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packet of chipolatas from the freezer and there was still a christmas pud in the cupboard from last year and we were festive enough i got a pair of socks for tom finished in time and best of all it being elfie s first christmas with us she was made much of with very classy new piece of kit a julius k9 powerharness in silver no less nothing but the best for our girl we ve always had a harness for her for walking and travelling we brought an spa one with their logo on it back with her from the refuge it was quite well designed but i always felt it gave her rather too much of the look of a charity child the legend best friend was an optional extra you can order velcro on labels to go over the brand ones they glow in the dark we had to choose from a list so we went for that on one side and treat monster on the other she also had a juicy bone which i imagine was her preferred present though she seemed happy to go out in the harness happy christmas all posted by lucy at 8 13 pm 7 comments labels bonfire of the vanities christmas elfie monday december 12 2016 half a century and half a decade which seems quite a lot of years i am having a rather wonderful day in fact my birthday treat was really to go to england last week which was packed with activity and most enjoyable i saw two siblings lovely sister whom i stayed with and brother phil too and his angela took the day off as well to come and meet us at the fitzwilliam museum in cambridge after a walk through the beautiful botanic garden where we ate wild boar tortellini and cake in the café and looked at the exhibition of medieval manuscripts where i shadowed a very erudite lady who was commenting and explaining the exhibits to her companion in a most fascinating way so i was moved to approach her before we left and thank her i seem unable to stop myself speaking openly and probably inappropriately to complete strangers once in my native language when i took my older french students to the south of england some years ago they kept asking if i was related to all the people we met as i seemed so familiar with them we spent a day in london had delicious vegetarian lunch at this restaurant and took in more medievalia at the v a along with a very absorbing exhibition on underwear since 1850 i also spent an evening with tom s daughter k and her family eating spag bol being shown music videos and having the drop explained to me by my step grandson and i went food shopping in lidl in harlow which bizarrely provoked the strongest feeling of homesickness i experienced during the whole trip i think it was brought on by the sausage rolls i took the camera but no photos whatsoever even though i told lovely sister i d photograph more of her quilts i just forgot but i did bring back these little fellows they are know as shelves a portmanteau of shelf elves elves who sit on shelves they are exquisitely made with felt hats and boots knitting nancy french knitting tricotin limbs and sheepskin beards and filled with kiln dried sand so their cone shaped bodies sit cosily and slightly mobile in the hand like kelly men no two are exactly alike my sister has been creating so many lovely and immaculately made things and trying to sell them for a fraction of their worth for ages and suddenly she s hit on something everyone wants it seems there s a story book though she didn t know about it and a new custom that has grown from it of parents moving the elf and hiding him in a different place round the house for the children to find every day in advent on account of this craze she has produced about 150 of them in about three weeks and they are flying out of the small craft and gift outlets where she takes them she still charges ridiculously little for them anyway despite having such a grand time and despite ryanair diverting the flight because of fog which was nowhere to be seen on the ground at dinard but was deemed by hq in dublin to be too severe to land there so we had to wait around at rennes for a couple of hours then be bussed back it was lovely to get home elfie greeted me with equable but not overwhelming good humour she d had rather a nice time being spoiled by tom and dragging him around the countryside since he didn t dare let her off the lead he just followed her everywhere she had a huge marrow bone to distract her the day i left too much she threw half of it up again but it didn t distress her and was generally very good i haven t done anything special today since there would be nothing open on a monday in december and anyway we had a firewood delivery but elfie and i had a lovely foggy morning walk with a stripey partridge skittering away under her nose and getting her all excited and two white egrets fishing in a puddle in the cow field below the house who took flight and drifted off into the fog like spirits and made the hair on the back of my neck rise our friend j rang and asked had i opened her present yet she had said it was just a jokey one which rather made my heart sink as j s jokey cards and presents are usually awful and i d put it away and forgotten about it unwrap it now she insisted on the phone in fact it was unexpectedly pleasing a pair of large plain white mugs designed to look like aran knitting we had hot chocolate in them i made eight jars of white currant jelly so i d have something to give people for christmas then had orzo possibly my favourite pasta shape what s yours with pesto and bacon for lunch while tom had an apple sandwich which he prefers then the wood came which i d ordered before i left for nearly twenty years we have had free fire wood from the farmer who farms our field we negotiated a cord when we arrived and he has faithfully delivered it every year sometimes we ve bought an extra one as the cost of firewood rose and the value of land rental stagnated this became a very good deal for us the paterfamilias retired but still continued to honour the arrangement but this year i felt he was avoiding the subject and us i finally spoke to his wife on the phone who prevaricated then said that in fact pierre was no longer occupying himself with the wood we d need to talk to their son we knew we d as well talk to ourselves cut our losses which weren t losses anyway and went and ordered supermarket wood it is beautiful stuff clean and dry and fragrant rounded at the corners from seasoning and turning it came wrapped on pallets and took about an hour for both of us to unload and stack i only wish it were cold enough to justify a fire but it really isn t so now we are luxuriating in a comfortable level of fatigue looking forward to a decadent convenience food supper of fray bentos steak puddings tinned marrowfat peas and mash from the freezer plenty of red wine and a dvd of the mill on the floss bloody delightful thanks for cards e mails and other treats my cup runneth over as always where i also had a run in with a nervy american girl who had used her backpack to reserve a table for four for herself alone while she went to queue seats were at a premium the correct protocol was to queue get food and then look for seats as we had done i moved her backpack and we all sat down together and when she appeared claiming her reserved seat i said politely i thought that i didn t think one could do that we were four and needed seats and a bag on a seat was not a person she went off found a single seat then came back near to tears saying how rude i was and i heard her bending the ears of the people she d sat by about how ill treated she d been poor snowflake i am such a meanie posted by lucy at 8 47 pm 18 comments labels birthday family london outings winter wood wednesday november 30 2016 citoyenneté so i ve downloaded and printed the paperwork to apply for french citizenship dual with british which you can have and put them all in their own little folder you gotta have a dossier the livret du citoyen has been on the kindle for some time and i ve read it through once would this were all that were involved now i m stalling it s not only the language requirements which are quite daunting having to conscientiously study and practise then getting to rennes to take the test but they re the least of it and it could be quite a satisfying project there are also the certificates huge numbers of them birth marriage divorce death not only mine but tom s and my parents too and they want originals and copies and accredited translations which cost as well as details of all my siblings though not their paperwork by chance i do have quite a few of these papers along with the photo albums they somehow ended up in my possession i ve looked after them carefully not least because the envelope is one of the few things i ve ever had bearing my father s handwriting it s worrying though to submit these ancient fragile precious and personal documents into unknown and yes foreign hands what if they are lost or damaged it feels weird as if my parents spirits are uneasily above my head at the very idea which is all rather foolish the other thing about the paperwork is that it requires going back over my own past more than i care to having to apply i know not where for certain others a first marriage certificate i ve got the divorce one surely that ought to be enough evidence of a brief stupid episode never talked about because it long since stopped being important or even anything to do with me any more you owe nothing to your past selves i read on a youngster s twitter stream the other day they are stupider than you and they don t exist naturalisation implies in its etymology a re appropriation of one s life since birth which i m not altogether happy about the livret du citoyen is probably much like all such publications around the world ridiculously condensed over simplified anodyne of necessity i suppose i fear i will want to argue with it if i am placed before a departmental panel quizzing me but won t have the words or arguments to hand and anyway you can t ask for a favour then rubbish what your asking for so i must needs play along cross your fingers behind your back suggested tom frankly and don t tell them in rennes i m not sure i much want to be french i ve lived here nearly twenty years i ve just about acquired half a clue about what s going on round me i find much to admire and some things i don t probably much like i would most places i have read all yes all even the stuff about nuns of les miserables the book not the screenplay albeit in english and several of the lesser novels of flaubert in french and can confidently say that imho hugo was a fairly awful writer and flaubert a loathsome one hugo gets a mention as a luminary in the livret du citoyen as do several noteworthy personages who were born outside of france but became french citizens apollinaire marie curie dalita to encourage us others you know i would need to show that i was involved in french cultural life and society i m not sure whether my francophone knitting group many of whom show a tendency to stroppy gallo breton regionalism and adopting a breton spaniel because some bastard heartless french hunter chucked her out will be enough in the end though i m not sure i want it because it s not mine i will never really be french i ain t no child of the republic i m afraid and resist the idea of having to pledge myself to its values though i find myself quite protective and bloody minded about defending them when feeling they re under attack from ignorant or self satisfied outsiders while reserving the right to be an ignorant and self satisfied outsider myself most of the time even heather who was here sixty years married in and made seven more french people more or less stopped speaking english wrote in french received the legion d honneur and chewed the fat with jouve and derrida used sometimes to smile mischievously and say french don t mistake me some of my best friends are french but then of course if france whose politics i already frequently find at best impenetrable and at worst repellent next year goes the way of britain and the us and elects marine le pen where will that leave us and will i want to be french at all the thing is i liked being british in europe in fact i like being european it might be a dirty word for some but not for me for much of my life whatever the shortcomings and failures of the political and economic reality known as the european union europe has meant something bigger and better cultures and cities and landscapes languages paintings poets music ideas discoveries history much of it like much of all human history vile and brutal and tragic and thank god it s over and done with of which my anglo heritage comprised a vital part but which could also offset its island parochialism i have enjoyed and indeed built the best third of my life upon freedom of movement within europe harping on about national cultural ethnic identities is very largely erroneous and boring i think but then i wonder if i m only able to see it that way because i ve always felt relaxed and comfortable in mine because i m one of the lucky ones of course i m glad my heritage is english british european christendom it feels comfortable normal happy to me but like so much pride in one s identity that s like the person who says i m glad i hate garlic because if i liked it i d have to eat it and i hate it and being what i was born certainly wasn t any virtuous act or indeed any evil one on my part the admittedly brighter and more educated french kids i know while happy to be french don t seem to care much about being european they are more drawn to other continents and hemispheres a wider world and good for them so why am i doing it for practical reasons of course i need to know i will be able to get healthcare in my old age if not sooner until now when one reached uk state pension age as tom has you would have some of the medical care i write about here in glowing terms paid for about 70 on average depending on what it is the rest has to be topped up either by private complementary insurance or out of one s own pocket whatever the outside perceptions about french statist socialism there is no such thing as free healthcare on point of delivery and no one assumes there ought to be poorer people get their healthcare topped up by the state but separately and means tested french people s sense of entitlement is much more around their pensions that s another thing that s been brought home to me here that what one society sees as their inalienable right isn t necessarily what the one next door does tom gets this now i come into it as his dependent and assumed i too would when i reached the requisite age before this we got healthcare through the work i did or just crossed our fingers it is one of the reciprocal benefits of eu membership and we and other genteel nice retired british folk could be seen just as much as benefits scroungers as polish or lithuanian or whatever people in the uk claiming child benefit but we have never bee...