This will definitely go down as one of the best.
French television: TF1. 23/07/2013 20h22
Just as William and Kate are coming out of the hospital doors, where all the World’s cameras are pointing at the ‘happy couple’, the French journaliste says:
“No. it’s a false alert; There is absolutely nothing happening here at the moment…”
When we suddenly hear in her earpiece:
“Turn the fuck around, stupid…”
Just brilliant.
This is what really pisses me off about France. And I think it illustrates why it’s still more of an agricultural country than a manufacturing one: whatever they might want us to think.
The end of the school year is next Friday, the 5th of July.
Tuesday this week Audrey finished at 11 in the morning. Wednesday she didn’t even go in because her first two teachers were busy doing union things. Yesterday and today all the teachers were busy doing everything in the world other than what our [extremely high and going up again]taxes pay them to do so there was no school.
Do you want to know what next week’s agenda is?
Games!
What fun.
In four years’ time Audrey will take the Brevet exam – like a GCSE if you like. On last night’s 8 o’clock news that was an item about high unemployment in France and the difficulty that a lot of people are having in these crisis days we’re experiencing. I thought that it was important that Audrey watched the news item simply because we’re at the stage where we enforcing homework and trying to explain how important it is that she still put’s the effort into doing it.
And the school effectively shuts ten days earlier than it should do. Crazy!
Anyway, we had the end of school report and it was very good reading as usual for Audrey. (We’ll come onto Liam a bit later on). Progress in all her classes, especially in Art & Plastic where she had a low note last year: 4th in the class as it stands so we’re quite happy. 18/20 in Maths, French, English, History & Geography and 16/20 for the rest.
And what about the (very near retirement age so doesn’t really give a toss how it’s all thrown together) English teacher? Well she’s still there and still doesn’t give a toss. I had dinner with the headmaster last weekend and he’s retiring next Friday. I gave him a nudge and a wink to see if he could get her into the proper English teacher’s class next year. He said that he couldn’t really interfere with his replacements plans. He winked back. We’ll see in September.
Liam, the little git, is averaging 4/10 so he’s in for a spanking (literally speaking for any of you ‘Don’t hit that child brigade’) but he’s only at junior school so it’s not too bad.
I’m on holiday as of next Friday so I’m going to catch up on here and add some of the holiday photos from Vichy with mum and dad.
Sean/
Or, How to get your daughter into trouble without really trying.
At the beginning of the school year we were given a list of material to purchase for the school year: pencil case, ruler, protractor, crayons and so on. Equally asked for was the English exercise book for first years.
I’m not a fan of buying books for the school. We all pay enough taxes to cover the cost of school books and I believe that it should be the school’s responsibility and not the parents to buy the school books. Anyway we went onto Amazon and bought the book. As we were in September 2012 Amazon sold us the 2012 edition.
When we went to see the various teachers at the end of October we sat in Audrey’s registration class and throughout the evening the different teachers came to us and gave us a summary of the first term. When it came to the (very near retirement age so doesn’t really give a toss how it’s all thrown together) English teacher’s turn it transpired that we were not the only ones that had the 2012 version of the book: the (very near retirement age so doesn’t really give a toss how it’s all thrown together) English teacher had the 2009 version. (Can you see where this is going?).
We all said that this was a pretty stupid arrangement but the (very near retirement age so doesn’t really give a toss how it’s all thrown together) English teacher wasn’t buying it (which was ok for me as I wasn’t really selling it).
When the (very near retirement age so doesn’t really give a toss how it’s all thrown together) teacher asked that for homework the kids do; for example, exercises 6 & 7 on page 32 these coordinates apply only to the 2009 book, not the 2012 book where there are no exercises 6 & 7 on page 32.
Audrey started getting 0/20 for the homework. As were other kids.
So Carine wrote her a letter that she stapled into the correspondence book. There was no reply. Apparently the (very near retirement age so doesn’t really give a toss how it’s all thrown together) English teacher said to Audrey that she couldn’t understand a word that Carine has written so didn’t bother replying.
So I entered the game…as I would…in my way….which wasn’t a particularly a good idea!
I wrote a letter. Actually I typed a letter.
In English.
To a French (very near retirement age so doesn’t really give a toss how it’s all thrown together) English teacher.
It didn’t go down well! I didn’t save it on the computer so I can’t copy and paste it here but I basically said that it shouldn’t be Audrey’s fault that in the year 2012 she purchases a 2012 edition of the school book that is three years newer than that of her teacher’s.
She again got 0/20.
Rudy’s finished and here is the semi-final result…
I say ‘semi-final’ result because I haven’t finished painting yet. I’ve got a lot of roller strokes showing so I’m going to do another coat next weekend and then do the walls but it gives an idea of where we are with it.
Both Audrey and Liam have what they call a ‘cahier de correspondence’ from their respective schools. Basically, it’s a small book that enables teachers and parents to communicate in a simple manner. We need to sign it on a regular basis, maybe twice a week, and so we keep up with what is happening and when.
A couple of weeks ago Audrey’s teacher asked if one or both of the parents would like to attend a school lunch and if so which day would be preferable. I volunteered for a Friday which was a stupid choice in a catholic country as that would mean fish as the main course and I don’t like fish too much.
Anyway. Leading up to the Friday Audrey was all excited over the fact that I would be having lunch with her and her school friends. The actually morning however she was a bit more reluctant: she was pretty sure that others in the school would laugh at my ears. (Now as an aside my ears have become a focal point of the family at the moment. When we went to the zoo and saw all the different animals, my ears would invariable come up in the conversation about elephants {no surprise there} but equally giraffes, bison wolves {no I didn’t get it either} hippopotami {?} etc.]
As it turned out the school dinner was excellent. After the disgraceful scenario at the middle school [if you remember it was the day before left-overs from the other school heated up for a second time and served to Audrey and her mates in the new school] it was good to have a decent school meal. Audrey had amassed all her friends to eat with us as parents get to jump the queue and get to eat first. Starter of fresh salad or fresh quiche followed by a choice of battered or grilled fish with a side order of freshly made ratatouille. Dessert was a choice of fresh fruit, cheese or yoghurt. There was also fresh bread and jugs of water. It made me think of the Jamie Oliver programme where he tried to have better quality in schools and how lucky we are in comparison : no ‘rubbish’ food in this canteen [or at least not on the day that I went].
In France there are no teachers patrolling the refectory but public servants who look after both the canteen and the playground. They, too, did a very good job of keeping order and getting the different services in and out of the canteen in time for the next group to come and eat.
All in all it was good fun to go back to the school canteen after so many years and both Audrey and her friends enjoyed my being there.
The kitchen ceiling has always been a problem. When we moved in in 2003 it was covered with wooden planks and there was a sort of outdoor render on the walls.
We took the planks of wood off and could see why they guy had put them up to begin with. It looked as though the builder hadn’t really finished the ceiling and he had put on some sort of greasy rendering that couldn’t be painted over. Over the years we’ve tried to paint, put up wallpaper, paint, put up another type of wallpaper and nothing sticks – everything we’ve tried has come ‘unstuck’!
So Rudy’s back with us for another week. We came up with an idea as to lower one part of the ceiling without it looking like an after-thought and here are the fruits of three days labor:
So, as you can see there is no visible join between the kitchen and the old dining room.
Tuesday Evening :
Rudy’s fixed straight onto the ceiling joists so it’s pretty solid.
Friday night Day 4:
In all there will be 7 spots on two different switches: two above the bar area and the other five above the sink, oven and one in the centre of the kitchen. According to Rudy if we were to have all 7 at the same time it would like like the “Palais de Verseilles” (Think Ally Pally)
More to follow
I had my first taste of France’s secondary school system last night with the very first parent/teacher evening for Audrey. It wasn’t a good experience.
My secondary school experience started in 1978 and to give that some sense of meaning not only is that 34 years ago but the Sony Walkman hadn’t even been built at that time whereas today we have iPods and music on the go with our mobile phones. One has to accept that over time things have changed and not only that this is a very different culture from the one in which I grew up.
I never imagined that any potential child of mine would experience any other form of secondary school experience from the one that I had had. But here we are in the South of France and not suburban Surrey in the UK so everything is different.
The first problem is the weight of the school-bag: it is way too heavy. Apparently this is the child’s fault as they are afraid to be scolded by one of the teachers if they forget to bring in a certain item. It is, apparently, up to the parents to check that the child only has the required materiel for that particular day. OK, this is a fair point. So I checked Audrey’s bag contained only what was required for today; the bag is still way too heavy for an 11 year old.
Secondly there are no lockers available, or very few, so not only is the school-bag way too heavy she has to lug it around during break time and lunchtime. The school principal said last night that locker priority is given to first year students but 90% of parents put their hands up last night when asked if their child had a locker problem. If priority is given to first years, and we have a 9:1 problem ratio, then heaven only knows how many 2nd, 3rd and 4th years have a locker problem. They are too expensive to replace, allegedly. So, it would seem that it is better that the child has a bad back than replace expensive lockers.
Why are there so few lockers? Vandalism, apparently. Audrey has a biometric hand and retinal scanner to get into the school but they can’t put a security camera up to see who vandalises the lockers. And what I find even stranger is that all the lockers are in the same place. At my school first and second year lockers where down by the first year toilets whilst 4th and 5th year lockers were elsewhere. That prevented ‘bigger’ kids wreaking havoc on the ‘smaller’ ones which is a common problem here in France according to the principal. (You don’t say!)
More to follow.
Ok, he’ll probably kill me for putting this up here!
This is my neighbour, Jacques Meziat looking a proper dick!
See you tomorrow, Jacques!
Once again a very small rush for a couple of people interested in the boxclever.com domain name.
Why? Do they know something I don’t? One from the UK and the other called Bret with a gmail address so he could be anywhere, maybe the UK too.
Are boxclever.co.uk up to something? They’ll get first refusal (for the second time since they have already refused it once in 2003, but hey, let’s not let that get in the way of business) and then I’ll go through the list one at a time.
What do you reckon it’s worth, then, this dot com?
Rudy Quatrato started at the beginning of June with a ‘delivery date’ of mid September.
Here we are in late October and there is still much to be done. To be honest, the lateness is really down to the previous owner of this house the ‘Right Honorable C$$t’ Mister Carole of the French Army.
We both warned Rudy as to the terrible way that M Carole had undertaken work in the house; DIY was definately not his strong point. Our neighbours have all explained that M Carole was a tight git and that when the house was built he asked the builders to leave the interior decorating to him. The git [as we shall now refer to M Carole {can’t stand even saying his name never mind writing it down}] simply stuck polystyrene tiles on all the ceilings without even bothering to put an undercoat on to pretect the drywall panels. When you try and take these tiles off half the ceiling comes away with it; especially since the git didn’t even protect the joints of the drywall. The git obviously tried it himself in the dining room and rather than repair the damage the git just nailed up wooden panels onto the ceiling. He did the same thing with every wall in the house simply sticking wallpaper directly onto the drywall panels again not even protecting the joints.
So, Rudys lateness, if you can really call it that, is down to the fact that he had to skim every ceiling [except in the kitchen and we’ll come back to that when it’s done] and every wall in order to put them right. It cost a few thousand extra and added a few weeks onto the schedule but well worth the money and Rudy is very good at what he does.
As the title mentions we’re now in the painting stage in the kids bedrooms. Ours is still the storage room at the moment but I hope to be back in it before Christmas.
Both Audrey and Liam chose their own colours [not my style, but hey if that’s what they want, why not] and Carine pushed them into deciding to have coloured bands across the walls. As you can see from the photos below it took a while to prepare the walls but the result is OK. The white bands at the top and bottom of the walls are there : (1) so that I do not have to cut colour into a white ceiling and (2) to protect the new skirting boards.
So, I’m left with the following to paint, at least an undercoat before the winter sets in..
1. Our Bedroom.
2. The bathroom when finished.
3. The toilet when finished.
4. The kitchen when finished.
5. The lounge and old dining room.
6. The extension across the terrace when finished.
7. The ‘wet room/utility room’ when accessible [another temporary storage area]
I’ve already gone through 20 litres of undercoat, 40 litres of white paint, 5 litres of aubergine, and a couple of litres of each of the other colours. And I’m only a quater of the way through…I’ll need to buy new rollers tomorrow and try to get as much done as I can before I go back to work next Monday.
