The France Show 2012, Earls Court London

Although it wasn’t quite the same as stepping across the Channel, the France Show 2012 at Earl’s Court London was a great experience.
Our main reasons for attending the exhibition were to give us a chance to spend the whole day together without the children and to see Sally from Les Bons Voisins, LBV.

We travelled by train from Eastleigh and arrived in the busyness of Waterloo around noon.  Despite packing enough fruit and coffee for a day of Slimming World, we decided to have a day off the diet and treated ourselves to a Panini from the French Café (which is probably also the Italian/Baby/Outdoor Café depending on the event at the time.
After a high-priced and low-taste snack we decided to search for Sally.  We also met Verity and Sean (Sally’s daughter and future son-in-law, come September) and Amanda with her husband; who will be working with LBV too.  It was really nice to catch up with Sally and we had a really good chat with Verity, who we thought was lovely.
When it was time for them to return to the LBV stand, Jez and I decided to explore the rest of the exhibition, including the market area.

The market area was great, with hustle and bustle, smells, sounds and games in French, it gave us a real taste of France.

Some of the stands were fantastic, clearly going to a great deal of effort and expense to attract passers by.  To our surprise and delight, we bumped into Patrick and Heather from Kerizac who are estate agents from Finistere who we met on our last visit to France.
We had a lovely chat with them and really like the couple, who we feel we ‘click’ with.  After a chat we continued to explore the delights of France in London.

We were drawn into sampling a number of things, including some cheeses and salamis from one bloke.  It was a great opportunity to practise our French and the guys seemed to appreciate our efforts.  However I wasn’t sure how to deal with the conversation when the man refused me soft cheese because I was “with child” as he pointed to my Panini bloated belly. Humpf! Anyway, 2 slices of cheese and 3 salamis later, £32(!) quid down and an embarrassing moment made me realise that there was still much room for improvement on my French!

“Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.” Genesis 11:7  Mmm, I must remember that God did this for our own good, showing us that nothing would come before Him and a relationship with Him…..

A quick goodbye to our French friends, a dash to the station (well, hobble in Jez’s case with his dodgy knee) and before we knew it our day was over and we were home in time to put the children to bed.