Spring is springing...

For the past few weeks the gorgeous weather has made it seem as though summer has come early. Unfortunately this probably means that we won't actually get a summer, more a season of dampness and disappoint, like last year. I can't complain though, we shall be wandering around France for three weeks visiting relatives and holidaying by the sea.
This is our usual holiday routine and it takes the full three weeks to really enjoy, a few days with my mother-in-law in the south, then a week on the coast, followed by the rest of the holiday relaxing in my parents dutch barge as we float around the french canals...yes it really is as blissful as it sounds...My mother-in-law is always..how shall I put it?...interesting. She prides herself on saying what she thinks, regardless of social niceties and has quite a low tolerance level for visitors. Despite this, I love visiting her. Her house is incredible, once part of the medieval battlements for the town it is probably the only house where you can look through an arrow-slit whilst sitting on the loo. She has quintessential French shabby chic style, complemented by the huge amounts of delicious things she has gathered over a life-time in the antiques business. As a woman I am very proud of her, this is a seventy year old woman who still back-packs around Africa and hitches (bush-taxi) around the south of France, she does her own thing and is beholden to none, she also takes snuff...classic character.
It does seem to me though, that her desire for independance means that she fends off contact with her family and keeps herself quite incommunicado, she's missed out on a lot of her grand-childrens' and her sons' lives.
All I have to do is smile and nod and not let her get my goat, however hard she tries - and believe me, she tries...