It’s a beautiful summer evening and my husband and I enjoy a drink on our terrace. An enormity of green stretches in front of us as far as the eye can see and the songs of the cicadas compete with the reassuring sounds of the river. We’ve just finished renovating the farmhouse next door, the …
I didn’t really want to go to London. I didn’t want to return to the world of news and reality, commuting, delayed trains and, let’s face it, since it’s January after all, disgusting weather. I was perfectly happy in my bubble, perfectly content and embedded in my own slice of rural France for over two …
Today marks the two-months anniversary since we got on a one-way flight from Stansted to Biarritz to begin our new life in France. But it feels more like two years. Here’s how I celebrate it. I wake up to see rain falling in millions of tiny droplets outside my window and my mind is empty …
I realise that today it’s been one month since we moved to France and, yet, I still wake up in the morning wanting to pinch myself to test that I’m not dreaming. That yes, I did find a hedgehog sleeping in the chicken coop last night, that my cat actually comes running when I call …
’Welcome to the most cosmopolitan street in France,’ says Daniella, my Brazilian neighbour, whom I had the pleasure to meet at my other neighbour’s chateau, an absolutely jaw-dropping property across the street, where Julia, a Scottish who has been living here with the family for over six years, has organised a ladies’ evening. I’m gonna …
Apparently there is this thing in France about leaving. I read in Tout Sweet, a memoir by Karen Wheeler, that if you’re visiting someone and at some point you wish to leave, you have to express the desire to leave long before you actually plan on leaving because a whole ritual of ‘Are you sure …
’So do you like it here?’ asked the English tourist, while I was on duty at the fruit shop. ’Have you ever wondered about the meaning of life?’ I asked instead of an answer, slicing up a rotund pumpkin and scattering seeds all over the counter. ’Yeah,’ he probed. ’Well, I found it,’ I said …
Sri Lanka Diaries Part 4: A Typical Day at Millennium Elephant Foundation Read More »
The honeymoon tent at Yala We left the beach wishing we’d stayed longer, but we were off to Yala National Park to see leopards. A short taxi ride took us to the meeting point outside Kataragama town, from where we got picked up by a jeep and taken into Noel Rodrigo’s Leopard Safaris Camp. ‘I …
A fake start to our Sri Lankan holiday It hadn’t started particularly well. The six-week long holiday to Sri Lanka commenced with the Qatar QR004 cancelled flight. A 9-hour delay on the less than comfortable seats outside gate 6 of Heathrow’s Terminal 4 ended with the official announcement that the plane was definitely broken, could …
’11 Feb 2013, London Yo Iulia, I am writing this letter to you only to list a few things I am now deeply convinced you will achieve and a lot more!’ This is how my letter to myself starts. The letter I wrote at the beginning of the The Love Project, which I found …
