This cold weather makes us crazeeee

"STICK 'EM UP, FURRY MAN!!!!"


CUPBOARD LOVE?????

"NOW THAT'S WHAT I THINK OF THIS ROTTEN WEATHER"

Sean penn or Harvey Milk?

Let's talk movies. This years must-see's have got to be Milk and Slumdog Millionaire. Alot of you may already have seen them, but not me. I saw clips of both, and I must say that Sean Penns performance is splendid, can't wait to see the film. I'll bet he wins his Oscars that he's been nominated for hands down! Talking of milk, does anyone, apart from babies, small kids and me, actually like it neat? I get goosebumps remembering being forced to drink sour warm milk with a thick kind of skin on top at school, (urrrgghh!), in miniature bottles that had been left out in the sun all morning!! How times change. Not only do kids not get milk at school anymore, but you'd get the chop from health and safety for not putting it in the fridge! If only it were like that when I was at school.....maybe I'd like milk today........Or maybe this film will make me have a change of heart.

Freezing cold weather on the way

Time to get the ear muffs and bottom warmers out again!! Just when you think it's all over the snow and ice is coming back this weekend, oh lordy. Batton down the hatches, pour yourself a good glass of wine, put on a good movie and sit down in front of a roaring fire, (or radiator depending on your situation). Here in France it's not due to be quite as cold as in the UK, so for all you lot in the Blighty, take care on the roads and keep warm, or you could end up like my mate on the up there!!

Kansas Bacon belly bomb big hit?

I've been reading about the new "hot sausage" in the USA, Kansas I think, called the Bacon Belly thingammygig. A sausage wrapped in bacon, with bacon & spicy sauce in the middle? It is apparently causing a bit of a stir. Clever that, to invent sausage and bacon out of sausage and bacon! It actually sounds a bit like the " bandaged toes", (sausages wrapped in bacon), that us brits have been having at christmas with roast turkey for years. But I guess if you can make a bob or two out of something sooo simple, then why not?.......Why on earth didn't I think of that??? Oh well, back to the drawing board....

Don't sell it, shell it

I can only assume that since the recession began the only thing people are buying is petrol. Was it 25 billion in profits that Shell announced this morning? That's alot of mazooma. It' crazy really as the price of petrol is so high, well it is in the UK but here in France it is beginning to come down, it is, shall we say, affordable. Today in France it's not the recession everyone's worried about, no, today is national strike day. I haven't the foggiest just what they're striking for, and I'm not entirely convinced that they do either! So, there's no post, no public transport, and no school teachers. The school thing we're used to , I think my eldest must have had at least 3 weeks off school in the past couple of years due to strikes. Why can't they strike during the holidays?? And also, why do I still have to pay for the school bus and canteen when they "shut down"?? Between that and jour de ferié, (bank holidays), long weekends there's little time left to study. Any excuse for a booze-up! Could anyone enlighten me on these queries I have......
1. Why don't spiders hurt themselves when they fall off a wall?
2. Do birds find it hard to fly in high winds?
3. How do flies find their way home?
4. Why do mosquitoes only bite you in the dark when your trying to sleep?

Any thoughts?

No regrets

Afternoon all. Thanks to delphine for the comment, I was beginning to think I was alone here! I've been thinking about the cruise liner bit, and trying to remember some of the funny comments that people make, or made, on board the ship. Once the captain was inspecting a burst pipe with water spilling everywhere, when a lady came running up to him crying "captain, captain! There's water pouring down the stairwell!!", to which the captain calmly replied, "madam, you only need to worry if there's water going UP the stairwell!". One person once asked me, "does this elevator go up AND down?"....I have fond memories of the times when real down-to-earth celebreties came down to the depths of the ship, to the crew bar, (where they are not normally allowed), and performed especially for us. I remember Petula Clarke singing "Down Town" for us, then she sat and drank a can of beer with us, (out of the can!), a real nice lady. And Paul Daniels came "down town" to show us some tricks, to this day I still have no idea how he got the watch off of the wrist of the person sitting next to me....but then again, that probably was a few bottles of wine into the evening!! We worked relatively hard, and we partied even harder, and there was always plenty of time for shore leave. I think my favourite place I visited was Alaska, so much to do there, a mixture of sunshine, snow and big brown bears that love to steel your picnic!! Mexico was nice too, there are some great restaurants in Acapulco. Carlos 'n' Charlies was always a favourite and, oddly enough, I came accross a shirt that I bought from there all those years ago, and I just noticed that on the label, just under the logo, it's marked, "Wash when dirty", no kidding!! Anyway, enough of all that, although I reckon I'd rather be sitting under that mexican sun right now, and not in the freezing cold here in France.....Or would I???

My new CV, give us a job job

Hello again! I've just applied for a job. A job teaching english to french companies. I'm not a qualified teacher, but I do speak, read and write pretty good english...I should do after 44 years experience!! Anyway, it's just the basics for people to be able to get by, how hard can that be? I've taught english to people before but not as a job, just in my spare time. Mind you that was 18 years ago! I suppose you could say that I've had the last 15 years teaching english, as I've taught my kids to speak, read and write it, and the eldest is 15. I went back to school for a couple of hours yesterday to learn how to write my CV "the french way", they consider the english way far too long and boring, they just want to get down to the nitty gritty asap. Well I can tell you it was some mean feat trying to get 27 years of work onto one A4 sheet, (as a well travelled person, I've had too many jobs to count!). Yes I've travelled and worked and worked and travelled, pretty much all over the world, on cruise liners and in hotels mainly IT WAS GREAT!!.....and then I had kids, and that was the end of that. Don't get me wrong, I love them to bits, and anyway Im far too old to be burning the candle at both ends like I used to. Oh well, wish me luck in my quest for fame and fortune, and watch this space, this time next year I'll be a millionaire!!!!

I'm back!!

Hello there, I've been away for a bit, sorry to all you hundreds of readers that missed me!....Not. Seriously though, I think my whole family has gone down with the plague, there's some weird stuff going around at the moment, and it goes through anyone in close proximity faster than the TGV goes through tunnels!! It's this odd weather, you know. The day before yesterday it was 10 degrees in the morning, but very windy. By lunchtime, the wind turned into a storm and it poured down with rain. Ten minutes later it started to snow! I'm not talking sleet here, I'm talking huge snow flakes. By 2pm it was sunny. How weird is that?? Hope the weather is better wherever you are. Did anyone see Dancing On Ice last night?? I don't think I've ever laughed so much at Todd Cartys performance!! He was trying so hard, but then he stumbled and went carreering out of control and completely off the set, leaving his partener dancing on her own. It reminded me of a Norman Wisdom film!! I'm not entirely sure if his partner actually realised, at first, that he was missing........From one extreme to the other, wasn't "Little Ray" brilliant, reckon he's got it in the bag. Yes, I know, we live in France but we still have english tv. But we do have french tv too, except that none of us like it. If you're into badly directed live tv and constant re-runs of "The Love Boat" and "Hart To Hart", then french tv is for you, sadly it's not my tasse de the, (cup of tea for those who do not speak francais). On that subject, a funny story when we went back to England last October, (for the first time in 10 years, I might add, what a shocker! But that's another story). I went to buy a lucky dip lottery ticket which in France is called a flash. Well, I don't need to explain the look of horror on the salesgirls face when I asked if I could have a flash for tonight!! "You don't want to go round saying that too freely!", she quickly remarked. Oooops.....

Rain, rain go away

Not feeling too chipper today. I've caught my daughters cold, something I've managed to dodge quite well recently, but alas, my time has come. It's raining again! I am soooo looking forward to the hot summers days and warm evenings on the terrace coming back, I guess we all are. Talking of coming back, what a relief to hear that the young 15 year old girl, who ran off with the 49 year old man she met via the internet, is on her way home! It' a difficult thing being a parent these days, and I bet hers are ecstatic. The internet is a wonderful thing, but it can be hard trying to warn children of the dangers as well, as us grown-ups all know. Yippee, just got an enquiry for our gite, which we rent out during the summer. Business is a little slow this year due to the economy crisis, but it looks as if it will start to pick up now. It's a lovely gite which we renovated ourselves, situated in a great part of France, so if anyone out there is interested I'll send the web site!!!! A little poem that my son gave to me on a piece of paper as big as a postage stamp, (he writes very small), copied out of a "Horrid Henry" book...
"Dear old wrinkely mum,
don't be glum,
'cause you've got a fat tum,
and an even bigger bum,
ho ho ho hum,
love from your son!" That made me giggle...hee,hee. Until next time...

And a new day dawns

If there are any americans popping in, way to go Barack!  What a touching ceremony, and everything went just as planned.  Although I didn't envy the majorettes in those little outfits in that freezing cold weather.  My children complained almost all the way through, they couldn't quite grasp that it was an important event in history; "important for the americans maybe, but we're english!!", is all they kept saying.  I'm finding it a little difficult to concentrate this afternoon as the children don't have school on Wednesday afternoons, and they have done nothing but argue!  Talking of school, I was very shocked last night when my daughter, who is preparing an "all about me" card for open day, came home from school and said that her English teacher, (who is French), told her that she cannot write "apple tart" on her card as you can't say that in English!  She suggested that she replace it with "apple PIE", as the word "tart" was inappropriate.  I politely suggested that should she look in her dictionary she would find that tart and pie are not the same thing, and that any inappropriate use of the word was in fact slang.  What do they teach teachers these days?  It's not like it's a technical mechanical term that a secondary school teacher would not need to know!!   Anyway, If anyone should know about apple tart it's the French, I could bet my boots if I went to a restaurant and asked what the dessert of the day was, it would be apple tart every time!!!.................Did you hear the one about the shetland poney with a sore throat?...He was a little hoarse!! Ok, Ok I'm signing off for now, until next time........  

America expects

Hello there, I'm back.  Today is the day, only 7 hours to go for Barack Obama and, of course, Bush.  I imagine that they will be the most painful and long 7 hours of his life.  Scarey thought to have so much responsability.  I've got my stars and stripes flag out ready, I did consider wearing red, white and blue today, but decided that was going a bit too far, especially for a Brit, so I opted for my "I love the USA" knickers so as nobody will see them!  I shan't be able to see all the event, though, as it co-insides with  "Neighbours", (sad person...).  BBC will get good ratings this evening, I'm sure,  but it's a good job the inauguration isn't on at the same time as Eastenders, otherwise they wouldn't have aired it!  Let's hope that all goes smoothly for the Obama family, (or Bahama as my daughter puts it), he seems like a good guy.  Nothing exciting has happened today, except the dog decided to take a bath in the compost heap and, being a small WHITE ball of Bichon Frise, this was not a good idea.  I'm so glad I decided to have white tiles on the floor......NOT.  I've been looking for a part-time job.  I'm well travelled, (used to work on cruise liners, those were the days!), fluent in French, also speak a little German and Spanish, outgoing, motivated, dynamic and terribly modest!  How hard can it be?  In France if you don't have the diploma, you don't get the interview.  I even applied for a job in a bakers shop selling cakes, but I don't have that all important piece of paper saying that I have a masters degree in sales, so my CV went in the bin!  Ah the French......everything needs a "dossier", everything takes "15 days" to get done, (unless it's July or August when everything shuts down).  You can't get hold of anyone between 12 and 2pm everything is closed, in fact it's a really good time for crime as the gendarmes are all taking a siesta!!  I sometimes ask myself why I live here.........ah yes, I remember.....the wine is good!  Well better go now and get practicing the Star Spangled Banner!  Speak again soon.

I'm here, if anyone's interested!!

Hello, is there anybody out there?  This is my first time blogging, so forgive my beginners nerves.  Today is rainy, dull and very windy.....in England, here in France it's rainy, SUNNY and very windy!  Here I am not doing all the boring daily things I normally do at this time, no today I've begun blogging.  Maybe this is fate, maybe my fortune lies in writing.....but then again, maybe not.  I was thinking of applying for that Best Job In The World in Queensland Aussie, but somehow I can't see myself sporting a tight wetsuit and snorkle, plunging into the great deep of the reef!!  Do they accept 40 somethings, (actually 30 somethings, i'm counting down since hitting the big 40), with hubby and three offspring in tow??  I don't think so, I do, however, think I need to get a bit more out of life at the moment.  I mean, there are only so many conversations you can have with a dog!  I should never have given up work, it's catch 22, can't live with it, can't live without it!  So, I've done the housework and washing, no 3 child is sick in bed, (no's 1 and 2 are at school), the dog wouldn't answer me this morning, (think he's sulking because I told him I like cats better), dinner's prepared, there's no shopping to do so i'm waaaay ahead of myself.  Only 7 and1/2 hours to go until eveyone comes home!  This is why Im blogging.  It's coming to something when you spend half the day writing to yourself.  Hold up..the phone's ringing,(maybe a job offer, a cash offer, something exciting!!).........No chance, wrong number, curses.  Going to stop blabbing now and find something else interesting to write about next time, so bye for now and watch this space, you never know what might come next!!!Byeeeeeeeeee!