Joyas

Google Translate tells me that the Spanish for 'jewels' is 'joyas' - I sure hope it's right, as I spend all day telling students not to trust that programme... but here are some beautiful, jewel-like Spanish treasures for you:

They almost seem like a beautiful children's craft project to me, made of thousands of tiny pieces of sticky paper, or maybe wine gums...

They're actually tins, imported into France containing sweets, something like the vintage Huntley and Palmers tins I sometimes find on Vide Greniers stalls. I've never seen anything else as spectacular as these jewelled Spanish tins, though. The first time I saw one I enquired the price and the antique stall holder said to me: 'People are always asking about the tin, but it's not for sale, only the contents!' After that I seemed to see the same dratted tin with the same stubborn brocante dealer about once a year, but never any others, until...

...I bought the lozenge-patterened one with the pale roses earlier this year. It was lovely but a little lonely, and slightly lost amongst less textured tins I own. Until...

Our wonderful housesitters spotted this black-centred tin, FULL OF BUTTONS, at the brocante market in Toulouse and decided that it had 'Floss' written all over it. The wonder of generous, blog-reading housesitters!

They saw it and they knew I'd love it and they wonderfully bought it for me, all without knowing I had another one just looking for company.

Late in the summer I bought the frankly inferior (untextured) tin at the top of the frame, with the idea that two's OK but three's a display. And it seems I was right!

You may remember the frame - it's a complete fake, made of solid foam, but it does mean you can play around with it like this!



Some of my favourite tins are in this stack, but I think they look ordinary compared to the glamorous Spanish tins to their left.

It's hard to snap a photo of the whole thing - the mantelpiece is never in natural light, but here's my best effort. Marie-Antoinette is tucked onto the gold rim of the mirror - can you spot her?

Thanks for all your comments - it's now the holidays and my timetable has reduced just a little bit, so I'm trying to take the time to reply when I can - it's ALWAYS lovely to hear from you!

"Un peu spécial..."

If you're an English speaker, I bet you think you know what the title means, but the French give "a bit special" a different spin - here are some lovely variations of its translation, which range from "a little strange" to "a bit unique"... including some positives but frequently putting a more negative spin on the whole concept of  "special".

My family has been having a bit of an interesting, not to say "spécial" month, and there have been moments when I have wondered why we are just all so weird. Surely normal people don't have such a bizarre series of things to deal with?

Well now, of course they may, and the fact that they may deal with them in different ways does't necessarily mean that our way of coping is worse, or that someone else's is better.

I have been forcibly reminded of how parents think that their children's problems are all their fault by a chat with a wonderful mum, whose child is one of my many dyslexic pupils. Without going into too many details, I can tell you her first reaction when she realised that her child was struggling to learn. She told me, "I thought: It's all my fault! I've indulged my child too much and now s/he's too lazy and undisciplined to learn like the other children!" The discovery that the child was in fact trying very hard, but had a genuine block, freed her up to love and help her child - and this is something that I can identify with too.

Then I read this post today - by a mum whose eldest has just turned 18, and who talks with a beautiful, poetic honesty, about the beauty of their life together but also about the hard years. I hope it's OK if I quote her here. She says: "Hard to know I can’t fix any of the times I dented up your heart with my ridiculous white-knuckled steering-wheel control and big Buick idols."

There we are - we think that everything that goes wrong is our fault, and that if only we keep harsh enough control, our children will be "normal", whatever that is, and not "un peu spécial". But actually, I think everyone's child is special, don't you? After all, I am a Special Needs Teacher...

And one rather sweet thing about the "specialness" of my family was brought home to me again today, as we drove to church and the boys and Ben were yet again discussing what colour words and letters are. And the colours of sounds, smells and feelings, too - I didn't even know they saw colourful feelings, even after all these years of living with them! The ability to do this is called synesthesia, and it's certainly quite special! It's inherited from their dad - I really am the odd one out in this family.

St George's Day on the beach!

Happy Saint George's Day!

We celebrated in England, for once - Ben is back home but the boys and I are staying with his parents in Somerset.

This afternoon the sun was shining and we had a thrilling time making sandcastles on Burnham beach.

The tide came in and the boys were thrilled and horrified in equal measures to see their moats filling up with water!

There is nothing like the sea when you live in the centre of southern France...

5 wonderful things... times 10!

I think this is doomed to be a pictureless post - Blogger and my laptop are not playing nicely together tonight...

What a lovely holiday it's been. Like most of the rest of the northern world, we're back to school today, and that's been hard - both boys have been as healthy as something really healthy, but have come home with a general sense of back-to-school-itis tonight (still, they've done their homework, so I can't say they're playing it up too much). A look back over the holidays is well worth it for us, as we all agree it's been a super festive season. Here's a little set of highlights:

5 foods eaten:

• Mince pies
• Capon
• Christmas pudding
• Salmon
• Galette des Rois

5 films watched:

• Brave
• Star Trek (the latest re-launch - we liked it!)
• Monster House
• Super 8
• The Pirates (in an Adventure with Scientists)

5 books read by boys:

• Calvin and Hobbes
• Calvin and Hobbes
• Calvin and Hobbes
• Calvin and Hobbes
• Calvin and Hobbes

5 quotes endlessly repeated:

• 'Star trekin' across the universe...'
• 'How do you know you like it if you won't even try it?'
• 'It's life, Jim, but not as we know it.'
• 'A prince does not leave his bow on the table!'
• 'It's worse than that, it's physics, Jim!'

5 gifts given to me (or us):

• An up-cycled bracelet (more on that when the photos work again!)
• A macaron recipe book and baking sheet
• A DVD of the History of Ancient Britain
• A fruit drier
• A mobile phone I can keep my diary on

5 exercises tried out by boys:

• Cycling
• Walking
• Weights
• Getting well and truly stuck in mud puddles
• Attempted wrestling father to the ground (no actual success at this...)

5 games played:

• Lego Star Wars
• Skylanders
• Spore
• Keep-the-dog-out-of-the-kitchen
• Indoor firework displays

5 families at our 'between the festivals' party:

• An English family from our town
• A French family from our town
• A French family from Ben's work
• A French friend from Ben's work (whom I teach!)
• Our own family!

5 major things sorted:

• Cobwebs attacked even in the highest corners of our barn-like ceiling
• Donated wardrobe in Son 1's bedroom finally put up, to hold ski-wear and all the things that never had a home before
• Weekend list of chores for boys including changing their own bedding (phew, phew, phew!)
• Couronne des Rois baked and eaten
• Time to do my cuttings scrapbooks - for the first time in about a year!

1 thing started and yet to be finished:

• Making clothes washing liquid out of ashes (watch this space, it's currrently straining)

It's been a lovely holiday. I'm ready for the return to work... almost.

2012 in a Pocket Handkerchief!

I inherited my mum's collection of antique and vintage pocket handkerchiefs this year, and when I was doing an initial sort-out recently this one sprang to my attention:

In the centre are the four seasons, and around the edges, as you can see, are the months. Each one is illustrated with a natty 1930s illustrations of a stylish young lady doing the Things One Must Do at that time of year! It's witty, colourful, and a good way for me to do a little review of 2012:

Let's begin with January (where else?). I didn't skate but I did spend an unusual amount of time in Toulouse, doing the cultural kind of things that there dosn't usually seem to be time or money for. It was all thanks to Son 1's work experience, and I wrote about ancient, medieval and modern Toulouse here.

February was indeed a month for staying in and recuperating - don't you love the picture? Son 1 had a big op on his knee at the end of January, and February seemed to be mainly taken up with nurse's visits and carrying food to a sofa-bound son. However, being fairly house-bound had its compensations, and I re-organised all my lovely vintage kitchenalia, and also popped out to buy some fantastic vintage tins which are still talking starring roles around the house.

Would that I looked so stylish in the wind. My only similarity with this picture is the red face. It was windy here in March, but there were moments of springtime sunshine, too. Everything was overshadowed by the killings in Toulouse towards the end of the month, and it seems that many people in the key communities (Jewish and Muslim) have had a really hard time since those complex and tragic events. Your continued prayers would be appreciated.

We had a few April showers - here and in Edinburgh, where I went to visit my dad and also to meet his lovely new friend... there was more news to come on that front as the months progressed! For Easter I looked at my vintage French chocolate moulds, and also shared an embroidered map of England, which dates from around the same time as this handkerchief.

I certainly didn't dance around any May Poles in May! I think that's what she's doing - don't you? However, things got appropriately outdoors-y and a huge Scottish foxglove burst into bloom in our French garden. I also painted the front gate and got  some great deals as the Vide Grenier season really came into play!

June is my birthday month. I love sun hats, but I don't quite go for the bonnet-effect pictured here! We wore our sun hats to pick blueberries and to spend time with our new hens....

In July I changed my blog's look - I loved the old blue flowers so much but I had to find a way to celebrate the beautiful kitchen canisters I'd bought with my birthday money! I also picked up some antique hemp sheets - this is a stunning fibre and the sheets now do sterling service absorbing whatever the boys and the dog can put on them, under the throw on our sofa. But the main excitement of July was our departure on a 28 day camping tour of Italy!

The pictures for the two months are kind of reversed, on the handkerchief - we swam in the Med in July and walked in the Appennines in August. But, close enough! The holiday was a wonderful time together - I've got over the fear that things will go wrong, mainly by relaxing and realising that, of course they will from time to time, and it's my reaction to them that will turn them into either a big deal or a short-term blip. Later on in the month I took the boys over to Edinburgh to meet my dad and his now fiancée!

September is often a quiet month for my work, as all the children I teach are busy with la Rentrée and don't yet know their timetables for out-of-school activities. However, over the month I slowly built up my own timetable, deciding that the boys are now independent enough for me to take on after-school lessons - all of them at home, and finishing around 6 or 7pm, so that the boys come home independently, relax or do homework (lol) and then we all eat together in the usual way - it's working fine, and gives me the chance to teach a lot more children and teenagers, as this is the time-slot their parents have always wanted. The hens also became more numerous, as we adopted two new littlies, whose previous owner was heading back to the US. After a nervous start, these two have settled in well and now live up to their heroic names (more or less)! In the picture, our society lady is looking at the apple harvest - for us, it was finally an egg harvest! Our little swan song to summer was a weekend camping trip in the Pyrenees for Ben's birthday.

What is our friend doing for October? Sneezing? I have no idea... Well, I was mainly working! Taking on more children in the evenings gave me more time to accept appointments with my language school in the daytime. I took a weekend out to take the boys, plus friend, to a rural science event in a beautiful village. I also popped into the charity shop near my Friday lessons and was delighted to find vintage down-filled édredons which have kept us warm though the only patch of freezing nights we've yet had this winter.

November wasn't particularly foggy, but I love the illustration! We spent a weekend in Edinburgh, for my father's wedding.

I didn't share many photos at the time, as I hadn't asked for permission to show faces, but I've got permission since then, so here are the happy couple! Don't they look great? My BiL took this wonderful photo at the reception.

December, well, that's now! We didn't find any mistletoe (it grows all around here, but only very high up). We had a lovely, peaceful Christmas, and today Ben and Son 1 have gone off to the Toulouse museum where Son 1 did his work experience back in January. He never had the chance to take his dad around it then, so today is the day. Son 2 is slowly going crazy as he waits in for a delivery of a game he's ordered with his Christmas money. We were told it should arrive today, but...

So, it's been a wonderful year. Honestly, my years are getting better and better.

Which way is the wind blowing for 2013?

We have some fixed points. What should be Son 1's final operation is set for February, so that will be another quiet month in! Our wonderful holiday in Italy has inspired us to plan another two weeks of camping, this time around Spain. Ben may, hopefully, be doing some further training from September onwards, so this will keep him away from us during the week but will allow us all to discover a new part of France at the weekends. I'll still be busy teaching, but I will commit myself to one New Year's Resolution - I will continue blogging! One of the reasons my life has got better and better is that I have learned to appreciate and cherish the good times - to record them and even to seek them out. Bloggers and blogging have taught me to do this. Busy or not, it's too good to leave behind! Happy New Year to you all.

A very merry Christmas, and a belated Pause in Advent

Oh, life takes over again..! But only in a good way:

The last part of my Essence of Christmas is, of course, Jesus. Can you spot him there, in among our Sunday School children and teachers? We had a 'global' themed nativity this year...

If you're a Christian, having Jesus as the main 'ingredient' of Christmas is a bit obvious. If you're not a Christian, I hope that you didn't stop reading straight away - I'm rather conscious myself of the alienating nature of faith blogging. I personally feel more at home in a very mixed blogging world, where we share our differences as much as our similarities. Rather like our church, don't you think? Happy Christmas to all of you. It's been a lovely year.

A Pause in Advent - Essence - Family

I'm a late runner in this week's Pause for Advent - life is still busy but in generally good ways! We spent yesterday at church and then watching The Hobbit with the boys, which brings me on to my third ingredient in the 'essence' of Christmas - family.

I'm sure this is one thing that nearly everyone can agree on - Christmas is a time for family. My family member is hiding in the photo above - Son 2 is controlling the innkeeper puppet in yesterday's youth group nativity!

Son 1, usually the shy one, fought for the part of the mad scientist (what do you mean, the Nativity play doesn't usually have a mad scientist?) and ended up sharing the role - here he is is using a most hideous English accent in his role as assistant to the 'German' mad scientist! It brought a lot of laughs...

So here are our fast-growing children, suddenly amongst the teenagers instead of wearing their dressing gowns and looking like little lost shepherds. How do you adapt Christmas to family life as the children grow up and become more independent? In some ways, we have it very easy, as the boys like many of the 'childish' aspects of our celebrations. I read a French magazine article pointing out that at Christmas even teenagers find it acceptable to childish, and that's a rather cheering fact to hold on to.

 

I have very little regretful 'nostalgia' for the boys' childhood years. Yesterday Son 2 asked which 'him' I liked best - the 2 year old, the 8 year old, the 14 year old, or what? I honestly answered that I like the fact that I have been with him at all of these stages, and am still with him as he is growing up. Keeping our sons in a bubble away from other teenaged boys and the pressures of modern life would be rather nice, but is both impossible and, ultimately, very dangerous. There are some hard things for them to deal with as they are getting older - friendships change and many friends they have trusted in the past are into things they shouldn't be into. I'm very grateful for honest sons (honesty can be painful but it's way better than the alternative) and I'm immensely grateful that we are supported by God in the real world. We don't have to pretend that family life is all sweetness and cosiness, but can honestly and joyfully trust God in Reality.

Neighbours, tropical and otherwise...

At Christmas they eat lychees on the island of Réunion !

Our neighbours spent many years living on Réunion, and now their younger son has returned there. They received a parcel of lychees this week and Nellie called me over the fence to come and partake of the bounty.

I’ve never had fresh lychees before, and they are great. I had to take a photo quickly… there’s no way they’ll last until Christmas here!

We’ve had some wonderful neighbours over the years. A kind reader might suggest that this is because we deserve them, but actually I wonder if playing the piano at midnight, having the odd scream at or between children and running a farm-style front garden truly make us good neighbours… but over the years, we’ve known real friendship and kindness from those who’ve lived next door to us.

In Cumbria, we had Dave and Maggie, a young middle-aged couple who sorted us out in all our ‘first house’ disasters – Dave found us an old bath when we did up our bathroom, and Maggie taught us about the folk music of the fells. In North Tyneside we had a succession of young women living in the flat below us, who put up with Ben practicing his trumpet at night and invited us round for curious food and sociable parties. In Harrogate our neighbours honoured us by chopping down the high hedge that they’d planted because they didn’t like the previous owners of our house! We shared the cherries from our tree with them on the only year it actually produced – they couldn’t believe they’d been living next to a cherry tree all these years.

On moving to France, we met with real kindness. The neighbours of our rental house spoke some English, and had real fun initiating us into cassoulet and all the wonders of living in this part of France. Serge and Nellie, our Réunionaise/French neighbours here, are sweet and generous. It took both families a while to work out how to be cross-cultural neighbours – in France people don’t talk to their neighbours much, I’m constantly assured, and when we did weird things like inviting all the locals to a bonfire party we were accepted but considered rather odd! So sometimes Serge and Nellie don’t talk to me for weeks or months, and I have to remember that they aren’t shunning me, but just behaving normally for France. But at other times they give us food (and indeed, we give them food too) and they have taken to giving us leftovers for the hens, which is just fantastic! They’ve set up a little table by their fence and I sometimes find a bowl of rice or a pot of shredded lettuce on it in the morning. What a very nice way to live with your neighbours.

 

PS The internet connection is back! What a relief...

Family Celebrations!

Our frenetic activity over the last week was all to get ready for a wonderful celebration in Edinburgh:

I didn't think to ask permission to blog photos, so there are no faces in this photo, but the dashing naval captain is my father, marrying his beautiful bride, whom you see here holding her vintage family prayer book. It was a really special event. Maybe I'll be able to show you more photos when I've spoken to them after the honeymoon!

You have my permission to see me! I bought the outfit second hand, but at a rather classy (and therefore more expensive than usual) shop in Edinburgh called Mona's Catwalk - well worth visiting if you're in the area! Mona and I had a lot of fun playing dress-up, and I like the results. I wore my handmade mother of pearl button necklace, and a vintage coat that I picked up on the local sales page on Facebook - no photos of that yet, but I have high hopes that my brother in law got a photo of it!

I'm OK showing you these charming faces - they are my family's former minister (she's moved on to a new church now) and our two boys, who scrubbed up nicely for the family event, I think!

Backwater Science...

On Saturday, various science teams decided to bring their entertaining and educational science workshops from the city to the countryside.

The boys and I, plus friend, headed off to the incredibly pretty village where the groups had set up their stands.

The three boys were probably the only teenagers there - a smattering of smaller children and their families also attended but I think that advertising could have been better.

The three photos above are our boys experimenting with sound and water.

Which is better - the photo of the mini-whirlpool Friend 1 created, or the fantastic church wall behind it?

There was an even better location around the corner, for a chap who was demonstrating sundials!

The boys all found it fantastic - they are variously studious/trendy/easily distractable, so capturing the interest of all three was a real coup for the science teams! Next post: architecture in the village, conkers and cats...

Community

Hello friends! My Red and White Rentrée Giveaway is in the post below, and I'm really enjoying reading your comments and resolutions - please keep them coming!

One of my Rentrée Resolutions this year is to make more time for other people, getting actively and consistently involved with friends, groups and wider family , and I wanted to think this one through a bit more in a separate post. Ben and I have historically been fairly sociable – actively involved in every church we attended, making friends and sharing meals at our house, at church and in their homes. We also like to get to know our neighbours (as much as they would like to be known), and have friends and family to visit whenever we can.

Over the last few years I’ve really cut down on social activities and I know why – it was for a good reason. The little ‘falling apart’ that I mentioned here came at a point when I realised I was living largely to convince other people that everything was right in my life, and not so that things could actually BE right. This crept up on me slowly – everyone gets things wrong, everyone tries to put on a good front so that things look OK, but due to problems with the church we went to and the general stress of moving to another country I was going way overboard on trying to present a shallow yet acceptable image.

I needed to take time out for God to rearrange my priorities, and to get me to love my family for who they were, not try to force them into something they weren’t. God did this most gently and most marvellously, and the blogging world also helped me more than I can say – blogs, recommended books and blogging friends were all used as God shone a gentle light on my life and helped me to know myself better.

In the few years since this has been happening, I have drawn in and focused on my family alone. It’s been a valuable focus and one I don’t want to loose, but I knew that this year I would be ready for God to show me something  new, something wider, something to replace the all-consuming passion for spirituality and world justice which I felt I’d lost as I looked inwards. I suppose I rather hoped that this new thing would be quiet, inward-looking and something I could do alone. However, he’s making it clear to me that this isn’t the case – it’s all about other people.

"Without friendships no one would choose to live, even if they had all the other good things in life."
Aristotle
Hmmm…

"Community is the place where the person you least want to live with always lives."
Henri Nouwen
Sigh…

"If you don’t go to somebody’s funeral, they won’t go to yours."
Yogi Berra
Snort…

Those quotations are from a Christian book called ‘Everybody’s Normal Till You Get to Know Them’ by John Ortberg, which has been sitting on my shelves for so long that I honestly have no idea how or when it got there. See how God has been preparing this shift back into community living for me?

So through picking up that book at a time when I’m emotionally prepared for it, and through other things – noting that the boys need practice in greeting new people politely and spending time with new adults, for example – I’m ready to follow where God leads and push out again into a wider circle of people. I am going to try going to a house group at church – this is going to be frustrating in French, as, with the best will in the world, people tend to assume that one’s ability to speak equals one’s level of Christian understanding and faith, and can ‘talk down’ to one quite accidentally (consider this if you have immigrants in any of your churches, please). I’m going to respond more enthusiastically to Ben’s suggestions that we invite people over for meals, and will try to be brave enough to rekindle some friendships that kind of died in my quiet years. Please pray for me.

Linking to Spiritual Sundays... for logical reasons! The flower photos are bouquets the boys gave me on Mother's Day - I've been waiting for a chance to share them since May...