Well, another week has passed and, with it, a new website has arrived.

This one is something I’ve been thinking about for a long time.

Mainly for people living in Brittany (or thinking about visiting there for their holidays), it contains some essential local information as a well as a list of Brittany based blogs and the last 5 updates from each of them.

You might want to check it out.

For more details, please take a look at www.BrittanyToday.com

All the best

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Well, another week has passed and, with it, a new website has arrived.

This one is something I’ve been planning for forever.

Or, perhaps it just seems that way?

If you ever need some inspiration or just some occasional words of wisdom….

You might want to check it out.

The words change every day but you can take a look at the List of Quotes if you are impatient.

And you can even suggest quotes to be added – I’ll link back to your website (if you have one) if you suggest a quote that I can add.

You can even sign up to receive your Daily Dose of Wisdom by email every morning! ..

At some point, there may even be a widget so that you bloggers out there can put some Daily Dose of Wisdom on your blog..

For more details, please tale a look at www.DailyDoseofWisdom.com

All the best

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Well, another week has passed and, with it, a new website has arrived.

This one is a listings website for houses for sale in Brittany.

Although a simple site – I’m especially proud of the rotating fading slideshows – they were a lot of work to get right – no simple wordpress plugin for me; I insist on doing things the hard way!

In a way, this new site is a trial for a national property sales website covering the whole of France.

It is, of course, totally free to advertise your property on A House for Sale in Brittany.

For more details, please tale a look at www.aHouseForSaleinBrittany.com

All the best

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Well, another week has passed and I’m happy to be able to realise a long term project by launching….www.FrenchMarketDays.com

I hope that www.FrenchMarketDays.com becomes a resource that people can use whether they live here, or are just visiting for their holiday.

The aim is to accurately describe All the Markets in France.

We’re a way off that but, with 6,800 markets already researched and in the database… we’re off to a good start!

Please feel free to visit www.FrenchMarketDays.com and pass on any feedback that you feel is merited.

All the best

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BretonDiary	MushroomDiary	A Taste of Garlic	kmeckstein.com	The Friday Blog	Roadside Tales
Web Design for Gites	French Public Holidays	French Saint’s Days	Brittany Websites	KeithEckstein.com	Market Days in Brittany
Books about France	Find a Gite!	Prestige French Lettings	Best French Holiday!	Pet Friendly Gites!	Best Gites in Brittany
Images of Brittany	Internet Acceleration	FavIcons4Free

Even with the distractions of not having a reliable internet connection (or perhaps as a result?) I’m moving four new websites online.

Please feel free to take a look at them and perhaps tell any of your friends who may have holiday (or long term) accommodation to let.

The services offered in all four sites are totally free!

Find a Gite Find a Gite – The best place to find the best Gites in France! www.FindaGite.com	Pet Friendly Gites Because our special friends need their holidays too! www.PetFriendlyGites.com
Best French Holiday For holiday accommodation in Hotels, B&Bs, Campsites and more! www.BestFrenchHoliday.com	Prestige French Lettings For quality medium and long term lettings throughout France! www.PrestigeFrenchLettings.com

All the best

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After what seems an eternity (but is really only a couple of months), all the Links sites are ready to use.

You can see all the Links sites at the bottom of this post.

The feedback we’ve had so far from the users of Brittany-Links.com has been 100% positive (apart from the negative feedback, that is, and we’ve shot those people anyway!)

So, please feel free to visit your local Links site and register your business for free or advertise your sales in our classified ads section.

If you think of anything I should add (or change), please let me know. I’ve run out of bullets and, to be honest, I’m a lousy shot, so you’re probably quite safe!

All the best

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Aquitaine-Links	Brittany-Links	Burgundy-Links	French-Links	Languedoc-Links
Limousin-Links	Loire-Links	MidiPyrenees-Links	Normandy-Links	Paris-Links
Poitou-Charentes-Links	Provence-Links	Rhone-Alpes-Links

I didn’t make a big fuss about it at the time as it’s very much a geeky blog and aimed at  people who are spotty, wear glasses and allow themselves to be seen in public wearing a three week old, dirty Rammstein tee-shirt!

The sort of people who don’t wash their hair for weeks on end, in other words!

Not, I imagine, a fitting description for all the good people who are nice enough to visit me here at BretonDiary.com!

In other words, it is a blog about the crossover between creative writing and technology; and how we can use the latter to aid the former.

The Blog is called The Friday Blog and can be found at www.TheFridayBlog.com

It is an end of week report from Brittany and I describe it as follows…

“Although I have a number of other blogs where I can express myself, I felt that there was a need for yet one more – somewhere where I could pick on one subject close to my heart, once a week, and hammer it to death for all the world to see.

Well, this is that place. It’s here that I’ll be talking about writing and reading and all those things that don’t fit in elsewhere. I do hope that you enjoy your time looking round here; you may even want to take a look at some of my other sites.”

Yesterday, however, www.LinuxToday.com picked up on my third blog posting on www.TheFridayBlog.com and, as a result www.TheFridayBlog.com received 1,320 unique visitors.

I’m hoping that many of them will return on a weekly basis to read my other ponderings and pontifications.

Of course, if you are really, really interested you may wish to take a look at the article that www.LinuxToday.com liked.

It is called The non operating system operating system and details my thoughts about how it is the core software layer that matters to me, rather than the underlying operating system infrastructure.

In other words, how I do’t really care what version of Linux (or any other operating system) I run – I’m more interested in the tools that allow me to get my work done.

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

Another week, another website.

This is one of my own.

I’ve long thought that there was a need for something in between the online bookshops that you can find on some of the expat sites and the vast, immense vastness of Amazon.

A site that was backed by all the power and range of Amazon but, one that was easier to use.

And better suited to its targeted readership…

An online bookselling site that was specific to people living in France or, those thinking of doing so.

A site where the visitors could contribute to the conversations; either via the commenting system or on the forum.

A site where the visitors could participate in the reviews and be rewarded , as a result.

The site is called  www.BooksAboutFrance.com

Please feel free to pay it a visit and let me know if you feel it needs any radical surgery.

Before moving to France (and before my my move to London), I spent six years working in the book trade for Britain’s largest book wholesaler.

Based upon my experiences there, I am hoping to engage the publishers of relevant books to ensure that new titles are sent to France so that “guest reviewers” get a chance to provide pre-publication reviews  for Books About France (and get a free copy of the book for their troubles!)

Perhaps there might be some competitions sponsored by those publishers?

There will also be the opportunity for people with blogs about Life in France to sponsor their favourite book about Life in France; all they need do is write a few words (10 – 20) about that book and I’ll put them on the relevant page of the site with a link to, and mini review of, their blog.

All I ask in return is for a sidebar link back to Books About France.

I’m also hoping to interview writers although I am aware that I may have to be a little bit more polite that I have been in the past (I’m thinking of those interviews on A Taste of Garlic, here.)

I’m in the process of adding another couple of thousand titles to the site; this does take time so, whilst everyone is enjoying the sunny weather, think of me hard at work, slaving away over a hot keyboard!

All the best

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Another day, another website!

Some friends of the Girlie’s who have stayed in her gite were looking for a website for their Stockport (Greater Manchester) based double glazing business.

So, where else did they come to but… me!

It’s still a bit of a work in progress but the main bulk of the text is there.

If you know of anyone in the Manchester area who might be interested in replacement double glazing, please point them at www.StockportWindows.com – I’m sure that John and Mark (the two brothers who run the business) will be very grateful!

All the best

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In the past a French child would be given the name of the saint on whose day their own birth fell. More recently it has become more common for the saint’s name to be given as a second or middle name.

This means that children often have two special days to celebrate; their own birthday and their “Saint’s Day.” Almost every day in the calendar has a saint’s name assigned to it, some have more than one and January 6 has five.

Thus, the idea for  www.FrenchSaintsDays.com was born.

I was first interested in doing something like this a few years ago;  I noticed that my local boulangerie used to have a blackboard outside, displaying the name of that day’s saint.

Also, at work (at the now famous Helga’s House of Pain, there was also a similar sign near where we picked up our clean overalls.)

As well as creating a new site, I’ve also written a widget for French Saints Days, so that you can display the Saint of the Day (as it were) on your own blog or website.

You can see that widget in action on the sidebar of this blog (just above the Categories listing.)

You can also sign up to receive a daily email telling you which Saint’s day it is.

More details at… www.FrenchSaintsDays.com

Please take a peek at www.FrenchSaintsDays.com – if for no other reason than to see if you’re entitled to another special day to celebrate!

All the best

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