Spotted

I went right through all my archives looking for spotted things. I could find nothing. I wandered around the house looking for spotted things.  I could find nothing.  But then I spotted the cat sleeping on the quilt.

Maybe the quilt has spots?  Turfing the cat off, I had a look.

No, not really.  So I decided to have a look outside.

There I spotted a fishing boat setting off for the day....

...and some leaves spotted with a light fall of snow.

Not a lot of spots around at all.

If you'd like to join in and find other other players, pay a visit to TNchick's site where you can find out more.

Balanced

Bleakly balanced.

Lobster pots covered by the recent snow, waiting for the next trip out to sea.  They are still there, I notice, though the snow has gone.

Blithely balanced

A snowman, again during the recent snow, cheerfully balanced on a local railing.  Snow is fairly unusual in this part of the world so there were snowmen being built in every possible place.

Bunched up and balanced.

Two cold pigeons sitting on the edge of a fountain in Rome last February. It gets cold even in Rome.

Bracingly balanced.

A local fishing boat well braced against all weather, on the shingle beach.  Shingle, for those not familiar with the term, means pebbled.  Shingle beaches are usually very steep, and often used for beach-launched fishing boats

All the photos, as usual, will enlarge if you click on them.

If you'd like to join in and find other other players, pay a visit to TNchick's site where you can find out more.

French mistakes

Image via Wikipedia

One of my sidelines has become working in a charity shop once or twice a week.  Today I noticed a group of young men and women coming in together, one carrying a clipboard and a pen.  They were looking all around the shop.

All sorts of possibilities ran through my mind.  Mystery shoppers? No, far too obvious.  From the local council?  No, they were a little too young.  The young woman who seemed in charge approached me while the others gathered behind her.  I smiled.  She smiled back.  "Can I help you with something?"  No response.  She gestured to one of the others, a young man who took a deep breath and told me, haltingly, that they were a group of French students studying all the charity shops in the area, and could I do a keeezz.  A what?!  Two pages of paper were put into my hand.  "Ah, a quiz!" "A quiz" they all chorused after me.

It was a questionnaire.  The questions were translated into English but in all honesty the French was easier to understand.  Two pages of questions about how the charity shop functioned.  It wasn't easy.  The students had no English whatsoever apart from the initial set speech, but I did my best and went on with my work, sorting books.

I know, I know, I have the best job in the place.  Do you know how many different ways you can sort books?  I haven't come to the end yet, I read far too many of them along the way.

I digress.  Suddenly I was interrupted by one of the French students who handed me a huge bag of sweets "pour vous remercier".

A bag of Bêtises de Cambrai, apparently a speciality of Cambrai (along with cambric).  A "bêtise" means a mistake or a foolish thing, and legend has it that an apprentice sweet maker in the 18th century made a mistke in a recipe which resulted in these sweets.  And the sweets sold well and were an amazing success. An alternative tale is that the name refers to the the way local men would waste their money after the cattle fair, buying silly things and among them these boiled sweets.

So, who wants one of my hard earned foolish mstakes?  They taste very like humbugs.

Things are looking brighter

The sun came out.

The world came out for a walk.

The beach huts were spruced up.

Some more than others.

Taking to the water.

Unlikely ever to take to the water again.

A lazy day on the beach in January.

All the photos enlarge when clicked.

Congé <> vacances

Photo from Flickr/l r

In the part of France where I live, if you try to visit a restaurant or some museums or châteaux, you are likely to find a notice like the one above saying that the place is shut for "congés annuels".  If you are in Paris, you may very well see the same thing during August.  Sometimes they do say "vacances annuelles" and so I've always believed that the two words, congé and vacances, both meant holidays.

Well I was wrong, they aren't interchangeable.  There is quite an amount of overlap but  "vacances" means pleasurable holidays where "congé" is more of an official period of leave.

All that preamble is to say I am taking a congé, a week or so off blogging.  The house move has been less than smooth, there is so much to do that it's hard to concentrate on anything else, and now the heating has stopped - this is the coldest winter in the UK since the 1960s.  I think I am justified in not using "vacances" in this instance.

PhotHunt: lick

Of course the most obvious picture would have been photos showing our cat licking but he has been totally lacking in any co-operative spirit since our house move, so I've had to look elsewhere.

Cars on a snowy motorway/autoroute in France, some going at a fair lick, or lickety-split.

A small sheet of British definitive stamps, all of which need to be licked before being put on an envelope.  I wish they produced more self-adhesive ones.

An upturned boat on the beach, waiting for a lick of paint.

If you'd like to join in and find other other players, pay a visit to TNchick's site where you can find out more.

2009

As night....

... follows day....

...the year progressed through the seasons. It started in snow

...and moved on into spring...

...summer...

...autumn...

...and back again to the snow of winter.

2009 has been a variable year for me but the high points far outweighed the lows. I wish health and happiness to all of you for the coming year. Happy 2010!!

Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot, and auld lang syne?
For auld lang syne, my jo, for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet, for auld lang syne.