A GOOD LUNCH AT A NEW PLACE

We recently, on the spur of the moment, visited L'Ascenseur in St Savin for lunch.  It had been recommended by several people but, being nearly an hour's drive away, we somehow never made it until now.  You can see its website here.

It was worth the wait and worth the journey!  People don't take pictures of their lunch so much nowadays but this meal was so good I just had to.  The ambience is relaxed and the service excellent and unfussy.  

A salad starter for him.

A calamari starter for me.

We both had the chicken main course.

Followed by a delicious cheese course which included a small glass of port.

A fruit meringue for dessert for him.

A chocolate concoction for me.

Finally, a very good coffee.

We thoroughly enjoyed it and will be going back soon.

St Savin is also a great  place to visit, a UNESCO world heritage site with a fabulous abbey, lovely walks and a charming old town with numerous other eateries.

 Apparently, St Savin was the birth place in 1827 of the man who invented the first hydraulic elevator, Félix Léon Edoux, which is how the restaurant gets its name. 

EN SUITE BATHROOM FINISHED !!

BEFORE - the sink area was cramped and crowded.

Nick always hated the blue glass blocks.  I didn't mind them too much.

The sink itself was resin, not porcelain, was scratched, discoloured and worn.

The handles on the mirror doors had fallen off and were held on with sellotape.

The switch for the lighting was inside the cupboard and very fiddly to turn on.

AFTER - new sink unit and the return wall with the glass bricks has gone, creating more space.

The sink is porcelain and the light is now a wall light with a switch where you would expect it - on the wall!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BEFORE - on the shower side there were flimsy contiboard shelves crammed with stuff.

The floor was tiled in the same tiles as the shower cubicle and were uneven and broken.

The old toilet was not screwed down, just glued on top of the tiles.

Years of limescale deposits due to the very hard water meant it never really looked clean.

The lighting was an old fashioned spotlight above the shower and we suspected it was actually not designed for bathroom use.

AFTER - the dark grey floor tiles have been replaced with a lighter laminate floor.

The new toilet is neater and most definitely fixed properly to the floor.

The lighting is now a proper bathroom light.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

BEFORE - the wobbly shelves were very useful but full of stuff that never got used.

AFTER - new painted wood shelves, half as deep.

We have given away piles of towels and loads of unused toiletries.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~



BEFORE - the ensuite bathroom was dark, cramped and very tired looking.

AFTER - the new one is more spacious, light and fresh.

We had to make a difficult decision about the shower cubicle.  It's hard to argue for changing something that functions perfectly but is just old fashioned.  

The en suite is open to the bedroom and I really wanted to have a door of some kind across the front of it.  That meant we would have to change the shower cubicle to make space to either build another wall or hang a sliding door.  We dreaded to think what plumbing surprises lay behind or underneath the shower and would almost certainly have had to have it all done professionally.  All of that would have added a huge amount of money to the cost of the project. The en suite is, after all, literally in the bedroom so we compromised and decided to stick with the old shower and the curtains that we added a few years ago.

We're very pleased with the end result after a lot of work but minimal expense.  We could have demolished everything and had a showroom en suite bathroom which would have cost ten times as much and been the best room in the house!  Hard to justify for somewhere that you brush your teeth, take a shower and spend a penny!!  Not to mention that was unlikely to add much to the value to the house when we do come to sell it.

Now at least it looks clean and neat and not something that a prospective buyer thinks they're going to have to fix immediately.  I call it my "forty shades of grey" bathroom!!

ANOTHER SUNSET

 

As the sun sets on another day in the middle of France we think about our future.

The SMS from the Préfecture inviting us to go and collect our cartes de séjour has still not arrived after almost six weeks.

We think it's unlikely that they are not ready, that they have not actually been manufactured yet.  Our 2024 cards were ready within two weeks but the message to collect them was sent to the wrong number.  We finally collected them after they had been sitting at the Préfecture for eleven months.  Our 2025 cards were ready within two weeks and we collected them promptly.  We think it's likely that this year's cards are ready but the text has not been sent to the right number, if at all, or the text has gone missing into the ether, as they sometimes do.

An SMS seems a very insecure and unreliable method to use for such an important thing as residence cards, even more so that there is no procedure to follow up uncollected cards.  With text messages there is no indication whether a message has been read.  So, we have sent an email to the Préfecture asking, very tactfully, in "would your dog like my breakfast" tones, if they are ready and if an SMS could be resent.   We are advised that when contacting the Préfecture it's important to imply that any fault is ours, not theirs!  Email is the only avenue of contact and you can't get into the Préfecture without showing the SMS on your phone to the security guard on the door.  We expect to get some kind of reply in a couple of weeks but are not hopeful that it will be helpful.

Lately, we have been thinking about our future in France.  The house we have here would be difficult to manage if there was just one of us, or if one of us needs help and care.  We have come to the conclusion that, like many of our friends, we will have to either downsize to something more manageable in our old age, or return to the UK, where we already have a small house perfect for an old couple or, importantly, an old person on their own.

Lately, several of our friends have put their French homes up for sale to return to the UK.  Mostly it's the need to be near to family as they get older.  For one it's the hassle of managing an old property by themselves as a widow.  

For us there is another dimension, a direct result of Brexit, that we do not have the right to live here and have to go through this palaver (and expense) of re-applying for residence cards every year.  After we have had five one-year residence cards we should get a ten-year card.  That would be in 2028.  Which means that by the time we would have to renew that we would be well into our eighties and that could easily be one thing too much to cope with.  

The health service in France is excellent, better than in the UK, but living out in the sticks if there was just one of us would be very hard.  Not to mention that sooner or later we would almost certainly not be able to drive.

The thought of giving up our place in France and returning full time to the UK has filled me with dread but we would have to do it while we are still physically and mentally capable of doing it.  We don't want to find ourselves in the position of being forced to do it at a time when we are unable to cope.  So, we have come up with an alternative plan.  We are going to sell this house and look for a small holiday home.  We would become UK residents again but having a small house in France, somewhere in the same general area, that we could use for holidays or a month or so at a time.  Back to where we started.  Once we felt unable to make the journey we could sell that, or leave it to family, or just walk away from it.

We love this place, love this house and the life here and don't want to give it up, but have to have a plan for the future while we still have options and can cope with a move.  We are conscious that we shouldn’t leave it until it’s too late. 

A DAY IN THE CITY

We went to Tours on the bus for a day out.  The main reason was to see an exhibition of sculpture by female artists at the Musée des Beaux Arts.  It was on the ground floor where there were several groups of teenage children presumably on a school visit to see them.  They seemed to be having a good time, judging by the level of noise!

On the upper floors there were a lot of biblical paintings depicting scenes of too much violence and misery for my taste.  Regardless of the skill of the artists I couldn’t bring myself to study them for long.  I've come to the conclusion that in most things I prefer lightweight to serious these days.  

The sculptures were fabulous but my favourite was not a bronze but one by a Canadian sculptor called Carolina Benedicks-Bruce, of herself and her husband.

In the courtyard of the museum is a huge cedar tree.  It’s a magnificent specimen and also one of the largest and acknowledged trees in France.  It reminded me of the lovely tree recognition ceremony that we attended at the château in our own village last year.

We got the bus home at teatime so that Hugo and Yvonne were not alone by themselves for too long.

It was a nice day out and we enjoyed our little glimpse of "city life".  Living out in the sticks and immersed in country life it’s fun to be surrounded by a little hustle and bustle amongst the smart shops and restaurants every so often. 

In the evening there was another gorgeous sunset.  We sat out in our hats and fleeces until the sun disappeared and the bats came out.