Living in Brittany

One of my simple pleasures ( perhaps childish ) assuming its the correct result is buying "L'Equipe " and reading it in the bar on the Monday and asking somebody French to help explain some words in the article. Its a really good wind up and then I have to see my friend Yves the pharmacists ( he's a real rugby nut we watched the semi finals together in 2007 ) so I enter the shop and all the girl servers start giggling so I say " hi is Yves around or is he too depressed to work or just hiding" A head appears from the back of the shop and we have a good laugh together me more than him. Still it makes my day
I made a "faux pas " the other day , someone from the town band is always sending jokes which I usually delete as it gets boring ,however he sent me one of a Dutch carnival which was a bit "risqué " . I mentioned it in the bar and a Sophie said email to me so I can show it to my friend, I immediately forgot but later in the day I had an email from a Sophie to something virtuous such join a petition against genetic modified something, so I hit reply and posted the Dutch Carnival it wasn't till the next day I realised it wasn,t the same Sophie as I don't take a lot notice in the surnames. I think its a Sophie from the jazz band who I hardly know so quickly sent a grovelling apology. A good lesson in deleting rubbish straight away.
Bas has received his "permis conduire " but seems to be very sensible he put all the seats in the Boxer and took his mates to the night club the week after he passed the driving test. When they left the night club they were stopped by the police , he was breathalysed and they put sniffer dogs in the van looking for drugs. Fortunately they were clean on both accounts.

Sarkozy sees himself as a modern Napoleon and is in a position to redraw the internal map of France. At present there are 22 governing regions and it is proposed to be reduced to 15 for Brittany it would mean a fifth department with Nantes being re-united to the rest of Brittany. It was Vichy France which separated it in 1941, there could be a competition for the regional capital Rennes or Nantes. Rennes is more central but Nantes is bigger. Normandy is proposed to be united for the first time since John II lost a chunk of it 800 years ago and its also proposed that Paris copies London GLC and represents most of the inhabitants ( including the "revolting" banlieues) instead just the bourgeois centre. There would be a few losers Picardy and Poitou-Charente which by co-incidence is the fiefdom of Segolene Royal who was the presidential rival candidate in the last election. Those regional groups would be merged and disappear in the new regional set up as proposed by the committee of Edouard Balladur. The Bretons are happy but no doubt there will be demonstrations and protests against the reforms
Bas passed his driving test this week and now drives around with an "A" on the back of the car because he did the accompanied approach he only has it for 2 years if you do purely lessons and pass you have the "A" for 3 years as statistically the accompanied drivers have less accidents and their insurrances is marginally cheaper

We had a cold spell last week and on two consecutive days had snow but it disappeared late afternoon but it made driving very tricky for the school run at 7 in the morning, I had to resort to loading the Boxer with a pile of stones to give it better traction on the roads. The first day (Monday ) the buses were on strike so I had to drive into Lannion I think the council workers were also on strike as the roads weren't treated that day but the next day they found their salt stocks and all the main roads were very drivable. The minor roads stayed treacherous until the snow melted.
Max my eldest son has at last received a letter of confirmation of French nationality, its only taken 3 years and they seem to ask for the same documents three times but I guess it keeps the bureaucrats in a job. You need to be French national if you want to work in the civil service which is probably half the jobs in France, but at least there will be less jobs lost in the looming recession.There is a big motor construction sector but they have been lobed a few billion to tide them over and Sarkozy is taking of abolishing the professional tax in 2010 ( an illogical tax on business ) which is causing local government to worry over future revenue as they are the main benefice of the tax.I guess they will have to radically increase the "taxe foncier" or " taxe d'habitation"
I found a good source of spare parts for my Peugeot classic last week a mechanic in the garage found a local 305 being scrapped so we stripped off the parts I needed for nothing and I just gave him some cash for helping me.The garage had quoted 240€ for just one of the items!
My brother who is a wizz in marketing has been on at me to join "twitters.com" its an insane chat site where you can't post more than 140 syllables but allegedly all the "bright things/people" use it.I manage a couple of posting but don't really understand it and then you get followers, who log on to your 140 utterance,bizarre the death of intellectualism.