les Davey de France

but it's Christmastime and we had two services on Sunday and in the morning lots of people were away and it was me preaching and we were still about 25 to 30 people and then in the evening it was the English service and again lots of people away and we were twelve people among whom were some French guys who are anglophile and it was a good time and this week it's doing chores and odd jobs except last night we were invited round to some friends' house who have converted their garage into a study come home cinema with a video-projector and a big screen and surround sound speakers and we ate fettucini bolognaise and then watched Indiana Jones and I fell asleep in the middle but that's normal for me and this evening I want to go to the student centre and get the office PC so I can try and encourage it to work a bit better and faster and more efficiently and it's a time for planning the coming months too especially for the home groups, international and French. Sorry abo...

Read Matthew Parris' article here .

Well well that was a lively day. It started quietly enough simply running someone to the airport. Then I had a rendez-vous for coffee with a friend visiting from Switzerland BUT we had not arranged a place to meet, he is staying in a rented house and his mobile phone doesn't work here. I phoned his father who was unable to tell me the house number but he told me the road, so I drove down there to look for a Swiss Opel. Nothing. I drove home to find the Griffins there for lunch. Our friends, the Foreaux arrived soon afterwards and we got our raclette sets out, the meat, cheese and potatoes. We waited for the last person to arrive but eventually gave up and ate a hearty meal of bacon, spuds and cheese, followed by leftover cheesecake from yesterday and icecream log. While we waited we had a phone-call to inform us of the death of an old friend in Connah's Quay. She'd been ill for some time and died during the night of Christmas. It snowed this afternoon, quite hard, but not f...

How to buy, keep and serve oysters. Yesterday as we drove to the student centre we passed oyster stall after oyster stall. The bakers and the florists were open, too. So oysters are extremely popular but I can't imagine I'll ever eat them.

The quickest report on Christmas Day in the student centre. We were about 25, of whom about 20 were Chinese. I was especially pleased that a friend called Mohamad was there and had brought his neighbours with him. Fiona was unable to be there as she'd gone down with 'flu. An excellent meal - largely Chinese but some other stuff. We ate, we played games - ice-breaker games, a team quiz, we inveigled people into singing. I ended up singing " Un fendith dyro i'm " because I could only remember that or " Oes gafr eto " on the spot. The beginners English class did this sketch of the nativity story, which was made all the better by the fact that the angels shepherds and mages were all played by the same people with the addition of wings, tea-towels or gifts. Then I did a brief talk- ette on our reaction to the good news - how the experts thought they knew everything so they didn't seek the truth about Jesus, how Herod just wanted to keep things th...