Birthday week

Thanks Private Eye

Mary's was last weekend, and my birthday is today.  Now aged 74 and living at no.74, a random statistical coincidence!  The French numbering of houses is interesting - often in less urban areas houses are given the number of metres they are distant from the end of the road.  It works for us - we are 74 metres from the (other) end of the rue de la Brechette, our next-door neighbours 82.  It's why you so often find very large numbers in addresses where there are rather few houses in a street.  Useful though when you are not quite sure where someone lives in a long road with houses well set back, just check on your odometer as you drive up the road.  We ahve friends who live at no.600 at one street in Sommières, though they are well signed, but we pinpointed someone else in another road there with no visible numbers, simply by checking how far along the road we'd come.

view from the garden on one of our Tuesday meetings with friends, nearby in the Gard

I've had a whole clutch of lovely greetings on Facebook, including some from people I'd never expect to hear from in pre-Facebook times.  It's easy to rubbish social media, but at a time when people are more than ever isolated the simple exchange of messages like this is very comforting.  We do have a lot to be thankful for, wonderful sunny weather still continuing and good friends, neighbours and family, even though the political scene is deeply depressing.  There has been further upsetting news this week as the British government seems to be prepared to go back on properly negotiated agreements, and some people think this puts our situation as French residents at risk when we thought it had been settled.  People reassure me that the French government, for all its faults, is unlikely to overturn the understanding it reached with expats, and I feel this is likely to be OK, but you never know, and it is very distressing that British values should so easily be set aside by a government that historically has had a reputation for probity and high international standards. 

At Roussillon south of Lyon, during a recent visit to friends

Our thoughts now are with a friend whose father is very ill, the nearest this virus has come to affecting us closely.  We are staying isolated as a precaution, so seeing even fewer people just now even than usual.  But we live quiet lives anyway, and are reviewing some of our musical commitments when they do restart because the benefits are not really worth the extra risks.  But I am working out how to continue my singing, and Mary her cello, in different ways with smaller groups if we can.

Apart from a lot of reading, we are much enjoying the delayed programme of sports on tv.  The Tour de France is in full swing, and there are some breathtaking moments without most of the British interest we've seen over the past years - Colombian riders still pretty strong, but the surprise package has been the young Slovenian riders coming to the fore.  The French riders, as often, are wildly hyped here but don't really live up to the hope and faith  people place in them. As always the scenery on the tv transmissions is wonderful, and overhead photography whether from drones or helicopters is marvellous.  

The Rhône at Condrieu

But the exceptional sporting bonus for us this year has been the cricket, with the West Indies, Pakistan and Australia all turning up for Tests and various one-day series.  I'm not too worried about partisan national support, and it has been terrific to see the quality of the all the visiting teams  - England still puts out rather different teams for the Tests and one-day matches, but the restricted numbers visiting nations can send over in a pandemic means that we have an excellent view of the best of them in all forms of the game, And apart from the excellent achievements of Anderson and Broad as fast bowlers in the England team, the best of the bowlers in all the other teams have been really great to watch.  The Auustralian fielding just now is exceptional too, although I'm enough of an England fan to hope they won't be quite as successful over the next few days.

As with audiences for music, the lack of spectators in the sporting events has not been a great loss, and the lack of beer-soaked fans in the cricket has been especially easy to overcome.  Meanwhile the dogs, who behaved impeccably on their fist trip away with us, are still delightful companions and shape our days through walks and so on.