A whirlwind week!

I knew last week was going to be a busy one and ho boy, was it ever. I don't usually mind as long as I can keep on top of where I've got to be and when, but sometimes it felt like I never got out of sixth gear! At least all the dashing around allowed me time to listen to my latest book on Audible - even if I'm not sure that I'm particularly enjoying it. I don't know what it is about this book - maybe it's the author's voice that grates on me, I'm not sure - but even while I think, on balance, it's a good book I'm struggling. I won't mention the name of it because I'll just sound like a peasant since she is both a successful poet and writer, but I obviously (obviously!) don't have the soul of poet and am struggling. She has a good story to tell but I feel like all I'm hearing is "so I Google earthed my home last year, and my son's bike was in the front yard" (followed by a 20 minute soliloquy), and "then I Googled it the year before and my daughter's stroller was in the yard" (followed by another soliloquy) and I'm thinking "lady, just get on with the bloody book, would ya"! So anyhoo the jury's still out on this one!

On Monday I was determined to go to yoga, despite the fact that just a couple of hours later I had my naturalisation ceremony, so it was a bit of a dash to get home and changed before showing up for that! While I was sitting listening to the speech welcoming new citizens I couldn't help thinking about how lovely I find France to be and yet how f....d up this government is trying to destroy it - oh and how they "forgot to mention the €50 billion more in debt the country is than was announced prior to the legislative elections in the summer"! There were about 20 of us receiving our déclaration de naturalisation that day and in most cases the Maires of the respective villages were there to present the papers to their new "citizens". Not in my case though but that was ok with me. When I mentioned this to my neighbour she said she had seen him the previous week at the lunch for Octobre Rose (the breast cancer support movement) and he had actually looked away from her when he walked past!!!! This man knew her husband as he had been on the local council for years and had been invited to their home on many an occasion, and knew that her husband had recently died, but didn't even acknowledge her presence, let alone extend his condolences! So nah, I didn't need that jerk handing me my paperwork, thank you very much.  After that I had to dash off to sewing club as I have the keys to open up, so all in all Monday was a very long day!

Then on Tuesday I had to drop my car off to get winter tyres put on, so thought I'd be good and walk back into town in the evening to pick it up (about 45 minutes). Wednesday I was up and out at seven to take my neighbour to drop her car off at the garage and then dash back into town for 11.30 to pick up my new French ID and passport. The ironic thing is that according to all my paperwork I have been French since last November (so two months after I applied) so it intrigues me somewhat that I had to go to Grenoble in March for my citizenshp interview. I mean, why bother if I was already French?

Since my neighbour's car wasn't ready that evening I suggested to her that the next day we both walk into the village to catch the little ole bone-breaker of a bus into town so that she will be confident enough to know that she can find her way round the bus system (spartan as it is) if ever she's stuck. I told her it'd be like going on a girls day out and she laughed, but in the end it turns out that the young heating engineer who had been called out to service her heating system said that he was going past the garage and dropped her off on his way to Annecy! Now I'm sure this is totally against company rules (I mean, would she be covered by his insurance if he had an accident), but it did go to show that there are some nice people out there too doesn't it!

The parking situation in town is now absolutely hell, even though the Thursday market has now been moved from the town square to the side streets. The problem is that when the commuter train (the Léman Express) was inaugurated people were (rightly) encouraged to use that to travel into Geneva for work. Trouble is, while "park 'n ride" is a great idea, there's not much point "riding" if they hadn't given any thought to the "park" side of the equation. This Maire is the guy who decided it wasn't necessary to have any kind of ramp or elevator at the train station to allow people to get across the train tracks, and now it would seem that encouraging people to catch the train all while not making sufficient parking spaces available to them - well you just end up with people parked all the way into town and a lot of pisssed off local shopkeepers whose customers just give up! So on Thursday, knowing I wouldn't be able to park because of (a) the market and (b) the commuters, I again got up at the crack of dawn and caught the bone-shaker bus into town for my pilates lesson, and while that was fine I subsequently learned that the jacket I routinely wear in this weather - well it's not totally waterproof! Damn! Since I got there so early I was chatting to our teacher and nearly fainted when she told me that she teaches 28 classes a week! She's in her early 60s and has thighs that could probably crack walnuts, so talk about feeling deflated after feeling so proud of myself for walking into town on Tuesday!

Anyhoo, on Friday I decided that I was going to go out and treat myself to a totally waterproof jacket - (which would obviously be necessary if I was going to keep up with all this walking)! So I drove down to the Mountain Store in Passy, found exactly what I wanted, along with a more appropriate (read "waterproof") backpack and then headed out for a walk around the lake - one of my favourite places round here. When I picked up my passport on Thursday I asked about how to go about getting on the electoral register and she told me to take x,y,z paperwork to my local Mairie on Monday. Well I looked it up online instead when I got back from the lake and within about five minutes it was done! And the next day I got a phone call from the secretary to say that I was registered! Talk about efficient!

Then on Saturday a group of us from sewing club agreed to meet up in Scientrier to drop off the beanies we had made for the cancer survivors' association and would you believe we had actually made 85 all told for the association to hand out to any of the ladies who wanted them. Then we went off to enrol in the 8km walk that was also being held to raise funds for the Association, and given the size of the crowd (maybe a couple of hundred) I'm pretty sure they easily raised over €1,000 just from the walk participants alone. When we got back there was a zumba class for anyone who wanted to join in (no thanks), but I thoroughly enjoyed myself that day and when you're yacking non-stop, 8km goes by very fast!

Anyone for zumba!

And finally today I made it down to the château for the exhibition of work by local artists. I've mentioned before that "art" usually doesn't do much for me - well too much of it, at least - but by golly there was some talented artists' work on display!

The château in La Roche!

Then I met up with Jordan and Jen in the château's grounds as we knew that La Roche was having its annual Venetian-style carnaval parade. We didn't know where or when, but as luck would have it, we were seated exactly where the parade started and got to see everyone up close and personal. The weather was lovely and having a bird's eye view of the parade was the icing on top of a very lovely cake!