MY STORY (SO FAR)

Hello everyone - all those that know me and those that don't!! And welcome to my new blog.

Now, a little bit about me.

I am currently living in the UK but retiring, at long last, to my home in Brittany - a photo of which you can see above together with a photo of my kitchen (very very important in my life). Very early on you may well gather that one of my passions in life is cooking. But more about that later as well.

I actually retire on July 28 of this year and my hubbie, Ian (about who I will talk about later) is coming over to the UK with his trusty van to pick me up together with my clothes and all sorts of stuff that I have collected over the past year - needless to say, dozens of cookery books!! We actually get into Brittany (St Malo) the morning of August 1 and what a celebration we will have that day. My brother and his wife are travelling over with us as they have never seen our house before, nor have they ever set foot outside the UK. They are in for a real treat. I hope the weather will be good at that time because we intend to have lots of BBQs.

Much of this blog will be taken over eventually by recipes, photos of food I have prepared and eaten, photos of my beloved Brittany and much, much more so, for non-food lovers, I hope I can find other things of interest to keep you logging in!

My husband, Ian, has been living in our current home for about 6 years, and we previously had a house just a mile down the road from this one - Ian renovated both houses to a great standard and we are both very pleased with the results! The original house we had, and which we purchased in 1997, is a mill, known locally as Le Petit Moulin. It was a lovely house complete with trout stream but we found out in our own good time that the sun never shone on the back garden, that there was always a pervading sense of dampness around the house and we always had to have the lights on, even in the summer, because the trees surrounding the house blocked out the light. Of course, we should have realised all of this before we bought the house but we simply fell in love with it. By chance, the house on the top of the hill became vacant and, hey presto, we decided to buy it and we started the renovations all over again! Needless to say, we truly believe it was all worth it and just meant to be. But, moving just one mile up the hill took us from one commune into another one and some of our French friends shook their heads in despair. They thought we were totally disloyal to them but all was forgiven after a few glasses of vino!!

It has been a struggle for me travelling backwards and forwards to Brittany leaving my husband and dogs behind and being thoroughly miserable but the time has now come to lay down my PC (for work that is!!) and join Ian and the one remaining dog at home in France. (We had two dogs, but the one in the photo above sadly passed away at Easter this year).

I am starting this blog now before I depart for Brittany as I want to have it up and running before I arrive so that I can update continuously about my progess. It is going to be the start of a new way of life for me and, quite honestly, I just can't wait!!

More later.

Sue