les Davey de France

Intermittents are show-business people and at present they're on strike!

So I said to myself, "Now I have my sermon outlined, let's see what other people have done with John 14:6, I am the way" the truth and the life". My favourite IP hasn't preached on that verse, but he has preached on how to not have a troubled heart. Another preferred chappie went on at length about coronary heart disease. hhhhmmm.

At this time of year whenever we take the Number 4 or 44 bus, which we do pretty often, we walk through the park: through the gate, across the field, past the swings, through the woods, through the far gate and out opposite the bus stop. Just inside the nearer gate there is a plum tree. In the park. A communal, civic plum tree. And in June the little, dark purple plums are soft and sweet and juicy and delicious. I walk round the tree and take only those plums that are just about ready to drop. I never pull, I never twist, I just give a gentle tweak and if the plum comes away then its abscission layer is ready and it's ripe. Otherwise leave it. It will be ready to come tomorrow. And so every time I catch the number 4 or 44 bus the experience is sweet.

Before I got old and crabby I would sometimes say to myself, "Oh boy do I need help with this text. I know, let's see what Revd. Bigtime-Preacher or Pastor Guy Famous did with this passage." "Ah. Nothing." And usually Spurgeon hadn't either. OK. No help there.

The thing with adolescents and young adults is that they kind of fade out of your life by spending more and more time in their room.  This means that when eventually their room is in another city or even another country you don't notice so much. Anyway last night we suddenly though, "Oh yes, Gwilym went out to the end of lycée ball." Elegantly clad in his sales suit he'd gone off to celebrate the end of his education. We remembered at bed-time, and idly wondered what time he'd be back and whether good parents would wait up for him.  Then Pat's phone rang.  He was warning us that he might miss the last bus and so stay with his friends and come home the following morning. But in the end he cycled on the city bikes to Pessac Centre, then walked home from there.

When it's hot it's important to drink enough. Carry your little bottle of water. But if you don't have it for whatever reason ? Then U have bottles of water for 17 centîmes. And, opposite the no.4 bus stop there's a small supermarket. I like the owners and I went in there thinking that maybe they would have something I have found nowhere else. An ordinary ice-cream. A choc-ice, Anything like that. Bordeaux is full of artisanal ice-cream vendors where you can buy very good ice-cream in remarkable and unusual flavours at, of course, high cost. But it ain't easy to find a choc-ice.  Well not unless you buy a pack of four...  But my favourite little supermarket might... Yes! They had Mars or Snickers bars, and for just 1€ each. Great! And a bottle of water, fizzy, I think this time. And I am set for the arduous journey home on the small, overcrowded, rush-hour bus 4.

a Welshman, an Irishman, a Ukrainian, four Americans three Frenchmen, two Persians and a Dutchman ? Well that was my day. A bit crazy, but all pretty wonderful.