Expanding horizons...

It is not just the sea stretching to the horizon, or the rolling hills providing a backdrop for my daily 'power walk' with the dog, or the abundance of space in this house, a space that I am enjoying and using and even revelling in after seven years in The Doll's House...

It is also the new experiences...

Yesterday two friends and I drove to Guingamp, there to witness the arrival of the first TGV to travel at high speed from Le Mans to Rennes, thus reducing the journey time to Paris to 2.5 hours, and thereby making a day trip to the capital a tempting prospect.

I used to take Sundays in Paris when I worked for the software company in Slough. I'd fly out with British Airways at 7:20 am, Heathrow to Charles de Gaulle, be eating croissants and sipping coffee by 10, take in part of the Louvre and have lunch in the cafe there, often eaten in the company of a nun though why I never discovered, and then wander round a le Marais or Montmartre until it was time to get the bus back to the airport.

In those days my life was larger and my horizons stretched further.

So far that I bought this house and fled to France for two years, before being lured back to the job in cyber security with the (then) New Employer. And to life in a corporate cage and a much littler life.

It's a wild, crazy and very independent part of France, Brittany.
And I think it suits me very well!

Especially after the last nine years which shrunk my world and reduced my horizons and made me focus too much on my own navel for my liking. A necessary part of surviving, I daresay, but not ideal for one who likes wide open spaces and adventuring.

Yesterday my friend was disappointed that the first fast TGV was not the newer model.
I was happy enough with the old version. I took it to Paris twice while I lived here, both times to sit my university exams, not a bad place to go, especially if the hotel is near the Sorbonne for added inspiration.
 

So, I find it takes little to make me happy these days - an absence of fear, no daily stresses, knowing that The Rags are happy and well, that all is ok in our family's world.
Toe-tapping music helps too.
 

And free oysters, although I do not indulge, not since The Incident of the Oyster at the food hall in Boston, that was one feisty oyster, I can still feel it clinging to my tonsils as I tried to swallow it!

But free crèpes, well, who could say non?
We had ours with salted caramel and thus, another new experience for me and another slight expanding of my horizons. I will make crèpes, I decided, making a mental note to find a recipe for salted caramel.

  

La vie est bonne, n'est-ce pas?