Goings On

Well, Mum has left us this week to return to the chill of Europe, and the island has mourned her departure with day after day of rain, rain, rain...! When she has organised her photos, I will hijack them and blog her stay (hint hint!). Now I am having to get up early with CassCass (I very much appreciate your 6am or earlier wake-ups Mum, and all those lie-ins I got!). The girls have been enjoying the books she made with pictures of car symbols on each page. When it stops raining we are going out with paper and pen to copy the ones she missed - LissaLou did a mighty fine attempt at a Peugeot yesterday! Then wrote PEJO (with J backwards!) under, and I suggested that it was creole!

Today Bertie has gone to Sainte Rose with CassCass and Mamie to buy some seedlings. Papy hired a man and a van, nope, sorry a tractor I mean, to plough his land at Pika (two new french words for me - first he had to hacher several times the land, then silloner it- all over a space of a few weeks to allow the land time to repose and take in the sun) and has given some space to Bertie. I am hoping for tomatoes, peppers, various herbs, and given the price of lettuce at the market right now (€4 a kilo!! we are eating every last leaf to get our money's worth!) hopefully some of that too.

LissaLou is at school and off to the swimming pool - it is outdoors so they will be wet from below and from above!

I am carrying on my cleaning campaign which I have shamefully neglected over the past weeks. Perhaps I will bake too, who knows?

Baby JoJo is happily crawling around investigating everything in his path, but I shall put him to bed soon. I have hung his mobile up next to his cot and for the first time in a long time, he went to bed without crying as his eyes were fixed on the spinning giraffe!

Other events of note this week...Bertie made chichis and most delicious they were too, though a very strange shape and we shall ignore the fact that his nephew Steeven said they tasted like bokits! Chichis are a bit like the Guadeloupean form of doughnuts (beignets) but long and thin and dipped in sugar or nutella. Very good for you, as you can tell!

Wednesday night there was a BIG match at the stadium next to our house, as the winners get to play against a mainland French team in the next round. In honour of the occasion, the street sellers were out in mass (we were tempted to go and sell our chichis but decided the average man in the street may not be discerning enough to appreciate the unique taste and form they had...!). The underdog team from Petit Bourg had also brought along their own personal band to support them, with drums and other instruments I was at a loss to identify. The (loud) music began before the match, and went on, and on, and on, and on... Bertie said they would play the whole match to encourage their team and that they did! It obviously worked, as they won.

I thought the music was gwoka, which is local traditional drum playing , but in fact it was carnival style. Apparently the carnival season lasts THREE months this year and every Sunday the bands will be parading past our house practising! Better get used to the noise! I really enjoyed listening to it, and was so tired that it didn't stop me going to sleep as the match went into extra time and then penalties for good measure!

Speaking of football, I hope you have all been following the stunning renaissance of the Hotspurs recently?!

Unfortunately Premier radio's Listen Live isn't working at the moment - I like to put it on at 8am and 6pm for the worship hours!

Right, I shall don my ipod (SMILE!), get out the vinegar and get scrubbing!

Thank You Thank You Thank You!

This is a message of thanks to those marvellous members of my family (you know who you are!) who made my day, no week, no year! and sent me over an ipod nano for my birthday! Sigh, such joy!! What a marvellous surprise, and I will therefore forgive you of all the mean Spurs jokes you have been making. Watch out, we are on our way back up...

I will also hold you same people responsible for the fact that I am up at 1.15am acquainting myself with iTunes and having a great time downloading songs - I shall no doubt regret it tomorrow morning!

In fact, this very morning I said to Bertie that I missed having music on, especially doing the cleaning, as our computer decided not to play CDs (only DVDs for some strange reason) a couple of weeks into our stay here. I am so glad that will no longer be the case! However, I will have to go to my niece and ask her if and how to download all the songs from my CDs to the ipod. Being the technically savvy person she is, I am sure this won't be a problem.

So today's question - what was the first song you put on your ipod? Mine runs as such...
Michael W Smith - You are Holy and Never Been Unloved (highly recommend these two, you can find them both on YouTube too)
Tim Hughes - God of Justice
Now I shall have to decide how many songs to limit myself to each month in the interests of frugality and budgeting!