Salut

Hello to all , I am trying to look at a new way of involving more people in our Blog.
Please go to CafePierreNing This is a Social Network site that may be what we are looking for? Anyway it is certainly worth a try!

Peter

Hello everybody

It is the beginning of term and the renewal of our contacts I hope it will be fruitful with a lot of exchanges.

First of all: a short funny article.

Article found in a local newspaper

In our cathedral, we can find surprising things engraved in stone. A journalist tacked a snapshot of a figure located in the crypt, decorating the base of the ribbed vault. When the sculptor made his or her work, he or she let himself or herself go and sculpted… human buttocks!





Apart from the fact it is in a house of God, what is funny is:

Figure (same word in English or in French for this place of sculpture) is the word to define the face in French!
This type of sculpture is named in French Cul-de-lampe. I’ll let you guess the meaning of the first part of the word!
Outside the cathedral, there are seven other of the same figures!
We don’t know who the model was: a man or a woman? No clues..

Claude.

Whistle-blowing

I read in the Gazette of Middlesbrough (on the web) that a firm bought another firm which provides whistle-blowing service. In my dictionary, a whistle-blower is someone who dare say things that another people do not. It seems to me he or she is an informer or a kind of spy. I don’t exactly know the meaning.
If someone can tell me what a whistle-blower is and a whistle-blowing service can be?
Thanks a lot for this information.
It will be better for you to answer in French!

First Lady of France

The news has surely arrived up in Middlesbrough: President Sarkozy divorced Cecilia his second wife. I suppose that the tabloids in Great Britain made their headlines with this information because I believe they are fond of this kind of news! In France, we were not surprised because before the Presidential Election, they have not already lived together and Cecilia Sarkozy ‘eloped’ from France to go to the US and live the ‘perfect love’ with another man! We don’t know what the reason for their divorce was. In this case, we say in France: when the shutters are closed, we don’t know what is happening.
Cecilia probably came back to France for the election only because in terms of ‘image’ it was better for the candidate to have someone beside him to play the Jackie Kennedy or Hilary Clinton… Some people say they had a deal just for the election. The result looks like that!
The question is: ’but who will be the next First Lady’? Some names are spreading: hush… it is a secret…. In France, it is forbidden to spread this kind of information in the newspapers. Everything is pillow talk (‘bruits d’alcove’ in French). Everybody knows that the last three Presidents were not faithful but they stayed as a couple just for their image!

Just for fun: Bertrand Delanoë the major of Paris would like to be the next President in 2012. I wonder who the first Lady could be. You could try to answer the question.

Claude

France: an English summer?

In France this summer, we had the result of global warming! The summer has been rotten. Except at the edge of the Mediterranean Sea, everywhere else the weather has been execrable: rain, wind, and snow in the mountains with low temperatures. Apart from short periods, the tourists or holidaymakers have not been lucky: deserted beaches, evenings by the fireside, ‘compelled’ museum visits, games and long stays inside pubs…. Sun lotion was not necessary, sweaters, mackintoshes and ponchos replaced them. At the edge of the Mediterranean Sea if there has not been rain for four months the weather has been windy and the water rather fresh…Sometimes in high winds people ran away from the beaches because the sand was stinging their eyes and their body.
The funny thing is that some meteorologists learnedly said at the beginning of this year there would be a heat wave in August and we would be short of water! We have seen the result! When specialists are not able to forecast the weather for the next day, then for the coming months and years it is pure chance…
In French popular memory such weather is to compare with the one they think they could find in England (maybe rightly so!!!)

Claude

Sorry to have lost !

Last Saturday was a gloomy evening for French people. We lost the rugby match against our ‘best centuries-old foe’…We lost because our team was not the best or the English players were! Never mind, for me it is just a game. It wasn’t the case for everybody if you looked at the appearance of people after the match in the television report. The excitement was finished and sometimes some people were crying…. The pub’s customers were not numerous nor, of course, the consumption of beer or other alcoholic drinks (Poor pub managers and their turnovers)! I am sure there has been a positive transfer to … England with probably the hangovers too!!!

Well done to your team and good luck for next Saturday.

Claude.

Merci mille fois Bourges

Hello to all in Newcastle and welcome to Boro Bourges-live.

Merci mille fois Sylvia pour vos mots!