22 today!

Happy birthday to Olivier who celebrates his 22nd birthday today – the 22nd - and he was born on a Friday. It must be a lucky day!

Unfortunately, I know that he has 4 hours Friday afternoon and 4 hours Saturday mornings with the same lecturer every other week (VIP who travels to Bordeaux from one of the financial capitals of Europe). Fingers crossed that this is one of his free weekends.

Here's a picture of him when he was three

You must see these

We hardly ever get snow here - about once every four years.  I love snow picrures...

Snowflakes caught in a spider's web

Do not feed the horse

This is a picture of Groseille (Currant) the local star in our village.  She's very friendly indeed if she thinks that you've got something for her to eat.  We used to take her an apple every time we walked by.  Someone told us that the apple should be cut up, so we cut it into four pieces.  She can count and would wait for the forth piece before continuing with the grass.

Unfortunately, everyone was feeding her tit-bits, including stale bread.  See how muddy her back looks in this picture.  One day as we were preparing to feed her an apple her owner, the mayor, came over to us and explained that she had been rolling on the ground in agony with colic.  So he's asked everyone not to feed her.  She's written a very nice notice explaining how too much food makes her ill.

Unfortunately she doesn't come over to say hello anymore, just snuffles a greeting and continues grazing.

Strange week

It has been rather strange and Rob and I have certainly been feeling a little strange coping with the flu. 

I had a new pupil this week. A farmer, who had lessons with Rob when we first came to France. I met him and his wife when I was expecting Christian. He asked me how my little boy was these days, expecting him to be 10 or eleven. Christian was 26 on Thursday! We had a lovely long phone call to celebrate. He’s now as old as Rob was when he was born.

Something else that is strange, though I don’t expect to feel the impact until next week, is that ExposeYourBlog! is closing down this weekend. I’ve just sent out my last newsletter (twice as usual – I never did get that right). Friar Don and I are sad to be letting it go, but we both have busy lives elsewhere now. Don needs to devote more time to his spiritual life and I wish him well for the future.

 Me? I’m busy with my postcards and hopefully more blogging and writing.

Careful how you comment

There was I gleefully leaving a comment on Kath’s blog about how good the flu vaccination is…and I was struck down. We’ve all heard about the dangers of viruses over the internet, but the flu virus spreading online? Hopefully Kath is now recovered from her bout of flu and mine seems to be clearing up okay-ish (very tired if I try to do too much at once).

It seems that 75% of the children in our village (ages 3-11) were absent from school last week because of flu. Someone mentioned that this year’s vaccine here wasn’t quite the right one. Rob’s next.

I apologise in advance for typos and sentences that go nowhere.