Most people have to work to earn money to pay for wine and pineau, and I am no exception. At the moment I am having to do all the work that was previously covered by myself and a colleague, so things are, you might say, rather busy. Hence why my postings here have been rather scant of late. My days have been full and my nights very short.
But anyway, today I find myself with a bit of time for a catch-up so I’ll be posting a few items to fill you in on what’s been happening over the last couple of weeks.
Sorry folks, its been a while since my last post, so lets catch up on what’s been going on shall we?
Well, first off, after my posting about how lucky I was to be able to work from home so much, I have had several trips back to the UK just recently. These have generally been fairly painless affairs, although each time I leave home I do attach a psychological bungee cord to the gate-post so I can come back as quickly as possible. As we are in the high season, I have a lot more flights to choose from and I have found the EasyJet routes to be quite useful. They do mid-day flights from La Rochelle to Gatwick with a return flight mid-morning from London. This really fits in much better with my needs as I can catch a flight to London and still get some time in the office the same day. Gatwick is closer to Maidenhead than Stansted, and the Gatwick Express train service is head-and-shoulders above the Stansted Express, which is the pits.
In fact, the whole EasyJet experience is so much nicer than that offered by RyanAir. The planes are more like normal planes, and not just big yellow tubes advertising the airline. The seats are a soothing grey, and not in-your-face yellow, and they have pockets in the back. In the pockets there is even a magazine! Yes, folks, its almost like being on a proper flight. The boarding process is better organised as well. With Ryanair you are either a priority boarder or not. Hence, there is always a huge scrum at the departure gate while people jostle to get in the best position to get the best seats. At least with EasyJet you are broken down into groups: Those that have requested “Special Assistance”, those that have purchased “Speedy Boarding”, “Boarding group A” and “Boarding Group B”. Each group is boarded separately and in my experience it works much better.
So, work has kept me away from my blog for a while. There are changes going on which may affect me and I’ve had to give it a lot of attention recently. However, it’s not been all work and no play. We have had visitors too.
For the first time since February, my sister Kathryn and her family managed to come and see us. My brother-in-law Sam had broken his leg at doing something foolish (playing football actually, which just confirms my belief that exercise is bad for you…). So their planned trip was very much in the balance for a while. Thankfully they got the all-clear from the consultant and so they made the journey down to see us. We had a lovely time and our kids were delighted to see them, especially their nephews, who they haven’t seen since February.
While they were here we had a couple of days out.
On recommendation by Kevin D, we went to the Ile de Ré near La Rochelle. What a lovely island it is, although the €17 toll to cross the bridge is rather steep! We found a nice beach at La Flotte and had a great day doing the usual building of big sandcastles and playing in the sea. This day also saw the christening of our picnic-hamper-rucksack-thing, which Kathryn and Sam had bought us. It was very pleasant eating our lunch on the beach with proper plates, knives and a cheese-board. All very civilised! Sadly we had all managed to forget to bring a bottle of wine, so we failed to finish off the event in true style. Maybe next time 
As the sea started to come closer we decided to go for a walk along the sea-front up to the harbour. Sam, who is still on crutches as he has all sorts of pins sticking out of his leg, stayed behind to soak up some sun. The harbour was a very nice part of town, made all the better in Molly’s eyes by the inclusion of a Chi-Chi stall.
For the uninitiated, Chi-Chis are like long thin doughnuts and are totally gorgeous, freshly fried and caked in sugar. No good for the diet, but heavenly :) Most seaside resorts sell them somewhere round here and we always like to indulge. Well, once has to support local businesses don’t you think?!
When we returned to the beach to join Sam, the sea had come right in, leaving a throng of people clinging on to the 10 square meters of sand that was left. It was all rather amusing, seeing the masses of people spilling off the beach and up the steps, onto the grass verge above. No-one was willing to give up on the sunshine, so they just escaped as far as necessary from the sea and plonked themselves down there to sunbathe. It looked rather like a refugee camp to be honest!
We were totally won over by Ile de Ré. It looks like a beautiful place and is certainly somewhere to come back to and explore further (preferably without the tourists 
).
We eventually toddled back to Foussais and enjoyed moules et frites once more. Lisa makes a very nice m&f, though she was inspired by those we had in Carcassonne to add lots more wine & garlic. Still she felt she hadn’t reached the same level of flavour, so next time there will be even more! When we visited Niort a while ago we tried Moules au Pineau, which was rather delightful too. Though it seems a bit of a waste to cook with Pineau… we’ll have to see.
Anyway, back to the visitors.
There was a fête in Maillezais on Sunday, so we went to explore. It seemed to be fairly busy, and there was the Yeovil Brass Band there, which we though would be fun. However we were a bit disappointed with what was there and the band only played a little during the day. The whole fête seemed to be focussed mainly on the evening’s concert by the brass band, and we weren’t really looking to stay out that long, so we moved on.
After our great night at Nieul the week before, we thought we would go back and see the village on a “normal” day. Well, it being Sunday, it wasn’t really normal as everything was shut, but at least we could explore a little. First things first though, we needed something to eat, so we stopped at the auberge near the abbey for a lovely meal. They certainly do know how to make good goats cheese salads round here
After starting the day quite cool, the weather really improved while we ate, and so we decided to head back home and let the kids jump in the pool. Yes, our pool is still standing, so far. I can’t remember if I have told you the tale, so I’ll fill you in another time.
We were very sad to say good bye to Kathryn, Sam and the boys. We always have a great time together and this one has seemed all-too-short. We’re already looking forward to the next time.
So there you go, it has been a busy few days and I’m sorry for neglecting you, my faithful readership. I’ll try to keep on the ball from now on
I have just returned from a brief jaunt back to England, my first for a long time. My job being what it is, I am able to work from home most of the time, which has been fantastic. Setting up home in a new country is hard enough without the strain of having to leave it all behind every week to return to the rat-race. It can be quite tough though, working remotely. After a while you do start to feel a bit forgotten and, although there are always conference calls, email, MSN and Skype, there’s not really any substitute for a 1-to-1 face-to-face meeting.
So I actually don’t mind spending odd days back in the office. It serves several purposes.
It keeps my brain active. Being one of the more senior guys there, I am generally a magnet for enyone with tricky questions. This does me good as you can very easily “zone-out” when working from home, especially when home is a quiet corner of rural france and its sunshine and blue-skies outside!
It reminds people who I am. In a large organisation it can very easily become a case of out-of-sight-out-of-mind. And you can find people unconciously excluding you from conversations or going elsewhere for information just because they haven’t seen you in the office for a while. It’s nothing personal, you just start to “fade-out” of their conciousness after a while.
It’s a change of scenery. My desk faces the corner of the wall, so, like a naughty schoolboy, I can see very little of what is going on around me. The lazy spider that lived near the cieling above me seems to have slipped down and is now hanging on his web, looking rather dead. So I don’t even have him for company. Going back to the office gives me a new view of the world, with lots lots of faces around, none of which are generally dead.
I get to earn loyalty points at the hotel. One of the few perks of the job - staying in lots of hotels means one soon collects a stack of hotel loyalty points. I shall soon enjoy spending my collection on a bunch of nice stuff
I can reconnect with the organisation. Working at home it’s easy to forget that you are part of a wider organisation. Just visiting HQ for a day reminds me that there is more out there.
But the best thing for me about going away is that I get to come home. As I drive into Foussais Payre and see all the sights that have so quickly become my signals of home, I can feel myself relax and all the stresses of trains, planes and automobiles are left behind on the road.
It’s worth going away just to get that feeling.
My journeys to and from work generally involve me just walking downstairs in my dressing gown, but this week I actually had to go out and do some proper work for a change nby visiting a customer on-site. Thankfully it was not in the UK this time, but in Bucharest, Romania. So, clearly there not being any direct flights from my neck of the woods, I had to get myself to Paris. Now, this is no mean feat - it is actually easier and quicker for me to get to London than Paris, but that’s by the by.
I got everything organised, booked my flight, hotel, train & parking (I wasn’t getting caught out again by having to find €21 in coins to feed into the parking machine at Niort station!). I won’t bore you with the details (but DARN these rural french folks) but I ended up just missing the train from Niort to Paris. “When is the next train?” I pant to the woman at the station, having tried to sprint along the platform with my rather-too-heavy-for hand-luggage. “15:24 monsieur.” That sounded bad to me… “Il arrive à Paris à quelle heure?” “17:40″…..Noooooooooooooooooooo!!!! That would leave me less than an hour to get from Paris Montparnasse to Charles de Gaul airport. Quite simply not enough time, given that it was rush hour.
So I faced the prospect of having to cancel my flight, or at least change it until the next day, which would mean finding somewhere to stay overnight….all so much hassle. But thankfully, my colleague Sam saved the day by telling me about Royal Bikes. They are a motorcycle taxi firm, and they were amazing!
Now, I am the sort of old-school guy who always says that motorbikes are death-traps, an accident waiting to happen etc. etc., but I have to say…. WOW! It was the first time I had ever been on a motorbike and after the first 10 minutes of sheer panic as I watched us squeeze in between the cars vans and lorries with inches to spare, I actually really enjoyed it. And talk about exhillarating! Big Thunder Mountain has nothing on this - racing round the paris perepherique at rush hour, swerving in and out of the traffic….It was one hell of a journey.
And incredibly he got me there on time - 18:20 I arrived at the air France desk, where a nice young lady took me to the front of the queue so I could race off to catch the flight to Bucharest.
I don’t think I’ll be swapping my Chippie for a motorbike just yet, but I might be daring and open the windows when I’m going fast, just to remember a taste of that crazy journey.
