Something cheerful for the weekend...

There has been rather a lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth lately, at the top of our little green hill. In the odd moments when no-one was in hospital, the anguish of the long term has been gusting round the hill top and it's been feeling a bit nippy. Of course we all have to get old, if we are lucky, and adapt ourselves to waning powers. It is when this is combined with waning income and increasing expenses that tossing and turning starts to wear out mattresses.

I think there is something about the start of the scholastic year that induces even more stress.

The nightly chorus of voices in my head;

Will I have enough students to keep my courses going? Have I done enough preparation?

Is what I have prepared too easy/difficult for them?Will they be any good? Able to sing even remotely in tune/read music, cope with the english, able to clap on 2 and 4 instead of the dreadful french habit of 1 and 3....(I blame the accordeon myself...)

Of course, all this goes away as soon as I see how enthusiastic they are.

And last but not least, will I be earning enough or will I have to take in washing...

So far, so good.

Just as long as no one makes any more impulse purchases...

like caravans...

or a

drum kit...

Pass the soap powder...

Nice to see them happy though, isn't it?

The English Patient

Well, yes I have had to be patient with the patients.

After the wedding celebrations, some of us found that we had lowered our immunity considerably and so it was that I spent a lot of time sitting in doctor/ clinic and hospital waiting rooms while everyone tried to decide whether Darling d had appendicitis...or just an enormous hangover.

Apart from Naomi Campbell, she must have the most photographed body on earth...but on the inside. She had ultrasound and was bombarded with x-rays, which were still not conclusive. She seems all right now though, so it must have just been a gastro bug. The French medical system is slow but thorough and she staggered off to university with a giant bag of medicine.

While we were at the hospital, a clown arrived in the emergency waiting room in full regalia, but with a doctors bag as well. He prescribed a red nose and applied it directly to Darling d's face. I told him that we had just been to a wedding of a clown and asked if he knew her. This seemed to perturb him and he made off quickly...

No sooner did I lose one patient, when illness struck once more. This time it was Mysweet with back pain so intense that the poor dear was unable to stand up straight. We got him into the car with great difficulty because he was fixed in an unmovable position, or rather when he did change position even slightly it was accompanied by screams. We prised him out onto a trolley which I accompanied to the very familiar waiting room.

The clown was lurking by the reception desk, but for some reason he ran for it when he saw me...

UPDATE...Mysweet is expecting to come home on Saturday, and is feeling much better.

when a Breton clown marries a German sound engineer......

...it is bound to be an international event.Here you can see Mysweet revealing his 10 years in California with his shirt choice, and Darling D is establishing diplomatic relations with a german punk, while a tyrolean looks on bemused in suede hot pants. The most impressive thing about that costume was the gap in his socks (summer version?).

The bride arrived on the arm of her proud father, to the sound of John Lennon singing "love", which of course had us all sobbing almost immediately. I will use this as an excuse for the blurred quality of my photographs, although it was really because my intelligent camera was incapable of deciding that I really meant portrait even though the setting was scenery...

The mayor made a speech which was not as long as it might have been, and also had a few jokes in it...
The vows were exchanged and then the young couple struggled to put rings on each other's fingers. They both looked lovely and very happy by the way, and it was all very moving.
As you can see, my camera tactfully went out of focus at this point.

The simple ruse of leaving three microphones in a row switched on in a wedding tent full of performers had the effect of turning the wedding breakfast into a delightfully bizarre eurovision song contest with entries from Germany, Tunisia, Spain, Scotland, Italy, France generally and Brittany in particular, with us representing England as a trio, and then individually. If I have forgotten an entry, please forgive me, ( the champagne was good...). Particularly touching were the performances of the brides mother, then father, then children!

And what a joy to catch up with friends and aquaintances that I hadn't seen for ages.

Yeasty Pants

We have at last returned from an eventful holiday in the South of France at Limoux.

It involved meeting a nice new vet from Paris who looked about 12 years old, lots of worrying, licking of paws, enduring a smell like over-ripe camembert for hours on end in a small car, and trying to wash a large waterproof dog with deep treatment medical shampoo every two days under a weakly flowing tap.

At least Porridge developed three different illnesses at the same time which meant the vet was better value for money, although the dark look on Mysweet's face might have indicated that he felt otherwise.

It was so hot when we got down there that Porridge did a lot of swimming in rivers at first.

And we noticed the smell became riper, and riper.

Then, when we walked over a newly mown field of grass we didn't notice the sharp seeds that worked their way into her paws until she spent all night chewing her foot.

The vet increased the worry stakes when he cheerfully informed me that last year he had operated on a dog pierced by one of these evil seeds which had worked its way through the body to the heart of the animal. We must check her for them every day or they will inevitably pierce the skin... With that he introduced a spiky needle with a grabber on it deeply into her foot, between her toes, and pulled out an enormous spine.

Ah... the smell. It had started in Brittany, but was now eye wateringly pungent.

She's got yeasty pants, declared the vet. Her fur is so thick round her legs that it never dries when she goes swimming a lot, and yeasts start growing. He gave us the shampoo and said we must be sure that it penetrates completely to the skin surface.

Oh, and by the way, he said, she has a uterine infection.

We left laden with antibiotics.

As we left a small woman came through the door desperately hanging onto the horn of a large male goat which was putting up a bit of a fight. The vet's assisstant dangled from the other horn and they both eventually manoeuvred it into the now vacant consulting room.

I felt a bit better about things...

Order from Chaos

Last week, Porridge and I stepped out for a walk to our favourite place, Chaos du Gouët

with our chums Lucy and Mol.

We were both armed with cameras, and I noticed, in the way of men in the changing room, that her apparatus was considerably larger than mine. I look forward to seeing her results on her blog. So I have decided to leave the arty blow ups alone for the moment and concentrate on action shots.

At least, that is what my new intelligent camera decided for me.

We set off along the river bank clicking away happily:

There were great big rounded rocks and flat table-like stones crying out to have a picnic eaten off them.

Some of us found the rocks a bit too big, but they were very brave.

Some of us were very interested in the swimming opportunities.

It was difficult to decide which pool to choose.

But they were all rather good.

Occasionally, sticks were retrieved.

But only if we felt like it...

Sometimes the gaps between the rocks looked too big and dangerous, especially with one's nearest and dearest on the other side of the river. The only solution was to sit down and do a lot of nervous barking...

Sometimes we even lost our chums altogether.

But then we found them again..

Well there we go, first major outing for the new camera. If you click on the pictures some of the dogs are actually in focus, which will do for now. I hope to get a bit more proficient when we go on holiday down South to Limoux...

STOP PRESS...go and see a superb slideshow of the same walk at Lucy's

Moth fashion trends

The postman arrived from America yesterday(well, the post did), with a much appreciated early birthday present. The subtle hints that I have been dropping over the last few months have finally borne fruit. Small parcels are always the best...

Mine contained a new camera.

Since I am someone who cannot see very well, I need a camera with a MENSA level IQ which can take decisions for me. That way, I can point it at things which might be interesting and then have a chance to really see them later on a screen. Mysweet has done his research well, and I am delighted.

This little chap showed up in the evening.

I think the colour must have attracted it to Mysweet's Kooldrums. It must have known it would look good there.

I like the way it has jammed a foot between the notes to hang on.

The very last one...

Yes, the very last session today with my autisitic musicians and then I will be able to devote myself full time to cleaning up after my family. They are all back home at the moment, so now we are are four adults, two cats, a dog and three chickens.

One of the adults is in severe party mode after finishing her BAC exams. She comes in at odd hours, leaves deep piles of clothes scattered unevenly around the house as well as endless empty chocolate pudding containers, and occasionally sits groaning in front of our enormous new television typing the details of her hangover onto facebook before taking off once more to get another one.

Slugman and Drummerboy are messy in a rather more creative way. They are both working on a music project with a group called ALIVE KILL and will be performing sous les Halles at St Brieuc on Friday. Slugman has abandoned lettuce protection duties to take up his old occupation of sound engineer and Drummerboy is....drumming. They come and go at odd hours but I know they have been around because I find large pans in the kitchen covered with burnt layers of stuff that needs scraping off where they have kindly cooked a meal for all the performers.

Even the dog was ill in the night...

This morning, my own musical interlude was cut rather short because my first group of autistic students was off to join another training centre for a day of sports, outdoor activities and consumption of lots of lemonade and biscuits.

It's a hard life.

I'll just switch on the tele and see when Murray is playing tennis and put my feet up for five minutes.