School Celebration

School Celebration

This Saturday saw the planned celebration of the village school take place, with an exhibition of old photos of the school and former pupils (three members of our English conversation class started their schooldays together here), various children's games, an evening meal in the 14th of July square and friend Jo's impromptu choir. I «sang» in the choir. Bass, tenor baritone? Maybe a mixture of all three at various points or maybe just undefined. No one ever bothered about these nice distinctions on the terraces at Chelsea. We sang four songs. Sacré Charlemagne accuses Charlemagne of ruining kids'childhoods: Qu'as tu appris à l'école aujourd'hui is an ironic take on what is taught at school: L'école est fini is an end of term celebration and Adieu monsieur le professeur a rather sad tribute to a retiring teacher. All were sung lustily and received enthusiastically, which hopefully rewarded Jo adequately for her efforts to make us sing properly. The whole event served, among other things, to raise some money for the school.

Schools here, as in the UK, are strapped for cash but to nowhere like the same extent as in the UK. Mollans with 1000 inhabitants has a school as still does nearby Brantes, a village of about 200 inhabitants stuck on a mountain side. Scholarship is still valued here and blatant cynicism still rare. The Minister of Education does not sneer at those who have acquired enough knowledge to be labelled experts, especially before becoming Minister for the Environment, having previously voted against all environmental measures. Different countries, different values.

Raoul Balurdin

Movement in the village has been disrupted for the past two weeks because a film is being made in the rue du Faubourg, my street, a hundred yards further along from me. The first inkling we had of this was when plastic trees and foliage started appearing on the fronts of houses along the street. I asked what was going on and was told that they were props for a film entitled Raoul Balurdin that was about to be made. So who is/was Raoul Balurdin? Nobody seemed to know anything other than that he was a bicycle repair man who couldn't ride a bike. Mention of a bicycle repair man immediately called to my mind the Monty Python sketch, the spoof of Superman: «wherever in the world there is a bicycle in trouble, bicycle repair man will be there!» Friend Daniel enlightened me a bit more this morning when I had a coffee with him, saying the story was from a novel that nobody seemed to have read. Nobody other then myself seemed interested in knowing anything more either. That doesn't augur well for the film but I guess a good film could overcome that handicap, even encourage more people to read the book.

Grandfather

My daughter and son-in-law, Nat and Andy, have now informed everyone they wanted to about the birth of their daughter, Eilidh, and so I am free to announce this in my blog. 

She's beautiful, of course, and I already have plans for her as a future captain of the Chelsea ladies' team and so have sent a teddy bear, a romper and a bib all in Chelsea colours. She'll undoubtedly show herself to be a good dribbler in the coming months. I've installed Skype so I can see her over the next few weeks until I go over around the end of July to see her in the flesh. Proud grandfather!