Happy New Year

2013 has been a year of ups and downs, but aren’t they all? It was the year in which Gemma separated from her husband, Johnny, but Kieran met his girlfriend, Alice, who’s lovely.

Highlights included Nick cycling Mont Ventoux, the giant of Provence, three times in 24 hours and our trip to Zaragoza at Easter. I started teaching, mostly French to the English, but also some English to the French and I joined an Irish band.

But most of our energy this year has gone into building our new house; with the help of Joel, the builder and Didier, the electrician, we’ve made enormous progress towards realising our dream. It seems to move at a snail’s pace, but when we look back at what we’ve achieved over the last 12 months, it’s really quite impressive, though I say it myself. Especially so as this was the year in which winter lasted until the end of June, we nearly lost a cement lorry and a digger in the swamp of a back garden and Joel refused to come back till it stopped raining! Nick, being totally incapable of sitting still, has built the plinths to put the beams on, that will support the roof of the abri and finished off the joists in the chaufferie today. He can’t do any of the big jobs at the moment as Kieran’s not around.

We hope to be able to move in sometime in 2014 and start renting out our current home as a gite; just to add extra incentive, we’ve invited the whole family for Christmas next year.

So I wish anyone reading this a very happy New Year; I hope it will turn out to be a good one for you.