Alexis

Good idea, that.  No use to me now, of course but I might try it out at the Dartford Tunnel.... Several of the peage are right hand for GB.  There is a little Union Jack.

Todays Ouest France.  Shows property price drops too. www.ouest-france.fr (It is Bretagne section if you don't live here in the North.)

In a swift change of subject, doesn't Twiggy look wonderfull?  I saw a photo of her advertising stuff in a magazine. NOT that thread!  Some people!  Jealous, I expect[:)]

1529?  Judging from his photo on the other thread, he is looking good whatever his age.[:D]

Ooohh! Look!  There's me!  There's Miki.  There's Cassis......

Love it. Sounds like my kind of man.

Part of the programme showed Cyril in a very fetching hat taking a tour of a school in Denmark.  Here also they have a problem with the weight/eating habits of the children.  They served up healthy food in a little plastic carrier and they went off and ate with their friends.  They only had half an hour for lunch so that is perhaps why there wasn't a hot meal.  That was the idea of the yellow bus. Anyway, the Danes taught the children to cook at school.  Three hours a week from the age of twelve but the tots cooked too and the kitchen had little steps under the work surfaces to pull out so they could stand on them and reach the counter.  Very nice kitchens too. I loved cookery at school.  Struggling onto the bus with a satchel, cake tin, hockey stick, games bag and a violin.  All stuffed full of the dried fruit and cherries nicked from the store cupboard[;-)]

Blimey!  Now I am confused! A rutabaga is a turnip to me.  A swede is a navet. If you take a look in the old dictionary, you will find that a rutagaga is a swede and a navet is a turnip. So it is wrong.......[:D]

Blimey!  Now you have started me off! Thank goodness for google....Fool's Garden, Lemon Tree.

I watched it all this time.  Apologies for saying the Normandy dinner lady was a bit bolshie when, in fact, it was the one from Pas de Calais.  I had missed the first twenty minutes of the first programme last week making marmalade and had got confused. I thought it was a good programme.  Felt sorry for Cyril as he takes it very much to heart and for the first half of the programme that Jean-Yves was a right pig.  His staff weren't exactly sparkling either.  The lycee he went to where it was all homemade was outstanding and it just shows what can be done. I believe the kitchen staff started work at 6.00 so goodness knows what they did until lunchtime if all they prepared was either frozen or from tins. I must admit that I was fascinated by Cyril's eyebrows.  They seem to have a life of their own.  Have you noticed how bendy and curvy they are?  Like little slugs.  

What a catchy title.  I hope to find one in my stocking at Christmas. Are you doing a French version? Parsnips are panais which is almost panda.  Could they be related? Rutabaga is swede which doesn't seem to be related to anything. (North - South divide.  A rutabaga is a turnip to me.)

No, I've never seen Jamie. (Or Nigella, Little Britain, The Office, Pride and Prejudice, make over programmes or any decent gardening programmes......)

Abject apologies.  I asked the Man Who Knows and he said muscadet. As you can imagine, tripes have never passed my lips but as a small child it was a different story.  Chitterlings too. Strangely enough, we bought some tripes de Caen for the MWK yesterday and I will be having the pleasure of cooking them tomorrow. I would rather starve....  

Mais non!  Tripes don't 'go' with muscadet. It was a saucisson.... (Did I ever tell you about the years I spent doing the worst job in the world?  We got well fed...and all the booze you could drink!)

I don't know! What are you like SB?  You know that you are supposed to lavishly butter the offending baguette the next morning and dunk it in your bol de càfe. I have seen a ham sandwich being dunked but only briefly as I closed my eyes.  Put me right off my breakfast.  I nearly spat my muscadet out.

After the little people last week, Cyril tries to convert the teenagers to healthy eating. M6, 20.50.

You don't need to go to the UK for parsnips....they are available all around me here in very sunny Bretagne. Mind, I would go to Jersey 'just for a look'.

That will be worth waiting for....but not too long, I hope.  Remember the power of the Christmas hit market.

It is still a bit windy but it has calmed down here in central Brittany but around 16.00 - 17.00 it started blowing a gale after a turbulant  early afternoon. Good job I'm sturdy.[;-)]

I'm afraid that the girls I have near me are not old enough to have left school.

We have a "naughty girl" hostel here.  You see five or six young girls pushing top of the range pushchairs around as they all go shopping. Then they all vanish and a couple of months later, a new lot arrive.

Blimey!  Aren't you men BOYS!  I'm glad I'm not talking to you at a party... [:D][:D][:D] Boulogne - Le Havre - Caen - Avranches - Dinan - St Brieuc - Quimper. You just jump on the auto-route after leaving Boulogne - easy enough to find (marked Amiens) - and keep straight on. If you don't fancy le Pont de Normandie, take Tankerville.  When you get to Caen and come off the autoroute, go either way on the peripheric, makes no difference.  Marked Rennes for the exit. There is a pretty route, of course, but it is very, very long. Boulogne - Avranches is about four and a half hours with a stop. I normally stay at this side, living here, but we did stop at a B&B in Dover.  Talk about dead, Dover!  Bandit territory.

Cyril was on M6 last night.  I watched most of it.  The French children seemed just like their British friends!  Bleugh!  Vegetables! (Don't forget I have never seen JO and his crusade.) The money allowed for each meal was derisory.  The dinner ladies had no equipment to help them use fresh vegetables - all morning to purée potatoes for example.  The cook in Normandy didn't seem to want to change.  She was quite happy to use frozen or powdered products.  One of the meals there Cyril spent .81€ instead of the allowed .50€.  (I must admit to not really looking there but I think it is 1.50€ a meal.  It couldn't just be .50€, or could it?) Of course, it being the telly, everything turned out well in the end but I suspect he will have problems when he turns up at the next school and meets the teenagers.  He certainly seemed a bit clueless to start with because he couldn't believe the children ate so badly.  He seemed to think they ate the same as he would.  They didn't even know the names of the vegetables ...but they knew that they didn't like them. I loved my school dinners in the Olden Days.  Meat - we all hated liver - a veg and potato.  (This being before rice and pasta stopped being exotic.)  Lovely, lovely meat pies.  Then pudding and pink custard.  All for a Bob.

Latest....BBC radio programme I'm listening to had comments about JO being the size of a baby elephant on his programme last night which wasn't thought very good publicity for a healthy eating programme. This mornings Ouest France headline was about nearly 6 million French obese.  One in ten Bretons is obese.  So fat is here. I will agree about the increasing size of mainly woman and girls in the UK.  Every time I go back they seem fatter.  It is so bad, I feel thin. I have never seen JO.  Yet something else to look forward to.  

I saw that on the news last night.  Fabulous news.