Living in Brittany

We had some sad news yesterday my mother in law, Hildegarde passed away Friday night. She hasn't been well for the last two years but had been well looked after by Beep ( Paulien's sister  who is married to my brother ) in Cornwall. She was a colourful character well know to our client/friends  as a slightly eccentric Dutch woman doing yoga and interested in all aspects of life with a very open mind. She was probably the least  materialistic person I have ever met a sad loss for humanity may she rest in peace.

The boys are all moving on this autumn, Max has finished his 3 year stint  at Brest and wants to do a further 2 years at Rennes studing "European law" (exciting stuff ) and Bas passed his bac and has a place at the university at Rennes to do "lange applique "  which is doing the languages Spanish and English with some business studies thrown in, so they will be flat huntting as it makes sense to share and is cheaper per head than having single appartments. Xav is off to the lycee in Lannion  to do a CEP which is a vocational  course and involves an apprentiship in electrics. I hope he isn't colour blind

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.

Easter seems to have passed in a flash this year , we had some friends at the beginning of April when we seemed to be celebrating birthdays most of the week, still it was good fun. Since then we seem to have just French families stay + a foster association who left without paying but I was assured there is a cheque in the post!!
This week we had some maintenance done on the pool as we are having the liner changed next week and as there is a problem with ground water and I've tried using various pumps and non return valves but as they usually go wrong decided for a more radical measure. Sink a well next to the pool. The first thing is to decide on the exact location so I use a wire coat hanger, cut in two then straighten them out and form two L shapes. Those are my divining rods, then walk slowly around the back of the pool one in each hand and when the rods cross that's the place to dig.So the digger man makes a big hole, 3 metres, nothing except a French smirk. I start shuffling around pick up some of the uncovered clay it feels moist I feel slightly more confident. Then at 4 metres its as if he had cut through a pipe the water starts to trickle in and the sides of the pit collapse.Success, so we then drop in the round concrete sections, the first one disappears under the water which is by now a metre deep, the fun bit for me was sitting in the digger bucket and being lowered to the bottom of the pit to release the concrete ring. Now I have this free supply of water I was thinking I could have a water feature in the orchard, some sort of fountain. I'll have to work on the idea.
On Thursday I am off with the "Harmonie" to Germany we are staying in Gunsberg in Barvaria which is twinned with Lannion. Its actually the oldest twinning of a French town to with a German town. The poor citizens are going to have to listen to our musical offerings for a week still there is a beer festival there at the same time

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.

Yesterday was "jeudi noir" as most of France was on strike and the boys didn't go to school. Even Lannion had a demonstration of 5000 in the afternoon, I was asking people in the bar why there were strikes and demonstrations and nobody had a sensible suggestion. So half the population doesn't like Sarkozy but the other half does and helping out the banking sector isn't popular but letting it collapse would be worse, but what do I know.
A good or bad example of French industry was last week I had to order a small item for the pool, the pipework is by a British company called Certikin and I was told to get in touch with the Perpignan office as I lived in France.Over the next couple of days several telephone calls and emails produced zero response , they weren't interested so I asked for a English company to deal with,one telephone call and the product is in the post. OK its not a lot of money but its an attitude problem they need to learn to love their clients.
The pounds continuing decline although making life more expensive if you are sterling dependant makes the UK much more attractive for shopping so I'll have to make a list a do a shop in the spring.My middle son bought a laptop from PC World about 150€ cheaper than he would have paid here and it also keeps him off my PC as well.
Its our annual band dinner on Sunday I think its the 30€ menu + wine all paid for by the municipality of Lannion, not sure if they are getting good value.

The weather has reverted to type for January cold, wet,windy but the temperature is +5 as opposed to -5 which we had for the first 2 weeks of the year. I even planted some onions in my new raised beds. I made 7 of them from old beams I found in my store they measure 1.2 x 3.5m and should make gardening much easier as the soil doesn't get compacted and I can give them a coating of compost at the start of the season.
The recession has made its mark in Plestin the upholstery shop is closing down we know the owner well and her work is good and she doesn't appear to be incompetent as a business person. She told us she hasn't paid last years taxes and this year she had a demand of 21k from the RSI (regime social independent ) which includes social security payments and pension contributions. It seems very excessive for a small business I think French economists go to the same school where they invented the square wheel.
The Lannion harmony band seems to have the opportunity of going to Bavaria for a week as part of an exchange the only problem is only half the band is interested and we would be short of trumpet players so it would effect the total sound of the band. I guess after the locals have had a few beers it wouldn't sound too bad.

I think i must suffer from SADs ( seasonal something disorder ) something to do with lack of daylight as I always get cranky in December, hate going out and go to bed early perhaps its a primal hibernation urge but it gets better after a few weeks in January. On reflection it might a reaction to the rampant consumerism of Christmas still it passes.
My sister came for a week ( so she thought ) at the beginning of the month, fortunately her husband took out breakdown insurance as his car hadn't been starting too good recently and sure enough it didn't start the day before the return and they had to stay another 6 days while the garage sorted out the problem. It was only a sparking problem but as Volvos aren't so common in France the spare parts ( distributor cap and condenser ) had to come from Sweden!
Xav has been doing his work experience this week he was supposed to do it in a restaurant in Plestin but the owner has some problems so at the last minute Paulien got him a place in Super U which has been great. Normally work experience is just watching and taking notes but Xav has been stacking shelves hauling pallets around. He comes home completely worn out and is beginning to realise that there is a point in working at school as he doesn't think much to shelf packing as a career option.
The weather has been really mild but I am surprised that if you drive inland just 5 minutes its quite a few degrees colder and often they have a frost whereas we have nothing in fact we have had just one frost so far this winter. We get one of our regular visitors tomorrow, she is very cheap to keep as we keep her on a chain in the orchard, yes its a goat from our Dutch friends who go back to Holland every year for Christmas.
This is the time of the year to wish all my readers ( all two of them ) a happy and festive time. Bloavez Matt