Morning all. Strange day in the world yesterday, what with right wing extremist getting collared after being hauled off a luxury Chinese yacht, someone who dared to question Putin seemingly poisoned, government minister saying the opposite of his secretary of state, and the coronavirus on the increase again. Yet none of these things compared with the discomfort that the residents here suffered. On another day of extreme heat, the temperature in our enclosed garden touching 40°C, the farmer decided to clear out his cow shed and go muck spreading onto one of his fields. We are quite used to rural smells and take little notice of them normally, but this time it was intense having been nicely heated up in the fierce sunlight. Doors and windows had to be shut as it started to spread through the house, and although we have had some light rain overnight to dampen it down, it is still quite pungent. Will go and do some shopping to get away from it. Have a good day whatever comes your way.
That reminds me of my first teaching gig here after arriving from Australia. My classroom assistant was in the habit of opening all the windows before school started every morning. About halfway through one particular morning, a rancid smell started wafting through the room - a local farmer was muckspreading in his nearby fields.Nothing we did got rid of the odour - and that was the only time I ever vomitted in a classroom. I can only imagine how bad it would have been had we anything like fierce sunlight up here.
Morning all. Sunshine and cloud forecast for today, with a comfortable temperature of 25°C. My Friday night football of French Ligue 2 has returned, although now on a Saturday night. Chateauroux have drawn the short straw with the longest possible away trip as they start in Corsica. Ajaccio have a three sided ground with the fourth side giving a lovely view of the mountains in the distance. Next Saturday they will be at home, and buying a ticket in advance can cost as little as €2, and even if you leave it to the last minute it will only cost €5. As the ground holds 17,000 and the average attendance is around 5,000, social distancing is not a problem. However you must wear a mask, stay 1m behind others in the queue for the half time bars, and unless you are with family leave the seat next to another person empty. With infection rates rising again we will see how long this can operate for. Have a good and safe day whatever you are doing.
Morning all. Overcast one minute and bright sunshine the next, so variable seems to be about the right description. Spent the day yesterday with our daughter and three granddaughters. They had picked baskets full of blackberries that were to be turned into blackberry jelly. Mme being a bit of an expert is such things was there with her thermometer making sure that the mixture of juice and sugar reached the right temperature before being decanted into jars. Every year the hedgerows have plenty of the fruit, but often it stays very small and hard. This year due to the rain earlier the berries have swollen to a good size and now with the heat and sun have ripened well. Had a taster before it has set, but it looks as though the twelve jars will be appreciated over the coming months. Enjoy your day whatever you are up to.
Hola a todos, Got touched by Jesús yesterday, then he gave me the all clear after my op. Went on a massive session with the wife after that, accumilating very heavy bills in three establishments. Feel right as rain today. Just as well, off out to eat in the main plaza in a bit. Hope you are all sound.
Morning all. Bright and sunny here and a nice comfortable temperature to get and do things outdoors. Just spent an hour indoors fighting my way around La Poste website. All I wanted was to buy 6 International stamps that I can print here. Every time I thought I had found my way through the maze it took me back to the internal stamps, before I found tucked away at the bottom of a page a button to click on for far away places. Finally arrived at pay now, only to find that I had to receive a security code via text message from the bank and enter that number. Seems daft really when I was paying €8 and I can use my card for a contactless payment at the supermarket for €50. The joys of modern technology, still it did save a 16km trip to the post office that might have been, or not open. Have a good day whatever you attempt.
On the subject of wasps - I just stumbled across this - You're having a few drinks in the garden with your friends, or a family BBQ, when a load of pesky wasps arrive to spoil the party. You haven't seen them all summer and then suddenly they're all over the place, annoying everybody, causing panic and helicopter hands. Sound familiar? August is the time of year when people start to ask 'what's the point of wasps?' The answer may surprise you. Did you know that there are approximately 9,000 species of wasp here in the UK? These include the parasitic wasps, some of which are so diminutive they are like pin heads. Of the 250 larger wasps which have have a stinger, the majority are solitary and cause no upset to humans. However, when we talk about wasps, we're almost certainly referring to the our nation's nemesis, the Common wasp (Vespula vulgaris). To understand why these wasps become really annoying this time of year, you first need to understand their life cycle. Common wasps live socially like bees but, unlike honey bees, they haven't evolved a way of storing food to allow the colony to survive the winter. In fact the only survivors are the young, fertilised queens who hibernate over winter. They emerge in the spring to build little walnut sized nests where they they lay around 20 eggs. The queen feeds the resulting larvae until around May, when they mature and become workers. Then she focuses on more egg-laying and the workers get on with feeding them, enlarging the nest as they go along. By this time of year the nest has grown to around 40cm in diameter, often larger, and that nest can contains up to 10,000 wasps! Then, in late August and September, a dramatic change takes place. The queen quits her egg laying (save a few that will go on to be future queens and males to fertilise them) and no longer releases the pheromone that causes the workers to work. Basically, these workers are made redundant, and are left jobless and disorientated. And the problem for us is that, although adult wasps are insect predators, that meat is to feed the larvae not themselves. In their adult state wasps are not able to digest solid food and need sugary liquid to survive. Now, with fewer no larvae to feed, they become uncontrollably and insatiably hungry. Wasps love easy food such as over ripe fruit and your fizzy drinks. Towards the end of their brief lives, their hunger drives them to search for easy sugar at exactly the time when we are more likely to be using our gardens and outdoor spaces for eating sweet things. The timing couldn't be better for them or worse for us. So why are those who panic and try to swat them away more likely to be stung than those who remain calm? Well the problem is that these redundant workers have their own pheromone, which helps protect the nest from attack earlier in the year, and that's essentially a chemical rallying cry to other workers that the nest is under attack. So when you swat that annoying wasp and it feels under attack, that rallying cry will go out. Suddenly it all kicks off, and loads more wasps will start arriving in aggressive 'red-mist' mode, fired up and ready to defend their nest. This is why the best advice is to stay calm. Think of it this way, from May that wasp has been working its socks off helping to keep things nice on planet earth. Now it’s going to die. So why not give it a break, save your swats, put a bowl of sugary drink somewhere out of your way, and let it go out on a nice sugar rush. At the very least don't kill it. What's the point of wasps? Without them it’s likely that human life would not survive because, in the absence of their role as predators, our planet would be overrun by even more damaging insects such as aphids, ants and caterpillars. I've just spent a pleasant afternoon sitting in the sun in the garden reading and am glad to say that I followed the above advice about not swatting - at one point I had two wasps and a bumblebee resting on my arm, apparently reading along with me - and a butterfly contentedly sitting on my shoulder too.
An interesting article about villagers trying to buy the land around them. https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...anlockhead-nears-deal-to-buy-surrounding-land It is a bit off the beaten track for me to know what is right or wrong in this case, but for people to want to control their surroundings is something I can understand.
Morning all. Overcast, although the météo tells me the sun is blazing down. Back to 30°C+ this afternoon if they are correct. The temperature was just right yesterday to be active, and judging by a few niggles maybe I was a little too active. The neighbours are all busy, gardening, bringing shopping home, or preparing vegetables for the freezer. I need to get some bread, then start cutting logs ready for the cooler days. Enjoy whatever you attempt today.
Sounds like a Buddhist meditation! Meanwhile we have been overrun all over this region.. Never seen so many.. I have to admit for the first time to putting out the traps.. With good wine I may add!... And have caught dozens and dozens of the stingers.. Interesting question.. Why do they even have stingers.. As due to the stingers they have madr an enemy of humans?
As someone who on my increasingly rare visits to the UK has been known to forget where I am, and have asked for a couple of coffees in my best polite French, I was surprised to read this. "My daughter is cycling from Bristol to Oxford and has just sent me this message." ‘Went into a pub and it had a sign up saying no foreign languages we tolerate people of all nationalities but will not tolerate people speaking foreign languages in here’. Just a question. Is that actually legal?
I think there are laws about language discrimination in the workplace, but I'm not sure they extend to customers. In a pub, restaurant or any retail business, I'd say banning foreign languages comes under the banner of stupidity.
Morning all. Grey clouds keep scudding across the sky with the possibility of rain in them, but they just keep on moving over without watering anything for me. Talked to the family in Leeds last night and they really wish it would dry up. Our son has spent the last nine months trying to get the two IT systems that Leeds City Council use to talk to each other. Having just returned from two weeks holiday he finds that what had been required has changed, and the last six months have been wasted. Will it ever work? Maybe in a limited form, but until one new system is installed what they have will always have faults. Still it keeps him out of trouble. Have a good day whatever you are doing.
Not sure there are any laws covering this - there should be but there aren't, at least not for bars and such places. The bottom line is that a pub owner can refuse to serve anyone without giving a reason. It tells us a lot about which locals actually go to a pub like this - meeting point for Brexiteers and EDL ? However it is close to Bristol (maybe in Somerset) and they regard London English as being a foreign (Faarrrn) language there ! Always find the use of the word 'tolerate' insufficient - it makes it sound as if you don't like something but just have to put up with it - we need to find a more positive word.
Morning all, low on data after a month in France and no WiFi here... So eking it out till home on Tuesday..... Have a good day...
Morning all. Variable is the way that the Météo is describing our weather for today. Rain showers are possible this evening they say, but yesterday the clouds said rain, but nothing fell. "Morning all, low on data after a month in France and no WiFi here... So eking it out till home on Tuesday....." You needed to go along to LeClerc or Flunch or other large places, have a relaxing cup of coffee and log on to their free WiFi. The centre of town near here has a system that allows you to log on if you are in the large Market Square. There have been a number of occasions when I have been without the Internet and created a list of must do things so taken the laptop into the cafe at the supermarket. It is only when you don't have it that you realise how much you rely on it to carry out everyday operations. Have a good day with or without the Internet.
Had a lovely trip to an old French village with many preserved buildings to view showing the life 100 years ago.. And a first class lunch abd carafe of chilled rose.... All thanks to a recommendation from a fellow Hornet and his wife... Now chilling back home on the terrace...
