Blog in France

Here are some traditional French sayings from the 1932 and 1933 copies of La Prosperité à la Campagne magazine. Autant de brouillard en mars – autant de gel en avril There’ll be as much frost in April as there is fog in March. (A saying from the South-West) Autant de...

I’ve been painting and cutting plasterboard on and off for the last week now as we work on some ceilings. In our various renovations we’ve used vast quantities of plasterboard, and we haven’t finished yet. So I decided it was time I did some research on it. Plasterboard, plaque à...

Moving to France as we did from mole-free Ireland, we were initially taken aback at the obvious national hatred of these little creatures that manifested itself in the large displays of mole eradication devices that we saw in every hardware shop. There were mole mashers, mole crushers, mole crunchers, mole...

So it’s Fat Tuesday – that’s what Mardi Gras means. What a great name. Traditionally it marks the last day of the ‘carnaval’ period that began at Epiphany and which ends with Lent (Carême). Quite who would have been celebrating all that while I’m not sure. Certainly not the ordinary...

St Valentine’s Day has lots of associations with France. It’s thought that the idea of sending Valentine’s cards started with the Duke of Orleans in the fifteenth century. He was captured during the Battle of Agincourt and taken to the Tour of London. He sent love letters and poems to...