And so to the optician

We have our standard health insurance scheme - we belong to the regime for the priests, nuns etc. - and a top-up insurance, a mutuelle, so when you need glasses you have to ring to find out with which optician your mutuelle has an arrangement. So we ended up going to an optician on the other side of Pessac. I met Catrin off the bus from school and we scuttled through the torrential downpours into the opticians' - a very grand place like a small supermarket entirely dedicated to spectacles. And it seemed deserted.

Until a young woman spotted us and came over. She took my Carte Vitale and the card from our mutuelle and then said "So what kind of frames would you like", directing us towards the swanky brands. Catrin tried several different ones and eventually settled on a pair from down the other end of the shop.

Then came the totting up. Without the mutuelle your glasses would come to a King's Ransom, but because of the mutuelle you get so-and-so reduction on the frames and there's a set list of prices for the lenses, so that comes to ... an Italian Industrialist's Ransom.

I signed here ... and here ... and here ... and here ... and put my card in the slot and poked the numbers.

Oh, and there's a free spare pair from another range of frames...

So they'll be ready on Friday in time for Catrin to take them on her school trip.

Normally Catrin would be in school all day on Friday but it's the Père Cent*, so they will probably close the school and even if they don't she's not going anyway. So we'll go and collect her specs.

* the Père Cent# is celebrated 100 days before the baccalaureate exams, when bac candidates run amok round the street casting eggs, ketchup, flour etc. at those lycéens in the lower years. Last year Catrin went to school to find it closed and got pelted with ketchup and flour while fleeing for the bus home.

# Catrin and I argued hammer and tongs, tooth and nail over the spelling of Père Cent, she insisted that it's not Père Cent as in Père Noël and in the end I acquiesced and wrote percent... Then the school sent out it's traditional Père Cent warning letter "Any child found..." and it's spelt... Père Cent.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

A bit about music exams in UK and France

They're really different. I think I have already mentioned that while in the UK people generally find a private teacher for their instrument, or do it through a school scheme, here there are municipal music school, conservatoires and so on. The situation is a little more complex than I had first understood, because the schools vary in the rigidity of their organisation: the most, the conservatoires, next the municipals, then the associations. Our music school is an association, but it tends to apply the standards of the municipal schools with its programme of cycles, etc. Britain - grade 1 to 8, grade 8 being roughly equivalent to A-level, pre university/conservatoire. France - 3 cycles, each taking about 4 years, with 3ème cycle being roughly equivalent to grade 8. Theory of music - UK to take grade 8 you need theory grade 5. In France you study theory alongside your instrumental studies, very slowly. Catrin's flute music is MUCH more difficult than the stuff she does in theor...
Read more

Good news from my sermon buddy

Yesterday we went over my script from August 13. There really wasn't much she had taken exception to. Once or twice she wondered quite what I was getting at (they had the same problem at Deeside, I think...) and I do have difficulties with the word " de ", but then she said "Who doesn't?" So I felt very encouraged. I also took the opportunity to ask her about one or two things: 1) Direct preaching. Like I used to in Britain, I preach saying you - using "vous" when I am talking to the whole wide world and "tu" when I want it to feel as if I am addressing each person individually. French preachers tend to say rather "What will we do, what will one do". So I asked her if she felt my way was too direct, too brutal for the French ear. She said "I think you can get away with it with your English accent". In fact several people have commented on how much they appreciated being spoken to directly in preaching. 2) Liaisons Last...
Read more

A brief sortie to North Wales

 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...
Read more