Good heavens… it’s been a year…already.
Anyway… what brightened my day today… learning that our school is returning to 4 full days and that the one-to-one reading lessons will be re-introduced as well… all as from next term. Yippee…
It is wonderfully rewarding when a youngster who has struggled to read for so long… suddenly “gets it” and starts rattling away. 
Any of you with time on your hands… you might find your local school welcomes volunteers… 
I’m over at the coast. Blue sky and warm sunshine. It’s almost as though the wet winter didn’t exist.
How does your school organize the logistics for individual lessons? Just interested.
These are little ones… the parents are asked if they want their child to participate (parental consent is essential) … and time is allocated during an otherwise “gentle” (ie nothing major) lesson-time for the children.
It all depends on the uptake… how many children v how many sessions per child we can fit in over the Term.
Some kids just need coaxing… some are eager to show-off their skills… each child is a different challenge.
I should add, that some kids can read a little and like to have a go in front of the crowd… so there are some “group” sessions as well… we play it by ear on those occasions… always good fun.
I was just wondering how they did it because it became a logistical nightmare in British primary schools. My daughter’s godmother who taught the same age range just said it didn’t happen their schools.
I did it for 5 years, then moved into TAPS when that came in in 2013, leaving no space for Lire et Faire Lire…
Now that TAPS has been voted out in our area (as from next term)… we can resume our other “duties/passions”… 
Possibly our classes are smaller than in UK …
I could read and write etc before school age… so no memories of how that worked in UK…I simply jumped ahead a few classes.
what is brightening my day today… my lovely wife coming home after her latest stay in hospital
I am imagining Jacob Rees Mogg et al spitting feathers because the contract for the famous, or infamous, blue passports has gone to a French firm.
Made friends again with Simon Armstrong yay!
Peter - some (?) may consider that just a tad OTT - just sayin…
Who needs Morecambe and wise when you have Goble and Armstrong.
Mmm… you’ve been reading my mind… 
Well, this has really had me laughing my socks off… and wondering whether I should leave home…
Took a call from our local Undertaker … I always try to find something positive to say to him…so, in my best French I say I hope he is profiting from the sunshine …which is coming and going…
He rambled back, with a thick accent and I thought he sounded upbeat …something about the heat bringing all the butterflies … so I said something along the lines of… Well, that’s great isn’t it… deathly hush at the other end of the phone… 
Then in a resigned and slightly less-thick accent… he said he would drop by later for a tissane and to explain face-to-face…
I’m now racking my brains to try and figure out what it was he really said… 
Looking forward to hearing your update on this one Stella 
Cat to the vet for booster jab today. 2 attempts to get her in her box but I’ve stopped bleeding now so all is well😉
Warm sunshine and blue sky at last. Windows wide open and a warm gentle breeze through the house. Bliss 
My cat being extra sweet to me today. Rubbing herself against my leg and following me everywhere.
The first decent shower of rain that fell this afternoon,after weeks of arid sécheresse, the vegetable garden looked like the Gobi desert…
The chickens loved it and roamed about wetly looking for emergent worms. Peas, beans, beetroot and courgettes have been on their metaphorical knees, one can almost hear their sighs of relief.
I have the same issue with my next door neighbour. He is my hero and a blessing, but some his more eloquent outpourings leave me floundering. Planting beans yesterday he nudged me and recited some obscure dicton about a full basket… I could tell it was an old aphorism about beans and although I asked him to repeat it and even to write it down, it defeated me.
Eventually he spelled it out, it said that beans planted on the jour de férié St André (his prénom) would mean a rich harvest. Problem was, I know his jour de férié is in Novembre, 'cos we always mark it in some way. So the penny took a long time to drop…
Such are the beautiful and touching fragments of life in France, I am immeasurably grateful for them and people like him.
Very happy today, after 4 days of searching high and low for a missing Kitty (mum in tears and me close to them) walking and asking around my commune, and the neighbouring ones calling for her , finally had some luck.
I heard a pitiful meowing from a neighbours barn, I 'phoned them, and they explained that the barn is open at the side so she can’t be stuck. Anyway they shut their 3 large ferocious dogs in so that I could go and have a look. 3 of us finally tracked her down she had climbed up the stacked hay rolls 8 metres high and couldn’t get down! One ladder, some scrambling around, and the neighbour’s son was finally able to grab her by the scruff of the neck and hand her to me ( I was perched at the top of the ladder). Mum burst into tears when I walked in with Kitty, so pleased I heard the meowing or she would have died of thirst and hunger ! 
