Back to France

So - I'm finally back home, after almost three weeks in England - London, to be precise. I stayed with Giles and Fiona from the 10th to the 29th December, and had a lovely time there.

It was Giles' 40th birthday on the 12th and there was, of course, a party with all his friends (including one from Warsaw, Indiana) and with his brother (from Paris) and his sister (Toria) (from the south of England). With Toria came her husband, Marcus and, of course, my granddaughter, Molly. She's really cute now, at nearly 3 years old...

photo by Jason Whittaker

...it was lovely to see them all and, although the original plan had been that they would all come for Christmas Lunch too, in the end it was only Giles, Fi and me, and a Christmas pudding made for 10 people! We did our best...

Giles and I went to Southwold for a few days, as I had never been there, but it was bitterly cold...

...with a biting wind. Still, I had a lovely time, although we were forced to shelter in cafés and tea shops and drink coffee and eat cake! Fantastic!!!!

We came back to London on the day before the GREAT SNOW, so we were very lucky. The snow stayed around for several days and there was a lot of disruption to traffic. I think it had pretty well all gone by the actual Christmas Day, but it's the closest I have been to a White Christmas.

We went out a few times. To the theatre to see Breakfast at Tiffany's; to Eltham Palace and, on my last day, to Greenwich where I took this fab photo of the Meridian line being projected over London.

It was all amazing and I had a great time.

So, now I'm back in the Limousin and it's definitely a lot warmer than it was in England! I went out without a coat today (by car, of course) for the first time in weeks and it was almost springlike (if you used a teensy bit of imagination).

Tomorrow I'm going to a New Year's Eve party at La Petite Fontaine with a couple of friends, so I think that'll be fun.

Today I've just been mooching around, but I have made a great loaf of bread, following Giles and Fi's example of getting the breadmaking machine to do the dough bit and then shaping it myself and baking it in my oven. I was afraid the oven would cremate it, but it turned out rather well...

... and I'm off to eat some right now, with some boiled eggs for my tea!