Heroes in the Hen House

There's been some interest in the fact that one of our new hens is called Valkyrie. I kind of wondered about that myself! But here's the story of how our hens are named...

The boys and I get to take it in turns to name them, based on characters in books we've been reading. Thus we have:

Holly, named after the first female officer of LEP Recon, a metre-tall action-fairy from the Artemis Fowl series:

Do you see any resemblance? Then there's a very clear connection between Annabeth the hen:

and Annabeth Chase, one of Percy Jackson's fellow half-blood heroes:

Nobody give that hen a sword! She has angry eyebrows! Next we move on to China. Don't laugh, please.

Son 1 named her after the pale, mysterious, blue-eyed beauty in the Skulduggery Pleasant books:

And here's Valkyrie, on the mend now,

but maybe some nerves in common with her namesake, Valkyrie Cain, also from Skulduggery Pleasant:

And finally here's Rosie:

She's named after a character in Henderson's Boys, who isn't featured in any fan fiction pictures:

But for me, she'll always be the hero-hen that gets the better of the fox every time:

I must admit, I think it's rather stunning to have so many heroes tucked away in our hen houses tonight...

"Sapristi!"

Don't you know that word? I'll translate it for you: apparantly, it means "Great Snakes!"

And "Mille million de mille sabords" translates as "Billions of blue blistering barnacles"!

Or that's what my bilingual Tintin scholars tell me. They really enjoyed the film.

Saturday in the South of France - Flowers and Rugby

So off we went this morning, to 'Floralys'. (In France these spring plant fairs are generally called 'Floralies', but in our town we get a bit of a pun on our town name, so ours is FloraLYS.)We had a shopping list and a general idea of what we wanted - it's wise to stock up because the prices at Floralys are staggeringly low, with 60 plant nurseries selling at close to trade prices.Here is St Julien, benignly overseeing events. He's the saint of our local church, and has both a well and an annual fair named after him.

We live close enough to the town centre to walk up, but sometimes we need to bring the car up in the afternon to pick up everything we've bought!
The old school, now used for various community events, overlooks the square.

Various specialist nurseries have stands outside in the square, and I liked this set-up for a bamboo and tropical plants vendor:Inside are more plant stands, and, this year, a stall of fossils and minerals which was of particular interest to our boys...We give them 5 euros each to spend at the Floralys, and they can add their pocket money to that too, if they want to.The boys and I got home by lunchtime, and had a quick look at the loot so far. I'm going to wait until tomorrow to show you everything we bought, partly because Ben only got home with a car-load at around 5pm, and partly because both of us adults want to head back tomorrow after church! One vendor is going to have a look round his nursery tonight to see if he can find a better variety of the climbing rose Ben and I wanted - that's very good service, we think!

So in the afternoon, Son 2 and I were off to a local town for a rugby match.

It's a fairly small town, well outside Toulouse, and has a thriving rugby club with a very artistic element:

I tried to get photos of all the rugby badges represented amongst those I know read this blog!

Hello, American friends!

And South Africans!

If I missed out a nationality, please let me know!But where on earth was Scotland? I think I'll have to ask some pointed questions, next time.

Instead, here are both the first two and the latest two of France's International Rugby Captains. Each one is portrayed, along the back of the stands. The whistle blows, and he's off!

He's at the bottom of this heap (note my impressive grasp of rugby vocabulary).Halftime knees... He scored a try! I was far too excited to take a photo...So instead, here he is at the end (in the black head protection), having filled in for a visiting team who needed an extra player. There's a lovely atmosphere - many of our players were happy to take a turn playing for these guys, and each one was welcomed and thanked enthusiastically. I liked this team, too - the top players were called Naseem and Ahmed, which makes a real change from Theo and Bastian.

I think we pretty much won, but interestingly, everyone seemed more interested in the cameraderie than in the final score. It's not always like that, but today was a very good day...