My brother David, who knows of my fascination with Montpellier’s St. Roch, sent me a little medal to this saint a few days ago which he had found in his house in Cork.
Now when I turned this over I found the above image which says Our Lady of Betharam, Pray for Us.
Now I know that I am not the greatest authority on the heavenly hierarchy, but I had never heard of this Notre Dame before.
Off to Google I go. There I discover that in the Pyrenees some shepherds were visited by an apparition of Our Lady by a stream . They then decided to build a shrine there and thereafter many miracles occurred. (Sound familiar ?)
This happened about 13 miles west of the town of Lourdes in Betharram and in the eleventh century.
I must confess to being a little gobsmacked. How come we have never heard tell of this apparition which happened so close to Lourdes and predated it by about 800 years?
Has it gone totally out of favour, been discredited, our simply replaced by the story of Bernadette ? Makes you wonder

This was in Bergerac in 1989, the Dwyer’s with the Lyes’ en Vacance.

Of course part of the reason why I have been a tardy blogger since Christmas is because the daughter Caitriona introduced me to the joys of Twitter.
Now I know myself, being a garrulous old man, that there social media thingies are meat and drink to me and have been quietly addicted to Facebook for a year or more. Twitter is a horse (ahem) of a different colour and a bit more of an acquired taste. However I am delighted to have found new friends there (if one can call people with whom one tweets friends, and I do) and also to have renewed some old friendships. It is also a great source of news and gossip as breaking stories hit the tweeters even before they happen. So between Facebook, and Twitter I am now having to fight for time to blog.

It has been a funny old time since Christmas and I have been very remiss about recording it on the blog.
As soon as the family went back to Ireland we both did a fairly dramatic collapse with what started as a flu and then developed into chest infections. We both ended up visiting our respective doctors Sile was treated with a Cortisone inhaler, me with anti-biotics, eventually . towards the end of the month we were better but, still shook when we did our first clients ( a couple from Cork). Then we skidaddled off to the south of Spain to see my sister D (who has taken to wintering there) and our friend Michael.
The warm sun and the high temperatures there did the trick and we got back here at the begining of the month feeling that we were on the mend.
Last week we had three couples from Ireland weekending with us and we were fine (they thought it warm here compared to Ireland) and the phone has been ringing booking in heat seeking refugees from Scandanavia, America and even Northern France, a new thing for us as normally we don’t see anyone before Easter.
As I have already told everyone our Nationwide piece goes out at the begining of March so we expect a bit of a deluge of enquiries after that. All in all it is building up to be a busy time.
This whole blog piece is, I suppose, by the way of being an apology for my being so irregular about blogging since the Christmas and to express the hope that, as the sun warms the fingers, I will get back into the swing of blogging once more.

First picture from new camera of some Mimosa we cut from the first flowering of our very first Mimosa which has suddenly come into flower. Here it is the first sign of Spring.

Cameraless until my new one arrives I will just give you a peek at a bowl of Apricots , warming in the sun, from last summer.” If winter comes………

Meself and the beautiful Mary do a walkin’ talkin stroll through the historic Rouelles of Thezan. ( Guess who is doing most of the talkin’)

This is a still taken from our upcoming Nationwide piece (10th March ish) of ourselves on the terrace looking terrified of the cameras as usual (note the mics are on)

This morning, could be next years christmas card?

This morning the Midi-Libre tells us that the last time it snowed in l’Herault was three years ago and previous to that…… The lord alone knows.
At the moment , before the sun melts it all, it lies like it did for King Wenceslas “Deep and Crisp and Even” and bizarre on our terrace table where we were eating lunch last month.