Old, plump and nerdy

Yep, that's me. But these aren't words you can use against my luscious new Mac laptop and the all new and shiny Mac Leopard operating system. Before I was  a B&B landlady in the south of France I had a computer company in England which built PCs for businesses and installed networks. We were very good at it, but it was tricky and stressful. I suppose, if one is going to fix computers you may as well choose the ones that go wrong, i.e. anything Microsoft. 

All that work that we used to struggle with is a complete snap with Leopard. Seconds after I had upgraded my Mac to luscious Leopard it had not only connected me to the Internet, it had also found our other two Macs and two PCs and logged me onto each of them. Automatically. I just noticed they were available. Not that long ago it would have taken half a day battling with settings and software to network PCs and Macs. 

 I just love the fact that Leopard knocks spots off Vista. Never again will I build or buy a PC. Hooray. I'm free!! I can get down to being a real B&B landlady.

So today I have my niece and her pal Etienne here lugging new sunbeds up the garden ready for next summer.

Strewth Ali - howdya get here?

All was going well with Ali's trip to Australia to see her family until she reached the BA check-in desk. Somewhere between leaving Eurostar and arriving in Heathrow Ali misplaced her passport. Lost, nicked? We may never know. Either way she was about to have to forgo her entire trip. Darling BA moved her ticket on 24 hours with the words 'it's a pity as we were about to give you a complimentary upgrade to First Class' - (worth having - we came back that way last year). Still, at least the ticket wasn't lost.

An overnight stay with Yvonne, our friend and wrangler of the impossible, who lives in London left Ali ready to tackle the passport office. By some great stroke of fortune I had taken copies of Ali's passport and birth certificate years ago and, after a few minutes trawling through an old computer to find them, I winged them off through the ether to Yvonne's computer. Armed with these documents, a skip load of charm and a great deal of height (both Ali & Yvonne are 6 footers) the Passport Office very graciously said they'd have a new passport ready at 6.30pm. Just three hours before Ali's flight and quite a distance through rush hour traffic back to Heathrow from central London. Meanwhile I applied for a new Australian visa to go with her new passport from my computer here in France. It worked, she took off and is currently having a lovely time with Don, Pam, Trisha & Tam.

Thank God for technology - and Macs which don't fail you in your hour of need.

Spread the WiFi

Visitors to Le Couvent have always been able to log onto our WiFi network free of charge. Now we have joined a bigger community of free WiFi centres by 'FON' enabling our router. Here in France the internet service provider Neuf has updated the software on their NeufBox to allow shared WiFi for anyone in the area who has enabled their own box - free, in hundreds of places throughout the world. What a fantastic idea. Click the logo above for more details. It's really very simple.

The guests have all gone...

... and the most common question we are asked at this time of the year is "so what do you do in the winter?" We're going to carry on the blog during the time that Le Couvent is closed to guests (1 October - 30 April, but taking bookings for next year) so the question will be answered.

Yesterday, after preparing breakfast, I drove to Barcelona to see my Mum & John, my step-father. They take cruise holidays each year, so I took the opportunity of catching up with them in my favourite Spanish city, just a three hour drive from Le Couvent. We had a lovely couple of hours in the luscious Placa Real and then I drove back, happy to have seen them.

Today Ali & I took off to Bouzigues


for some moules frites and Picpoul.

The weather was perfect, we made our winter's resolutions, and lunched well in a little restaurant called La Nymphe.


overlooking the oyster beds in the Bassin de Thau. Perfect.