Manny's Blog

Sharing our French adventure as we live and work and renovate our forever home in the Haute Loire.

March winds

Here we are in mid-March already! I guess it’s a good sign that time passes so quickly these days! Or maybe it’s just a sign of getting old! We’ve been working on our home here in Solignac for more than six years now, (we got the keys in January 2017) and living in the house…

The Summer of ’22

September 2022 – it’s been a jam-packed roller coaster of a year so far! My sister Sasha got married; I turned 60 and caught Covid; Oscar turned one and was Christened and and on the same day (June 5th) we lost Joe’s much-loved Dad, Dave. So the year has involved quite a few trips to…

A Blue Skied Autumn and the first snow of winter

Quite a cliffhanger I left you dangling on in June… the night of our darling, beautiful grandson Oscar’s birth. Sorry about that! As always I thought I’d be back to my blog sooner… but as always, it’s taken longer than expected to get back here! Oscar is now six months old (nearly seven months!)- he…

Summer’s been a long time coming

(May 9th) I’m writing from a top floor room in a cosy Parisian Hotel – the windows open, curtains billowing in the warm breeze, and the soothing sounds of the city evoking distant memories of city-dwelling many moons ago! Curfew still in place from 7pm, so hardly any sounds of folks on the street, but…

La Source – build it and they will come!

We have our 3 stars from the Tourist Office… we have our first guests arriving in a few days, through Airbnb, and we are fully booked until mid-March with a summer three-week booking too. Honestly we couldn’t be more thrilled! We’ve given it so much love and attention, and I have to admit to having…

Christmas… so last year!

We had ourselves a Merry Little Christmas here in Solignac – even though we couldn’t all be together physically, we were all with our loved ones, and we were together in spirit. Beth’s Christmas video this year summed up our year with such grace…and her beautiful voice. And with all the difficulties and obstacles and…

Summer on the farm!

As we approach the end of September, I can hardly believe it’s been more than four months since I last wrote a blog! The year of Covid strangeness meant a summer at home, with very little travelling for Joe and I, however we were truly blessed to catch a month with Beth here in France,…

Lockdown Birthdays and Anniversaries …and Nairobi!

One month almost to the day since my last blog, one month more in ‘confinement’, and how does it feel now? We have definitely settled in to a ‘new normal’ and a slower more conscious rhythm to our life, but at the same time we start de-confinement today, 11th May… my birthday! And whilst it’s…

A different world…

We’re coming to the end of our fourth week of lockdown during this extraordinary global pandemic. I’ve been thinking I really want to write this blog as a reminder of this unprecedented time in years to come – when life is hopefully a little less extreme… I wonder if things will ever feel the same…