Buzzing off

The wasps were dealt with a week ago. I did feel sorry for the poor young man having to put on protective clothing in all of the heat, but I was pleased to be rid of the them.

 Dom and J-M are now in Edinburgh. They stayed overnight here and we took them to the airport. Dom’s first presentation is tomorrow, around lunch time, so fingers crossed. They are using some of the time outside the conference to explore the city. I hope that they take a few photos.

 I took off the word verification because someone had been having problems deciphering the words. Within minutes I started to get spam comments again. Do these people spend all of their time hanging around blogs testing to see if they can get a comment through?. Word verification has been re-enabled.

If you have difficulty with the verification, you can find a link so that you can email me on all of my Blogspot blogs in the side menu.

Wasps

Yesterday I discovered what I thought was a beehive on the stonework of the garage which is not attached to the house (fortunately). After lots of looking up on the internet and in my nature book I decided that they are vulgar wasps(Vespula Vulgaris). This doesn’t mean that they swear (as J-M told Dom when we were on the phone earlier – doesn’t he fit into our family humor well?), it means that they are common. They are small and cute, but not to be underestimated.

 Normally they will die when autumn comes and the young queens will fly off to found more hives in little nooks and crannies next year. Tomorrow I’ll have to phone someone to come and destroy them, for the sake of the neighbourhood.

Not very clear, taken with my phone

We're having a heat wave

As I write the temperature outside is 35°C/ 95°F and the breeze is hot. It could be like this for the next 5 days. I feel sorry for anyone who is camping in a tent in this heat.

The house is reasonably cool. With careful use of the shutters as the sun moves around we can keep out the sunlight.

I hope it’s not too hot where you are. Whether or not it is, here’s something to cool you down. I couldn’t find the Carmen Miranda version so Miss Piggy is kindly stepping in.

My son the postman and other stories

Olivier is now a postman. He’s replacing a real postman for 3 weeks. Guess who has to get him to the sorting office for 6.40 in the morning? I think that by the last day he should be pretty fast at sorting the letters for his round into order and finding his way around the streets. Would you believe that people come up to him in the street and expect him to know who they are and where they live? His round finishes in a street along the beach which he considers as his reward for the day.
 

In September he will be continuing his studies in Bordeaux.  He will also be sharing an apartment with a couple of his friends - if all goes to plan.

Today is a holiday in France to celebrate The Assumption. It marks the beginning of the end of the holiday season here. The weather joined in this morning too; wind and rain to drive the holiday makers away…

 I’ve been busy looking into the names of some cats who were fortunate enough to have their own visiting cards.

Dinard

Dom and J-M have rented a house in Brittany for a fortnight. They very kindly invited us to stay with them in Dinard for a few days. So we joined tham on Wednesday for a couple of days.

The house was really lovely and they were the first ever holidaymakers to use it. It was so nice to sit in the garden in the sunshine and be served delicious meals. As well as eat, we played tourists too and went for some lovely walks. The sea was so blue and it wasn’t raining (rare in Brittany). We also explored other towns nearby.

The town hall at Saint Lunaire 

It was hot! 

Thank you for inviting us Dom and J-M!

Sunflower progress

I planted two varieties of sunflowers. When they’ve dried out I’ll probably hang them from a tree so that the birds can get at them without being interrupted by the local cats

Taller than the front door! 

A better Friday

This is what greeted me when I opened the shutters last Friday morning: 

 Later we went for lunch at our favourite restaurant. 

Cram Chaban!

I’ve always been fascinated by the name on a sign post we’ve passed over the years when we were travelling North. Cram Chaban sounds like a magic word. Yesterday we set off to visit the village.

In fact Cram Chaban consists of the community, Cram and another part of the village which is either called Chaban or Cram Chaban? It’s tucked away in the middle of nowhere and is quite a pretty village.

As there was nowhere to have lunch there, we travelled to the next village to find somewhere to eat and happened on Basil Fawlty. When we asked if we could eat outside he said “We don’t usually serve meals out side. Do you really want to eat outside? Well I suppose if you must eat out side I’ll serve you a meal outside…” and so on. There was no menu, just the menu du jour which was simple and quite good. He told Rob off for being on his phone at the table (timetable problems – I was secretly pleased though). We were handed a selection of cheese on a plate, each piece wrapped up, but it was all the same goat’s cheese. If he hadn’t reminded us of Basil Fawlty we wouldn’t have stayed – it was quite amusing.

We then enjoyed a good walk around the beautiful, old village and went into the tourist office where there was an exhibition of work by Michel Moro, who combines paint and mosaics. The website does not do justice to the colours. His workshop is open to the public and is in CRAM! I think that we will be returning soon.

It’s called Friday 13th

The end of last week was a particularly bad one here. The Maritime Museum caught fire in town. The museum is/was in a ship which had just been renovated at an enormous cost ready for the season; an electrical fault.

 The weather on Friday itself was very wet, windy and cold. The music festival that the town was holding over five nights was delayed for that evening, and then cancelled. Olivier had a job for the five days and nights of the festival on a food stand. This involved us collecting him from town around four o’clock every morning. Fortunately Rob was on holiday for four of the days, but we still found it very tiring. We did have an early night on the evening that was cancelled – if you call 2 am early.

This year I have been growing some sunflowers and they were doing very well, especially the one that was taller than me. The wind blew it over. I put the top in water but after a couple of days it was obvious that it was dying.

Here is one in the fields

Nearly a month has gone by…

I’m sorry that there hasn’t been an update for so long. Rob went back to work this morning – 5 weeks after his accident. Our 27th wedding anniversary passed without divorce proceedings due to my driving. It’s not that I drive badly I just don’t drive like him and get nervous when I’m constantly ‘given advice’.

I met up with another blogger for the first time ever in my blogging career. Caroline and her partner were passing through La Rochelle on their way home by car. They usually wave as they fly over, so it was nice to see each other for real. We sat on the port and drank coffee and chatted. I wish I could have stayed longer. Here’s the proof:

 (Weather was a bit windy)

 Dom and J-M came for the weekend as it was Rob’s birthday on Saturday. Dom made one of her wonderful cakes; Chocolate on Chocolate (can’t get more wonderful than that). It’s always good to see them and we all spent Sunday morning browsing around local Brocantes/boot sales/garage sales. I found a lovely leather wallet and the partner to a candle holder we found last year under similar circumstances. Dom’s paper has now been accepted completely for publication. She’s just submitted her second and I think, has started on a third.

That about wraps up the update.