Red and White holiday... Red and White Giveaway!

I'm ready to draw the result of my Red and White Rentrée Giveaway - thank you so much for your entries, and particularly for your interesting comments and resolutions. Nothing wrong with any of them, although some of you feel they are rather humble! Humble ones are probably the most sensible, actually...

Anyway, I decided to look for some photos taken over the holidays, which are (more or less) in keeping with the red and white theme. Firstly, the hemp sheets are doing a wonderful job on our sofa - nothing clever in the way of stitching, just acting as a base for whatever crochet throw I put over it, and wonderfully forgiving of dog and boy maltreatment.

One of the guilty parties, photographed by another (her master)! She's getting old and slowing down a bit, but as adoring as ever...

The ancient red walls of Herculaneum.

Mosaic floors in the same town.

Wall paintings which have survived nearly 2000 years.

A Roman feast, cooked for us according to delicious ancient recipes, by Son 1!

And back nearer to home, a house near last weekend's Vide Grenier.

Finally, the winner of my Red and White Rentrée Giveaway is:

Magsmcc, from Fraise Lachrymose! Oh, well done, Mags! She's a French teacher, you know, so she will really know what she's doing with the recipe book! I suspect I already have your address, Mags, but could you just email it to me again, please...

Those cheery Willows who helped me through the Rentrée are now on their way to Australia - I'll put up a link to their arrival when they touchdown!

Community Rentrée and a Sad Story

The whole of our town (well, the whole of France in fact) marks the rentrée with a rash of exciting events and things to join in with. The Forum des Associations (Clubs Fair) is on Saturday, but I've already found something to take part in: a Town Photography Competition!

The Willows are on the case, of course:

It's more their scene than the whole back-to-school thing, anyway.

The topic for the competition is the 'hidden heritage' of our town, so I'm really showing you a few photos I snapped this morning that don't quite fit that category - I need to save anything I think I might enter. I loved the cosy quilt on the bench outside the maternelle canteen! Really welcoming...

I spent a long time in the graveyard (I'd never been in before), looking for this boy. I can't tell you his name, because our street is named after him, and I don't want to publish our address. This poor boy, aged 15 or 16 (and therefore the same age as Son 1) was shot in Nazi reprisals following an ambush on a convoy just outside our town. He ran into the street by the church shouting, 'Don't shoot, don't shoot!' Ben thinks the marks left by machine-gun bullets raking across the wall are still there:

It's sobering indeed to remember that this is the fairly recent past of our town. Britian had it hard during the Second World War, but we knew nothing like this.

So I found his family tomb, and although it may seem a very gloomy way to have spent my morning, in fact I felt in tune with our town, and paid my respects to someone who, as part of our address, almost feels part of our family, too.

My own rentrée...

Son 1 is at lycée - we await the end of the day (technically they can finish as late as 5.30pm, but possibly not every day) to see how he's got on! Thanks for all your comments about this yesterday - Ben and I cycled up with him for the first day, and then stood to one side and watched (with a load of other parents in the car park) as our offspring went in without a backwards glance... So today it's just Son 2 and me at home - and I'm getting ready for my own rentrée! This means a good tidy-up...

The guest bedroom is going back to being my teaching room, after accommodating some wonderful house-sitters over the summer (Izzie and George, what would we have done without them?). So the bed is allowed to go all vintage again, and I have my first Rentrée Resolution - keep the spare room tidy!

There's plenty of motivation - every Wednesday my teaching (usually spread all around Toulouse) narrows down to the nearest town and villages and I have a stream of local children and teenagers coming for lessons on their day/afternoon off. I also have an adult coming for lessons on Thursday evenings this year, so a good desk and a pleasant atmosphere are a must. The good desk was donated a whole year ago - do you remember this post?

A pupil donated me her old desk, and I had an interesting time reading your comments about how to tie modern and vintage together - Wendz was particularly helpful and it only took me a year (sigh) to talk Ben into putting holes in the wall for all the pictures she suggested. (Yes, many of you can hang your own pictures. I suffer from clumsiness and have a perfectionist, but very capable husband, so I usually DON'T.) Here is the delightful result:

You'll have spotted the Willows having a good look around - I got Mr Toad off my laptop ASAP, I can tell you! Who can tell what would have happened if he'd got onto my Facebook page?

The Rentrée Shopping Bill

Yesterday morning I cleared the table, got out the lists, and started going through the stationery shelves:

Not very tidy but you get the picture - we have a lot of pens, books, papers and those beastly little plastic pockets in stock! This seemed a safe enough moment to involve the Willows - and so it turned out.

With highlighter pens, extra lists and lots of sorting, I whittled down Son 2's list for 4° in Collège (that's year 8 or 9, in the UK), using up lots of the stationery I'd already picked up whenever I found it going cheap,

and even some of his stuff left over from last year, although most of it looked like the contents of his pencil case, above!

Unusually, Son 2 wasn't helping me, as he was out in the garden with Ben, working on his bike - this seemed a good excuse to head off to the shops with only Ratty for company (I heeded Jane's warning about the likely outcome of taking Mr Toad into a French supermarket)...

Above is the physical result of our labours,

and this is the financial damage! 66€52 is a great saving on the projected cost of the Rentrée, which was estimated this year at well over 100€ per child. Son 2 has kept his cartable (school bag) from last year, as it was fantastically strong and reliable, and with a bit of care we've also re-used some books, a pencil case, a calculator etc...

And by working carefully from the Intermarché booklet I showed you yesterday, the list above shows how much money I got back on my loyalty card - about 20% of our total rentrée spend. Phew! How much does it cost to go back to school where you are?

La Rentrée - Shopping List

As I promised yesterday, I'm going to be combining my week with the Willows with a little guided tour of la rentrée - the French Back to School week. I feel as though I've told you a lot about it, but never shown you how it all works. So we begin here - when the boys finished school last June (or got inscribed into the new school, in the case of Son 1), we filled in oodles of forms and were given, in return, loads of lists! The Willows are giving the whole set a once-over:

As you'll see, our handy local supermarket, Intermarché, is well on the case to help us get every last item. I've waited until this week to buy the bulk of the stationery, as Intermarché always gives us great deals on the loyalty card, for ten days only...

Well, those ten days run out tomorrow, and very few Intermarchés are open on a Sunday, so today is my last chance to go shopping!



The green list to the left is Son 1's school books for lycée. These are already sorted, thanks to an astonishingly organised Parents' Union event which sells second hand and new books to all students. The mauve list on the right however, is all down to me, Son 2, the Willows and Intermarché... I will tell you how we get on!

The Willows in France

Many of you probably know about the intrepid band of explorers which has been winging its way around the bloggers of North America and Europe, but for those of you who are new to the team, here they are, sunning themselves, in Haute Garonne, France (the département number for Haute Garonne is 31, so this photo seemed appropriate!):

Here are Ratty, Toad, and, balancing precariously above them, Mole. They had a bit of a sabbatical over the summer holidays, with some interesting travel arrangements and absent hosts (including me), but were safely tucked up chez mois when I returned (finally!) from Italy. I instantly plunged them into more down-time as I was far too busy hosting parents in law and then visiting my dad and his financée, but now here we all are together, back in le trente-et-un, or the sunny south of France, to non-French readers.

 

I wondered for a moment how to entertain them, and you, dear readers, in the time they have left with me, and the answer came quickly: la rentrée! The French Back to School is upon us, and I'm going to aim for a short post per day over the coming week, to keep you up to date with the Willows (for those of you who are following their adventures) and to give all readers an insight into the serious but rather beautiful business of getting back to school in France. This will give us a nice run-up to my now traditional Rentrée Resolutions and Giveaway, and then I'll post the Willows on to their next stop, spring-time Australia!