les Davey de France

So yesterday we Daveys went off to our different rendez-vous. Patricia to the Alliance Française for her preparatory workshop before her TCF-ANF next week. She had a wonderful time listening to the recordings (just once) and ticking the boxes according to the conversation she thought she heard. Then discussing the discussion section. Meanwhile Catrin and I were at James' flat with the GBU bunch for an evening discussing evangelism and apologetics. It seemed to go OK, and James cooked us an excellent spicy pasta meal!

the other Saturday a little group of us headed for the nearest tram stop. We got talking. As often happens the subject got on to how long I've been in France, whether I came directly to Bordeaux and stuff. It comes up because I have an accent (American? Canadian? Belgian? Martian?) but I do pronounce things like what we do in Bordeaux. One woman said, "Ah yes, I am from north of the Loire and it wasn't till I came here that I had any idea that in and un could conceivably be pronounced differently." So for her there were just three nasal vowels, and in un grand pain rond, un and ain sound exactly the same. As do un and in in un bon vin blanc . I'd read about this in the unique and unparalleled Harriette Walters books. And all of a sudden the penny dropped on something that I'd not thought about. A friend who is very cultured, well-read and a professional story-teller did some workshops on the use of the voice. We went along to some. She insisted

When I had my eyes tested the ophthalmologist said, "Now I don't know if your additional health assurance will cover your new glasses. Some of them have gone to once every two years. So I watched out for the reimbursement. On 14 February the state scheme reimbursed 14 euros of the cost, and the message said that the bill had been passed to our additional health assurer. Since then nothing. So I called it at the local office armed with every possible relevant piece of paper. The lady at the desk phoned head office. "They say that it's every two years now, unless your eyesight has changed", quoth she, holding the phone in her hand. "And what does this prescription say?" asked I. "Ah yes. ... But his eyesight has changed", she said down the telephone. So today I was glad to see that I have been reimbursed. Should think so too!

I haven't looked up this word, I warn you, so I've just worked it out from context but: when you have a flat tyre c'est crevé . when you want to tell someone to drop dead (I know you don't, of course) Crève! when you feel under the weather, exhausted, generally below par, j'ai la crève when you are exhausted and desperate for sleep, je suis crevé

I knew there'd be one around here somewhere. Morning run round the sodden vineyard and through the damp streets. Maybe shopping for cotton trousers later. And music, music, music.

Well there we are. Two evenings that went OK. On Monday evening I had to deal with "Is there life after death", and the pastor from the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Florian, had "Does God exist". There were 37 folk present, about 1/2 unknown to the GBU people. On Tuesday evening my subject was "Does life have a point?" and Florian got the biggie, "If God exists, why is there evil?" There were fewer people present but again about 1/2 were folk unknown to the GBU types. I realised how far out of my comfort zone I was. "Philosophical" style subjects. A Lecture hall setting. Questions and answers after the talks. Very short talks, 15 mins maximum. And, of course, everything in French. Today I was a little bushed, but we had a prayer date and a lunch date with some friends and colleagues, then Pat and I went and booked her in for a preparatory workshop for her French test, then went and had an excellent coffee from Café Piha before

On Friday morning as I tottered out for a scamper round the vines I saw that there were two people waiting by the bus stop. I don't wear my glasses to run and sometimes I have to squint to decide whether the animal in the distance is a sweet little pussycat or a ravaging dobermann pinscher - this morning when the thing began to move I could tell it was a cat - so I didn't recognise the people at the bus stop. Not until they both said a cheery "Bonjour" and I realised it was our neighbour and her daughter.... So early this morning, perhaps it was knowing that all was revealed and my feeble attempts at secrecy were all in vain. Or perhaps it was that my back was aching and I was hit by one of those early morning existential crises, so eloquently sung by my neighbour on a Welsh language camp all those years ago - "ffili gweld y pwynt o godi, ffili gweld y pwynt o gwbl" - I don't see the point of getting up, I don't see the point at all . Anyway the cl

from the website of the Gospel Coalition - click HERE and from Wales Today - click HERE

Bobo = bourgeois-bohème (the rich and trendy) Facho = fascists (the extreme right) Beer for Patrick's Day, Leffe, Desperadoes and Hoegaarden!  Figures, I suppose:

On Tuesday, having discovered new reserves of energy, we decided to go out for a meal to celebrate our anniversary. This means lunch, for reasons I won't go into. Now Bordeaux has an embarrassment of wonderful eating establishments, but at the moment we have a little project of eating our way round the world near the Place de la Victoire, so we decided to eat at Nobi Nobi Japanese restaurant. Pat had a predictably cool curry while I had some chicken thing with rice. We ate in the sun, quaffing San Pellegrino, then went to the nearby Banana Café for dessert and coffee. It's a grand life!

I'm pretty sure that when we got married and went on honeymoon I had an Olympus Pen EE3 half-frame camera. It was great. It took no batteries and was as reliable as can be. It took great photos, though the processing was expensive! After a while I bought the best camera I ever had. Now I had slr cameras over the years. First a Zenith E that I bought as a student and sold on. That was followed by a Cosina CSM - really good! Then came a Nikon FE, I think, bought second-hand, and then a Canon Eos 300. That was my last slr. No, the best camera I ever had was an Olympus mju2. Quick, easy to use, a splendid lens, a good focusing and exposure system, some of my favourite photos were taken with this camera. Digital cameras became cheaper, with the prospect of immediate photos and no processing charge. There followed a little list of cameras like the Olympus C3000 (refurbished from Morgan Computers!), a compact Olympus C2/D230, a really natty little Minolta X20, which was very good at

in the Eglise Saint-Nicolas, a big 19th century heap with lots of trompe l'oeil swags and bows in the interior.  The concert was given by the amateur vocal ensemble, Stella Montis, which specialises in singing stuff by living composers, or at least those not long dead, and in which the bass player from the Pessac Jazz Band sings. I wasn't sure what to expect. We are going through a period in music where living composers are writing music that is pleasant and accessible - in the UK people like John Taverner and Paul Mealor, and internationally with people like Arvo Pärt and the American minimalists. But you never know, do you. Well I was blown away by their repertoire. The theme of the concert was Bach's influence, so they began with a quick and simple chorale, then another by Mendelssohn, then we were into works by Jaakko Mäntyjärvi, Knut Nystedt and David Lang. And one from Arvo Pärt. Here's one of the David Lang pieces, "Again". He's Jewish and the

One problem with being a creature of habit and fitting a 6:30 run into your life is that when your life is disrupted in any way - late nights, for example - your habits go out of the window and take your early morning runs with them. I cannot go to bed at 1am and then get up at 6:30 to run. Others may be able to. I cannot. So for some time I've been intending to add in a 1km loop to my morning circuit. This morning I did it. Hurrah! And what a morning for a run. Light, for the first time this year. A haze over the vineyard. The local rowdy birds yelling their heads off again. Some young lad about 30 - 40 years old running the other way looking all wiry and angular, a proper runner, while I oozed in the opposite direction. But I like to think I encouraged him as he did me as we puffed "bonjour" to each other. My "fitness band", a Xiaomi Band 2, receives frequent updates to its firmware and to the application on my iphone that goes with it. One recent update

so we decided to go out for cake and coffee. There is now an embarrassment of cafés in Bordeaux that I really like and want to go to. It took us just a little time, however, to decide to go to the very posh café near the Opera House, la Librairie de la Comédie. It's a bookshop with a posh café, and they have REALLY NICE cakes.

"Komm süsser Tod" by Knut Nystedt after Bach.

It's glorious here. Sunshine. Loud birds. Flowers everywhere. Wonderful running weather. And LATE NIGHTS, so only one bout of early morning running. Oh well.

Emails was OK. Some were replies saying sorry, this year I cannot come because our dates for church visits are booked up now. :-( One was a reply to someone who'd like to come and help for a couple months. Some were to do with Dialogue Véritas. I'll need to do another post about that. Booking conferences was another thing. Essentially every year I have to choose between attending the Colloque Biblique Francophone or attending the Banner of Truth Conference. To go to Banner I schedule church visits near the dates of the conference and that works out OK, except that really church visits are better done later in the year, in June. Anyway. So this year I thought I could try and attend both. They are on consecutive weeks, but one is only three days and the other four. We even planned that Patricia would come with me to the UK and while I was at Banner she would spend the time with church folk in North Wales. HOWEVER. Banner is held in the UK near Stoke on Trent in Apri

To get from Victoria to the British Museum I could have taken the Underground, but before committing myself I thought I would check with Google maps and it told me that I could take a bus directly. Buses are MUCH better. You can see the city as you travel through. So off I went to find the stop. Well the Victoria area is being redeveloped, so the whole place is a little difficult to negotiate. Added to that it wasn't obvious to me how the bus stop functioned! But despite my uncertainty I managed to find the stop, wait for the bus and hop on it, and I was pleased to find that it was one of those redesigned Routemaster Boris buses. To pay for public transport in London you have several options. You can buy a ticket from a machine. You can load money onto your prepaid Oyster card and present that at the turnstiles. Or you can simply use your contactless credit or debit card. I have an Oyster card, but I didn't want to load money onto it unnecessarily, so I used my bank card.

OK. So back in the autumn there was a plebiscite to choose the candidate for the centre-right party, which at the moment is called "Les Républicains" in a fine show of resistance to the inexorable march of American culture. The greatly loved mayor of Bordeaux, Alain Juppé, stood alongside François Fillon, considerably more right-wing, but who presented himself as the squeaky-clean candidate, resolutely and traditionally Roman Catholic and with a Welsh wife, Penelope. Fillon won. Then came Penelopegate . French politicians are allowed to use parliamentary money to employ their family members as aides, secretaries etc. BUT it has to be for real work really done. M. Fillon had paid his wife a generous but not unreasonable salary amounting to something approaching a million euros over the years. Unfortunately an interview emerged where Mrs Fillon, who comes from the disputed territories of Monmouthshire, was asked if she helped François with his work.  Her reply went somethi

On Tuesday I took flight to go to the Affinity Theological Studies Conference. This is held every two years and takes the form of six papers exploring a theme in theology, these papers being sent out beforehand accompanied by a series of discussion questions. During the conference each expert delivers a synopsis of his paper, or homes in on sections they feel particularly relevant. The assembled company then divides into groups of about 10 people to discuss the paper and the questions set by the speaker. I had agreed to lead one of these groups. I set off from a tempest-racked Bordeaux having weighed the misery of catching the 42 outside our flat, then crossing the road at Mérignac to wait for the 1 to the airport against the misery of trudging to the centre of Pessac to catch the 48 directly with no change. I decided on the latter and made it to the airport not entirely drenched. Some of this water came from my trek to the bus stop. Some of it fell INSIDE THE BUS. I consoled mysel