It’s been 26 years since I moved from Australia, where I lived for 6 years, to the south of France.  First a year in the Pyrenées Orientales, which is in the south-west of France, and then 7 years in Roquebrune-Cap-Martin, near to Monaco.  Eventually,  19 years ago I was lucky enough to find a house in Gorbio.  Gorbio is a medieval hill village above Menton.   I live just below the village – not far, as the crow flies but two and half kilometres by car as it’s a long and winding road but it’s only a 10 minute walk up ..
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It’s not that I particularly like sepia – in fact, give me good ol’ black and white anytime.  Or colour.  But I belong to a small group of very sympa photographers and friends who get together in Menton and the surrounding villages to  recreate the past in images of life as it was once lived.  At the moment, we are ‘in the 1920s’ when sepia was still in use. In film photography, it was a chemical process carried out on silver-based photographic prints and had the advantage of being more resistant to the degradation of time.  However, during the first ..
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  Dogs are welcome in most restaurants and bars in France and Monaco, except perhaps the grandest.  The American Bar in the Hotel de Paris in Monte Carlo, for example, will serve your champagne (what else would you order in the Hotel de Paris?)  And he’ll quickly return with a bowl of water served on a tray, laid with a white cloth, and a plate of dog biscuits should Monsieur le Chien be a little peckish.       In fact, dogs are allowed in most places in France including  shops and markets.  However, in supermarkets there is always a ..
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