La Bloggerie

The dogs are getting more exercise now that we have no guests. They have been enjoying having the freedom to run the full length of the garden, and patiently wait to have a fuss made by the children crossing the bridge into the school at the far end.

There was a games lesson in progress this morning in the sports field next to us as I walked down with the dogs. A class of 12-year olds were running around the perimeter of the football pitch, carefully avoiding cutting the corners where the teacher had thoughtfully placed orange cones.

Now, at the school in Colchester that I taught at we had an excellent PE faculty with a deservedly good reputation and I had seen them at work on many occasions. I therefore imagined that the jogging was the warm-up preparation for something a little more demanding.

However, about 20 minutes later I noticed that the same children were still just running round the pitch, only now the teacher, who to her credit was running round with them, blew her whistle every 30 seconds or so. The children duly stopped running, stood in little groups chatting for 10 seconds or so until the whistle went again and off they trotted once more.

It was then that a certain jealousy kicked in. For starters, back in England a Year 7 class would have had a minimum of 30 students, not the 20 obedient souls I was now watching. And what about lesson planning, targets, National Curriculum levels and differentiation? And where were the half dozen ne’er-do-wells with a note from their Mum saying they couldn’t possibly be made to go outside?

The entire one hour lesson followed the same pattern, as indeed did the following lesson with a class of 14 year olds and a different teacher.

Even the dogs come up with more interesting ways to exercise than that.

My preferred seat on the flight between France and Stansted is usually a window seat, just forward of the wings.  You get the best views there, and it’s also easier to avoid the endless procession of stewards selling food, drink, perfume and railway tickets on the Stansted Express. 

I also usually avoid putting my hand out for the Ryanier Inflight Magazine just in case I’m accidentally offering to purchase one of their scratch cards.

 But this month there is a very good reason to be taking the magazine – we’re in it!

It’s an article about buying a gite complex in the Charente, and in the belief that any publicity is good publicity we jumped at the opportunity.

I have yet to find out whether anything we said in the interview has made it into print, but since the article apparently states that both Liz and I were teachers, I’m not over hopeful.

When people ask us what we miss most about England we generally say that, apart from the children, very little.

If pressed I would say that I miss newspapers and magazines, maybe the grey skies, the traffic and the ridiculous pace of life, but that’s it. We genuinely feel lucky that we live in France.

 But we have just found something else – the National Lottery.  For some reason, as residents of France, we are not entitled to play the Lottery by standing order through our French bank.

 Now normally this wouldn’t particularly bother me.  The last time I bought a ticket was as one of a group of six languages teachers who suddenly decided that we wanted out and bought a ticket each, agreeing to share the proceeds.  Not one of the numbers on any of the six tickets came up.

But on Saturday came the draw that you dread to read about. We had all six numbers but no ticket.

They say you shouldn’t always use the same numbers and now we know why.

The prize of £4.5 million went to one ticket holder, who is even now blissfully unaware how lucky they are that we live in France.

September is here, the local children are back in school, and normally we expect some of the nicest weather of the year over the next few weeks.  The question everyone is asking is ‘How was it for you?’

In terms of bookings, we have had our best year yet, and have been flat out since early July.  It’s been a very Welsh summer too, with unprecedented numbers escaping the floods for the charms of the Charente.

The weather has been much better than last year’s abysmal summer but still a little too changeable for our liking.  Local people have a theory about why it has been a comparatively miserable couple of years.  It’s the moon that is to blame, apparently.

Local farmers and gardeners do everything according to the phases of the moon – “Not tonight Josephine, the moon is only in its third quarter.” 

You can buy diaries that are based on the lunar calendar that tell you when to plant your vegetables for a successful crop.  And weather forecasting is based on the same premise.

Apparently the reason for two successive poor summers is all down to there being 13 moons both this year and last year. 

Now call me a cynic, but they know well in advance how many moons to expect each year – why didn’t someone say back in January not to expect our usual sunshine this year? 

Though perhaps it is just as well they didn’t given the number of people that were booking their holidays with us at that time.