Day 236 (Monday)

I was woken up this morning by a very strange thing; I could hear a man’s voice that wasn’t Huw’s and it sounded very close. I went onto the terrace and I was quite taken aback when I saw a man at the top of the neighbours’ olive tree cutting it back. He looked up and I think we were both feeling a bit embarrassed so we both sort of smiled and I said ‘bonjour’ and so did he and I went back inside.

Geoff picked me up at 10am and we did a good solid four hours work at the restaurant making the kitchen look like a kitchen again. While I was up there Huw sent me a text saying that he’d seen that he’d seen a number of large fish jumping in the bay and he’s pretty sure they were dolphins, damn, missed that! When I got the tree cutting man was still at work and he was cutting the second tree. The transformation of our view was spectacular; we can now see the whole bay and the lighthouse.

This is what it used to look like…

And this is what it looks like now – hooray!

This is what the poor tree looks like now.

A few days ago Huw saw a story on the British news about riots in the Intermarche supermarkets in France with people trying to buy as many jars of Nutella as possible as they had been reduced by 70 %. I’m reading another Stephen Clarke book at the moment ‘In the Merde for Love’ and he’s in his girlfriend’s mother’s house and her nephew is eating a Nutella sandwich. He goes on to say…

I’d read an article about French food which said that this chocolate-and-hazelnut spread is the glue that holds France together. Almost every kid in the country has Nutella for breakfast. Teenagers and jobless graduates turn to it with a spoon in times of stress. I’m sure it’s the single reason why no one in France talks about nut allergy. Hazelnuts are in their blood. While I was still working for a French food company, a colleague brought her son in to see me. He was 19, a big lad with rower’s shoulders who’d been offered a place in Oxford. He spoke great English and I could tell he’d fit in really well at university. And the one question about England that he was desperate to ask was ‘Can you buy Nutella?’

This was the headline and article I found online…

NUTELLA 70%-OFF SALE SPARKS 'RIOTS' IN SUPERMARKETS WITH SHOPPERS FIGHTING

There were chaotic scenes in French supermarkets today over a 70% discount on jars of Nutella.

Bargain hunters rushed to the stores to get their hands on the hazelnut spread, swarming into aisles to grab the pots.

French media reports said shoppers were behaving like "animals" and the sale sparked "riots" in stores.

The hysteria was even captured on camera and isn't unlike the scenes captured on Black Friday.

One customer who was shopping in Rive-de-Gier told Le Progres: "They are like animals.

"A woman had her hair pulled, an elderly lady took a box on her head, another had a bloody hand. It was horrible."

But the manager said there was no violence in the shop and added that 600 pots were sold in just five minutes.

Reports even claimed local police had to be called out to calm the chaos.

The scramble to the shops was sparked when Intermarche slashed the usual price of the jars from €4.50 (£3.95) to just €1.40. (£1.23)

Some stores even had to limit the amount of spread each customer could buy to three and in others they sold out within 15 minutes.

In a small store in Saint-Chamond, 300 jars were also sold within 15 minutes.

A 16-year-old employee told Le Progress: "It was fighting. We sold what we sell in three months."

Videos posted on social media show the huge crowds gathering in supermarket aisles around pallets of Nutella.

Some even got into a shouting match.

People can be seen pushing and shoving each other to get their hands on the bargain product - even clambering over shelves to reach it.

France is the second biggest consumer of Nutella eating around 100 million jars a year - and as this article shows - they really do love it.