My new job

I think I rather muddled things with the details in my previous post of the cleaning job for which I inadvertently applied. Yesterday saw me going off to another care home in a beautiful Kent village about 20 minutes drive away (a much better journey than that to Tunbridge Wells) and this time the job was indeed for a care assistant. I'd not seen an advert - this was another 'posh' place to which I had sent my details and it did turn out to be a glorious Georgian house with modern annexe. Cedar trees and weeping willows are the view out of the window as you enter the main living room that backs on to Reception and there is a conservatory, gazebo and little follies around the grounds - near the allotments where the residents grow the vegetables that the chef then uses for lunch. Shrubberies and herbaceous borders abound and they look beautifully cared for.

I had a cracking interview - after being in charge of recruitment for a firm of London accountants for about 15 years I'm quite interview savvy and the manager whom I met had the same style I used to adopt - like a chat amongst friends to encourage the candidate to relax. Halfway through she said that even though I had no proper experience she would be mad to let me escape and after that I was introduced to some of the residents, all of whom gave me a hug.

Reference requests and the Criminal Records check have been sent off this morning and it looks like I will be starting in a couple of weeks. The money is rubbish but this was never about money - Mr FF does quite well in terms of our needs. It was about finding something that would be of interest and that would also not just see me sitting in front of a screen helping my bum to get larger.

There is an 'end of life' centre at this home that takes people in when the local hospice is full. I thought I would find the idea of this too sad to cope with but strangely enough I feel very enthusiastic about it. I will also be doing shift work - the shifts are 7am - 1pm/ 1pm - 7pm/ 7am - 7pm/ 7pm through the night to 7am, and they are in blocks of 36 hours a week. On the week you get three long shifts you get four days off. These hours suit my doggy day care duties very well, except of course for the 7am - 7pm and on those ones Mr FF can elect to work from home.

The only drawback is that I have to travel on the M20 and nobody wants to let a 'Frenchie' into the lane. Grrr - these xenephobic Brits, eh?

Kentish catch up

Because of not having a landline (we've only signed a six month contract at this house in case we are not that happy) we are on some mobile roving set up for internet access and I am on a limited amount each month. I only realised this when a screen came up the other day telling me I was out of internet credit. Mr FF had tried to explain this to me on the first day here but there was so much going on I did not quite take it in. I'm limiting myself to just now and then in the old blogosphere, so that is one reason I am not very good at keeping up to date with your entries. Another reason is that I am just enjoying being back in the UK and am out a fair bit.

Immediate impressions of being back:

I am no longer the plumpest person in town - there are some hefty people around and I'm very happy about this.

Everyone seems to have tatoos (I hate them), especially round where we are living

Some of the local kids seem quite brattish which was never the case where we lived in Brittany. I have already caught our phantom doorbell ringer (done to make the dogs bark which indeed they have been doing). I shouted at him and his two mates and then took their photos - now they scuttle past and avoid eye contact when I pass them on dog walks.

Traffic is horrendous and everyone seems to delight in cutting up someone they think is a French person (my car has French plates)

My love affair with Tescos is developing into a true passion. I'd never eaten pak choi until this week - not to mention all the millions of items you just do not see in a French supermarket. I'd also forgotten how English supermarkets encourage their staff to be friendly and helpful - again, a no-no in France.

Bold 2 in 1 washing capsules are rubbish and smear soap all over clothes.

Things on the horizon:

Further bonding with our lovely neighbours who say they do not mind the dogs barking as much as they do. Even though we are in a cul-de-sac we are on a pivotal corner with lots of foot traffic to the local shops. Two floor to ceiling windows mean the dogs have too perfect a view of people to bark at and sitting with the curtains drawn is a bit depressing.

I have an interview on Wednesday morning in Tunbridge Wells and will not say more until I know whether or not I have the job.

Getting UK plates for our cars - not because of the road antics by other drivers. I think we are going to be here for the long haul and it is law to have the plates of the country.


Back later in the week with hopefully positive news to report about a job.

That's better

Oh people, it has been so difficult and I'll tell you why. About ten days before I was due to leave France for the UK I had a bit of a turbulent morning where lots of things went wrong, culminating in me attempting to do an Ubuntu upgrade - yes, even when it said 'this installation will take approximately 3.25 hours', it still did not ring those bloody warning bells that should have been belting out like Biggius Bennius. It all went terribly wrong and I was completely without the net for the remainder of my time in Brittany, save for the Wii (on which I was able to view emails/blogs etc but not respond at all), Thus I have kept up with most of your news but not been able to leave my mark.

We have settled nicely into our house here (mid-Kent is as much as I will say), it's been wonderful being back in my mother tongue again, I've joined the library (yay, a library - it's the simple things one misses the most as an expat), job hunting will seriously begin in a week or two.

Over the next few days I will be back in full flow on here. I've missed you all so much and I'm sorry to have been out of the loop for so long.

Look out Kent, here we come

Yes, the Fancy household will soon be decamping to the county known as the 'Garden of England'. Lately I have been in the UK tracking down a rental house whose owner would take the two little bichons. It's not been easy - I suppose a lot of home owners think of dogs as huge, hairy wet, flea-ridden things. However, Misty and Poppy are the canine equivalent of glossy and sparkly bright young things, always fresh from the latest grooming session (and their hair doesn't shed or moult). We've now found somewhere though and are just waiting for our moving date.

You knew I must have had a good reason for deserting the blogosphere.

So, within the next few weeks we will be back in the UK (hooray) and keeping the French house for holidays and rest/recuperation. I'm going to be looking around for a job as well (oh how I have missed working - you think it's going to be wonderful giving up work, but it can make for very long days).

This is a post on the fly but in the next few days I will be round to see you all

What a lot of rubbish

Mr FF is away for a few days and last night I decided to see if there was anything to watch on English tv. When he is here we usually watch films on our wall with the projector or play Scrabble on Facebook or just laze about chatting, seldom do we watch television - if we do then it is usually French tv to help with language skills.

I watched about 15 minutes of two programmes last night and couldn't decide which appalled me more; first there was Katie Price and Peter Andre's reality show about them moving to LA. It showed how unpleasant a person the former Jordan really is and I don't understand how she could have agreed to let a film crew follow her and record every nasty rejoinder to her husband. He wanted to go to the gym and she replied 'I know you are having an affair with someone there Peter - folks you heard it here first (looking at the camera). She then told him he was a liar and that she didn't love him any more and his little boy ran over to her and she encouraged the child to diss his dad. How can she behave like this in front of a) her kids and b) all of us sitting there mindlessly watching?

So I switched over to Channel 4 and watched a bit of Gok Wan's fashion makeover show. One item he does each week (although this was the first time I'd seen his show) is select some high street fashion items and then a 'rival' selects similar things but of a 'designer'nature and the audience choose which look they prefer the most, although they - and us - do not know which is the 'cheap' version and which is the astro-currency one. This show made me actually realise how out of touch with consumerism I have become since moving to France. -okay, I have my Rocket Dog (very mild) compulsion but that is it really. Anyway, I even found the 'cheap' high street prices quoted quite a lot of money , let alone the few thousand that each so-called designer outfit cost.

I think this whole 'staying in fashion' concept is a ludicrous one, although I didn't think so when I was 25 and as addicted to labels and needing to have the latest look/colour/style as the next fashion victim. For that is what these people are - they are victims and I've decided that I'm happy, delighted in fact, at being out of that loop.

You can take the woman out of London but...

you can't take London out of the woman - or something like that.

Living in the French countryside, well any countryside really, is something that I never thought I would ever do. I was a confirmed city type, a paid-up member of the 'spend your monthly salary on clothes and going out and to hell with the future'. Whilst my friends were sensible and bought themselves flats (apartments for you lot over the pond) or houses when prices were reasonable, I spent spent spent. I would go to Harvey Nicholls, Browns, Liberty or Selfridges to buy my things. I was a consumer and I consumed.

Between the ages of 20 and 30 I have no idea how much money I spent. I had indulgent parents, no siblings with whom to share the spoils, I took taxis everywhere (I only learnt to drive when I was 28), in short I had no idea of the value of money. I was a generous spender though and regularly picked up the tab in restaurants or bought my crowd tickets to things that we couldn't blag our way into.

We lived very near Highgate Cemetery and that used to be my 'walk in the country'. It was atmospheric, I had to wear sensible boots (my definition of the country is somewhere you have to be sensibly shod - stiletto or kitten heels get stuck in the mud) and some of the people buried there are quite famous. Take Karl Marx for instance, whose tomb is the photo above. He was buried on the Eastern side of the cemetery, the entrance to which was in a road called Swain's Lane (which was where my best friend lived). It was a short skip over the road - in our sensible boots - to have a stroll around, go and see Karl and count how many people would be there taking pictures of his iconic monument. It wasn't always so - he actually had a much more modest grave in a rather overgrown, seldom visited part of the cemetery; it is only since the fifties he has been in his famous plot (not that I ever saw the original plot, I'm not in my dotage yet).

But anyway, that was my country walk, followed by a stroll in the adjoining park (Waterlow Park - Mott the Hoople wrote a song about it) and then tea at the park's cafe which was in Lauderdale House, a 'country house' bought by Charles II for his then mistress, Nell Gwynn (her with her famous oranges). You could star spot as you sat outside the cafe; you would regularly see Sting with his first wife - Frances Tomelty; Alan Rickman (Prof Snape from Harry Potter but at that time a well-known stage actor); Annie Lennox; I could go on and on.

This part of London is so very lovely and it is a shame that most tourists stay in the centre and don't venture out to the suburbs. If you are reading this and are planning a trip to London in the future, make a note - get out to Highgate and also to Hampstead (another haunt of mine). You will love it and sometimes I yearn to be there again. But my memories of London are through a soft focus neuron. At this time of my life I am happier in the peace and quiet of the French countryside, a place I never thought I would be so happy living in.

Strange Times

It's getting so that each time I see the UK news or read an online newspaper there is yet another report of a ghastly and gruesome murder/savage attack/ mindless thuggery - you know the sort of thing. What is happening to the country that I grew up in? People coming to the aid of other people and getting set upon, beaten unconscious and later dying; young girls kidnapped and tortured. It's the stuff of films and yet it is real enough.

I've never encountered anything firsthand but about a year ago the husband of my cousin's closest friend left his house one morning and was walking towards his car so that he could go to work - 20 yards at the most. Two youths came up to him and one of them drew a knife and slashed this poor man down his face. Okay, he wasn't killed but he is now too terrified to leave his home and has been on indefinite sick leave since it happened. It turned out that it was an initiation ceremony for a new gang member and it happened in the quiet London suburb of Winchmore Hill.

I don't know what the answers are to help stop this decline in law and order. Look at me - I left all this behind and moved to the French countryside. It's more than a year since I did a UK trip and there is nothing planned in the near future. I'll stay in my sweet corner of the world, look at all the mayhem and despair on the news and be glad that we left England.

Why didn't I?

...take my camera on my UK trip last week? What a numbskull! I wouldn't mind but it's tiny and would just have nestled in a corner of my bag. There were so many opportunities for me to have taken just amazing photos.

We spent a week staying at this hotel, which turned out to be pretty good. I got a very good deal; normally it would have been £195 per night booking direct with the hotel but through Expedia I got it for £120. Being above a pub did not turn out to be noisy because it was mainly end-of-day workers that frequented it and they were gone about 9pm.

Right - photos I could have taken;

We were crossing Waterloo Bridge on the way to the Aquarium when walking towards us were about 20 men in - I reckon - their early twenties. They were dressed as Roman centurions - leather jockstraps, tridents, helmets with wings, and very defined chests which looked very impressive from a distance but close up you could see that they were plastic fronts. Still a good effect, even with the (mock) woad with which they were painted.

We also went to see the current Harry Potter (it's hard to see movies in the original language where we are in France; they like to dub everything) at the Leicester Square Odeon - one of the small cinemas upstairs. We went to the afternoon showing and when we came out of the cinema about 7.00pm there was absolute mayhem. It turned out to be the premiere of Stardust and it was (minor) celeb after celeb on the green (when did it stop being red?) carpet. I couldn't tell you who I saw - lots of soap stars I reckon - except for the fact that Take That were standing just in front of me being interviewed.

The day before we'd seen (Lord) David Puttnam having lunch at the table next to us at the NFT. And the day after -again whilst having lunch - we saw Chris Evans and a bit later on had to jump out of the way as Aldo Zilli drove his Alfa really fast down Wardour Street.

One really excellent thing that we did was go and see Lord of The Rings (the musical). It really is a misnomer describing it as a musical. It conjures up all sorts of images that don't do justice to what is a sensational show. I know the reviews have been mixed but if you get a chance to go and see it, go!. There is much that reminded me of Cirque de Soleil and the costumes and settings are glorious. There is much audience interaction with hobbits and orcs (I had a firefly taken out of my hair by a hobbit) and I think we'll come and see it again next year. This time from the front row of the Dress Circle as opposed to the front row of the Stalls.

It's good to be home but I adore being in London. It's where I grew up and I feel totally alive when I wander around. Where we live in France is beautiful, but quite quiet and calm. I wouldn't want to live in London any more but I think I will visit it a bit more often that I have done

sad state of affairs

It's been a while since I've paid a visit to my home town of London and I thought I'd go through the theatre listings to work out when to go (according to what is opening when), see a few shows, meet up with friends and family and generally have some hustle and bustle. Apart from something at the Royal Court and Michael Ball cross-dressing in Hairspray, there is very little that fills me with enthusiasm.

Of course if I was still UK-based there would be some things I'd half-heartedly go and see and no doubt enjoy them tremendously but, considering the amount of effort involved in us driving over from Brittany to North London (about ten hours solid in the car), I just can't be bothered.

Most of the musicals currently on offer I either saw first time around and with a better cast or else I have no interest in them. The dramas - on paper anyway - do not sound my sort of thing.
What a shame. Oh well, maybe much later in the year there will be something. Perhaps Stephen Fry's Cinderella will be worth a trip.

It's so nice to be home

When I was in London last weekend I kept thinking longingly of our pretty house in Brittany. The London air was so smelly that we felt a little sick from all the constant diesel fumes and our skin felt tight and dirty. I'm sure this isn't a psychological thing; I do enjoy being in London - I'm a North Londoner after all - but we spent a lot of time in the West End and the noise, pollution and crowds do get you down after a while.

Monday we spent time in various bookshops browsing and buying. It's something I miss here in France. French bookshops are good too but I prefer to do my reading in my own language. We met my old boss, who is also our accountant, for lunch and went to a lovely place in Charlotte Street that I hadn't been to - Pescatori, an Italian fish resto. The food was delicious (I had safffron roasted cod) and we're so used to drinking French wine that it made a good change to sample some from Italy.

In the evening we met up with an old friend and ate in the restaurant of one of our favourite London hotels - the Hampshire in Leicester Square. Food also good there (wild mushroom broth with truffles) and I had melon martinis which didn't really match the food but I just fancied the sound of them (and they turned out to be an excellent choice)

Talking of martinis, we had a lovely time in the American Bar at the Savoy on the Friday evening prior to seeing Evita. What a lovely bar that is, a bit expensive though. I had champagne cocktails ( peach royales) and they were £15 each. In fact our bar bill came to £50 which was a bit of a steep hour.

Evita was excellent. The actress playing Evita - Elena Rogers - is first class (obviously she will never end up in Les Mis), a real all-round talent and anyone reading this who is not sure which West End show to go and see, give it a whirl. It's not aged at all. I toyed with the idea of booking Blood Brothers because my chap has never seen it but I'm glad now that I went for Evita. Obviously, in retrospect, I wish I'd booked BB instead of LM but I'm sure we'll catch it another time. Spamalot has received good reviews but we caught it on Broadway last year (how flash I do sound) and I don't think I'd like to see it again.

So, back at home and - so far - loving it.