La Fosse de Tigne

At last a little bit of time to blog. The weekend was full of eating, laughing, chatting and a trip to Angers to see the famous & kind-of-scary Tapestries of the Apocalypse. (More on that later).

Now I need to bring you up to speed as to where we are & what we are doing here.

We are in a small village in the Loire valley in France called La Fosse De Tigne (pronounced tinyay), about 1/2 an hour South East of Angers.

Richard's lovely friend Liz has bought a house down here and needs a hand to do it up. Well actually she bought one ages ago and has recently bought the one next door, it's the newer house that Richard is working on. It feels like home....I never realised how Mediterranean Melbourne was. The main house is ancient and made of thick stone. The windows are tiny and it stays cool even on the hottest day. There is a huge backyard. There is lavender and roses everywhere. (Thomsey you would love it). The more recent house is a marvelous one from La Belle Epoch, built around 1904. It has really bad wallpaper and endless rooms with giant spiderwebs. It is so quiet at night. Liz uncovered this beautiful floor of tessilated tiles.

Not much else is left inside the house of any character, most of it had 70's panelling in the rooms.

Last week there were friends of Liz's staying, Chris (an Aussie guy from Hobart), Marianne (from Amsterdam)and a little sweetheart that Chris looks after named Ivy. Ivy fell in love with Cheekee Monkey, and I fell in love with Ivy. She made a skirt for monkey to wear & called him Elizabeth Nemo. She was an absolute delight and made it not so lonely with Richard working all day.

The weather has been beautiful so far. About 25 degrees with little puffy white clouds. It is such a familiar landscape, there are vineyards as far as the eye can see, with the odd field of sunflowers or corn evey now & again. There is a mini chateau over the back fence which I will photograph soon to show you. It's like a piece of Disneyland.