les Davey de France

Our little café has now been running for some time, and we have a nice group of regular clients. The first to arrive were older people, generally attracted by the Language Exchange that happens on Monday evenings, or to the handiwork group, Knit and Natter, on Fridays. More recently some younger folk have joined the Monday evenings from the nearby Alliance Française, attracted by the opportunity to converse with real French people. It’s going well. The Tots and Co group has also been encouraging., with some great friendships and great conversations. Kids’ workshops at the café have also been very much appreciated, and it’s great to see the place filled with little ones. The café has survived financially, thanks partly to the generosity of supportes in the UK, but also the low running costs of all being staffed by volunteers. I think the volunteers also enjoy being in the café, I certainly do, and I can get on with reading, typing, etc. when the place is quiet. (Like now.) We tried loan...

 So all week in Budapest I had a heavy cold. The kind that makes you very unpleasant to sit next to. Or anywhere near. Our colleagues, being mainly Americans, were tolerant and sympathetic. One chap probably caught my cold. One lady confessed that she had probably given it to me. Another lady went home feeling unwell but tested positive for covid-19. I'm not getting tested. My hugs are always slightly distanced anyway - I like the side-hug. Highlight of the week : The prayer conference. Of course. This was our official reason for going to Budapest. We also tagged on a long weekend beforehand to celebrate our thirtieth wedding anniversary, due in mid-March. Next best thing : The Terror Museum. This is the old headquarters of the Fascist, then the Communist secret police that were in operation from 1944 to 1991. The story was told with directness, honesty and restraint. Unforgettable. Goulash : A total winner. I must get a good recipe. Biggest regret : I should have eaten more cake. ...

 So the summer holidays are drawing to a close. This week the teachers and children are returning eagerly to their classrooms. New people are contacting us about studying in Bordeaux. And the church's year is beginning, too. Alongside our "Café Contact Centre", A Coeur Ouvert / Espace Gallien, is almost ready to open. We have tables and chairs, a counter made fetchingly from old wine crates, our swanky coffee machine, enough stocks to start with and we're all set to go on Wednesday 6 September for our grand opening. There's still quite a lot to do, though, especially in terms of publicity. We need flyers, posters for the windows, a sign above the window, maybe a Facebook page and/or Instagram account. In the past I would have cobbled these things together but that was then and this is now. Others have better graphic skills than I do, and accurate colour-vision, and so I leave those jobs to other. 

 We flew to Manchester Airport on August 3rd with Ryanair, an easy and uneventful flight, and caught our train to Shotton. Everything was on time and convenient. The train was clean and comfortable and we enjoyed seeing the landscape slowly change from the city of Manchester to rural Cheshire and then to Wales. We had been asked to "organise" the Missions Hall at the Annual Conference of the Evangelical Movement of Wales in Aberystwyth. Flights in August are predictably expensive but our mission travel fund is there for that. We baulked, however, at paying a thousand pounds for a hire car so it meant travelling by rail. Aberystwyth is accessible by rail, but to go there from Manchester Airport would take a very long time so we took the opportunity to break the journey with a visit to our "home" or "sending" or "previous" church in Shotton, North Wales. This was a joy, of course, and we got to visit our old next-door neighbour and to see various o...

 I dont know why things always have to be so STRESSFUL ! Renting the Espace Gallien has proved to be one headache after another, including some comical mixups by the bank, ordering cards on the wrong account and sending things hither and yon. The agency demanded an urgent signature of a lease they had not yet fully prepared. The lease was a source of consternation - but will be modified. It’s been one thing after another. Meanwhile our flat purchase is calmer, and we’re pretty confident that we have all the money we need, except that from time to time it becomes invisible on our internet banking. There’s currently several thousand euros that I just can’t see at all, while our current account yoyos wildly. I’m hoping all settles down this week as we sign on the flat next week! Once all is done I will move our account to the nearest branch to where we live. It will be so much easier to sit with pen and paper and work things out - even in French - rather than to try and sort things ou...

 Monday was Whitsun Bank Holiday and the weather promised to turn out well, so we were very glad as we left the flat to go to the CNEF33 ‘Day Together’. Planning for this day began some years ago. We’ve long wanted to organise a day when Christians from different churches could worship together but also spend time getting to now each other. Anyway I think it was in 2020 that we settled on a venue and started to plan the day when covid struck and put all our plans on hold. Meanwhile I left the CNEF33 committee.  Now with covid on the back foot and much greater freedom it was possible to meet. The day consisted of a time of worship together with one of the local preachers, then lunch - you could either bring your sandwiches or order from a sandwich bar, or order a portion of a giant paella. The afternoon would involve various games, sports and also an open mike, before the day closed with a brief closing message. It all seemed to be impeccably organized and to go very well indee...

 Having reluctantly decided not to spend Christmas in the UK, we had some work to do. The following morning, Wednesday, I got onto the websites.  Boots had sent our day two PCR tests out, so we couldn't get that refunded. Trainline made it very easy to cancel our return tickets from Stansted to Norwich. There was a button to click. We had booked return lateral flow tests with a lab at Stansted. They were easily cancelled, too. Ryanair - I was reconciled to losing the price of our tickets - expensive ones given the hold baggage we added, and sure enough, we were not allowed to cancel our trip. However, we COULD change our flights for a "small fee". We discussed dates with our people in the UK and changed the dates. It meant the tickets now were really very expensive indeed - were we throwing good money after bad? - but it gives us a date to visit the Norwich part of the tribe. So now we were staying, but how to make it festive? Well on Wednesday we contacted people quickly...

 So we went down to the church for 1:45 to have a quick blast through the carols we'd chosen to sing at the market. We were eventually about 11 people, including two small ones looked after by their father, so 8 singing, and it all went off pretty well. I have one nagging doubt - we aren't allowed to distribute leaflets, so it means we can't hand out anything at all. It means that people see us and that's that. I wonder whether we'd be better off singing in the street near the entrance to the market where we could then hand out flyers to the Carol Service... To be considered. Do UK churches still have Carol services ? They used to be quite a big thing.

 So tomorrow is the civil wedding of two of our church members. I am the groom's witness, so we'll scuttle off to the Charente, the neighbouring department to the north of us, about an hour's drive to the village of Messac, rendez-vous at the town hall at 4. Next week is the wedding ceremony for Catrin, our daughter. It's going to be EXHAUSTING!  It starts with a "hendo" - in French "the burial of the life of the young girl". This means Catrin and her girlie friends rampaging around and having girly fun. All day. Thursday is the barbers. I am relying on Clement to produce the best possible version of myself. Friday is when my involvement starts. I have some folk to collect from the airport and then a team goes to decorate the room. Saturday is THE BIG DAY. I have to walk about 10 yards while looking as elegant as I can without upstaging my daughter. My son-in-law, of course, is fair game. Sunday is THE BIG SLEEP. Rory is preaching. Thanks, Rory!

 One afternoon of the conference is given over to a sightseeing trip. On previous occasions we have taken the train to Salzburg and sung our way round the Sound of Music sights. This year we went to Berchtesgaden and to Kehlsteinhaus - the Eagle's nest. Berchtesgaden is a picturesque Bavarian town - Germany turned up to 11. On a mountaintop high above the area in the 1930s a meeting place was built for the Third Reich, accessed by a vertiginously winding road that leads to a wide car park, then a tunnel you must take by foot to a golden elevator that opens into the Eagle's Nest. There was a large meeting room, a sun terrace and a kitchen. There were no bedrooms. Nobody stayed overnight. It was spectacular, fascinating and astonishing. Pictures below.

 This last week I have been in Germany for the International Pastors' Retreat. We stay in a conference and holiday centre in a small town called Teisendorf, very near to the Austrian border and on the Munich to Salzburg railway line. I took the TGV to Paris Charles de Gaulle airport to catch a flight to Munich and then the train to Teisendorf. I knew that a colleague would be on the same flight as me, but I'd never seen him. By the time the crowded aeroplane took off we'd identified each other and were able to get out ticket to Teisendorf together. He speaks German. I'd done the journey before. We made a good team. I flew Lufthansa and it was a pleasant experience. I got the cheapest type of ticket. You get to stuff your bag under the seat (mine fitted fine) and you also get a bottle of water and a small piece of chocolate - which I missed on the outward journey because I was asleep. You also get taken to your destination at the same time as everyone else. Getting the G...

 Someone congratulated me on knowing what I did thirty years ago when I left British Telecom and my job as a database administrator. I generally have an extremely bad memory and often think it's quite a blessing really! But I remember that weekend very well because I was leaving British Telecom to become an Assistant Pastor in North Wales. The weather was atrocious on March 4th 1991 as I steered my little blue Fiat Uno up the borderlands road from Cardiff up to North Wales and the village of Hawarden (one says "harden"). The arrangement was to be that I would stay three years as Assistant Pastor, then leave and go elsewhere. Instead the Pastor, Peter Milsom, left after two years to go down to South Wales and continue ministry there, and I ended up staying in the church until 2005 before coming to Bordeaux. So much has happened in those thirty years that it's really hard to know even how to sum them up, except to say that it has all been a great adventure and I'm s...

 On Saint David's Day of 1991, a Friday, I left the office at British Telecom in the very centre of Cardiff for the last time. I was also leaving a happy career as a database administrator that had begun in Hemel Hempstead in October 1980 when I joined Honeywell Information Systems in their Systems Centre. A couple of years there, then a year at Harlech Television, then the rest of my time at BT. I still miss the office, the gang I worked with and my life in Cardiff. It was a great place to live and many of my family were nearby. I still have a misspelled name badge (Alan Dayey) and the name plate from my desk, though I think that came from Honeywell.

 This time a short plea to you, and to myself. When someone suggests that you are making a mistake, or committing an error, or on a wrong path, or even suggests that there is some dreadful secret in your life, please don't react with anger and indignation. Your goal is not to establish your own innocence and righteousness. Not if you are a Christian. Your goal is to face up to your own pervasive guilt and moral ineptitude, and to accept an alien, imputed righteousness freely given to you, and then to make progress towards a holiness that at present you do not have and can not obtain, and that you need absolutely if you are to see the Lord face to face. That means even a scurrilous, erroneous, malicious accusation could be useful in achieving your highest goal - glory.  Entertain the possibility that there is a grain of truth in the accusation. There may well be. Thank the person and tell them you will take what they say seriously. Then do so.  Consult someone who knows yo...

A couple of things have helped.  Catrin came round and clowned around with music. A future bride came round to eat, and to plan her wedding in three weeks' time. I listened to Vaughan-Williams' Fantasia on a theme of Tallis.* I took a nap. I needed it, too, after a short and disturbed night. My preparation for tomorrow morning and for Sunday. * one bright spot in the covid experience has been the artists finding new ways to reach the public with their music: the pianist Igor Levit's micro-concerts, Voces8 and Apollo5 and so on with their chamber choir stuff, orchestras performing from unusual halls, the Wigmore Hall broadcasting wonderful singers. I can't always spare an evening or the cost of a ticket for a concert in Bordeaux but here world-class music has come to our homes, and I'm very thankful.

Lidl were selling their occasional bargain sewing machines yesterday, so I made a quick trot out there, arriving probably at about 9:15. Catrin is hoping to begin sewing. They open at 8:30, but by the time I got there all had been sold. I was glad to have avoided the possible scrummage and fisticuffs and used the visit instead to buy some of their coffee pods and a couple of other things we don't find in our local supermarket at the moment. On the way I stopped to experience as much as I could the flowers and trees along the path. Below are some photographs. Our mayor wants us to wear facemasks in public transport, in shops, in parks and even in some streets. The city is providing everyone with a washable mask, so he considers this a reasonable demand to make. So I wore one of Pat's masks all the way to Lidl and back. They sure make you hot, those things! The latest tentative proposition from the French government is that, if all goes well and there is no new escalation o...

Well, just like in the old days, the kids got us up. We'd opened our presents on Christmas Eve as you do in France, but we also had little stockings with bits and bobs in. Then the rush to get the table ready for lunch. Some genius had had the idea to have a raclette for lunch - I think it was a collective decision - so there wasn't a vast amount of cooking to do beforehand. We'd bought too much charcuterie, some chicken pieces, too much cheese and so we boiled too many potatoes. For an apero we opened a bottle of Lillet someone gave us and which we'd been saving for just this kind of day, and we had crisps and cashew nuts. To accompany the meal we had some French cider, barely alcoholic but sweet, light and fruity - not at all like English cider. For dessert we had some mince pies, of course, but this time made with home-made pastry and home-made mincemeat. I tried someone's secret that they'd shared with me years ago and used self-raising flour in the pa...

here .

At the Luther 2017 meeting I bumped into some good friends from a charismatic church on the west of Bordeaux, and we were able to discuss the local CNEF group together and plan to get people to meet up. I followed up with some emails on Friday and we're all set to meet on Monday afternoon. Great!

There was a meeting on Thursday evening to add some more details to the planning of the Luther 2017 thing. Some things to note include that there won't be any stands representing any churches. Stands will be held by associations, like food banks, etc.. The Maison de la Bible will be there, sharing a stand with the Gideons.