les Davey de France

Republican France is nevertheless very attached to its public holidays, many of which mark events in the story of Christianity. So it is that this week we mark Thursday of the Ascension (the BBC used always to play an Ascension Day hymn, and the following couple of days. If you take Friday off then you get four days off in a row! It's not without drawbacks. Ascension Day moves back and fore with Easter so this year falls just at the end of May. Coupled with the other public holidays on 1st May and the 8th May, it can effectively paralyse anything you're trying to accomplish in May. That leaves June to get something done before you hit the holiday months of July and August head-on.

I'm pretty sure I did it right, but I just did my tax declaration again and they say they owe me money.

a fire, that is. This time in a block of lovely stone buildings just behind the waterfront at the start of the Chartrons area of Bordeaux. Renovation works are suspected at present. The fire spread through the roofs of six houses and destroyed some of the buildings pretty thoroughly. One has effectively collapsed. We're hoping for no more fires this summer!

On Saturday evening a fire started on floor -3 (minus 3) of the undergound car park on the quays near the Saint-Michel market square. Tram C passes directly overhead. It took almost a day to pout out the fire. Over 300 cars have been damaged, as well as the structure of the car park. Until safety experts can verify that there is no danger of collapse the tram can't pass over the car park, so there's no tram C between the main railway station and the interchange at Quinconces. Hi, bus de substitution! Wish I could say I'd missed you!

 The square ones have all been through instagram, all with the same filter and brightness increased a little. The rectangular one of the tram stop is before instagram treatment, just as it comes out of the iPhone.

and so are the piles of earth

The assiduous reader will know that our life here is one of constant anticipation as we see the building site around us change and as we hope for the promised gardens to emerge. So certain recent developments have us all agog! Firstly some bottle banks have been placed behind the car park. We watch these keenly because as soon as they are commissioned we have several months worth of bottles just waiting to be deposited. The local dump is often closed and its bottle banks inaccessible. Then a container that had been used to store tools was removed. Lately some membranes have been laid down and covered with soil. Is this the start of terracing for the gardens? Is the big square hole destined to welcome some artwork, like the Stick of Rock in front of our flats? And why these earthworks? Are they permanent or temporary?

You live and learn, don't you. There are various folk on the interweb who occupy themselves with finding out unusual facts and putting them out there for all the world to see. Two such have recently alerted me to the fact that one of our squares in Bordeaux has a chequered past. Place Fernand-Lafargue used to be known as Place du Vieux Marché because it was there in centuries past that produce brought to the city via the Garonne was sold to the eager townsfolk. Nowadays it is a square of bars and restaurants. There you'll find various Thai restaurants. Bordeaux' fish and chip shop was there, but has since been replaced by a Peruvian Sushi Bar. (I promise you that I'm telling the truth.) You'll also find the popular Apollo bar. But the Place du Vieux Marché had another, more sinister use. It was the place of public torture where, as one writer put it, some were broken on the wheel, others had their tongue pierced with a red hot poker, and counterfeiters wer...

On Thursday, Friday and Saturday our choir, Arianna, was engaged to sing with three other choirs and two harmonies (town, wind or military bands) at the cathedral for the "Night of the Cathedrals". This is an evening where all over France cathedrals put on cultural events designed to draw in the crowds. Our concert was free, the cathedral was full to bursting and people were queuing round the block and way up the street to get in. The programme was varied, including some martial piece I didn't know at all, followed without intermission by Cantique de Jean Racine Extracts from Carmina Burana (the loudest and most spectacular parts!) Two extracts from Mozart's Requiem Berlioz' Grande Symphonie Funèbre et Triomphante The dress rehearsal on Thursday evening was brutal. We were stood around for hours, and Pat's back threatened rebellion. So she went home and didn't sing in the concert itself. On Friday evening we were working, so that meant I was pre...

Read about Grand Parc in the Guardian today here . Here's a little video en français with English subtitles. EU Mies Award 2019 : Transformation of 530 Dwellings - Grand Parc Bordeaux from caviar.archi on Vimeo .

I checked on the website this morning and, yes, the price had gone down and all was hunky-dory and dinky-doo, so off to the station I toddled through high winds and driving rain. This time I didn't make an appointment, I just took a ticket and sat in an armchair to read until my ticket number was shown on the screen. The clerk took my details and printed out the card. "On a pas besoin de justificatif ?" "Ben, non." So my proof of address, carte de séjour and all the other things that prove my date of birth stayed in my pocket and I was swiftly conveyed home by tram and gusts. Mission accomplie !

We're trying to organise fetching Catrin from Charles de Gaulle in about 10 days' time. We'll go up by train, stay somewhere overnight and meet her in the early morning. She lands at 5:30am. .... So I went online to buy my codgers' railcard which will give me a reduced price rail ticket. The card costs 60€ and entitles me to at least 25% off the price of my tickets. The website told me I'd have to have it posted to me and it would take up to two weeks to arrive. "That's no good" I thought, so I steamed off to the Railway Station and inveigled my way to the front of the queue. The railway station here is bright and cheerful. It has two pianos, and there's always someone playing or plinking. The cafés and shops are pleasant, and the ticket sales office is open-plan and full of excited people chatting with advisors about the best date to return from Sainte-Perpète-les-Oies. Eager staff wear their SNCF caps proudly. There's no raised voices,...

The weather has been unseasonably chilly, with showery days and windy episodes. Not much like April and May in the South-West of France. It clipped our wings during Gwilym and Beth's visit. We had intended going to the seaside but there wasn't a reliable day. It also turned our church barbecue into a staged meal with anything eaten raw, cold or chilled being served first, including crisps, salads and cakes, followed by barbecued vegetables, then by the meat at the end. Our gallant barbecuer did a lot of running, blowing, fanning and relighting... More seriously two morning frosts have nipped the buds of 10% to 25% of the Bordeaux vines. This isn't always very bad news as sometimes less wine combines with higher prices to make no reduction in profit. It depends how the rest of the year goes. We'll see. However, in brighter news, we were troubled by our first mosquito last night. It's a sure sign of warmer weather arriving at last.

Every day something changes round here. Yesterday I made one of my trips to Carrefour for trousers - my jeans are disintegrating and I still need some decent black trews - and on the way back the bus didn't stop where I thought it would. "C'est pas ici, l'arrêt?" quoth I. "Non, c'était un arrêt provisoire. Il est remis à sa place." It's place is right outside the local library about 100 yards further on. Meanwhile we are very excited about some new bottles banks that are being installed about 100 yards from us. You're supposed to take bottles and jars to bottle banks for recycling, but our nearest is the municipal dump about 10 minutes' walk away and often when we go there we find it closed. As a result we have a large number of bottles and jars just longing for a new bottle bank to open. We can see these new ones from our windows and we are very excited about them. Then the school opposite is taking shape rapidly. It has deligh...

Yesterday as the church committee was met at our flat a big old black kite was wheeling back and fore just across from our big balcony.

Sorry about the long absence! Firstly it's a busy time. It's strange. I'm not sure if it's busier than usual or if I'm less efficient that usual, but whichever it is my days are fuller. And with less time spent on the number 4 bus, too. Secondly we've had a super visit from Gwilym and Beth. It was a great time for so many reasons, but one was that they arrived with work to do so that meant that I could get on with work, too. Another reason was that the weather was changeable so that stopped us taking trips to the sea or anything. Instead we pillaged Bordeaux of all its joys, including the cinema and our most favourite coffee shops. Anyway, here's a rather odd photograph where you can clearly see them: