Shopping days??

This week I have to start with our first post-lockdown return to the beach, only the second visit ever for the dogs who had a fine time in the sunshine.   The Couchant beach just west of La Grande Motte was not at all crowded, lovely sunshine - altogether a tonic for humans and other animals alike!

I've just read in the local paper that Montpellier seems almost as busy as it used to be (though bars and restaurants are still shut.  The editorial regrets that people are so careless (and maskless) of others' health and wellbeing, crowding into streets and markets.  I know we all have to be careful not to criticise - the pressures on people with, little time and money, to make the best of moments of  'freedom' are huge.  Yet, even with vaccines on the horizon, the risks are also huge.  As the editorial says, businesses are forced to keep their shutters down while others risk prolonging the pandemic through carelessness.  Better safe than sorry, as innumerable people have said to us in the past... 

Reading - we keep resurrecting things we've already read, often because one of us has but not the other.  Following Henry VII Mary tried A L Rowse's Bosworth Field & the Wars of the Roses which she found a bit pedantic, but she has romped through a number of the Clive Sansom Shardlake series and is now venturing back further towards the middle ages with Azincourt  by Bernard Cornwell, one of his few but well-written non-fiction books, while I contemplate revisiting Sharpe and his adventures in the Spanish Peninsula war once I have caught up with Alexander McCall Smith and Mma Ramotswe with her wise sayings, with Mma Makutsi's talking shoes!

Our watching has included a lot of sport, and the close of the cycling season brought not only spectacular scenery across the Spanish uplands, but a lot of echos of  the Sharpe books with Wellington's battle sites as the Vuelta headed along the Portuguese border.  Now we are back to regular rendez-vous with Monday quizzes on BBC tv (Only Connect and University Challenge) and Wednesday's wonderful French tv series Des Racines et des Ailes.  We have a number of these on DVD as part of our Christmas viewing choices - a later blog will reveal all!  Meanwhile we have not been disappointed by the return of Masterchef the Professionals also on the BBC.  In the past we've really enjoyed this bi-annual series, and have occasionally sought out winners in their restaurants.  Now, with numbers of competitors reduced by distancing and so on in the pandemic, the focus seems even sharper and the standard higher, and so far we have continued to agree with the judging!

 Our day often begins with music on BBC Radio 3, and I am really looking forward to the Christmas season, especially since our live music has been badly reduced by lockdowns and curfews.  After a trying Zoom B.a.Bach choir committee for me (not the fault of the  participants, but the technology is uncertain, someone almost inaudible, someone else only seen as a muffled silhouette, and the time lags make it difficult to speak and be heard) yesterday everyone is trying hard to get singing going again in the new year, but I'm not convinced it will happen.  We have had to call off our little Christmas carol concert for the first time since we came to France - some of our singers rightly reserving contacts for their new grandchildren, other English friends who usually sing with us could not get over in any case.

However, Mary is looking forward to a couple of pre-Christmas cello dates at the Vauvert music school, including her first lesson for months.  Happily her hand has almost healed from the damage caused by a fall in the road when she was walking the dogs (a car came round the corner and she overbalanced trying to make sure the dogs were out of the way), and it has not really impeded her practising.

I've been delighted to see my old friend Martin Weatherhead (we met at school over 60 years ago!) about to display one of his wonderful wool tapestries.  He has become something of an icon for his art and his adopted Wales - more details in this article.  It will be a strange Christmas cut off from friends and family  but perhaps things will gradually open up if there is not too much over-enthusiasm!