Happy Easter

Happy Easter to everyone, whether your eggs are delivered by a giant rabbit, Snoopy or the bells; I hope that you receive the ones you want.

Time keeps on slipping into the future...

That’s how I feel at the moment. I don’t seem to get a minute to myself.

Last Friday we went to Bordeaux to an auction which I love, but is a very long tiring day. The nice part was that Olivier met up with us for lunch. We also saw the new bridge that lifts up to let the boats through. We came home with some excellent postcards.

Olivier has also been home for a few days, so I’ve been washing and ironing and preparing meals. We don’t have a bus service to this village so I ferried him to the nearest bus stop a couple of times – as well as just passing time talking.

The weather has been sunny but cold – nothing to do with the end of March here. We’ve still got the heating on and the clocks go forward this weekend!

Dom and J-m are coming to stay next weekend as J-M is in a play this weekend by Steve Gooch; Female Transport, about 6 women convicts sent off to Australia. Dom will be giving her first lecture in an amphitheater during the month of April. She’s looking forward to it! – Brave girl. She knows her subject well so there should be no problems.

Did we save a life?

One of Rob’s colleagues is ill and as he is in charge of the time table she left him messages at 5.30 and 6.30 this morning (he puts his phone on silence at night these days – can’t think why!).

At breakfast he phoned her up to let her know that she wasn’t working today anyway and to ask how she was. It seems she has flu and was dosing herself up with paracetamol and a cold/flu cure which is popular here, it also contains paracatemol, as well as another medicine we don’t know. As soon as he put the phone down he realized what she had said and sent her a message telling her she was double dosing on paracetamol. She didn’t know it was dangerous at all and thanked him.

We then forwarded the number to the anti-poison center (first page of telephone directory in France), so that she could check whether she was okay. She contacted us a few minutes later to say that they had instructed her not to take anymore paracetamol for at least 15 hours. She lives alone, had she continued to dose herself up every four hours goodness knows what would have happened.

 In France you have to go to the pharmacy to buy all medicines. If you buy paracetamol and the cold cure together they always advise you not to take them at the same time. I hope that everyone knows how dangerous paracetamol can be.

From Wikipedia:

 “The onset of analgesia is approximately 11 minutes after oral administration of paracetamol, and its half-life is 1–4 hours. While generally safe for use at recommended doses (1,000 mg per single dose and up to 4,000 mg per day for adults), acute overdoses of paracetamol can cause potentially fatal kidney, brain and liver damage and, in rare individuals, a normal dose can do the same. The risk may be heightened by chronic alcohol abuse. Paracetamol toxicity is the foremost cause of acute liver failure in the Western world, and accounts for most drug overdoses in the United States, the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand”

Bits and Pieces

Recently, we’ve had snow, warm spring weather and now we’re back to cold with the threat of snow. Although we seem to be in winter still, we’re only a week away from spring. Where has the time gone?

On Monday in town I saw a hollyhock in flower.

Last week there was a small earthquake locally – it didn’t wake us up.

I watched “The Lake House” on Sunday evening. Lovers corresponding to each other from different time zones – just the kind of film I like!

Just finished “Last Night at Twisted River” in French. Dom is going to lend me it in English next time she and J-M come to visit. I’ll review it on Still Learning when I’ve finished the second reading.

Findus France have announced their recent troubles as a “problem with labelling”.

Geese

This morning a flock of geese flew over. I heard them before I saw them, flying in the clear blue sky in a ‘V’ formation.

All of a sudden I was transported back to over 30 years ago when I lived on the farm. Flocks of geese would arrive to make short work of the new shoots of wheat. Come harvest time there would be quite a bald patch in the corner of the field. I used to go out for a walk with my collie, Elkie. Although she wasn’t trained to herd sheep, she definitely had the herding instinct and would go down onto her tummy and shuffle silently towards the geese. Then she would wait for my command, struggling to stop her tail wagging. “Sedemoff!” (send them off) meant that she had permission to rush at them barking and they would rise into the air, a noisy cloud of surprised geese.

For a little while I had a lump in my throat, Elkie is long gone, the farm is no longer a farm and I live in a different country.

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.