les Davey de France

We were invited to lunch yesterday with some church folk, so I collected Pat from the café where I found everything in disorder and clearing up after the kids' Easter workshop not even begun. Still we slowly got everything sorted. I seemed to take an age to lock the toilet and tidy everything up. Then off we went to find the apartment. I'd not been before. It was raining heavily. Just two tram stops, but it took us ages as we dithered our way along.  We got to the flat, and first had to inspect the living room. The dining room was being kept shut to keep in the naughty cats. The living room was very impressive. I passed the time looking out of the window at the park opposite as various aspects of the sofa were discussed. Then into the dining room. Surprise !  I was gobsmacked. Speechless.  I'd been duped, like the hapless dupe I am, and the church folk were all there for a birthday barbecue, complete with inextinguishable birthday cake candles and enough meat to march Nap...

I'm so very thankful for all the wonderful things God has given me over the years, and now he's given me the opportunity to serve him in a different way. Twenty years ago there was a conversation where we shared to whom we were responsible. My list was very long. I was accountable to the church and the people I worked for and with. I was responsible to denominational structures in France. I was also accountable to my home church which had sent me to France. There was also the mission who were there to support and take care of us. Then to the many people who were contributing generously to our support. It's good to have accountability and I rarely found any of this to be a problem. From now on, however, we'll be paid increasingly exclusively from our own resources, to which we have contributed over the years. Voices that once were determinative will now become consultative. We'll appreciate people's advice and counsel, but we will have much more freedom in what w...

The RER from Paris Charles de Gaulle takes you through Drancy, where those deported during the Second World War were collected from all over France to be transferred to the camps in Poland. I always shudder as I pass through and wonder what it is like to live somewhere with such a dreadful past. I changed at the chaotic and frantic Gare du Nord for the metro to Montparnasse and found a fold-down seat in the crowded carriage. An (even more) elderly man came and folded down the seat next to me and we began to chat. I don't think I asked his age, but I did ask him if he was from Paris.  "Oh, my story is a bit complicated." It turned out that he was born in the early forties to a couple of resistants. His father was captured and shot. His mother was deported. (This means she was sent to the camps, and almost nobody ever came back.) He grew up placed in a family. I talked about how different the UK experience of the war was, and how although my father served overseas, there is...

The annual prayer retreat of the international pastors was to be held in Brno. There are no direct flights from Bordeaux to Brno and the best way to get there is to fly to Vienna and take the short train ride to Brno. There are no direct flights from Bordeaux to Vienna at this time of year, and the best way to get there is to take the train from Bordeaux to Paris, then cross the city to CDG and fly on to Vienna. So the journeys were less straightforward than they could have been. For reasons I won't go into I ended up staying overnight in Vienna on the way to Brno. This gave me the opportunity to meet Froim's parents for a meal - they picked me up from the airport, reminding me of the book "Je voudrais que quelqu'un m'attende quelque part" by Anna Gavalda, which I have never read. I ate a pork Wiener schnitzel. The next day I had a few hours to run amok in Vienna and inspected the Stephansdome and the Peterskirche, where I met George from southern India who ha...

 In a month's time I turn 66 and two notable things happen : 1) I become a UK pensioner. I won't get anything until four weeks later, but I get the status. 2) I get to use my tram and bus pass on my phone!  For some time we have had senior rates tram season tickets - we don't get them free, but we get them cheaper - on our TBM cards, but the cool kids buy their tram tickets in the tram system app. Recently the app has been changed to allow senior season tickets, so from my next birthday - my next renewal date - I won't need my TBM card any more - I can travel just using my phone! 

My dear ophthalmologist is very thorough, so when he discovered an "anomaly" in my optic nerves he decided to send me for various tests : MRI scans of my head x 2 Doppler imaging of my carotid arteries and those which feed my eyes. A night at the sleep clinic to explore the possibility of sleep apnea. My own doctor was somewhat sceptical. Do you nap? How long for? Every day? Who is this Dr.? Anyway, the sleep clinic is run by a psychiatrist, and you have to fill in all sorts of questionnaires about your sleeping habits. I filled them in honestly, I promise, and my score was very low, but she said, "you have a long head and I'd like you to do the overnight sleep test and for us to have a good poke around in your sinuses". I came out feeling worse than when I went in. A year passed without me hearing anything, so I wondered if she'd decided not to bother, but then on my next visit to the ophthalmologist he told me to contact them. Some message had gone into sp...

 We sold the table on a Saturday. On the Sunday evening after church we hied us away to the Ibis Budget Hotel near the airport to stay overnight before our early flight to London. The Ibis Budget Hotel was fine. The lift wasn't working, but we were on the first floor, so what did we care. Next morning at 5am we trotted the 10 minutes to the airport and ran from terminal to terminal (not very far!) to find our flight. We were in London in time for breakfast. Breakfast was in a nice Turkish café on the way to our London hotel. Bacon, eggs, tomatoes, etc., and a big mug of tea. Bliss. We were staying in the Easyhotel in Shoreditch. It was fine. You get a bed, a bathroom and two coat hooks. Once I fixed the shower all was good. Our week included : A visit to The British Museum, this time armed with my little book. The Museum was crowded, so we curtailed our visit a little, but not before visiting Alexander the Great and Socrates, as well as Ur of the Chaldees and Assyria. Oh, and the P...

Back in perhaps 2007 or thereabouts we saw a table at Ikea. It wasn't part of their catalogue and had no strange name. It was just a big, heavy table in very solid pine, measuring 180 cm by 100 cm, or almost 6 feet by 3 feet. We fell in love with it and bought it and it became the centre of our life for almost 20 years.  It was where the children did their homework. It was where sewing projects were done. It welcomed family meals. It held Bible studies. It was where people ate, prayed, read and talked. It was the field where endless games were played. You could easily seat 10 people around it, and we regularly did. And more. It moved with us from our house to our small flat, where it dominated the living room. It then became the centre piece of our bigger flat and we put a makeshift bench at one end increasing its seating capacity. You could squeeze stools in, too. But now we've moved once more to a smaller flat and the table is just too big. I offered it to family and church f...

 The DW letter arrived yesterday telling me that I am, as I thought, and as the government website informed me, entitled to a full UK state pension from 18 April 2025. It will be paid into our bank account every four weeks, etc. Once we've received the first payment we can reduce further our support from UFM. We're getting there slowly, step by step.

Who knows! However current thinking is that maybe we will not leave UFM completely, but will stay as long as we have some kind of useful service somewhere, somehow.  We'll keep you informed!

The DWP first acknowledged my request to be paid my UK State Pension from April. Then they sent me back my birth and marriage certificates. Then they told me by SMS that they had studied my case and written me a letter. We might be all systems go for the next phase of retirement. 

We both got ill at Christmas - I blame the foreign Parisian bugs - and it's taken us both a while to fully recover. My asthma got set off, not with major crises but with a fairly constant wheeze and rattle. I slept through it but apparently I was noisy all night. Pat, for her part, got over her infection but then had one of her back problems. So we've not been on the bikes for about a month, relying on shanks' pony (walking) and the trams and buses. It's not been a great loss as we've had very cold weather and occasional torrential downpours. I saw the doctor and predictably am being sent for x-rays, blood tests and probably a cardiologist later on, just in case it's fluid retention. Pat saw the doctor, too, and also an osteopath. I took herbal anti-inflammatories and maxed out my asthma treatment until things settled down.  Anyway, long story, on Friday we looked at each other and at the forecast, and hop, bikes it was. It felt good to be back in the saddle. Co...

 1 cup sultanas 1 cup strong tea 1 tsp ground mixed spice 1 egg 1 cup self-raising flour Soak the sultanas overnight in the tea with the spice Next day mix in the egg, then the flour Bake at 180°C till a skewer comes out clean (30 to 40 minutes) Cool, slice, butter if required. Note well, if eaten unbuttered this tea-loaf has no fat and no added sugar.