Welcome to the Blog part of the website. This is my attempt to make sense of Kate and I living in France, the lifestyle,the french, my home and animals and anything else that seems amusing to me. Sorry I have a strange sense of humour!! 

The blog is written on a monthly basis with regular  news of my adventures and those of my animals at La Godefrere.  You can now look us up on our new facebook page - La Godefrere.

This website can no longer host my blog so I have changed to using wordpress. This can be accessed through the following link:

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Browsing Archive: December, 2013

Christmas week, in which there has been une crise de gateau; une crise de dents; a mince pie incident; bored cats and finally tempest Dirk hits La Godefrere!

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, December 29, 2013,

Christmas week has been and gone. We ate too much and drank too much (well at least I did). A time which should have meant peace on earth and goodwill to all mankind turned out to be a bit more incident packed than we would have wanted. Mind you that could be the case most weeks at La Godefrere. My retirement retreat to the quiet and solitude of rural France has not quite lived up to expectations.

This last week started badly with a cake crisis (une crise de gateau). Sounds even more dramatic ...


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Officially winter; Christmas commences; Moggie goes missing and Mole match is on!

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, December 22, 2013,

A brief blog update this week as Christmas festivities descend upon La Godefrere. Hopefully will be back to the full report next week.

So it is now 22ndDecember and officially winter started yesterday. Coincidentally the cold weather has disappeared and we now have rain, lots of it. So the cruel frost of last week has gone and I have managed to complete my poor man gathering winter fuel routine. All the wood is safely gathered in and stored away either in the wood shed or around the grounds, n...


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Good King Wenceslas; Mole movements; Tractor traits; cats, cars and calendars

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, December 15, 2013,

Brightly shone the moon that night,
though the frost was cruel,
when a poor man came in sight,
gathering winter fuel.

As we move closer to Christmas we of course have to get out our CD of cheesy Christmas music including lots of Carols. Mrs. Parish has set up her version of Santa’s workshop in her sewing garret and is disappearing for hours at a time “making Christmas”. Actually most of her work has been on designing and making Christmas cards and wrapping presents. A book has just arrived ...


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Now is the winter of my discontent as Great Birnam Wood comes to La Godefrere and we encounter winter wasps. Cows confuse but Peter returns and it's nearly Christmas

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, December 8, 2013,

'Fear not, till Birnam wood

Do come to Dunsinane:' and now a wood
Comes toward Dunsinane.

It has been a bit like a scene from Macbeth this week as I seem to have spent hours in the garden moving brush wood down to our big field for it to be burnt. The brush wood is all the small branches and leaves that came off the trees cut down or pruned. This meant that all around the garden there were great piles of brushwood. Mrs. Parish likes a good bonfire so decided that we should burn the brushwood i...


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Cider making, log cleaving, crossword puzzling, cat purring and we go to the Soiree Dansante!

Posted by Graham Parish on Sunday, December 1, 2013,

It is cider making time and as you might assume this is of great importance to the French. Emile and Yvette came round last week for the final lot of our cider apples. We had some late fruiting trees and so collected them up. Mrs. Parish also went round to help Emile pick up his apples and spent a happy afternoon on her knees! I was unable to help as I was allocated to important Assistant Tree Surgeon duties. More of which later.

Once the apples had been collected we were invited round to watc...


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About Me


Graham Parish Graham Parish is a former UNISON Trade Union official who retired to France with Kate (a previous self employed gardener and now resident gardener here) to start a new life of wine, cheese, french bread and a vegetable garden on a large rural french farm with holiday gite, and associated animals.

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