les Davey de France

So I got our property-owners' tax bill through today. 1608€, please, by mid October for the property which we no longer own . I wondered whether I perhaps still owed for last year, but no, it clearly said it was for this year. I wondered if there was some kind of mistake in my mind, but no, the notaire had clearly said that we would no longer have to pay after December 2015. I wondered if perhaps I had not notified them, but I have. I wrote the day we sold the house, enclosing the notaires' attestation of sale. AND they contacted me in August asking if we still owned the house, and I replied, enclosing my letter of 22 December and the notaires' attestation of sale, again. I phoned them up. After some minutes on hold I got through to a helpful lady who made encouragingly shocked noises to her colleague. "Oh la la. Mais quoi? Et aloes... Zut!" and other words I shall not repeat. "Allô? Monsieur? Yes, because the change of ownership was only noted ...

I'm off to Paris in October to a training day on association law run by the Conseil National des Evangéliques de France. It'll mean an overnight stay but I've found somewhere reasonable, a reasonably priced rail ticket and it's all feasible.

Today Mrs Davey and I took advantage of the relative calm to go and explore an exhibition of street art that has been set up in the old premises of the Virgin Megastore, and that is open from Wednesday to Sunday each week. OK. So, having a little time on our hands, we decided to check out some new coffee chops. First we poked our noses into Starbucks because a friend has just started working there. He wasn't there. We retreated swiftly. Then we visited the BIG post office looking for pre-stamped envelopes for sending letters overseas, for example to England. They didn't have any. Then we decided to check out a new coffee shop that comes with strong recommendations, and that will prepare your coffee by chemex, aeropress, or sundry other methods. It looked great, but Mrs Davey was not convinced. So we went to the Jean Moulin French Resistance Museum where there is an exhibition of propaganda from WWII. It was chilling, especially a film about the liberation of the deat...

So today has been interesting. Catrin left at 9:00 to go to the airport with some friends on a trip to Barcelona. We, meanwhile, were off to Clinique Tivoli for an appointment with the anaesthetists who will numb Patricia's eye with drops ready for the surgeon to do her cataracts. At about 10 the phone rang. "Dad, one of the girls has a problem with her card, but there's a couple who had the same problem, so we're going with them by car to Barcelona." The "problem with the card" was a French identity card that was out of date by a month. The girl in question will come back by coach, where they don't worry so much about valid identity. So off they set for Barcelona. Catrin promised to text us from time to time. Meanwhile we set off for the clinic. Patricia needed a BIG THICK dossier of papers, including a complete print of the contract of our health insurance and loads of other stuff, together with her passport. We walked through the stre...

We have had two different deliveries this week from UPS. One came on Wednesday and one on Thursday. At least in theory. I had been tracking the deliveries and I knew that Wednesday's parcel was scheduled to arrive, so we made sure someone was always in to watch for it. I was not encouraged, therefore, to receive a message saying that the package could not be delivered because we were " indisponible " - unavailable. How much more available can you be than watching the gate of the front yard of the flats? We knew no UPS van had come. Anyway our flat has a bell, a loud bell, a loud bell which had been silent all day. Subsequent messages said that the package had been delivered to a relay point about 5 minutes walk away, then that the relay point was closed so "a new attempt to deliver the package would be made on Thursday". The problem - apart from complete fabrication such as "unavailable" - is that because the flats are less than a year old t...

We needed some provisions, so Patricia and I ventured out quite early on the 42 bus towards Mérignac. I knew one stop to get off to go to the huge Carrefour at Mérignac Soleil, but I saw, too, that you could alight at the stop before and take a shorter route, so we tried it. A little gated road with a footpath and cycle path led past a staff carpark for Carrefour - promising - and past a yard full of Carrefour rental vehicles. To the right was the after-sales service area. A gentleman with a small girl was walking in front of us. I noticed that his legs were strangely shaped - a cyclist, I think. We followed him. He entered through a doorway. When we approached the doorway we saw that it said "Private, No entry, Security". A lady stood just to one side, smoking. "Hallo," I said, "how does one access the shopping centre?" "Through there", she said, "then across and through a door on the left". Thus encouraged we entered the pri...

The inscription process is really well organised. You start at the bottom of the reception building with someone who checks that you have all the documents you need. Catrin had not received her official list of marks for her course last year, so she'd downloaded them from the course website. Also we were unsure whether the little grant she received makes her a boursière or not, so we'd said she wasn't. The woman who checked Catrin's dossier went off to check and came back with her official report from last year AND the news that she is indeed a boursière, and therefore we didn't have to pay any fees for her course. Last year we had about 200€ to pay. Then you go to part 2 , which is the actual inscription desk. Here all your information is loaded into the computer and you get back various certificates to say that you're a student, as well as your wifi password, etc. After that it's part 3 , which is where you get your student card and you walk awa...

We have heat-shields on our windows. Roll-down shutters. As this part of France is officially in a heatwave (Canicule - defined in the Gironde as temperatures above 35 in the daytime and not falling below 21 at night) the government has issued the following instructions: 1) Spend at least 3 hours a day in a cool place. (for us this would mean hanging about in Carrefour or in the local library) 2) Refresh yourself, moisten your body several times a day. 3) Drink frequently and copiously, even when you are not thirsty. 4) Don't go out at the hottest times. The hottest times are from about 2 in the afternoon till about 6 pm. The morning is OK, and in Pessac  we also get nice breezes. But after lunch you can't stay out on the terrace, you have to get back in the house behind the shutters. And even then it's so hot you are aware that you're thinking sluggishly. So in the afternoon we live like troglodytes in the gloom hidden behind our heat-shields....

There was a guy there filming for TV7. He asked if he could interview me, but his questions were a bit un-thought-out and I was somewhat awestruck by the plant so I was replying in whispers!

This morning - a visit to the Greenhouses of the Botanical Gardens (already some of my favourite words in that sentence) to see the flowering  Amorphophallus titanum . This afternoon - trombone brother Bruce (who is actually American) is coming round for coffee. This evening - Patricia and Catrin come home and I get to collect them from the airport in Carys the Yaris!

Again this morning I noticed that people I know from separate worlds - France, Wales, UK, Mission, etc - discover each other or know each other, without me introducing them or knowing they knew each other. It's a bit alarming sometimes. Everyone I know also knows each other. I dare not sniff, I am surrounded! It's not that surprising, really, though, is it. Birds of a feather and all that. Six degrees of separation. I thought about this the other day. Someone described a church I know and love as "just scraping in as conservative evangelical". I was surprised. The church in question is eminently conservative evangelical and more or less in the centre of the spectrum of evangelical churches in its city. Of course, we could do with defining our terms - what is a conservative evangelical anyway? Not only that, but you ask the more "right-wing" of our brothers and they'd agree that the church barely cuts muster, but ask folk on the left-wing and my frien...

Mrs Davey has taken flight to England, to Burgess Hill, to the celebration of our brother-il-law's 70th birthday. Yes. 70th. Oh la la. So 15h found us scuttling through Pessac to get Carys the Yaris to drive off to the airport. When we arrived I cast a glance round Carys and found - a long scrape down her side. Yikes! This means phoning the Car Pool Club. I had to do this once before - I found someone had clouted her bumper - and it's always frustrating. For a start you get put through to an operator in a call centre somewhere and they can never find the parking place in their system. "La Gare de Pessac? Non, je ne le trouve pas..." "Ben, de toute façon il n'y a qu'un seul stationnement à Pessac, alors si vous trouvez Pessac vous avez trouvé l'endroit." I tried not to sound exasperated. The thing was, Mrs Davey had a plane to catch. "La longueur? Je dirais 50 cm." I think it was longer, in fact. Anyway, as long as they k...

I phoned on Tuesday for an appointment. "Tomorrow at 9:15?", said the doctor, who handles her own diary. I quickly reserved the Yaris hybrid and all was set for the off. The Yaris started great - once I remembered that you have to stick your foot on the brake - and off we went together, me and Carys the Yaris. I really love that car! It's smooth, quiet and has good aircon. And the roads in August are pretty clear. It was a pleasure to drive again! 9:15 means you won't go in very late. My doctor books appointments every 15 minutes, but I reckon she takes about 20 minutes with each person, so it's good to go early in the day if you can. I bet she never eats lunch. Still, lunch is for wimps. We did the general MOT / contrôle technique. "You're still running?" "Yes." I didn't feel the need to explain that while in the UK running through unknown streets prowled by unknown monsters had put me off. She looked at my carbuncle. ...

1. It really is all of grace. Any church growth or health is down to the goodness of God. 2. Those you help the most, hurt the most. Sometimes the people you invest in the most just walk away...sometimes in anger. 3. Beware of strangers bearing gifts. Too many times I have trusted new people too soon and been burnt. Beware motives. 4. Home is where the heart is: Protect it! My primary calling is as a husband & father, but it is always tempting to neglect. 5. People don't care how much you know until they know how much you care. Pastoral care and preaching are inseparable. 6. Grace is always enough, even in the face of death. God always brings His people through, even when their faith seems weak 7. Remember the 7th day of creation. Sleep, sabbaths and sabbaticals keep us humble and healthy. 8. Fight to have fresh milk every day. I need the grace of time with God every day. Without it I get arrogant or despondent. 9. Don't believe the hype. Fads, fash...

We returned on Saturday from a very restful three weeks in the UK. The first week we were spoilt rotten in Clydach by old friends who opened their comfortable home to us, cooked wonderful meals and sent us off exploring in their car. The weather was a bit lousy, but it's always wet in the Dan-yr-Ogof caves and we followed up our visit with Gwilym's dream "pub lunch". Next came the UFM Family Conference which was a good time. Gwilym was in charge of the older Youth Stream, aided and abetted by Catrin. The conference was held in a de Vere conference centre which was in beautiful grounds in a lovely Surrey village, but the rooms were in dire need of redecorating. However the food was good and the conference encouraging. We always come away feeling very daunted by what some of our colleagues have to deal with - we really do have a cushy number here in comparison - and I STILL got burnout! Meanwhile my summer carbuncle - well, while at UFM I finished my eight day c...

The 15 days were up last Thursday, and today is the deadline for enrolling for the next TCF-ANF exam in October, so I emailed my old phonetics teacher and asked if I had passed. The answer came back straight away. Because the exam took place on the last day of term, the deliberations will not take place until September. Oh well. I reckon I will have passed. Even with the cow in the apartment, they'd have to give me 20% for my effort, surely. And the other testes were OK.

Well the augmentin did not succeed in killing off the bugs which had colonised my neck. By the way, would you like to see some photos that Pat took of the carbuncle? She took them so I could see its progress as the antibiotics did their work. Also I have succeeded in finding out why I couldn't find a word for carbuncle in French. There is a word. It is l'anthrax . Yes. Irritating, isn't it. Just as using l'angine for a sore throat is irritating. So once the course of augmentin was finished, and the carbuncle still infected, I decided to go and see a doctor again. We were in the leafy village of East Horsley, near Leatherhead in Surrey, so I dodged the Mercedes, BMWs and Jaguars to stroll through the village to the surgery. The doctor was very nice, very efficient and very straight. "I'd say there's a 30% chance you'll need to have that lanced," quoth she. "Lanced is such a ... violent word." I replied. "Well, we'll...