Have a very Happy and Healthy New Year!

Yesterday afternoon, while walking the dogs in the vineyards, the loop on the lace of my right boot somehow managed to attach itself to the hook on my left walking boot, and I went crashing to the ground.  You know when you are young and you fall, you very quickly jump up and brush yourself down, hoping that nobody has noticed - that no longer applies to me as I just lay there, refusing all offers of help, while I took stock of the situation.  Luckily the ground broke my fall (as Spike Milligan once said), but part of that ground included a big stone which I must have landed on as by the time I managed to stand-up (or allow myself to be pulled up!), I could already feel a large bruise on one of my ribs.  

The ironical thing is that I had designated 2019 as my ‘Year of Health’ .  Not making huge resolutions that I would never keep but just deciding to eat more healthily, exercise more, cut back on alcohol (not ‘dry’ january but ‘moist’ january), and more specifically, to sort out all the niggling health problems that I had ignored for years.  Even though I’ve lived in France for ages, I still have the stoic British mentality that means I don’t even consider seeing a doctor unless a leg is falling off whereas my french partner makes an appointment at the first sign of a sore throat.  I have been very lucky to have been in ‘rude’ health for many many years but it seems that once you get to a ‘certain age’, your body starts creaking and letting you down, so to start the New Year off I made an appointment with the village doctor.  

He listened to my heart (still beating, apparently) took my blood pressure (11 over 6 whatever that means) and asked a few general life-style questions and then sat down and started writing the equivalent of War and Peace on a prescription pad.  He seemed appalled that I hadn’t had a blood test for several years (very regular here apparently) so that was added to the list.  Following my trip to the pharmacy I left with one of those ‘bags for life’, brimming with pills, products and potions - so much so that I then spent some time sitting at my computer turning it all into a spreadsheet so I could remember what to take or what to do at what time of day, and for how long etc.

One of the problems which I have ignored for far too long has been the feeling of having blocked ears and it is now affecting my hearing, so many of the products and potions were in an attempt to deal with this - allergy pills, salt-water nasal rinses, nasal sprays etc.  At the same time I have been following some strange exercises I found on the internet which involve pulling extraordinary faces to move the jaw-bone, and also pinching your nose and blowing hard.  Which brings me full circle back to yesterday’s fall…… my  bruised rib only hurts when I move, laugh, cough or sneeze and when I tried the exercise of pinching my nose and blowing hard it proved almost fatal.  At least being partially deaf means I can pretend not to hear my partner laughing when he remembers my fall, nor hear him telling me that I should’ve tied my laces better!  As for my ‘Healthy 2019’ - I shall restart it when I am feeling better!

My 'Glamorous' life!

Living in the South of France always sounds quite glamorous and I think some of my friends in the UK fondly imagine that I spend my days lying by a crystal clear swimming pool sipping cocktails in the sunshine, or shopping for chic outfits in the designer boutiques in town.  I have just caught sight of my reflection in the patio window and felt it was time to put the record straight!  (My arms aren’t long enough to take a ‘selfie’ of the full glory of what I am wearing and also the more I stretched my arms out, the more wrinkles appeared in strange places, hence just the headgear). Today is a typical example of my ‘unglamorous’ life – I am wearing walking boots, old jeans rolled up to the knees, a strappy top (it is 25°), and finally, a woolly hat (very hot but due to vanity as I had my hair done this morning and it is very windy!) 

I’m sure when the hairdresser asked if I wanted hair-spray applying that she assumed I’d be going out somewhere nice, but the reality was that I was having to attend to a flood in the pool-house.  (And when I say ‘pool-house’, it is actually a small cave-type area down some steps where the machines that work the pool live) (and also frogs).  Sadly the flood was entirely my fault – I had done nothing about the vast amounts of leaves that had collected on the steps so after 2 days of wind and then a tropical monsoon-like downpour last Wednesday, I should not have been surprised to find that the drain was blocked and there was water all the way up to the second step.  I spent most of the afternoon playing ‘hook a duck’ with all the pool cleaning products that were floating on the surface and then digging out leaves with a rake.  I actually got a bit scared when I suddenly heard a mechanical noise start up (it was only later when I finally gave in and called the plumber that I found out there was a pump down there).

The ‘uniform’ of jeans and walking boots is quite normal for everyday life now as most days involve a walk round the vineyards or to the village for bread or just playing ball in the garden with the Loulou the dog.  On the days that I go to work she looks depressed the minute she hears the sound of heels clattering across the tiled floor as she knows that ‘noisy shoes’ mean I will be leaving her!  And when I say ‘heels’ I don’t mean stillettos – many of the streets here are cobbled and taking clients to view houses often involves walking around gardens and up slopes so the ‘sensible heels’ that my daughter used to laugh at me for wearing are now the norm – as are trousers (all of us in the agency have learned the hard way that you don’t wear short skirts on viewings as many properties have strange staircases, if not ladders...)

Actually on reflection I admit that life here can be glamorous – just the other day I had a lovely lunch next to the beach at a sea-food restaurant in Collioure and there are many occasions where you will find me lying on a lounger by the pool – but just remember that before I have poured the cocktails I will have cleaned the pool (of frogs and dogs), balanced the chemicals, cleared the poolhouse of leaves (HaHa) – and I bet nobody feels sorry for me!