I knew the Bear was feeling better, after a week or so of various aches and pains, when he asked 'What are we doing today?'

Now that may sound like a perfectly normal start to a conversation but, if you know the Bear as well as I do, it was  a loaded question. It meant, in this case,  'Are you planning to go shopping with your son, in the hopes that I'm not well enough, you scheming cow?'

It should be pointed out here that we are expecting a friend to stay tomorrow - a girl I was at college with - and Jay has offered to cook a meal so that we can have a relaxed gossip when she arrives. The last time this happened the Bear sneered and complained because I pointed out that it was more sensible to go to the supermarket with Jay as he was doing the cooking, but that he (the Bear) was welcome to come too. Of course, he declined -  and also refused to eat anything that evening!

So far, he has not been told who is cooking tomorrow but he may have worked it out. Anyway, to keep the peace as long as possible I made my list and asked the Bear if he felt like going to Carrefour. He would probably have prefered to stay and watch the snooker but he knew I'd go with Jay if he said no, so he reluctantly tore himself out of the armchair and off we went to fill the boot with household goods, catfood, fruit and vegetables and wine.

Jay, who always likes to choose his own ingredients has taken the Whale, seperately, to the same supermarket to pick up the necessities for his recipes.

With the sudden arrival of Spring weather the garden could wait no longer. It wasn't properly tidied before the onset of Winter and so there was alot of cleaning of pots and pruning of bushes before I could even begin to think of what to plant where.

Whilst dealing with the garden rubbish I felt a nasty prick in my little finger and it looked - to my shortsighted eyes - as though a thorn was still in there. Jay was asked to check and after a certain amount of painful squeezing and prodding he decided that 'it' was too far in.

Remembering good oldfashioned 'yellow basilicon' I trotted down to the chemist to see if such a thing existed here. No, there was nothing like it but the pharmacist obligingly took me round to the back of the shop and had a good prod herself - to no avail. 'Are you up to date with your tetanus injections?' she asked.

I had no idea, so came home and phoned the surgery where we used to be registered. After some searching the receptionist came up with the date of my last jab - 1990!!!!

Back to the chemist with the bad news. They rang the local doctor and soon I was on the way to the surgery clutching a little bag of the necessary vaccines. After a wait of twenty minutes or so I was invited into the consulting room where the doctor took her own turn at prodding the finger and decided there was nothing in there, but the bruising would account for the pain. Then came the injections -TWO; a serum for immediate protection and then the first of the tetanus jabs - in the bum!!

She struggled to pull down my jeans (I was pretty hot and sweaty by then) and announced, 'S... you have a fat backside!'  before administering the needle! Ouch - (for the remark, not the injection!)

Today I have just returned from an embarrassing trip to the dermatologist with the Whale. He has been convinced that he had skin cancer for the past year or so but our doctor put off sending him to a skin specialist until she could bear his complaints no longer.

In France you have to make your own appointment with the specialist of your choice, so after our GP wrote the letter it was down to me to make the arrangements. All the local 'dermatos' had several steps so wheelchair access was not possible. I looked up the hospital in the 'pages jaunes' and found a dermatology department where I made an appointment. However, when the day came I realised to my horror that it was not the local hospital but another one about an hour away!! It was too late to make it so I cancelled.

A friend recommended a specialist in town and said she was sure we could get in with the wheelchair - but we couldn't! Eventually it was a case of booking an ambulance together with another appointment! At that visit the dermatologist confirmed what the GP had been saying all along - that it was a case of warts - but he went about removing them all the same, as a purely cosmetic exercise, giving a further appointment to 'finish off'.

It was this, second appointment that caused my embarrassment. First of all, the Whale became anxious that the ambulance wouldn't turn up and so he rang, not once, but twice to remind them. This meant that when they came the ambulancemen  were not in the best of moods and it showed in the way that they bundled him unceremoniously onto the stretcher and deliberately left his wheelchair behind, saying it wouldn't be needed.

The Whale huffed and swore all the way there because he couldn't see how the doctor would manage to treat his back if he was laying down and then, to add insult to injury, the 'dermato' was running very late. The ambulancemen, unable to do anything else while their stretcher was in use, wandered off for a coffee while I sat opposite the Whale trying to ignore his complaints and his efforts to 'practice' sitting up. Imagine an oversized baby, all red in the face, sitting on a potty and straining . . . . . .

Naturally, the consultation passed without a problem but the Whale was disappointed that he hadn't been given a further appointment. I was mightily relieved.

Here's a brief introduction to the main characters in my life:

The Bear:  my husband, a true Gemini if ever there was one, sometimes quite soft and cuddly but usually VERY moody and with a worn out sense of humour!

The Whale: my EX-husband, handicapped and also part of the household. (A recipe for disaster? !) Overweight and ponderous, not remotely malicious (as can be the Bear) but can be incredibly irritating.

Jay: my son (with the Whale as father). Lives with us all the time and is very helpful in regard to looking after the Whale but I hope one day soon he will find a satisfying and rewarding job/career . . . . . .

CC: my daughter, who gave up her job in London to come and help out when I had my cataract operations and knee problems last January (2007). My wishes for her include finding a man and a job she really likes (not necessarily in that order. . .)

The Cats;  Toby, Mustard and Pepper, Holly, Parsley and Chloe.

This morning I learned that my dear friend died on Saturday afternoon. Her husband is too devastated to talk - it was her daughter-in-law who rang me.

The usual clichés are meaningless and futile but there are so many memories from the  twenty nine years we knew each other that will live on forever: the many holidays we shared as a foursome, including one in Italy when we knocked back a bottle of whisky and a large amount of Valpolicella while playing cards one evening and woke up with  terrific hangovers. Then there were the superb parties and dinners she gave. Her pastry was legendary and she always produced a wonderful array of desserts. Her husband is also a great cook and usually looked after the main course while the starter was a joint effort.

She carried on working (she was the headteacher of a first school) until she was well over 60 because she loved her job and adored the children - even though there were lots of 'difficult' ones in her area. She learned self defence (a bit of a necessity) and after retirement (by which time she was a black belt) she started classes in Choi for the  kids, including a special one for 'awkward teenagers'.

As someone who was always fit and active and never looked her age she was justly proud of keeping her slim figure while the rest of us succumbed to 'middle age spread' but she was a sensitive confidante with whom I could share my innermost thoughts and problems, knowing that from her I would get a straightforward and honest response even if it meant something I didn't really want to hear!

During the last three years she had suffered more and more from the 'tummy bug' she picked up on holiday. When it was still there after a year, and she was beginning to lose weight dramatically, we were all worried. What were the doctors thinking about? How could they let someone get to this stage without finding the cause - and the solution???

I am immensely grateful to her and her husband that they made a huge effort to come and see us last November to celebrate my birthday. The weather was horrendously bad and we never expected them to set off, let alone make it, but they arrived after a long and difficult journey through the snow.

It was apparent that she was uncomfortable and her weightloss was a shock but she insisted that she was fit enough to go out for a meal - even though she hardly ate a thing. That was the last time we saw each other. . . . .

Every time I rang her she would sound cheerful and upbeat until the last three times, when I detected the despair in her voice, and felt that she was ready to give up. The final conversation we had was the day she went into hospital 'for some more tests'. She knew, by then that it was cancer of the liver and pancreas but she didn't tell me. I found out when I rang and spoke to her son. He broke down and cried.

She was the rock for the whole family - a born organiser - a fantastic wife, a great mother to her three sons, a wonderful friend. Everyone will miss her so much. . . . . . . . .

Well, our week of respite from looking after the Whale is nearly over and what is there to show for it? Not much.

As I feared, the Bear decided to make changes and we spent a good hour in the local DIY shop mainly putting bits of wood on the trolley and then taking them off again. Eventually we came ...   more »

I have just learned that one of my dearest friends is dying of cancer. She has been ill for over three years and we all thought it was a tropical disease that she had picked up in Peru or China. However, after losing weight continuously and being subjected to a whole battery of tests  - at intervals of weeks or ...   more »

It all started on October 6th 2002 when I walked out on my husband to start a new life in France - wait for it - a new life looking after my ex who is handicapped.

Nowadays it's a case of a menage a trois, plus my son, who is unemployed and frequent visits from friends and family.

The first few months were fraught with a  mixture of tears and pleadings from the spouse I had just left,(until I gave in and let him come too!!!) numerous battles with French bureaucracy and getting used to the pace of life on the other side of the Channel.

Initially I kept a diary and may publish extracts from it in due course. This blog will therefore consist of a  mixture of past and present 'tranches de vie' - a blend of happiness and tragedy and an account of the rewards and tribulations of retiring to France.