Ubu Enchaîné

Saturday, we went to the  L'Athénée Theatre to see  Ubu Enchaîné.  We had a little time to kill before hand and decided to have a glass of wine in the theatre's bar.  We ended up sharing a platter of ham, saucisson and ham, it was a bit liking eating a ploughman's lunch but without an egg or pickles.  It was lovely, quite filling, but Alain and I managed to finish it just in time.

 The play was amazing, although hard for me to get used to the accents as the narrator, Giovanno Calo (fantastic actor) had an Italian accent and Eric Cantona, a strong southern accent. 
The whole play takes place in a kitchen, where the narrator played all the other characters using eggs (that get broken), slices of toasts (that end up on the floor), a tea pot (that he breaks) a flower (I won't go into details what I think he did with this) and a bottle.
At one point in the play, Ubu made an eruption via a side door just next to where I was sitting, it was wonderful to see him so up close.
If you get to see it before Eric leaves for the USA for two years, leave your rational mind at home and just enjoy it.


I really loved mère Ubu played by Valerie Crouzet, just brilliant. 

Random thoughts and happenings

Things have been a little busy around here, what's new.  Added to that, I've got a few mum worries which is hard for me as I'm unable to go the UK unless absolutely necessary, which thankfully isn't just quite the case as my family over there, are all pulling together to help my mum who's convalescing at home.

Secondly, eldest son who tells me that he's grown up and can do things on his own, has just proved the opposite.  He's late applying for his post A levels choices (schools, universities, prepas et cetera) and just has no sense of organization at all. Hence the fact, that we have taken over, printed charts for him to fill out with cut off dates for inscriptions, place of exams, and for some, the fee just to sit the exam and the enormous cost if he were accepted.  We have already paid nearly 200 euros so he can sit the exam "pass" and tonight we have the double to paid out so he can sit the sesame exams.

On to brighter subjects, Alexis, has been excited for ages to go on school camp in the Auvergne region here in France, and today was D day, I'll miss him, but I'm so happy that Alexis' with his friends and his class and his wonderful teacher Mr B. He'll come back wiser and with lots of fond memories (I hope) and let's not forget, some Fourme d'Ambert cheese. He's got thirty euros pocket money and  four stamped addressed envelopes packed ready for him to pop some postcards in and send back to us, mamie and papy and grannie...will he remember?

On the house front, we have started the top floor bathroom...more to come soon (camera is downstairs and I'm feeling lazy)

Saturday evening, Alain and I went to see Ubu Enchâiné starring Eric Cantona at the Athénée theatre in Paris, wow what an evening (photos to come, this time on my phone, which is downstairs too)

Finally, we went for a run on Sunday, this time building on endurance.

13.6 kilometers in 1hour 28 with a couple of minutes in that when I had to drink and Alain had the water, yes, it was really warm yesterday (today too). 


Our target is to be able to complete a 33 kilometer trail competition this summer (pre inscribed) and not be last and try to finish in less than four hours.

Daisy Chains

There's a big difference between the garden we had in the south of France for eight years and this one here, here we have grass, in Sanary we had Olive trees and mimosa's. Grass does grow in the south but you have to water it, something I was unprepared to do.

I like having a lawn and even though I have to charge our lawnmower's battery three times to actually finish  cutting it! However, Marie-Kate doesn't want me to cut the grass because there's thousands of daisies and primroses flowering all over it (fine by me).

Yesterday afternoon, the sun shone and for a 14th of March the temperature rose to a lovely 20°c.  While I started to mark out new flower beds, Marie-Kate planted some more Primroses (bought from plant sale at school to raise funds for schools trips, equipment et cetera) and made herself a daisy chain.  We like no school Wednesday's, especially when we can get outside.

Today is going to be even warmer, I'm going back outside, lots to do. And this afternoon Alexis has invited J for play and he wants me to buy ice cream and lemonade...sounds like he's going to be making some ice-cream sodas....cool.

The Other Side of the Door

The children have really enjoyed playing in the garden today as the weather has been wonderfully warm, even warmer outside than inside...really.
I took this photo of Charlotte quite by chance, in fact Marie Kate wanted  me to take a photo of her daisy chain (more later about that) just when Charlotte came home...late again. 
Now you can see the iron door in the background, this leads you out onto a village road. There is space at the side for one car, under what will become our sixth bedroom that would be have been our seventh if we weren't going to change Oliver's one in to a large open landing office area...that's another story.  The new room (see older post somewhere on this blog) is big 36m2 and we are getting quotes soon to open up the a door way on a bearing wall leading into this room...oh yes and the whole front of the house needs to be renovated i.e rendered, this is a big job too.  More to follow

Breakfast chez nous

 Breakfast most days starts around 5:30, I wake up first and without an alarm, it's been like this for ages. Alain wakes a little later. We enjoy this time of the day, the house is quiet, we can talk without being interrupted in mid-sentence by one of the children. 
If I'm lucky, Alain will happily prepare a soft boiled egg with soldiers (very Proustian moment for me). He did just that. After, I thought I'd make some Welsh Griddle Cakes that I'd been dreaming about trying for some time (Hairy Bikers cook book...I like these guys)

 Really easy to make and light in texture. Alexis was first up (he always is), he never speaks before he has eaten something, he isn't difficult at breakfast...no, the problem starts after, because Alexis wants to go to school so he spends his time checking the time and that means a lot of checking as he's up about two hours before school starts, it's quite an obsession. 
After it's Gaby, pancake crazy girl, who also liked these little cakes and had three in the end. Gaby is by far the easiest child to please.
Charlotte's next (7:15..bus leaves here at 7;40), sixteen, can't prepare her breakfast herself, eat lots, but not these, not today, after eating her cereal, banana, and bread, she had to have (otherwise she'd throw a hissy fit) a protein chocolate bar (bought my me for me for after a run).
Last but one, nearly always Oliver, never down before he has spent time combing his hair perfectly, sometimes down with minutes to spare, but today he graced me with his company at 7:25, here's another one who's crazy for my protein bars that I actually don't like. He doesn't like breakfast, well he didn't,  not before these bars that is, and won't once they're all gone, but for this week at least, he'll eat some bread just to get one of these...he preferred to eat a bar than eat a yummy Welsh Griddle cake...I won't forget that next time I make some more, which I reckon will be very soon.

Welsh Griddle Cakes with raisons and cranberries

Marie-Kate, the youngest, is always up the last*, she can't live without her daily bowl of cereal and rarely eats anything that's new to her, i.e these cakes, in the morning, so today wasn't any exception, she had a banana instead.  

If she's good, she can have one at lunchtime, there's four left...if not, tomorrow at 5:30, I know what I'll be eating...yummy, can't wait.


*apart from at weekends and during school breaks, now there, Mr 17.5 and Miss 16 can stay under their covers till their stomachs scream out with hunger, so lets say Oliver holds the record, getting up at 12:30!

Our beginnings in trail running

                                              View of our just over ten kilometer run

We started running jogging a couple of months ago in December as a way to lose a little bit of weight and stay fit.  It was tough at the beginning, running a little and having to walk a lot, but we are progressing slowly. It helps us to be able to monitor our speed and length of each run using the runtastic application on my phone. 

Our average speed per kilometer has gone up from a snail paced 7km per hour to a more acceptable  9.1km.

Our aim is to get to over 10km per hour before May and increase our endurance so maybe we'd be able to do a trail race before the year is up, our only expectation would be, to finish the race and not be last.

Last weekend we ran for over an hour  for the first time and managed to complete just over 10 kilometers in 1hour and 7 minutes. If we can lose those seven minutes, I'd be very happy.  

The circuit we completed starts and ends at our front gate, there's a hill to climb (another harder one later) almost straight away then we're off the road and on a track for about 6km then cross down through a neighboring town and then around 3 km along side the River Seine. This was the worst bit, because there must be about fifteen barriers you have to get round (there to stop motorbikes I suppose) and here's where we lost a lot of momentum.  With the benefit of hindsight we can learn for next time how to become quicker for this part and hopefully run this circuit in 1hour and 5 minutes.... we tried twice to run again this weekend, but with inscriptions pending for Oliver's post bac, prepa's and competitive entrance exams to fill out on Saturday, that pretty much scuppered our plans and on Sunday our neighbors came round just when we though about running again and instead we shared a lovely apple tart that our neighbor Réné had made, and had a nice cup of tea while listening  to Edith stories from the past about our small village, especially during the war and I really enjoyed that. Edith is 76 and has always lived here, different houses, but always in this village.

Gabrielle's 12th Birthday

Gaby's lemon curd sponge cake covered with a white chocolate frosting

I'm a bit late uploading photos onto my computer but now it's done and I can cross another job off my to do list.  

Gaby turned twelve on Thursday, twelve, amazing.  Since going back to school in September, this year in  5eme, she has matured a lot.  She's calmer, she's more organized (work wise...but lets not talk about her bedroom!) she loves school, and most of her subjects, especially Math, French, English, German and Latin....  Latin, interesting, as she only started it this school year,  and it's an introductory year where she gets to choose if to continue or not for the rest of her time at college and maybe (hopefully) Lycee. she said at the beginning of the year she'd only do it for one year but guess what( she might not admit it)? She likes Latin and hasn't said anything about stopping, here's keeping my fingers crossed
Gaby is still shy but is very popular and has a best friend since starting college "Marjolaine", she doesn't do Latin, she chose Drama instead and hates it...

 Here are a couple of the presents she received.  She has been very busy using her new camera.

 For her Ipod and her cd's and for an alarm that she doesn't need because she's always awake at the crack of dawn.

And no, I didn't buy this present, Granny did. It's a giant make-up case. I never wear make-up, much to my mother's disappointment, so she's compensating and she's happy to have three grand daughters, two of which, who are actually happy to receive presents like this...

Oh yes, the cake was good, Gaby loves lemon curd, so I made a sponge cake, filled in with lemon curd and covered it with a very calorific white chocolate frosting.  

No more birthday's for over a month (thankfully) because with cakes like this you need time to work off the kilos.