Maison Grillou goes social

Do you like me? In a Facebook-y kind of way, I mean?

Well, I hope you do, because I've just spent a while huffing and puffing over creating a Facebook page for Grillou. On a personal level, you could say I've been a bit of a FB dullard since I signed up a couple of years ago, originally simply to look at a friend's photos on there: I rarely post, mainly because there never seems to be time but mainly because I can't quite find it in to me believe that everybody wants to hear my daily dribbles of trivia. But what I do do on a regular basis is follow up some of the links that various friends post, on the grounds that if I like them I might just like what they like. (Yes, I know, it's called social networking. And yes, I know, it's probably a modus vivendi to most of you ... But just humour me here).

Anyway, all sorts of people have been trying to persuade me that I really should start Going Social. And the more I think about it, the more I rather like the idea of 'meeting' more people who are drawn to Maison Grillou and/or to the Ariège, whether or not they might actually want to come and stay here. Being at heart a community minded kind of person, after five years with only a trowel to talk to (oh. And John) I'm more than ready to engage with the world again ...

So meet my new page: Maison Grillou on Facebook. And if you're a Facebook user yourself I need your help. Apparently once I've got 25 people who 'like' me I can get a new, much shorter URL for the page (at the moment it would take half a page if I wrote it out in full ..). So - um - do you think you might - um - like me? Please? Oh, and just one other thing: would you also mind awfully 'liking' our main website as well? (There's a new 'like' button right at the bottom ...).

Eternally, grovellingly, gratefully, yours .......

Hello again blogosphere

Oh, and a happy new year. At least I think it's new year. I don't get time to look at my diary much these days.

Actually, there's a very good reason why I haven't been blogging much. Well, there are two.

1. I haven't actually had anything to say. And that's because
2. I've spent the last five weeks or so at my desk, at the laptop, from morning to night early morning, designing and coding and writing our two new websites, one in English, one in French.

And if one more person says to me that they don't understand why it takes so long, I might just commit an unaccustomed act of violence ... so to save you the trouble of having to take an unscheduled trip to urgences, it takes so long because

1. Each site has 21 pages. So far. There are more in the pipeline. And that's because I happen to believe that it's really important to get a good fit between the people who are going to come and share some time here with us,  the place where they're going to come and spend time, and the people they're going to come and spend time with - us. Look, let me put it another way. I'm in this more for the fun than the money. If we ain't compatible - like, for instance, the guest we once had in north Norfolk who spent a very unhappy weekend complaining that she couldn't walk on the village's cobbled pavements in her stilettos - I'm not going to have fun and nor are you, and to be honest I'd much rather help you find somewhere else where you're going to feel more at home.
2. I'm not a html or css (or any kind of) geek. I've only just given up Microsoft Frontpage. I fly by the seat of my pants, borrow bits from here and there, and frequently break my own code. Finding just what I've done to break it reminds me of doing Sudoko, to which I have periodic addictions. And sometimes I just have to give up and start over.
3. Selecting, and editing, photos is incredibly time consuming.
4. The English site and the French site are not translated mirror images of each other. Each has had to be written from scratch, holding a different focus, because the issue is more about culture than language. When I'm writing I have to understand where my readers are coming from, what their cultural values are and their collective unconscious is saying about what they're reading, and then write to all of that. In other words, I have to move between my inner Frenchwoman and my inner Englishwoman.
   Let me give you an example. On the English language site I have a page devoted to 'ten things that make us different'. I don't have that page on the French site: that would be far too threatening. The French are at heart a conservative nation that sometimes seems to live within their own stereotype - although many do have a goût de l'insolite (taste for the unusual), they're on the whole only comfortable with experiencing 'difference' when it departs from a framework which is part of their zeitgeist and therefore familiar. So instead I get to talk a lot more about la slow attitude and our démarche écologique, both of which are increasingly important here. 

Anyway. I'm delighted to say that both sites have now gone live, and are now in the 'snagging' stage. If you want to have a look, you'll find them at www.grillou.com (English) and www.grillou.fr (French). And if you happen to notice any bits that don't work, typos or wording that's just plain ugly, I'd be delighted to hear from you!

The other bit of news is that bookings have just opened for this year, starting from 2 April, with a rather good early booking offer for all those who signed up on our mailing list. I sent out a newsletter yesterday with all the details, but an awful lot of your email addresses have proved to be undeliverable to (appalling grammar deliberate): if you're one of them and you think you might be interested, why not get in touch?

A steam driven geek ...

For some reason, a lot of people seem to think I know what I'm doing on the end of a laptop. A friend of mine even refers to me as her 'tame geek'. Now I can see it may look as though I'm technologically savvy - and I suppose to a limited degree I am. (I certainly am compared to John, who honestly believes he's going to 'break' the computer if he so much as touches it. Hmm. Very convenient ...). But ... although I can put on a fairly convincing show, I'm like the language teacher who's only ever one lesson ahead of her pupils, and what knowledge I have garnered over the years is well past its use by date.

And now my chickens are fast coming home to roost. Over the last eight or nine years, I guess I've created and run some fifteen websites for different purposes, including sites for our restaurant with rooms, a community site to encourage environmental tourism in our old village in north Norfolk, a site for a Ban the (plastic) Bag campaign, a couple devoted to workshops, retreats and therapy, and a networking site for English speakers here in Ariège. Mostly, I've used various versions of Front Page - Microsoft's WYSIWYG web editor which allowed you to create sites without knowing a word of code. Which I didn't, really (see, I told you I was a sham). But to be honest I've been getting more and more dissatisfied with the end result - a kind of 'Front Page' look which while functional can by no stretch of the imagination be described as inspiring. More important even than that, I've slowly realised just how Microsoft-centric the code created by Front Page is - view a FP web site in Firefox or Google Chrome and unless the author has painstakingly hand-edited the code it's usually gobbledegook. W3C compliant it isn't. [Goodness. That almost sounds as though I know what I'm talking about. But don't be fooled ...].

But now the time has come - actually it came a while back, though I ignored it and hoped it might go away - to start putting together some new sites for Grillou. And I have some decisions to make. Like - er - how to go about it. Carrying on with Front Page is a no-no, so do I use an online WYSIWYG website builder? Many of them are distinctly naff; too often their sites have that tell-tale look. And me, follow the crowd? Nah. Too egotistical for that. I could use a Wordpress platform as a base - lots of holiday accommodation owners are doing that now, with good results. That's on the 'possible' list. Or I could pay someone else to do the whole thing for me. That's not on the possible list.

Or (or rather and) I could get down to it and learn to code properly. There. I've said it. I don't want to get into this. I really don't. I've got better things to do - or at least I'd like to have - late at night, which at the moment is usually the only time I have to devote to geeky type pursuits. My heart sinks at the idea. "Why me???" it cries, as it stamps its foot in true drama queen fashion. Trouble is, I've moved from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence, which is not a comfortable place to be, for me at least. And so - deep sigh - there really is no alternative.

I thought, tonight, that if I blogged about this, it might just help my intention along a bit. So here it is. Coding here I come: I've committed myself to following a whole load of online tutorials at the W3Schools, until I know what I'm doing.

That may take some time. I'll be back.

Labels are for jam ...

I have an identity problem.

As the loose-bowelled Pigeon of Time swoops low over the unsuspecting Tourist of Destiny, and the flatulent Skunk of Fate wanders into the Air-Conditioning System of Eternity (anyone else a ISIHAC fan?), I notice that I can at last see the end of the renovation in my distant line of sight, and that means I have to get my act together to start describing and promoting what we're offering at Grillou to the world.

And that's not as simple as it could be. Because the world of guest accommodation seems to be rigidly divided into this or that: self-catering or serviced, gîte or chambre d'hôte. You book a gîte: you arrive on a Saturday, hand over your security deposit, get your keys, make up your beds, do your thing for a week; then a week later you clean up, hand back the keys and go home, possibly having seen nothing of your hosts, who may not even live on site. You book a chambre d'hôte: you spend time as a part of your hosts' household - you talk with them, get to know them, you may eat with them, effectively share their lifestyle for a night or several ... but although you may be invited to share their living area your own space is usually limited to a bedroom and bathroom.

In France, as indeed in England when we lived there, the entire culture of domestic scale tourism revolves around this distinction. I'm supposed to choose which side of the line I fall on and which particular mould I fit, following which it will be decreed what I offer (or not), how I describe what I offer, what I advertise as, how I legally frame and register my business, how I select my tax régime and what expenses I'm permitted to deduct. And therein lies my problem. I don't do labels, I don't do moulds, and I don't do either-or. And so neither I, nor Grillou, will ever sit happily in a one-of-two-sizes-fits-all system.

We've been here before, in our restaurant days. "Are you a vegetarian restaurant?". "Er - no". "But you don't serve meat or fish ...". "Er - no". "So you must be a vegetarian restaurant then ...". "Er - no". (Okay, I wasn't quite as obtuse as that, but you get my drift). And here in France, where things are as they are just because they are, I suspect it's going to be pretty hard to break the mould. It is, after all, no accident that one of the favourite expressions here is "c'est comme ça" (that's how it is), accompanied of course by the famous shrug of the shoulders.

So when you're offering a chambre d'hôte that actually isn't a chambre but a whole tiny house, with its own hallway and a proper salon and a bedroom with a mezzanine, along with a huge two level gîte-apartment where you can arrive any day you like, stay for three days or fourteen, take breakfast or not, and where your bed will be made up for your arrival and your accommodation cleaned every other day ... well, it's pretty hard here to find yourself a meaningful tag. And that's without throwing into the pot the fact that each unit is designed, in spite of its size, for one couple without children (or four adults, if both are booked together) - and that in itself is going to be challenging to many French people, who are happy to cram as many people/kids/dogs as they can find into the tiniest space when on holiday and seem never to travel without at least two blow up beds for just that eventuality ... not to mention the fact that dinner will indeed be an option two or three times a week, but not every day; smoking will never be an option; and we don't take dogs (or cats, or hamsters, or ferrets).

Oh dear. I think I've just pretty much written myself off.

Ariège life ...The Ariège Network

I have, you may have noticed, been somewhat quiet on the blogging front since I got back from England. Not because I have nothing to say (heaven forfend ...), but because my head has been stuck not in a soil pipe this time, but deep in the bowels of hitherto unexplored cyberspace.

Until a month ago, there existed a low-key but useful community internet forum for English speakers here in Ariège, Ariège Life. Now it has to be said that our department is not by any means an ex-pat enclave, and those English speakers who do move here tend to want to integrate with their local communities rather than cling to an immigrant group. And thank heavens for that. But for all that, there are times when you just want to be able to connect with others who've made the same move as you, who are wrestling with the same things as you, and yes, who speak the same language as you. That was where the forum came in: we asked each other questions, we batted things around, and I met some interesting people I probably wouldn't have met otherwise.

And so when the forum was closed down rather suddenly by its webmaster a few weeks ago, a bit of a hole was left in Ariège life. What to do? "Nothing!" said John, firmly. "Leave it to someone else for once". Hmm. A nice idea, but not in my nature. So to cut a long story short, I didn't.

Now whereas I can design simple websites, and I've even set up a community site before, for our village in north Norfolk, the intricacies of content management systems and php and messageboard software were well outside my comfort zone. And long might they have stayed there but for the support and encouragement of several Ariège friends, a succession of very late nights and an understanding (if long suffering) partner who knows me well enough to just shrug, and do all the cooking and washing up, whenever I get into one of my single-pointed 'I'm not going to be beaten by this' phases.

And now for the shameless plug. (Are you reading this, Google?). The Ariège Network has just gone live, complete with rather snazzy looking forum. Here it is, as a proper link:

The Ariège Network - life in Ariège, in English.

And I'm back in circulation. Hello, world ...