Well, it’s that time of the month…

When I say thank you to all of you for visiting!

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Whoops…

It looks like there was a problem with last Tuesday’s That Was The Week…. post and it seems to have been truncated….

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Some people cut things fine, don’t they?

They hear the school bell ringing and..

Then they get out of bed!

Still, better late than never?

That’s my motto, anyway.

So, I’d like to introduce another bunch of future Assistants or Students in France!

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Well, this lot appear to have snuck into the back of class after the register has been taken!

But…

As I don’t want to risk their education and put their whole future professional lives at risk….

I’ll ignore their tardiness and say a few words about…

Even more new arrivals to be the next wave of…

Assistants in France!

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After months and months of planning…

Mrs A Taste of Garlic and I have decided to commence the first stage of our world tour!

We shall be leaving the windswept wilds of slightly rural and very backward Brittany on Monday and heading south…

As fast as our old jalopy will go!

Now, we’re not very sure of where we’ll end up…

But we’ll be sort of heading for La Rochelle (as it’s downhill from here) and…

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Carrying on from the last couple of days posts I thought I’d do some more investigation into the new wave of volunteers who, one day, will be able to tell their grandchildren…

I was an Assistant in France once…

Assuming they survive?

And, believe it or not, many do…

or, perhaps it’s only the survivors who tell tales?

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It’s not often that I roused from the comfort of my armchair, where I spend my days in front of the fire, idly dreaming of Pigs Trotter Sandwiches and other local delicacies but…

Yesterday Little Me from Pint Sized Rants told me about some really awful news that I’ve been thinking about ever since.

You see, there’s this blogger called GentleOtter…

Now, GentleOtter has been living on a remote tenant farm in Scotland for the last 120 years.

Not her personally, you understand – I’m not sure how many years she’s been living there but….

Her husband’s family have been the tenant farmers there for the last 120 years.

In that time they’ve never once missed a rent payment!

Not once! In good years and bad!

They have maintained the house during all that time but…

“The farmhouse roof has crumbled ‘through fair wear and tear’. It has covered and protected the house since circa 1800, before that it was thatched. I think it is safe to say that the roof has lasted well.”

Having asked that the roof be repaired, to no avail, two days ago, a chap from the council came up to look and informed GentleOtter that a demolition order be served. There is nothing she can do as it is the landowner’s responsibility!

Now, you may want to read more about GentleOtter’s plight…

I’d just suggest that you get a box of hankies ready first!

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Firstly I’d just like to mention that yesterday was a record day for Garlic with 3,074 unique visitors!

This is the first time we’ve cracked the 3,000 visitors level and it reminds me that only a year ago I was more than happy with daily visitors averaging around the 700 a day mark!

So, thank you to all of you who do visit – I hope that you continue to do so.

Now that recent events are fading into the distance and my health seems to be improving I hope to be able to take Garlic to even higher levels of expat information, cheeky observations, irrelevant awards and general fun and games!

Please stay on board and, if you think that they might be interested in all that sort of stuff…

Tell your friends!

Once again, many thanks for all your support during what has been a difficult time for me – you’re all getting an award next Tuesday; whether you like it or not!

All the best

P.S. The full statistics can be seen on The Statistics Page.

Continuing on from yesterday’s post I thought I’d do some deeper investigation into the new wave of volunteers who, one day, will be able to tell their grandchildren….

I was an Assistant in France once…

Assuming they survive?

And one who did survive was Eyelean who came over about a million years ago back in 2006 and seems to have forgotten to go home?

Obviously you all know about Eyelean because she blogs at the wonderful, really rather good, shouldn’t be missed A Landscape Selected at Random.

Now, I’ve not reviewed that site yet (but I shall, one of these days)…

But I did review Emmygration back rather a long time ago and I remember noting that Emma said of herself… “came to the North East of France in September 2005 to teach English for 7 months, and well, never left. It is where she vents her thoughts about living as an anglophone in France; she thinks of it as therapy.”

Well, I’m not sure the therapy is working but…

It’s still very interesting to read about!

So, which out of the new crop are doomed to forever stay in the land of Red Wine and Smelly Cheese? Well, dear reader, lets see, shall we?

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I’m always happy to support worthy causes here at A Taste of Garlic.

If there’s something you want the world to know about…

Or, at least, the sensible section of the world…

Those who read Garlic, in other words…

You only have to ask and I’ll publish a post about it here.

However, today I have a cause that is very close to my heart…

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Ladies and Gentlemen (and that Montpellier lot!)….

It’s come to my attention that it’s that time of the year…

When otherwise normal and sensible young Americans (and Brits and Aussies too!)…

Pack their bags to move to France for a year…

To teach little froggies how to speak English (or, American or Aussie?)

Now…

Over the years we’ve had some famous (or, infamous?) English Assistants who’ve somehow grown roots and stayed….

One of whom is Shannon from a little bit chaunoise.

And, of course, there’s Andromeda at The Adventures of an American Blonde in France who started here as an assistant (in Metz) four years ago, and…

The infamous Sam at Totally Frenched Out who sorted of started off as an assistant even longer ago!

Then there’s Milkjam who came over in 2003!

And is now a real froggie!

And who can forget Amber at Travelling Amber?

Indeed, who could forget Amber?

And lastly (for the moment, anyway), there’s Crystal at Crystal Goes To Europe.

And every year we patiently wait for the new intake in the hope that they will learn from those who’ve gone before them and…

Get up to lots of fun…

Forget to go home and…

Blog all about it (with all the gory details!)

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Well, I suppose that the time for mourning has come to an end.

I really didn’t think that my father’s death would have affected me so much; me being born, as I was, without anything remotely resembling a heart and totally lacking in all the finer emotions that distinguish us from the beasts.

But it did affect me so….

I guess I might be slightly human after all?

It still hurts to see my father’s chair in front of the house; knowing that I’ll never see him sitting there, book on his lap – reading with his eyes closed!

But now it only hurts every minute of every day.

And that, after all, is better than before.

And if I ever hear his voice, whilst I’m all alone (as I am these days), in a charcuteire asking me “Shall we buy those eels/squids/pig’s trotters?” I do sort of understand that I’m almost hallucinating.

It does kind of worry me that I like those hallucinations – that worries me a lot!

Anyway, life goes on and I get the feeling that it’s time I got back to work on Garlic and try to catch up on the various recent deeds and misdeeds committed by some of the wilder elements of the Life in France bloggers whilst I’ve been otherwise engaged.

And whilst I’m not willing to give you any clues whose antics immediately come to mind, I can say one thing to you…

They’re a funny lot, that lot down in Montpellier!

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I’m sorry but, having only recently restarted updating A Taste of Garlic, I am going to need to take another short break.

My father died last week and so I’m taking a little bit of time off.

I imagine that I’ll be able to start updating A Taste of Garlic sometime in early July.

All the best

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KME

General | Keith Eckstein June 21, 2011 | Comments (30)

The Celebrity Interview to end all Celebrity Interviews!

Well, it’s all been finalised!

The Celebrity Interview to end all Celebrity Interviews is just round the corner!

Did you really believe me when I said that I’d been abducted by Aliens from Outer Space?

Well, the truth is that I’ve been busy for the last two months negotiating an interview with a celebrity of stage and screen!

Someone who has wowed us with this manly good looks and powerful on-screen presence…

Someone who has featured in the nighttime fantasies and dreams of many a respectable housewife…

Someone who shunned the bright lights and the big city and came to live in France…

And no, I’m not talking about Johnny Depp!

Johnny is busy darning his socks apparently, and can’t spare the time for an interview just at the moment (but watch this space…)

No, I’m talking about an even bigger star!

Someone who wowed us in Britain’s all time favourite television comedy as well as creating the swashbuckling, seagoing role that Johnny Depp later nicked and copied when he did those Pirates of the Caribbean films!

A real man, in other words!

And….

If you want to find out who it is….

And what he thinks about Johnny Halliday, Elvis Presley’s current employment and why he moved to France…

Well, you’ll just have to keep tuned, won’t you?

And me, I’m going off a cold shower and a little lie down!

Hobnobbing with the rich and famous always wears me out!

All the best

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---

General | Keith Eckstein June 8, 2011 | Comments (11)

An Update….

Some of you may have noticed the slight lack of posts here recently.

Indeed, some of you have even emailed me and/or left comments about the reasons for this.

Well, I can finally reveal the truth!

Football Issues

1). It’s not because, as many of you have no doubt suspected, that I have been so ashamed of Spurs’ recent performance (Spurs are a football team for any of you of the Female persuasion – although they’re not that much of a football team, to be honest!) that I have decided to shave my head, relocate to a Tibetan monastery and begin a new life of silent but rather aggressive self-flagellation.

No, that’s not true at all – at least, the Tibetan monastery bit isn’t entirely true!

Health Issues

2). And it has absolutely nothing to do with health issues.

Many people did suggest that perhaps I’d ruptured myself changing from my Winter LongJohns (that’s Union Suit for those of you of American Persuasion) into my Summer LongJohns

And whilst that may well have been true but it doesn’t completely account for my blogging absence.

Diet Issues

3). There seem to be a few of you (OK, I’ll be honest, there seems to be thousands of you) who think that my diet of Andouilette, Pigs Trotters and Boudin Noir may finally have caught up with me and the reason that I haven’t been blogging or updating A Taste of Garlic is that I’m now so fat I can’t fit through the office door!

And, whilst this does, coincidentally, happen to be the case, it’s not the whole reason why I have been so quiet for so long.

Aliens from Outer Space

4). A few of you (a frighteningly small number, it does have to be said) seem to have suspected the truth right away.

They realised that I’d been abducted by Aliens from Outer Space (and we seem to suffer quite a lot from this in the particular part of slightly backward, generally overlooked and completely rural South West Brittany that I have chosen to call home) and, for the last six weeks, have been undergoing a number of rather disturbingly intimate tests performed by the aforementioned aliens to determine a). whether we, as a species, are good to eat… b) how we manage to get about when we only have 2 legs and c). how we procreate.

After thoroughly analysing me, I feel that the aliens have come up with the following answers…

a). Human Beings taste of all the wrong bits of dead pig!

b). Human Beings do manage to stagger around, handicapped as they are with only one pair of legs, but do seem to have some trouble staying upright – especially towards the end of the day and, almost always if they have been drinking that drink that is clear in the bottle but goes yellow in the glass once water has been added.

c). Messy and noisy – I don’t think I need to say any more there!

From the look on their faces I do believe that they were somehow disappointed in me.

As an ambassador for our species, I feel that somehow I have failed….

However, the one thing that I can say for sure is that….

If they think that I am a typical example of the human race,

They’ll probably not come back for another million years or so,

In order to give us time to evolve into something that a). tastes better, b) can grow another couple of pairs of legs and…

c). Makes a little bit less noise and a whole lot less mess during the mating season (their words, not mine – I did try to explain that, for any red-blooded English man, Mating Season happens on a Friday night after 6 pints of lager and a few games of darts in order to prepare for a Saturday down the betting shop and watching footie on the wide-screen down the boozer. I’m not entirely sure that they completely understood?)

And, as such….

I truly and honestly believe….

That I have singlehandedly…..

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General | Keith Eckstein May 27, 2011 | Comments (18)

A delay…

Due to industrial action at the printers….

An invasions of aliens from out of space….

And a whole host of other excuses that you won’t believe….

Today’s That was the Week….

Will be published tomorrow!

I do apologise for this, somehow we’ve lost a day over here in rural Brittany and, no matter how hard we look, we can’t seem to find it!

Normal service (or, whatever approximates to normal) will be resumed tomorrow.

All the best

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General | Keith Eckstein February 8, 2011 | Comments (3)

A little late today….

Today’s post is going to be a little bit late….

Busy, busy, busy!

Perhaps about 3pm?

All going well!

All the best

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General | Keith Eckstein February 3, 2011 | Comments (0)

Is it Wine O’Clock?

Partly in order to satisfy the extraordinary interest from my Twitter followers in the subject of Wine O’Clock and partly to keep Tanya at Tanya in Transition on the straight and narrow, I have used some of the parts from the wreckage of an alien spacecraft that crashed into our back garden a few week ago to build a Wine O’Clock Calculator.

Many of you may find this useful and you are welcome to pop into A Taste of Garlic during the day to determine how long it is until that happy hour!

Should you wish to display a Wine O’Clock Calculator on your website or blog, please take the following code and insert it into a text widget in the sidebar of your blog.

<br /> <center><br /> <iframe src ="http://www.atasteofgarlic.com/wine.php" width="100%" scrolling="no" frameborder="0"></p> <p>Your browser does not support iframes.</p> <p></iframe><br /> <center><br />

Of course, this particular Wine O’Clock Calculator is based upon the Traditional Wine O’Clock hours observed by those of us living in the Posh Part of Brittany, France.

In other words….

Monday to Thursday = 6pm and Friday to Sunday = 5pm.

Should you follow a different local tradition, please feel free to email me at contact@aTasteOfGarlic.com and I’ll knock up a Wine O’Clock Calculator to your requirements.

There are plenty of bits left over from the crashed alien spacecraft and the aliens seem in no hurry to go home anyway.

In fact, they appear to have assimilated quite well into local rural Breton society and often you can’t tell them from the natives!

And that either says a lot about their skills and training or….

Answers quite a few questions about the make up and character of rural Bretons!

All the best

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A selection of Books About France that might interest you

• Prehistoric Anglesey: Archaeology of the Island to the Roman Conquest (Studies in Anglesey history)
• Return to the Olive Farm
• Living and Working in France: Chez Vous en France (Living & Working in France)
• A Business in France
• A Country Year in Gascony: Living in South West France
• Taschen's Paris: Hotels, Restaurants & Shops
• Recipes from a Chateau in Champagne
• Chateaux of the Loire Green Guide (Michelin Promotional Pack)
• Discover Paris: City Guide (Lonely Planet Discover Guide)
• Journey Through Britain: Landscape, People and Books

Check out all of our Books About France

Tags: General

General | Keith Eckstein January 28, 2011 | Comments (5)

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