I'm at home

I'm at home by the way. So I won't be writing anything for the next two weeks, I'll be busy eating as much chips and gravy as possible. So I'm sorry. But if you're anywhere near Adlington then come and see me. I'll be in the pub!

Pub Quiz in Mulligans

On Monday night we finally went to the quiz at the Irish bar in Le Mans with the Nixes. I say finally because we've been talking about going since September, but until now it hadn't actually happened!

It is an English quiz run by an ESL (English as a Second Language) school, and the questions are repeated afterwards in French. We called ourselves the Eggheads, but the irony was lost.

After each round the scores are updated and put up on the screens around the bar.




Our quiz sheet


The Guinness birds on the ceiling


Ignore my funny eyes - I've had 2 pints of cider at this point!


The scores

 More than 30 teams took part, and the bar was packed. And embarassingly.... we came last. We left in shame before the prizes for 1st, 2nd and 3rd were given out! No, we actually left early to run to Macdonalds, a rare treat these days but we really did come last!

We're setting off for home at about dinnertime tomorrow (I managed to blag my way out of my lesson 13.35-14.30!), and we'll arrive home tomorrow night, hopefully in time for a drink in le Cardwell!

Please God, make the weather behave itself until we get home!

Pain (of the sounds like pan and means bread variety)

"S’ils n’ont pas de pain, qu’ils mangent de la brioche!"

"If they don't have bread, let them eat brioche (yes that's right not cake!)

Quote from Marie Antoinette - although most modern day historians insist that she never said it anyway

Baguettes are such a French stereotype, but a stereotype that is (at least in the countryside) completely and utterly true. It's a common occurence to see people above the age of thirty walking through town with a baguette or five under their arm. Sometimes if they are feeling particularly sterotypical, they do this whilst on a bike, but never, unfortunatly whilst wearing a stripey top or a beret. (I have never seen a beret in this country)

I may not have made an awful lot of progress on the language side but I now feel that my time in France has been worthwhile because I have learnt the difference between une baguette and un pain.

A baguette is stick of bread that is fairly small in girth - like one you would expect to find a hot dog on. There are two types of pain, one is thicker than a baguette, more like the size of the bread at Subway and the other is a loaf (right)

One of the kids actually asked me a question about bread a few weeks ago. He said: "You know the bread in England? Can you buy baguettes?"

To which I replied, "Yes we can in supermarkets, but there aren't as many as in France". He followed up this question by saying, "Do you buy bread in..." and made a slicing gesture with his hands. I nodded and said "Yes everyone buys bread in slices". The look of disgust on his face was classic!

French drivers

I don't know what GB cars have been doing to create such a bad impression of our nation as drivers, but the French seem terrified of driving near us sometimes.

Just half an hour ago, we had pulled onto the country road we use to drive home for lunch, and there was a French car driving strangely slow in front of us, at about 5mph. We were confused for a split second, and dawdled behind him. Then he put his indicator on, and pulled over to the side of the road near a house. We assumed he must have been looking for this house.

But oh no, we drove past him and sped up again, and ten seconds later he set off behind us again. He just didn't want to be in front of us (in case we went into the back of him perhaps?).

It's like that all the time. Usually we will be driving pretty fast on a country road, and a car will come up behind us, overtake us, and then stay in front of us. They don't even want to go faster than us, they must just think we as a nation are scatty drivers, and we'll suddenly brake - or we won't brake and they'll go into the back of us.

The French (around here at least) do seem very relaxed about overtaking in general. People will overtake us, even when there's a ten tonne lorry approaching in the other direction. The lorry must seem a safer bet than an English person....

And once we were even overtaken on a country road by a ten tonne lorry. Nutters, the lot of them!

WARNING: Misery Alert

Feeling miserable today. I just want to finish and get home for good now. There is the small consolation that I finish for half term next Friday and we're spending two weeks at home, but I will want to stay, and I'll be really upset when we have to leave for France again.



So when I'd finally managed to get Dave's arse out of bed (!), I coerced him into going for a little walk. It took me three quarters of an hour to get him dressed, another five minutes to push him out of the front door, and he complained and dragged his feet the whole way!

So I took loads of miserable ugly boring pictures to reflect my mood, which ironically made me feel a bit happier.



 This is our post pox. They don't have them on front doors in France, they're usually on the gate or wall.

 This is the field across from our house....

  ... and the dirty stream. It looks like someone's poured milk into it.

  I climbed a telegraph pole. I'm grimacing because Dave was taking ages and I was about to fall.

  Someone's gate.

 Dead allotments. 

The French equivalent of a grid.