..try to communicate with French police

I shall have coffee with a friend and speak French,  this is what my title should have been.

Ambitiously phrased of me.  My french is severely limited.  It was the one O' level I failed, shouldn't have opted for it in the first place but the alternative was welsh and scarely under the circumstances being that I am welsh, that was even worse.

So here I am a year and a half of living here later, with two children in a French school, still as rubbish as I ever was.  I can proudly say I understand more but that was never going to be difficult, nothing to something never is.  The sticking point is speaking.  People who know me laugh in my face when I say I am shy but that is because they know me and I do like to chat.

However my chat often consists of throw away comments and witty responses, with the odd rather volatile debate thrown in for good measure.  I don't do small talk and always feel rather ridiculous when I try.  I am also much better one to one if I am honest especially when in the company of a master of the art of chit chat.  Finally as mentioned previously I talk fast and frankly prefer it when others do.  So little wonder why the speaking french bit is going nowhere.

This can't go on though.  We intend to stay here and will hopefully be buying a house soon which will require renovating, haven't managed to buy one yet that doesn't so why change the habit of a lifetime.  A kind friend has bravely volunteered for the unenviable task of helping me learn.

 So today I shall go to her house and we shall drink coffee and we shall speak French, after the police have left that is.  Bikes stolen from the garage last night and now left to deal with it all using my serioulsy inadequate French.

.

All done

Hubbie will be pleased,

Won't have to,iron own shirts next week, darling.

...sort out my laundry room

French houses, unlike british houses, don't appear to have boot rooms.  Okay many british houses don't have them either but most have an utility, a place for washing machines, wet dogs and dirty gubbings alike.  Never worked for me, two opposing needs lumped into one room.  Too many crisp clean sheets soiled by muddy paws and earth clad floors.

In France they have the baunderie, easy to remember ' sounds like ....laundry', throw back to my teaching days there.  It more often than not is situated upstairs, convenient for discarded clothes, not convenient for dirty boots and wet dogs, hence the obvious segregation.  Unfortunately mine is rather a large room, unlike back in blighty where it fitted a machine and ironing board,  and as in all large families there is an accumulation of stuff and that stuff must be housed. Not in an attic where stuff never needed again and xmas decs live, things  that may be useful stuff. Material for projects planned, not done, grown out clothing that will another conveniently birthed son adorn.  Mouses live protected from killer cats. Every house needs an indoor garage in my opinion.

So stuff therein accumulates and spreads, gets rummaged through and dropped.  Frankly it all ends up in one big,messy muddle that yours truly has to sort on a too regular basis.  Put off for far too long today it will be once more tackled and this time it will stay organised.

She doth jest of course!

A brave before photo.

So no backing out now

Might need to do some ironing?