Living in Brittany

The dairy farmers have been protesting these last few weeks mainly by blocking the big super markets.One of their favourite tactics is to release a few thousand litres of fresh milk into the stores, which must really smell.Their other tactic is to drive their tractors with trailers piled up with farm waste and to dump it on roundabouts and parking lots and rounding up all the shopping trolleys and setting fire to them with a pile of tyres.Last week it was the turn of Lannion and the "Intermarche" supermarket they also blockaded the "Netto " which is a low cost franchise and owned by a couple and when I did my fortnightly shop there I was given a leaflet from the owners explaining if they were blockaded again they would close the business. They explained that on the day of the demonstration they lost 10000€ due to damage ,loss of business and theft and their margin on milk was about 5cts so they weren't profiting from the farmers problems. It just goes to show how selfish the farmers actions are and putting other businesses at risk I guess they feel if they act together using their hardware ( big tractors ) they can intimmidate the public and the politicians. I was thinking of organising a protest by gite owners and we could all drive our rideon lawnmowers through town , but we would look fairly stupid .

I lost my internet connection at the weekend but after examing the cables realised it was the work of our onsite terrorist  (the new puppy) he had chewed them up thinking it was a new game. I have an old school friend staying who I haven't seen for 30+years its really good that fame ( I'm sure he's well known in the toxin world ) and wealth haven't changed him

The European election is one of two elections I can vote in ,the other being the local town hall election.For Europe we have a choice of about 20 parties of which 4 are serious and have a chance of electing a good number of deputies ( 5 if you include the national front ) they will probably get around 10% of the vote. The main players are the UMP (Sarkos lot ) Socialists,MoDem ( a liberal party ) and the greens. The rest of the candidates are more single issue policies,such as "esperanto " "breton party " and extreme left,right and green. The voting turnout is always high in France so should be 50-60% with the polls showing UMP in the lead

Paulien brought home a terrorist last week , he has 4 legs ,looks cuddly but is destruction on paws and dashs around chewing shoes and anything left on the floor. The other dogs do their best to ignore him but that is really differcult.The boys have named him " Bealo" after the village idiot in the film Borat.

I see a bit of blue sky so must go and cast my vote.

We had an EDF man with a clipboard call in at the beginning of the year it was something about changing an electric pole at the entrance and then he quickly mentioned cutting a few branches under the wires in the orchard just normal maintance. So this week 2 guys turned up , they looked like Starsky  and Hutch with dreadlocks in a "cherry picker "  ( a lorry with a hydraulic lift box )  + their weapons of mass destruction, chainsaws. We walked around the orchard  and they pointed out a few branches and I mistakenly left them to it. half an hour later I came back and found a corridor  of branches and one tree was cut in half so will fall over as it is unbalanced unless I cut some branches from the other side. Paulien proved her fluency in French by giving them a good dressing down an ability to let rip in 3 languages is rare.

Guingamp have had a good season for a football club in the second division and a population of 8000, on match day that doubles , the stadium holds about 20 000. They were in the final of the France cup against Rennes  ( an all Breton affaire ) and beat them 2 1 which is only the second time a 2nd division team have won the cup in its history.