Time marches on...

What have I been up too? Working for the main part. Remember I talked about MIL falling down the stairs? She’s still in pain and very, very tired all of the time. She had been talking about selling her lovely house, she even found a flat/apartment, but in the end she’s decided to stay. We’re worried about her being so tired.

My mum is due to go to court as a witness, next week, I think. She was sitting in a café having a coffee with a friend one day. They were seated near to the toilet door and when one young lady went into the toilet she kicked my mum’s bag in with her, took the money and when she came out kicked the bag back under mum’s seat. Fortunately the café owner’s wife saw this from the kitchen. They chased the lady down the road and managed to recover most of the money. Unfortunately she has pleaded not guilty so everyone must go to court.

Dom and Olivier have both had exams, so I’ve been very stressed and not sleeping too well. Dom has finished. These are the end of 3 years of study. She’s decided to go on for another 2 years after all. The bookshop can wait.

Olivier is just over’ half way through his Baccalaureate. So far so good. He had to travel to another town for his English oral. He said the examiner was a mixture of my sister and Rob’s sister-in-law so he was immediately at ease with her. He’s really worked on his maths, which he took today. He thinks he should have a good mark.

Dom is coming home tomorrow, so I’ll know all of her gossip then. Her boyfriend will be coming to stay in the middle of next week. We haven’t met him yet, so I’m nervous about that. He’s very, very clever and Dom says a really nice person too, so it should go well.

We might have a couple of auctions to go to over the next fortnight. Nothing happens for months and then it’s action stations all round. I’d just like to sleep now for a while and wake up when it’s all over!

Gone

In the past I always listened to 'Go 4 it' on Sunday evenings after the Archers on BBC Radio 4. 'Go 4 it' was a magazine programme for children and was always fascinating to listen to. The BBC discovered that the average age of the programme’s listeners was - ahem- fifty something, so they axed it.

A couple of pictures of my butterflies – only you can’t see them. The flowers look good though, don’t they? The blossom and the rose petals have all gone with the wind.
Rob took the pictures

How to use up lots of paper

We voted on Sunday with about half of the population of the village who were eligible to vote. It was Olivier’s first turn to cast his vote. The thing that annoys me about French elections is the amount of paper involved. A pile of lists of each party’s candidates is laid out on a table, you then pick up a list from each pile with an envelope before you go into a booth to put your chosen list into the envelope. The rest goes into a bin. I refuse to pick up a National Front list.

The week before the election every person of voting age receives an envelope with all of the same lists and a paper about each party in it. The idea is you can take your lists with you if you want to. The paper gets recycled and the envelopes are the kind that can be used again. I prefer the English system BUT I remember that my voting ticket had a number on it. They could check who you voted for if they wanted to. d

One of Rob's colleagues was running as a candidate for the Royalist Party. There party was too small to have lists distributed everywhere so you could download them if you wanted to. Would you believe this? They only had women’s names on their list because it is obligatory and most of them were a name only as the party didn’t really expect to get enough votes to have a representative at the European parliament.

As usual that’s the last we will hear until the next election.

Birds, bees and the rest

Sunday

In the past I’ve written about the dwindling numbers of sparrows and butterflies on different occasions. I’m pleased to say that I think that I’ve made a difference. When I put out scraps of bread I can sometimes count as many as 20 sparrows as well as blackbirds sharing the crumbs. This afternoon I was watching the action in my deutzia bush outside the kitchen window. It is alive with bees and butterflies, mainly painted ladies but there was also a rather large swallowtail type butterfly which hung around for a while so that I could observe him/her.

So I think that next I would like some more tiny blue butterflies, I haven’t had one of those in my garden for a few years and we seem to be a bit short of Emperor and other dragon flies at the moment. I’ll let you know what happens ..

Monday

There were more and more butterflies as the afternoon wore on. Whenever a car or pedestrian passed by the butterflies flew up into the air. I’m sure there were at least 50 on the side of the bush that I could see. Later I was ironing in Dom’s room (nice to have more space – I now have an ‘ironing room’) I heard some juvenile chattering and a blue tit with one of it’s youngsters came in search of food. The parent was very busy picking insects from the branches and feeding them to their chick. It was pretty windy and both of them had quite a job hanging on.

This morning the painted ladies are slowly coming back as the day becomes warmer and they’ve been joined by a couple of red admirals. There is also a rose chafer ‘caressing’ the flowers. I wonder who’ll turn up next?

My turn to have a day

I haven't had Mother's Day yet so I think that I'm entitled to pass on this link "Why God made moms" It's really funny and I think I'll have to die my hair blue.

Another week slips by

Wednesday lunchtime found me sitting outside the deputy head’s office with Olivier. He had had a dispute with his English teacher and called his lessons a load of ‘merde’. The result was a lecture about how he has never really put any effort into lycée and two days suspension from lessons; I’ve made a list of things for him to do over the two days, mainly revision, the Baccalaureate is in a month.

On Wednesday afternoon Manpower telephoned with some hours of exam supervising starting on Thursday.

Thursday morning I went to the loo with George Cluny before I started work. He’s on the toilet door urging us ‘girls’ to save water (put a brick in the cistern) and the planet. I hung my coat up over him. I mean, George Cluny, I want him to have a good impression of me….. I wonder who the boys have got in their loos?

I had a nice exam. There were supposed to be 8 international students but the Russians had gone home and someone else was taking the exam in their own country so I had two very polite young men from India; One of them was recovering from chicken pox. Friday was good too. Everyone finished well before time and I had a good chat with the lady I was working with. You remember I had a few problems with someone before Christmas? The class representatives had noticed her rudeness too and she was asked not to come back.

The washing machine went funny again this morning. I had to unplug it to stop it from making a blowing noise. I tried it again after a few minutes and it was fine. I must phone up and see if the company has been reinstated. I discovered that in France nowadays a company that’s due to go under is given 6 months to try to sort things out. Hopefully my guarantee will come back to life.

Yesterday, Rob worked until midnight. The idea was that visitors would admire the sunset from the top of the St Nicolas tower. It was windy, cold and wet – but they were still quite busy.

I also had an interesting find.

Sunday was a good day

Even though it was wet we enjoyed our morning walk. There was a meeting of marching bands being held in the park. The rehersals for that were noisy to say the least, but all of a sudden the load speakers were playing Verdi’s requiem - Dies irae, a pleasant surprise. The afternoon walk was rewarded by a pair of swans showing off their 7 sygnets. Why they are called ugly ducklings, I’ll never understand. They were so sweet and kept together with one parent in front and the other behind.

News report

This was the news report yesterday evening. It's in French, but the images of the divers are excellent. Rob managed to go up and watch from above the divers, he doesn't think that it was the best view. I managed to see one dive with the webcam. One of the divers was injured, but nothing too serious.

I tried some Red Bull last night, Olivier was right; a mixture of cough syrup and lemsip, yeuk.

Live!

Here's a link to the La Rochelle webcam Select 'Les Tours' and you might see them diving off the top of the St Nicolas Tower as I write..... Unfortunately they keep moving around to catch the crowds. Rob is working inside the same tower this afternoon so he won't get to see what's going on. Perhaps he'll bring me a can of Red Bull home - not.