Bon weekend from the Good Life France in the Loire Valley

Bonjour,

I hope you and yours are well.

Here in the north of France where I am, we’ve had some lovely sunny weather after a lot of rain – everything is green and lush and flowers are blooming just about everywhere, and the air is scented with blossom. Last week I was in Le Var, Provence and wow – what an incredible part of France it is, not as well-known as the Provence of the Luberon and Vaucluse but utterly beautiful (I left a little of my heart in Bormes-les-Mimosas) – I’ll be sharing what I discovered with you in a future issue of The Good Life France magazine!

This week I’m in the Loire Valley (that’s Chinon in the photo above) – researching the local cuisine, meeting artisans and producers and discovering why Tours is an official ‘cité de la gastronomie,’ a network of cities dedicated to gastronomy – and of course I’m obliged to test as much as possible so that I can report back to you! You can come with me via Instagram, through regrettably I’m unable to share what I eat with you, though I would if I could!

Back home, Tony Blackbird, the baby blackbird who took a long time to learn how to fly, is doing well, and has been joined by his siblings and cousins as it seems that our garden has become a bit of a blackbird den. They hop about in the grass from dawn to dusk, and have eaten all the cherries – not one left for me! But it’s ok – we all have to live as best as we can I reckon, and so I will plant two more cherry trees later this year and I’ll keep them small and one of them netted up – one for me and one for the birds! Thankfully my lazy cats have lost interest in running about in the heat, and the dogs bark if they see a cat in the garden which warns the birds.

Meanwhile Kim Kardachicken (formerly known as Kardashian) and her main rival, Mariah Cluck Cluck Carey have been squaring up to each other for top dog, or rather top chicken, in the pen. It’s fascinating to watch them. One way to display their ‘strength’ seems to be by picking on others weaker than them (not unlike some humans). We haven’t had a cockerel for a while, not since Roger Moore and Brad Pitt reached a happy old age and passed on a while back, but I’m thinking of getting a cockerel for them to see if it makes them all a bit happier, the cockerel is always hen pecked but big enough to take it (!) – and also because Joan Collins and Meryl Streep are both having phantom pregnancies and I have to wrestle them off the eggs every morning!.

Never a dull moment here!

Bisous from a chicken-mad writer in France,
Janine
Editor

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