Mary Fleming

Help Wanted

Friday, 3 May Maybe because of its deep historical roots and multiple associations, May Day in France is a national holiday celebrated in earnest. Spring, the original reason the Romans then the early Christians observed it, is really here, which makes people happy, encourages them to offer sweet lily-of-the-valley to

Looking Back

Friday, 19 April Five years and one week ago today, we took possession of a house and garden and the surrounding fields in the Perche. After a summer-long search for a place in the country within a two-three hour radius from Paris that needed no renovation work, we circled back

Old house, novel ideas

Friday, 5 April A few weeks ago I visited the place des Vosges. I wanted to see the recently renovated Victor Hugo Museum and the exhibition of his grandson Georges Hugo’s art. But I also like to check in occasionally on this 17th century square, the oldest in Paris,

Grey Matter

Friday, 15 March We the People do not agree on much these days, but can anyone deny that the weather here in north-western Europe this last stretch of time has been terrible? I use the term stretch of time because it has felt too warm to say winter. Wherever I

Timeline

Friday, 1st March Every morning, no matter how busy, I take a moment to scroll through Le Parisien newspaper in my inbox. A treasure trove of information about city life, it rarely disappoints and has inspired many a blog. Wednesday I learned about an exhibition of objets trouvés, a lost

Broken Geometry

Friday, 16 February Any regular reader of this publication or anyone who follows me on Instagram will have seen variations of the above photo, the perfect triangle of my morning dog walk with Tasha in the Perche. Even in February, its geometry evokes peace and harmony, a fleeting glimpse of

Islet of Heat

Friday, 26 January The French love their grands projets, and there are quite a few of them in Paris at the moment as the city frenetically dolls herself up for the Olympic Games this summer and beyond. There is the ongoing reconstruction of Notre Dame after the devastating 2019 fire.

Season's Greetings

Friday, 12 January Winter surprised us this week. On Tuesday, when I opened the door onto the dark morning to walk the dog, snow that had not been forecast blanketed the landscape. Better yet it stuck long enough to stick in the memory, and yesterday there were still patches of

New Places, Small Spaces

Friday, 17 November The sun came out a bit on Wednesday, and I decided to carpe diem, to act on a recent article in Le Parisien newspaper about “deux petits paradis aux allures de village” that I had never even heard of: la Butte Bergeyre and la Mouzaïa. Getting to

Inside Out

Friday, 3 November It’s gilet jaune season again – not the human type where the discontented French take to the streets – but the canine version when a dog needs yellow-vest visibility in the face of possible stray bullets. The hunting season in France lasts about five months, from the beginning

Shape Shifting

Friday, 20 October Our local bookshop closed this week. The Labo Land photo developer next door to it and the Café Mucha next to it will soon follow suit. The block of buildings has been bought by a developer who has revoked their leases. Their disappearance marks a significant advance

A Model

Friday, 6 October Earlier this week, I felt an urge to get away, to be reminded that Paris is more than its currently frantic, disfigured centre. Along with pervasive road and building work that I have written about in previous postings, there’s now the Rugby World Cup Village blighting

Finding the Feng Shui (cont'd)

Friday, 22 September Mid-August, I got a shocking email. It was from Orange, our telecommunications provider. They are (slowly) installing fibre optic access in our area and needed details on our living arrangements. The message included a satellite photo that must have been taken last summer: Was it really that

Finding the Feng Shui

Friday, 8 September The restless, migrating spirit of the swallows that once lived here must still have been with us: no sooner had I pushed send on my last blog in July than we were once again moving furniture, reappointing rooms.   They say you should live in a place for

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

Friday, 14 July Here in France, it’s a weekend of grand départ. In fact, it’s grander than usual this mid-July because besides the normal flow of people leaving on their summer holiday, Bastille Day makes a three-day weekend. But having just returned from 10 days away in Ireland

Safe Haven II (Maybe)

Friday, 30 June No sooner had my friend Trevor, who was staying chez nous in Paris last week with his husband Dana, said: “It’s not crowded,” than I was on my bike and pedalling across the Seine to the recently renovated Hôtel de la Marine on the place de

Why We're Here

Friday, 16 June It’s been a while since David has said: “I know we bought this house for that damn dog.” He is of course talking about Deux Champs, the property we purchased four years ago in the Perche, and our rescue dog Tasha (aka la Princesse). I can

Food for Thought

Friday, 26 May Let me ask you a question: is it odd that a blogger who lives in France never blogs about food? I think so, especially given how much the writer in question, me, loves food and all things culinary. Okay, there was once an entry about Indian cuisine,

Finishing Touches

Friday, 12 May “Is it finished?” ask some (genuinely wondering). “It’s finished, right?” ask others (as in: after all this time, it’s gotta be…). “It’s finished,” state still others (no inflection, since there’s no way it couldn’t be done by now).   My answers, depending on

Ode to April

Friday, 21 April “April is the cruellest month.” What an overused way to start a piece of writing concerning the fourth month of the year. Worse, it is often misused, thus spoiling all the irony that TS Eliot infused into the first line of his 1922 poem The Waste Land.

The Demos and the Kratos

Friday, 7 April “What is a simple definition of democracy? “The word democracy comes from the Greek words ‘demos’, meaning people, and ‘kratos’ meaning power; so democracy can be thought of as ‘power of the people’: a way of governing which depends on the will of the people.” Thus spoke

Of Puddles and Ponds

Friday, 24 March My family often accuses me of being a glass half-empty kind of person. Someone who imagines the worst-case scenario at every turn. While I admit that my mind can tend to misadventure, I would argue that in many instances, I am just being a realist, particularly when

Guest Apparence

Friday, 10 March Last week I dreamt I went to Berlin again... Actually, unlike the narrator of Rebecca who made a nocturnal visit to her former home Manderley, I did physically return to the city where I once lived. It just felt like a dream. For more recent readers, some

New Friends

Friday, 24 February Here's a new word for (most of) you: dendrolatry, the worship of trees. My admiration may not quite attain the level of adoration, but this winter I've been counting my arboreal blessings. When you buy a property in the country, it's

Building Time

Friday, 10 February Early on in my Paris years, I learned an expression that made me feel I really knew my way around town: les dix minutes parisiennes. It means that whether you are attending a meeting and certainly a dinner party in Paris, you are not only allowed to