Hoddy
-
Posts
4,886 -
Joined
-
Last visited
-
Days Won
1
Posts posted by Hoddy
-
-
I think we have highlighted the difference between the French and the British education systems. In my experience British schools do their best to teach their foreign pupils English.I think your geography is a bit off ALBF. There is no cheese shop in Domme.
-
I agree that there are other lovely parts of France. I like the area around Beaune and Macon very much, but when driving south on the A20 and I go round a bend and sees the Bassin de Brive ahead that just makes me feel like I’m being welcomed home. I suppose it’s a bit like falling in love. Plenty of people who you like, but not many that you actually love.I agree about unemployment. I often find myself pointing out to visiting family and friends that our house is in quite a deprived area. It doesn’t show in the good weather with tatty markets, but in the winter when people are scouring the second hand clothes stalls which replace the catch-pennies it’s a different matter. It has recently been made worse by the closure of the only factory of any real size in Sarlat.If what you think about British children not being good at English or French is true then that is the fault of the French education system in failing to adapt. I write as someone who worked for many years in a very multi-lingual school and although I can’t speak about how good they were at their mother tongue they all left with a good standard of English. One of them even wrote the “Hinglish” dictionary.
-
What’s to like around Sarlat ...........well, apart from the foie gras and confit de canard, the beautiful, often spectacular countryside, the mild weather, the cepes and girolles and the home grown fruit and vegetables, it’s the people.Our nearest neighbour ( about 150 metres away) is more like a brother than a friend. Other neighbours have spent time in our house in England while we’re in France and we get invited to all the village events or just go along to them. I just don’t see many English although at an event last year I did meet a woman who had lived in Domme for so long that it was easier for us to converse in French than in English.As for Sarlat, there’s a theatre festival in the summer, a film festival in the autumn and regular exhibitions of good artists, many more than in similar sized towns in England. The chocolate breakfast on the Rue de l Republique in Sarlat is truly wonderful even if it does require a week’s dieting to get over it.I’m not surprised that a teacher has a low opinion of the English children’s French if it anything like the level of English taught to French children which is, in my opinion, quite poor. I’ve had to help lots of the kids out.
-
I try not to and don’t often ‘bite’ when the tired old cliches about various parts of the Dordogne are trotted out. I have had a holiday home about 6 kilometres south of Sarlat for the last fifteen years and I love it and what’s more there are very few English people anywhere nearby. What exactly is your experience of the Sarlat area Alittlebitfrench ? I do feel that it’s important that we give accurate information.
-
Until recently I have been quite sympathetic to Scotland's wish for independence, but since I discovered that the population of Scotland is only about five hundred thousand more than the population of the East Midlands I'm feeling less so.
-
All those voters should have watched The Simpsons.http://metro.co.uk/2016/11/09/the-simpsons-predicted-president-trump-16-years-ago-as-a-warning-to-america-6245205/On a more serious note, I'm just hoping that like Reagan, he will surprise us all.
-
I am shocked that so many women have voted for him. I'm not just thinking of his personal behaviour, but prosecuting women who ask for an abortion. What kind of world will it be ?
-
I'm sorry to have to tell you that you would have to get in the queue of people who think they could have succeeded, Gluestick. The 'forensic' accountant established that his lifestyle did not match his alleged income which is done mostly in cash. The CSA found in the ex-wife's favour by many thousands of pounds, but were unable to collect from him because he had no assets. By this time he had moved into a new girlfriend's house and declared he had no assets or job.I am convinced that there is some organisation that helps men like him wriggle out of their obligations. They certainly know the law at least as well as barristers do. On the good side my daughter can hold her head high and know that she can paddle her own canoe financially.The trouble is when people talk about 'single parents' they forget about people like her with evil ex-husbands and that she bears no responsibility for people who don't pay their dues to society.
-
In some ways it's even worse than you think Gluestick. I'm talking about two children born within a marriage and whose father, after the divorce, was suddenly unable to earn a living and so had unemployment benefit. My daughter, a hard working fairly well qualified professional, ended up paying income tax towards his (fake) unemployment pay. As I already said the CSA are useless and no-one in government seems to care.
-
I get really angry at non-resident fathers lack of sense of responsibility for their children. I know some do contribute properly to their children's upkeep, but many don't. My ex son-in-law pays £7 per week towards the upkeep of his two daughters despite the fact that he has a thriving business. The CSA (or whatever its successor is called) is completely useless. We need a change in attitude.
-
I know that now Kong, it's just that in the deepest, darkest, Derbyshire of my childhood we'd never heard of such a thing. We made a guy but it never crossed our minds that we were burning him because he was a catholic.
-
I'm with Judith on this. My late husband was from Yorkshire and he used to call if Mischief Night, I don't remember anything at all about it from my very rural Derbyshire childhood. We had no neighbours to try to scare.Bonfire Night on the other hand was celebrated with glee and I remember being astonished after I moved into town to be told by my lovely RC neighbours it was anti-catholic.To me now Hallowe'en seems a bit like Father's Day: just another device for business to extract money from people.
-
It seems like a minor miracle to me that anybody gives any credence at all to anything he says.When he was first elected leader of the Labour Party he did a tour of the party faithful. A friend of mine, a lifelong member of the party, went to the local meeting and when she came home she wrote to the branch secretary and resigned. It's a pity it took other people longer to see through him.
-
"supremely white British doctors"I know this is trivial compared to most of the discussion here but I feel I have to point out that not all British doctors are white.Only last week I walked into the doctors to be greeted by a cheery, "Hello, Miss," from a former pupil who is not supremely white, but is British born and British educated.
-
Thankfully, I'm not watching Poldark either.He certainly took some keeping up with.Many thanks to all those who pressed the report button.
-
think the removal of Home Economics from the school curriculum has played its part too. Although it was often thought of as ‘just cookery’, in the school where I taught it was a serious subject. The kids learned kitchen hygiene and nutrition as well as basic cooking methods. If they wanted to study it at A level they were required to have GCSE Chemistry. People seem to be much more ignorant of the basics than they used to be and therefore susceptible to fad and fashion.
-
Sanglier are a real problem in this neck of the woods. A few years back they completely denuded the bank which for a few hundred yards is the border of our land of cuckoo pint. This year they are grubbing about on the borders of our stream. My neighbour has just had to put three lines of electric fencing around his maize to keep them out. I have read that some areas of forest devastated by the tempest in 1999 have still not been cleared and that the sanglier are living there. In spite of this in fifteen years I have never seen an adult, only very young ones which I presumed had been separated from their parents by the hunt.In my bit of rural England there are many, many more badgers than there used to be when I was a child.
-
Wooly was right it is reported in the local paper. It was over Villeneuve-sur-Lot which is further away than I expected it to be. It must have been heard over a huge area.http://www.sudouest.fr/2016/09/07/explosion-dans-le-lot-et-garonne-avez-vous-entendu-un-grand-boum-2491979-3900.php
-
Gourdon is about eight miles from here as the jet flies so it seems we heard the same boom.We do occasionally get very noisy low-flying jets here but, unlike your neighbour, I heard no plane this morning.
-
I heard it too Mogs. Exactly as you describe and certainly shook the house. I made a note of the time 9.52 - does that coincide with your boom ?
-
Thanks for the all interesting replies.Nomoss - my first teaching job was in a school which had recently become a comprehensive after being a secondary modern. The classes were quite small and we had extensive playing fields and fiercely competitive sports teams. It was the general experience in that local authority that the schools which had been secondary moderns did much better as comprehensives than the old grammar/high schools did because the old secondary mod teachers could deal with ‘challenging’ children with one hand tied behind their back while the grammar school teachers thought that they could continue to sit at the front and dictate notes.Gluestick - I accept your ideas about the quality of Loughborough - the trouble is that it’s our local - they could probably walk there. Very embarrassingly some of their friends’ parents teach there so it’s at the bottom of the list.I agree with you about the playing fields. When I was a school governor I fought tooth and nail to keep ours. I thought I had sound logical reasons based on the fact that many of our feeder primaries only had a small tarmac yard so it was the kids only chance of sport. The headmaster accused me of being romantic - a first and only for me. In the end though they weren’t sold.My personal idea of choosing a course is more in line with Mint and Linda that doing something because you are interested in it is more worthwhile, but in these uncertain times I was hoping for something more concrete.Norman - I agree with every word you say about media studies, but then I think the whole curriculum needs reform. Perhaps Brexit could be a good reason to persuade people that we need something different. I'm sorry I seem to have hijacked the thread. I've been saddened and astonished by some of the vitriolic and personal vituperation that has gone on. I've hardly ever had a government I voted for but I've never felt the need to be so personally abusive as some people have been.
-
So in the light of all this analysis what advice would you offer to today's teenagers ? This question is close to my heart I have two teenage grandchildren; one who has just completed GCSEs and one who is just choosing their subjects.
-
I think Rabbie is right that sometimes it depends on people who you have know with that name in the past.It also depends on what kinds of names you like. There are a couple of Oceans around here, but it's not a name that appeals to me. I think Delphine is a charming name that would suit a little girl or an adult. Carol or Carole would be OK in either language.The latest addition around these parts is one of my neighbours four-years-old Victoire and we are all under orders that it will never be Vikki.
-
Who'd have thought it ?They'll be inventing apple crumble next.
Wanted: Property Let or Purchase Near Sarlat/Salignac
in South West (Aquitaine, Midi-Pyrénées)
Posted