The best bit for me is I do not have to travel anywhere and all of my work will be transacted using ADSL between the United Kingdom and here, the leafy countryside of South West France.

Now I think you will see why I was so anxious to get it back. I could have started three weeks ago although with so much going on it fits in well to start now.

I have been in horticulture for all of my working life running my own business. My qualifications and experience are varied and wide and include pesticides and Greenkeeping. To this end I have teamed up with friend and former colleague on promotion and development for his UK wide application and advice companies.

One of the task is to start a blog and advice site (watch this space) dedicated to grass development and maintenance in the leisure and professional turf care industry.

We will examine products, grass species chemicals and machinery together with hot topics of the day. The aim is to build up a recognised brand using the thousands of hours and documents that have accumulated and make them available to everyone as a dedicated advice centre on the web.

I am very excited about this especially as it means that I am able to share a considerable amount of juice that I have amassed over the years and put it to good use and be paid too.

I guess, one of the advantages is the power of the internet. I came here with many goals. One was to find, restore and extend a French property. The other to develop a skill, or at least a hobby in carpentry and the other to find a way to leverage the internet to provide an income.

Whilst I enjoy building gardens I did not want to graft so hard in very hot or very cold temperatures for other people. I endured 21 years of working on peoples gardens and you meet a lot of personalities. The majority are well meaning and nice people but occassionally there is the bad apple who makes life a misery and get niggly and obstructive. The thought of returning to that level of stress business wise does not appeal to me.

The objective is to do things to my agenda and enjoy it. Making some money along the way is a bonus.

This means now that both Donna and I use ADSL (broadband) to work on a UK based database which includes VoIP. I feel and have always felt that there is so much potential to earn a living in this remote way that is still largely un explored or exploited by the ex pat community.

I have also been working a on project since October last year that is still yet to be publicly announced so I cannot reveal much detail but safe to say it involved the internet and a network of people that spanned several counties. We hope that is will be live by mid May when I hopefully will be in a position to reveal all.

As far as the work here is concerned we are making relatively good progress. I am just about to start fixing the insulation and plasterboard. We did take a some time off when our friends were here and the children are still off school for the Easter holidays so next week, afternoons only now, we will crack on again.