Humphrey

There are several major differences between life in the UK and in France.

The language, for one.

The food, for another (although to be quite honest what we eat as a family hardly changes. I bring Branston Pickle and other such necessities back every time I go home...)

The weather. We're already averaging 26 or 27° (Celsius- sorry, I don't do Fahrenheit) here in the afternoons, and that's pretty normal for this time of year.

These, you might think, are pretty big things.

What, then, is the difference I notice most?

LIZARDS. Yes, really. I believe there are some in the southernmost parts of the UK, but having never lived further south than Cumbria (non-Brits, that's a long way north by English terms) for any length of time, they're still something of a novelty to me.

Humphrey pretends to be shy

This here is Humphrey, the first lizard I met when we moved to our new house. He came out of hibernation some time towards the end of February. He lives under the windowsill with Mrs. Humphrey and The Other One (another lizard, but we haven't/don't want to think about what their relationship might be. This is a Christian household, we will not have lizard immorality going on under our windowsills).

This afternoon, I was working, like a good little translator-elf, when I heard a clattering noise on the other side of the room. The culprit? A lizard, which had somehow managed to fall through the open skylight. (It wasn't Humphrey, though. Humphrey would never do something as silly as play on the roof).

I got the lizard out, in the end, using a waste paper basket and a comic book (yes! They DO have a use after all!) - but it took a good ten minutes of chasing it round the office, in and out of the stacks of paper and shoes and plastic dragons Ze Husband leaves lying around, all while laughing manically to myself at the surrealness of the whole thing.

Now THAT wouldn't happen in Edinburgh.

EDIT: I'm pretty bad at the whole picture thing, but if you want a better view of the Beast, just click on the picture to zoom in!