les Davey de France

 We're so thankful for this flat just now. I can live at one end and Pat can live at the other. We have a "dirty zone" - the kitchen and living room - where we have to wear masks, open windows and wash our hands obsessively. I prepare the meal then scuttle down to my end shouting to Patricia that it's feeding time. Then once the coast is clear she gets her plate and scuttles off to her end. We sneak in with our dishes and pop them in the dishwasher decontamination apparatus to await thorough cleansing. It occurred to me that this might be a lot of effort to no effect if my catching covid is inevitable. It also occurred to me that there might be things we should do that we have't even thought of. So I arranged to call the doctor. "Well you mustn't see her", he said. "I mustn't SEE her?" I emphasised. "Well, you must't spend time in the same room." I explained our arrangements I detail and asked if there was any point. He s...

 She's been ill since Friday and tested positive this morning.

 

 Vocabulary is always a challenge. For example, what about the range of different kinds of pain, like ache, throb, stabbing pain, discomfort ? I only know two, I think... douleur and courbatures. As well as the old mal à la tête, mal à la gorge, etc... It seems quite important to me to know whether something aches, throbs or stabs, but I'd have to launch into quite a long speech to explain it in French. Thankfully on this occasion pain wasn't part of the issue, and I had most of the words I needed. Respirer , s'allonger, le fauteuil, constricte, bronchodilateur - though it turns out this one needs a bit more tatata in it. it's dilatatation , so bronchodilatatateur . Or I think that's what he said. You have to remember that a cough is a girl - la toux , and to cough is tousser ... oo, oo, oo, never ü, ü, ü. How do you address yourself to the doctor? I asked a friend. Can you say, Bonjour Docteur ? Bonjour Toubib ? Bonjour M. le Médecin ? What is appropriate ? As it ...

 We got back Tuesday evening and a happy and full week of activity awaited us. Wednesday was Bible study and prayer at the home of a couple who live in one of the suburbs - Mérignac. It's quite a hoof from the tramline, so you switch to the bus and the journey, though not long, takes up to an hour. Sometimes I reserve a pool car but it takes just as long because of having to get around the city centre, then negotiate a maze of different routes. The evening was good, however. Wednesday morning we had met up to work through the statutes for the association which will run the café-style centre in front of the church building. We met in one of the local coffee-shops and I drank a great flat white to kick-start my little grey cell. Then it was preparation. We changed our preaching schedule a while ago but, still high on San Sebastián, I totally forgot so launched into reflexion on Luke 3, instead of the end of Luke 2. Luke 3 is a fascinating chapter and Rory will preach that this coming...

 We were married on 13 March 1993, so last weekend we hopped on the TGV to Hendaye. There was a church officers' meeting at our home on Friday evening so we took the 9am TGV from Bordeaux. Hendaye is a border town just south of here. The TGV gets there in about two and a half hours. We get cheaper tickets because of our age (codger cards) and when I booked the tickets it cost perhaps 3 euros more to travel first class, so we did. Large armchairs with electric reclining mechanisms, a mains socket and a USB socket, various lights and natty tables to fold out. We travelled like kings. You now only have to wear a mask on public transport, but even there you can take it off to eat or to drink, so we regally ate apples and bananas and drank from our water bottles. At Hendaye you change to the Euskotren which goes from a station about 100 yards away. I wasn't sure what kind of ticket we needed and there wasn't a lot of information displayed but a friendly lady came up to help us. ...

Our Ukrainian friends had car trouble in Germany and the repairs required a part to be ordered, so instead of arriving on Wednesday evening they arrived on Friday. Not only that, but nine people had swelled to seventeen.  This changed our plans. We had imagined accommodating them in church members’ homes but on Saturday two of our folk were having their wedding ceremony and reception, and spare rooms were full of guests, so we decided that the best thing was to get them rooms in one of the basic hotels on the ring road. There’s one just over the river from us, so once we knew they were definitely going to arrive I phoned and booked the rooms - four I think - and then booked a pool car for the journey over. We anticipated cooking them a meal, but we abandoned that idea when we realised that they would arrive late at night, with very young children. Church folk had bought vast quantities of boxed drinks and cartons of coffee as well as bread, ham, cheese, biscuits, cookies, chocolate...

 A friend in Spain - who, incidentally, I have not yet met - contacted me to say that some of his Ukrainian family are on their way from the Ukraine. Could we help them on their way by accommodating them for a night before sending them on their way. Originally they were to arrive on Wednesday, but car trouble has delayed them two days. This complicates matters for us as we have a wedding on Saturday and several friends from hither and yon are descending on Bordeaux for the wedding. In addition the original 9 people increased to 17.  So we have alerted our friends in other churches locally, but our backup plan is to lodge them in one of those cheap hotels that we used to stay in on our way from France to the UK. They're fine for an overnight pit-stop.

 So last week was the International Christian Communities of Eurasia annual prayer retreat, and it was held in Bordeaux. It kept us going from early morning to late evening, so we spent a lot of the weekend asleep.  One of the important little moments of the retreat is a meal out in a restaurant. Sometimes host churches have members who own posh eateries. We ate somewhere very impressive in Prague some years back. Others are in awesomely cheap cities. I was more than a little concerned here in Bordeaux. We don't eat out in the evening. Hardly ever. I mean, we're generally busy in the evening. Not only that but most restaurants in Bordeaux are more expensive in the evening than at lunchtime. And I didn't want to use one of the chains, but we needed something affordable and ... Anyway, you get my drift. So Pat and I were very happy to chance upon somewhere up near Place Gambetta, not too far from the church premises, where they catered for groups. They could handle a group of...