les Davey de France

I have seen two Pibaux at close quarters this week. This represents 10% of the total number of Pibaux in the world! The first was just outside Mollat, the bookshop. It was being ridden by a gentleman who was discussing his itinerary with a woman. While he was stopped I took a quick photo and it is this photo that you can see below, with his head cropped to preserve his anonymity and to focus more on the Pibal. The second was being ridden near the cathedral : we were both waiting to cross the road, I saw it and said "Un Pibal !" The lady riding it was very chatty and said that, yes, it is as good as they say it is, that no, it is light and she happily carries it up steps and so on and yes, the footplate is useful for carrying children and you can still pedal even with a child stood thereupon. Jolly good ! Here we have a photo of one of the pibaux, plus a vidéo with Philippe Starck

Hanging gardens of Bordeaux Sun and shade - sunny means cold A Pibal ! the Bordeaux Bike by Philippe Starck Brrr... It's COLD ! Festive traffic ! Festive pedestrians !

Today we're meeting up with two students who have asked to interview us as part of their research into the diets of ex-pat-Brits what live in France. Guess where we're meeting ?

Cold, but sunny. There's a friend who calls me in spates, this week was a spate, so on Thursday evening the phone rang, I thought it was him, I picked it up and waited. Nothing. I waited some more. Still nothing. "Âllo ?" "Just ringing to say that your application for membership of the International Club of Bordeaux has been approved." Just in time for us to go to the reading group in a café in the middle of town. (See, this café thing is not just us.) This month it was "The Stranger's Child" by Alan Hollinghurst. I enjoyed parts of the book, some parts were quite funny. It reconciled me a bit to Ian McEwan. I went off Ian McEwan when his books started to resemble, to me, propaganda on various moral issues of the day - Amsterdam was the most blatant, for me, but Saturday was the same really, and after that I gave up for a while. Anyway perhaps that's what some literature has to be about. Propaganda for one or other view on m...

Dan On Thursday we went to check out a restaurant run by some friends of ours - he's French but he's worked in China and she is Chinese. The restaurant is kind of Asian-French-Fusion. It was also a kind of postponed birthday lunch for Pat. So we went off and found Dan , (the restaurant's name). The meal was exquisite, the restaurant pretty and intimate, the staff small, our friends were manning the kitchen and quickly realized we were there, it was a super time. No coffee, thanks. Afterwards we had a rendez-vous with visiting dignitaries from one of the UK missions, so we hastened off to the cathedral where we'd said we'd meet them at the base of the bell tower. A happy hour of discussion ensued at the Cheverus , the café where I used to do the advanced English conversation. They had another rendez-vous at 15:30, so we delivered them back to the bell-tower, then Pat and I separated. Hot Chocolate. I had half an hour to get to Les Mots Bleus , so I dawdled ...

Tuesday evening FAC and GBU held a presentation in the public rooms in the centre of town on the depiction of the crucifixion by artists through the ages, with special reference to Michelangelo. It was expertly given by Julie, the GBU Staff Worker. Here's some photos.

At the A&E for Hands department last Thursday night we met a charming nurse and doctor who said," We'll use a special protocol which involves just covering the wound with a transparent plastic dressing and leaving well alone. It will macerate and it will smell, but you'll see, within quite a short time the flesh will grow to fill the wound and the skin will grow back. It's the best protocol for this kind of wound to avoiding scarring and loss of sensation. But it will mean coming back every week for us to redo the dressing." So yesterday we went back. Pat's appointment was for 4. There are 36 ways of getting to the hospital from here so I chose one that allowed us 20 minutes to find the department once we got there. It meant the 4 to Barrière de Pessac, then the 11 to the hospital. Champion. We arrived at the hospital and, with our dim memories of the site on a dark rainy night, quickly found the fire escape style staircase we used to get out of t...