Exactly 1 month later

I still feel fat.

But that's not really the point of my posting. 

 In the next week or so we should finally complete on the French house. In some ways it felt like this point would never actually arrive, and that's made for a very relaxed build-up to this stage. However suddenly it's here, we have a date and suddenly all those really important things like transferring euros, French bak accounts, electricity, water, insurance, covid tests et al have to be sorted. I've frankly no idea what to do about internet yet - the village has broadband running through, so it may just be a case of speaking to Orange or Bougeytel or someone to get them in when we're actually present. As for heating, there were some electric convectors upstairs, plus a couple of stoves (one may be oil fired) in the kitched and a solid fuel stove 1M out from the wall in the livingroom, but what works? Who knows?

We last saw the house in mid October, just long enough to have a good idea what it was like and decide that it was for us. When we next see the place we'll need to measure, photograph, dig a little, decide what should go where and how the place can work best for us as temporary visitors. There are no plans to move in (or indeed move country) as yet, though if we fell in love with it, maybe. It's not the home I imagined we would buy, but I think it should be a good place.

So here we go. Another adventure.

We're both spending about 5 hours per week trying to learn French, and that's curious too. Can't remember if I mentioned this already, but it seems to be 2 languages, with the spoken langauge and written language diverging. In speech it's all about flow, and I'm sure the concepts of masculine and feminine were introduced to rationalise the le and la prefixes (and a bunch of other stuff) that helps it roll off the tongue. but then things developed and there seem to be a bunch of word endings that are completely silent in speech, but ESSENTIAL in writing. Cue much eye rolling, though I *think* it's making sense somewhat. 

Chris is much better than me with French. Given the choice I'd have bought in Italy despite the earthquakes, and just started from scratch learning, but c'est la vie. This has to suit both of us, and I'm not sorry we've gone this way. If we ever did want to move out, at least we could do so thanks to my Austrian nationality.

That's enough rambling for now.