Guest Blogger Keith Eckstein tells what he loves about France!

Keith is sharing the love!

Beginning this week I will feature one guest blogger per week. The only rules are, you have to be a blogger and you have to share something you love about France. 

Bien sur, the honor of the first guest blogger goes to the Sugar Daddy Blog King of France, Keith Eckstein over at A Taste of Garlic.

Burned out in what seemed to be a lifetime of working in Corporate IT in London, Keith took three weeks off and had a good think. What he came up with was, "I want to live in France!" Courageous man that he is, he made it so. Eight years later, you can tell by reading his personal blog, Breton Diary, that Keith is loving the life changing choice he made.

Still keeping his finger on the pulse of the IT world with his blog kmeckstein, he also has a thing about mushrooms and tells us everything we ever wanted to know about fungi in his blog Mushroom Diary.

Most touching about Keith is how much he cares for sharing the love. Your love for all the French stories we write and your diligence in getting our words out there are greatly appreciated.

Thanks Keith! Mwah, bisou!

When Charley asked me if I would be interested in writing a short something, as a guest blog post, about what it is I love about France I was really rather excited.  

A whole wealth of possibilities seemed to arise.

Should I talk about the food, the wine, the people or the beautiful countryside (at least, in my part of rural Brittany where it is rumoured that God comes for his holidays when he is bored with heaven!)

Or perhaps I should talk about the old fashioned family values that my grandparents might have felt at home with?

In the end I decided to write about something that is very special to me.... Mornings in France.

Mornings in France

by

Keith Eckstein

Now, let me put things in perspective.  Before I moved to France I didn't enjoy my mornings at all.  I was employed as an IT manager, working in the financial heart of the city and my mornings were a catalogue just waiting to happen,

Would the early shift engineer turn up for work?  Had the overnight backups worked?  Would the helpdesk crew remember to check the server monitoring system?  What grotty emails could I expect from clients whose overnight reconcilliations had failed (bound to be my fault!)

Who was going to hand in their notice that day and exactly how much of their bottom was I going to have to lick in order to persuade them to stay on board?

And after September 11 things just got worse!

In France I don't have to worry about any of those things.

Because I suffer from Sleep Apnea I often don't sleep well and my mornings can start very early.

I use that time to read, to watch a film, to catch up with all the Life in France blogs I read or, more recently, to do a bit of programming.

Then it's eight O'clock and time to take my fourteen year old stepson to school.  It's a nice drive and we often see deer.  

Once I've dropped Josh off at school I pop into a bar for a couple of cups of coffee.

The same old boys are there every morning; if one of them didn't turn up it would only be because he had died in the night!

And, you know, that doesn't seem to happen.  They seem to be a very long lived bunch round here!

I'm in my forties and I'm the youngest of the regulars - by about a hundred years, or so!

We seem to talk about the same things every morning but it doesn't get boring.

The weather, of course, is high on the list of subjects to be discussed, as are the varying fortunes of our local football team, Rennes.

We might also skim over some of the global events that are being reported in the newspapers.  But they are generally happening far away and don't really concern us here.

And from these morning discussions I get a great sense of community, of belonging, of being part of somewhere; sat among the old villagers, me with my coffee and them with their early morning glasses of red wine.

And that's something that I never had when I lived in London.

From day one, my mornings in France have always be special.

For the first three years in France I didn't have a car (I couldn't afford one); I went everywhere on a pushbike.

Even the six kilometre cycle into work in the early mornings was a pleasure to me.

Often, in the winter, I'd see deer and owls.

And, once, in the summer, as I was cycling past a friend's cottage, I saw a family of rabbits in his vegetable patch, feasting on his lettuces.

I didn't chase them away though - they seemed to be having too much fun!

I did know that when I cycled back after work, eight hours later, Thierry would be in his garden ranting and raving about those ***** rabbits and making vague threats about rabbit pie!

Or, on another, more poignant occasion, something strange happened to me.

I was cycling to work early one morning, earlier than normal for me - I'm not sure why?

And when I got to the top of the valley, I just had to stop. 

I mean, it was so beautiful.  

The sun was rising and bathing the fields of lin and corn with a beautiful light, highlighted by the soft rising mist. 

And I said, or at least, I think I did, something like...  "God, That's beautiful."  

And then I heard the reply, or, at least felt the words...  "Yes my son, I know.  I made it that way - just for you."

  

I felt shivers down my spine.

Now, I'm not saying that that made me a Christian but it certainly made my day!

Then, after a hard week at work, it would be Saturday and the medieval market town of Josselin would be transformed by the stalls selling all sorts of wonderful things.

And somehow, it would always remind me of the Sunday morning market at Cancale where I had spent so many of my childhood holidays.

But it was also more. It was a link to my local community - something I'd never really had before.

I'd wander past the fish stall that I  knew so well.

Past the vegetable stall where the produce looked so much fresher than its counterparts in the supermarket.

Down the hill past other stalls, stopping every now and again to say hello to friends, colleagues from work and people that I may had met once or twice but who had not forgotten me.

My Saturday mornings in France were magical.

Of course, the Autumn is the time when the mornings matter most.

The long walk into the forest, basket in hand, anticipating all the lovely mushrooms that I'm going to find.

Meeting the other mushroomers, chatting about how the mushrooms were bigger and more easily found back in the old days!

Expecting cars to slow and stop so the driver can take a peek your basket...

And knowing that the conversation will always end....  

"When I were a lad, the mushrooms were much bigger and there were more of them!  It's not been the same since the war!"

And me, trudging off down the lane, hoping to fill my basket and wondering to myself...

"Which war was old Pierre talking about?  The First World War or the Second one?"

And you know, the mornings in France have their own special smells.

On a bicycle, not locked into a steel box, I was better able to appreciate them.

The smell of silage on the fields. 

The smell of the cows as I cycled past the farm that always reminded me of my Cornish grandfather who was a farmer himself.

And, approaching Josselin, the smell of the town - curiously French (the French have never really got the hang of sewerage systems, have they?)

And then, as I passed the supermarket, the smell of freshly baked bread; bringing back memories, once again, of childhood holidays in Cancale where it was always my job to get up early and get the family's bread from the boulangerie.

And, finally, at work, the cup of strong black coffee (I was sure that it was extra strong to make us work harder!) and the morning ritual of saying hello, kissing cheeks, and shaking hands.

That, then, is what I love about France - the mornings.

But I'll let you into a little secret...

I also love the afternoons, the evenings and the night-times as well!

Love, Keith