Daryl & Heather Overland

Monthly update No.3

Short Update.

Happy Holidays


It was the best of times, it was the wurzel of times...

I apologise for not writing this email in French as promised, because after five days on the Cote d'Azure I was expecting to speak fluent French, but unfortunately this is not the case. Instead I will have to suffice by peppering the email with a variety of French phrases, that may or may not be appropriate. Je comprend le francais un peu, mais je ne parle pas tres bien. Anyway, this month, not only did we get lambasted with the well meaning but really sucky Band Aid 20 song 'Feed the World' but the even suckier (but still well meaning) Bristol parody, 'Feed The Wurzels'. Apparently they have sold thousands of this merde. At least Heather and I had a fun time looking up the various Bristolian celebrities that appeared on the song - it turns out one of them is a rather well endowed porn star (she has an enormous, ummm... accent). Oh la la!

Nice is one of those self-describing places, along with Dodge City, Iceland and Hell. It reminds me of a thin, dry biscuit covered with sugar crystals, although why, je n'en sais rien. Things we enjoyed about Nice and surrounds were:
-The museums of Nice, including the Musee Matisse (gotta love a guy who paints with a long stick on a wall while sitting down) and a great modern art museum (so very very weird)
-The weather, which helped us stock up on vitamin D
-Monaco, with the great jardin d'exotique (cactus garden on the side of a cliff) and maritime museum (aquarium on the side of a cliff), and yachts that have their own postcodes, as well as the obligatory gawk atthe casino.
-Christmas fairs in Nice, Monaco and Cannes, with mulled wine and expensive but nice looking trinkets.
-The Gorges du Verdon (the French Grand Canyon) and surrounding countryside is very pleasant.

Things we didn't enjoy about Nice and surrounds were:
-merde du chien, everywhere.
-driving through Grasse, and then back through Grasse, and then round Grasse a bit, and then pulling over and looking at the map, and then going back to the start and...
-Andouillette, looks like a pork sausage, but is made from offal, as Heather discovered after she'd eaten most of it, hehehe.
-Bridgett Jones 2 in Canne. Well... Heather thought it was OK, while I prefer a movie with a decent script, likeable characters and an interesting plot.

Christmas in Bristol was a cosmopolitan affair, with a Singaporean, Frenchie and a few Aussies hankering down to some serious turkey with all the trimmings, although no wurzels. It snowed the previous weekend, but the promised White Christmas did not eventuate. Anyway, it's
amazing what fun can be had with plenty of punch (which, like Nice, was self-describing, as in "packed a") and an inflatable Kangaroo.

Be sure to check out the december photos for some great shots of France and the latest edition of the inflatable Kangaroo kama sutra.

http://uk.pg.photos.yahoo.com/ph/darylholland/my_photos

Au revoir

Daryl & Heather (although Heather has no editorial control over the contents of this email, apart from the spelling)

PS for those not from South-West England, a wurzel is a type of beat (vegetable) while The Wurzels are a local 'Scrumpy and Western' band who had a hit in the 70s with "I've got a lovely combine harvestor"... seriously.

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