Coffee-flavoured meanderings...

Driving to Calais from my house south of Guingamp, Brittany in a 1.2 Opel Corsa that was laden with three passengers, two of The Ragazza's large cases, one hamster in a large cage, the entire contents of my un-girlie wardrobe, The Someone's small bag and a partridge in a pear tree...

Approximately 625 kms

in gale-force winds that blew the car across the N12 as if it were a carelessly-discarded plastic carrier bag

The bridges at Honfleur are large and scarey...
At least to a Wimp Behind The Wheel such as Yours Truly


The wind was very strong as I paid 5 Euros for the pleasure and drove onto the first (smaller) bridge.

I gripped the steering wheel, gritted my teeth, clenched my jaw and tensed my shoulders...

Heck, I could, for all the world, have been driving along the M4 motorway to work

Plus ça change...

The second bridge, unrecorded for prosperity because The Someone was busy talking me out of a 110 kmh panic attack as we approached it, was higher and curved like a sick engineer's attempt at a roller-coaster. So much so that the first time I saw it, as I was driving to Lille via Belgium (never was any good at map-reading) to fetch the puppies last year, I thought to myself "Ha! Look at those people driving up the supports of that bridge, Idiots!" until it dawned on me that it wasn't the supports, it was the darned bridge!

The drive was long and unremitting

Six and a half hours with just a brief break and I refused to let The Someone drive

France is a very large country compared to the UK where, if one sets off from the centre in any direction and accelerates to 70 mph one risks falling into the sea within half an hour!

Eventually we hit Calais and found the Sea France ferry
Fortunately Sea France had ended their strike for a 25% pay rise a week before we left home so we were able to travel with them to England

Unfortunately I am a bad sailor and the wind continued to blow a gale as we set sail...

I leave it to your imagination but it was almost as bad as the time I sailed to Capri in a small ferry and was sick 14 times in an hour an a half..

"There'll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover
Tomorrow, when the world is free..."

I have come to appreciate just how truly terrible the two world wars must have been...

No, strike that, I can have absolutely no idea how awful the two world wars were since I am fortunate enough to have been born in that which we laughingly refer to as 'Times Of Peace'

but since moving to France and talking to people whose country was occupied by an enemy I have become more aware

and deeply moved...

So the sight of the white cliffs of Dover from the road leading into Calais was truly magical. And as we docked in Dover I gasped in wonder at the sight of the cliffs in the sunshine

And so to Reading, Berkshire

The hotel was chosen for its close proximity to The Standard Tandoori Nepalese Restaurant. One of my favourite eating places

I would not stay in this hotel again.

Aside from the unsavoury smells emanating from the WC (I had thought we'd left the fosse at home) and the never-ending noise of traffic and the unwelcoming receptionist and the dodgy back-street car park where I almost left the front spoiler of my car in the dip in the kerb and the lack of a cover on the stained mattress and the a/c unit shoved against the bed and the wrongly installed hot and cold controls for the shower (illegal in the UK) and the filthy carpet and the TV that was badly positioned and the nails sticking out of the walls and the water stains on the ceilings and...

should I go on?
I could you know!

Aside from all of that I was deeply offended by this notice.

Especially as we had tried, and failed, to get the wardrobe into the back of the car and couldn't find a towel soft enough to be worth stealing anyway!

I was shocked by the price of houses in Reading.

Since I left, 18 months ago, they have risen by around 20%.

They cannot keep rising, indeed the indications are that the housing bubble is about to pop and that prices will fall by around 1/4

I hope so


Peppard Common in South Oxfordshire is lucky to still have this wonderful small primary school.

I have many happy memories of this place...

I used to walk my Dalmatian puppy over this common as part of our daily five mile wander.
Domino was beautiful but boisterous.

The Ex, not a dog-lover, gave me an ultimatum "either the dog goes or I do"

I should have kept the dog


Parking in the "usual place" we walked over the river Thames and into Reading. The sun was shining briefly as a sporty pair in a kayak paddled under the bridge and towards the lock....

I tried canoeing on (in?) the Thames with The Ragazzi once. After my fifth capsize in as many minutes and having been dragged like a piece of driftwood from the dank and green river water, the instructor ordered me into his boat and confiscated my paddles.

In vain did I protest that I have steered a kayak around the Gulf Of Maine without once falling out...

I keep promising myself that I will buy a kayak and go bobbing about the beaches of Brittany.

I Love Books...

Waterstone's for a long-awaited latte while I dipped into a book about the English language by my hero David Crystal and gazed longingly at the well-stocked shelves nearby



Have you ever seen someone sitting at a nearby table and though "He looks nice, I wish I could walk up, sit down and chat"?

I don't often post pictures of people. I possess an over-developed English sense of reserve and respect for people's privacy.

So I apologise to this cute man, really I couldn't help myself, blame it on the caffeine-high!



There's a Costa's now in Caversham sounds like the start of a song, n'est-ce pas?

This place was a rather depressing newsagent when I lived in Caversham in the 1980's. Since my departure from England it has been transformed, Cinderella-like, into a coffee shop.

And Prince Charming works behind the counter


"Be it ever so humble..."

This is Caversham Adult Education Centre...

When I gave birth to The Ragazza in 1988 I took a long maternity leave (10 years which is, you'll admit, a very long time!) returning to work when my marriage floundered on the rocks of loveless indifference.

While I was not working I took up learning languages in order to keep my mind active and me sane. (Was I successful?) French when I had The Ragazza, Italian when The Ragazzo arrived.

Caversham Centre was a home-from-home.

It was here that I studied, sitting by a sunny window and next to my Best Friend Jeannie for many happy hours while the Ragazzi played happily in the creche. There are still times when the phone rings and I pick it up expecting to hear Jeannie's excited voice asking "Jules, the new course brochure is out, how about Welsh this year???"

Jeannie has been dead for 5 years but her spirit lives on and I am still trying to find meaning in my life as I sit here conjugating irregular French verbs....


"This is not just food...
This is M&S food"

(Current and very popular M&S advertising slogan that is fast becoming iconic).

I didn't shop in the M&S food hall though I did wander past the rows and racks of food open-mouthed in green-eyed envy at the vast choice of excellent quality chilled food, perfect fruit and vegetables and the Indian meals!!!

Carrefour will never, ever be able to match the excellence of M&S and no, I am not being paid to endorse their products, I happily do so for free


Sunday morning and the Reading Costa coffee house was open for business.

Staffed, as always, only by foreign workers. As we sat sipping The Someone told me the sorry tale of a person working at a motorway service station who charges £400 to find jobs at coffee shops for kids from Eastern Europe.

Turnover is high and he is making a good, if dirty, living exploiting people.
Someone should tell the taxman.
He should be stopped

Following the recent expansion of the EU Reading is full of Polish people these days. I loved listening to them speak and not being able to understand a darned word they said...


Did I mention that I Love Books?

One of the things that I miss about my old life is being able to visit the library in Reading town centre. It opened in 1985 and since the Ragazzi and I went every Tuesday and borrowed, on average, eight books a week, I guess it was good value, we were well-served!

And after the trip to the library we always called in at the village fish and chip shop, cod and chips for me and fried chicken and chips for them. A simple pleasure but one that now seems to hold such significance for me now that the memory often makes me tearful

So, we came, we ate a lot, spent a lot, laughed and cried a lot

And we left...

In a blizzard

And my decision to stay in France or to return to the rude, frenetic and greedy Me Me lifetsyle that is, I am shamed to say, England in 2008?

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