All hail Halloween

I was rather miffed in an icy English way when trying to make a rendezvous for youngest a couple of weeks ago. The Orthophoniste, leaning over her desk, pen hovering, said “hmm you will be going to England for the holidays so we shall have to book a rendezvous after school re starts”.

“How dare she presume we would be trooping back to England” I growled at youngest en route home, I bristled at been branded with those expats who hurtled backwards and forwards across the channel like demented yo-yo’s . How, I seethed a vrai Madame Grognonne, did she know we were going to England anyway! We rarely go, well only for funerals or the visiting of sick relatives, which is what in fact we were doing this time.

“C’est Toussaint” said youngest with the calm tone reserved for idiots . Thus the truth dropped with an audible clunk. It is indeed Toussaint and of course she would presume we were going “home” nothing to do with my compatriots’ obsession with returning to stock up on sliced white mothers pride or instant gravy browning at all. She had just assumed that, I like any good Breton would be travelling to the land of my fathers to visit and honour the family graves armed with car load of Chrysanthemums like some mad peripatetic paysagist.

Despite the jollity of Chrysanthemums (can they be jolly? I am not sure but in the language of flowers the symbolize Cheerfulness, optimism, rest, truth, long life, joy except bizarrely in Europe where it is the symbol of death and grief so you rarely see them used as garden or house plants here) there is a certain penetrating sadness about Toussaint, it marks the passing of time, the loss of old friends and family and the changing of ways of life. Not many I suspect keep the all night vigil at the graveside as they once did. But at least they are remembered around the dinner table where the family meet in the dark of All Hallows eve and tell old stories of the dead family members, gone but not forgotten. It is important to mark the passing of the year to remember how deep our Racine’s run no matter how far we have grown from our place and people who gave us life.

Historically the Celts started the whole dressing up as ghouls and making a racket thing. They would extinguish their fires dress up as horrible ghouls and wander the village making lots of noise and generally being unpleasant in an effort to discourage lost spirits attempting to hijack the bodies of the living. Summer officially ended on November 1st in the Celtic calendar with the feast of Samhain and it was on the eve of that feast that the barrier which kept apart the worlds between living and dead was weakest thus allowing disenchanted spirits to pop back to the old world to see what they could grab, a bit like the expats with their sliced white loaves I suppose.

Anyway The pumpkins are lit and my two ghouls are all dressed up ready to trot off and maraud about the Bourg as soon as Daddy gets home from work. Meanwhile outside the owls are hooting and the dogs are howling fit to wake the dead and I shall sit in the kitchen preparing dragons blood and witches eyes for tea and remembering those who have gone before us marked one hopes with the sign of peace. I do hope they are marked with the sign of peace, I really do not think I have the wit or wisdom to do battle with evil spirits this evening although I may manage a gin at a push!

What a Hoot!

Yesterday was a day packed, like a tin of Paimpol Sardines, full of rendezvous. Being a wise old owl I master minded proceedings with the precision of a Napoleonic campaign, dashing about Brittany to ensure both boys were in the right place at the right time with all the necessary accouterments and dressed appropriately for each occasion, clean teeth for the Orthodontist, clean hands for the orthophonist, clean sports kit for Handball and , as always with any expedition involving diminutive Frenchmen , a suitable supply of goutes to keep the ever present loupe of hunger at bay, for as Napoleon famously said "an army marches on its stomach".

On the final leg of the journey , driving along in the pitch blackness of country lanes we were halted by the sight of an Barn owl sitting unperturbed by our headlights in the middle of the road and with no intention it seemed of stirring one feather in flight. Thus we ground to a sedate halt and waited.

"Look boys isn't it beautiful!"

"Is it a Chouette? ( French name for Barn Owl)" asked Middle .

"Yes" I said gleefully proud of his ornithological skills .

" Oh Chouette!( the French for "Oh Great! " ) said youngest.

The French language has a not so endearing trick of using the same word spelt and pronounced the same way to mean a variety of quite diverse things, which has no doubt led to some interesting misunderstandings in history . Any way back to the Owl...

"Someone close to us is going to die" .they both said with typical French resignation.

"Not true" I chirruped " its just a myth" . They gave me one of those slow steady stares reserved for demented elderly relatives who have uttered something particularly stupid.

The problem is that our Breton neighbours believe, and I mean seriously believe, that to see a Chouette and hear its call means someone you love will fall off their proverbial twig in the not to distant future if not before. Rather a fatalistic lot they are at times. Since we live surrounded by woodland and barns all of which are bustling with Chouettes it can make an evening excusion rather a tense event at times. No wonder the locals rarely go out after dark.

"Anyway" I prattled like the vielle chouette that I am ( and that means silly old bag in French, see I told you French vocab was a cunning beast!)

"We aren't Breton so it doesn't apply to us"

My passengers were not convinced and as if to emphasise the inevitability of a dear ones passing each devoured another Madelaine in resigned silence. I could feel their minds working on the list of family and friends crossing of those accounted for and pondering for whom the owl would screech.

After an age the Owl gave a rather Gaelic shrug and took off silently into the night having successfully put a damper on our evening. Not that I believe in those things but I did drive very carefully all the way home!

A Kiss is just a kiss....

We are going back to Blighty for a brief visit over the Toussaint break. Its not something we do very often our trips to England usually being for death bed scenes, or, if we didn't get there fast enough for those, funerals. It is a long time since our boys have trodden upon their native soil a fact that was brought home today on the school run by youngest.

"Mummy" he said, long pause " Do the English Bisous?"

Another long pause whilst mummy ponders an appropriate answer" Um no , not generally poppet"

Even longer pause as youngest contemplates life without bisous. After all here every day starts with a bisous, friends bisous, family bisous, teenagers slouching at the school gate bisous, life here is one big re-affirming kiss after another.

"Oh how sad " says a wobbly voice from the back seat " French people living in England they must be so lonely having no one to bisous them"

Another long pause "They are very bizarre aren't they..."

"Who darling?"

"The English Mummy"

Oh Môn Dieu my own little diminutive Froglet if only you knew!!!

Today is a day for biting back.

Today is not a good day. Today is a day for being someone else. Today is a day for running away to sea, for joining the foreign legion for being anything but what I am. Yesterday was not a good day but today definitely stinks.

Today is so bad I may have to attack the kitchen. I have already embarked upon a blitzkrieg of my studio under cover of darkness and look and smell like something the cat has peed in so what do I have to lose if I now scrub the work surfaces with some vile toxic potion guaranteed to kill all the jolly microbes in the fosse septic? Not my equilibrium that has gone already. Nope, today I am not a happy woman.

It is blowing a gale outside, how apt as I am brewign up a storm inside too, and autumn, freshly arrived with a scowl, has brought an air so thick with damp that my joints ache and my fingers are too stiff to paint and I keep dropping things. Our Broadband hates bad weather and the only thing that has managed to fight its way through cyber space is an invitation from a women’s international expat group to ask me if I will blog about life in France. Ladies today is not a good day, my writing is not going to encourage or inspire people to travel and embrace the expat life. They will read my blog and weep.

The morning started if not with joy at least with hope. Hope that after yesterday things might in fact have improved. I was woken at 5 by a nightmare which involved my trying to recapture our Labradors whilst being berated by a small dark French woman complaining that they should not be allowed to roam free. I totally agree madam, no need to invade my already distressed psyche to tell me that but if you can find a way to repair the electric fence then please be my guest because it stumps me. Breakfast was fine if you ignore the fact that it was eaten at 7am to the accompaniment of the sound of the wind impersoanting a train outside and one of the cats licking blood from the floor, he having caught his own breakfast, and another of them savaging me as I went past to put the kettle on. The school run was bearable and, on the way home, we even remembered to post the terribly urgent letter we forgot to post on the way there.

At home I collected the eggs, only dropped one, got youngest mustered for school and we were doing fine despite the contents of the kiln looking as if they have developed small pox because of a glazing fault. I was ignoring the feeling of rising panic in my chest, ( you know that feeling when something tells you that you are really should runaway very fast whilst your brain is ignoring it,?) until we got to school and I kissed smallest on head and said have a good day and try hard with your writing at which he dropped his head and he said “I always try my hardest but my teacher doesn’t believe me she says I don’t. But it’s Ok you don’t have to go in and see her.She thiks there is nothgin wrong with me I just don't try”

Is manslaughter still considered a crime of Passion in France because I may well have to kill this woman? Woman? Well actually barely out of college so more a post teenager, a new teacher determined to be firm and sure that we parents are just being namby pamby English and if we only pushed him harder he would be fine. A teacher who has, it seems, decided that in the one term she is gong to be there (she is covering maternity leave for yet another new teacher) she will cower him into writing neatly by sheer force of her scowl and meanness. The school knows he has dyslexic and dysorthographie but she it seems with all the conviction of youth knows better than the orthophoniste ,,to whom he goes once a week to help him fathom the unfathomable depths of writing, the specialist well, no actually the two specialists, who conducted a barrage of tests on him and have decided that is what he is and are trying to decide what can be done to help him. Nope this new teacher says, he must try harder at writing, keeps him in at break time because he doesn’t finish his work, rolls his eyes when he comes back at the end of the day to collect the books he has forgotten and has told him no, he can not use the specially shaped pens recommended by all the aforementioned professionals he must use the ones school provides, which are basically cheap and flimsy and terribly for handwriting but hey what would I know I am only a mother and a teacher and old enough to be her mother at that and if I was I would box her ears.

I know any child needs to be encouraged to develop a positive, determined attitude and that hard work is necessary to overcome the obstacles presented by dyslexia. I also know children will reflect the attitudes of their parents and teachers so authority figures in the child’s life need to help develop personal confidence and inspire the child not to give up, not demoralise them even further when they already feel they are letting everyone down by falling so far behind their siblings and school mates.

And I write this not for sympathy nor for effect but to so I will keep my promise and not go into see teacher and I will not give in to my strongest of urges to run away with him and protect him form all those people who think deep down that its just laziness and pure bloody-mindedness and quite frankly a bit of an embarrassment to have a 9 year old who can’t write as well as his friends.

This is why today is a bad day and which is why next time the cat bites me in passing I may have to go and bite the cat back.

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.