les Davey de France

Those who once were regular readers may have noticed that regularity is harder to achieve. The blog is running down. This is due to various factors : 1) we are so used to living in France now that little is remarkable any more 2) I am so astonished by our political situation that I dare not comment 3) our service with the mission is slowly drawing to a close. So the blog has a use-by date. When we finally pull the plug on our active service with the mission I have vowed to withdraw from social media, and this includes the blog. Meanwhile I guess we'll be documenting our progress towards Christmas 2025 and our definitive retirement. We're awaiting our first payment from my old IT pension. I did get identical two emails the same day, saying that computer system problems were delaying our first payment. We'll keep you posted!

 Some friends came to serve in Bordeaux Church in August by preaching each Sunday. They stayed in our sweet little retirement flat. Meanwhile they suggested to us that we go spend some time in their manse in Northern Ireland, and that we use their car while we were there. Well we had a wonderful time visiting the Giant's Causeway, Derry and some of the important sights and sites of Belfast. The car was a hybrid and very easy to drive once you managed to convince yourself that the automatic handbrake worked and would continue to work while you were away. The railway service is cute and scenic. The people are immensely friendly, kind and courteous. In short we loved the place and its people. While there we worshipped in two baptist churches, one where our friend is the incumbent and the other in Belfast where an erstwhile intern in Bordeaux is now Associate Pastor. We'd love to go back to Northern Ireland one day, but in the summer.

 Following the Great Keswick Debacle, when our volunteering at the Keswick café was sabotaged by our assorted indispositions, we had airline tickets to use up. Yes, we had not taken travel insurance, so we paid even more money to change our tickets to fly for a short visit to North Wales. This time we were able to go. We passed extremely slowly through a very crowded Bordeaux airport but in good time to get our plane. All seats in the terminal were taken so we leaned against whatever we could find while waiting to board. Hey, bags need seats, too! though sometimes pointing out to Pat, "No, that's a bag seat", makes the bag find a new refuge on the lap of the person sitting next to it... Once on the plane we quickly found our allocated seats - right at the back on the left hand side - stowed our bags and the flight was smooth and uneventful.  We had 30 minutes in Manchester to disembark, get through immigration , hustle off to the station and board our train for Shotton. I

The Hobbit has been translated into Welsh and published as "Yr Hobyd - Yno ac yn ôl". I rushed to order a copy, of course. Meanwhile we've had visitors. Our son and daughter-in-law have been to stay, and then their friend Phil from Yeovil arrived. They are going to watch a couple of Olympic football matches, one here and two in Marseille, where they drove today. Our flat is smaller than our old one, and poor Phil had to sleep on the floor in the living room. A borrowed airbed proved useless because we didn't have the special pump. Cushions pushed together were abandoned. A duvet on the floor proved pointless. The last night involved cushions secured together by the duvet, and this held throughout the night. Nevertheless Phil's Fitbit announced that he had slept well whatever the conditions. We begin a month of inactivity soon. Well, we are planned to visit our sending church, then to spend two weeks in Northern Ireland. We will chill diligently ready for our big r

Saturday 13/7 I finally felt more like myself again, though it seemed unwise to wander far from a good toilet. That makes 10 days of gastro-enteritis! Sunday I was able to preach.  Monday I was pretty washed out and good for nothing. Meanwhile Pat's back was responding well to painkillers, rest and gentle exercise. Tuesday we went into the café, travelling by bus'd'sub on the way there and bus 9 coming back (never again!). Our tram that takes us to church and to the café is currently having some major engineering works, so it's out of commission until next week. The city lays on relay buses (bus'd'sub, for bus de substitution), which are slow, hot and crowded. They follow, more or less, the route the train would take. We decided to take bus 9 along the boulevard to come back, but it's slow, long and crowded, too. Worse than the bus'd'sub. Wednesday, yesterday, we got to the café on time by taking an earlier bus'd'sub, then decided to make the

We have some medication from the pharmacy. It seems to be good stuff and has reduced the problem greatly.  Meanwhile Pat's old back problem has flared up.