French without Tears

I am off to France on Saturday with brother P, our first holiday together since childhood. We are staying in a gite in Normandy belonging to some English people so if we both collapse, there will be someone nearby to pick up the pieces.  B Wiggins is going to Brighton to daughter J and they are taking him along with their dog Jumble to Dorset to walk on the coastal path near Weymouth, as it is half term.
This morning on our pre breakfast walk B.W. jumped on an electric fence and cried most pitifully. We will not do that walk again. The countryside is full of hazards: a great gaggle of geese advanced towards him the day before,and he is scared of the the three horses in the field behind here and gives them a wide berth. It is a different kettle of fish when he sees the postman or the paper delivery man.   He becomes  a savage barking inferno.
I said that the film about the pig killing was Swedish but it was German.   It has put me off eating pig in any shape and form and hitherto  I have always fancied a bit of bacon for my breakfast. I notice that grand daughter M who was brought up a vegetarian as many of my family are, now eats hardly any dairy foods either, just soya milk and olive oil rather than butter. Many of her friends are the same.  Trends in food are a- changing. And everyone was shocked to hear on the news that most meat that we buy is halal.
I have got a good stash of books to take to France from our lovely mobile library\ including Donna Tartt`s Goldfinch, a biog of Tennyson by Peter Levi. I have just read This Boy by Alan Johnson and enjoyed it. Such a hard, poverty stricken childhood he had, and he turned out to be  a decent MP and Cabinet Minister, such a rarity.
I am doing the poems again with the Infants. We make a little anthology each year with the Year 2`s. I t is hard work getting them to write about anything other than football, cats or spaghetti. I had one little girl who has recently come to the school from the Ivory Coast. She insists there are tigers there (no, there aren`t) also that she went for a ride on a giraffe. I suppose it is what you call poetic licence..
I have become addicted to a quiz on the telly every afternoon called Pointless.  Grandson R and I have fantasies about appearing on it as you have to go in pairs. the questions are on such things as types of trousers or members of the Royal family, as well as books and films., and you have to find obscure answers. Many of the contestants are woefully ignorant when it comes to literature and classical music, but they are much better than I am on pop music and Formula One racing drivers.

Life Class

I` m off to sit for the Grey Ladies thiis morning. They are an Art Group that meets every week in the Meeting House (I do not know how they got that name as they are not particularly old or grey).   I have sat for them many times before and I really enjoy it as I get all the village news and I am actually paid! Not a princely sum but acceptable all the same. I do not look at their work as when I have done so in the past I am shocked at how old and wrinkled they perceive me to be.
This afternoon, I am off to the Infants and we are doing woodwork. It is only balsa wood but the kids love hammering and sawing and also we smother the little boxes they ar making in glue and as I have said before there is nothing I like better than a spot of glue.
I saw an upsetting Swedish film the other night called Emma`s Bliss., which involved the aforesaid Emma killing several pigs. The method she used was cuddling and kissing them and suddenly plunging in a knife so that they merely looked surprised and did not squeal or feel any pain. Later in the film she did the same for her husband. I do not recommend this film to the ultra sensitive. It was very gory.
I watched the Childrens Parade in Brighton on Mayday. Children from every primary school in the city march through the streets dressed up as film characters, with their teachers bravely marching backwards whilst conducting a band of drummers and tooters. It always brings a lump to my throat. It is so joyful and hopeful.
I heard my first cuckoo this morning when I took B.Wiggins out for his walk over the buttercup meadows.