Dunnit!
Got the missing blogs from the 9th & 13th May on this page, but not necessarily in the right order.
Have just returned from a vide grenier which is 1 step down from a Troc. Apopros of this, no, Mrs W, there isn't a prize for knowing what this is, & Auch is osh as in gosh not ouch!
Sunday, 27 May 2007
09 May 2007
balloon head
back after a busy day, with a swollen head....2 compliments in one day. No, not"Why, Miss Jones, but... you're beautiful..." The time for that is, if not long gone, then certainly autrefois. But at my French cours, a pretty intensive language course held by a superb, energetic teacher of a foreign language, Marie Delaye, I was kept back to be told I had made the most progress of all her students at level4 that year. Wow! It was worth mastering the subjunctive& reading le Fig to understand the election. Here I am in my fimtyumph decade, longing to please the teacher & chuffed to bits when I do!And this morning's teacher, Christine the line-dancing queen, earned my undying devotion by including me in her teacher's pet-quick-learners group & teaching us a faster, more complex dance than the rather dull stomp & scuffs we've been doing. In celebratory mood, & having forgotten to defrost some pastry before my late return from class, I nearly suggested we went out to eat - it is a blessed evening of calm sauternes sunshine - but wiser caution & the remembrance of the bank account prevailed.Tomorrow it's back to the decorating, 2 rooms to finish by June, & you know what they say about the bloke who invented decorating...
balloon head
back after a busy day, with a swollen head....2 compliments in one day. No, not"Why, Miss Jones, but... you're beautiful..." The time for that is, if not long gone, then certainly autrefois. But at my French cours, a pretty intensive language course held by a superb, energetic teacher of a foreign language, Marie Delaye, I was kept back to be told I had made the most progress of all her students at level4 that year. Wow! It was worth mastering the subjunctive& reading le Fig to understand the election. Here I am in my fimtyumph decade, longing to please the teacher & chuffed to bits when I do!And this morning's teacher, Christine the line-dancing queen, earned my undying devotion by including me in her teacher's pet-quick-learners group & teaching us a faster, more complex dance than the rather dull stomp & scuffs we've been doing. In celebratory mood, & having forgotten to defrost some pastry before my late return from class, I nearly suggested we went out to eat - it is a blessed evening of calm sauternes sunshine - but wiser caution & the remembrance of the bank account prevailed.Tomorrow it's back to the decorating, 2 rooms to finish by June, & you know what they say about the bloke who invented decorating...
Sunday-Taxes & Ten Tors
Sundays are SOoo quiet here, apart from mainlaw's doberman barking, affronted, as a distant neighbour's visitors have the temerity to drive off with a merry beep. Hardly a car passes, but for the constant chirrup of cicadas & the breeze through the conifers my ears would be humming with dense silence. Perfect time to confront the Tax Form.Really it's not so difficult, the Hôtel des Impots sends us the easy pink form; our affairs are limited & simple, only a couple of sections to fill in, it's just that it's foreign, there's always the risk of making un erreur & if you're not Chirac a dim view is taken of financial mistakes. We might be hauled off to the Bastille, no, it no longer exists, that Island then, where Papillon was incarcerated , after all, you can be jugged for merely failing to balance your cheque-book & going overdrawn! Suddenly weeding the drive then painting a door seem terribly important. A bagful of broad beans is crying out to be podded & frozen, make P a cuppa while he prepares the guestroom's walls for tomorrow's papering, get the washing in... Oh well, I'm sure I'll do it before it has to be in the post for June 1st.I see the UK has the customary accompanying appalling weather to the 10 Tors challenge. Why don't they change the date? Every year it's the same. Still it was great seeing so many teenagers dressed in clothes not hanging off their backsides or pulling above junk-food-filled stomachs, articulate, grinning, if disappointed, having put in weeks of training, at being stopped from yomping over beautiful Dartmoor, reminding the world that it is only an unfortunate percentage of 13-20 year-olds who spend their time binge- drinking in town centres before puking & fighting in gutters. Although P pointed out that many of them will now be enjoying a night on the cider! Well, they've earned it.Well done the Hammers! Beat ManU!!
Sundays are SOoo quiet here, apart from mainlaw's doberman barking, affronted, as a distant neighbour's visitors have the temerity to drive off with a merry beep. Hardly a car passes, but for the constant chirrup of cicadas & the breeze through the conifers my ears would be humming with dense silence. Perfect time to confront the Tax Form.Really it's not so difficult, the Hôtel des Impots sends us the easy pink form; our affairs are limited & simple, only a couple of sections to fill in, it's just that it's foreign, there's always the risk of making un erreur & if you're not Chirac a dim view is taken of financial mistakes. We might be hauled off to the Bastille, no, it no longer exists, that Island then, where Papillon was incarcerated , after all, you can be jugged for merely failing to balance your cheque-book & going overdrawn! Suddenly weeding the drive then painting a door seem terribly important. A bagful of broad beans is crying out to be podded & frozen, make P a cuppa while he prepares the guestroom's walls for tomorrow's papering, get the washing in... Oh well, I'm sure I'll do it before it has to be in the post for June 1st.I see the UK has the customary accompanying appalling weather to the 10 Tors challenge. Why don't they change the date? Every year it's the same. Still it was great seeing so many teenagers dressed in clothes not hanging off their backsides or pulling above junk-food-filled stomachs, articulate, grinning, if disappointed, having put in weeks of training, at being stopped from yomping over beautiful Dartmoor, reminding the world that it is only an unfortunate percentage of 13-20 year-olds who spend their time binge- drinking in town centres before puking & fighting in gutters. Although P pointed out that many of them will now be enjoying a night on the cider! Well, they've earned it.Well done the Hammers! Beat ManU!!
Tuesday, 22 May 2007
back to shedland...
One day I will have the time to look at lots of other blogs to see what a blog should be like...
But today it was off to Marmande, to take pa-in-law to an appointment, then a chance to shop for 2 items. Once again I trawle up & down the Bordeaux Road on Marmande's shedland, kerb-crawling with all the other punters who are on the look-out for consumer goods. Those of you who have had my conventional RRs e-mailed in the past will know that many French shopping areas are strung along arterial roads in aluminium sheds, and we still struggle to work out what some of them contain. Since becoming a grandmother I discover that 'Aubert' is a sort of Mothercare. 'Litomania' has beds &, apart from supermarkets is the only place in which I've found bedding. Hence my affection for The White Company & its over-priced mail-order service. Le Mutant is a meat supermarket, hmmm...
Today's futile quest was for moisture lotion. After happily using it for firtyumpty years, I am no longer able to find Almay lotion, so taking my last precious bottle for reference, I venture into a 'parapharmacie'. A size zero 17-year old in a starched white coat hears me out, looks at my bottle & indicates three products. Avène is made from spa water & a bottle 1/5 of the size of mine costs twice as much. Not being a believer in water being anything other than H2O, I move on to Caudelie, which is made from the remains of squished grapes. After the harvest, vignerons leave piles of these at special roadside points where the Min of Ag picks them up & turns them into industrial alcohol; they smell appalling. I pass on to Roc, again, a minute tube costs far more per centilitre than I am used to paying - I am going to have to grow old more gracefully. I show my teeth & escape in search of new baskets.
Sport 2000, thank goodness for an unambiguous shop name. 1 pair Reeboks, perfect fit, très confortable, parfait, succès! First decent pair I've had for ages despite years of step etc. Praps now I'll finally lose some pounds? Now I have good baskets? ( Ssh. Don't tell anyone. They're for line-dancing.) The French LOve line-dancing. I did go to a Guingette ( a dance studio,) in a shed on the Bordeaux Road, where 2 excellent teachers encouraged paysans, femmes de menagère & smooth young men, who must have worn sharp suiting during the day, to sailor-step & coaster-step and every one slung thumbs into big buckled belts that held up straight jeans that covered the tops of their studded cowboy boots. Some even wore hats. And the dancing was brilliant, all pas chassé-ing & quarter turning in perfect unison while the studs flashed.
Now I just enjoy myself in the village hall at Agnac, being taught by an enthusiastic amateur along with a lot of French & English ladies in T-shirts & cardigans, & 3, occasionally 4, men. There were 5, but Gerard, an ex-Parisian policeman, gave up. Sometimes, someone will sport a nattily knotted neckerchief, & several of us wear jeans, but except for Pauline who likes to clack her heels, we favour trainers. The floor is slippery & nobody wants to break a hip!!
Our favourite shed is a Troc. Now what do you think a Troc is? Answers on an e-mail please, I'll tell you another time...
But today it was off to Marmande, to take pa-in-law to an appointment, then a chance to shop for 2 items. Once again I trawle up & down the Bordeaux Road on Marmande's shedland, kerb-crawling with all the other punters who are on the look-out for consumer goods. Those of you who have had my conventional RRs e-mailed in the past will know that many French shopping areas are strung along arterial roads in aluminium sheds, and we still struggle to work out what some of them contain. Since becoming a grandmother I discover that 'Aubert' is a sort of Mothercare. 'Litomania' has beds &, apart from supermarkets is the only place in which I've found bedding. Hence my affection for The White Company & its over-priced mail-order service. Le Mutant is a meat supermarket, hmmm...
Today's futile quest was for moisture lotion. After happily using it for firtyumpty years, I am no longer able to find Almay lotion, so taking my last precious bottle for reference, I venture into a 'parapharmacie'. A size zero 17-year old in a starched white coat hears me out, looks at my bottle & indicates three products. Avène is made from spa water & a bottle 1/5 of the size of mine costs twice as much. Not being a believer in water being anything other than H2O, I move on to Caudelie, which is made from the remains of squished grapes. After the harvest, vignerons leave piles of these at special roadside points where the Min of Ag picks them up & turns them into industrial alcohol; they smell appalling. I pass on to Roc, again, a minute tube costs far more per centilitre than I am used to paying - I am going to have to grow old more gracefully. I show my teeth & escape in search of new baskets.
Sport 2000, thank goodness for an unambiguous shop name. 1 pair Reeboks, perfect fit, très confortable, parfait, succès! First decent pair I've had for ages despite years of step etc. Praps now I'll finally lose some pounds? Now I have good baskets? ( Ssh. Don't tell anyone. They're for line-dancing.) The French LOve line-dancing. I did go to a Guingette ( a dance studio,) in a shed on the Bordeaux Road, where 2 excellent teachers encouraged paysans, femmes de menagère & smooth young men, who must have worn sharp suiting during the day, to sailor-step & coaster-step and every one slung thumbs into big buckled belts that held up straight jeans that covered the tops of their studded cowboy boots. Some even wore hats. And the dancing was brilliant, all pas chassé-ing & quarter turning in perfect unison while the studs flashed.
Now I just enjoy myself in the village hall at Agnac, being taught by an enthusiastic amateur along with a lot of French & English ladies in T-shirts & cardigans, & 3, occasionally 4, men. There were 5, but Gerard, an ex-Parisian policeman, gave up. Sometimes, someone will sport a nattily knotted neckerchief, & several of us wear jeans, but except for Pauline who likes to clack her heels, we favour trainers. The floor is slippery & nobody wants to break a hip!!
Our favourite shed is a Troc. Now what do you think a Troc is? Answers on an e-mail please, I'll tell you another time...
Monday, 14 May 2007
missing on La-Annie
Right, missing blogs are on www.la-annie.blogspot.com , I think!
Next I will try to get the time setting right. Was on Pacific time, switched setting to W European but I'm still 2 hours out.
Next I will try to get the time setting right. Was on Pacific time, switched setting to W European but I'm still 2 hours out.
Brilliant.- - Der!
Typical. Just as I think I've cracked it & created a blog, thanks to the rather irritating & not entirely intuitive sign-on system here, I've ended up with 2 identities & have been merrily blogging away on the wrong one. I'll try & post the link so you don't miss them!
Monday, 7 May 2007
elections & electricity
Yesterday I stumbled through dark corridors behind my mainlaw as she showed me all the cupboards where her bluddy dog's sumptuous supplies are kept. She had just found out, she informed me, that by using less electricity she might help to save the environment. So she was not going to use her lights.
Then she & my father-in-law switched off their tv which is on 16/24, 7/7, (loudly), got into our car, we drove for 1 & 1/2 hours to Bordeaux, including a 20-minute spell with foot hard down, which is the only way to survive on the 'Rocade' around the city, to the airport at Merignac, where they got on a jet.
Bordeaux's airport is unhurried, bright & cheerful. There are plenty of signs, loos & pleasing notices saying Restaurants, plural. You can park right outside. We've never flown from there, being far more familiar with the tents & sheds of Bergerac-Roumanières, but as they shuffled off, I thought that I'd like to, perhaps this summer, as we brace ourselves for the usual heat plus the now-expected urban unrest.
This may not be noticeable in the calm of the rural Sud-Ouest but it may be wise to stock up at the supermarket. One cannot live on foie-gras, duck breast & the local appellations for ever, ( although this is pretty well all you can get in any local restaurant as French food has ossified since the 1960's, bar the nouvelle cuisine blip). If supply lines are cut by riots in the banlieus & strikes at the ports, following Sarkhozy's election, we need to ensure our supplies of sliced bread & sausages & bottled Black Sheep. These are all to be found on the shelves marked 'Produits Etrangers', along with noodles & soy sauce & Pataks curry sauces, Hooray! All a far cry from the day when, in a supermarket near Sarlat, we shrank & longed to look French as a pink Englishwoman in unsuitable shorts strode up & down the aisles, crying
"But they must have Branston's. Where's the Branstons?", after which we ex-pats promised never to raise our voices in that middle-class bray that so many English tourists affect as they de-ferry.
I watched Sego & Sarko on the debate. I know which one I preferred. The body language spoke volumes; one too rigidly calm despite a moment of being accused of losing their cool, one fidgettingly repressed, aggressive, turning a shoulder constantly to viewer & co-debatee & talking to the TV pundits. We're in for a rocky 100 days, je pense. Best to turn off lights, leds & all, head for Merignac & the hills.
Then she & my father-in-law switched off their tv which is on 16/24, 7/7, (loudly), got into our car, we drove for 1 & 1/2 hours to Bordeaux, including a 20-minute spell with foot hard down, which is the only way to survive on the 'Rocade' around the city, to the airport at Merignac, where they got on a jet.
Bordeaux's airport is unhurried, bright & cheerful. There are plenty of signs, loos & pleasing notices saying Restaurants, plural. You can park right outside. We've never flown from there, being far more familiar with the tents & sheds of Bergerac-Roumanières, but as they shuffled off, I thought that I'd like to, perhaps this summer, as we brace ourselves for the usual heat plus the now-expected urban unrest.
This may not be noticeable in the calm of the rural Sud-Ouest but it may be wise to stock up at the supermarket. One cannot live on foie-gras, duck breast & the local appellations for ever, ( although this is pretty well all you can get in any local restaurant as French food has ossified since the 1960's, bar the nouvelle cuisine blip). If supply lines are cut by riots in the banlieus & strikes at the ports, following Sarkhozy's election, we need to ensure our supplies of sliced bread & sausages & bottled Black Sheep. These are all to be found on the shelves marked 'Produits Etrangers', along with noodles & soy sauce & Pataks curry sauces, Hooray! All a far cry from the day when, in a supermarket near Sarlat, we shrank & longed to look French as a pink Englishwoman in unsuitable shorts strode up & down the aisles, crying
"But they must have Branston's. Where's the Branstons?", after which we ex-pats promised never to raise our voices in that middle-class bray that so many English tourists affect as they de-ferry.
I watched Sego & Sarko on the debate. I know which one I preferred. The body language spoke volumes; one too rigidly calm despite a moment of being accused of losing their cool, one fidgettingly repressed, aggressive, turning a shoulder constantly to viewer & co-debatee & talking to the TV pundits. We're in for a rocky 100 days, je pense. Best to turn off lights, leds & all, head for Merignac & the hills.
elections & electricity
Yesterday I stumbled through dark corridors behind my mainlaw as she showed me all the cupboards where her bluddy dog's sumptuous supplies are kept. She had just found out, she informed me, that by using less electricity she might help to save the environment. So she was not going to use her lights.
Then she & my father-in-law switched off their tv which is on 16/24, 7/7, (loudly), got into our car, we drove for 1 & 1/2 hours to Bordeaux, including a 20-minute spell with foot hard down, which is the only way to survive on the 'Rocade' around the city, to the airport at Merignac, where they got on a jet.
Bordeaux's airport is unhurried, bright & cheerful. There are plenty of signs, loos & pleasing notices saying Restaurants, plural. You can park right outside. We've never flown from there, being far more familiar with the tents & sheds of Bergerac-Roumanières, but as they shuffled off, I thought that I'd like to, perhaps this summer, as we brace ourselves for the usual heat plus the now-expected urban unrest.
This may not be noticeable in the calm of the rural Sud-Ouest but it may be wise to stock up at the supermarket. One cannot live on foie-gras, duck breast & the local appellations for ever, ( although this is pretty well all you can get in any local restaurant as French food has ossified since the 1960's, bar the nouvelle cuisine blip). If supply lines are cut by riots in the banlieus & strikes at the ports, following Sarkhozy's election, we need to ensure our supplies of sliced bread & sausages & bottled Black Sheep. These are all to be found on the shelves marked 'Produits Etrangers', along with noodles & soy sauce & Pataks curry sauces, Hooray! All a far cry from the day when, in a supermarket near Sarlat, we shrank & longed to look French as a pink Englishwoman in unsuitable shorts strode up & down the aisles, crying
"But they must have Branston's. Where's the Branstons?", after which we ex-pats promised never to raise our voices in that middle-class bray that so many English tourists affect as they de-ferry.
I watched Sego & Sarko on the debate. I know which one I preferred. The body language spoke volumes; one too rigidly calm despite a moment of being accused of losing their cool, one fidgettingly repressed, aggressive, turning a shoulder constantly to viewer & co-debatee & talking to the TV pundits. We're in for a rocky 100 days, je pense. Best to turn off lights, leds & all, head for Merignac & the hills.
Then she & my father-in-law switched off their tv which is on 16/24, 7/7, (loudly), got into our car, we drove for 1 & 1/2 hours to Bordeaux, including a 20-minute spell with foot hard down, which is the only way to survive on the 'Rocade' around the city, to the airport at Merignac, where they got on a jet.
Bordeaux's airport is unhurried, bright & cheerful. There are plenty of signs, loos & pleasing notices saying Restaurants, plural. You can park right outside. We've never flown from there, being far more familiar with the tents & sheds of Bergerac-Roumanières, but as they shuffled off, I thought that I'd like to, perhaps this summer, as we brace ourselves for the usual heat plus the now-expected urban unrest.
This may not be noticeable in the calm of the rural Sud-Ouest but it may be wise to stock up at the supermarket. One cannot live on foie-gras, duck breast & the local appellations for ever, ( although this is pretty well all you can get in any local restaurant as French food has ossified since the 1960's, bar the nouvelle cuisine blip). If supply lines are cut by riots in the banlieus & strikes at the ports, following Sarkhozy's election, we need to ensure our supplies of sliced bread & sausages & bottled Black Sheep. These are all to be found on the shelves marked 'Produits Etrangers', along with noodles & soy sauce & Pataks curry sauces, Hooray! All a far cry from the day when, in a supermarket near Sarlat, we shrank & longed to look French as a pink Englishwoman in unsuitable shorts strode up & down the aisles, crying
"But they must have Branston's. Where's the Branstons?", after which we ex-pats promised never to raise our voices in that middle-class bray that so many English tourists affect as they de-ferry.
I watched Sego & Sarko on the debate. I know which one I preferred. The body language spoke volumes; one too rigidly calm despite a moment of being accused of losing their cool, one fidgettingly repressed, aggressive, turning a shoulder constantly to viewer & co-debatee & talking to the TV pundits. We're in for a rocky 100 days, je pense. Best to turn off lights, leds & all, head for Merignac & the hills.
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