I jet-blasted the front garden yesterday…and very interesting it was too! It really was ‘four seasons in one day’! We had rain, sunshine and rainbows, hail, snow, wind and it was bitterly cold, with a warm sun on my back! I didn’t mind though, I just kept blasting. I quite like jet-blasting, it is a really satisfying job, the difference is amazing….I’d forgotten they were honey coloured slabs and it’s quite therapeutic, (apart from the noise!) it’s a good way to get immersed in a job and forget all the pressure elsewhere!
The fence is nearly complete. The guys had missed out one plank and we were told one was on order. Plank arrives, is nailed into place and they come round for their money. But on closer inspection, the plank is the wrong colour and the wrong height! Maybe they thought we wouldn’t notice! Well, it stuck out like a sore thumb! So, still waiting for the fence to be finished…..
Plus, this morning, I went into the estate agents and am now awaiting the arrival of Dave, who is going to do a valuation. I have asked that no photos be taken yet, as it is still a mess here! I need to get myself a house doctor!
Happy Mothers Day to all you Mums out there…I hope you were treated and pampered all day!
I was awoken at 7:30 this morning, with giggling and smirking, a lovely cup of tea (my first Diddy made cup of tea!), 2 giant slabs of toast and a banana covered in butter. And very nice it was too! I was then left to have a lovely lie-in…perfect.
We have had a busy Sunday; so far we have been to Asda to finish off the shopping for Diddys school trip, (cost of trip £95, cost of essentials and bits, at least £195!), B&Q for 2 storage boxes, jet blasted patio, made soup, to the park for football and cycling, made cakes and flapjacks…..and it’s still only 5:30!
We are hoping to get the house on the market next weekend…it seems to be dragging now and quite honestly, I can’t think why it has taken so long! We wanted to get it on the market by the end of January but it didn’t happen.
So, the new carpet arrives on Thursday, the fence is done in the front garden, patios jet blasted. I need to de-clutter, de-personalise, have a good clean and tidy in time for the agent and his digital camera!
And then all we do is sit back and wait! Apparantly, for every house on the market in the UK, there are 8 separate customers searching to buy it. Yeah, well, we’ll see!
I’ve been back a week now from France and I realise that I have not posted on how it went, apart from a little bit on Bergerac Airport. It would appear that the improvements there overshadowed the rest of my stay!
So what did we do?
It was fairly warm but very wet….I think there were a few hours when the drizzle and rain stopped. At this point, the kids put on their boots and leapt outside to play happily with Poppy.
Dads car had got stuck in the mud and there were concerns that we might not make it to the airport on the Thursday. But with a little bit of sand and a lot of brute force, we managed to shift the car. We nearly took the front of the house with us at one point….the joys of country living! (Mental note:…..surface the front drive, one of first jobs!)
Myself and Dad did a bit of walking around, looking at work that we intend to do; basic landscaping, ideas for improvement, new staircases, shower rooms and bedrooms, to name but a few. We are going to be very busy!
They are getting very excited about our imminent arrival. Having said that, I think we will have to wait and leave once the house here in London has been sold. We were hoping to make the move during the Easter holidays, come what may, but I don’t think this is practical.
Never mind, I’m confident that the house will sell very quickly and we will be settled by the Summer Hols!
I’ve had no word from Billy, who has now left for our shores. I only hope he has a mobile phone so that he can ring me en route. It looks as though my posse of 8 year olds can help out.
‘Yes Mummy, I had a great time at the birthday sleep-over. We all carried boxes from the shed to the big truck…we were pretending to be removal men’.
I have had the under-cupboard lights in the kitchen fixed at last…it took all of half an hour. They blew this time last year. I understand how Sir Jerry Robinson feels now! Wall….head….bang springs to mind!
I am awaiting a quote to get some blown tiles in the bathroom done. It’s all go here…..
I blame these Channel 4 programmes. Gone are the days when you can put a house on the market, complete with grubby walls and weedy gardens. You need to completely decorate first, renew all of the carpets and landscape the garden. Call me old-fashioned, but I thought that was the fun of moving into a house…now you have to do that before you put it on the market. And all because people don’t have the imagination to see beyond the peeling paper and bright green skirting boards.
I had a bit of a shock last night….I have been informed that Billy is coming on Saturday, at an unspecified time, to pick up some boxes from me, to take to France.
This is good news, honestly. I have been saying for a few months now….‘we need to get Billy to do a quote, to take some preliminary boxes, from the first/initial de-cluttering stage, down to France, to get them out of my way so that I can start on the decorating’.
It seemed quite a good idea at the time. We have a lot of ’stuff’, all non-essential, but far too useful to actually throw out. Only, it’s in the way at the moment…so why don’t we ‘get Billy to do a quote……decorating’.
I think it’s the shock…things are really moving now…only a few months and we plan to make the move, we plan to be there! And so much to do!
Plus, I happen to have Diddys eight years old, birthday pyjama, sleepover party on the Friday night. Yup, four screeching 8 year old girls….methinks I won’t be in any fit state for tea-chests and cardboard boxes!
I caught this article in the Telegraph today, whilst browsing.
Although my two are fairly good with their table manners, I’m thinking it might be a good idea to enrole them anyway. Experimentation with new food is not one of The Boy’s strongest points and more than one set of cutlery…well!
It may give them a taster for when they are tucking into their school lunches at the ecole primaire; or at least buffer the shock a bit!
On a very regular basis, I am sent the latest instalment,which has all sorts of really practical, easy to follow tips and techniques for learning French. There is the ‘Mot du Jour’, verb conjugations and such like, all the rules and regulations that most of us last met at school, daily quotes, games and much more.
It includes many practical elements, eg. pronunciation sound bites, translations to work on and even a guide to the various gestures that are so common in French. (Chance to perfect the Gallic Shrug!)
What I like is that many of the new words are quite modern…less ‘La plume de ma tante’ and more ‘mon blog rocks!’.
We stayed at Aunty Debs this weekend, in London Town and while we were there, I thought it might be worth a trip to a Waterstones to see what is available in the Learning French section.
We went to the Gower Street shop, which is an amazing experience! Four floors, possibly five, of books, books, books! It was very difficult to walk around without being distracted, so we had to put our blinkers on.
The language section is huge, from French to Mandarin to Arabic and back again. We managed to find a section just for childrens French, where we found Serge the Cheeky Monkey!
The pack consists of a DVD, CD, parents’ guide, workbook and flash cards and at £25, I thought it was worth a try. So armed with our new French is Fun! activity box and a couple of French childrens’ dictionarys, we left very pleased with our efforts.
So far, the DVD has proved very popular, with both children enjoying the antics and songs of Serge and his friend Pascale, the parrot. The format is the same for all of the programmes, Serge and Pascale deal with basic language ’sets’…Je m’appelle, le temps, la famille etc. There is a cartoon of the Coco football team and slots where Serge visits France to meet real French children. In each the recently acquired French is repeated throughout.
I am hoping that the enthusiasm for learning French is not short lived and that both Diddy and The Boy have a smattering of the language before we leave. If they keep up with Serge, as they are doing, I don’t see why not!
I had a little chat with Diddy the other day about her concerns on moving to France. At that point she wasn’t at all keen on the idea, so I thought a discussion on the pros and cons of the idea may be of benefit to her.
It would appear that her major concerns are:
Missing Daddy
Missing her friends
Not being able to understand French
All reasonable fears!
Which brings me on to Muzzy. I have seen the adverts and always thought the character Muzzy looked and sounded a bit odd. I never took it any further. It was Diddys father who suggested it the other day and so I checked out the website.
It offers a free months trial, with only posting and packaging to pay for and then monthly instalments up to a total of £150. It seems quite expensive, but if the claims are true, she will wake up one morning, after having watched a few cartoons and be speaking French. Wow! Maybe it is worth it!
My theory is that even with just a smattering of the basics, Diddy may be a little more relaxed and confident in her abilities to understand and make friends. She is doing a bit of French at school already and I am pleasantly surprised at how much she is picking up on only half an hour a week. Maybe a bit of Muzzying is all she needs to help her on her way!
Does anyone have any experience of the course? If so, please let me know what you thought of it.
I am pleased to say that after our little chat she is now much more keen on the idea and wants to sell the house now, take the Bilbao boat and move over.
Well, after much deliberation and stalling, I finally linked the Beauregard website into the Bonnes Vacances advert that we run. So we’ve kind of gone ‘official’ with it!
I have been waiting for the chance to re-register the domain name as Beauregard.co.uk. It is registered with my BIL at the moment, but due to work constraints and other commitments, we are unable to do it at the moment. We will, I know, so in the meantime, it is running as a .wordpress domain. Not ideal but the content is the same.
I am quite pleased with the site…I like the simplicity of the WordPress template and it’s style …it’s the same as the blog here, but with a different header. I think the days of flashy intro’s and glittery, bling text are gone and we are now seeing more minimilistic sites, where the content and pictures do the hard work…without being cheesy and kitch! I hope that I have achieved that anyway.
Having said that, the thumbnails on the site, for some reason do not replicate well at all. They are grainy and frankly quite poor! They do improve when enlarged but I will need to look into the reasons why and do something about it. The Flikr pictures in contrast, look a lot better.
So, the website is now up and running! I think it will be constantly updated, but it is something I really enjoy doing so it won’t be a chore.
Please leave me your comments/thoughts on the website. If there are glaringly obvious errors or typo’s, or if you think it is dire….I would love to know.
If you would like more information on taking a holiday here at BEAUREGARD, please click on the link below in the Blogroll.
Or contact us by email: beauregard47@orange.fr
FeedBurner
Subscribe to our newsletter...it's free and easy to do, it keeps you up to date with our comings and goings and we promise that your email address will never be shared.
Subscribe to BEAUREGARD...The Blog by Email
Linger and have a look around; catch up on what we are doing. There are updates on a regular basis and we hope you find it an enjoyable way to get to know us a little.
Please feel free to make comments, put us in your favourites, send us to your friends, link to us, subscribe to our feed or newsletter.
Email @: beauregard@orange.fr
