The English Armchair Abroad

I'm sorry I haven't a clue - Tribute to Humphrey Lyttelton

My son doesn't have school on Wednesday afternoons and today there is a holiday feel because he also doesn't have school tomorrow:  May 1st.  I'm in luck.  My husband has taken him to have his brace tightened (by the same person who I face in the tennis final tomorrow!) and as a result I have the chance to do something I've wanted to do all week.

Living in northern France we are able to receive BBC Radio4 and as it is the only English radio station we can get it is on just about all day.  Someone once described this house as "never more than 10metres from a Radio4 receiver".  Not far from the truth!  I could probably recite the programme schedules better than the current Governor General and his team.  I wake up with John Humphreys and Jim Naughtie, I spend my coffee break with Jenny Murray, my lunch break with Martha Karney and I share my dinner preparation with the evening comedy slot. 

Definitely the best of these is "I'm sorry I haven't a clue".  This was tagged the "Antedote to panel games" and was presented by Humphrey Lyttelton, jazz trumpet player.  Humph (as he was often known on the programme) died  last week and this week we have had a series of tributes including a repeat of one of the "Clue" programmes from 1995.

If any of you want a really good laugh for 30 minutes I recommend you go straight here and listen to it.  You'll have to be quick as the listen again facility is only available for a week.  If the link doesn't work go to the radio 4 website and then listen again.

I could go on for hours with anecdotes or quotes from this programme series.  I won't because if you have never listened to it before you will never tune back into this particular English Armchair! 

Perhaps this programme should come with a Government Health Warning:  If you are an ardent feminist you will probably go into cardiac arrest at the outrageousness of Humph.  How he got away with it I don't know.  Luckily I'm not a feminist and I laughed myself silly.

To my daughter in France...

I have taken to reading Mr B's Blog where he describes his life in France - no prizes for guessing what I feel it has in common with mine!  I rather like his rambling way of describing his day to day life.  Anyway, his last blog was about waking up early and not being able to go back to sleep.  This is something I am all too familiar with.  Unlike Mr B though, I don't suffer from the "Now I must get up and do something for two hours" syndrome.  I am lucky in that respect!  No, I am an avid reader and read whatever is at hand.  Sometimes this has the effect of sending me back to sleep - oh joy!  Not because the book is boring but simply because the black on white has that effect.

At the moment I am reading "To My Daughter In France" by Stephanie Keating and Barbara Keating.  It was leant to me by a friend (another consumer of books) who picked it up at a booksale locally.  I took it reluctantly thinking it might be yet another travel book about France.  How wrong I was.  I am gripped by this novel which describes the lives of two families linked by the words "To my daughter in France I leave the remainder of my estate."  A shock, it seems, to all the people concerned.  It has a bit of everything:  wartime romance, intrigue, goodies and baddies and endless conflicts that need resolving.  That it takes place partly in France and partly in Ireland (Connemara) is an added bonus.   I am just over half way through and it is all I can do to get up in the morning...Mr B would not approve of my idleness!

Now of course I have added this book to the Grand Gennetay Bookshop or you can, if you feel so inclined, buy it by clicking the picture below. If you are good enough to buy it via this website Amazon rewards me with a miniscule percentage for the service.  I've so far earned an entire 34pence and would love to up it a bit just to prove to my children that it is worth it!  When I've finished this book I intend to try and find the Keatings' other books.  This one has whet my appetite for more.

           

Social Spark - Good, Bad or Indifferent?

Recently launched and now open to all bloggers SocialSpark is the latest paid post site from IZEA and as such is a sister site to PayPerPost.  I've been a member of the latter for about eight weeks and I've only recently joined Social Spark.  There are some key differences between the two.

When you are offered an opp (a paid opportunity to write for an advertiser) in PayPerPost (PPP) you are told exactly how much you will be paid.  So if it offers you ten dollars and you accept the post that's what you will be paid.  In Social Spark they are using something called "dynamic pricing".  This means that when the opp is put on the board at, say, thirty dollars, if there is a lot of people who want to accept it, you are put in a queue and the price is bought down by some calculation.  The result is that this opp, which I accepted at 27.50USD is in actual fact only paying me 5.50USD.  As a result there are other opps which I have turned down. 

Now don't get me wrong.  There are people making money with Social Spark and they are well satisfied.  I just wanted to point out that for bloggers new to this the dynamic pricing is a complicated and to my mind not totally clear system.

The fact that I can actually say this is part of their code of ethics which includes:

-100% Audit-able In-Post Disclosure
-100% Transparency
-100% Real Opinions
-100% Search Engine Friendly

There are things that I like about Social Spark and which have nothing to do with paid posts.  There is a thriving community and you can use this to build traffic to your blog.  This obviously helps with your ranking and that has a direct bearing on what opps you are offered.

So what is my opinion of Social Spark?  I'm not sure.  On this blog the jury is still out.  Give it a go and see what you think.

Bear with me for 26 minutes

A couple of days ago Antoine the physio came for supper.  Whenever I see him he always asks me if I've been running.  I think he is keen to find out what went wrong with my foot and to see if it is better.  The fact is, I've been playing tennis a fair bit and until I've played in the final on Thursday I don't really want to risk hurting my foot again.  All the same, this morning it was just beautiful - the sun was up, not  a cloud in the sky, not a breathe of wind and about 10 degrees.  I had no excuse.  As soon as I pressed the button on my running watch the dogs knew where I was off to and came out with me.

I chose to run down to the river.  It's not far (3.5kms round trip) and it's lovely down there.  The dragon flies aren't out yet but the morning bird song greets me and the cuckoos mock me.  I don't blame them - I'm 5 kilos over weight and puffing every step of the way!

Living in an old house (14th century) with a moat we have our fair share of wild life around us.  We do our best to encourage more but are amply served by birds and animals that have lived here for much longer than we have.  We have several families of moorhens who nest in the banks and each year we are greeted with the sight of Mrs Moorhen swimming along with her chicks behind her.  This year two pairs of Mallard duck have come back so often that we are hopeful they will set up home again.  They get quite noisy in the mating season but we are used to it and it's only our visitors who are disturbed at 5am!  Very occasionally we will be rewarded with a flash of brilliant blue zipping across the water and we'll know that the kingfisher, that most beautiful and elusive of birds, is back. 


(Photo rkarthikeyan)

Herons are abundant and of course they come at any time of day for a quick snack.  Three years ago this area suffered from drought and after a number of dry years the moat all but dried up.  When there was just a large puddle left we removed as many fish as possible and put them in a nearby reservoir.  All the same, just a few days later the remaining large fish were floating, dead, on the surface and soon after the medium sized fish also succumbed.  We did all we could to save the remaining fish.  Desperate to provide them with oxygen, we even put the end of the air compressor in the water.  It sounds desperate but what else could we do?  Anyway, the smallest fish did survive and eventually we had some rain and the moat began to fill up again.  After last year's unbelievably wet summer and autumn we are back to normal levels.  The "small" fish have grown and the fish community is thriving - and the herons are back!

We also have frogs.  A whole generation of children are growing up without the benefit of Jeremy Fisher and his friends, but if any of them come here they soon find out about frogs!  We have all his brothers, sisters, friends and relations.  Thousands of them!  As we walk around the moat you can here the plop, plop, plop as they leap off the bank and into the water.  And the noise...oh boy have they started in earnest again!  You can be sitting outside enjoying the silence of nature - birdsong, woodpeckers, bees - and suddenly the frogs decide they want a part of the action.  The volume of their song depends largely on how lovely Mademoiselle Grenouille is looking that day.  If Mademoiselle has bought along all her girlfriends and is looking for a good time then it can go on for hours and like all teenagers they hold no respect for the time of day - or night.

The French eat frogs of course.  I've eaten them in friends' houses and actually like the taste but I've never thought to eat ours.  I wouldn't be able to catch them for one thing and I really don't think I would like to have to "deal" with them.  Hypocrite or what?

And now the telegraph pole is just a few metres away.  I always walk the last 300 metres to the house and this telegraph pole is my marker.  I no longer have to think about nature in order to keep my mind off my stiff legs and my tired lungs.  I can walk again and cool down.  Thank you for staying with me and all being well I'll be out running again on Monday - although they do say it's going to rain on Monday...

Blogging friends, new and old

A big thank you first of all to Polly from Pollys Peri-wrinkles for her encouraging comment on my last post.  For those who don't know a Google Page Rank is an indicator of all sorts of good things for us bloggers and helps boost the ego enormously.  It also helps boost the income!  I'm not there yet but I live in hope despite the somewhat opposing view of my children ("Why would YOU get a page rank from GOOGLE!?"). 

I've recently joined up with Social Spark which has been created by the same people as PayPerPost.  So far I've had zilch in the way of paid posts and unless I get a ranking I suspect it will stay that way.  All the same I've found a few new blogs over there and one which you should check out is La Vie in English.  I have never written more than a thank you letter in French as quite frankly my written French is not up to it.  A long time ago the French decided that being able to speak French was just too easy and so whilst in English you pretty much write as you speak, the French have "spoken French" and "written French" - and they are not the same.  My written French is full of such ridiculous errors that I always have to put in an apologetic disclaimer.  So to come across a French woman who blogs in BOTH languages is spectacularly impressive to me.  She writes about food (and we all know how good French food is!) and shares some recipes.  If you have time go and take a look.  I'm off to the kitchen....

The season of love - spring is in the air...

Our house is surrounded, literally, with water and I woke up this morning to hear the frogs singing.  During May this will become an irritation and force us to close windows and doors to get away from the by then deafening noise.  It is of course the "saison d'amour" and the frogs take this very literally:  all night, all day and any time in between! 

But the really good thing about the frogs singing is that it means the weather has finally warmed up.  They are a good indicator that the warm weather is finally be with us.  Not quite T-shirt and shorts, but something to look forward to.

Three little boys...

Many moons ago when I was first pregnant people kept asking me whether I wanted a boy or a girl.  I got so sick of this that I just came out with "Four boys".  It was not expressing a preference;  simply trying to get them off my back and I have to say it worked.  By the time they'd digested the answer I'd usually managed to change the subject. 

My first two children were indeed boys and then along came pregnancy number three.  "I expect you're longing for a little girl this time...?" was the new refrain.   Aaaaaarghhhh!  To my mind both these questions are just plain stupid.  I couldn't choose, therefore it was a matter of be very grateful for what you get.  And along came a third boy.  I have to admit I was thrilled.  Apart from anything else I wouldn't have to deal with a teenage girl like her mother...ie me! 

Three boys is hard work but great fun.  I'm quite sure three girls, or two girls/one boy, is too but I'm not qualified to comment.  The curious thing is how many friends I have who also have three boys.  Maybe that's because in the early years (when the girls were still "Oh no, we don't want to play with girls!") we inevitably met the parents of more boys. 

All day yesterday it was raining - pouring in fact - and I just wasn't motivated to do anything;  so I went looking around the web at other blogs.  To my surprise I came across Puppy Dog Tales which is full of very familiar stories from another mother of three boys.  Hers are much younger than mine and she still has plenty of hard work ahead.  I well remember those potty training days, the temper tantrums (oh boy, those were tough!) and the "Really, why am I doing this?" as I drew yet another wretched fish to be scribbled over.  The mess in the bathroom, the toys all over the floor, the untidy bedroom.  But it's a bit like going through a long tunnel with air holes.  Just as you think you really can't cope anymore the kids turn gorgeous and come over to give you a cuddle and say "I love you Mummy".  Or they make clearing up lego a game and actually do it. 

The great thing is that as they grow up they become even more lovely.  The issues don't change though:  boys always leave the bath dirty, they never replace the shampoo, the loo seat is ALWAYS up and they NEVER seem to tidy their rooms.  But who cares?!

Good News Part Two

It is obviously a weekend for good news.  This morning the weather was hot and sunny and as the forecast is for rain later in the week (despite the hatching chicks I managed to catch the forecast!) my son and I went up to inspect the bees. 

This time of year is the beginning of the swarm season and we are advised to look out for queen cells being built.  This is the first sign of a hive getting ready to swarm.  To be honest I wasn't too worried as our previous visit had shown relatively few bees and only a small area of brood (cells with eggs or larvae in them).  However, we were more than pleasantly surprised.  The queen has obviously been busy!  The frames were all covered by bees packing in nectar and pollen and there was a good covering of brood on six of the ten frames.

As a result we decided to put on a super - this is another level (like a multi-story car park) in which the bees put any surplus honey...ie honey we can take for US!  It may be a little early but the Oil Seed Rape is still in flower and the weather is now much warmer although still unsettled.  It would be wonderful to think that by the end of the year we might have our very own honey.

Good News Part One

You may recall that I gave my husband an incubator for his birthday.  Lots of laughter at the time - mostly aimed at me - and all sorts of "What on earth for?" type questions.

Well, we put nine eggs in the incubator exactly three weeks ago and yesterday morning he came running upstairs to say "We are hatching!"  It was 6.45am at the time...

  You can just see the egg shell beginning to crack.  Then there was a LONG wait!  All day we each made excuses to go into the playroom where we had set up the incubator.  We really didn't know how long it would take.  Gradually six of the other eggs started to crack as well.  Finally at 7.58pm (I know because we were waiting for the news to come on!) the first one hatched right out of the shell:

  It certainly looks scrawny here - or dead even - but we put it into a box with a bar radiator (we don't have a lamp) and within half an hour it was looking far more respectable and his coat was all fluffed up.  By 11pm yesterday there were just two hatched and I was beginning to wonder if the others had perhaps not made it (the last day is the most stressful).  But we came down this morning and there were five waiting for us in the incubator who were walking around tripping over each other.  We put them into the box with their brothers/sisters and they all flopped down on top of each other!

  You will simply have to take my word for it that there are seven!  One of these is still very weak and I have my doubts about whether s/he will make it.  He has a patch on his back which the others don't have.  I don't know enough about it to know so we will have to wait and see.

The other two eggs are still in the incubator unhatched and indeed without the first little crack.  We will keep them there for two days in the hope that they hatch but we are realistic enough to know this is unlikely.  All the same, six or seven chicks from nine eggs isn't too bad!

Go, girl, go (or, Forgive me if I brag a little)

I mentioned a few of days ago that I am in the local tennis tournament.  Well, joy of joy today I played my semi-final match and WON - YEAH!!!!  It wasn't a difficult match and I knew I ought to win as she is not a strong player.  However, because she plays "loopy" shots I end up playing unforced errors and netting the ball.  That happened today but not too often fortunately!

Anyway, done that and got the T-shirt and on for the final on 1 May.  That will not be the same match.  I know my opponent well and I'll have to work hard.  I'll let you know how it goes!