Tea, Travels and Terracotta.

I'm sure that anyone who's reading this already knows that revision is my main occupation at the moment. It's House of Lords reform today. Anyway, I'm not going to mention it again, but would like to reassure you that I'm still doing plenty of it (mainly aimed at Mum and Dad...!).

In between books and learning, I've found enough time to do a few interesting bits and pieces. One of them is making this house, which is loosely based upon M&D's house in France. It was originally a present for Dad for Father's Day 2010, but like any construction project, it went drastically over-budget and I was forced to completely abandon the inital schedule. It's now got half-a-roof of terracotta tiles, and is fully-glazed, but the kitchen is still very much a Budweiser box, and there's no front door. I'm expecting a delivery of more clay when my next installment of student loan arrives, and we're hoping to be in by Christmas.

It IS that yellow in real life.

Other nice distractions were goodbye-visits by a few friends who are off on travels to various places around the world. Dave and Chris are going on a grand tour of Europe, while Matt is going to brave The Americas with some friends from school. I'm sure they're going to have a good time - I think I'd much rather be trekking through the Andes and sampling the bars of Bruges than sitting in basement in Reading!

Chris looks like he's having second thoughts.

Looking for Cancun on the ticket machine.

A final note before I return to Lords reform is that I seem to have become competely dependent on tea, in silly quantities. Between reading each page of a book, I treat myself to a sip, resulting in worrying scenes such as this one:

Apparently there's no Earl of Grey in the House of Lords.

A Very French Day.

Yesterday was possibly the most French day of my life so far. Apologies in advance for the rambling nature of this post.

I awoke at the rather early time of 7am, and opened the curtains to find the sun peeping over the trees, sparkling onto a dew-encrusted spider web on the window. For breakfast, I made myself a couple of cheese-and-ham croissants, and ate them while watchin Télématin (the french version of BBC Breakfast).


Delicious, but probably/definitely bad for me.

I had only one lesson, with the 3euro, the best class in the school. We talked about films, and described film posters, while sneakily learning vocabulary along the lines of 'foreground', 'background', 'next to' and so on...
After my lesson, I ended up talking about French literature to one of the French teachers from my school. She was impressed that i'd read Sartre's 'Huis Clos'. I didn't tell her we were force-fed it at university, but managed to hold a fairly reasonable conversation nonetheless.

After such a strenuous day at work, I caught the tram, and helped an elderly lady carry her shopping trolley onto the tram. We then talked all the way back to my tram stop - she told me about her grandchildren, and the time when she visited London with her husband, which was in the 1960s. At my tram stop, I got off, and popped into the bread shop, where they knew what I wanted. I feel like a proper local now!


Flower in the shed!

I ate my lunch (tuna baguette) in my little garden - it's March 5th, and already outside dining! Oh, and my narcissus is flowering now too. Spring! In the afternoon, I wandered off to town. The temperature was 15C, and i've never seen the sky so blue! The town centre was bustling with people, many of them sitting outside cafés in the sun. I joined them, and had an ice cream which looked like a flower. It was delicious!


The vanilla ice cream


Ridiculously blue sky. Exciting photograph.

In the evening, I went to a party at another assistant's house, which is actually above a church. A bit of a bizarre location, but it was a good evening. We got there a bit early, so we went to a nearby bar beforehand. It turned out it was very much a bar for local people, and we got stared at by the seven people at the bar, until they found out we were English, and therefore 'interesting'. We spoke to a few of them for about half-an-hour, then went on to the party. There were people from all over the world at the party, and the most communal language was French, so I spoke a fair amount.

I got back tot he shed at 3am, and made myself a nice cup of tea. The day had been so French that I needed a nice cup of PG Tips to remind me i'm still English. I even drank it with my little finger stretched out.


No idea who this guy is, but he's kindly demonstrating my tea-drinking pose.