Our latest news is that we don’t have flu, fitba has proven somewhat elusive and election fever has not quite broken out here.  This update is brought to you by a zebra, several llama’s and a tame looking peacock.

 

Of late S and I went to the Cinema to see The Joker – a Jason Statham film – in French.  The choice was in part as, no disrespect to him as an actor, his films tend not to be too complex plot wise.  It was an experiment and went ok in that we enjoyed the film tho probably wouldn’t pass any quizzes about the exact details.  Options for another trip will NOT include Cinquante Nuances de Grey or Bob l’eponge…

The language is proving a bit difficult to pick up without a formal informal scenario if you see what I mean.  We are getting dab hands at transactional stuff, getting food for a veggie and trips to banks, vets and such.  However opportunities for a proper blether in French seem more difficult to find but the quest continues – they can’t have all been warned off me already can they?  We’ll however keep you posted on this.

 

The weather has been decent here, rumours of snow last weekend came to nothing – the impact of this is in the fitba bit…  Limousin has the flu, or rather it has 50% more cases per 100,000 than the second most snotty, achy and coughy bit of France.  Which strikes me as unusual especially as this bit of France has a low and spread out population, but I’ll stop before start speculating and get all geographical.  This situation is not a proud boast for our adopted home and Keith has been struck down poor bloke.  Pleasingly he’s now on the mend.

 

Our excursion since my last missive took us to Bourganeuf, north east of Limoges.  We took a less direct route than we could have but were able to stop and have a look at Ambazac which was nice but a bit lacking in the Chateau department!

We pootled onto Bourganeuf just in time for lunch.  We dined on pizza after the door to the place (La Strada) had tried to fire S in and up the stairs.  I of course forgot its curious operation and departed the place with a loud bang.  We’ve not been barred as far as we know…

Bourganeuf is one of the places I had surveyed via Google Streetview on a break or while talking on the phone to a boring mental person or paedophile when I was working for the Council.  This helped guide our visit, the town was one of the first to have electric streetlights but the museum detailing this is only open in July and August foiling our seeking of further knowledge and a handy comfort break before the drive home.

As is not uncommon there is a Medieval core to the town and it’s a nice place, we liked it – shut museums and rapidly opening doors aside.

More time and effort than there perhaps should have been has been spent scouring chocolate aisles in Supermarkets trying to find dark chocolate with Pear.  This glorious culinary delight was discovered by accident in Lion-sur-Mer in Normandy (AKA Sword beach) a couple of years ago.  We found some in Bourganeuf at its Carrefour Market – if you can try some sometime we’d recommend it.  However yer no getin any o’oors!

On the way back we paused for the below photograph – Tim you are (nearly) immortalised here!

He’s a lovely bloke and frankly deserves it.  It seems the kids there are a bit lively…  We got out ok, it must be my Community Safety background.

 

Otherwise we’ve continued to potter along happily.  On Friday past Gideon Osbourne bought us lunch.  Ok, not really but much to her initial concern and the bafflement of her employers HR team S has been getting money each payday.  It’s been identified as partial tax refunds and we decided to celebrate the latest with lunch in SYlP.  We went on Friday past which was the day of the fortnightly market – regular readers will remember this but fret not there is no quiz.

As we approached we were handed a leaflet by a bloke from Debout La France for the coming elections here in March.  There were also some Terre de Gauche folk with leaflets who I had to ask for one from rather to their embarrassment and some people we took to be UMP who were similarly less than pro active in giving out their propaganda.  Having myself tried to avoid spending time gossiping with colleagues when meant to be connecting with the non-committed it was nice to see it’s just the same here.

S stocked up on fruit and veg and I got some smoked duck wrapped around fois gras which is superb and well worth the 50e per kilo price, (I only got a small bit).

After the market with its barely visible political undertones we went for lunch.  S was catered for at the La Bonne Cave as she was last time –  there is still nothing for her on the menu!  I Menu de Joured as always which started with Tete Pate which was good if perhaps best not thought about too deeply.  A large lump of Salmon with a very fine sauce followed then the meal finished strongly with a light fluffy pudding that had fabulous cherries lurking in it.  Cheers ya Tory git!  S has asked that I point out we haven’t put on weight, which pleasingly is true.  J

 

Fitba

On Saturday the 21^st I managed to get to fitba.  SYlP equalised with a last minute re-taken penalty against Solignac making it 1:1.  The League table is shaping up for an intersting second half of the season with SYlP in the mix.  Champnetery – who’s ground we happened across the other day – seem rooted to the bottom of the table having lost 17:0 recently!  That could bring some consolation to any passing Cowdenbeath fans.

My normal pal wasn’t at the match, the cold (for here) reduced the crowd to about 9 and I’m pretty sure one of them was the Referee’s Dad!  One of my normal compatriots in the wee stand wasn’t there and I realised he was actually in goals for SYlP.  He played well having no chance with the goal conceded and doing very well to carry on after the visitor’s number 9 tried to kill him with a horrendous challenge.  Thankfully you’ll be pleased to hear he’s been playing for a smaller village side and that it wasn’t just his ‘turn’ to go in goals.  If that was the case my turn would no doubt make Champnetery guffaw wildly at a 20+ goal defeat for SYlP…

On Sunday past, the 1^st, I whizzed up the road to see SYlP in a top four clash v Moyette in Limoges.  Confused by the sudden disappearance of match details that morning I persevered and found the right place but no match.  It turned out the Haute Vienne had cancelled all the games in the region on the Friday fearful of the non-appearing bad weather!  Annoyingly I wasn’t aware of this but did get an unhealthy lunch and have a look at Limoges FC’s ground plotting a future visit to see them.  It was thus a bit less of a wasted trip.

I was last night welcomed to the Limoges FC fans group on the Facebookness and sure enough details of the whole scale postponements were on that…  Hindsight is a sod sometimes.  I got a message from the Admin chap and replied briefly which meant I got a mention on the main page as did the mighty Raith Rovers.

I have my eye on Limoges next home game on the 28^th – they are bottom of the League they were promoted to last year – and it will be interesting to go to a higher level game.  I bet you all can’t wait to hear about that…                                                                                     End of fitba

 

I know that you both will be wondering at the Dr Doolittle like reference at the top of this times blethers.  Well the circus was in town the other week and we happened to go past when a zebra and some llama’s were getting their tea.  Circuses are common here with animals, tigers, perhaps lions and even bears.  Oh my, I hear you.

The cat is living somewhat grudgingly on hypo-allergenic food the collection of which involved me helping a woman get her massive dog out her people/dog carrier and into the vet’s office.  The beast wasn’t very keen to say the least but inside the monster was weighed and it was 46 kilograms which is rather more than 7 stone in old money!

On various trips we’ve seem other llama’s who obviously didn’t make the showbiz grade (Peru’s Got Talent?) and a peacock that seemed to be more than at home on someone’s patio.  It’s not a problem when a cat or dog is the living room between you and the TV but a peacock would be much more of a problem.  Perhaps they could be trained to block out Ant and Dec or guff like the Scottish Premier League and River City…