French Life

We established over an "apero" on Friday night that Jean-Jacque and Nadine like playing cards, as we do. So we were invited round on Saturday evening to be taught a new card game "Belotte". Quite a challenge for all of us, you try and explain "whist" to a foreigner ! However this game was far more complicated than whist, the cards change their value depending on the circumstances - and I (Sue) kept getting them confused. You play with a partner and JJ was mine. I'm sure he's been to an English whist drive because I got an inquisition if I played the wrong card! Nevertheless we had a good evening and it must have been good for the language skills.

We haven't had any post for about 10 days as the delivery staff are on strike. We dont know what the problem is but we saw a demonstration outside the post office in Gourdon last week and recognised our post lady. The dispute is purely local but you take direct action if you are not happy, well as far as I know that is the French way of sorting things out. Yesterday " the bush telegraph" informed us that all the village mayors had made arrangements to collect the mail from Gourdon and we could collect ours from St. Germain town hall at 14.30 (can you imagine the Chairman of the Parish Council in England doing that). I arrived at the appointed hour only to find a queue of about 100 in front of me. The average age of the queue was 75, and I should think they only get one letter a week but it was an event so they didn't want to miss anything. Nadine and I refused to wait while they sorted out the mountain of post so she went back an hour or so later, but there were still 10 people in front of her. The strike will have to go on for a very long time before we make the effort to collect anymore post , although John's not so friendly Gendarme keeps ringing him up to see if he has received his French Driving Licence yet so that he can put the points on it. Get the feeling he will not accept a postal strike as a valid excuse.