no news ...

well, been days since my last post and guess what ? Nothing - and I mean NOTHING - has happened. Things have been oh so quiet and oh so still. The snow has all melted. The ice has all gone. Temperatures are back up to higher than the seasonal norms. Presidential election smear campaigns have begun in earnest. Doubt that Sergolene R will be strong or evil enough to stand up to the nasty Sarko challenge facing her. Everywhere she turns the Sarko camp is ready to pick up on anything and everything she does and make sure that the press know about it immediately. Gregoire currently struggling with copper elbows as he learns how to extend the central heating system. Scarlet had her first dentist visit hier. She rather enjoyed the drill, saying it tickled her teeth, confirming my heretofore held suspicions that our daughter is weird.

thaw meets frost equals sheet ice

so it started thawing nicely in the bright afternoon sunshine. Our icicles started to melt and the departemental road gritters and snow ploughs passed by, gritting and sanding and whirring away as they do. All is well thought I, by this eevning it will be clear. Ha! Not so fast - thought the evil weather pixie. Instead the temperature plummeted from +1°C this afternoon to -4°C now ...and it's still dropping. So all that lovely melted snow (that'll be water then) is turning to a flat glistening sheet of hard ice.

Let it snow, let it snow...

It's snowing. Finally. After days of warnings and tales from the old folk, it started snowing this afternoon, and hasn't stopped since. It is barely settling, but who cares? Looks really pretty for the moment, and it isn't really that cold. We did an IKEA run yesterday and managed to get round the store without arguing and without initiating divorce proceedings. Pretty good for us. I think it is because we were awed into submission by the vastness of the retail park. Have we become so rural, or is it that retail parks have got bigger? Who knows, but it scared me into silence. We stuck to the list, bought what we need to and skulked back to the car. We even had to hit an oyster bar on the way home to make ourselves feel better. Ikea as retail therapy? I think not.

Wednesday 24 January update

Has now been snowing for 24 hours and is getting thicker. Stopped briefly overnight long enough to freeze and make the roads all skiddy and dangerous. Is now falling thick and fast and furious. Scarlet wants to go to her friend Claire's to build a snow man, snow woman, snow dog and snow cat ....all in a little snow house. Horse riding is cancelled as was the schol bus. Hmph.

Making a spectacle of themselves

Instead of doing the traditional dinner dance, something aimed more at the parents than the children, we (as in the pre and primary school PTA ) decided to hire professional performance artists Ixigrec. A burlesque magic show. On a Sunday afternoon in late January. The 2 'comediens' performed their hearts out. They kept their audience of young children (aged 2 to 12) enthralled and giggling and clapping and participating, and the associated audience of parents equally enthralled etc.
We the PTA members did cakes and drinks in the interval (some nice home baking - scrummy squishy choclate brownies and sponge cakes and Grégoire's now famous poppy seed cake) and all in all the afternoon was quite lovely and a great success. Felt very old fashioned.

winter blues

or should that be winter greys? This January seems to have been nothing but shades of grey. Dark mornings, grey afternoons, dark evenings, pitch black nights. Misery reigns. St Fraimbault's first suicide of the year earlier on today - an 84 year old man who just got too depressed to carry on decided to shoot himself. His daughter found him. And so the bell doth toll.

Cattle Grid - the boys from Rouen

Pascal, Pierre, Pierre, Dominique, Christian : the boys from Rouen (via Perpignan, Basque country, Brittany and Italy) who dipped their toes in Ireland and its culture and its music long ago and now have nearly a quarter of a century of playing together (with new additions along the way) behind them and just can't stop the music. And oh how they play. And how the audience love them. Check out Pierre's blog for news of the boys and their gigs and shows and rehearsals. Bodhran, uilleann pipes, guitar, banjo, whistle, flute, clarinet, guitars.....and, of course, voice ....just fantastic. Once a year we invite them to play chez Papillon, every year it is a full house. Party on boys.

fiddle dee diddle dee dee

They strummed and fiddled and whistled and puffed and sang and twanged and the joint was hopping. I danced due to excessive Guinness consumption throughout the day, and tout le monde had bags of fun... . Papillon was a-buzzin to the sounds of Cattle Grid playing and at the end of la soirée the tell-tale effects of Guinness and Jamesons and Bushmills were being seen and felt..."je t'adore" slurred young Guillaume after downing 1 or 2 pints too many "vous etes trop coooooool"..he then hugged and kissed and hugged and kissed everyone and everything in sight - male, female, animal, vegetable and mineral - and sashayed off into the night. Grégoire's Irish stew and hot bread and butter pudding was much savoured, my irish coffees caused a stir (and yet more swaying). To be repeated. But not before the autumn. Best quotes from the evening include "I never knew Irish coffee had alcohol in it" "ooooh Guinness is quite strong really isn't it?" and "I really really really love ya" - repeat these often and with a heavy slur and you get the picture.

A good night was had by all - I think. Come again Pascal, Pierre, Christian, Pierre and Dominique...the crowd loved you (as do we).

sexy by name...

so there we were idly whiling away time when old Mr Sexis walks in (pronounced sexy) the bar for a chat. Poor man. What a name to have carried all his life. He is 94, about 4 foot 8, has a limp, stoops badly, is deaf in one ear and partially deaf in the other and has a stutter. He is also very endearing and a real old charmer, but I can't imagine he has ever lived up to his name.

time rights itself

overnight the clock righted itself and 7am rang out and l'horloge showed 7. Maybe, as you say Maylin, the little wrinkle in time has been ironed out...

Time stands still - almost

Panic in St Fraimbault. The church rang the usual angelus at midday …and then bizarrely the bells started chiming forth once more at 1 o’clock. Usually it would just be the single chime for one o’clock. But no, the bells rang and rang. The population looked confused. A marriage? A christening? On 6th January? Unlikely…Maybe a death? No – no-one had received the black outlined papillons (death notices) through their door….Perhaps a link with the epiphany? But no- everyone knows the religious offices too well. So what was it? The crowds gathered and looked in awe at the church clock. Standing tall and proud in the middle of the village the church clock and bell tower showed the true reason. It was not showing 1 heure, but rather midi. The big hand and the little hand linked together as if in holy matrimony – and thus St Fraimbault had 2 middays. And then time carried on as normal. How lucky are we? The streets have been alive with talk of what went wrong …will YOU remember what you were doing the day St Fraimbault stepped out of time with the rest of France?

New Year's Eve in Papillon

Our new year's eve repas Saint Sylvestre was a huge success, if a tad knackering ....our last customers left at 1.30am and by the time was had cleaned, washed up, relaid tables, washed coffee machines and cashed up etc it was the wee small hours. Still, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves, the timing worked impeccably - I served champagne to everyone then we took the desserts out and put the last plate in front of someone just as midnight ticked into place. Everyone jumped up and kissed everyone else (which was a bit manic and very loud), then the English customers linked arms and the French customers joined in and Sabrina and I got caught up and suddenly we were doing auld lang syne. The French loved it and thought it was a great tradition, the Brits were dead pleased that they had 'introduced' something to the French, and for their part thought the kissing everyone was fab. The menu was delish (bien sur) - from warm toasts and my killer calva cocktails to clam and crab chowder passing by foie gras and a glass of pommeau then scallops and legumes - a little trou normand to lighten the stomach - and back to fillet steak tournedos with a 5 berry sauce, then normandy cheese and salad, and a trio of desserts to die for (chocolate marquise, posh bread and butter pudding, lemon and grand marnier mousse glacé) served with champagne, rounded off by cafe and petit fours. Yummmmo. Everyone very full and happy. Even the 2 surprise vegtarians that Grégoire had to improvise for. Keeps him on his toes and teaches Lones the real stuff. Pats on the backs all round à la fin.

conceptual stuff

And so 2007 starts and we leave the fetes behind us. We – for our sins or otherwise – paid a visit to Evreux and Paris this week. Evreux to see Gregoire’s maman and papa and Paris to get our visas for Kenya. We took advantage of the forced Kenya embassy visit to ‘do’ Paris …..Scarlet at 7 is the perfect age right now, so each time there we try to top up her memory banks. The musee de quai branly (musée des arts premiers) was open and there was no queue (unheard of) so we took our chance and went to see the current exhibition (D'Un regard l'Autre – a history of European conceptions of Africa, America and Oceania). Fantastic. Loads of adventurers and explorers and anthropologists stuff and drawings and sculptures and the like – plus some rather gorgeous Picasso Gauguin Matisse Rousseau and Vlaminck thrown in to boot…brilliant, we passed 2 and a half hours there without realising it. Came away with that lovely scrubbly feeling of wonderment. Then hopped the metro and zipped up to the old Sacre Coeur…only to find the funicular railway closed for repairs, so we had to climb the 325 steps with our own legs. Aaaargh. Horror horror. Still, worth it once at the top as that view is always so stunning. It was made better by a harpist strumming away at the foot of the cathedral steps. Trop musical. Then we wondered through the textile and fabric market and Grégoire reminisced about his grandmother (a couturiere) doing all her fabric shopping here. Lunched in Montmartre, headed back to the Kenyan embassy to collect our visas then meandered through the streets to the Gare St Lazare. Fab little day out. Saw some old good friends Bruno et Corinne in Evreux and caught up with gossip and news – Scarlet and their 3 girls (Margolise, Eileen et Cassandre) played until they dropped, whilst we grown ups drank wine and champagne and ate langouste and chocolate and laughed and giggled and got sillier and sillier. Most of our Evreux time was with Monique and Jean (les beaux parents) who fed us masses and made us sleep late. Even demon child Scarlet slept until 9 every morning. Ahhh bliss. We made them dig out all the old family photos (from turn of 20th century onwards) and found some fascinating pictures and letters. Gregoire greedily grabbed all car and moto related images and info and will probably spend the next few weeks researching and googling for info before contacting fellow classic petrol heads for further info. I contented myself with absorbing all the old photos and trying desperately to work out family connections. Turns out there is a family connection with St Fraimbault, which is most odd and strangely coincidental..we just have to track down the family now…..