Blog in France

Tuesdays is pub day. No, not the day we head off to our local for our drink , but the day the postman leaves a pile of advertising brochures – le pub – in the mailbox with our letters. We refer to it all as the weekly pictures of meat...

Photo from www.pdphoto.org I’m going to be gardening by the moon this year. I have my trusty handbook by my side – ‘Mieux Jardiner avec la Lune’ – and I’m ready to get started. But will it really make any difference? Gardening by the phases of the moon stretches back...

Here are a few wise old sayings from the February 1932 edition of La Prosperite a la Campagne: Chandeleur noire – hiver a fait son devoir. Chandeleur trouble – l’hiver redouble. Black Candlemas – winter has finished its work. Unsettled Candlemas – winter will redouble its efforts. (I guess that...

Lycée Pierre Bourdan in Gueret Our experience of the flu epidemic in France has been a bit of a disaster really. Ruadhri was the only success story – he had his vaccination without any side effects. OK, his yells echoed round the Salle Polyvalente for several minutes, but he had...

The census taker came yesterday. It’s our turn to be counted. Unlike the UK and Ireland, France carries out its censuses on a rolling basis. Communes with fewer than 10,000 inhabitants are censused (that’s a real word, honestly) every 5 years, but not all in the same year. For example,...