Moving pictures and a Bolt from the Blue-Ray

I have seen a lot of movies in my time, I think the first one was sound of music which my brother and I and two friends snuck into to watch at the Rex Cinema in a small fading Victorian coastal resort on the Isle of Wight, we watched it one and a half times before we were discovered and turned out but it was worth every minute of crouching in the dark. At school the nuns would dig out some old black and white film for the end of term, sitting in serried ranks cross legged on the polished parquet floors in our navy blue knickers. One year I remember watching something which I think was called The Red shoes; I can remember nothing of the plot except that it involved her pride and greed to possess the ruddy footwear and that the poor 1950’s beauty in the starring role seemed to be stuck into her ballet shoes and danced herself to death. Very sobering for a small child with limited experience, and I am sure cured all of us of any desire to have red shoes or do ballet for that matter. I can not imagine what the sisters were thinking of!

Cinema trips with my Father were of a much more grown up, the cinema a very plush Gaumont with gold baroque architraves and red velvet curtains on the boxes and an entire flotilla of cherubim and seraphim cavorting about the ceiling. The nuns would not have approved I fear. I always wanted to sit in a box, still haven’t done it yet and now I suspect most cinemas are multiplexes in England so if I ever go back I have lost my chance to watch a re-run of War and Peace in regal splendour. Our local cinema here is very twee, A tiny thing and awfully friendly. Tickets are 3 Euros in the school holidays, no need to sneak in without paying at that price, and everyone knows everyone and the entire audience sits in a clump in the middle leaving the rest of the small auditorium free for tourists and “Johnny no friends”, so that it looks as if they have been dropped from a great height into their seats or swept there by the cleaners .

These days most of my cinematic experience is home based. I suspect we may have one of the largest DVD collections in Brittany and it growing ungainly, I shall have to perform some judicious pruning before we are swamped even further with each new enticing release from Pixar or Disney. If I ever give up buying movies I suspect the entire industry might fall into recession. It is a great responsibility to carry on ones shoulders.

Sad to say many of the DVD’s we have did not lived up to their trailers or our expectations. At least that makes it easier to humanely cull some of them, but it is disappointing when something you see on a trailer turns out to be such a let down. Recently we have seen several movies which promised high flying comedy of a family kind only to reveal itself, once seen in total, as excruciatingly dull bar the scenes selected for the trailers themselves. I hate that when it happens. It is like biting into a cake only to find the cream is in fact artificial not fresh and the icing not chocolate by only coloured to look that way. I wonder is there a law one might invoke to save the consumer from such travesties or is it merely buyer beware and on my own head be it?
One film that has not fallen short of expectations is the new Walt Disney animation “Bolt”. I was all set for a mildly dire evening watching yet another disappointing kids DVD, albeit in glorious Blue-Ray( no, I don’t know what it is either but there you are it tells me on the box it gives me a pristine picture and theatre quality sound) starring Disney’s newest hero and was amazed to find it was really very good indeed. All of us loved it, even our resident theatre critic. I won’t spoil the plot, oh yes it has one honestly, but here is a trailer
http://video.google.fr/videosearch?q=trailer+Bolt&hl=fr&emb=0&aq=f#
so you can see for yourself. It is I think one of the rare family movies we will be watching again and again. So if you are looking for a little light relief for the school holidays do seek out this one it actually delivers more than it promises which is a pleasant change!

A book at bedtime.

Youngest and I are reading the Borrowers omnibus by Mary Norton as our bedtime story at the moment. We love it. It is nothing I hasten to add at all like the film starring Jim Broadbent, which is why I suspect it has captured the hearts of children for so long, it is far more believable and far more realistic, it holds both the harsh terror children feel at being small in a large world and the frustration of trying to live under someone else’s rules. The land of the borrowers is a world in which one can disappear and a land where anything is believable. I remember reading it at my son’s age and wishing desperately for it to be real, for them to be real. I made small shelters for them amongst the shrubbery in the garden and built furniture from cotton reels and left them lying about in odd corners , yearning for them to be retrieved by tiny invisible hands.
Is it still I wonder every child’s hearts desire as I remember it was mine, to live part of the stories they read and are read to? For a story and its characters to come to life? Do little girls still imagine themselves to be a princess stolen at birth by gypsies or boys see themselves as great heroes on horseback, galloping across the plains chasing Indians or is that all too politically incorrect now? Oh dear I do hope not!

Eldest who has gone beyond believing in fairytales has grown into the font of all knowledge about the film industry. She can name obscure actors and recite their entire careers at the drop of a hat. It is not unlike watching a movie with a Cannes film festival judge, “Ah yes” she will say as we catch a fleeting glimpse of some dark shadow darting across camera in a crowd scene, “Look! Of course that’s so and so, he was better, I think, as the small one legged Eskimo in such and such directed by so and so , although some would argue his appearance in the now banned blah blah blah was really his greatest triumph”. She can recite entire scripts after only one hearing ( great when we are travelling with her younger brothers, car journeys go much faster with her keeping them enthralled with her one man performance of “Lilo and stitch” or” Shrek one, two and three” complete with voices and music). She does not, I hasten to add, get it from me. I am hard pressed to remember anyone’s names let alone a cast of thousands.

Anyway as ever I digress, back to the world of fantasy meeting fiction, Eldest is for ever emailing me you tube clips for promising films which she thinks I will enjoy ( and obviously should buy as she wants to see them too). They are of a wide spectrum with a heavy emphasis on family films; she has for instance decided that although she wants to see Dark Knight or whatever the batman movie is called it is highly unsuitable for our suggestible and sensitive middle son who would have nightmares for weeks. Despite his constant pleading she has instituted her own censorship programme on our DVD collection and her suggested purchase list comes with appropriate comments like “Daddy would not enjoy this far too girly but I think we might” or “too much violence for the boys perhaps we might buy it (note the royal we!) And watch when they are in bed“. Sometimes she is so sensible and grown up it puts her parents to shame.

This months offerings have included several on a similar theme, which ,oh good and patient reader ,leads me back and links to my opening meanderings , that of stories engulfing readers and drawing them into their plots in a truly physical sense. This isn’t a new theme I know, after all look at Jimanji, (or if you are like me, don’t look at it far far too frightening) or the Never Ending story (and it really is never ending but half way through I was begging for it to finish).

The two top of her list though are far more subtle and less threatening by far than some, the first being Inkheart with Jim Broadbent again and Brendan Fraser has been voted thrilling but possibly unsuitable for those smaller family members of a nervous disposition. The unanimous favourite stars Adam Sandler ( whom we all agreed was wonderful in 50 first dates, only upstaged by a vomiting walrus ). We the selection committee, have watched all the you tube trailers and extracts, we have read the blurb, it has been approved by the family previewing and censorship board ( Eldest and I) and so tonight that is we are having the family premiere performance of , “Bedtime Stories” http://www2.disney.co.uk/DisneyDVDs/DVDs/bedtime_stories.jsp


Watch it and see what you think…and remember a good book and bring its words to life, and I think a good film can perhaps do the same for a good book?

ps I had a wonderful embedded link but it jsut won't work so I hope the one above will surfice instead..

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The illustration is one of the original line drawings from the first edition of the borrowers Homily in her kitchen, by Diana Stanley, 1952, for 'The Borrowers' by Mary Norton

I wanted to be me ( not Me-ed)

I have been mee me meed. Thanks to Fennie (http://corner-cupboard.blogspot.com/) who is , I fear, alas still avenging the departure of Loic the one legged gardener prone to catatonic episodes from this world, and is using meedom as a form of sadistic punishment. It is my fault he has gone, I stopped writing him. Well then here we go if I must pay for my sins, even if they are ones of omission I had better get down on my knees and start otherwise we shall still be here next christmas.

What are your current obsessions?

What ever makes you think I may have an obsession? Are you perchance obsessive yourself? You can get help I understand these days you know, its just a case of knowing where to look, now there you go you can obsessive over where to find help for obsessions that will keep you quiet for a while, there must be a blog in that someone surely?! An obsessive to me is someone who is constantly compelled to fluff cushions as soon as someone gets up, or has to have all the jars in the cupboard facing the same way, or put the corners of the newspapers straight. I once knew a woman who was totally obsessed with Tupperware. She kept everything in her kitchen in it, all colour coded to some bizarre system, very odd. It was like some manic form of lucky dip if you tried to find tea bags and didn’t know her system you ended up with gravy granules. No, I do not have obsessions.

I do have interests though, and that is a very different matter all together. I have several life long interests but I do not think they are all controlling, well not quite yet anyway. For instance I find old kitchen utensils hard to resist and am, at present, trying to reason with myself against the purchase of a sky blue vintage Spong runner bean slicer I have seen recently on ebay, something that is as my aunt would have said "a long felt want”. I also am a terror with books, our house has more books than the local library, when visitors come for the first time they tend to be rather overcome by the number, “ have you read them all?” they ask, a a strange question, of course I have, people don’t buy books for decoration surely? I am particularly prone to cookery books; they are a weakness of mine. I used to ferret about in charity shops and car boot sales in the UK and seek them out but today rely upon Amazon.fr. When I start cataloguing them by Dewey system or colour of spine then it will have become an obsession, now they just lurk all over the place like loitering literary refugees, a fact that implies that I am not truly obsessive at all.

Which item from your wardrobe do you wear most often?

Wardrobe? What wardrobe, one of the joys of living as a foreigner is that I am not confined by the social mores of dress so living in deep rural tranquillity I live in Jeans or trousers, I am not a skirt or dress person I hate shoes of all sorts but luckily since most of our friends are farmers wellingtons work very well. I have however found one is not expected to wear wellingtons to funerals which leave me somewhat scuppered on such occasions.

First spring thing?

Youngest has a rather fine collection of springs of various sizes including some old ones he dug out of the garden but I suspect you are talking printemps not bong bong so let us trill over the joys of nature in all her abundance. The sudden acid green awaking of the countryside, cherry blossom in the hedgerows and the joy of mornings lightening and evenings lengthening. Apple trees heavy with pink flower and the cuckoo in the woods.

What's for dinner?

Now lets see how pretentious can one be and get away with this sort of question I wonder?
We tend to eat lunch rather than dinner during the week so supper tonight will be Home made country Terrine with home pain complet made with flour from a local mill. I have recently gone back to bread making, tempted by the wide range of different flours one can get here and have been making pate since I first learned to cook. I used to make it in the UK because you could never get a decent pate de campagne only smooth liver pate which I don’t like but I make them here because it’s so therapeutic and simple.

Where are you planning to travel to next?

Well each day come rain or shine ( or both) I venture out on short forays to the far flung regions of my empire ( ie doing the school run or fetching and carrying offspring to various activities, or popping over to the farm to collect fresh milk and yoghurt) The next notable jot of travelling is I think going to be a jaunt down south to the camargue in southern France (http://www.travel.hickerphoto.com/camargue_provence_france_information.jsp) this summer en Famille. Please hear and take note that I am being very brave and noble about our abandoned plans to visit Italy again this year. I will not mention it again.

What on earth possesses you to blog and read blogs?

Ha, I do hope that gets you thinking! This is my question, the one that I have popped in to replace another one far, far to dull to write about ( see me me me rules at the bottom..) I used to dutifully blog everyday the tales of Un Peu Loufoque and Madame Grognonne Chronicles but have I think firmly put them to bed now. They may of course be somewhere else fighting their way through life’s bizarre and taxing events but at least they are, for now at least, not waking me at 4 in the morning demanding to be heard. Recently I have hardly blogged at all, I am busy writing other things and working on my ceramics and doing all the wife and motherly things that make up my day (and not brooding about not going to Italy, did I mention that before?) Having broken the habit, I can now sit back, breathe and ponder what it is about blogging that is so seductive. Does one blog to be seen? To reach out to change others lives? To fill a gaping hole in one's own life that otherwise would fill with all those festering doubts to which one may fall prey to if one isn’t careful? To become another person for a short time pretending to be someone you are not if only in the eyes of others? So why do you blog? And what do you look for in other people’s blogs? Do try and answer that one honestly, I think blogging is a fascinating phenomena.

Last thing you bought?

If one excludes such things as duck and chicken feed, and other dull domestic trivia I think the last thing I bought was a mismatched set of old French baking tins in various shapes and sizes. Ah no I tell a lie I bought a whole pile of Donna Leon novels with her Commissario of Police, Guido Brunetti , on Amazon just now at 1 cent each who can resist buying just one more at that price!

Flower of the moment?

Bluebells. I recently bought several hundred wild bluebell seeds from the excellent and extremely helpful people at http://www.farnellfarm.co.uk/ . Come June I intend to plant them around the edge of our property under the hazel trees and apple trees in the banks to try and re-establish the colonies of them that would have been native here a few centuries ago before farming became more intensive. We already have vast amounts of wild violets, wood anenomies , ( can’t spell them but you know what I mean) wild garlic and primroses.

What are you listening to?

You mean apart from the ruthless clatter of my fingers on the keyboard? Shush a minute and I will see. If you concentrate too you may hear the birds songs , the bees in the apple trees and the hens and ducks in the garden , also less prosaically the sound of French children’s television wafting through the open doors of the salle, and any minute now I will hear “ Maman j’ai faim !” This is a coded way of saying the boys want chocolate cake. It’s that time of day again.

Favourite ever film?

Don’t be ridiculous one can no more have a favourite film for ever or book for that matter unless ones tastes remain constant and static from birth to death. As ones experience grows and we develop and change so do our likes and dislikes surely? The option being stagnation, give me change over stagnation any day. At 8 years old or so I loved Mary Poppins,I used to think at 13 years old that Zefferreli’s Romeo and Juliet was the best film ever, at 27 the Mission. My taste is varied and changeable. But I do enjoy movies like Un long dimanche de fiançailles or la gloire de mon pere ; le chateau de ma mere (http://www.amazon.fr/Coffret-marcel-pagnol-gloire-chateau/dp/B0014JKMI6/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1241009542&sr=1-1) all of which are good romantic escapist films about love in its various guises and constancy. Oh dear does that say something deep and meaningful about my psyche? I do hope not!

Care to share some wisdom?

OOH tricky no one really wants to hear pearls of wisdom unless it happens to agree with what they think. But hey ho! It is, at the risk of sounding like an aged aunt from another era, in my experience, always dangerous to feel superior either about oneself or about ones offspring or lifestyles. Mrs Do-as-you-would-be-done-by ( see http://www.blurtit.com/q155209.html if you have no idea who she is, may I suggest you might consider suing both your parents or the authorities in charge of your schooling for if you really have no idea who she is then they failed you miserably )
Smugness is invariably followed at some distance by a sobering slap about the visage with the proverbial wet kipper. Enjoy who you are and what you choose to do or believe without thinking firstly that anything makes your superior to others or that others should feel the same way. Humble pie is hard to digest and tends to repeat on you thus keeping you awake at night.

If you were a god/goddess who would you be?

You mean I am not already? Oh dear me how frightfully disappointing life can be! Oh well if I must be one, I think TohKap the small household god of lost socks will suit very well thank you if the job is vacant. Think what a following one might have, and what power deciding which sock to steal and which to preserve! Each house could have a tiny altar in the laundry with offerings of small china bowls of fabric softener competed with Fabric freshener spray and those strange little sheets of nappy wipes like things scented with some bizarre exotic flower or other that people stuff in their tumble driers to make believe it makes their clothes small fresh.

There we go then, penance done Fennie and I have no doubt either bored, estranged or angered several bloggers in the process unless no one bothered to read this anyway which is a real possibility. Now I must pass the poison chalice to some other soul, so Milla I choose you, as you so bleatingly cried that no one loved you, Blossom and the sheep down her road if they care to join in , Withy brook, salle de bain, Bayou, @TM and PG and of course anyone else who feels the need to be mee mee meed please go ahead and say I sent you!

What one is meant to do is Respond and rework the above questions on your own blog. Replace one question with one of your own. Tag 8 people or however many you want to. Now off you go and annoy the world some of us have things to do.
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The photograph is of the apple trees in our garden where I even now am sitting, listening to the bird song, well obviously no I am not in the photo, even Tohkap can not be in two places at once, I think its only luckluk the god of the headless chicken who can truly claim to do that! And yes incidently I am aware th grass needs cutting but I'm writing this so unless Luckluk is free to pitch in then it has to wait.

La Petite Souris strikes again.

We have been visited by mice Chez Nous; they came, like rodent thieves in the night, in search, not of cheese but of teeth.

Ah yes and bien sur, It has certainly been a busy week for the tooth mouse here. Both boys having dropped a dent , one from natural causes and one rather more reluctantly with a bit of help and a lot of brute force from the dentist ,a nice chap, camp as a row of boy scout tents ,with a chin stud, its him who has the chin stud not the tents, and alas a great deal of blood and tears (from middle not the dentist).

Here in France as in Italy, Spain and parts of South America children do not have anything as namby pamby as a fairy to collect their tumbling teeth, oh no, they have a little mouse. Traditionally the recognised currency for a tooth in France is a small toy, hence you put your tooth under the pillow and in the morning hey presto, or as it is France “Bam”, you awake to find the tooth gone and as if by magic, a matchbox car or its Gallic equivalent has appeared in its place, and very possibly permanently embedded itself in your ear. Since having a supply of suitable small toys involves a lot of forward planning, and in the case of it being embedded in ears a bit of medical intervention, over timethe international currency has altered so that generally the mouse whips the tooth and its gummy giver gets a Euro coin.

They say that the tooth mouse originated in France ( well the French would say that wouldn’t they?)and first showed up in an 18th century French fairy tale “La Bonne Petite Souris” in which a good fairy helps a poor brow beaten queen in distress by turning herself into a mouse, hiding under the kings pillow and smashing his teeth out, thus teaching him to behave more kindly. Apparently the same tradition is found in parts of Lowland Scotland where it’s a white fairy rat that does the business. Sounds horribly like a Glaswegian bedtime story to me, well you've heard of a Glasgow kiss haven't you?

Of course the questin arises that, if one happens to be teh family tooth mouse what doe sone do with all those teeth? After all you really can not be too careful with teeth. Before the mystical arrival of the mouse with attitude, milk teeth were buried when they fell out with a plant n top to keep them safe. In almost every culture across the globe, Teeth are recognised as valuable things , and not just because without them it makes eating pork and crackling a trifle difficult, you can’t leave them lying about for just anyone to find, after all witches might steal them and thus gain power over your body and soul. Interesting that since not too many years ago they discovered you can extract DNA or something from discarded baby teeth and grow cells form them which gives them the potential for treating all sorts of horrible things that the now grown up owner of the tooth might develop in later life.

Each of our kids have their own personal tooth fairies, I know, I know they should be mice as we live in France and the kids are more French than English but old habits die hard. You can’t expect a fairy to morph into a mouse mid childhood it would be like Father Christmas having a sex change. Eldest one is called Flossy but since Eldest has all her grown up teeth we don’t use her services anymore. Anyway, Flossy would have to use a pair of wire cutters to get any more teeth out of that mouth as its wired up with a brace, hence Flossy, who in her prime I seem to remember had fluorescent pink hair, has gone into retirement.

Middle has a small dark scruffy haired butch sort of fairy called Molar Gumbo and smallest has Dentina who is without doubt a dainty little thing on gossamer wings. Molar Gumbo has to be big and tough because middle is a right softy and doesn’t give his teeth up without a lot of blood and waling so needs a great hunky tooth fairy on hand for moral support and a positive role model. Youngest needs a soft caring creature as mother here,very cruelly ,did not pass on her enamel to her baby ( doubly remiss of me as I seemed to have managed to pass him the gift of dyslexia which he could well have done without) several of his baby teeth had to be removed at a very tender age and she does a nice line in telling him how brave he has been.Our little tooth fairies send letters to their charges, tiny things in spidery writing on minute rectangles of paper, reminding them politely to brush their teeth and be good to their sibings and aged parents. Sometimes, if written late at night after the surprise uprooting of a tooth and too much wine being imbibed by parents ,the writing is even more spidery and indecipherable than normal. Occasionally the tooth fairies get letters sent back with a thank you or as in this week missive from youngest, with demands for information such as

“How big is a tooth fairy? “(Bigger than a speck of dust and smaller than a mouse)

“Where do you live?”” (Here there and everywhere)

“What do you do with the teeth? (Mind your own bloody business and go to sleep otherwise you don’t get the euro comprendre?)

On Monday night youngest built his fairy a fine little house from white paper complete with windows, shutters and a door and was terribly saddened and disappointed that she didn’t take it with her. Luckily swift witted mother said she probably wanted to leave it by his bed to use as a holiday cottage or a stopover on long haul flights. Of course had Dentina taken the small house that might well have been wrong too. Life is never simple in fairyland. He had wanted to make her a small set of clothes as well but it was getting late and Mummy wanted to go to bed even if he was happy to stay up to prepare her a trousseau, so after much foot stamping, by me, he settled for a sleeping bag instead , hastily made by him from from a cotton wall balls and one of his sisters hankies, his being far to rough and masculine for one so dainty, not to mention of course he can never find one when he needs one.

Sadly the Dentist has decided that Middle needs 3 more teeth removed in order that he too may have a mouth full of wire like his sister, and eventually one hopes a dazzling smile. which I suppose means that poor old Molar Gumbo may be kept quiet busy for a while. I wonder if Dentina might consider sub letting him her sleeping bag and tiny paper house ? I can see another flurry of letters to the tooth fairies in the offing. I suspect it would be a lot easier if we had settled for a French tooth Mouse with aggresive tendancies I am pretty sure they don't charge half as m,uch as the Dentist !

Ah well ,better go and practise my spidery writing .

The Chicken and the Egg

I have always had a soft spot for chickens, which is surprising really as my Mother was terrified of them, and every other feathered creature on earth. When I was little I used to frighten her witless as I trotted off to the local Farm twice a day to collect fresh milk in my billycan and would be found several hours later sitting in the barn full of brown hens and listening whilst Clive the dairyman played his guitar to them. We used to call them his bedtime chickens. I suspect he played to them as they were the only living creatures who didn’t complain about his pronounced musical ability or rather lack of it. I adored Clive and his chickens as only a 4 year old can. I have been enamoured ever since, of chickens, not Clive, I went off him when he threw a bucket of fresh milk over me but that is another story entirely.

Anyway back to chickens. When we lived in the rolling hills of southern England we had a fine large hen house and a terribly grand assortment of rare breed fowl thanks to a friend who was a national feather and fur judge at all the county shows, he would rescue the “also rans” who didn’t get prizes and turn up at the kitchen doorstep at strange hours, with cardboard boxes bound with baling twine for me, on the understanding that I'd give stray hens a home rather than let them go to the pot. Showing birds is very competitive and there is no room for sentiment, if your chook isn’t a winner it gets the chop.

When we moved to France my friend Grouse gave me a lot of sound advice on going into egg elevage ( or whatever the technical term is in English) but our research showed this area ofBrittany has more than enough of them already, every farmer we know has a shed with layers as a side line so economically it wasn’t worth it. I was sorely tempted and we do sometimes get a call to go out and help unload boxes of small chicks when they arrive in friends barns, youngest adores that as a way to spend the afternoon, he and his best friend get all the straw down in the house then tip toe about the yellow cheeping fluffy things about their feet. It’s all I can do to stop him bringing them home in his pockets. As a precaution we frisk him on the way out. Meanwhile our own fine chicken house stands empty waiting for Spring and the next flock to arrive and I look forward to the day I can start collecting my own eggs again.

Anyway back to my friend Grouse. Grouse is a woman to envy in many ways. She has lived the dream of the environmentally conscious who, of eco sound thinking, would love to move to somewhere self sustaining surrounded by England’s green and pleasant land without a blot on the landscape and a means of earning a loaf, and a fine dream it is too. You note, I do not say crust here as we are talking a jolly decent living even in these economically tough times, or possibly because of them, eggs are becoming more and more popular as a cheap healthy food and easy to cook for the more culinary challenged. Omelettes were the first thing my lot learnt to cook and there is nothing better than cooking your own omelette, made from eggs from your own hens.

Grouse and her family built their farm up from nothing on the edge of the moors that is a National park and close to the Chatsworth Park Estate, and those of you who know her blogs of old will vouch that it is a veritable haven for wildlife, not a thing to spoil the view, nor ever will be, and a thriving business to boot with ecologically sound and very splendid home attached, with its own reed beds and a kitchen to kill for.

Since the death of her husband she has been running the farm single handed with a part time helper two days a week. She sent me her house details as she is moving on now and if it was not for the fact that I love living here too much I would be sorely tempted to put in a bid on her fantastic place. I have her kind permission to ooze over it here and share it with you just on the off chance you might be looking for a change of direction yourself. And you know you don’t have to be a dyed in the wool farmer to run this business, when we looked at the possibility of starting from scratch here, she talked me through the whole thing and it is something that you could swiftly learn especially as she would be happy to be on hand to advise if you wanted a guiding hand on your first steps into farming. Anyone could do it, except my mother of course, although to be fair to her I did manage to cure her of her phobia of birds at least sufficiently to allow her to experience of the joy of egg collecting with her grandchildren in her later years!

So here we have it, an ideal business opportunity, a chance to escape the rat race and breathe the fresh air, to raise your family surrounded by beauty that is forever England and to earn your living comfortably whilst you do it. Think on, stop dreaming and take that step toward the self sufficient life you always promised yourself. Live your dream but hurry, bids have to be in by 16th April and you do not want to miss your chance. Sometimes you just have to stop saying I wish and take a chance in order to live that dream.

And think of it you need never run out of things for supper again, there is, after all, more than one way to crack an egg.

If you want to see the farm and are tempted to stop dreaming and start living then the details are here at http://www.bagshaws.com/prop_det.asp?htm=B90006&pdf=&postcode=DE4%202NN

Lost in Translation

I have a mind that by habit wanders off on its own journey, tempted by a tantalizing image, conjured by a single word. I trot off down some twisted path, the thread of my thoughts caught on the bramble bush of some phrase , only to find as I look up that the conversation has all but unravelled behind me and I am happily lost. I can do this in any language but must admit it is far easier in French. As it is my second language I am not hampered as I ma in English by years of being told to concentrate, to focus, and if my mind wanders others simply assume that I have lost the thread and not that I am happily being entertained somewhere far more interesting “dans ma tete”.

Give me a word and it paints a picture in my head far more interesting and bright than any its mundane meaning conveys. Say tree and I am gone amidst the myriad forests of trees I have explored in my travels, the tortured pine by a greek beach that Jacko and I climbed one hot afternoon when we were very young and far to drunk ,the apple trees in the gardens of my childhood, the date palms of upper Egypt all flit like fairies through my head and I pause and stop and ponder, lost, as the French say, “dans la lune” until jolted back to the present where I have to tune back into reality and look attentive and hope no one has noted my absence.

Songs are a constant joy, French ones all seem to hold stories that weave such pretty pictures. They sing so fast and play with words so cleverly that sometimes you need a doctorate to understand them but what matters that to me? I can love a song to tears , dragged into it by the exquisite story it paints only to find later upon closer examination that the real meaning is utterly unrelated to the one I have given it. French songs are like poetry with depths upon depths of hidden meaning each open to interpretation, we discuss them for hours. And then there is the misheard mot which makes them, for me, even more exciting. So many French words have similar sounds and quite different meanings and thus I happily sing my own version only to have it shattered by one of my diminutive Anglo French offspring. Mummy he says he is like a wet dog (chien mouille) nor a crème brulee! Well to be fair Renan Luc’s lyrics are so wonderfully bizarre, this one seems to be about can his Russian security officer girlfriend who beats him up for excitement, stinks of vodka and sings like a bath ( do not ask my why the French sing like baths but just for once believe me he swears she does)I think him feeling like a crème brulee works just as well, its certainly more palatable than a wet dog.

My current favourite is Christophe Maé who wrote and sings “Mon P’tit Gars” for his son. For months I have been singing the line”Je te bois comme un Grande cafe “( “I could drink you like a big cup of cafe”) how exquisite a line, how evocative of parental all consuming love, after all don’t we tell babies we could eat them up they are so yummy? It is such a wonderful expressive image it makes my toes curl with glee, it reminds me of when the children were babies and I nibbled their ears until they giggled. The children were horrified, the French do not devour their children they tell me what he is saying is ”Je te vois comme un grand guerrier” which means “ I see you as a great warrior” hmm personally I think coffee works better, one of those big milky breakfast cups with a pain au chocolat or a buttery croissant would do nicely thank you.

Well you listen to it see what you think http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h6f8Grl8Fho&feature=related

Marie Antoinette knows best...

I seem to have divided the past few days between frantically driving about the wilds of the countryside running errands ,and children ,to different places and engaged in high speed food production. The small citizens of France eat a lot. When Marie Antoine said" let them eat cake" this was nothing to do with her indifference to the suffering of the masses, she just knew that it was inevitable that they had eaten everything else in the place already.

Today, up at an ungodly hour, I made crepe batter for breakfast, organised a vegetarian risotto from the left over’s in the fridge and trawled the depths of the freezer for fish for lunch, toyed fleetingly with making a chocolate cake then settled for a life saving batch of biscuits instead.

Thus at 10.30 I could be found swathed in my apron , like a vrai drudge ( me not the apron) and rubbing butter into flour with the help of Francis Cabrel and Renan Luce. They may not be much practical help with the baking side of things but there is nothing quite like them for raising the spirits with song, and bless them they don’t mind when I belt out the wrong lyrics at full volume nor quibble when I yell "Mais me, je suis un homme..." when ,obviously built as I am , I am not and never shall be one..an homme that is.

All morning as me and my French crooners busied ourselves about the cuisine ,them safely ensconced in the CD player ,me flitting at speed between oven fridge and larder, we had a steady stream of visitors as the diminutive sons and daughters of the revolution played cache cache. As is proper we stoically ignored them as they hid under the sofa, behind the chairs and beneath the tablecloth . I rolled and kneaded pate for biscuits , Francis pondered on whether God was still there and Renan went on about wrongly delivered post.

Softly and slowly like small boats drifting, shoreward’s on the tide the petits citoyens all bobbed up around the kitchen table and watched, in silence , as I cut out trays of biscuits on the slab of granite I use as a pastry board. They looked from me ,to the board ,to my sons with their oh so French raised eye brows elevated in wordless questioning.

"She is making biscuits" explained Middle.

"Ahh" came their perplexed reply.

I don't think they have ever seen anyone make biscuits. I don't think I have ever seen a child who has never seen someone make biscuits so we each stared back at each other in barely disguised disbelief.

They stood and watched as if this bizzarre English activity were some new spectator sport and then, suddenly, along with Renan, they all started singing. Totally spontaneous, totally unselfconscious ,totally in tune and in time with the song they stood watching me make biscuits singing their hearts out. The song finished they all turned around and walked off chatting to continue with their game of hide and seek as if it was all some well choreographed scene from a Francois Truffaut movie.

Upon reflection, I think my entire life here is part of some strange French movie. Sadly I do not however look at all like Audrey Tautou which is a shame really.

Ah well, Mais C'est las vie!

If you want to hear what they were singing then click the link here..http://www.wikio.fr/video/15705