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Our mais avec a peine assez d'essence pour remplir un reservoir .... Thanks for kind comments Mint. At moment enjoying Indian Ocean 200km south of Monbassa with family. ..... sorry had to come clean.

Chancer, you have the correct meaning. The word has been around for as long as I can remember. We also say " quelle galere" when talking about a situation that is causing/has caused us hassle. Les pauvres, ils ont galere toute la journee mais la terrasse est maintenant terminee. The word comes from "galere" when prisonners were sent to spent some time rowing in the under belly of a ship as often seen in Roman times.

Carnivore is no longer the same since they stopped (by local authority request) offering zebra and other "odd" sounding pieces of meat. Last time I came they had buffalo balls which were ok but so strong in flavour. I agree, crcodile is tough and tasteless.

Al !!! Thanks but no thanks, I have just read your Email to my wife (sat opposite me) who now wants to do this dawn hot air balloon rise ...... Could you just reply it's not available during May/June ? As for the Hilton hotel Manager, I will pass on your best regards hoping for a couple of free cocktails in exchange. Went to "Talisman" last night an the food was great. Leaving "Carnivore" for departure date a week Friday. Visiting here for 2 weeks as eldest daughter's work took her here for 2 years. Off to the Indian Ocean coast at the weekend (youngest daughter joining us from the UK) but heading to http://www.sanctuaryfarmkenya.com/index.php/home tomorrow morningfor 2 nights :-)

[quote user="Loiseau"] (BTW, can "à peine" mean "plenty"? I don't think I have ever seen that sense of it.) Angela[/quote] "a peine" in this case "a peine rentable" means hardly worth the bother. "a peine" is often used for meaning "a little of" it never means "loads/lots".. Various examples: - Il faut mettre un peu de sel dans la pate a crepe, mais "a peine", un soupcon. - Tu tournera le robinet a gauche pour avoir de l'eau chaude mais "a peine" sinon tu a de l'eau bouillante. - Au restaurant, tu fais "a peine" un geste de la main et 2 serveurs viennent voir ce qu'il te faut.

All. Hello from Nairobi where I am sitting in the 15th floor lounge on the Hilton. Cloudy but warm. "Rentable" .... It means that a situation, deal etc. is worth doing as "unlikely to lose". Angela needs to take her tablets more (or less) often ..... "Pas rentable" is the contrary as in "not worth doing".

Speaking Franglais is sometime very useful. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZvrcjDWc70

En argot ....... c'est d'la merde !

[quote user="Loiseau"]Ha ha! Just seen this headline in Le Figaro online: "Royaume-Uni: Boris Johnson, un ex-maire de Londres à la langue bien pendue" It's a wonderful image, I must say... I suppose we would say "has a good turn of phrase" or "has the gift of the gab" perhaps? Angela[/quote] It means he talks too much .....

I'm not an avid reader (unlike our eldest daughter but she is intellectual). This is probably the best book I have ever read and I was only 16 years old: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Grand_Meaulnes

Navel gazing = Regarder son nombril (pronounce non-brie). Tortilla, i like them !

If you can't find that switch, you could always wire a low energy bulb into the system. Light on chauffe-eau on.

And by the way, I have been privileged to visit Irkurtsk on lake Baikal many times over the years. Spring, autumn and winter. Autumn visits (fueled by large doses of vodka supplied by the customer), boat trip on the lake and skinny deeping (only 2 of us went for it) in a water that was just about to turn into ice. Winter visit, BBQ on the iced over lake !!!, crazy golf using bright orange balls. I clearly remember drinking imported red wine out of a plastic cup and literally watching the surface of the wine turn into ice crystals (didn't wait any longer and gulped it all down). Spring, attending an outdoor camp (all houses made of tree trunks, all with one single room inside with a large double bed and an enormous wood stove in the corner). I could just imagine a weekend there in the middle of winter. Also went to a "Banja (banya)" or sauna hut by a stream surrounded by a huge forest. Wood fired stove for the sauna and deep jump-in pool fed by the stream to cool off after. Vodka was always available on all occasions. My friend Yuri (Yura) Vassiliev, had a phobia of flying. He would therefore travel to Moscow by train (a journey of 5 days !!!) instead of flying the 6 hour journey. Happy days.

C’est l’histoire d’un mec, Sylvain Tesson, qui décide de vivre une expérience d’ermite avant ses 40 ans. Se retirer de la civilisation, fuir les contraintes sociales et les gesticulations qui accompagnent la sortie du nouvel Iphone. Il va même par voie de conséquence louper la dernière saison en date de Dr House et la fin de la Ligue des Champions. Il devrait avoir bien les boules… mais non. Parce qu’il est comme ça, Sylvain, la vie moderne le gonfle un peu. Il choisit une région qu’il a déjà traversée lors de ses pérégrinations d’écrivain-voyageur et se fixe donc sur un coin qui attire peu les yachts de pop-stars ni même le vacancier allemand : le lac Baïkal, au Sud de la Sibérie. Avec neige à haut débit. Le Lac Baïkal, c’est on ne peut plus rustique. On a même coutume de dire que « c’est beau, mais c’est chiant ». A noter que l’endroit est également (peu) fréquenté par des Russes rustres qui ne sont pas les derniers à boire des coups en regardant au loin, le regard hagard et la pensée fugace. On a envie de dire à Sylvain : excellent choix, tu vas bien te faire ch… et pouvoir faire connaissance avec ton toi intérieur. En même temps, c’est un peu l’objectif… Car Sylvain Tesson va relater cette expérience de vie via un journal qui fait aujourd’hui l’objet de ce livre à grand succès. Chaque jour, notre ermite va noter ses impressions, ses pensées, ses activités quotidiennes, en enfilant les aphorismes et les verres de vodka glacées (sans avoir besoin du moindre frigo à froid ventilé tant le climat est rude). Accessoirement, Sylvain Tesson poétise abondamment, ému par la beauté simple et austère des paysages et animaux qui lui tiennent lieu de compagnons, et pas peu fier de son expérience. « Dans le hamac, j’étudie la forme des nuages. La contemplation, c’est le mot que les gens malins donnent à la paresse pour la justifier aux yeux des sourcilleux qui veillent à ce que « chacun trouve sa place dans la société active ». » Surtout (et parce qu’il n’a quand même rien d’autre à foutre), il va profiter de cette robinsonnade pour faire un point sur sa vie et LA vie en général. Depuis son point de chute, Sylvain semble heureux, sans contraintes autres que celles qui consistent à occuper son corps (balades de 20 km, coupe de bois, patinage artistique..), remplir son estomac, lire des bouquins et regarder le panorama. Sylvain Tesson se place en retrait du monde et jouit du bonheur d’être détaché de tout matérialisme. « Rien ne me manque de ma vie d’avant. Cette évidence me traverse alors que j’étale du miel sur mes blinis. » (je me permets de couper cette citation extraite de la page 176 : sur ce coup-là, c’est un peu Philippe Delerm au pays des Soviets dans « La première bouchée de blinis »… Mais cessons de faire le malin et reprenons…) « Rien. Ni mes biens, ni les miens. Cette idée n’est pas rassurante. Quitte-t-on si facilement les habits ajustés de ses 38 ans de vie ? On dispose de tout ce qu’il faut lorsqu’on organise sa vie autour de l’idée de ne rien posséder. » Dans les forêts de Sibérie constitue pour Sylvain Tesson la preuve qu’il se donne à lui-même que ses nourritures spirituelles le satisfont plus grandement que tout le jeu social et matériel de cette vie urbaine qui l’oppresse tant. Sa démonstration est assez efficace et l’on ressort de la lecture de ce texte avec la confirmation que le monde moderne n’est qu’un parc d’attractions où les mieux lotis cherchent les animations les plus efficaces pour occuper le temps qui passe. Et donc ? Est-il vraiment besoin de fuir à ce point la modernité pour prouver la supériorité de l’esprit sur le matériel ? Ne peut-on pas arriver aux mêmes conclusions sans pour autant adopter un tel radicalisme dans son choix de vie, aussi temporaire soit-il ? Et pourquoi pêcher soi-même des ombles dans le trou d’un lac gelé plutôt que de faire confiance à une aimable poissonnière ? Il traîne chez Sylvain Tesson un fond de misanthropie qui le pousse à la fuite et l’aide à supporter la difficile épreuve du froid et de l’isolement. Le détachement, l’expérience d’ermitage aident assurément à mettre sa propre vie en perspective mais il est difficile pour le lecteur d’envier l’auteur, malgré tous ses efforts pour nous convaincre de la justesse de sa perspective. Si ce n’est dans l’idée – et seulement l’idée – d’un dénuement révélateur. Le fin mot de cette histoire ? Sylvain Tesson revient de son séjour d’homme des bois et va affronter le monde en lui livrant Dans les forêts de Sibérie. L’acte d’isolement est suivi d’un acte immensément social, la sous-exposition au monde succédant ironiquement à la sur-exposition due au succès de son livre. Etrange besoin de partage, finalement… Qu’aura-t-il vraiment fui, au juste ? Le récit de Sylvain Tesson fait dans une certaine mesure l’effet que peuvent produire certains urbains lorsqu’ils annoncent fièrement leur départ à la campagne car « non, vraiment, on n’en peut plus de la ville… Et puis pour les enfants, c’est mieux… Le grand air, le calme…». L’idée est séduisante mais, en Sibérie ou ailleurs, pour combien de temps ?

Yes but ......no cherries ... ;-)

Defo NO CONFETTI !!! Rose petals ok but might be hard to get for next week ..... in my days, we used to throw rice (uncooked).

Shepherd's pie.

Why have a "tree" when you can have a useful "fruit tree".

Those were pushing the limits ..... and I often had to ask for help. However, the mini reports that used to make the Sunday Post were the right format for me.

My GreatGrandMother used to use the word "jadis" a lot. Younger generation use it less nowadays in common daily chats. She would tell me ..." au temps jadis nous faisions this/that". As for the Easter Eggs, we have always put the chocolate eggs around our small gardens for my younger brothers to go and find/collect on Easter Sunday morning. One year, the 3 young kids two doors down woke up earlier than my brothers and came in to collect the eggs from our garden. In France, Church bells travel to Rome overnight and on their way back, drop the goodies in your gardens/balconeys/flats before heading home to the local church.

In deed, well done Mint ! It's great when one can apply a new phrase/word in a discussion. When I arrived in England with limited language knowledge in the mid-80's, I first signed-up for night classes at the local college. It's when eventually, after a few months of attending, I realised that "preterit" was the same as "passe compose", I stopped going to the classes and continued learning the language from reading newspapers (easy to associate the articles with what was happening in the world), TV and then radio (that was an achievement). I used to read the "Sunday Post" religiously from front page to back cover and that, along with my daily office work and exchanges with colleagues, helped me with vocabulary. Go on all of you, persevere as you are well on the route to fluency.

[quote user="mint"]I have this foolish habit of biting off more than I can chew, loiseau. And perhaps there is a French expression that means that? Not only will I be going off for a whole weekend with a group of French people towards the end of June, the following week, I am down for a "reading a book aloud" session! This, to quote, consiste à lire à haute voix un meme livre à plusieurs, c'est rigolo et littéraire...... In other words, there I shall be reading at half the speed of everyone else, stumbling over unfamiliar words, etc. So, probably très rigolo but all at my expense, snif! [/quote] Avoir les yeux plus gros que le ventre ...... You can use this at the table when hungry people order lots of food and don't finish it all ....

[quote user="mint"]Came across a new word today which many of you will already know. Had a mail message today, asking me to go for a dépistage........and, no, it has nothing to do with taking the pi§§ though I suppose that could also be on the cards? Late last year, I had some weeks of contact with a migrant who has now been discovered to be suffering from TB. Apparently, it's le loi that I am offered this dépistage. I understand that it involves having a blood test and an X-ray. But, what a truly "lovely" sort of a word that can lead one to imagine all the sorts of ridiculous things it could mean but doesn't[:D] Anyone can think of other words that stimulate the imagination but give you a totally erroneous picture? [/quote] Years ago my wife was teaching French (night classes) at the local college. In that class was an old man whose French was pretty good but as you will see, still lacked fluency. During the verbal exchanges, he told the classroom that he had had a French lady penpal for many many years. Travelling to France in order to meet the said friend for their first time, they had agreed to meet at one of the big rail stations in Paris. When they recognised each other on the platform, he opened his arms and told her (in French) .... "Viens que je te baise..." .... The French Lady was somehow taken aback, too polite to tell him that he should have said "viens que je te bise ...."

... Du coup je pourrais pas à la marche pour préparer la salle ..... This is from someone that I walk with but we have a concert and chilli con carne (very French[:P]) at the salle and I understand that he has to set out lighting, chairs, tables, etc. There is a verb missing in that phrase. Du coup je pourrais pas (aller) à la marche pour préparer la salle the ommission of "ne" in je (ne) pourrai pas etc. is common spoken language. Shows lack of education (basic for that) when written.

[quote user="Chancer"]hadn't heard of "snif" and I wonder whether its something that is said or perhaps is texto talk [/quote] Hi all. Chancer is correct. The add-on "snif" is purely texto/SMS talk and may be perhaps Email. You wouldn't put this in a written mail nor in a conversation. Child talk IMO.