Back on the air

We were planning a trip to the Netherlands at the end of November, looking forward to sharing Thanksgiving with American friends. But then Oscar turned up with an abrasion on his cornea. First we postponed the trip, then cancelled, when the eye took a while to heal and we couldn't ask the cat hotel to give him drops eight or nine times a day and take him in for checkups. And then just as Oscar's eye was declared well, Sophie came down with a mystery virus, not eating and barely moving all day. Another  week of worry. All this plus a couple of days with no phone or internet have left us feeling a bit incommunicado.

On Remembrance Day proper, we attended our local ceremony. We met at the mairie, and followed the flag procession to the church. A wreath was laid at the monument, there were two minutes of silence, the mayor read the state proclamation, the vice mayor read the list of the dead. Not fancy, but moving. (The left side of the church is 12C.)

Following the ceremony, there was a small drink (hot chocolate or wine) at our newly re-opened Salle Polyvalente, the hall where town events are held. A modern addition has been tacked onto the historic, old barn. The new bit provides some extra space and has new kitchen facilities and toilets. (The toilets were in an out-building and there was no proper kitchen.)

Over the last year or so, many of the large grocery store chains have started offering a "drive-through" option where you place your grocery order on-line then drive through to pick it up, kind of like drive-through banking. Our more or less regular shopping day was on the day this opened and we thought to give it a try, but the catalog wasn't available on-line the day before because the Drive wasn't open yet. So we've yet to try this and are not really sure it offers anything for us. (We prefer to choose our own veggies!) We read in the paper that this is a big nation-wide trend now, and is uniquely French. They say it's popular although we've never seen a car at any of the stations.

And in the local news we've read that the number of cantons in the Charente will be reduced from 35 to 19, starting in 2015. The canton is an administrative level between the commune, the town where we live, and the arrondisement. Currently our canton is near-by Montemboeuf, but will change to fairly near-by Chasseneuil sur Bonnieure. We've never had any business at the canton or arrondisement level, so we doubt this will have any affect on us. For official stuff like our cartes vitales and car registrations, we go to an office in the capital of the department, Angoulême. There are also stories that the Poitou-Charentes region will disappear in the future with some or all of the departments to be merged with Aquitaine, which is actually historically accurate. It's all part of a general move to reduce expenses by consolidating administrative functions. We'll see.

One afternoon we did some volunteer work at our local SPA, the animal protection people, like the ASPCA. We walked three pairs of dogs, cage-mates, and came home exhausted. We might try to make this a regular activity.

Ed's Montbron choir did two very nice carol concerts, both full of carolers. These shows involved three weeks of extra practices. This is the group before the second concert.

On Sunday we went to the marché de noël in Chassenon to look for treats for our xmas dinners. Several of our favorite stands were missing, but we managed still to come away with a bagful of goodies. The market is held on the church parking lot, with the church largely obscured by the tents. We popped around a side street to find the front of the 14C church. It shows very old brickwork with an ancient carving above the door and is largely built of stone from the meteorite that fell in the area about 200 million years ago.

The first three weeks of December have been mostly lovely, some nighttime freezers, very sunny, daytime highs sometimes in the double digits (C). Just in time for the holidays, though, the weather has turned gray and drippy. North of us they are having severe storms, but we're just having a bit of wind and rain.