"Vous avez une bête dans le grenier?! Non, ne-la-touchez-pas! Ça serait peut-être plus grande que vous!"

So, I’m finally here :) alone in France. Scary times.  Especially scary times because I don’t have a phone or the Internet or even a landline phone…I’ve gone back in time to the dark ages.  I also have an unidentified beast, which I’ve named Herman, living in my loft, who runs about at night, rolls around heavy bottle-sounding objects and somehow swings my light bulbs from the wires.  And to top it off, although I’ve been here four nights, this will be the first in my new house that I spend alone as I have just taken my mum to the train station and said good-bye so I’m feeling a bit low at the moment, what with my only company being a huge rat / chinchilla / squirrel / chipmunk-type squatter up in the rafters keeping me awake and the lack of communication to anyone in the World outside of my tiny town.  Or anyone in the town in fact, unless I walk to their house and knock that is.  Actually it’s not quite true that I have no company whatsoever, I have a stray kitten who has started coming to my house for fuss and stands at the back door meowing for hours and sleeps on the bench next to the door all day.  Me and my mum saw him eat a lizard whole yesterday so I’ve decided to call him Bear, after Bear Grylls, who will also sink to eating anything that moves to survive – just like the cat.  Poor, little, lizard-eating Bear!

So, I’m a bit sad and alone halfway up a mountain in France. I’m not Carrie-Bradshawing it just yet though (unlike her, I can, at least, speak basic and understandable French which has gotten me through all situations thus far) – Autun is one of the most beautiful cities I’ve ever been too, let alone had the pleasure of living in.  Think Beauty and the Beast’s tiny, provincial town, but bigger.  It is technically a small city by France’s standards, but it’s possible to walk from one end to the other in about half an hour, passing several boulangeries, several brasseries, a really beautiful cathedral and the Lycée at which I have just started working.  Très French, darling.  Speaking of brasseries, on our first day here, mum and I found a cool, quiet one where they play Miles Davies all day and the coffee is only 1€. I have a feeling I’ll be making good use of that this year.