The rope

Last Tuesday I was sitting in my car in the public car park next to one of the primary schools that I teach at. Two mini buses arrived and after some manoeuvrings finally switched off their engines. There were two adults per bus and about 13 children aged around 4 years old, in total.

The tots wandered around aimlessly while the adults looked at a map, and waved their arms vaguely towards the town centre.


One of the adults then went back to one of the buses and came back with a length of blue nylon rope which was joined to a length of green rope. There were knots at regular intervals along the length of the rope.


Now I was parked with a fast flowing river behind me and on my right there was a bridge crossing the river.


Were they going to tie the children together and throw them into the river?


Everyone milled around a bit more, arms were waved and pointed and there was at last a feeling that something might actually happen.


Two adults each took the hand of two children. The remaining 2 adults took one end of the rope each and stretched it to full length, one at each end. Children then deployed themselves between the knots, on alternate sides of the rope. The convoy then moved off with no soundtrack from the Jungle Book. Progress was slow. It was okay for the adult at the back end of the line, they walked forwards. The adult at the front of the line walked backwards, facing the children.


By the time I returned about an hour later, the mini buses had gone, so I can only assume that the pushmepullyou had successfully completed its mission.

The brown stuff, a donkey back and things that go bump in the night

Just imagine it. you own a large building renting out flats to a number of people. No it’s not my building, but it is across the road from me. Since I bought my abode, the building across the road has had its walls resurfaced and painted. The French are known for their chic stylishness, so obviously it needs further decoration.

Qu’est-ce q’on va faire Pierre?
Laissons-nous le couvrir avec de la merde.
And so it came to pass that bits of wood framing appeared on the lower part of the façade facing the road.
Months passed. Roller shutters were fixed to the ground floor windows.
Nothing happened.
In May I return home from the UK and there is a panel of shit coloured plastic fixed on to the wall battons. Months pass and another panel appears.
Nothing happens, and there is a flurry of activity. Some smaller panels appear above the lower panels. This takes days.
A week later the panels are off again and black rubber or foam has been wrapped round the battens. There is also thick blue polystyrene sheeting behind the panels. The panels are replaced.
Nothing happens.
A month or so later there is a fortnight of activity, with 2 people now working on the job.
Then nothing happens.
This is what it looks like now.
Look out for it your next designs for living magazine. It’s bound to be up for an award.

The exciting thing is that there are still wooden battons ready and waiting for the brown lovelyness on that front wall.

Why is there a traffic jam outside my house? Well the council has finally begun to take action after the 4 road accidents. They have been trying plastic cone chicanes, electronic speed indication panels and at the moment we have a dos d'ane (a donkey's back) or speed bump to you, further down the road. The temporary traffic lights are the only thing that stopped the speeders though. It was amusing to see them whizzing down the road as usual at around 80kms per hour, ignoring the lovely new 30km signs. Seeing the red stop light just as they passed it. Some jammed on their brakes and reversed.

Earlier this year the owner of the building across the road installed posh metal roller shutters on the downstairs windows and a posh metal door shutter for the part of the building which is destined to become an office unit. Can you spot the white peugeot parked outside? Well some months back in the evening, I heard a bang. I ignored it. Then there was another bang. The lady who owns the peugeot had a white van and was trying to park it in the space where she usually parks her car. There were many more attempts and bangs, but she finally got it parked to her satisfaction. The next day I noticed that the nice door shutters are rather dented.

No doubt she reported her accident to the owner..... .

The next night she parked bonnet first. Look it's not my fault that it wasn't a man driving! I'm also almost certain the the van's bumper isn't touching the wall and that it is just a trick of the light or the angle of view.

Rock‘n’roll

Whilst en route to my bank soiree. I spotted something that made me think that I was seeing things. Of course I took a photo of the scene. Today’s online Depeche has this photo and story from the Tarn-et-Garonne region of France.

This is what I thought might happen in the situation that I saw, only in my case the results could potentially be much worse.
Remember I am on a steep hill which overlooks the Town. Across the main road there are houses built on more, steep hillside, which drops down very steeply to houses at the bottom of the hill.
I would think it bad enough waiting for the rumble of an earthquake (we are in an earthquake zone) and an area which has frequent rock falls due to heavy rain. But the people at the bottom of the hill have the houses above them, the hillside to fall on them, and as if that were not enough. There are these babies waiting in the wings.

I could not see anything other than their size and weight holding them in place. They are holding back yet more earth and hillside.
What would you put on your insurance claim form for your damaged car.
“Large stone fell onto car while I was parked in my driveway”.
I expect the house is owned by people from Paris or the Dordogne… or a Brit who thought that they had ordered some pebbles to surface their drive....

Hot stuff and French films

All of a sudden on Friday someone has decided to give us a blast of summer weather. Thankfully not as hot as the Australians are experiencing at the moment. I drove to LeClerc supermarket in 21 degrees C. It was all I could do to stop myself turning on the airconditioning. It is amazing how a burst of sunshine can lift the spirits and get the old arse in gear.
I had spotted that they had bargain fluorescent jackets at 2 for half the price that I had paid for one (just before it became law to keep them in the car for occupants in case of car breakdown on the road) and I now have 5 yellow and one orange jacket. They also had a special on warning triangles (which you must also have with you to deploy in case of accident). I now have 2 triangles. Perhaps I could start my own percussion band “Rigsby and the fluorescents”?
Most French music is really dire, so I would be coming in at the top end.
I believe that 2 triangles and jackets are compulsory car luggage in Spain, which is probably an hour or less drive south.
Spurred on by the sun’s golden glow, I decided to wash the stairs and to wash my car.
Washing small cars is much more fun than washing cars with big bonnets (the bit of the metal between the windscreen and the front number plate, before JNNR asks). In fact I was going to apply car polish / wax to the car, but I could not find any in amongst my supplies.

On Saturday evening there was nothing worth watching on the TV, so I unwrapped my DVD of “Jean de Florette”. I saw this film at the Glasgow Film Theatre when it first came out and of course its sequel “Manon des Sources”.
I also taped it from the TV onto video. Time to watch it on DVD then. Thank goodness for subtitles. The language spoken is not French as most of us know it, but a regional dialect.

Merde! I can feel a list coming on J
Top French films wot I have seen. In no particular order, probably.

1) Diva
2) Les Rippoux
3) Jean de Florette and Manon des Sources
4) Pauline at the beach (Pauline à la plage)
5) One deadly summer (l’été Meutrier)
6) Les Visiteuses
7) Cop au vin
8) Death in a French garden
9) Betty Blue (37 degrees 2 in the morning)
10) Romaud et Juilliette
11) Chocolat
12) Amelie
13) The hairdresser’s husband
14) Un moment d'egarement (A Moment of Distraction) remade later in the USA as “Blame it on Rio”
15)Trois hommes et un couffin (Three Men and a Cradle). Remade in the USA as “Three men and a baby”

I have a backlog of films to watch which may add to my “favourites” list

Pot Luck (L’auberge espagnole), Russian Dolls (Les poupées russes), The road to Corinth; The Breach; Pleasure party, Innocents with Dirty hands, The flower of evil, An Autumn tale, Le rayon vert, Indochine, A very long engagement, The nest, Le Boucher, Love etc.

My favourite films in languages “other” than English

1 My life as a dog (Mitt liv som hind) by Lasse Hallstrom
2 The postman (Il Postino)

Are there any other “”must see” French films? No pretentious crap please, just good story lines that merit repeat viewings.

14 October Tuesday 2008 – Safety first

My first walk into town for a long time. There are still lots of lizards darting about the garden. Here is a photo of one that stayed still long enough to be digitised.

The weather is glorious and as my hair is a mess (my nail varnish is chipped too), I decide to do some haircut pricing research. There are many hair salons to choose from, but I want cheap. Prices seem to range from 12 to 15 euros for a man’s cut. In one salon I could have my hair rearranged for 20 euros.
I am fed up, so I go into the first hairdressers that I passed. I get my hair washed and cut. I really just wanted it cut as I had only washed it 2 hours before. Anyway I sit very quietly in my grey open-fronted smock and rubber neck guard, while the lady snips, blows then trims away. It doesn’t take as long as it used to.
There is some debate as to how much to charge me and the shop staff settle on 10 euros (£8). There is a gents hairdresser up the stairs in the same building, so they probably don’t get many men going in.
I head towards my bank, but in the main square there is a road safety week going on. The place is heaving with gendarmes of every rank. The “Road safety village” as the large cordoned off area is called, is rammed with school children of various ages. They can put on a pair of special glasses and try and walk in and out of cones. They can go on a motorbike simulator, look at the drugs equipment and information stands, look at police motorcycles, test their reflexes etc etc. The two most interesting items were a machine that simulates what it was like to have a crash at 10kpm and another machine that simulates what it would be like in a car if it rolled over and over with you in it. Both of these of course indicating the importance of always wearing your seat belt. See the videos.

No prizes for guessing which is which :-)

I was also given a few goodies which included a one use breathalyser kit. Wait at least 15 minutes after you have been drinking and don’t smoke during the time that you are testing yourself as this could skew the results.
I collect my top up insurance credit card from the bank then head to the Casino to top up my caramel tea supply and a few other items.
S and I saw various types of “Flammekeuche” as menu options at the Irish pub last month, but we did not know what it was. Was it stir fry?
I spotted a packet marked Flammekeuche in Casino, so I bought it. It is like a pizza on thin, flat pitta bread.

Talking of bread, here is a photo of the olive bread

baked over wood that I like.

So now you know!