365 Things That I Love About France

The extraordinarily wonderful and extremely talented author and blogger Charley Appenzellar recently asked me if I would like to do a guest blog on her site 365 Things That I Love About France

I’m not sure why she chose me to be her first guest blogger but she did, saying…

“Bien sur, the honor of the first guest blogger goes to the Sugar Daddy Blog King of France, Keith Eckstein over at A Taste of Garlic.”

You know….

I’ve never been called a Sugar Daddy before!

Or a Blog King!

I wonder if Charley was thinking of the right person?

Read more about… 365 Things That I Love About France

Pay as you win!

Now, although I don’t bet on horses myself (Apart from the office sweepstakes in London for the Grand National, I don’t think I ever have), I do have two rather good friends in the UK who do back horses and have done so for over twenty years…

And rather successful they are at it too!

When they came to visit, during the summer we started chatting about the mathematics behind their methods of picking winners and…

The upshot was that I would design a website for them…

So that they could pass on their tips (for a very small fee) to anyone who wanted to benefit from their wealth of experience.

Thus, www.Pay-As-You-Win.com was born.

Read more about… Pay as you win!

An apology

I’m sorry for the slight lack of posts over the last couple of weeks.

I’ve been having a few sleep related issues due to the cold weather and the Girlie and I have been very busy on two new projects (details of which will be announced in the next few days.)

But, I’m happy to say that all is back on track and normal service has been resumed (although what passes for normal here might be considered obscenely abnormal in most decent and respectable households!)

And, just to prove it, here’s a nice picture of a spider’s web!

Read more about… An apology

An Award!

Yes – I’ve won an award!

I’m not going to go into it here but you can see all the details (together with some personal indiscretions) at A Taste of Garlic!

Don’t all rush at once because there won’t be room!

All the best

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Visitor Statistics

The visitor count at Breton Diary just seems to go up and up!

A massive thank you to each and every visitor to Breton Diary!

All the best

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Only a year late!

I was doing a post about our sunflowers when I realised that last years posts about our sunflowers weren’t available on BretonDiary!

After a little delving around I realised that it was all of August 2009′s posts that hadn’t come across when I changed from my old, hand-coded system to WordPress.

Thus, I’ve spent all day importing those old posts!

If you’re interested in that sort of thing….

This is a list of what I was up to last August!

Read more about… Only a year late!

Open for business

At long last, the majority of posts form the old Breton Diary have been migrated over to this, the new one!

There are still a few stray posts to recover but these shall be done over the next few days and weeks.

These are mainly the restaurant visits (I can’t really call them reviews) and I’m taking my time because I’m reliving old memories.

If you want to look at the old site, you can find it at BretonDiary, Old Diary Page.

All the best

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Kitchen section transferred

I’ve just finished transferring all the food related article from the old Breton Diary to the new one.

If you’re feeling hungry, or just want to know 101 things to do with little bits of dead pig, why not take a look at The Kitchen Section.

All the best

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A Blast from the Past!

I’ve just finished moving all my book reviews from the old Breton Diary to the new one.

I’d forgotten what a fan of Jeffwey’s I was!

I also found a link back to the original Breton Diary – although, in those early days I called it My Place in France.

I did a quick check and the site is still there, not updated, unloved and unvisited.

If you want to see how all this started out, take a quick visit to My Place in France.

An Update

Well, the move to the WordPress platform seems to be going well. I’ve moved about a third of the old posts over and am working my way through the remainder.

A Taste of Garlic seems to be moving from strength to strength and we are now seeing about 400 unique visitors to it every day.  I have also started a new site (still in Beta)… www.Brittany-Links.com

Once www.Brittany-Links.com is up and running, others will follow.  What I am trying to do with these sites is provide a simple and easy way for people to advertise their businesses, advertise items they want to sell and, of course, pick up a bargain or two!  Why not pop over to www.Brittany-Links.com to see what you think.

I’ve shipped an Internet Acceleration Appliance to Alex Hampshire who runs a very interesting blog at A Languedoc Journal.  I hoping that more people will follow his lead and use my ideas to speed up their internet access.  I’m happy to have a chat with anyone who  wants to know how it all works.

All the best

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Changes afoot!

Well, this is going to be the last post in the present version of BretonDiary.

I’ve decided to embrace the modern age and, from now on, use WordPress as my blogging platform.

Doing everything in raw html (and then FTPing it all up to the server), has just got too time consuming. I’m scared to post because of all the work involved.

Read more about… Changes afoot!

A Taste of Garlic – again!

Well, www.aTasteOfGarlic.com seems to be going from strength to strength.

I’ve recently interviewed the lovely Karen Wheeler who was kind enough to answer all my silly questions AND send a signed review copy of her first novel, Tout Sweet (I understand that if you can find an un-signed copy, it is worth an absolute fortune!)

Jenny was also kind enough to feature me on her blog… www.ToutSweet.net

Last night I finished an interview with probably the hottest chick-lit author in the universe (definately the hottest one that lives in France), Jenny Colgan – her interview is scheduled to be published on the 8th of January.

Jenny has written loads of books, once worked for the NHS and was a stand-up comedian (not all at the same time, one hopes!) If you can’t wait for the www.aTasteOfGarlic.com interview with Jenny, take a look at her site at… www.jennycolgan.com – you’ll be able to find out all the stuff that I don’t ask Jenny!

I’ve got more interviews coming up and plenty of Life in France blogs to review. If you haven’t taken a look yet, I suggest you have a little peak at… www.aTasteOfGarlic.com.

All the best

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A Taste of Garlic – revisited

My new website – www.aTasteOfGarlic.com seems to be going well.

Only a week after I launched it, the visitor numbers are increasing each day and I have already managed to interview two world famous authors.

There are plenty more interviews lined up (it takes time getting past famous people’s agents and personal assistants), and of course, each day a new blog about Life in France will be highlighted.

I can’t really tell you about who I’ve got lined up for interviews (just in case they read some of the previous interviews and chicken out), but I can let you know that I have fired an email off to the Palais de l’Élysée asking some famous chap who lives there (I’ll give you a hint – he’s the one married to that pretty Italian burd that sings a bit), if he’d me give an interview for www.aTasteOfGarlic.com.

I’m specifically interested in his views about all the English who sell up, move to France (especially Brittany) and then go round growing beards and wearing old vests?

And, if the behaviour of British women in Brittany wasn’t bad enough, what does he think about the men?

All the best

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A Taste of Garlic

Another day, another website!

I’ve long thought that it was a shame that there was no detailed directory of the sort of blogs that I like to read – namely, those that deal with the various aspects of Life in France.

Of course, there are the open directories but they are just listing services. I thought that there was a need for a more in-depth type of site; one that gave a basic synopsis of each blog so that the potential visitor would get an idea of what to expect.

Anyway, I hope that that is what I have done with www.aTasteOfGarlic.com – I’m sure that people will let me know, one way or the other.

All the best

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