Fake heiress Anna Sorokin deported!

It's weird that I just wrote about her a couple of days ago and then tonight I read that she's been deported back to Germany. I think they made the right decision because I, for one, believe she would only just continue her cons if they allowed her to remain in the US. Look out Germany, I guess!

Curating stuff!

I took a short break from the news/social media this week and I have to admit it did me the world of good. I can never stay away too long but a fews days' break seems to do me so much good. Not that the horrid stuff goes away, of course, but it gives my mind a rest to turn it all off, however briefly!

The French elections are getting ever closer and I just saw tonight that two of the more prominent candidates have announced an agreement between their parties to try to oust Napoleon. The French have this weird (to my mind) election process where in order to even stand for election you have to have confirmed support from X number of French mayors. Florian Philippot has been out campaigning solidly for about a year now and I like him very much, but he didn't get enough mayoral support and cannot stand. So he has gotten together with Nicolas Dupont-Aignan (who will be running) to forge an alliance based on five campaign promises and they announced it in a large press conference tonight. Of course the other candidates don't get anywhere near the air time that Macron gets, so while I'm afraid it is almost a done deal that Macron will get back in (he has backers with deep pockets), I would love to see Dupont-Aignan make it through to the second round and maybe people would see that there is an alternative to Macron and vote him in! I don't go in for political debates much but those two working together would be my idea of a pretty darn good team!

On Thursday I drove André back down to Valence to pick up his new car and he is thrilled with it. It's definitely very nippy and everyone is suitably impressed, but when I filled my car back up with petrol when I got back - ouch! It's now at almost $10/gallon so I would think anyone that doesn't have to do the km will definitely avoid it. I just pity those that can't avoid it, although there is (and has been for some time) a big push to get people car-pooling so maybe some good will come out of this price hike!

I finished watching the Netflix series Inventing Anna last week and yet again it kinda blows my mind how seemingly easily some people can fool others! It's the true story (although embellished I would guess) of Anna Sorokin who claimed she was a German heiress and convinced not only friends and acquaintances to fund her lavish lifestyle but also big-name banks. She was 26 when she started her antics in the US and to be honest I didn't feel that the actress pulled it off as she just came across as a rather silly young girl who thought prancing around in a short skirt would make people fall for her lies. Well more fool me, I guess, because that seems to be exactly what happened. Then the other day I watched an interview with the real Anna Sorokin and boy did she come over as an extremely arrogant, smug young woman - you know, with a face you'd just like to punch. More surprising to me is that she was no great looker either. I mean, if she had been some stunning beauty I could maybe have understood the appeal but I guess it just goes to show that if you have the self-confidence or chutzpah to try it, you might just pull it off!

Anna Sorokin

Spring is definitely in the air now and with that come all my grandiose plans for a massive veggie garden - which of course probably won't pan out because I go off the boil too easily. That being said, I'm already watching gardening videos on my computer and just discovered a young English woman called Emma Bailey and am really enjoying her channel. She comes over as a bit dippy and a real giggler but it's such fun to watch her as opposed to the obnoxious Ms Sorokin!

Oh and I almost forgot to mention, Jen asked me the other day if she could throw a surprise 30th birthday party for Jordan at my place on 4 June. Of course I said yes, only to find out afterwards that I'll be hosting about 50 people if they all come!!!! Yikes, pray for good weather won't you! She and her friends will organize it all but will need my house and garden to host everyone. So the first thing I did was get myself a child gate to put across the back garage door - which is right next to the rather nasty cellar steps! There will potentially be five or six very young children at the party and those cellar steps have always given me nightmares whenever young children are around. That being said, Jordan and Jen came over on Saturday for Jordan to install my new bathroom sinks. In the meantime I spent my time on my hands and knees chasing Charlie (he's still not walking) and both grandma and Munchkin were exhausted at the end of the day. On the plus side, Jen had Charlie climb down my internal stairs for the first time very slowly on his belly, to a great round of applause when he finally got to the bottom. Judging by the smile on his face you'd think he'd just carried out a moon landing!

Having that party lined up means I really want to start getting rid of stuff - I just have way too much of it and the other night I was thinking "do you really want to spend the rest of your life curating stuff which, for the most part, has no real value to you"? So you store, dust and curate this stuff and then hopefully one day you will consider it "done". But what if that's the day you keel over dead having spent your lifetime curating crap and for what? I don't know, I think it's probably true that as we get older we start to realize we don't need all this stuff and it's really just another millstone around our necks - or am I wrong?

I think this hit home even more today as a friend from work sent me a message to ask if I'd heard that H had died in Australia? I hadn't, as it turned out, but H and I were friends, went out walking together occasionally or to the theatre and she and I shared an office for a couple of years in HR. She used to handle the job vacancies and very often people would try to get information out of her about what was going on with a particular vacancy. She was very professional and never discussed it with anyone, certainly never said anything to me about it, but in any case I was never interested anyway. But, I do remember her bursting out laughing one time and she just went "oh the poor sod". When I asked her what was so funny she mentioned that an external candidate had applied both for the position of Chief Economist and also for the vacancy for a delivery driver! Not the same skill set I would think but ....!

My kids adored H because when they were pretty young they would catch the train from school and meet me in the office to go home and she was always messing around with them. She would rib on them and they would make fun of her appalling French accent because despite many years living in Geneva she never mastered French or the accent for the limited French she did have. She didn't have children of her own (I don't think she wanted them), but was always great fun with the kids. While I wasn't her closest friend we were still good friends and at only a few years older than me it came as something of a shock this morning to hear about her relatively sudden death. As she always said "it's hard to fly like an eagle when you're surrounded by a bunch of turkeys"! RIP Chookie, my old mate!

So silly!

My niece just posted on FB a "Siegfried and Joy" video filmed in Germany. It is really silly - a kinda "failed magicians" gag à la Tommy Cooper, for those of you in the U.K. It was totally daft but it made a me smile, as I have the same juvenile sense of humour as she does! I've mentioned before that I love Gary Larsen. Indeed I bought the complete set of his works about 15 years ago (expensive) and also bought both my sons a set for Christmas 2021. When I told my niece how much her post made me laugh she mentioned The Gods Must Be Crazy film that she'd seen at my place over 20 years ago. She'd loved that so much that she went out and bought it for herself! Gosh I remember seeing that as a new release in Lyon in 1981 and my then boyfriend was on the floor of the cinema laughing. The first 10 minutes I remember thinking "what the heck ...." but afterwards it really kicked in and was just so silly. It was a low-budget film originally made in Afrikaans but it was such a success they had to go back and redo it in English. I actually bought the DVD in both English and French (had to get separate DVDs at the time) but I think it's probably on Youtube now too. If you don't enjoy "silly", I wouldn't bother, but if you do .... well, it's a hoot!

Like mother, like son!

André's car finally died a death last week. His dad had actually bought it new in 2009 and André bought it off him when dad moved back to the States in 2015. He loved that car but as he'd put quite a bit of money into it in 2021 I guess even he knew this latest breakdown was one too many. I think it's a 2009 Ford Mondeo Break but I'm not totally sure, and I don't really know the km on it because it had to have a totally new engine about seven years ago because his dad seemingly didn't believe in putting oil in it! Oh well, at least André got pleasure out of it for a few years. He called me middle of last week to say that he'd seen a car that he fancied on France's central database and what did I think of the price? Ha, as if I know anything about what constitutes a good deal! The only thing I told him is not to buy new because I reckon they depreciate about 10% as soon as you drive them off the lot! He told me that he had a zoom meeting with the bank on Friday to see about a loan and in the meantime I pulled up the bank's web page (we use the same bank), and without logging in I used their loan calculator to get a rough idea of how much he could expect to pay. Just to reiterate, I didn't log on to their site, I just used their calculator - as that's relevant to what happened a couple of days later. Anyway, the car he was interested in was in Valence (about 250 km from here) so I told him I would be happy to drive him down there on Saturday if he set an appointment up with the dealer. As the bank approved his loan on the Friday already, he needed to go there on Saturday morning to sign, so we agreed that I would pick him up and we'd head out straight after the bank. I got to his place around 9.30 a.m. and called to say I was outside. So he goes "so am I". Me: "no you're not, I'm by the entrance". Him: "yes I am and no you're not"! Say what? Turns out he'd sent me a text message (to which I'd replied "ok") saying that he'd come over to my place on his motorbike and we could leave from here. Ha, I was just about to get in the shower when he sent that message and didn't have my glasses on so I replied "ok" to us going together, but hadn't seen or been able to decipher the bit about him coming over here! Oh well, it worked out in the end, he signed the loan paperwork and by 10.30 we were heading out of my village. We'd only gone about 100 metres when my mobile went and although I don't usually answer to numbers I don't recognize, for some reason I stopped and picked this one up, and it was the bank saying that they'd seen I'd been looking at loan calculations yesterday and could they help? Say what? I hadn't logged on to their site and yet they still knew I'd been using their loan calculator! I've always known Big Brother is watching but I really never thought it was that bad! Seriously?

Traffic wasn't too bad considering it was a Saturday, and change-over day for the skiers, so when we got to within 50 km of Valence we pulled off at a motorway rest stop to get something to eat and boy was it crowded. André said he reckoned the restaurant should have asked for our vaccine passports but that place was heaving and they wouldn't have had a snowflake's chance in hell of scanning anyone's pass even if they'd wanted too - but nobody tried anyway! We must have been about 50 people lined up one on top of the other waiting to order, and maybe 200 people in there all in all - so much for social distancing right? Anyway, all's well that ends well, André fell in love with the car right there and then and in a few days we will be driving back down there to pick it up. So when I say he's just like me, I mean that we both make our minds up pretty much instantly. Heck he bought his apartment without even seeing it as it wasn't built yet - he just knew he liked the area and the floor plan, and look how well that worked out. And I'm the same, I knew instantly that I liked the house I'm in now, I can pick out shoes/clothes/glasses in about five seconds flat and pretty much tend to always go for the first thing that catches my eye anyway. Actually since I will hopefully be getting my bathrooms started soon (more on that in another post), I've been looking at tiling for the floor and walls and think I know what I'm going to buy already, after looking online for about 30 minutes!

What's more we had a really good time driving down there, yacking non-stop about anything and everything and it was great. I felt like I had lost my son to a certain extent at the end of my marriage because although it was my husband laying into me (hell, André would be the one dragging him off me most of the time), I think the fact that his dad would later burst into tears did a number on André and that was where I lost him. He told me once "you're strong and dad isn't" and while that's true, I felt it also cost me my relationship with my son as he felt he needed to "be there" for his dad. Thankfully that ended when my ex moved back to the States in 2015. Now, though, we have a great relationship and I'm really happy about that!

In fact just yesterday he called me to ask where I bought my tea bags as he had run out (the good quality ones we get in the UK, not the crappy Lipton stuff they drink over here). I told him where I buy them but also said he should be careful because if the Brits found out he'd let his stock of tea bags run out they might have to take his citizenship away! You can never be too careful these days! I usually buy them at the Chinese store up the road (they sell everything) and just pick them up when I see them (they're not always available), so I told him I would bring him some over on my way to the gym later. Well, when I got there, the weather was glorious and we ended up sitting on his balcony having a beer and putting the world to rights - as you do - so guess who didn't make it to the gym after all - yeah, me!

Talking of unwanted phone calls, I had a call on my mobile today from a Paris number. Like an idiot I picked it up and it was someone trying to get me to set up a monthly donation of €40 to Douleurs Sans Frontières (Pain Without Borders). I guess they're a bit like Doctors Without Borders but I'd never heard of them. Sadly I won't have anything to do with Doctors Without Borders since the day many years ago the then top guy (Bernard Kouchner) crashed his DWB-provided porsche!!!! He may well have co-founded a wonderful organisation, but I didn't like him much to begin with because he was forever falling to his knees "in distress" (great photo op) at some of the awful sites he visited and I just found him to be way too theatrical! Shame really, as I'm sure they do wonderful work! Anyway, I digress! As this bird was pushing very hard to get me to set up a monthly donation I told her that as I was sitting in front of my computer I was just going to look up how much their CEO's salary was and I would let her know. I didn't find it out, as it happens, but I told her I have my own preferred local charities (true) and was able to get her off the line eventually! Then tonight I got yet another bloody phone call on my landline at 8.45 p.m.!!! It's a number that routinely calls me without leaving a message, but seriously? They are calling at 8.45 p.m. and think they're going to get a good reaction?

And finally, poor Charlie has been sick again. Man oh man has that little boy been hammered during his first year! I know, of course, it's because of the day care but he really does seem to have been through the wringer. Jen managed to get an appointment with an out-of-hours doctor as she thought he had chickenpox, but it turned out to be hand, foot and mouth disease again! Say what? This was what he had when he was about five months old and was seriously miserable - much, much worse than covid, which he just sailed through. And we all thought it was a "one and done" but apparently not. Seeing where he got those blisters though (hands, feet, chin and mouth), it was quite obviously hand, foot and mouth again! I went over to help Jen out as the poor little guy was just miserable and wanted to be in someone's arms as much as possible - and then, two days later, he was over it again! The little boy next door also had it (same day care) so the neighbour was going through the same thing at the same time. Still, he's good now and as Tuesday was Carnaval (Mardi Gras) they asked the parents to dress the kids up. You know the character Where's Wally (in the UK), or Where's Waldo (in the US)? Well in France it's Where's Charlie so Jen's choice of outfit for the babe was a no-brainer! Not that he probably could care less, but I'm so glad he was well enough to go back to the crèche on Tuesday as they had a "special surprise" for all the children. And since we're all getting together as a family again on Sunday at Jordan and Jen's place for lunch and a board game afternoon, I'm sure there will be plenty of willing arms to spoil him rotten!

More this and that!

I got a call from the fuel people last week to say that they would be delivering on Wednesday morning "somewhere between 7 and 10 a.m.", so I rolled out of bed at 6 a.m. to get showered and dressed so he wouldn't catch me in my jimjams if I was the first delivery that morning! Damn was it cold! When I went outside to move my car so he could pull his truck onto my driveway, it was pitch black and freezing and once again it brought home to me how eternally grateful I am not to have to do that any more to go to work!!!! I always get a quote on the price per litre before they deliver and since fuel is what I would call a "miscellaneous" expense (rather than a monthly recurring expense) I keep track of those kinds of bills to know where I stand. But get this, I just so happened to order 1,300 litres of fuel back in June and again ordered 1,300 litres this time. In June my bill was €998 and this latest bill for the same quantity was €1,506!!!! Now I know there's always a price difference when ordering in summer as opposed to in winter but damn, that's a 50% price increase whichever way you look at it!

In other news, I had offered to Jordan to start getting the paperwork together for Charlie's US citizenship, since I know Jordan hates this kind of thing and in any case I have the time. When I looked on the US government website how to go about registering him, as I had a question I shot an email off to the consulate in Strasbourg. About a week later I got a response relative to a "US citizen child who routinely lives outside of the US" and directing me to a completely different link. I don't think it should be too difficult but they are asking for more information about my ex, as the American citizen grandparent. Well he's supposed to be coming over in March to meet Charlie so I gave Jordan a list of papers to ask his dad to scan before he heads over here. I have a scan of his passport (and maybe also his birth certificate) but as they also ask for proof of periods spent residing in the US I told him to ask his dad to either scan his latest tax returns or go to a notary and get some kind of attestation. My heart always sinks a little when I have to count on my ex to do something because so many times he would screw up and not do it "because he forgot" or because .... well who knows why! I used to refer to myself as his chaos janitor (but no more thank God), so I hope he doesn't let us down on this! And talking of family State-side, Jordan was telling me that things are not working out well at all now that the brother, M, has moved back in with grandma. That's no surprise to me, as I mentioned before, but I genuinely feel so, so sorry for her to be dealing with M and having to be his chaos janitor at her advanced age!

I must have been on something of a roll because after that I started trying to upload more paperwork onto the new site in connection with my request for French citizenship - and that was a collosal fail! My resident's permit has three different numbers on it and when I try to create an account it doesn't accept any of the numbers. Then when I try to go back into the old system (as they told me I could), I couldn't get any further than where I left off 18 months ago. So I contacted the Prefecture responsible for naturalisation requests and at first they tried to tell me it was because "my personal situation must have changed in the last 18 months". When I told them that I had divorced 10 years ago but other than that the only change to my status was that I had to apply for my resident's permit after Brexit, so I didn't really know what else to try. In the end they got back to me and said it was a "bug" they were aware of and were working on. I hope that's true because I'm getting nowhere fast right now!

On a positive note, Switzerland lifted 99% of covid restrictions on 17 February, the only remaining restrictions still in force being a requirement to wear a mask on public transport and in medical facilities. No problem there! No more having to show a pass to go to the cinema, the restaurant, to a hotel - nowhere! Thank God! France are tiptoeing around possibly lifting a few restrictions on 15 March, but I think the pressure is on now as more and more countries in Europe are doing away with the restrictions altogether. And of course we have elections coming up mid-April so I reckon he will have no choice but to declare that he's personally beaten covid and could we all just go and vote him back into office next month please!

Saturday morning I went to the market in St. Pierre as I wanted to try to catch the lady who makes the wicker baskets. As luck would have it she was there so I bought myself a new "I'm off to the farmers' market" basket, my current one being 12 years old and starting to show some wear and tear. We got chatting and she was telling me how hard things have been for her during the pandemic as she was not allowed to work for three straight months, so she is another person who will be more than glad when all these restrictions are lifted. After that I met Jen at a vide-grenier (jumble sale) where we picked up a few next-size-up clothes for Charlie for next to nothing. When I got home I decided to walk back into the village to try out our one and only restaurant, which is under new ownership. It used to be called La Fertire, but the (brave) new owners spent a couple of months renovating it, putting in a whole new menu and changed the name to The Variant (!!). Good luck to them. I'm not sure I would want to sink money into a restaurant venture in the current climate. The food was good I have to say and nobody asked me for my pass (although they should have), but I think I prefer the more traditional local cuisine rather than the fancier stuff they are offering. Either way the place was full yesterday lunchtime and I hope it works out for them!

Jen's mom drove up north last week to pick up her dad (grandpap) as she had work she wanted doing in her new apartment and, from what Jen told me, grandpap and grandma need "some time apart" as they have been getting under each other's skin recently! Grandpap is a pretty sociable chap (unlike grandma, who is - shall we say - "difficult") and he very kindly invited us to a restaurant for lunch today so we could all meet up. Despite being way past his nap time, Charlie was an absolute sweetheart, flirting outrageously with a much older lady at the next table and has grandpap absolutely smitten. I tell ya, when the little ones are good it is an absolute pleasure!

And finally, I got "smart" this week and instead of wasting hours sitting watching stuff on my computer first thing in the morning, I picked out a longer video every day and decided to do some yoga while watching it. I have never been one for "meditation" - indeed I usually end up making my shopping list when our teacher tries to get us to "concentrate", so it really didn't bother me to do the exercises while watching/listening to a programme. I felt so good after each session that on Thursday I decided to go back to the gym after goodness knows how many months. It must be nearly a year, since first the gyms were all closed during the various lockdowns and then, not having the pass, I wasn't allowed to go anyway. So with some trepidation I went and I loved it. There was just one man downstairs and another man in the weight room upstairs so I virtually had the place to myself. I took my time and started back up with the programme my trainer had set up for me many moons ago. And it was wonderful! I thought I would pay for it the next day but it really was pretty much ok. Oh I had a few aches in the ol' bingo wings, but other than that, nope, nothing, nada! Maybe it's the fact that spring is just around the corner, but I'm hoping/planning to go back again tomorrow and to start going twice a week thereafter. I'm sure it'll do me the world of good after so long. Who knows, maybe I'll be looking like Miss Ernestine by Christmas (but I wouldn't put money on it)!

Ernestine Shepherd, aged 85!

Damn!

Here's me telling Ms Moon the other day how I routinely save posts regularly so I don't lose them, and blow me but I've just written a whole post, saved it repeatedly as I went along when damn we had a power surge and I lost the whole lot!  That'll teach me to be smug, I guess!

So what was I saying? Hmm, well not much has been going on here to be honest. We had a glorious week last week but this week is looking to be pretty cruddy weather-wise so I guess spring isn't here yet! Jen and her mom took Charlie swimming on Sunday and he absolutely adored it. Then it was back home to prepare a fondue as they had invited us all over for lunch, followed by a board game afternoon. Everyone reckoned Charlie would be out of it after his swimming date, but not a bit of it. He was tearing around "playing football" with his dad and his uncle (I have the sweetest video) until one minute he was there and the next minute he'd crashed! 

While we were chatting Jen mentioned that Samuel had another race in Beijing that afternoon and while we watched out for him, sadly he didn't make it through to the finals. He's still something of a local celebrity over here and very much a winner in all our minds though! Then Jordan mentioned that Daniel, Samuel's younger brother, had switched rugby clubs recently. Jordan and Daniel had played rugby together since they were little but while Jordan dropped out eventually after one broken collarbone too many, Daniel kept going, proved himself to be pretty talented and has played professional rugby for about nine years now! Apparently he recently transferred from Toulon to premier league, Pau, and, would you believe it, their players earn between €25,000 and €45,000 per month! Yes, per month! And I'm delighted for him! I know a rugby career is not long, all the more so if they get injured, but I'm pretty sure Daniel has his head screwed soundly on his shoulders and will manage that money sensibly!

Daniel Ikpefan!

I see Macron was doing his statesman bit last week when he flew to Russia to see Putin - who promptly chewed him up and spat him out, as is his want! By all accounts Macron refused to take the Russian covid test, preferring to take one provided by his own doctor, so there were no handshakes, no photo ops sitting side-by-side, and they ended up "negotiating" over a table that wouldn't have been out of place in Buckingham Palace!

"Would you pass the salt please darling?"

As I'm pretty much a late bird, I've been getting my money's worth out of my Amazon Prime and Netflix subscriptions lately. The other night I watched The Tinder Swindler, which was a documentary narrated by three rather beautiful young women who were conned out of a lot of money. They never got their money back but the Dutch lady at the end was rather funny and managed to get some small revenge on him, although after spending just a short time in prison for a con committed in Israel, he's now apparently back out running around doing whatever it is con artists do!

After that I watched The Puppet Master which, again, depicted the true life events inflicted by another fraudster on totally innocent (but maybe guillible?) young people. Set in the 1970s in England, he told them he was a British agent who had infiltrated the IRA (Irish Republican Army) but they were on to him so he/they needed to go on the run, holing up in "safe house" after "safe house". Why they felt the need to go on the run when they had done nothing wrong is beyond me, but I guess many of these fraudsters are so good at what they do that people lose all sense of reason! He would have them call family begging for money to "help him escape" and literally robbed them of thousands of ££££ and years of their lives. Sadly, he is also still at liberty, vehemently denying he ever did anything wrong!

Then last night I finally finished the second series of Succession, and I have to say it has grown on me, after a somewhat bumpy start. I had never heard of Brian Cox but he does a sterling job of playing the domineering family patriarch. I have more of a problem with the prodigal son as the camera seems to be forever panning in to him whispering, stuttering or walking round with a face that looks like a melted candle, but I'll stick with it and watch the third series! So you can see, I wasn't lying when I said there truly isn't much going on here right now!

"Kendal Roy" in Succession!

And fnally I reckon I'm in for an expensive few months. I had a guy come in last week about replacing the three velux windows that are going rotten and I know I have to get a couple of new tyres when I take my car back in to get my snow tyres taken off. Then I realized that I might need to think about ordering more heating fuel as I don't like to let the tank get to less than half full. Ouch, 1,300 litres at today's prices - yeah, ouch! I used to order fuel through a cooperative based out of CERN (the European Nuclear Research agency just across the lake from here - you know, home of the Hadron Collider), but they have closed down their office there so now I order direct from the fuel people, but (hopefully) they are still giving me CERN-cooperative prices. They just called to say that they would be delivering tomorrow morning from 7 a.m. onwards - yikes - so I told her I hoped the driver wouldn't mind letting himself in 'cos I'm pretty sure I'll still be in my pjs at that time of the morning! I guess I'm not used to early morning starts any more, what with all the late night TV I'm watching!

This and that!

After a couple of weeks of being lazy as heck, I finally found my "oomph" coming back last week, thank goodness. I hate being lazy but I suppose it is winter and maybe it's not such a bad thing to just "chill" sometimes. I reverted to my old stand-by of setting the timer on my phone for an hour and it really has helped me get back to being somewhat productive. It's amazing what you can get done in an hour - or even 30 minutes - if you just set your mind to it! So I've been moving furniture (eeww, all that dust) and sorting and cleaning, and while there's still tons to do it feels good to see some progress. Or even just to know that there's progress because I cleaned behind that furniture!!!!

Jen told me the other day that she wanted to try and pick her English back up and asked if I would help her. No problem there, although while my grammar is good (our teachers were really strict), sometimes, when it's your native tongue, it's not always easy to explain why you say things a certain way. I also don't have the mind set of a teacher or communicator, but the other day we went through a few exercises and I was able to help her practice. Actually I think she will pick it up more and more as Charlie starts babbling too! She told me that while it can only ever be an advantage for her to speak English, she has been thinking about it more and more because if Macron gets back in and remains hell bent on his "Great Dictator" trajectory, they might start giving serious consideration to leaving France - even though that's not what they want to do! How sad is that! She has a couple of months left on parental leave but last week she met up with her director and a few colleagues for lunch. She took Charlie with her for 15 minutes and then Jordan went and picked him up so she could stay longer and chat. Before her maternity leave the unit was supposed to comprise 12 nurses but they were only eight, so already stretched. Two nurses resigned after the vaccine mandate was introduced and of course Jen went on maternity/parental leave, so they were down to just five. Now with the booster being mandated by 15 February, three more nurses are refusing to take it and a fourth is only considering it - so that leaves one nurse out of unit of 12! I guess if this continues she won't even have a job to go back to as they will have to shut the unit - hence the thoughts about leaving France! The irony is that France suspended 70,000 healthcare workers for refusing the vaccine mandate in a field that was already short staffed. Now many more are refusing the third jab so who knows where this is going! The even greater irony is that her hospital has asked staff who have tested positive for covid but are asymptomatic to come in to work! The world has gone totally mad! I certainly don't want them to leave, of course, but the situation in France at the moment is, I guess, just a question of waiting to see who blinks first! 

On a slightly happier note, both grandmas and André are invited over for a fondue on Sunday, to be followed by a few board games. Jen was telling me that as she is an only child and her mom is an only child, she loves that my family have always been very family-oriented and she wants Charlie to have the same experience (how lovely is that)!

Then I was chatting with my friend the other day about maybe taking a few days to go up to that roller coaster/railway in June when it opens and she is totally up for it. There seems to be a lot to do in that area but when I looked at the prices of hotels nearby - crikey - I had forgotten how expensive Switzerland is!!! Still, I haven't been anywhere for three years so who's counting! My friend then told me that she'd been chatting with another neighbour who said that she'd been in her car leaving the supermarket parking lot the other day when a woman tapped on her window asking for directions. The woman drew her attention for a few minutes and then an accomplice (not sure if it was a man or a woman) opened the passenger door and stole her purse!!!! Now I know this has always happened but I would be in big schtuck if my purse was snatched because - money aside - I usually have my passport and resident's permit in there, as well as credit cards and so on. But ladies, we all do it don't we - handbag plonked down on the passenger seat! Anyway, when I went shopping yesterday I just took a bum-bag with me, but I can't say I like it! I guess some people will do anything rather than work though, right?

In other news, on 6 February Queen Elizabeth celebrated her Platinum Jubilee - i.e. 70 years on the throne - and I saw a news item that really tickled me. Somewhere (in China I guess), a company had been churning out (unofficial) commemorative mugs, but had unfortunately gotten the English wrong, so now they have a whole bunch of mugs for sale with "in celebration of Queen Elizabeth II's Platinum Jublee"! Ha, I would love one of those if I can get my hands on one!

And finally, when I was over at Jordan and Jen's the other day Jordan asked if I had spoken to his dad lately. I told him that I don't call him but I call Ammy (grandma) a couple of times a year. My ex has a brother who must be around 53 now. He was recognized as (slightly) mentally disabled many years ago and receives a small disability allowance. I'm not sure how well he can read and I know he has difficulties with money and so on, but many years ago, in his 20s, he had a job cleaning at Walmart, social services found him a small place (that he kept spotlessly clean) and he had a social worker to help him manage his finances and other administrative matters. It was a nice little set-up! Now my ex was hot-headed, but this brother was my ex on steroids, so mom and dad had to back away from trying to "help" him and let social services take over as he was forever cussing them out and could be very intimidating. Oh they saw him every week and he was invited to all the family get-togethers but they had to let social services handle him and that stinking temper of his. Anyway, one day he (yet again) decided that his manager at work "wasn't gonna tell him what to do" and stormed out - and I'm pretty sure he hasn't worked since (so that would be around 20 years now)! Around that time he got together with K (who may or may not have been special needs - I don't know as I never met her), but she had been married and had three grown up kids. Trouble was, M and K can only be described as "bringing the worst out in each other" and they ended up moving in with her grandparents as neither of them were working. Then social services intervened and took grandma out of there as the place was filthy (dixit my ex-MIL), so that left grandpa paying the rent and M and K pretty much living in a doss house, spending half their time at the bar or wherever it was they went each day. Anyway, last week M woke up to find that an apparently healthy K had died in her sleep at the age of 53! To say it was a shock would be an understatement, I guess. I don't know what the upshot of it all was but as they weren't married and he didn't get along with her kids I'm not even sure if he will ever know what happened. Anyway, my ex spent all last weekend ferrying M's stuff out of there and back up to grandma's, and man oh man, that is NOT going to work. They have been talking about having him start job hunting, but both grandma and my ex live out in the boonies and M doesn't drive. Eighty-six year old grandma and M living at home together will be a disaster (she once told me she is actually afraid of him), so where does that leave everybody? They have a sister who lives nearer to the city but I'm pretty sure she's not going to want to have M moving in with her and her family either. What a bloody mess! Years ago my ex told me he was "thinking about having M come over here to France and move in with us so he could 'sort him out'"! What a joke, my ex couldn't sort his own life out let alone M's. I pointed out to my ex that M had no right of abode in France, no skills, would have no income or health insurance and he didn't speak French so what on earth made him think the French would give him a visa! I also told him straight up that if he tried to bring M over here I would take the kids and leave - so that thankfully put paid to that hare-brained scheme! Hell he was in his 20s, had a job, medical insurance and an apartment and we were supposed to take him away from all that in order to "sort him out"???? But again, what a bloody mess! I don't envy any of them trying to deal with him, but I have to admit that I am selfishly so eternally grateful not to have to deal with this new situation!