So, have you missed me? It’s been almost a fortnight since my last post. Thought not. I blame the good weather. Not that I have any objection to seeing the sun shine, but it does bring with it certain time-consuming responsibilities in the grass-cutting department. Although, as a happy update to my earlier post, I do seem…
As part of the public service brief adopted by this site in its jjoint venture with the local newspaper, Le Quotidien de Faire-le-Dodo (87), here is the latest online edition of our Community Noticeboard: Super-Loto: Saturday night at the Salle Polyvalente. Join us to sit on uncomfortable plastic chairs in overcrowded conditions for six hours…
After a mild winter, the life cycle of the flora that surrounds us here at Tranquility Base is already well advanced. The forsythia is budding, the Narcissi are in bloom, the air is filled with birdsong. And the grass needs cutting. This year, we have a new weapon in the unending war against nature. I’ve cranked up the shock…
Hard to believe I know, given the absence of any residual physical evidence, but I used to be a bit of a gym rat. No, really. Not for very long, admittedly, and to nothing like the obsessive extent of the creatine-guzzling monstrosities that you might see pictured on the cover of magazines with titles like ‘Bulge‘, ‘Musclebound’…or maybe ‘Transformers’.…
Today, we feature the latest product of the joint venture with the online edition of our local newspaper, Le Quotidien de Faire-le-Dodo (87). Our regular reader will recall that we set this up at the beginning of this year with the aim of enhancing mutual friendship and understanding between the local and expat inhabitants of our fair…
My passport went off for renewal last week. Naturally, the application process entailed getting some new identity photos. Or, as it’s also known, a reality check. Compared to ten years ago I’m rather paler (the Abu Dhabi tan has long faded) and the face fungus is still a comparatively recent addition. Otherwise, not too bad really: a little more…
As a general rule I deal with the day-to-day vagaries of modern life by, if not quite ignoring them, at least treating their impingements on my consciousness with what I like to think of as a placid stoicism. By and large, to use a modern idiom, IDGAF. Sometimes, though, only a rant can help. Like…
There are very few things I’d claim to know more than most about. This rather limits – to put it mildly – the range of possible responses to this recent Daily Prompt: “Take a complicated subject you know more about than most people, and explain it to a friend who knows nothing about it at all.”…
You have no idea how much of a struggle it’s been not to start this post with the word ‘So’. For that is our subject today, dear reader. More particularly, the increasingly pervasive practice of begiinning sentences with this poor, innocent syllable. To borrow another common modern usage: WTF? This has been going on for years now,…
[The latest post in a series, prepared in conjunction with our sister publication ‘Le Quotidien de Faire-Le-Dodo (87), designed to promote greater understanding and integration of the local and expat communities in our fair commune. This one is particularly aimed at recent incomers, who may still be familiarising themselves with daily life here.] You’ll already have…
the only deadhead in the hameau 