A Year in Villefranche sur Mer - Moving to France

Day 1,056 (Thursday) 30 th April 2020 Day 45 and it wasn’t particularly sunny, can’t wait for the summer when the sun is almost guaranteed every day. Huw borrowed Aussie John’s car this morning to take his computer into Nice to be repaired. He saw Andy and Sean pretending to work in the same flat and he met John in the car park to pick up the keys. He took these rather eerie photos of an empty Nice. The Old Port The Promenade des Anglais And he saw these gorgeous flowers in a park I was very jealous that he could go – I can’t wait to go to Nice again and Antibes and Eze Village and Saint Jean Cap Ferrat and, and, and…. We saw Dom and Karen at the beginning of our walk today and we talked about having a boules tournament/picnic with them and Kevin and Angie as soon as we can and they happily agreed. It’s so ironic that we have met new people in Villefranche during lockdown; they seem to be really fun people. I was amazed to see this enormous cactus plant comi

Day 1,055 (Wednesday) 29 th April 2020 Day 44 and thankfully the sun is out again so I some time sunbathing. I started doing Tamsin’s jigsaw later and Badger was a great help – not! For our exercise for today we walked up to Picard to buy some frozen food and because we wanted to go for a walk as well we cheated on our permission papers and stated shopping as the reason for going out but as the food was frozen we had to take it home so we printed two forms each and managed to stay out for one hour and 40 minutes. What a pair of rebels! There is a florist next door to Picard and it was very exciting to see that they are getting ready to re-open. We saw two different people today – Ellie who only lives here part of the year. Her and her partner Trevor came down from the UK six weeks ago for a weekend and while they were here they decided to extend their holiday to two weeks and the lockdown occurred during that time so they have been here for over six weeks. She said that

Day 1,054 (Tuesday) 28 th April 2020 Day 43 and it poured with rain all morning but thankfully it cheered up in the afternoon. Tamsin and Christian brought one of my jigsaws back and borrowed another so we had a lovely chat through the window. We had great news today – well potentially great – On May 11 th our total lockdown is being lifted as long as the figures remain steady. We can travel from town to town even going as far away as 100km and we can meet people in groups of up to ten. I’m trying next to get excited because it’ll be very disappointing if the figures don’t stay steady. The beaches remain closed but they will review the whole situation at the start of June so hopefully that will happen then.  I didn’t take any photos today but these are from my extra photos file. I started reading Bill Bryson’s ‘Mother Tongue’ this morning and found some great examples of bad English – this is the opening line of the book… More than 300 million people in the world sp

Day 1,053 (Monday) 27 th April 2020 I can hardly believe that I haven’t left Villefranche for 42 days! Huw took Kisbee to Super U to get some essentials and I worked on my tan. I’ve had emails from two of my schools saying that they are hoping to open the schools on May 11 th but I can’t see it happening. There’s going to be an announcement from the Prime Minister tomorrow telling us what to expect after that date. I just really want them to open the beaches – they can be policed but let us walk on the beach. For our hour of exercise we walked up to the viewpoint on the main road and as always the views were spectacular. I was very impressed with the bougainvillea on this house   We walked back along the main road suffering from garden envy We walked to the boules club and saw Kevin and Angie and I gave them the mug hugs I knitted for them and they loved them. They always have a cup of tea while they do my jigsaws and when we got hom

Day 1,052 (Sunday) 26 th April 2020 Day 41 and it was sunbathing weather in the morning but it clouded over after lunch so I was forced indoors. Huw did some more work on the bedroom door and got a lot of help from Badger. We went for our hour walk through the park where we dug up some soil to re-pot one of my flowers. We walked up to the top road past the Hotel Versailles again and down the many steps to La Darse and we stopped to admire this gorgeous garden. We then walked through the citadel again and then down to the beach. We were running out of time and we were disappointed to see that we hadn’t met our 3km target, just 2.8km. Huw re-potted the flower and Badger was fascinated. As soon as Huw finished Badger pounced on it, knocking it over and then rolled about in the earth. Sorry about all the cat photos today but he really makes us laugh a lot and he is a great help through this lockdown. Speaking of the lockdown I found this article las