Wild Beasts in Our Garden

The first four photos were all taken within an hour of each other in the lower part of our sloping garden which we keep as a meadow. I was using a Canon 450D and the standard 18-55mm kit lens.

 Rose Chafer - Cetonia aurata

Large Conehead Cricket - Ruspolia nitidula

Red and Black Striped Shield Bugs - Graphosoma italicum

Small Pearl Bordered Fritillary - Clossiana selene

Wasp Spider - Argiope bruennichi

European Praying Mantis - Mantis religiosa

Replacing the Kitchen

When we moved to France four years ago we kept our flat in Richmond as a hedge against UK property price inflation and to provide us with some income from letting.  In the last two years we have progressively replaced every electrical item, together with the boiler and the hot water tank, as a result of breakdowns.  Fortunately Jacqueline and Ari were very tolerant about all of this but they are now buying a house and the flat has been empty since early July.

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We had already decided to replace the kitchen, which was installed when the building was built in 1994 and was deteriorating.  The kitchen cabinets of that period sat directly on the concrete floor and every time there was a leak it soaked into the chipboard.  
 To save some money I have done most of the work myself, but having no choice about the timing has meant that we missed our planned trip to the Pyrenees and we have ended up doing it all in a hot and humid UK summer.

We started on 7^th July and have just finished.  There was a destruction phase, requiring many trips to the tip, followed by chasing the walls for changes to the electrics, followed by a rapid installation of the base units.  This gives a strong illusion of progress which then seems to slow to a crawl as the work moves towards more detailed electrics, plumbing and carpentry.  

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The NVQ training that I did for plumbing and the exam that I passed on the 16^th edition IEE electrical regulations (85% the highest result the training centre had ever had)  were helpful, but not as useful as the two months that I spent last year supervising Audrey’s major refurbishment project.  There is no substitute for experience in practical matters!  Perhaps one day I will get measurements right first time and not make silly mistakes.  Not that I am intending to do more of such projects.  In fact I would be quite happy if this was the last one that I do!  I don’t enjoy the hard work and I get very frustrated when I don’t foresee the problem areas.  If you don't use an Ikea corner unit, beware of corners in L-shaped kitchens!! Ikea give no advice about this sort of thing and you are expected to know! The quality of their kitchen cabinets, however,  is very good and all doors and drawers have soft close mechanisms which are not at all expensive.

The physical toll is several episodes of gout, a few bruises and a notch less on my belt!  Unusually I have only given myself one electric shock when I forgot that the cooker supply is on a separate MCB.  Last week I avoided flooding the flat downstairs because I noticed, just before leaving for the day, that a connection I had made earlier was leaking.  That was a close thing.

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The end result looks good but, as usual, when I look at it I see the things that didn’t go quite right, or caused a problem, and take the rest for granted. 

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Until yesterday there was still an issue with the heating system to put right, before we could leave and return to our home in the Lot. We were waiting on the very busy Paul to come and sort it out.  He has been and checked everything, he wired in a new valve actuator, and we hope that this is now all resolved.  I will check it again tomorrow. Heating system electrics are probably the most complicated subject that electricians ever tackle and not many can do it.  Of course it would be so much easier if they worked to drawings and labelled wires, like one does on an engineering project, but they prefer not to!

We have found a young couple through Foxtons who take over on 1^st September.  We hope that they have a better experience than the last tenants and no breakdowns!

Jeannot and the Pink Rabbit

Jeannot Lapin lived in the Lot in France. He was a very young rabbit and he was very curious. He liked to taste all the plants in John’s garden. He had even dug some of them up to see what was underneath, but there was nothing interesting hidden there and he couldn’t understand why this made John so angry.
Jeannot Lapin loved to listen to other people’s conversations. One day he heard Christiane telling the lady next door that they had been to the seaside in Brittany. “There are lots of wonderful things there, including a pink rabbit. C’est une vraie merveille!” she said.
Now Jeannot had never seen a pink rabbit and he wanted to go and meet him. A few days later as he was going for an evening hop around the village he saw a poster saying “Visit to Brittany. Leaves from here tomorrow at half past seven”.
So the next morning, without a word to anyone, because he knew that his Mummy wouldn’t let him go on his own, he hid in the bushes while everyone got on the coach. At the last minute he hopped into the luggage compartment and kept very still while the driver closed the doors. All day the coach rumbled along, but Jeannot didn’t mind, he was used to the dark and he had a long sleep.


 Suddenly the noise stopped and Jeannot woke up with a start. The luggage doors opened and, when no one was looking, he hopped out and found himself next to the sea; it was very big and very wet.

There was a big grey and white bird standing at the edge of the water and Jeannot thought “I could ask if it knows the Pink Rabbit”. So he hopped over to it and said,

“Hello, my name is Jeannot, I’m from the Lot and I’m looking for the Pink Rabbit, do you know where he is?”

“Aaaawk, aaawk, my name is Mme Mouette-Machin-Chouette and I don’t know anything about pink rabbits. Are they good to eat? I can only find fish and crabs here! Aaaawk! Aaaawk!“

Jeannot ran away quickly, hopped over the rocks to another beach and hid in a hole.

 The next day, when Jeannot looked out of the hole, there was a seal sunbathing and looking very relaxed on the rocks at the edge of the water. “Perhaps he knows where to find the Pink Rabbit” thought Jeannot. “I’ll go and ask him.”

“Hello, my name is Jeannot, I’m from the Lot and I’m looking for the Pink Rabbit” he said to the big fat seal. “Do you know where he is?”

“Hello Jeannot, my furry little rabbit” said the seal. “My name is Phillippe “Flipper” Phoque and I would very much like to help you, but I live in the sea and there are no rabbits there, not even pink ones”.

“Oh dear!” thought Jeannot after he had said goodbye to Philippe “Flipper” Phoque, the very polite seal. “I never thought it would be so difficult to find the Pink Rabbit”.

In the evening, after the people on the beach had left, he was hopping along the coastal path when suddenly he saw some rabbits. “Surely they know about the Pink Rabbit” he thought. He went up to the nearest rabbit and said, “Hello, my name is Jeannot, I’m from the Lot and I’m looking for the Pink Rabbit” “Please do you know where he is”?

“Bonjour, my name is Pierre, lapin de garenne of the ancient family Delaplage de Landrellec . Our family are all grey, as grey as the sea and the sky in winter, as grey as our family shield. We know that the grey grass tastes best and we have lived in the biggest holes in the greyest rocks of Landrellec for more years than we can count, but we don’t welcome strangers, and we certainly don’t know any Pink Rabbits!”

Jeannot was very hungry so he tried some of the grey grass, but it was very tough and salty. He also tried some of the bright green seaweed that he found on the beach, but it was very slimy and he spat it out! He didn’t like Pierre Delaplage de Landrellec and his ancient grey family so he carried on along the coastal path until he found a hole to sleep in.

Jeannot woke up next day feeling that he was never going to find the Pink Rabbit. But he set out along the path once more. In the distance he saw a beautiful duck. Now Jeannot knew the ducks in his village in the Lot. They were dirty, white and lazy. They just sat around all day, but this duck had a bright red beak, beautiful white, brown and green feathers and he was paddling in the water. He decided to ask once more about the Pink Rabbit.

“Hello, my name is Jeannot, I’m from the Lot”. He said to the beautiful duck.

“Hello Jeannot mon cher” said the duck. “My name is Cedric Shelduck.”

“Excuse me Sir, but I’m looking for the Pink Rabbit. Please do you know where he is?” said Jeannot.

“Mais oui mon cher, every summer I fly here for my holidays and I have seen him near Ploumanach. He is as big as a house, he is all pink and he has a good view of the sea” said Cedric.

Jeannot thought that this sounded rather frightening and asked Cedric if the big pink rabbit was friendly.

Cedric thought for a moment and said “Il est plutôt très calme mon petit, he is very calm and laid back because he is made all of granite, mon cher! “

Now although Jeannot was a very curious young rabbit he had never heard of granite. “Please M. Cedric Shelduck what is granite?”
“The rock that you are standing on is granite, mon cher petit”, said Cedric.

Jeannot was very disappointed. He had come all the way to Brittany to meet the Pink Rabbit and it was only a big piece of rock. He hesitated for a moment and then decided he would go to see it anyway.

“Please M. Cedric how do I find it?” said Jeannot.

“Continue along this path, turn right at the empty bottle, go up the track and then down to the next path and look behind you! Bonne journée mon petit lapin, say bonjour to the Pink Rabbit for me!” said Cedric.

The Pink Rabbit was exactly like Cedric had said, “As big as a house, all pink and it overlooked the sea. It was very fine and impressive but only a little bit like a rabbit.

As he sat there, looking at the enormous pink rabbit, Jeannot thought about his home in the Lot. He had been away for a long time and he was missing his family and the nice fresh green grass of the Lot. He didn’t like the salty grey grass or the slimy bright green seaweed, and he was very hungry, so he picked up a small piece of pink granite and went to take the coach home again.

When he got home his mother had been very concerned about him. “Jeannot, you’re a very naughty boy. Your father and I were really worried about you, going off like that without a word to anyone. We thought you had had an accident. We looked everywhere; we even asked the rabbits who live up near the Mayor, but nobody had seen you! ……… ……… ……..”. She carried on like that for a full half hour and when she had finally finished scolding him, he told her where he had been, what he had done and showed her the piece of pink granite. “Well that’s all very interesting I’m sure but I hope you’ve learnt something from all this!” she said.

Jeannot thought about that for a while and decided that he had learnt not to believe everything he overheard.

As he went to sleep Jeannot was thinking that tomorrow he would go and see what the man in the house with the swimming pool had planted in his vegetable garden. “You never know, “it might be interesting, tasty and different”.

“And don’t you go digging up things in the neighbour’s garden either!” said his mother, from the other end of the rabbit hole. 

You can read more Jeannot stories here:
Jeannot and his Little World
Jeannot has a Narrow Escape

Oscar and Oscar-Nini the Sweet Corn Monster

Once upon a time there was a little boy called Oscar. He was a lovely little boy and he was very good.
Oscar adored sweet corn. One day he was eating his dinner and he had not just one, not just two, not just three, not just four, but FIVE pieces of sweet corn. Then his sister Georgia asked for a piece of his sweet corn.

Suddenly he changed into a monster. His hair went all green, spiky and stood up on end, his face went all yellow and he started spitting little yellow pieces of sweet corn all over everybody and everything. Pfft! Pft! Pft! He went.

He spat over the table, he spat over Mummy, he spat over Daddy, he spat over Georgia. Pfft! Pft! Pft!  There were little pieces of sweet corn everywhere! Help! Help! Oscar-Nini the sweet corn monster has appeared. “What we can do?" said Mummy.

Oscar-Nini ate everybody’s sweet corn and then he started to yell.

Aaaargh, he screamed. “I’m hungry, where's my sweet corn?"

Mummy didn’t know what to do. Daddy said “perhaps he likes carrots?”.

They gave him a carrot; he took one bite, spat it out and carried on yelling.

They gave him a radish; he took a bite, spat it out and carried on yelling even louder. "Aaargh, aargh", yelled Oscar-Nini! He was a real monster!

They gave him some spinach; he didn't even chew it but just spat it out and yelled and yelled. "Aaargh! Aargh", screamed Oscar-Nini! They gave him a raspberry; he put it in his mouth, but then spat it out and yelled even more. "Aaargh! Aargh", screamed Oscar-Nini the sweet corn monster!

“Why don’t you give him a strawberry?” said Georgia, who was fed up with all the yelling.

So they gave Oscar-Nini, the scary yellow sweet corn monster, a strawberry and suddenly all was quiet.

His hair went blonde and flat, his face went pink and their little lovely boy Oscar had reappeared.

“Please can I have another strawberry?” said Oscar.

A Thousand Protesters Outside France Inter

Yesterday 1st July a thousand people gathered outside Radio France to protest against the sacking of Didier Porte and Stéphane Guillon . The two humorists are not having their contracts renewed. Stéphane Guillon said in his penultimate “chronique” last week that he found this out by reading “Teleloisirs” a TV listing magazine, in which there was an interview with Phillippe Val the Director of France Inter.

M. Val was on the 7 to 9 sequence this morning presented by Nicolas Demorand, who is also leaving today. The only reason M. Val gave for not renewing the humorist’s contracts was that he was fed up with continually being insulted by them when he gave them every freedom.

Both of the humorists have over stepped the line between humour and good taste many times. They have also upset the politicians more than a few times, but this makes for lively radio.

Nicolas Demorand has a reputation for being a tough interviewer, but compared to the Today Programme presenters he’s a pussy cat. We don’t know whether Nicolas is leaving because he was asked to or he requested it. We do know that he will be presenting a 5pm to 7pm cultural slot on France Inter instead. So the protesters suspect political pressure from above, a possibility that M. Val, who is a smooth tongued political animal himself, was quick to repeatedly deny.

What astound me is that the bosses of France Inter did not foresee the public reaction and prepare for it in advance by leaking the news early and making announcements before the event. There is little culture of news management in France. Even senior politicians rarely use those techniques to lessen or limit the impact of their announcements, with the change in the retirement age being a notable recent exception.

I can’t decide whether this is due to arrogance, incompetence or the fact that there are elements in the culture which prefer confrontation. Perhaps it is all three!!

New Dawn

Jennie and Don Waterman live in La Teulière in an old stone house surrounded by roses. Don is totally passionate about roses and their garden has so many that there is hardly room for anything else. They sell their roses as cut flowers to support the charity that Jennie and Don started which is called New Dawn after one of the roses. On 24th May they ran a fund raising event.

Jennie was teaching in Uganda in 2002 and was appalled by the devastating plight resulting from AIDS of the widows and orphans that she witnessed there. With Don she started to raise money and made more trips to the region. In 2004 they registered “New Dawn” as a charitable association in France.

After working with a project in Uganda they focussed their support on another orphanage and teaching project in Kisumu where they met Nancy and Jonas Okoth. Jennie and Don came to know them well whilst they were working closely together in December 2006 and saw in them both a remarkable young couple, who were totally dedicating their lives to helping orphans and “street” children.

The orphanage was started by Nancy and Jonas in January 2007 to provide care and support to the orphans, street children and widows of the Kisumu area. Nancy used to work for the Imperial Hotel in Kisumu but left her career behind, bought some land about 4km north of Kisumu in the hills overlooking Lake Victoria and together with Jonas and their three children set up the “Arise and Shine” Kogony Orphanage and Community Project. We met Nancy last year at a social event hosted by Marie-Ange and Jean-Louis Dreyer whose daughter Julie has spent three months at Kogony. I did not know about Nancy's work then but I was struck by her self assurance and sense of humour. Others have used the word charisma.

They now have twenty four resident orphans and run a nursery school on the site. Often children in the community are left in the care of aged grandmothers or sick mothers. With the intention of improving the quality of life and the life expectancy of these widows, Nancy and Jonas have reached out to the local community by arranging nine empowerment groups for the many women left widowed by AIDS. They have encouraged these groups to start mini businesses, which sell locally made soap and high protein meal. Other plans are underway which include selling articles made by the tailoring group and vegetables grown on the orphanage land. In April 2009 they asked the community to select twenty widows most in need of help and started the “Desperate Widows Group”. Each member receives monthly food packs, regular home visits and other articles such as mosquito nets, extra blankets etc.

When Jennie told us all Janet’s story I was very moved;

“On another visit we found Janet very sick with AIDS and we thought she was going to die. It was decided to bring her back to the orphanage, and with the assistance of the staff, resident children and our American friends, Mary Lynn and Wayne McLemore, part of the cowshed was joyfully transformed into a clean hut for her. After six weeks of medical treatment, good food and loving care, Janet made a wonderful recovery, put on 11kgs, increased her white blood cell count enormously and to everyone’s amazement was able to return home.”

It has since been decided to create a small hospice on the site where people can come, to be treated and cared for or, if they are not as fortunate as Janet, to die in peaceful surroundings.

In 2009 the “Arise and Shine” orphanage hosted a Medical Camp in which 440 people were treated and about two-thirds of them were tested for HIV and received counselling. This was so successful that the orphanage was chosen to host an Eye Camp during which over 500 people from the local bush community were examined and 48 people including five of the ”Desperate Widows”, had cataract operations done by the team of five visiting doctors in the local hospital.

Jennie emphasises that all of this was made possible by a local Indian team “The Bhagini Samaj”, the Dutch aid group “the Klara Foundation”, the Kisumu “Ladies in Action” and Lions Club International.

The New Dawn Association is entirely responsible for the running costs of the “Arise and Shine” project and relies on donations mostly from individuals in France, Switzerland and the UK. You can learn more about it on their website. http://www.newdawn-association.org/

The “Arise and Shine” project is still in need of additional buildings and facilities, an improved water supply and an electrical supply.

In 2009 Edinburgh Direct Aid has made valuable contributions to specific infrastructure projects and in particular they filled a container with much needed items to equip the orphanage. You can see more pictures and read about their involvement on their website. http://www.edinburghdirectaid.org/

A generous contribution from Rotary de Levaux, Switzerland has enabled improvements to buildings, toilets and washing facilities, rainwater collection and storage and will also allow lighting to be installed.

At a time of my life when, I am ashamed to admit, I find myself more and more tending to doze off over a book after lunch, I admire Jenny and Don’s energy and determination. But then, as Jennie said last night, “Each time we go to Kogony, and work with Nancy and Jonas, the children and the widows we come back re-energised and feeling that we get back more than we give”! “It’s just as well, otherwise we wouldn’t do it”!
And of course it is impossible to adequately express my admiration for Nancy and Jonas in a few words. They are truly an example for us all!

Israel and the Aid Flotilla

So this time Israel has finally provoked an international outcry as a result of its incompetent handling of the interception of the Aid Flotilla. For a while I thought that the incident had been so badly handled, and so badly timed, that it must be a politically motivated conspiracy to undermine Nettanyahu. The defence minister, Ehud Barak who ordered it, is after all a political rival. But on further reflection I think that it is a tragic mistake rather than a conspiracy. Sadly Israeli mistakes usually cost other people’s lives.

If you send highly trained killers to undertake a police action and they meet resistance they will kill. It’s what their training is all about. So that was the first mistake. Next you have to ask why Israel launched the assault in international waters leaving them open to be accused of piracy and of disregarding international law. That was their second mistake. But Israel has been so protected from criticism by their international supporters over the years that I suppose they thought that aspect was unimportant and, as Gideon Levy said yesterday in a television interview on the BBC about his article in Haaretz, “Israel considers itself above the law”. http://www.haaretz.com/print-edition/news/operation-mini-cast-lead-1.293417

Israel never fails to miss opportunities for peace. They go through the motions usually without any real intention of ever resolving the Palestinian issue. They seem to like living under the siege mentality that the resistance to their persistent occupation of Palestinian land engenders. Or is it that the only way to unite the country, which is so politically diverse and fractious, is to have an external enemy?
Every time a rocket is fired from Gaza it is a propaganda opportunity for the Israeli government, who are very well organised on that front. Labelling Hamas a terrorist organisation and persuading western governments not to recognize a legitimately elected government was masterly.
Of course their supporters in the diaspora are well placed to label any criticism of Israel in the West as anti-Semitic and few in Europe or the States dare to criticise Israel directly. It is not anti-Semitic to criticise a government capable of launching a war against the population of Gaza and killing over 1,300 Palestinians principally in an attempt to get themselves re-elected. (Winter 2008-2009). The Israeli casualty count in that three week conflict was 13 of which 10 were defence force personnel. A 100 to 1 casualty ratio is not untypical for Palestinian Israeli conflicts, a grotesque extension of the biblical “an eye for an eye” doctrine, which seems to be considered acceptable in Israel and in the West.
I have great difficulty in understanding how a state, founded on the ashes and corpses of 6 million Jews and brought into being after a Zionist terrorist campaign in Palestine, can behave so inhumanely to the citizens of the land which it continues to occupy illegally. The oppressed have become the oppressors and they have persuaded the West to accept that what they do is legitimate.
If the outcry over the Flotilla incident hardens into a loss of patience with Israel perhaps 9 more people will not have died in vain. Egypt has lifted the blockade of Gaza and must put an end to it for good. Western governments should openly criticise Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians and demand that they negotiate a real peace. The initiative is with Obama but he is just the last of a long line of Presidents scared of the Jewish lobby in the States and, although he has now called for the blockade to be lifted, will he actually do anything?
Meanwhile individuals should boycott Israeli produce until some results begin to come from peace talks. In the UK I boycotted Israeli produce for many years. In France there is very little on sale so I am forced to resort to blogging instead.