Maybe, finally, the winter is over...

Looking NE

The winter has been long and hard in St Andre. It's really only in the last week that we seem to have clearly left it behind. Leaves and blossom are appearing, the grass is green and the rivers are torrents of melting snow. 

Normally, I would have flown 40+ hours by this point of the year - but not this year. I've managed to fly the last 3 days and that's taken my hours to around 15 for the year. 

Finally crossing the Mouchon and heading back to launch

Today's flight was supposed to be pretty short (partly because of the risk of storms), so I flew a little triangle out to the west. I got stuck on the last mountain (the Mouchon) on the way back to St Andre. By the time I got over it, clouds were building and the air was pretty rough. I landed and by the time I packed up, big, slow, lazy raindrops were falling, but it never went beyond that.

Being Relaxed

This area of France has a reputation of being relaxed. The locals aren't terribly 'deadline focused' and most planning involves the dreaded word 'normalement' (which means 'in principle' rather than 'normally'). 'Doucement le matin, pas trop vite le soir' is how the rest of France characterizes things (slowly in the morning, not too fast in the evening). 

Usually, it is charming. Sometimes it can be a little frustrating. Occasionally, it can be almost bizarre. Twice this year local commerces couldn't be bothered - despite prompting - actually preparing a bill, so I found myself walking around with thousands (yes, thousands) of Euros worth of unpaid goods before I was finally given the opportunity of paying for them.

I've just started on a 3 day work week and aim to make myself as relaxed as the locals…