Neige

It's absolutely beautiful here; beautiful but deadly. It snowed yesterday all day, about four inches in all and last night there was a deep frost so at present we are living on top of a ski jump or a toboggan run. We travelled here in our camper van, an extravagance bought in April when I retired and before we got the dreaded lung news. It seemed like a good idea to bring it as it's good and comfy for me and my fat leg, but it has been a disaster. First off we couldn't move off from where we had parked it on the first day as it was all mud and the wheels just span around; we then struggled to turn it round to park it going downhill whenever we took it out as our little hamlet doesn't have mod cons like mud free turning circles. We (I say "we", I in fact wouldn't drive it for a million pounds) bashed it into a wall and broke the light casing a couple of days ago which is merde as we may want to sell it to pay for the next lot of Rolle treatment.

So the ice adds another set of problems and today we were due to go off to see our French family, parents and brothers of Julie married to Sam, our eldest. S and J are visting too as it's Julie's eldest brother, Thibault's 30th. The family live about an hour away near Bergerac on a farm (see picture) that rears ducks and makes fois gras, confit de canard, magret etc etc; c'est un tres bonne marriage! As I don't know how to say cancer in French - or much else medical, I was looking forward to a day of escape and superb proper home-cooked French food.

There is no way can we get the camper van down and certainly not back up the slope in our hamlet and turn it round afterwards in ravishingly beautiful, shiny, crackly ice. But help is at hand and lovely Sam and Julie have just called and are going to brave the elements and fetch us and we will go to the ball and no doubt come back looking like a couple of pumpkins.