Call me! (Blondie, 1980)

St Roger


Happy Birthday to Stephen! (We won't give away your age!)


Our daughter gave us a nice present at Christmas, it's a new Skype telephone which means that if there is anyone else out there on Skype you can talk to us, and vice verse for free (don't ya just love that word?).

If you have a Skype telephone, please e-mail us to let us know your Skype address - we've set up an e-mail account just for this purpose so please, no spamming or phishing - we won't reply unless we know you (or want to know you!). The e-mail address just to let us know your Skype account is smithsenfrance@gmail.com .

If you don't already know about Skype, you can find details here. Basically you set up your account with them and connect a headset and microphone to your computer - or a special Skype telephone with a USB connection, and Bob's your Uncle (actually mine was Bill, not Bob, and Ernie and Dick too). You can call landlines from Skype too, and the calls are much cheaper than from a normal landline. By the way, I'm not on commission, just converted to a new way of staying in touch with the family.

I really must clear out my e-mails though. Not just those I have received but the accounts I have set up in the past and rarely use any more. There are the hotmail account, the Yahoo account, the AOL account that I set up when we had our internet connection with them, and the two Wanadoo accounts, French and English. I don't use half of these any more but, you just never know when an old friend might just get in touch for the first time in years and they only have your old e-mail account. It is just another facet of my hoarding problem. Books, magazines, old balls of wool (to make blankets and soft toys), fabric remnants (to make that patchwork quilt one of these years), not to mention buttons, lace, ribbons. I could go on.

But I won't.

This time.

A free what?

Ste Marguerite
Yesterday's weather: coldest yet but sunny

We are a little fed up with cold callers phoning us. We've had two this week. The first lady was trying to persuade us that we had won a free gift each and only had to turn up at the salle de fêtes in our local town. She would send us an invitation. I declined saying that we were not available on the day she mentioned (today). On returning from our shopping expedition at lunch time we found the invitation in the post box. We have to turn up at 3pm and no earlier or later, to profit from this wonderful offer of a gift gourmet basket for me and a couple of bottles of wine from him.

Well, if there's no such thing as a free lunch, then there's no such thing as a free gift either! The invitation doesn't tell us what sort of presentation we would have to sit through as, of course, we would have to.

We're staying put this afternoon.

When the second cold call came in I was obviously a little more alert and as soon as I twigged that silence when I picked the phone up followed by a background babbling, I just hung up. Just for the record if you are thinking of calling us we do not want our roof inspected, to attend a wine tasting, to win a 'free' holiday or anything else unsolicited.

Thank you.