les Davey de France

This week is the week of the Keswick Convention and also of the UFM Summer Conference normally held at Hothorpe Hall in Leicestershire. This year both have gone online, as did the Bala Ministers' Conference in June and the Evangelical Ministry Assembly, also held in June. The advantage of this is that I have been able to attend at least parts of all four conferences.  The disadvantages include that we don't get to go away, we miss out on all the informal conversations and we have to fit work in around everything. Makes life busy! Busy but blest. Meanwhile we continue to meet on Sundays, masked and distanced. It's OK, but only because we hope for a better future! After the service we adjourn to the local park where there is an ice-cream kiosk and we sit and chat under the trees. We're currently allowed up to 10 people in a home at any one time. When we get together in homes we are careful to wash our hands on arrival and to avoid touching each other. It's all a bit d...

A heatwave in France is a canicule, and is defined as a period of three days or more where the temperature does not fall below 20°C, even at night. And that's what we've got just now. It isn't THAT hot, to be honest. Today it's been at 34°C and we've certainly known 38°C in the past - Patricia is sure it has got to 40°C - but it's unrelenting. The sun is very strong. There's no cloud cover.  You get up and it's hot, you go to bed and it's hot.  We have fans on all over the flat, our windows closed and the shutters down, and it's hot. First thing in the morning I run around opening all the shutters and windows to change the air in the flat, but by 9 or 10 everything has to be closed again against the heat. The government puts up posters telling you to drink enough. You need to drink lots of water. The posters remind you to eat enough. The temptation is to not eat, but if you don't you don't replace the salts you lose through perspiration. ...

I'd never been the the centre for hepato-gastro-enterological surgery before, so I let Waze guide me. Big mistake. It told me to take two entrances that were gated and locked - I can't imagine what the driver of the van behind was thinking, thankfully he didn't tell me - and once in the hospital complex it had me driving round in all directions. Eventually I saw a building that looked like the one on the map I'd looked at previously so I parked near it and went inside. Incidentally this hospital has a beautiful free car park and also a nature trail through its grounds. Maybe a idea for another time. In France you go to the main reception, take a number, wait to be called and they enter you into the hospital database. Then they tell you where to go. Everywhere is colour coded. Even the reception desks. I stared intently trying to distinguish the yellow and the green, the blue and the violet. Anyway when my number came up I chanced upon the correct desk. "Go to...

As I come out of the pain and fatigue filled torture chamber of a weekend I feel immediately that I owe you an apology, gentle reader, for some IMMODERATE LANGUAGE in the last blog entry. Specifically when I may have appeared to threaten to give my doctor a slap for prescribing the vaccinations that plunged me into the gulf of hopelessness. It wasn't meant as a threat; merely an observation of the temptations to which I was prey. Anyway after a weekend in the crypt of despair I at last feel that I am emerging into the sunny plains once more. Yesterday Mrs Davey and I even attempted a visit to a promising pizzeria not far from our house - alas too far for even the lure of a proper italian pizza to coax me onwards - we ditched and bought a French one from the nearest supermarket instead. French food is excellent. Even the bad stuff is good. It really is. But like, I suspect, every nation under the saun, the French pizzaïolo has adapted the sublime staple of Neapolitan peasants to ma...

I feel ill-disposed towards my doctor just now. If she were here right now I'd be sorely tempted to give her a good slap. The thing is, she's decided that it's her responsibility to keep me alive and in the best health possible for as long as she can. Which this week meant anti-pneumonia vaccinations. Two. One in each arm. There's a nurses' surgery right opposite our pharmacy so on Wednesday when I picked up my anti-histamines I popped in to make an appointment. Thursday at 4. I knew the pharmacy had the vaccines in stock so all I had to was pop in the pharmacy first, get myself well-stabbed and voilà, it's all sorted. Ha! Poor ignorant sap! So at 15:40 precisely I left the house. At approximately 15:48 I arrived at the pharmacy and said, "Could I have the vaccines, please?"  Well, this being France, I said, "Good day, it's for the vaccines." "Good day. Do you have an appointment with the nurse?" "Yes. At 16 hours." ...

My six-monthly doctor's appointment fell this morning. I got the 8:30 slot and someone was already in with her before me, so I went in on time and was out by 8:41. Ace. It means leaving the house at 7:30, but the tram takes me to within a 15 minute walk of her surgery, past building sites and car dealerships. She pronounced herself content with everything, wants me to get vaccinated against pneumonia (to ward off the old man's friend?), to get blood tests done again and we chatted about confinement, trams, masks and stuff.

At the weekend the Opera National de Bordeaux Aquitaine held a series of free concerts - at lunchtime performances of Peter and the Wolf, at tea-time some dance and then in the evening the Fauré Requiem, some movements from Beethoven symphonies and a couple of arias from Florian Sempey. We went along for the evening. Marc Minkowski opened proceedings explaining the rules for entry and exit and telling us we could remove our masks while seated. (Hurrah!). Salvatore Caputo, the charismatic chorus master, introduced and conducted the Fauré, then gave place to the Musical Director, Paul Daniel, to conduct the rest of the programme.  The concerts were held in the amphitheatre that is formed by the Eglise Sainte Croix and the Conservatory, the Square Dom Bedos, as a tribute to the healthworkers "who gave their lives to save ours". The sound is surprisingly good, especially with some amplification. All sang well - we had some lovely moments in the Fauré, an excellent time with M. Se...

So we were back together yesterday. The brethren have removed all the cushions from the benches and arranged them a meter apart for proper physical distancing. They have done all the hard work of putting up signs, indicating the capacity of the room, organising one entry and one exit and so on. We arranged to meet up early to disinfect - I got confused about times and so we arrived 30 minutes apart - oops - but we swiftly disinfected the varnish off the benches and remembered the door handles, light switches and so on. Even though everyone was masked, it was great worshipping with the windows and doors wide open to get air through the place. I am told that if the preacher is 10 feet from the nearest person he can preach without a mask, but I would not have felt comfortable being the only unveiled person in the church so I persevered with it. It's tiring. Afterwards we cleared up and locked up and went to the local park where we sat in a circle, ate ice-cream and sang unmasked.  

has advantages and inconveniences. One inconvenience is the way that mayflies, having completed their complicated journey through the stages of life and accomplished their great task of perpetuating the species, seek refuge in our living room where their ultimate ambition is to go towards the light of our beautiful white ceiling, there to expire - and remain - all dry and light and insubstantial and as permanent as the river, stuck forever to its emulsioned brilliance. So this morning I had to find the right implement to sweep them all off. There must have been about 20 of them as well as one small living fly who wondered why I was persecuting him as I incessantly poked him from his resting places. The mayflies float down, gossamer flecks of down, and disappear on the dark tiled floor where we hoover them up.