Les Amarreurs

A foggy start to the day, but again, the sun burnt it off through the morning. I found a website where I could subscribe to French magazines, so I shall look forward to those arriving every month! I found Alice's favourite one too: "J'apprends lire" which is set at her school level, and comes with a CD. Parfait.

I loaded up the car with more recyling, and Alice and I took it to Mont Cuet. We stopped off at Ladies' Bay playground, and then walked to find Les Fouaillages, a monumental tomb from 8-6,000 years ago. More information here.

I'm only planning to blip every day for the next 4 days, in order to complete our French year, but I will continue blipping from time to time in the future, and Guernsey's history and culture may become my focus. While living in Brittany, I became really interested in its history and cultural heritage. Now we've returned home, I'm keen to explore and find out more about Guernsey. I've perhaps always tended to take our island home for granted, and just gone along with the masses - the watering down of our own culture. Perhaps Guernésiais will become my next language! (If ever I feel I've achieved my aim of conversational fluency in French)

We walked back to the playground (scanning and stopping for golfers ready to tee-off towards our direction!) where Alice played for a while, then we went onto the beach at Les Amarreurs where Alice enjoyed just messing about in the water. The breakwater was just above the water line, and there were a few young people jumping off the pier. Sunny, calm, blue, peaceful, beautiful. I haven't travelled much, but of the few places I have visited, there is little that can compare to the beauty of Guernsey's coast. It's the bit in the middle that I find so frustrating!

Alice is looking up at what seemed to be hundreds of seagulls flying by - you'll have to press the "L" key to see them!

This afternoon we went shopping at Waitrose. I miss ELeClerc and Carrefour! Most of the fruit and veg sold in Brittany, is grown in Brittany. If it isn't, then it comes from France, or sometimes Spain or Italy. Here, we see fruit and veg flown in from all over the world. Oh dear. I think one of my new "things" is going to be buying local produce as much as we can. Too late for Warry's, sadly. Perhaps it'll be the Co-op in future.

As we were just finishing at the checkout, I turned towards the exit and saw Alice a few yards in front, holding a piece of paper looking questioningly at a man walking quickly away. I rushed to her. "A man gave it to me" she said. A £5 note! You must give it back to him I said and started rushing off to him (he was out of the door now). She said "but I gave him something of his and then he gave me the money". What did you give him? "It looked like a purse. He dropped it and I picked it up and gave it to him". Ahhh. It's unlikely that the gentleman will read this, but just in case, thank you very much for rewarding Alice so generously and making a little girl very happy. I looked for him in the car park, but he had long gone.

M and Alice went off to see his aunt - taking half the figs I picked this morning. Mum had the other half when she called in later.

I had my usual weekly Skype lesson, although we changed the day for this week. In spite of watching French television in the evenings, and reading French magazines, websites and books - when talking, I feel very rusty already!

Apparently, this is blip number 500 today :-)