Observations from Normandy and Annecy

 

Normandy 12 - 16 March 2005

Our next door neighbour is a lady of 89 years.  The French state pension is quite generous and so she is not poor. However she dresses in old and battered clothes and looks every inch a French peasant.  Her washing line was directly in front of our house and with its ragged array of clothes, we decided to allow the hedge to grow sufficiently to hide the line, but not so much as to cause offence.  In a history of France I am reading, it is said that 1870 marked the time when French peasants became French citizens - a time when white became commonly used for weddings and when most of the population finally wore underwear.  I have not checked my neighbour's washing line for evidence of her status

We went to Honfleur with its picturesque harbour.  It has many art shops with expensive paintings and sculptures, mostly female nudes, by contemporary artists. It also has a small ladies fashion shop which we have been to on a number of occassions. While Heather is trying clothes on, the very attractive lady owner of a certain age smiles at me and engages me in conversation.  She wears some of the clothes from her shop to very good effect and I contemplate whether she was in time past the model for some of the sculptures, but perhaps wearing only her smile. Obviously this is all good for her business, as I end up paying, but do not feel the pain.

Annecy 2 - 8 March 2005

We were sitting at a table in a restaurant, when a couple came in. She was about about 5' tall, thirty, slim and attractive. He was possibly of a similar age, but 6' 2" and about 25 stone.  He was placed with his back to me, from which I judged that it would have been kinder to provide him with two seats rather than one.  I was left puzzling over their relationship and rather worried about the chair.  I was also reminded of a 'kiss and tell' account a lady gave of her relationship with the present Tory spokesman for defence, Nicholas Soames, who is of similar, very ample dimensions.  She said that making love with him was like having a wardrobe topple on top of you with the key protruding from the door.

It was snowing on and off from the time we arrived at Annecy.  We had about 20 cm of snow around the flats which made it look very pretty.  It also meant that we had difficulty in driving to and from the town because of the snow on the access road.  It is very steep and, although more or less cleared, was quite dangerous on the bends.  We were though able to put our snow shoes on and walk up directly up from the grounds into the woods on the side of Mount Semnoz.

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