Blue Sky Living

Editor's blog - A swiss experience

 

Yesterday my wife Tanya was having “a good French day.”

In our house this means that a language that continually perplexes and frustrates us was for once flowing.

She bumped into people in the village and rather than groping for the appropriate tenses and words whole sentences popped immediately into her mind. She felt confident and I imagine just a little smug. She wasn’t just a Brit living abroad instead she felt totally assimilated into the local community.

Then she went to the hairdressers, an intimidating hive of fast paced gossip. Rather than being daunted by the rapid fire French, Tanya told the owner of the salon all about the upcoming braderie de Saint Tropez.

We chanced upon this a few years ago and it’s a shopaholics dream. The owner of the salon was in raptures as she listened to Tanya explain about the designer shoes and dresses reduced by hundreds - sometimes even thousands - of euros in price. Two old ladies who were also having their hair done joined in. Quite soon Tanya was a the centre of a bubbling French conversation.

La Pitchoune - Restaurant review

In any other circumstances we would have left immediately. All ten of us had sat down to Sunday lunch in La Pitchoune restaurant. The setting was peaceful - a calm courtyard set back from the bustle of Mausanne les Alpilles. Branches from the olive tree above dropped over my shoulder creating a patterned of dappled sunlight on the table.

Editor's blog

Being a delivery man can be a hazardous job. In the UK vicious snarling dogs snap the other side of letter boxes. In France its even worse - the dogs are allowed to run loose and their snarling fangs have embedded themselves in the thighs of many a UPS employee. I can count myself fortunate then that until this week two months of delivering Blue Sky Living magazine has passed without incident.

Restaurant review - L'Etang Cucuron and Le Bastidon, Lourmarin

Back when I was at university it was ham, egg and chips in the pub. A few years later at law school I couldn’t survive without a weekly madras in the local curry house. Now living in deepest darkest Provence my choice of comfort food is the confit d’agneau at the Restaurant d’Etang.....

Editor's blog

When we returned from England there was a strange message on our answering machine. A gruff French voice announced that he’d picked up our magazine and had an idea that might be interesting for us. We arranged to meet.

In the meantime all sorts of ideas occurred - could this be the French white knight who would offer to sell advertising for the next magazine? Was it the editor of the Journal of the Luberon and Les Alpilles coming to issue a coded threat to get off his patch? A takeover offer from the Riviera Reporter? The pastis fuelled imagination sometimes knows no bounds.