French toilets suck!

I'm so glad I pay French taxes because this has enabled the local council in Vileneuve sur Lot (yes, it should have two ls but it's so much more descriptive with just the one!) to carry out an enquiry into the state of toilets in the local schools.


Questions were asked, facilities visited and the results finally published.


Young children are afraid of falling down the squatty Turkish toilets.


Whaaat? They spent all that money and came up with THAT?!! But I could have told them for free!

The town council has promised to remove all these toilet from schools and replace them with the more commonly used 'sit upons' which hold less fear for the littlies. From here on, generations of English exchange students will no longer be able to chortle to each other and say 'you won't catch me using that thing' or 'well, which way do you stand then?' . A real piece of French life will be gone forever.

And I also think that it is overlooking the valuable additional facilities these toilets offer.

The Welly Washer

The flush on the toilets is often rather over-enthusiastic, given the space in which it has to work. Water cascades down from the high level cisterns and out through an angled pipe at the bottom, barely skimming the bowl of the 'squatter' before emptying over your shoes if you haven't moved quickly enough.

It's perfect for washing muddy boots after a hard day in the fields, rugby boots after a particularly muddy game and even school shoes if you are careful. From now on, irate mothers the length and breadth of the country will be heard shouting 'Oui, Jean Luc (or more likely these days Thibault-Christophe) get yer muddy boots out of the sink, I'm washing the lettuce for supper'.


Pre-Ski Fitness

So, you are looking forward to your annual week in La Mongie/Bareges/Bagneres de Luchon but after a soft summer swilling chilled rose wine and floating around on your blow up poolchair complete with convenient receptacle for holding you glass, let's be honest, the old muscles are a bit slack.

A quick search of the internet brings up a selection of pre-ski fitness exercises, using involving squatting down with you back pressed against the wall.

Come on, isn't it obvious? If you'd spent the year squatting in a Turkish toilet (OK, not the whole year, obviously) you'd have thighs like an England forward (Mmmmm!) a butt to match and you wouldn't spend the first few days rubbing Deep Heat into your overworked gluteous maximus - or even someone else's but then I guess that would be quite fun.


ESP

No, it doesn't mean that you can use a squatty toilet as a channel to the other side. This is the acronym (and boy, do the French love their acronyms!) given to games lessons at school.

Now, the French have never had a Conservative government to sell off their playing fields, so this is one thing we really can't blame Maggie Thatcher for. Most schools have little or no open spaces, no doubt because EU subsidies mean it's far more economically viable to plant wheat on any areas that could possibly be designated for school physical education and in any case, the relatives of Farmer LeBlanc, who's field abuts the school playground, are probably still fighting over their inheritance 35 years after his death, meaning that the local council has no chance of negotiating either purchase or use of the aforesaid land.

Still, there are the Turkish toilets...

How about this for a fitness regime. Each child must go into the toilet, lock the door, have a wee (or not if they don't feel the need), holding the squat position for a minimum of 30 seconds, pull the flush and get out of the locked toilet without getting their feet wet. You could work on it every week until the entire class can managed to stay dry. And, it would mean that the schools could keep the toilets locked all day (oops, apparently they do that anyway) to ensure cleanliness of the 'petit coin' as the little darlings would be able to have a pee during a supervised lesson thus avoiding the many hours the janitor has to spend cleaning spitballs off the ceiling and fishing the toilet paper out of the plugholes.

An invaluable aid to building up their speed and dexterity on the playing field - if they had any -but I'm sure it has some use during Greco-Roman wrestling, which fortunately they do fully clothed, unlike their Greco-Roman counterparts.


Jockey Training

The French like their racing as much as the next person. How about using the Turkish toilet to improve their position and balance? I can just imagine it.... a queue of French pixies in racing colours waiting to take their turn over the yawning abyss.


And finally.....

It's a useful tool against bullying because you really can't stick someone's head down the toilet and pull the flush. I don't know this for a fact as neither DD nor DS will volunteer however much I try to dress it up as a bona fide scientific study but just looking at the approximate dimensions, it would certainly be difficult.

Come on France! Think outside the box!

How is it though, that while many societies have evolved (except for the readers of Nuts, Closer and Heat magazine of course) French toilets actually have taken a step backwards.

For example, the personal privvy of Jean Sans Peur (John the Fearless), Duke of Burgundy in 1409, had a padded seat, was heated via a chimney and had a system of air circulation to combat odour. It had a 25 meter drop from his bowels to the bowels of his castle and the medieval septic tank can still be seen. It had a primitive filtration system which allowed liquid to run away and solids to settle on the bottom, to be removed from time to time by a Monsieur Fifi (honest, it's true!)

However, one has to feel a little bit sorry for the passenger on the TGV the other day who dropped his mobile phone down the toilet. In trying to retrieve it, he accidentally pressed the flush, which works on a suction system, and found himself with his arm firmly stuck down the pan. He had to be rescued by the fire brigade who had to cut the toilet out of the train and then remove him on a stretcher with the toilet still attached to his arm.

Silly man! Those of us in the know have always been aware that French toilets suck!!

Une histoire anonyme.......

I heard a really funny story the other day but the person involved threatened to delete my blog if I wrote about it so I'm going to make it completely anonymous.

Once upon a time, there was a blogger who didn't live in France, didn't have a part-time husband and didn't have two lovely children - that bit at least is true!

The son known as The Blue One, who was nothing like his mother for getting caught undressed at inapproriate moments, hated using the toilets at his school so would always wait until he got home.

One day, his sister, known as The Pink One, suffered a monumental breakdown in communications which meant that he was delayed getting home while he waited for his sister's school bus in a little village that wasn't in Southwest France.

He told his mother that he was going to use the village toilets. He must have been truly in extremis to have even considered this option as the village toilets are notorious for being fly-infested, disease ridden holes in the ground, not to mention the fact that just getting to them requires belays and crampons, being as they are down a very narrow, steep track.

His mother carried on chatting to her neighbour who was also waiting for her daughter to arrive. After a quarter of an hour, The Blue One reappeared, walking strangely and announced he was 'going to the cafe' which isn't called the Cafe du Centre and isn't run by a Franco-Australian couple called Michelle and Jean-Marc.

Eventually, he reappeared looking a lot more comfortable. On the drive home, it transpired that the following had happened.

Using a convenient pair of crampons that he had secreted about his person, The Blue One had managed to reach the fly-infested, disease ridden toilets where nature played a cruel trick on him and he needed more than a No. 1. His first mistake was not to check for the (albeit unlikely) presence of toilet paper. The village toilet is generally cleaned once a year on the Maire's birthday at which time half a roll of toilet paper is also added to last until the following year. No self-respecting person leaves the house without at least two rolls of Charmin in her handbag, but having a complete flake for a mother, she had forgotten to impart this vital part of 'life in rural France' (where of course he didn't live) to him.

The deed being done, he looked around for the toilet paper, only to discover that there was none. A quick check of the pockets revealed them to be devoid of any useful bottom wiping equipment, so espying a conveniently large leafed tree, he waddled out of the toilet, trousers around his ankles, only to come fact to face with a couple of hikers.

Wishing them a cheery 'Bonjour' even though he didn't live in France, he grabbed a suitable looking leaf and waddled back into the toilet. Unfortunately, it being autumn, the leaf was a bit dry and not really 'fit for purpose' and promptly disintegrated in his hand.

A brief panic ensued before he decided that the only thing for it was to head to the toilet in the Cafe (why oh why didn't he go there in the first place?) while trying to ensure that there was minimal damage to the insides of his jeans. So, underpants half way down his thighs and hands in back pockets pulling jeans away from his posterior, he waddled up to the cafe which, in a miracle of 21st Century techonological development had both toilets you could sit on and a nice, soft roll of toilet paper.

Equilibrium restored!

This is, of course, a work of complete and utter fiction and any similarity to any person living, dead or soon to be dead (that'll be me!) is purely (un)intentional and just for the record, the photo shows a representation of a village toilet, not the real thing, as I wouldn't even consider entering it without full HazMat protective clothing that's of course, assuming I knew where it was....... which I don't.

Gens d'armes and Scrumping French-style

With my Ma Chère Voisine complaining that she's disappearing under a huge mound of unused tealeaves because her dear neighbour (that's me) never has the time to pop round, I promised that I'd be there over the weekend, come what may.

When I arrived there were two gendarmes sitting on the terrace. Knowing my history with the local constabulary I assumed they had come for me. I thought I'd grab the taureau par les cornes and cut to the chase.

Bonjour, monsieur, madame, enchanté. Je suis la voisine de MCV. Je suis sûr vous me connaissez bien. C'est moi que vous arrêtez toujours.

Hello, pleased to meet you. I'm Ma Chère Voisine's neighbour. I'm sure you know who I am. You're always stopping me.

Je veux te faire savoir, par contre, que mes phares marchent bien, que j'ai pas de pneus lisses, que l'addresse de ma carte grise est à jour et j'ai mon gilet et mon triangle dans le coffre

I just want to let you know that my headlights work, I have no worn tyres, the address on my vehicle registration document is up to date and I've got my high visibility vest and warning triangle in the boot (apart from the last one, all recent misdemeanours for which I have been alternately warned/told to report to the gendarmerie/had to pay a fine.)

There we are. That should sort things out and save them getting up from their cup of tea. I consider standing up against a wall with my legs apart so they can frisk me but maybe that's a step too far.

Bah non. On est venu pour les balles.

Oh no. We've just come for the bullets.

MINCE ALORS. Je suis foutu.

Good gracious me, I've had it!

I thought guillotining was the French way? They've been practicing if for centuries. Even Anne Boleyn requested the services of a French executioner when she was to be beheaded. It's the firing squad for me apparently.

But no, of course not. Ma Chère Voisine had found a load of live bullets in her barn so they'd come to collect them for the démineurs (bomb/bullet disposal experts). Should you ever find live ammunition, just give me a call because I now know what to do with it.

Apparently old bullets, particularly if they've been lying on damp ground can become quite unstable so what you have to do is half bury a bucket in the ground, put the bullets in and cover them with another bucket. Then call the Gendarmes.

Me, I'll be legging it down the road screaming 'Run for your lives'. Sod the buckets!

I returned home looking like Waynetta Slob. I'd already gone out with my top on inside out, much to the chagrin of DD, who doesn't accept my plea of 'but this is the SouthWest, we shop in our slippers!'. Now it was liberally splattered with tomato pips from her delicious tomatoes, raspberry juice and clutching some strange spaceship like vegetable, the like of which I've never seen before.

On the way home I met J-P, a local farmer, who was scrumping. Of course scrumping French-style in October means lots of figs, big, black and juicy! There's a communal fig tree in the hamlet so (now clad in a thick cardi which I'd left at MCV's at an earlier date) we stood underneath it, passed the time of day and munched on as many as we could reach. I was probably the only person in the area wearing a heavy cardigan in 26 degree heat but while I don't mind looking like Waynetta in front of close friends and neighbours, J-P is on the village council and I didn't want to be an item on the agenda.

It might go something like this......

Numéro 5. L'habillement de nos voisins anglais (the dress of our English neighbours)

Tu connais Mme VLiF? Je l'ai vu hier. Son tenu était déguelasse?

You know Mme VLiF? I saw her yesterday and her clothes were disgusting.

Beh oui. Je le connais bien mais elle est normalement déshabillée.

Yes, I know her well but usually she hasn't got any clothes on !

I've seen Debs Lehner's boufadou!

Back at home in front of the computer after a lovely day spent with the lovely Mme Lehner of The Lehners in France where I was honoured both to see her 'boufadou' (oooh, you dirty minded lot) and get a peep at the new blog. No, don't try to bribe me, wild horses would not drag anything out of me. Blogonimity must be maintained. We had a laugh looking at some or our favourite and not so favourite blogs, I met the full gamut of lame and sound livestock, had a lovefest with the gorgeous Sam (the horse) and went on the piste - not literally. I had the tour of the house, which is quite lovely despite being almost empty now, Mme Lehner has been a busy beaver, packing up ready for the big move.

I'm only sorry I met her two weeks before she's due to leave for the UK where she will be the one with pert breasts in her new, well fitting M&S bra while I'll still be boobling around in my French-made bustenhalter which is clearly not fit for purpose but I feel we've not seen the last of each other, indeed I hope not. We had loads in common and it was so nice to meet someone normal, no drink problem - at least not one she was admitting to, no desire to be 'more French than the French' and clearly a much loved member of the small rural community where she lives.

Spurred on by the lovely home-made bread Debs brought out for lunch (we both share a dislike of baguettes - give me appalling belly ache) and slightly embarrassed that I was so desperate for a pee that I didn't stop on the way home to buy any bread and cereals for DS and DD breakfasts, I decided to finally use that 'bread mix' from the German Deli (Lidl) which has been languishing in the back of the cupboard since my last 'I must be like my French neighbours and make my own bread' lapse. Fortunately, these lapses are rare because they invariably end in disaster.

Pour half the packet into a bowl, add 350mls of warm water and mix in a food processor for 4 minutes at maxiumum speed to make a nice smooth dough (it said in French)

How difficult could that be?

I rummaged in the back of the cupboard until I found my 1970s vintage Kenwood Chefette, bequeathed to me by a 96 year old former neighbour and the nearest you'll find to a food processor in my kitchen.

I duly poured half the packet into a bowl and added the water.

Within 30 seconds I had a revolting gloopy mess which had more in common with melted rubber than 'a nice smooth dough' and was busily wrapping itself around the whisks which were struggling to turn it.

The nasty burning smell which shortly emanated from the old Chefette was enough to convince me that it wasn't really up to the job and quite possibly, neither was I.

OK, time to resort to manual kneading which I vaguely remember from my home economics days at school.

I lifted the dough out of the bowl and tried to detach it from my hands. It wasn't playing ball. The more I tried to get it off, the more it stuck. What I need is more flour but how to pour it in when this godforsaken mess is still firmly glued around my fingers. I'll just have to do my best.

I picked up the packet and poured in more flour. That was the easy bit. Trying to put the bag back down was less successful. On top of the gluey dough I now had the bag of flour stuck to my hands. Time to try the CH's 'strudl pastry flick' (more on that later). It's all in the wrist action you know. A few sharp flicks and the bag detached itself and took flight across the counter spilling most of the rest of it as it went. The dough became marginally less sticky but still didn't look like a nice smooth dough. The more flour I added the more sticky the bag became, the more flustered I became........and then I got an itch on my nose. Why does this always happen?

"DeeeeeeESSSSSSS, DeeeeeDEEEEE, I need you!"

"Uggg" responded DS

"Whaaa" responded DD, neither making any attempt to help me.

Damn, I'll just have to scratch my nose myself. So now I have sticky bread dough up my nose and I'm going to....... to......... to....... SNEEZE. Not pleasant!

Eventually, with almost all the bag of flour added to my measly 350mls of tepid water I had something vaguely resembling a 'smooth dough'.

Time to put it somewhere warm to rise for half an hour. Blimey, in 30 minutes I could drive to the shops and buy a loaf of bread, but, not deterred I stuck it in front of the woodburner. Half an hour later, no change.

The instructions say I must now put it in a greased loaf tin and leave it to rise for another 45 minutes. Ah, that could be a problem. A loaf tin? Who do they think I am? Martha Graham? I find a brand new cake tin lurking in the cupboard. Must be one of the CH's purchases. There's no way I'd waste money on a cake tin. I mean, then I'd have to make a cake! Still, it will do.

Another 45 minutes later and a quick inspection reveals that it may have risen a millimetre or two. I seem to remember Debs wafting round the kitchen with a tray of very blousy dough. Still, she probably didn't buy a bread mix from the German Deli.

Into the oven at Gas Mark 4 for 60 minutes. 60 minutes? My oven has two temperatures. Off and Crematorium. If I put it in for 60 minutes it will be a charred, blackened lump. Let's try 25 minutes.

And, voilà, an almost perfect loaf of bread. Blimey, I'm going to change my name to Marie-Claire and buy a 2CV!

Le Retour de Stéphane et la tondeuse volante

Those of you who've been reading for a while will remember the shenanigans when the suave Stéphane came round to value the house and I was caught in a delicate position and my booty exposed.

Weeellll.... he's coming round again on Wednesday at 10am to take some more photos. So what I want you all to do is, wherever you are in the blogosphere, at 9.30am French time is to send me lots of telephathic messages to say 'Get your knickers on VLiF'. It'll be a bit like one of Uri Geller's worldwide cutlery bending extravaganzas except that we'll be willing my knickers into position rather than bending fork tines out of theirs. Don't forget. I'm relying on you all.

One more thing. Can you keep a secret? You mustn't tell the CH though. No, I haven't take a French lover. Blimey, talk about one track minds you lot!

You remember the lawnmower, the Green one. Well I was mowing the lawn yesterday and well, I did say it only has two speeds, MACH II and stop and I also did mention that our house is built onto the side of a steep slope. Well, the lawn goes right up to the edge at one point so you can guess what happened. The mower went over the edge in true 'Thelma and Louise' style, narrowly avoiding taking me with it.



I got it back up again. It wasn't easy and my back's a bit sore today but the lawn looks nice!

Autumn in the Seoune Valley

There's something rather magical and mystical about this time of year in our valley. The two little rivers at the bottom of the hill, coupled with the abudance of lakes, means that the valley is often shrouded in an early morning mist when I take DS and DD to catch the school bus.

On the plateau you can see for miles and miles and the chateaux and fortified villages hang above the mist like little islands.

Down below is a monochrome landscape of greys, blacks and blues and as the sun burns off the mist it's as if an unseen hand is slowly filling in the colours.

I go to the village shop for my morning croissant, often arriving before the boulanger's van, so I catch up the village gossip with Gilles and Sandrine who own the shop until the white van pulls up and we are hit by the glorious smell of fresh baked baguettes.

We're having the most glorious Indian Summer here in France. Day after day of cloudless skies, temperatures in the mid 20s with a gentle breeze, chilly nights drinking hot chocolate on the terrace and watching the stars. You can see the Milky Way here and there's nothing better than lying on your back watching the millions and millions of stars. I'd never seen a shooting star till we came here but now, on a clear night, if you watch carefully you might see half a dozen. I've wished on so many of them but so far that Euromillions win has remained illusive! No seriously, I always wish for world peace!

The trees are all putting on their autumn colours and the woods are a riot of reds, lime greens, brown and oranges. The plane trees that line the road, with their exzemaic trunks, turn the most glorious colours in October.

Our little departement, created by Napoleon himself, is without doubt, the most lovely in France. I've travelled all over and found nothing to rival the beauty of the undulating hills, ancient oak forests and lake filled valleys. Sometimes I stop on the hill down from the village just to take in the view. It's truly uplifting. Many times I've tried to capture it's beauty on film but it's just too big and too wonderful to do justice to it.

It always amazes me that so few people have even heard of it but on the other hand, it means that in the summer we arevnever overrun with tourists like the Dordogne and the Charente. It's known by the discerning few who return year after year and our little village café with a reputation that spans continents, is bursting at the seams with a multitude of different nationalities all chatting away in a maelstrom of languages, sipping chilled rosé or thick, dark coffee.

In the fields, the farmer are busy, working late into the night harvesting the maize while the droopy-headed sunflowers finally give up their seeds. Then it's clearing and ploughing ready for the spring sowing when once again the fields will be filled with yellow rape, golden corn and a multitude of sunflowers.

Wherever we end up, our house and our little valley will have left an indelible mark on my heart and the last time we drive down the hill, past the pond and the gurgling waterfall, past the buzzards who regularly fly down with us, past the deer grazing in the fields, will be bitter-sweet.

My name is.....

DD called me from her school trip to Arcachon where they eventually arrived. The coach, booked to leave collège at 6.45am on the dot finally showed up at 8.15am. I'm soooo glad I got up at 5.30am so she'd get there on time. She's having fun, having climbed up and rolled down the Dune de Pyla several times. This is the biggest sand dune in Europe.




They are staying at a place run by the nuns of St Vincent de Paul and so far haven't been beaten (as I told her they would be) or fed drugged spaghetti bolognaise (as DS told her they would be). When he stayed there he said they were given the most disgusting spag bol ever but they couldn't stop eating it. Proof positive that it was drugged apparently! She also reports that the nuns liked her nun jokes.

"Which ones did you tell them sweetypie", I asked nervously.

"Just the 'what goes black/white/black/white/black/white? A nun rolling down a hill. What goes black/white/haha? The nun that pushed her' one. "

Oh god, she's clearly inherited her mother's predilection for inappropriate comments! I can't pass a nun without swearing or blaspheming, neither of which I normally do. It's just something about being in the presence of one that sends it spouting forth from my mouth.

And not many can claim to have insulted a veritable British institution. I remember having lunch in the restaurant at Shepperton Studios while a certain Michael Caine was filming the Muppet Christmas Carol.

"God, how far has his career gone down the toilet? He's reduced to acting with puppets!" I pronounced loudly, swinging back on my chair and catching the one of the man sitting behind me.

"Oh, sorry.............Mr Caine"I apologised, red faced, and withered ever so slightly under the force of his glare.

"Do you think he heard me?" I whispered to my fellow diners.

They nodded in unison.

I'd like to thank.......

Frankofile for this lovely, and very much appreciated award. I shall pass it on in due course.

The Future belongs to ME! (apparently!)

6.30am saw me standing in the college playground waiting with DS, who is off on a school trip for two days. 6.30am is not a time that I usually see, except from underneath my duvet, or more likely underneath a cat which is asleep on my duvet, which is on me.

6.30am is also not a time that I find speaking any language, never mind French, an easy task but nevertheless, I found myself standing with one of the French Papas doing my best to get my half-asleep mouth around my vowels and my somnolent throat around the odd rolled 'r'. He was talking to me (and one of the other English mums) about carbon neutral insulation, and low CO2 boilers. This is a conversation I would struggle to have mid-morning after a healthy 8 hours sleep, never mind after about 2 hours at 6.30am. I have vague recollections of the mention of 'poil' (fur or hair) and Swedish boilers. Maybe someone call fill in the missing bits for me.

He did kindly e-mail me an old French proverb this morning though

L'avenir appartient à ceux qui se lèvent tôt!

Mais aussi:

L'avenir appartient à ceux qui ont des ouvriers qui se lèvent tôt!

The future belongs to those who get up early (that'll be me then!)
but also:
The future belongs to those who have workers who get up early (OK, OK, I'll share!)

J, the papa was obviously in philosophical mood as he cast his eye over the group of 11 and 12 year old children. 'This is the future of France' he said. McDonald's will be pleased, I thought. So many to choose from! We all know that égalité (equality) doesn't really exist in France except in the minds of the Government who force feed it to the proletariat in the hope that they won't notice that a ruling élite is still being groomed in the Grands Ecoles of Paris. Ooh er! What's happening to the Capitalist in me? That's sounds vaguely left wing to me!

One thing that will be different for them is their language. The Robert, the French version of the Oxford English Dictionary, has changed the spelling of over 6000 words to reflect modern usage and to simplify it for people learning French. From now on, foreign words which have entered the French language like Pizzeria and Kebab (see how international our cuisine is!) can now be written with an accent over the e (pizzéria, kébab) to frenchify them. Well, I guess if you can't beat em, join em! The Académie Française, charged with maintaining the purity of the French language, has long resisted the introduction of foreign words without success. So, if you can't get rid of them, make them sound French and everyone is happy.

From now on too, mots composés, words that are made up from two words joined together, like 'porte-monnaie' and 'pop-corn' can be written with or without the hyphen and words like 'évènements' (events) a long-time bête noire of children's school dictées (dictations - yes, they still do them) can now be written as it is pronounced 'événements'.

The media is in uproar, the comments page on Le Figaro's website has nearly 300 comments and climbing, most of them saying things like 'un nation de crétins' (a nation of cretins - doesn't really need a translation does it!), 'changer votre Robert pour Larousse à cause de trahison' (change your Robert for a Larousse (another dictionary) because of their betrayal), 'Paul Robert doit se retourner dans sa tombe' (Paul Robert must be turning in his grave), 'M. Alain Rey devrait prendre sa retraite. D'urgence.' (Alain Rey, the editor of the dictionary, should retire as soon as possible). He's also a gauchist apparently so that's why he's singlehandedly trashing the French language. Well, not quite single-handedly (!) as it appears also to be the fault of the presenters of the weather forecasts and of ex-footballers who've become sports commentators. Many commentators (as in those that comment rather than the commentators themselves . Boy can you tell I had an early morning!) believe that their prononciation of the language is so poor that the youth are starting to write phonetically. Oh, and don't forget texting!

Probably not the right time to remind them that up to the 17th century they spoke Latin in France.

Quisquis!

Personally it doesn't go far enough for me. When I'm President I shall dispense with all tenses except present, future and past - I mean, do you really need a whole tense just for the written word? How greedy is that! All nouns will take 'le' and there will be no agreement with nouns - no, not even if they go on strike. Better still, I'll make them all speak English.

Vote for me! Vote for me!

Celebrity City (well, village)

It's not easy bashing your way through the celebrity infested streets of our little corner of Southwest France.

On Saturday I saw



in the market

Then I saw

having coffee with my French teacher

Then I sat on the next table to

at a Quiz Night

Virtual prizes for the first person to name all three.