And, now, the end is near...

The moving van is booked. Stuff is going in boxes. Bags of unwanted clothes are going to charity bins. It's time to leave again.

As you'll all have noted from the long gaps between posts, I've not been around much. Not having internet at home has made blogging difficult. Work is not interesting to write about. Out of work stuff, I won't talk about somewhere Googleable and attached to my own name... Part-time expatting also takes up a lot of time, most of it spent in airports. (I don't really recommend it.) And, in a week or so, I won't even be a part-time expat.

Which means it's probably time to finally wrap up this blog.

I've been escaping packing to wander around one last time with my camera. Some photos follow - there may be a few posts of photos, depending on how inspired I'm feeling, and how long my camera batteries last.

It's been fun, looking back on everything I've written, all the weird and wonderful things I've done. I hope those of you who read it have found it interesting, and maybe useful. (If anyone reading this in the future because they're moving to Nice wants to chat about any of it, send me an email or something.) I might do one more post, a more introspective one, looking at how I've changed and what I've got out of the year or so I've been away. Not for any of you, because few things are probably more boring than other people's introspection, but because it would be a useful thing for me to do before finally leaving and getting stuck back into being a non-expat.

Anyway, photos from today...

Oh, and last but very much not least, Oscar has an orange! All of his very own! One that's actually orange!

You never know, I might start an English blog. If I do and you want the link, let me know.

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Home Sweet Home

Home at last. Internet still works, Oscar is still alive, though he's been seriously pruned, poor thing. And all his budding oranges are gone. The flat is clean, though it doesn't look any different to when I left it, except that they've reorganised the furniture (and, one assumes, cleaned under the cooker...)

Landlady is coming round later to teach us how to do things like clean the air conditioning filter (apparently legionnaire's disease grows in air conditioning filters if they aren't cleaned regularly. Wonder if that's what's made me ill.) and god knows what else. Oh, and our bathroom needs to be gutted and retiled, since water has apparently been leaking into the wall under the tiles. Nice. Workmen all over the flat for at least a week. Just what we need.

Now off to lunch and the beach. Hope you're having a good weekend!

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Flowers from the mairie

Turns out the event they're hosting at the mairie is a giant market. With flowers and cheeses and sausages and jewellery and Italian lessons and all sorts of things.

We carefully resisted the cheeses and sausages (though the samples were nice) and managed to only buy a couple of flowers - one yellow/orange one and one blue one - to keep Oscar and friends company.

I forgot my camera, so you can't see all the bright colours of the flowers for sale - if it's sunny, I might go back tomorrow, some of those cactuses were stunning! - but I have a photo of Oscar and friends on the balcony getting used to their new colleagues. You'll perhaps notice that Oscar has no orange oranges yet - I blame the loss of the Role Model Orange. But he does have flowers that are beginning to open and smell nice.

Oscar and family:

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Summer, it is here again

It is - today, I spent all morning on the balcony in the sun (after going to the post office to send off our applications for various pieces of paper from the embassy - fucking extortionate amount of money and hassle just to get a piece of paper that does some unknown thing...), and then the afternoon was on the beach.

Oscar is growing little flowers now, and his oranges are nearly orange.

Suicidal pigeon:

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Oscar the orange tree

Shopping yesterday in Italy was fun! I came back several euros lighter, but with a new rug, a new shirt and Oscar. Our new orange tree. We're going to have fresh orange juice in the mornings any day now...

Here are the first photos of Oscar in his new home. He looks more settled there than on the train, where I did get several odd looks. One family of older people sitting across the aisle from us were concerned that I might be trying to take him back to the UK - they relaxed noticeably when I reassured them I knew that would kill him, he was going to live on my balcony over here...

Oscar:

Today I may go and buy a hammock for the balcony.

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