I hope she doesn't mind me starting you off on a poem here, but Carol Ann Duffy has my long-distance vote for the next Poet Laureate.

Scrooge doornail-dead, his widow, Mrs Scrooge, lived by herself
in London Town. It was that time of year, the clocks long back,
when shops were window-dressed with unsold tinsel, trinkets, toys,
trivial pursuits, with sequinned dresses and designer suits,
with chocolates, glacé fruits and marzipan, with Barbie,
Action Man, with bubblebath and aftershave and showergel;
the words Noel and Season's Greetings brightly mute
in neon lights. The city bells had only just chimed three,
but it was dusk already. It had not been light all day.
Mrs Scrooge sat googling at her desk,
Catchit the cat
curled at her feet; snowflakes tumbling to the ground
below the window, where a robin perched,
pecking at seeds. Most turkeys,
bred for their meat, are kept in windowless barns,
with some containing over 20,000 birds. Turkeys
are removed from their crates and hung from shackles
by their legs in moving lines. A small fire crackled
in the grate. Their heads are dragged under
a water bath - electrically charged - before their necks
are cut. Mrs Scrooge pressed Print.
to visit Marley's Supermarket (Biggest Bargain Birds!) at four.

Read it in full in The Guardian

In an idle moment yesterday I was meandering through Youtube videos and came across this one. The chap's name is Michael Schulte. I like it a lot. Click on the big arrow, sit back with a coffee and think happy thoughts.

Ali and I wish you a very Happy Christmas and a peaceful, healthy and happy 2009. We hope to see lots of you next summer.

Bisous à tous de Lizzie et Ali du Couvent, Roujan.

Six hens weren't enough to keep up with demand for luscious boiled eggs for all the guests this summer, so we bought five more today. The new girls are Light Sussex and should lay creamy pale eggs to go alongside the brown ones our older biddies produce.

Although they are just babes at 5 months old, they will look like this in a few weeks' time, but for the moment they look like this:

Meanwhile, the old girls are looking mean and moody, ready to jump the new ones when they're released. We currently have the babes in their own quarters until they've settled in.

It'll be a week at least, by which time the old ones will have forgotten the new ones are new. This morning one of the white ones rewarded us with an egg. Just 16 hours after moving in. I guess that means she's happy enough.

I'm thinking of naming them after small Sussex villages. So we'll have Firle, Glynde, Ripe, Chiddingly & Cowbeech. God knows which will be which - there's not much difference between them yet.

Yep, finally we're into the other half of our lives - the B&B is closed for the off-season. One of the most frequent questions we're asked (along with "Is Kit really a labrador?") is how we spend our winters. Follow us through until the end of April and you'll see.

So far the best thing we've done is to move bank accounts - yippee!  We've left Cretin Agricole at last. Having had enough of battling with the indifferent bunch in the Roujan branch (open four mornings a week for banking, but much longer if you want one of their 'products') we went to the Pezenas branch to ask how we should deal with six unauthorised payments online from our account. The gum-chewing teenager who told me I should not be using a credit card on the internet (give me strength) could not have been more confidence-draining. However, the final straw came when, after (my suggestion) cancelling my card, a further two payments were made using it.

Now we are with a bank which our friend Suzelle, who works there, says is well-managed and humane. It's only taken five hours over two days, and a great deal of talking to open three accounts. This is France, after all. We were recognised with beaming greetings on our second visit, unlike at CA where I could have walked in naked for the past six years and they still wouldn't have wasted a smile. Wish us luck.

Our other wonderful thing is that, inspired by a raft of guests who were great walkers, we've decided to explore bits of the Languedoc we don't know, i.e. nearly all of it - on foot.  The wonderful Decathlon , seller of sports equipment for the masses at good prices, has kitted us out fantastically well. So, with our lunch, water, collapsible dog bowl, map, outer jackets, guide book, mobile phone, camera and (I kid you not) torch, all tucked in to our new backpacks, we set out yesterday.

Walk number one comes from a great book called l'Herault à pied .  6kms, just over 2 hours and a bit of a climb in the middle took us along the River Orb, past a pretty pre-Roman chapel, up a steepish climb (glad we had the new fold-down walker's sticks), through a long dark tunnel (glad we had the torch), along an old railway line where we stopped for lunch under five spots of rain (glad we had the jackets) before a descent back down to the Campotel car park where we'd left the car. I haven't been happier this year and the dogs were in seventh heaven. If you come to stay next year we'll have the walk available on paper for you.

We have three days left until the end of our season. The penultimate guests have just left and we are now waiting for three couples from Australia and a couple from Cheltenham, UK. Two of the guests are called Nutter, so we start with the stoolball team and end with the Nutters. Handily we come full circle.

Our guests have been just wonderful again this year. No-one trashed their room, everyone was impeccably behaved, books that were borrowed to finish arrived back in the post. No-one failed to arrive, only one couple arrived a month early - thank God. The vast majority let us book restaurants for them weeks in advance, saving us the nightmare of trying to find restaurants for nine people on the day.

No-one lost their keys, no-one forgot the gate code. (Burglars please note, we've just changed it.) No-one crashed their car, only one person broke a bone. Everyone enjoyed the wine, but no-one made a fool of themself. Only one person expected to pay in a currency we can't use - thank you. Very few people were defeated by PayPal. No-one ate enough breakfast so our hens are now on a strict diet.

No-one wrecked Ali's beautiful linen sheets, everyone put up with Magali's distant, yet persistent, cockerel. Lots of people wrote lovely reviews and those who hated it here have, thus far, not said so in public. For that we can't thank you enough. People let their hair down, but remained dignified and charming. Only a couple of people found they didn't much like the Languedoc, the rest walked, drove, cycled, cruised, rode and canoed huge swathes of this beautiful region and have gone home enchanted.

Now Ali & I will have time to explore again all those magical places people have discovered through the summer. We even have a couple of new restaurants to try. 150 pineapples, 200+ room changes and 650 litres of coffee later we'd be lying if we said we weren't tired. But we've had a fantastic time. Thank you one and all. Next year?