Rich and I have just had a conversation about living here. About how hard it is, considered why we wanted to make the move. This led to  how people (sorry but English people) in this country,  just seem to want to stab each other in the back, front and anywhere they can get the knife, and how easy it is to be sucked into that awful kind of behaviour. Let me give you an example.

You have to register in France to work, I am not going to go into the boring nitty gritty  but, obviously, you do have to be registered; and France being France it can be quite nit picky.

So if you are employed as a handyman but want to do gardening as well you have to add that on your registration. The thing is work is so difficult to come by you do not know if you are going to get work in that particular field so you may want to suck it and see fist because adding to your registration costs money.

Here is the rub. There is a local FaceBook site that people can advertise their services on, or people can visit to look for someone if they need a job completing. It has come to our attention that there are some really sad people (yep English again!) who should actually be pitied for how empty their lives must be, who are actually looking up what people are registered as on a website, and if they say they are available for a job that they are not registered as they are reporting them. Now I am not talking about a gardener saying he can build a house, or a baker saying he can put a fuse box in for the electrics, I am talking about a handyman saying he can clear rubbish from a garden for example. Why people cannot leave people alone and allow them to do what they need to do to survive is beyond me.

So I am going to ask this question how sad are you? And yes, I am asking this question! That you actually sit looking at FaceBook and then look people up and then do that? Can you not see what that says about you? A rhetorical question,because obviously not!! But please feel free to comment, then everyone who reads my blog around the world can pity you as well!

So what happens is everyone gets on the wheel, becomes distrustful of everyone else, does the same back to them, a never ending circle of hate! They moan about the English butcher, lie about his produce, tell everyone he is expensive. They bitch about people that open restaurants, a local fish and chip shop that has opened near us for example. If you don’t like it just don’t fucking go there! They lie to people about what they need to do, and it goes on and on.

In addition to that a poor lady put out an alert because she had sadly lost her dog, she had just re-homed him from Yugoslavia (or whatever it is called now!) and he had health conditions. She was beside herself. She had let him out to go to the toilet and he had gone. So many people offered support, including me, and offered to help, but two women were vile, they berated her for letting dog out without going out with him!? It was so unnecessary and I am sure that they will say that they were dog lovers, but they clearly could not see what dogs offer, because if there is one thing about a dog, it does not judge!

Why am I telling you this? Because trust me, this culture is a serious, ugly wart over here, and I said that I would say it warts and all.

But Rich and I have decided that we are not joining in. We are focusing on the lovely people we have met over here. My eccentric friend Jan, she just makes me smile. The French class that is held at my house, which like minded kind and helpful people seem to have radiated towards, we have such a laugh with no judging. Friends who have helped us, new friends who are helping us and our dear friend who has just come over from England and loaded us up with all his spare slate that he had from when he had his roof replaced. Add to that his friend who came with him who called us on her way home today because she had been looking at the roofs and decided Rich needed to do our a certain way. (Seriously this lady is in her seventies and goes up a ladder like a jack rabbit). My wonderful cyber friend and fellow blogger Roz, I have never met her but she gives me and my blog so much support. All of these people are English, and lovely. So we have decided we will limit our times on these sites, only view them when we have to.

So what led us to this discussion, a lady was advertising that her chickens were for sale, because she was moving back to England after three years. This got us talking about what did we expect from our new life. Yes, I expected it to be frugal, that does not worry me because I had too much excess in England. A simpler way of life, looking at the small things that we take for granted for which we are truly blessed. Not least waking up each morning with the person you love beside you (snoring!) Would we move back to England? No. If I could get a part time job here that paid me five hundred pounds a month I could afford to live. I could not afford to live on that in England. We are realistic, and let us not forget the tranquility, and peacefulness.

Oh and the Welshies!

So to all my readers out there, don’t get caught up in the crap, step away from the nastiness, lord knows there is enough of it out there right now. But do say, like I have, about the rudeness, challenge it please don’t accept it. It needs to stop.

Moisy