I have decided to try out the 5:2 fast diet. It involves eating only 500cals for women and 600cals for men for 2 days a week and eat normally the rest of the time. Apparently you can lose weight doing this so I though I would give it a try. Two small meals are in the plan and no milk. Well I suppose you can have milk but it in the allowance. So here goes. Today I have had 1 apple and a bruchetta type thing with 50g tomatoes and 20g of red onion and 10 g pesto all mixed up and served on 2 ryvitas. That is a total of 174 calories. I think tonight is a herb omelette.
I just decided today to do it so I have not really planned for it so have nothing in.I will shop tomorrow and get more ryvita and veg and stuff like that. I can see advantages of this if it works (sceptical as usual). The fact that you can eat normally means that you do not crave certain foods. It can be a long term thing, I think, maybe. Let us just see. Disadvantages, drinking black coffee and having to plan low cal meals.

I have not blogged for a while and it appears it is important that I do. Jim is doing his expenses and loses tickets . All I get is “do you know where we were on the Xth of such and such month? and by looking on my blog I can usually tell him. May is actually one of these months where we really have to work it out as there are so many Pont holidays. In France if the holiday such as Mayday falls on a day you get the holiday…. none of this waiting till the Monday. So when a holiday lands on a Thursday they term it a bridge holiday as many people take off the Friday to make it a long weekend, thus the term pont. This week he actually misses Mayday as he is travelling to Norway for the 2nd. I might add if a holiday lands on le weekend, tough titty they lose it. I have no plans to travel for a few weeks as Anna is going off to Spain for 3 months on the 9th. Jim does have holidays that week, something on the Wednesday so he is taking Wednesday-Friday off. I also have ballet tickets on the 22nd .

Well we stayed in Chartes for Friday night on our way to this chateau that Jim book us into. But on Saturday morning instead of the promised hour in Chartes he wanted to get on our way. We would see it on our way back on Sunday. We had a very pleasant stay in the place once the bedroom had warmed up. That is the trouble with castles they are freezing in all but the summer. There was a meal of quiche followed by boeuf bourginonge followed by cheese followed by chocolate cake and creme anglaise. With them they served a Saumer white and red. In the morning it was the usual French breakfast of flakes and bread and jams. We then set off on a sightseeing trip around the area but had maybe gone 30-40 kms when we had a puncture. We changed it to one of these space saver tyres and phoned Avis who told us to return the car to Tours where we would get another car. But as it was Sunday they were only open between 3-6pm. So we decided to abort the sightseeing and go back to Tours straight away. Had lunch on the way. I thought many french families ate out on a Sunday but obviously not in this area because it took a long time to find a restaurant. So fed and watered we got to Tours where the lad didn’t speak English but we managed to get the brand new Fiat 500L( only 1km on the clock when we picked it up.) changed for another bashed in car. We were making our way back to Chatres when Jim’s eyes started drooping as he was driving so he aborted Chartes. We went on for a bit stopping every half hour for a break. Eventually we went off the motorway and he was ok from then on. It appears that motorway driving makes him drowsy. Even at that it was 10pm before we reached Paris not really having achieved what we wanted to do, i.e. see a bit of the region. I have not yet seen anywhere in northern-mid France with scenery and I have not really been down the south yet. Some of the towns are quite pretty And some of the harbours in Normandy are nice. I do not like large swathes of flat farmland there is nothing of interest there. I suppose if there is a god he gave them the weather and us the scenery.

Ok Costas, other than Cafe Nero I have usually found the big chains coffee undrinkable . Jim advised me that I may like Costas flat white, so here goes.

Coffee looks good 1
The ratio of milk to coffee good and reasonably strongish 1
quality of coffee 0 nah didn’t seem good stuff lacked body.
Froth … well stretched milk 1
Temperature a good temperature not scalded 1
Cup was clean but the off centre cup gets on my nerves 0
Staff were friendly 1
Watersons is quite nice old fashioned place, ambience 1
Chocolate ..flat whites do not have chocolate 1
would I buy another no not really unless I was desperate 0
7/10

I spent all last week searching the house for his French keys turning everything upside down. He was so getting his knickers in a twist about them. Apparently they were very special security ones and would cost a fortune and be very difficult to replicate. It was 2 sets of his flat keys and his office keys 2 master cards and all that. I looked up the object trouve/perdue in Charles de Gaulle and went to the office this morning and they were waiting for some dead singer to arrive for them.
I was meant to be going to Paris this week but his nibs decided that two weeks away from our delightful home is too much and was having another of his panic attacks. Then today his boss got in touch with him saying the meeting has been moved to Dunfermline so he could go to that. I will now have to change my flight but I have another week at home.