NOTES ON CHRISTMAS IN RURAL FRANCE and three goes for photos

Christmas in rural France is not the same as in the UK.  It doesn't really get going until much later and there always seems to me to be less emphasis on the hard sell.  

Our favourite troglodyte pizzeria has made an effort at Christmas decorations.

 However, the supermarkets by now have mountains of chocolate and other seasonal foods.  

The French clearly take chocolate seriously at Christmas.

The weather has finally turned quite cold and we have had some spectacular sunsets.

One of the restaurants in town has announced their Christmas menu.

Not a brussels sprout to be seen and still very reasonably priced.

The hotel restaurant in the village hasn't quite got its Christmas decorations sorted yet.

It always looks fairly festive anyway.

We've been experimenting with new local wines and this is now a favourite red.

We are lucky to have three good eating places in the village although that may soon change.  There was an Irish night at Brody's with our local band Celtiqua performing.  It was an excellent night.

Winter is not as dull as some might think in rural France.

Unfortunately, Brody's is for sale and the owners of the third restaurant and the bar are all approaching retirement age.  This time next year we could have only one place to eat in the village.  We are patronising it as often as we can.  Use it or lose it.

Finally, we have resumed our class in watercolour painting.

This is the second of an exercise in perspective, which is much more tricky than I expected.

One of the good things about learning to paint is that you see everything around you with "new eyes".  We drive around saying "that view would make a nice painting" or "look at the perspective in that!".

Finally, finally, I have finally cracked how to upload photos to my blog using pictures taken on my phone which appear automatically in my photo library in my iPad.  Using the iPad:

Step 1:  Click on "insert image".  Select photos and click to upload.  Up comes the message "unable to upload photos to your blog".

Step 2:  Don't give up.

Step 3: Click on "insert image" again.  A quick flash of something on the screen then nothing happens.

Step 4:  Don't give up.

Step 5:  Click on "insert image" again.  Select photos and click to upload again.  As if by magic they appear in the post.  Third time lucky you get a result.  It's all a complete mystery to me but it seems to work!