Coming up next... Christmas!

Not long to go now.  I put the Christmas decorations up last Tuesday and even if I say so myself; they're looking good.

Dom and J-M will be coming for Christmas with Holly the cat.  Olivier might be coming.  He will have to spend a lot of time and money on trains so he must decide if it's worth it.  He's at work on the 26th.  Rob will be working on the 26th too.  We still find the idea strange, even after 30 years.

When I was teaching at the language school years ago.  I had a lesson at 7.30 in the morning on the 26th December.  My student didn't show.  It turned out she was very ill on Christmas day and tried to contact the school, leaving a message on the answer phone in the office which was locked.  I managed to get the next bus home after waiting around for half an hour.  The sun still hadn't risen by the time I got back!

I haven't been blogging much, or visiting.  Rob is borrowing my laptop most evenings as his is very slow.  hopefully we will be reorganised in a couple of weeks - a friend is fixing his old laptop.

What a good weekend

Dom and J-M came back from Edinburgh on Saturday afternoon. Unfortunately I couldn’t go with Rob to collect them from the airport as a couple of Dom’s colleagues needed a lift to the station. Dom’s presentations went very well . J-M went along to support her. It’s so nice when they visit, there is always plenty to talk about. They found time to explore Edinburgh. Taste the food (especially fish and chips) and soak up some of the rain. They bought back short bread with (Belgian) chocolate chips – needless to say that has all disappeared.

Dom came back with a copy of The Time Traveller’s Wife and told me that I could read it first as long as I don’t talk to her about it until after she has read it too. So far it looks as if it is going to be a good read…

This term they are both teaching: Dom will be teaching statistics to 1st year psychology students and J-M is teaching economics to students at an agricultural lycée.

Olivier is going to Bordeaux tomorrow to see about an apartment; I hope he likes it. They are very hard to find in Bordeaux at this time of the year. He starts term in about 2 weeks.

This is where Dom presented her work.  The picture comes from Wikipedia (where else?)

About Joachim

That's the name of the storm that crossed France at the end of last week.  When I was teaching, I had a pupil called Joachim in one of my classes in the special section.  He was famous for farting, especially during the first class of the day.  Knowing that, I suppose you could say that the name fits.

Ann, Anne or Annie?

I loved teaching at the language school during the summer months. It was a real challenge to cater for several groups of different ages and abilities for three hours every morning. I loved preparing the lessons and finding them ‘things to do’ if they finished their work before I got back to them. One week I remember having three groups, unfortunately one girl was on her own. She was obviously uncomfortable, not only being on her own but because she had been sent to improve her English before school began again in September. As it happened I left her to do an exercise on possession and when I got back she challenged me. The possessive adjective agrees with the possessor i.e. 'his house', if the house belongs to a man. Why does Ann pick up her book? She explained to me that in French Ann is the masculine form of the name and Anne is feminine. I had no idea that Ann could be a man’s name and we both agreed that we didn’t know of any male with that name. The fact that she taught me something about French boosted her ego no end and she made good progress over the week that followed.

This evening I was listening to the radio. There is another film about Darwin and his daughter Annie being released. This is my blog post about Anne Darwin from July 2004:

“Darwin’s daughter

When we visit Malvern priory I like to look at the old grave stones. A lot of them are unreadable now, being a couple of hundred years old. I was very surprised to see an elderly lady tending one of the graves. She came up to me and asked if I was interested in History. She told me about the grave she had been looking after; It was the Grave of Anne Darwin who was brought to Malvern by her father, Charles Darwin, when she was ten years old to take the cure. She had T.B., unfortunately she died and was buried at the Priory. The lady told me that although she’d lived there for over 50 years she didn’t know about this until recent years. She lives in a flat which contains the room where Anne died.

Looking again at the grave stones I could see that a lot of people were from other parts of England, a lot of them were women and girls.

The cure consisted of drinking lots of water and walking the hills. I think you’ll agree that a lot of people would benefit from that today.”

Anne or Annie?