Odds 'n' Sods

Almost a month has gone by since I wrote my last blog post. That has to be a record. I can assure you that I have not been sitting around on my backside wearing fluffy slippers, smoking fags and reading trashy magazines. I can't even say 'much as I'd like to' because I'm not the fluffy slippers/fags/trashy magazine type.

Here is a (non-toxic variety unlike the stuff made by Monsanto) round-up of recent activities:

1. Writing. YAY! I've been writing exercises which will make me millions (!) on grammar and punctuation - 130 for each of three levels, with question, right answer, three wrong answers and explanation. Total: 780 inspiring and educational exercises... Plus reading through even more for a figurative language app where I came across a whole bunch of words that I had never heard of before, like anaphora, synecdoche, etc.
2. Making water kefir. This is a process that requires regular attention what with keeping an eye on the first fermentation process to bottling the kefir ready for the second fermentation, and remembering how long the bottles have been out before they have to go into the fridge. I you want to find out all about making your own kefir water, this is a very thorough description. My kefir grains keep reproducing like bloody rabbits and I now have jars of the grains in sugar water sitting in the fridge waiting for someone to take them off my hands. I keep running out of flip-top bottles too. Must up my beer intake... This is in a vain attempt to give the boys a fizzy drink that's actually good for them. So far, so big failure, but it's a project in progress and I WILL find a version that they like! Preferably before they leave home... Meanwhile, my gut is glowing.
3. Making sour-dough starter. Another process that requires regular attention! I started making it so I could make sour-dough bread until I realised (after my starter had been going for a week or so) it takes about 20 hours to make a loaf! As I'm not sure how to fit that into full-time work, I've been using the starter to make pizza dough until I work out the logistics of baking sour-dough bread. 
4. Being part of the local elections as a member of the team opposing the one currently in place. This has involved regular meetings and delivering political tracts in the village. We also meet up in the market on Sunday mornings to show shoppers we're a sizeable team of merry types who have good ideas and are ready to talk about them. We buy goodies from the market vendors - oysters, cheese, charcuterie - which makes us very popular with them, and, funnily enough, after the first Sunday we were there but the others were not, the next week, they turned up too in a different spot. We offer wine from the local winery, they serve the hard stuff. If we win, I'll be on the local council! My DB is hoping I'll make it to Deputé level so we can live in the lap of luxury for evermore... (he's got a hope!).

I don't know how all the women who write the healthy food websites and blogs I follow (list in right-hand column) have the time to do all the stuff they do. I can only assume they do not have full-time jobs, or they have a full-time job but no kids. They seem to have husbands too. I drew myself the short straw being a working single mum AND trying to do all this time-consuming stuff. Wards off Alzheimer's I suppose keeping track of it all...

My mum was without a land-line phone for three weeks over Christmas and New Year. TalkTalk offered her a measly £18.08 off her next bill. I wrote to them and said I was not impressed. My mum is 80 and needs a land line, if nothing else, to contact the emergency services! She incurred £20 on her little-used mobile phone whose number is not known by most of her friends, and she suffered a lot of stress at the extreme inconvenience over the festive period.

TalkTalk wrote back and told me to get stuffed. They had compensation guidelines and as her phone had been out of order for so many days, she gets so many days off her next bill. It was all BT's fault anyway as their idiotic engineers had mis-connected some lines when they were working just down the road. Took three weeks and endless expensive mobile phone calls to get them to move their arse. Telecom companies are all bastards.

After all that I'm in need of a holiday. My DB and I will be off soon on a motorbike ride to Italy to visit Pisa, Florence and surrounding spots. I just hope everything stays alive while I'm away!

Shoe Vote

On Easter Sunday I went to Palavas to look for espadrilles. I have been looking ever since. Today, perchance, I was in Carrefour in search of a cap for the boys, and came across a display of dozens of variously coloured espadrilles! Ooooh, heaven, thought I.

Until I tried them on, that is. I'm a sort of size 38 although I have one foot slightly bigger than the other. So, of course, the size 38 was too small, and the 39 was too big. Visions of me flitting about the summer in variously coloured and decorated espadrilles at 5€ and 6.50€ faded until they were nothing more than the end of the evening television dot (that was).

I have trouble with shoes, it seems. I'm never in tune with the times; wanting boots when there are none about, wanting court-type shoes when flat pointy things are all the rage, or flat shoes when there's nothing under a 5cm heel to be had. Do I do it deliberately? Well, actually, I'm just trying to buy shoes to go with what I'm wearing, that's all. I don't ask for much...

Next door to Carrefour is the Halle aux Chaussures. My youngest needed sandals, so in we went. He found his bonheur pretty quickly, and I thought I'd just have a look around for something to wear during the increasingly hot spring weather. My youngest helped out, making suggestions, showing me 'suitable' shoes and pushing the stool around for me to sit on.

His taste was for the high, strappy evening shoe. Not quite what I had in mind to do the shopping in to go with pedal-pushers.

Searching for shoes is similar to searching for a presidential candidate to not vote for (as I can't vote). Either they are not in tune with the times, or they don't fit. The trouble is, you can't try them on for size first. They get voted in, and only then do you realise you made a fatal mistake. Wrong size, wrong style, wrong substance, but you're stuck with them for seven years.

At least with shoes you can send them to the Secours Catholique if they cease to be fit for purpose!

I'm glad I can't vote, really; I'd be in a real quandry for Sunday when round one takes place. As it is, I watch, knowing it's SEP to make the decisions.

At least I came away with a pair of sandals today, eventually.

Election Apathy

"Who are you going to vote for, mummy?" asked my eldest today.
"No one," I had to reply, "I can't vote."

He was quite stunned and well he might be. I might be able to vote in European elections (big deal, I'm sure that's just because the voting numbers are so dismal that they are desperate to involve the bottom of the pilers - foreigners) but I cannot vote in the one that counts. The election to choose the President of the Republic is not for me. I am not French. End of story.

However, the Republic is perfectly happy for me to pay my taxes and social contributions; they insist, in fact, but prevent me from adding my voice to how all my tax euros are to be spent, despite my being part of the happy, inclusive Euro family, as a Brit.

So, I can barely drum up any enthusiasm for the election at all. I have no voice, cannot influence the outcome, so why should I care? I can't do anything about it, there'll probably be no big changes that affect me anyway as there hardly ever are (except the 35hr week - yippee!), so I'm pretty apathetic about Sego and her white jacket, or Sarko and his hyperactive bouncing about.

I'm deeply suspicious of politicians, especially those on election campaigns. We hear words and promises, rallying calls to the population etc. etc. and it's all empty. Empty words, empty promises. The best liar wins. You just have to look at Blair to see how empty his words are, and Gordon Brown is even worse. He's a thieving, lying, manipulative, smug piece of shit, and that's being generous.

Chirac is rotten to the core as was Mitterand. They are all out for themselves; their self-aggrandisement, enrichment and rapacious political ambition come what may. Will Gordon Brown resign over the pensions fiasco? I doubt it. Has his pension or any other minister's been affected by his thieving grab? Yeah, right. He's all right, Jack. Stuff the public, they're all worn down by over-taxation, over-work and excessive surveillance anyway; they won't fuss for long... Slap another tax on them (preferably green to take the moral high ground), that'll shut them up.

A parent would have been proud that their child become Prime Minister, or President in days gone by. Today, politicians have to show such dastardly characteristics that frankly, I hope my two steer well clear of politics.