les Davey de France

The letter had been hanging round for a few weeks and I thought I had really better get it done. I do like to wait a little while. I have this theory that the vaccines get better as the weeks go on, but the last week of November is leaving it late. So off I went to ask about getting my flu jab. In Pessac one year the nurse came to do it. Another year I got the vaccine just before a visit to the doctor. I have the impression that the procedure changes every year. "Hallo. I have this form for a flu jab. How do you do that now? I feel like it changes a lot." "Oh yes, we can do that." "What? Here? At the pharmacy?" "Yes, that's right." The guy went off to get the vaccine. I took off my jacket. "But we'll go in a side room." "Oh, OK, though it doesn't bother me. It's only my arm. So the pharmacist?" "Yes, well you used to have to get the letter approved by your doctor, then get the vaccine fro...

The top part of the tower just beyond the metallic car park is now half-completed. It will have 9 floors of concrete for offices, and 9 floors of glass-clad wooden structure for apartments, separated by what I think will be a tenth floor garden area.

So I have now received my convocation to the préfecture for the 12 December, at 14:35 at guichet 22. The is the same date and place as Pat, but ten minutes before. So yesterday I sppent a happy moment scanning and downloading various documents that we will need. Two passports (every page) Two birth certificates. One marriage certificate. Two years' worth of electricity bills for 2013 and 2014 Rent record for 2015 - 2018 Tax statements for 2013 to 2015 Proof of rights under health system. We'll need to provide an attestation each about the amount of time we have spent outside France during the last five years. And I think that's all. We've been told that the people who deal with this at the préfecture are very pleasant.

Pat has her appointment at the Préfecture on the 12th of December!

There is currently a social movement against President Macron and his reforms, especially focused on the price of motor fuel at the pumps. Although prices have fallen over the past few weeks, it is still true that both diesel and petrol cost less in Spain and people feel ... hard done by. Thus large groups of people wearing their regulation yellow security vests have been meeting at strategic points to block the motorway bridges, toll booths and junctions. This has caused traffic mayhem in Bordeaux, our trams are full to bursting and our buses are delayed, rerouted and sometimes just plumb cancelled. It si a good time to be living in the centre of the city near the station! The situation is serious, some people have died at the roadblocks when drivers have panicked and so on. Meanwhile some wag mused on how agreeable life would have been if instead of imposing the yellow vest to be kept in all cars in case o breakdown, the government had chosen pink tutus. There's always one....

It has suddenly got very cold in Bordeaux. Over the course of two days it went from about 17°C to about 4°C. In our flat we seem to maintain a temperature of around 22°C to 25°C. Our thermostat is set to 19°C, but we seem never to have plumbed these depths and so our radiators have not yet heated up. Such, I suppose, is the efficiency of modern insulation.

Good news on the cartes de séjour front : some people in the Gironde have had letters giving appointments at the préfecture.

Well we did it. It was nuts. It was crazy. It was mad, but we did it, and we pulled it off! Something like 13 or 14 hyperactive italian romantic composers recruited by Verdi to write a requiem in honour of Rossini. Arianna, a choir of some 30 to 40 voices, augmented to 130 or more by a collection of choristers from all around. A 50 piece orchestra including an ophicleide. Five awesome soloists. All were great, the contralto and the bass were outstanding - and the bass used to be a maths teacher! Two hours of music ranging from sweet unaccompanied melodies ("think gondolas", said our choirmaster) to wild frantic blasts ("look terrified", he said). Verdi did the dies irae. Enough said. Some of the choir couldn't sing. I know, because I stood next to two of them at different times. I watched the player tuning his ophicleide. He blew a test note, shrugged and crossed himself. The piece was well-written. Here's an example. The first half ends with...

Tomorrow is the concert of the Mass for Rossini, given to mark the 150th anniversary of the death of Rossini and the 30th anniversary of the founding of the choir, Arianna. There's about 130 in the choir, a 50 piece orchestra and 5 soloists. We're doing it in the cathedral and apparently it's close to being a sell-out. Essentially on Rossini's death Verdi decided it would be a good idea to pay homage to the great composer by getting a gang of Italian romantic opera composers to collaborate on a requiem that would be a tribute from his friends and colleagues. The result is a two-hour extravaganza. We've been learning the piece and practicing for over a year. Here's a couple of remarks. These are Italian romantic opera composers, so the piece is larger than life. It's full of loud and soft, fast and slow, soaring soloists, a very menacing bass, four trombones, an ophicleide, the kit and the caboodle. It'll be my swan song with the choir. I've joi...

A young guy appeared at church last summer from a country where changing your religion is forbidden by law. He told us his story, of coming from a mixed background family, belonging officially to one religion but always being more attracted by another. Eventually he decided to become a Christian and started attending a house church. The church was raided, some six people were arrested and the others scattered. He hid in a village for a while, then found a "guide" to help him get out of the country. People like this often want to come to the UK because they speak a little English, but you can't get entry visas or get smuggled in so the "guides" instead persuade you to go to France or Belgium. Thus he ended up in France. He subsequently heard that the leader of the house group had been found dead, ostensibly he had committed suicide on his release from detention. So far our friend has been given a place to live - a shared room in an apartment near the centre...

unless they have started to landscape the future Jardins de l'Ars.

We caught the 6:30 train from Bordeaux to Paris to go to the South African Embassy on the Quai d'Orsay. That train is amazing - we hurtled through the French countryside at 300 km per hour (180 mph) and arrived in Paris shortly before we left Bordeaux - or at least it felt that way. Paris was grey and cold, but we negotiated the metro and got to the embassy. We needed to pick up some papers, and we got that done in about 5 minutes. Then we had some other important business to do before our return train at 3:15. First the Marks and Spencer Food Shop. There are several of these in Paris, so we chose the nearest and easiest to get to and scuttled off to find happiness in the form of: A Christmas Pudding Mincemeat Mince pies Lemon curd (for Catrin - a recent passion) It doesn't seem a lot but it weighed my rucksack down and also squashed my banana to pulp. Then off to a traditional Paris café - Starbucks - before zooming off to the Atelier des Lumières for a son et...

Houseplants are not easy to find in the heart of a French city. Lidl will sometimes sell something - they had some chilli pepper plants a while ago. Auchan will do a small range occasionally. Ikea sells a range of moderately priced plants. Otherwise there are the florists, but their houseplants are very expensive indeed. Enter Plantes pour tous, a group of nurseries and growers who group together, take an empty commercial unit or a municipal room and put on a two day sale of plants priced at 2, 5 or 10 euros. They've visited Bordeaux twice over the past few months, the first time at the Halle des Chartrons where Pat and I went and queued  to enter. We came out with a Scindapsus (a variegated vine with heart-shaped green and gold leaves) two different Sansevierias, a variegated Ficus Benjamin, a lovely spider plant and a miniature orange tree. Ikea provided a tall Dracaena and two small Aloe veras. Plantes pour tous returned to Bordeaux yesterday and I went along hoping to fin...

We left the flat at about 2, laden with cabin bags, sleeping bags and a bag of snacks. The following eight days would be filled with travel and adventure, but we began by lugging our bags down the stairs. The lift was out of order. Tram C took us to Quinconces. Tram B took us to Doyen Brus where we met the other intrepid members of our party and clambered into Uncle Eli's elderly but valiant Renault Espace. Bags, suits, a guitar and a barrel of beer filled the boot. We filled the seats. We ventured off onto the motorway system to do the six hour or so journey to the Cévennes. We were to stay overnight in some holiday flats in a little village not far outside Alès. The funny thing with the Cévennes is that whatever the distance you have to travel, it takes at least 30 minutes. And that's without diversions, alarmingly narrow village streets and doing the same circuit twice. Diversions, alarmingly narrow village streets and doing the same circuit twice became the leitmotif of...