Breton Diary - the good life in Brittany, France » Shopping

A bargain?

Keith Eckstein — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 03:00:34 +0000

I’ve been looking for a Velosolex or Mobylette….

I Spotted this one at the Vide Grenier at St. Vincent…

I’m not sure if the stuffed animal and the doll came with the Speed Machine?…

I do know that the 80 euros that they wanted for the bike was a bit too much…

I’ll keep looking then, shall I?

All the best

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Am I the only one?

Keith Eckstein — Thu, 05 Aug 2010 04:00:30 +0000

Do you ever find yourself overcome….
By the insatiable and uncontrollable urge,
Usually whilst shopping with the wife (or, the Girlie, in my case) in a crowded supermarket,
To start scratching your private parts?
Sometimes hand outside, and sometimes hand straight down the front of the jeans!
And watching all those people trying so hard, but failing, to not watch you doing it!
Or, am I the only one?

I was busy entertaining the Girlie with my genital scratchings in Super U last Saturday.
She likes that sort of thing!
She was so entertained that she accidentally started putting our shopping in someone else’s trolley!
The other person was not amused!
Grumpy Lady called a security guard!
We thought we’d got it all sorted out but when we got home we found plenty of things that we hadn’t intended to buy.
I wonder if Grumpy Lady will ever forgive us?

All the best

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Naughty but nice!

Keith Eckstein — Thu, 20 May 2010 04:00:58 +0000

In Redon there is a shop called Noz.

Noz sells end of lines and seconds.

Sometimes there are good things on offer but more often than not it is a Chav’s paradise of discounted tat!

The Girlie and I love going there every now and again to stock up on discounted tat!

Last week they were doing a special on jars of baby peeled tomatoes in brine (with additional preserves.)

I tried the tomatoes and garlic cloves at 50 cents a jar.

Delicious is too small a word!

The only thing that worries me is that I only bought 10 jars!

All the best

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A couple of visitors

Keith Eckstein — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 04:00:02 +0000

When I visited Noz last week, as well as buying some English Sweets, I also invested in a couple of additions to our already rather gnomified front garden.

I’m not sure what they are called and they don’t seem to say a lot.

I’m hoping that they get on with our other gnomes; gnomes can be shy sometimes!

I don’t really know what it is with me and Garden Gnomes?

I know that they’re tacky and I should resist the temptation!

It’s just that I see them, all lonely, in the shop and…..

Before I know it, I’m at the counter with money in my hand and more gnomes to add to the collection!

I’m sure there’s a pill I could take – perhaps electric shock treatment?

Who knows?

All the best

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You can take the boy out of England…

Keith Eckstein — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 04:00:43 +0000

You can take the boy out of England.. but, you can’t really take all of England out of the boy!

I took the Girlie’s car in to have a couple of tyres changed yesterday.

It was going to take about half an hour and I took a little wander around the corner and ended up at Noz!

For those of you who don’t know it, Noz is a discount store in Redon that operates on the pile ‘em high principle.

You never really know what to expect to find at Noz and that makes a visit there rather interesting (for that, read…. occasionally expensive!)

There’s not much that I miss from England and I certainly don’t haunt the English Produce Shops for what I do miss.

The Girlie likes her Marmite and, every time someone comes over to visit, there are instructed to bring some over.

I did, last year, have a craving for Frey Bentos Steak and Kidney pies but, having pigged out on them, the craving has passed and I believe there is still one left in the cupboard.

I couldn’t resist these English sweets though!

It would have been cheaper to stay at the garage and watch the tires being changed!

Still, as I say… You can take the boy out of England but, you can’t really take all of England out of the boy!

All the best

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MushroomDiary	A Taste of Garlic	Images of Brittany	Market Days in Brittany	Website Design	Best Gites in Brittany

Roadside Tales	Internet Acceleration

The French Kitchen A delightful book in which Joanne shares with us ‘her family recipes, passed down through the generations. The French Kitchen is a tantalising collection of casseroles, soups, roasts, salads, tarts and sweets. More information	Cholcolat Joanna Harris creates a rich and vibrant description of a rural French village with all its petty rivalries and traditional, narrow-minded boundaries on thought and behavior. More information	Five Quarters of the Orange Five quarters of the orange’ is a story of a childhood tragedy in wartime France, and the shadows it casts across the later life of the heroine Framboise Dartigen. More information	Blackberry Wine Everyday magic, he called it, the transformation of base matter into the stuff of dreams – Layman’s alchemy. More information
The French Market Following the success of The French Kitchen, Joanne Harris and Fran Warde have collaborated once more to write a French cookbook with a difference. This time they have taken their inspiration from the rural markets of Gascony. More information	Coastliners Passionate, stubborn Mado, whose “head is full of rocks” tries to save the livelihoods of the villagers of Les Salants by urging them to work together to save the beach from erosion, both natural and man-made. More information	Five Quarters of the Orange Three sublime audiobooks from the bestselling author, now available together in a specially priced pack. Includes BLACKBERRY WINE, FIVE QUARTERS OF THE ORANGE and the huge bestseller CHOCOLAT. With a gentle touch and an eye for human frailty and strength, these mouth-watering audiobooks will draw you into her enchanting worlds. More information	French Lessons Failed rock legend, pickled onion manufacturer, air hostess and euro-entrepreneur George East takes us through another eventful year of his doomed attempts to make a living out of living in rural France. More information
French Flea Bites The character of France and the French people has been captured in words beautifully and the hilarious exploits of George his wife Donella, their neighbours and Cato the cat. More information	French Letters This is not so much a book as a continuation of the serial story of George and Donella as they carry on with their almost idyllic life in Normandy. It’s at least as funny as the others, but the hanky had to come out again several times. More information	French Cricket Once upon a time, former night club bouncer, seamstress and professional bedtester George East and his wife Donella fled to Normandy to escape their creditors and try to live off their wits in a foreign land. More information	Home and Dry in France Buying property in France is fraught with mishaps and misunderstandings. George East’s book brings humour and fun to what happens when people venture forth to a foreign land with more hope than money and humour than language skills. More information
French Kisses Those poor people who don’t like George East’s books often dismiss them as fiction. Not so, everything is at least based on real people and real happenings. George admits to a degree of embellishment and often combines several mishaps to produce a spectacular disaster. Such is the nature of his works. More information	Rene and Me Told in the inimitable style which has alrea dy won the author an army of followers, Rene & Me is a somet imes hilarious, sometimes moving and always captivating celebration of human nature, people and, above all, life and living.’ More information	A Year in the Merde This very funny book sounds a lot more like the France that I know. Read it and you’ll still want to come here, you’ll just be a lot better prepared for the surprises that France has to offer. More information	Merde Happens Paul West is in deep financial merde. His only way out of debt is to accept a decidedly dodgy job that involves him touring America in a Mini, while pretending to be typically British. Also in the car is Paul’s French girlfriend, Alexa, and his American poet friend, Jake, whose main aim in life is to sleep with a woman from every country in the world. More information
Merde Actually A year after arriving in France, Englishman Paul West is still struggling with some fundamental questions: What is the best way to scare a gendarme? Why are there no health warnings on French nudist beaches? And is it really polite to sleep with your boss’ mistress? More information	Dial M for Merde In this book, you’ll get Paul, Elodie, her dad and some new French girls. All of them are of course hot and all of them adore Paul. Didn’t see that one coming… More information	Talk to the Snail The only book you’ll need to understand what the French really think, how to get on with them and, and most importantly, how to get the best out of them. With useful sections on: Making sure you get served in a café, Harassing French estate agents, Living with bacteria, Pronouncing French swear-words and much more! More information	1000 years of Annoying the French Was the Battle of Hastings a French victory? No! William the Conqueror was Norman and hated the French. Were the Brits really responsible for the death of Joan of Arc? No! The French sentenced her to death for wearing trousers. More information
The Olive Farm This is television actress Carol Drinkwater’s lyrical account of a new life in France; about her house, Appassionata, and the trials and tribulations of acquiring an olive farm, restoring it, farming the olives, overcoming the heartaches of taking on a “new” French family and understanding slowly the workings and lifestyle of a vivacious Provencal community. More information	The Olive Season This is an extraordinary and fascinating follow-up to The Olive Farm. The reader is drawn deeply and inexorably in to the world of the author, confronted with her personal struggles and entranced by her pastiche of growth and decay in the world of nature, a metaphor for her life. More information	The Olive Harvest Carol and Michel have again returned to Appasionata, the Olive Farm that they have restored, and Carol is eager to continue production of the olives and attain their cerificate for producing Organic Oil. More information	The Olive Tree THE OLIVE TREE charts Carol Drinkwater’s colourful and often dangerous journey in search of the routes that olive cultivation has taken over the centuries. Set during a springtime Mediterranean that is evocative and perennial, it is above all a tale of our time. More information
The Olive Route A tour de force from Carol Drinkwater in this, the fourth in her Olive series. The joy of this book is in the pen pictures that she creates of the unusual characters that she encounters on her journey. More information	The Illustrated Olive Farm The photgraphy is wonderful and the book is a great insight in to life with the olives and all that that involves. There are wonderful pictures of the dogs, family, friends, even the dreaded wild boar. Recipes as well. More information	Petite Anglaise Petite Anglaise is a memoir by Catherine Sanderson based on her blog of the same name. In 2004 Catherine decided to start up a blog based on her life in Paris. More information	French Kissing Name: Sally Marshall Status: single mother Age: 32 Nationality: ten years in France, yet still English through and through I like: Living in Paris, playing with my daughter Lila (four years old), the company of good friends, the smell of baking bread. More information
Tout Sweet You cannot help but fall in love with the author’s character. She seems like a Bridget Jones let loose in the French countryside, getting into a lot of funny situations with both ex-pat English and French locals like, as she adjusts to a totally different way of life. More information	Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette John Dummer’s sharply focused descriptions of the landscape, towns and villages, and the weather of the South West of France form a animated background for a series of adventures with an array of characters from some intimidating and belligerent peasants to a sad little old man whose only companionship is a collection of antique dolls. More information	Merde! This book is an excellent source of words and expressions, of varying degrees of vulgarity, that are used all the time by french speakers. I used it often during the first of my two years in France. More information	Almost French “Almost French” is the story of a woman who goes to France to visit a French lawyer she has only met a couple times before and barely knows. Of course, she gets caught up in the romance of the city and stays on to live there. More information

Naughty Knickers in Redon

Keith Eckstein — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 10:37:22 +0000

Thank God it only happens once a year – that’s all I can say!

The Girlie decided to have a birthday and, to keep things simple for me (as I am a simple man), she had it on the same day that she had her birthday on last year.

Now, that was nice of her, wasn’t it?

So, I was despatched to Redon to buy a surprise birthday present for the Girlie, with strict and detailed instructions on exactly what sort of “surprise present” would be acceptable (even down to the relevant sizes!)

Now, I have been spending a bit of time in Redon recently.

As there isn’t much going on in IT Support, I thought it might be best to try and find some temporary work.

So, I’ve been doing the rounds of the local job agencies.

There isn’t much available and anyway, I was made redundant from Helga’s House of Pain for medical reasons – that kind of makes it difficult for me to be taken seriously as a job-seeker.

Still, I had to try.

One of the things I’ve noticed, sat outside my favourite bar in Redon, is that someone had obviously been on the Pastis the night before when he put up some of the old buildings around here.

Or perhaps the slight slantiness was all planned?

I still think that les Freres Ricard were involved somewhere down the line!

So, getting back to the Girlie’s pressies… The flowers were easy enough and the Girlies’s little hint that I should ask the nice ladies at the jewellery counter at InterMarché for advice worked out just fine (they really are very nice ladies and they actually understand what it is that girlies like and, more importantly, what they don’t like!)

I even remembered to get some wrapping paper – although I think it is a crime on a par of forcing newly born babies to smoke non-filtered cigarettes to waste good money on something that will only be ripped off and scrunched into a ball the very next day – And, have you seen how expensive wrapping paper is? I wonder how many trees had to die for that bit of frippery? And, how do you wrap up things that aren’t rectangular? And, once again, why is it so expensive – someone really ought to bring out re-useable wrapping paper – that would be nice and green, nice and eco-friendly – you could charge a fortune for that!

Right, little rant over. Sorry for that. As you might have guessed, wrapping paper AND THE STUPID HORRENDOUS PRICE OF IT is one of those things that slightly gets my goat. Good thing birthdays only come once a year (and then only if you’re reminded about them!)

Anyway, I’d got all the little surprise pressies that had been hinted at – all but one, that is… The Naughty Knickers and matching Bra.

Now, I will freely admit that I am the world’s worstest lingerie purchaser!

I take a deep breath, pull myself together and walk into the shop.

I then proceed to tell the stunned sales assistant that although I’m pretending to buy this for the wife/girlfriend, it is actually my intention to wear it myself in the privacy of my own home and, more disturbingly, am planning, on my birthday, to waltz around town wearing nothing but the aforementioned lingerie before sexually molesting a traumatised police dog!

Well, actually I don’t do this because….. I can’t actually bring myself to enter the shop in the first place!

I imagine that the residents of Redon are all heaving a sigh of relief (not to mention the poor police dogs!)

Even if I could manage to enter the shop, as soon as the pretty shop assistant approached I would be totally unable to sat a word and would stumble out, no doubt knocking down a display unit, or two, in the process, in red-faced embarrassment!

And why, I have to ask, are the sale assistants in those shops so attractive? It doesn’t make it any easier for us poor men, you know!

Perhaps someone should invent a Naughty Knickers shop where all the staff have to undergo a surgical procedure to make them as ugly as sin? Just a thought!

Yes, you see, I’m the guy who blushes when he accidently wanders down the underwear isle at the local supermarket! It’s a medical thing; I am taking medication for it – the doctors are full of hope!

So, it did look like the Girlie might have to forgo that surprise pressie.

I did try though, I went to the shop that she suggested might be good for a little surprise pressie, took one look at the prices of the few scraps of silk they were displaying in the windows and then, a few minutes later, came to, lying on the floor, being offered smelling salts by that all too attractive sales assistant in the Naughty Knickers shop.

The sales assistant seemed well practiced so I can assume I’m not the only one to be so shocked by the prices – I mean, how can they justify charging so much for so little (especially when the whole idea is to remove it all as soon as politely possible?)

I think that the Naughty Knicker manufacturers are taking a leaf out of the Wrapping Paper manufacturers handbook – or are the two in cohorts together? A new conspiracy theory for me to investigate?

Eventually, after after a lot of false starts, I did manage to do the dirty deed (thanks to the lovely sales assistant who hid her beauty on the inside!) and the Girlie’s birthday was complete. By the way, I am planning on a temporary, but definitive, change of religion before Christmas comes up!

I was going to say that perhaps someone should invent a lingerie selling machine but…. it appears that someone already has!

And before I sign off, a little word about signing on. I’ve just successfully inscribed to Pole-Emploi which means that, for the next two years, I’ll be getting unemployment benefit. This works out to be only slightly less than what I used to get when I was chucking around all those little bits of dead pig all day long at Helga’s House of Pain!

Of course, I’ll have to deduct 80% of any money I get from Web Design but, I can live with that – what a great country France is!

So, got to dash. I’ve got plenty to do today – another new website to do and a server to build.

All the best

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MushroomDiary	A Taste of Garlic	Images of Brittany	Market Days in Brittany	Website Design	Best Gites in Brittany

Roadside Tales	Internet Acceleration

The French Kitchen A delightful book in which Joanne shares with us ‘her family recipes, passed down through the generations. The French Kitchen is a tantalising collection of casseroles, soups, roasts, salads, tarts and sweets. More information	Cholcolat Joanna Harris creates a rich and vibrant description of a rural French village with all its petty rivalries and traditional, narrow-minded boundaries on thought and behavior. More information	Five Quarters of the Orange Five quarters of the orange’ is a story of a childhood tragedy in wartime France, and the shadows it casts across the later life of the heroine Framboise Dartigen. More information	Blackberry Wine Everyday magic, he called it, the transformation of base matter into the stuff of dreams – Layman’s alchemy. More information
The French Market Following the success of The French Kitchen, Joanne Harris and Fran Warde have collaborated once more to write a French cookbook with a difference. This time they have taken their inspiration from the rural markets of Gascony. More information	Coastliners Passionate, stubborn Mado, whose “head is full of rocks” tries to save the livelihoods of the villagers of Les Salants by urging them to work together to save the beach from erosion, both natural and man-made. More information	Five Quarters of the Orange Three sublime audiobooks from the bestselling author, now available together in a specially priced pack. Includes BLACKBERRY WINE, FIVE QUARTERS OF THE ORANGE and the huge bestseller CHOCOLAT. With a gentle touch and an eye for human frailty and strength, these mouth-watering audiobooks will draw you into her enchanting worlds. More information	French Lessons Failed rock legend, pickled onion manufacturer, air hostess and euro-entrepreneur George East takes us through another eventful year of his doomed attempts to make a living out of living in rural France. More information
French Flea Bites The character of France and the French people has been captured in words beautifully and the hilarious exploits of George his wife Donella, their neighbours and Cato the cat. More information	French Letters This is not so much a book as a continuation of the serial story of George and Donella as they carry on with their almost idyllic life in Normandy. It’s at least as funny as the others, but the hanky had to come out again several times. More information	French Cricket Once upon a time, former night club bouncer, seamstress and professional bedtester George East and his wife Donella fled to Normandy to escape their creditors and try to live off their wits in a foreign land. More information	Home and Dry in France Buying property in France is fraught with mishaps and misunderstandings. George East’s book brings humour and fun to what happens when people venture forth to a foreign land with more hope than money and humour than language skills. More information
French Kisses Those poor people who don’t like George East’s books often dismiss them as fiction. Not so, everything is at least based on real people and real happenings. George admits to a degree of embellishment and often combines several mishaps to produce a spectacular disaster. Such is the nature of his works. More information	Rene and Me Told in the inimitable style which has alrea dy won the author an army of followers, Rene & Me is a somet imes hilarious, sometimes moving and always captivating celebration of human nature, people and, above all, life and living.’ More information	A Year in the Merde This very funny book sounds a lot more like the France that I know. Read it and you’ll still want to come here, you’ll just be a lot better prepared for the surprises that France has to offer. More information	Merde Happens Paul West is in deep financial merde. His only way out of debt is to accept a decidedly dodgy job that involves him touring America in a Mini, while pretending to be typically British. Also in the car is Paul’s French girlfriend, Alexa, and his American poet friend, Jake, whose main aim in life is to sleep with a woman from every country in the world. More information
Merde Actually A year after arriving in France, Englishman Paul West is still struggling with some fundamental questions: What is the best way to scare a gendarme? Why are there no health warnings on French nudist beaches? And is it really polite to sleep with your boss’ mistress? More information	Dial M for Merde In this book, you’ll get Paul, Elodie, her dad and some new French girls. All of them are of course hot and all of them adore Paul. Didn’t see that one coming… More information	Talk to the Snail The only book you’ll need to understand what the French really think, how to get on with them and, and most importantly, how to get the best out of them. With useful sections on: Making sure you get served in a café, Harassing French estate agents, Living with bacteria, Pronouncing French swear-words and much more! More information	1000 years of Annoying the French Was the Battle of Hastings a French victory? No! William the Conqueror was Norman and hated the French. Were the Brits really responsible for the death of Joan of Arc? No! The French sentenced her to death for wearing trousers. More information
The Olive Farm This is television actress Carol Drinkwater’s lyrical account of a new life in France; about her house, Appassionata, and the trials and tribulations of acquiring an olive farm, restoring it, farming the olives, overcoming the heartaches of taking on a “new” French family and understanding slowly the workings and lifestyle of a vivacious Provencal community. More information	The Olive Season This is an extraordinary and fascinating follow-up to The Olive Farm. The reader is drawn deeply and inexorably in to the world of the author, confronted with her personal struggles and entranced by her pastiche of growth and decay in the world of nature, a metaphor for her life. More information	The Olive Harvest Carol and Michel have again returned to Appasionata, the Olive Farm that they have restored, and Carol is eager to continue production of the olives and attain their cerificate for producing Organic Oil. More information	The Olive Tree THE OLIVE TREE charts Carol Drinkwater’s colourful and often dangerous journey in search of the routes that olive cultivation has taken over the centuries. Set during a springtime Mediterranean that is evocative and perennial, it is above all a tale of our time. More information
The Olive Route A tour de force from Carol Drinkwater in this, the fourth in her Olive series. The joy of this book is in the pen pictures that she creates of the unusual characters that she encounters on her journey. More information	The Illustrated Olive Farm The photgraphy is wonderful and the book is a great insight in to life with the olives and all that that involves. There are wonderful pictures of the dogs, family, friends, even the dreaded wild boar. Recipes as well. More information	Petite Anglaise Petite Anglaise is a memoir by Catherine Sanderson based on her blog of the same name. In 2004 Catherine decided to start up a blog based on her life in Paris. More information	French Kissing Name: Sally Marshall Status: single mother Age: 32 Nationality: ten years in France, yet still English through and through I like: Living in Paris, playing with my daughter Lila (four years old), the company of good friends, the smell of baking bread. More information
Tout Sweet You cannot help but fall in love with the author’s character. She seems like a Bridget Jones let loose in the French countryside, getting into a lot of funny situations with both ex-pat English and French locals like, as she adjusts to a totally different way of life. More information	Serge Bastarde Ate My Baguette John Dummer’s sharply focused descriptions of the landscape, towns and villages, and the weather of the South West of France form a animated background for a series of adventures with an array of characters from some intimidating and belligerent peasants to a sad little old man whose only companionship is a collection of antique dolls. More information	Merde! This book is an excellent source of words and expressions, of varying degrees of vulgarity, that are used all the time by french speakers. I used it often during the first of my two years in France. More information	Almost French “Almost French” is the story of a woman who goes to France to visit a French lawyer she has only met a couple times before and barely knows. Of course, she gets caught up in the romance of the city and stays on to live there. More information