If you can't beat them, join them

This afternoon France beat Scotland at le rugby. I did not really watch the match, but it was on. I thought that I had better watch the match because the French love le rugby. Even my female French “teacher” gets very, very excited when she talks about rugby. Her and her husband were invited to visit the Queen. Something about a rugby match not at Tweekinam but at a smaller ground, a beeg car and someone in robes. And they say understanding French is hard. Pfaff!
Anyway back to the potager (plot , gettit?). A flier inviting me to attend the “Assemblee generale du Cardie” for l’assebmlee generale ordinaire which was taking place at the local primary school in the next road to mine.
The agenda was:
Rapport moral
Rapport financier
Montant de la cotisation 2009-02-15 Election des members du bureau.
Election des membres du bureau

The meeting was due to start about 10 minutes after the match finished. Thankfully I togged up warm. When I reached the school, there were 6 people huddled inside the door which led to a very large room. A bit like a concrete garage, where the kids probably do assembly, gym and art judging by the contents of the room.
No heating of course as it is the school holidays!
The start time was 6pm, but being France people were slow to appear. Eventually the meeting started with an audience of 30 or so citizens.
Before it started, everyone had to shake hands with or kiss everyone else. I also paid 8 euros to join the association. I now have a cardboard membership card.
There were no surprises at the meeting. The committee have to step down and no one was keen to take up a vacant post. I said that I was too new and didn’t speak French well enough.
After the meeting the small quiche and the pizza slices (cold) appeared and the wine was opened. My friend Rene was there with his wife J, (who is in the choir with me) so I was not alone. I spoke to a few people and found out that I was supposed to attend the next meeting on 5th March (I had thought it was just for the new committee), which would not be in the school, but in a little chalet somewhere near. Did I know it? I said that I did not know it, but would follow the crowd on the night. Do the French do this kind of sarcastic humour?
I can now look forward to a range of organised activities over the year. These will range from communal meals, to a car treasure hunt, belote (card game which was not a success last year, so why do it again??), cinema show (on a local topic held in the school (Last year’s local theme of mountains was a great success), etc. If I have any ideas of what they could do, I have to tell the committee.
The three questions most asked of me were, How long have you lived here?, Which part of the commune do you live in?, Are you married?
Now I just have to contain my excitement until 5th March. Hallelujah!
Oh! As an afterthought, the French could not understand the concept that we do not have similar local area community associations organising events for their community, in the UK. In the UK no-one talks to anyone else unless they have kids. They only organise community events for royal weddings, funerals etc