The latest....in which we even have a little trip away!

It's been about 2.5 weeks since my last post and it actually feels longer as so much seems to have happened!

But first, let me show you the new me!  As you already know, I had my hair cut shorter a couple of months ago,  But last week, I had it cut even shorter.  And after years of having it coloured, I finally convinced my hairdresser to let me just grow out any remaining colour and be "au naturel" from now on.  I know it's not for everyone but I am very happy with it.  And unexpectedly, I have been getting lots of compliments - including from Danny who had always liked me having long hair!


Well, in the last couple of weeks things have been progressing well with our lounge refurbishment. When I last wrote we had the teeniest bit of wallpaper still to remove and thank goodness, we got that done!  I can't tell you how glad I was to see the back of that job!  Danny finished making the holes for the new electrical sockets and repairing the holes from his "mishaps"........

We think that some of the previous owners of our house may have been on the short side as many of the wall lights around the house seem low down to us - and neither of us is particularly tall!  So, Danny took the opportunity of this refurbishment to change the position of the wall lights beside the fireplace.  The new position is definitely better and all we have to do now is find some nice new wall lights! (You can see in the photo below, the original position of the wall light on the left and the new position of the one Danny's doing on the right).

This week, the plasterer came and in just over two days, transformed all the walls!  It'll be a few days yet before they all dry out but we are so pleased with what he's done and it was definitely the right decision to have the walls plastered before we paint them.

On 10 April, Danny officially became an OAP as he turned 65 years old that day.  We always treat birthdays ending in a "5" as special (as well as "0" ones!) and I decided to surprise him with a trip to La Rochelle.  I booked the dogs into their "pension pour chiens" (sounds so much nicer than 'kennels' doesn't it! And if you click on this link, you'll see just how nice it is!).  We left our cat Whisper at home with loads of food at her disposal.  She is quite timid and doesn't like going to a cattery so she was better off being in her own home.

Danny knew he was going somewhere but not exactly 'where' but I believe he was very happy to discover it was to be La Rochelle.  I had booked us into the Hôtel Saint Nicolas, based on a personal recommendation and Trip Advisor and we weren't disappointed.

If you're ever going to La Rochelle, I'm happy to recommend the hotel and if you want to find out more about it, click here  for their website.

It was unfortunate that the weather wasn't kind to us. After several days of beautiful weather here, it decided to be chilly and wet just on the days we were away! Unfortunate too, that Danny's knee decided to play up so we weren't able to walk around as much as we might have done.  Despite that, we had a lovely time and although we always miss our home and especially our pets, when we're away, it was nice to have no responsibilities for a couple of days. In case you don't know, La Rochelle is a harbour and, as a popular tourist town, it is busy with lots of shops and restaurants - all of which appeared to be open all day (unlike our area!).  This is a nice picture of the harbour and you can just see some of the restaurants on the left.  You can also see how overcast it was!

We were lucky enough to see the life-size replica of the 18th century frigate Hermione which was in La Rochelle prior to setting sail for America just a few days later.  The original French warship was famous for carrying the Marquis de Lafayette to America to fight in the War of Independence but it was subsequently destroyed in 1793.  There are various web pages about this ambitious project to build the replica and then recreate the sailing to America but for starters, you can read about it here.

There were hordes of people both around and on the frigate but with Danny suffering with his painful knee we didn't attempt to queue to go on it.  But here are a couple of photos we took...

Impressive, eh?

So there you have it!  That's about all the news there is for now.  I'll just leave you with this cute photo of our Liam, having a cuddle with his "dad".  

Until next time then..

À bientôt