I’ve got a bad case of the blues today. Why? Well, this whole property search seems to be all highs and lows and sometimes it’s hard to maintain any optimism. Then something new comes up, something we like, somewhere we can envisage making our home, and that is usually the point where we find a…
As of today we’ve been here three whole months. Wow, the time has flown. I was so relieved just to be leaving at last after a really quite difficult three months leading up to the actual move (DS was only two months old when James started cracking the “we need to pack up the house!!!” whip)…
This was supposed to be a post about how easy we were finding the whole process of registering the car with French plates. First we collected the necessary paperwork, then we went to the Sous-Préfecture in Limoux, which is basically an administrative office similar to a town council office back in England, where we were given…
We have Internet connectivity, yay! It’s been a real trial and almost three months since we arrived but heck, who’s counting, right? Yes, today we returned to the 21st Century and found ourselves properly connected to the Internet. Okay, that’s overstating it slightly as the version of the Internet we have is via the mobile…
We decided before we arrived that we would enroll DD into a maternelle as soon as we were settled, so it was always on the cards. Then, after reading various blogs from others who had relocated and put their children into the local maternelle or école without much of an issue (on the administrative side,…
One of the things I’m enjoying most about being here is making new friends and having to be open to those around me – particularly given the language and, to some extent, the cultural differences – in order for that to happen so feel extremely lucky that we were welcomed unreservedly into this small community…
Since we arrived in France we’ve been almost entirely without real, bonefide, always connected, not worrying about data limits 21st Century Internet (and hence, Wi-Fi) in the house. For a holiday, no big deal. For an adventure in a new country when you have a million things to sort out, friends and family to keep…
One of the criticisms often bandied about the UK’s nearest neighbour is that it takes a long time to get anything done. By coincidence, one of DD’s favourite movies is the Muppets: Most Wanted, which parodies this stereotype brilliantly with a detective who downs tools for a long lunch and then goes on a 3-month…
Here’s the final installment of our move: day 5, when the boxes arrived from the UK. We’ve been here a month now – actually, exactly one month tomorrow! We’ve not found a new permanent home yet but we are making new friends, loving the sunshine, and settling into a new way of life. More on…
The day after our drive down from the UK was the day to pick up the cats with our destination a service station on the A9 just outside of Narbonne. The Garmin reckoned it would take one and a half hours to get there so we needed to be up and out for 8am to…