Thursday 6th November

This was the day that Dom presented her Thesis to the jury. We arrived just in time due to fog and road works on the motorway.

 The room was full of family and friends – I suppose there were 30 of us altogether. From beginning to end Dom’s speech just flowed. Her PowerPoint presentation was clear and worked perfectly from beginning to end. She just had 22 minutes for her presentation and then the jury asked her questions about her work. She answered it all with no problems and noted their suggestions.

 During question time there was a lot of coming and going as people were popping in to see how it was going and going off to lectures etc.; all in silence. Dom had suggested we sat at the back in case we found it boring. Definitely not at all!

Her supervisor ran through all of the other work she’s been doing during her PhD which was very impressive and made Rob and I feel very proud of her.

Then we all had to go out while the jury made their decision. It didn’t take too long and we all went in to hear the result; her doctorate was awarded with the note “Très honorable avec félicitations du Jury”. That’s the highest you can get.

We had champagne and nibbles and met some of the people that we had only heard about over the past few years – as well as some old friends. I thanked her supervisor (who is also vice president of Poitiers University!) for all of the lovely things that he had said. He’s a very nice man – Dom has been very fortunate to have had such a supportive department.

Dom dedicated her Thesis to J-M , her husband and also to Holly the cat who gave her love and support despite not really being interested in human dialogue.

After that, we went out to lunch and back to Dom & J-M’s for a cup of tea. Holly gave us a really friendly greeting – I thought that she might have forgotten us. It’s the first time we’d visited since helping them to move in, so it was interesting to see how the rooms looked without piles of furniture and boxes.

It was getting dark when we set off home, fortunately the fog had cleared.

Champagne

Just before we were married 25 years ago we were given three bottles of champagne. The bottles were already 10 years old. We drank two on our wedding day and decided to keep the 3rd for this year. I opened it last week. First of all the cork fell apart, then when I poured it, out came a very dark looking liquid, not at all bubbly – I didn’t taste it as I thought it smelt like paint stripper. We weren’t too disappointed as we half expected it to go wrong.

On Friday night Olivier worked late as there was a function at one of the towers; They asked for an extension until two in the morning and rewarded Olivier and his colleague with – a bottle of champagne. Olivier was horrified when the other person poured Olivier’s share into an empty plastic coke bottle and gave it to him (do you think that this person could have been French?). He doesn’t like champagne so he brought it home and put it into the fridge. When I first saw it, it reminded me of a pee sample. Rob and I drank it yesterday eveing and it was very good – despite the coke bottle.