You can drink your wine and eat it too

I've had quite a busy week (for an unemployed bum. And I apologise to anyone seething with rage at posts filled with fun and frivolous purchases. I assure you I spend most of the time weeping and self-flagellating, but I save that sort of thing for my BDSM blog).

We had a picnic in the park on Sunday to celebrate someone getting her PhD approved, which was very nice. It wasn't sunny, but at least it didn't start raining until that evening (and then all day Monday). Then I went home and watched delayed coverage of the Grand Prix, which, contrary to all expectations, was actually very exciting (although I'm still a bit upset over what happened to Hamilton).

Since then, I've been running around going to the gym and working on my CV and other such scintillating stuff. I walked all the way to the Pôle Emploi the other day because I thought "right, I'm going to go there and work on writing cover letters in French without distractions and see if someone can help me with the French" only to find that there is only one computer there with a chair, all the rest you have to stand up at, and all you can do on them is look up job notices on the Pôle Emploi's own website. And when I asked if I could get help writing in French, they gave me a pamphlet designed for French people who can't read and write well (and I don't mean to sound snarky, but examples of people applying for factory jobs in very simple French are not much good to me) and enrolled me in a general workshop in like a fortnight. And told me that the job I wanted to apply for was only open to disabled applicants (which, of course, is a noble initiative, but it's just discouraging every time you come across something else that you don't understand about how the system works here). I know that sounds very whiny, and I know no-one forced me to move to a non-English-speaking country, but it helps everyone if you help us dirty immigants to speak better French and get jobs. And blogging about it helps to vent some of those frustrations.

Wednesday was hot hot hot, with actual sunshine. I went to a garden party, if you can call 20 or so people having drinks and nibbles in a garden a "garden party" (the Queen wasn't there, let's put it that way), which was nice. I spilled red wine on my new dress and had to wash it with detergent in the kitchen sink, but along with washing it properly when I got home, that did the trick, yay. (I'm a big believer in acting immediately, no matter what stain-busting equipment you have at hand, to get rid of stains.) In a brave move, since there will often be sudden thunderstorms in the evening after a hot day here, they set up a TV in the garden so I was able to happily ignore the football until it got to the penalty shootout after an undoubtedly exciting 2 hours of play without a goal.

On Thursday night it was my turn to have Liz and Charlie around for dinner. We have a sort of 'supper club' where we meet up at irregular intervals at each other's houses for dinner. It's a bit tricky because there's a ton of stuff Charlie won't eat, starting with onions and garlic!! This time, I made spinach, feta and chicken pasties and for dessert, the pièce de resistance:

That's no ordinary glass of wine, that's rosé jelly (jello to our American friends)! Basically, you simmer rosé with sugar, add gelatine and pour it into a glass with berries in it and voilà, hours later you have yourself a wobbly paen to the noble art of finding new ways to consume wine.

Cheers!

I didn't want to give the game away, because I think half the fun is bringing out a glass of "wine" and then the big reveal that it's jelly, but I ran the idea of a jelly-based dessert past Liz, who begged me not to do it, because as Canedolia mentioned recently, the French for some reason think the English can't get enough of eating jelly. And, indeed, Charlie found it hilarious to the point of making a video of it wobbling. But I thought a rosé dessert was too cool not to do! So, how did it taste? I did a little test pot of it and thought it was just okay when I ate some on Thursday morning, but maybe my palate just wasn't ready for wine first thing in the morning, because I actually thought it was very nice when we had it in the evening. Just the right amount of sugar and a nice flavour. The frozen berries were a bit seedy, but oh well.

After dinner, Liz went home and Charlie and I met up with Marion and went to a bar and then a club. Tomorrow is Marion's last day in Tours, boohooooo! Now I will (probably) be back to being the only Kiwi in the village. She doesn't yet know where she'll be living, her boyfriend is looking for an internship and in the meantime she'll be going between London and his family's place in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais. They're leaving some stuff in storage here, so I'll probably see her again, but it's still sad to have a friend leave.

We ended up partying with some cute French and Belgian pilots

I also bought these super-cute fold-up ballet pumps from Redfoot shoes in the UK, after Liz sent me a coupon code for their half-price summer sale (which may be still on, let me know if anyone wants the code, because they are really quite expensive). I haven't worn them yet, but it does seem you get what you pay for - the uppers are real, soft leather, and they have a gel sole, so they seem like they'd be much more comfortable for walking than the cheap pair I bought at H&M, which had basically no sole, so it was like walking on the pavement in your socks or something (plus they were too big and fell off all the time, so I gave them to Liz).

In case anyone doesn't know, the idea is you wear them out of an evening and then switch to your high heels when you get wherever you're going, and they fold up as shown and go in a little pouch in your handbag. I look forward to actually wearing heels some time, because with having to walk everywhere and the cobblestones and so on, I never do any more!

Photo fun

Well, I have nothing interesting to say really, but I do have quite a few photos - random shots from around Tours, my purchases from the last day of the sales today (no more shopping this month for me, or next month with holidays to pay for!) and the Bastille Day celebrations.





Video & photo of the Bastille Day fireworks down by the Loire. I like how everyone claps the fireworks!



One of my new dresses



And the other. My photo mojo was not there today - after about a million takes, everything was coimng out blurry or ugly or both. So when I put on my new bat-wing cardie, I decided it was time to get silly instead...



Secretive ninja



Pretending to be graceful



The crane



Attack!



Let's try that again, with a bit more menace



A la guinguette, a guinguette being an open-air café or dancehall. This is here all summer on the banks of the Loire, and there's various things like bands playing or dancing or games depending on the night.



People dancing at the guinguette.



St Martin's Church



Sainte Maure cheese. I won't do a cheesewatch on this, since I'm fairly sure I've said before that this is an utter marvel of cheeseadry and very unfairly unknown outside the region (well, to me it was anyway!). I just wanted to post the adorable little goat with her log of Sainte Maure on the label



I love how this old building has been preserved wedged in between two modern ones. I'm not sure what it is now, seems to have a garage in the lower bit (?)



This is where Joan of Arc stopped to get some armour made before going and fighting the English. And now it's a shop on the ground floor and what looks like empty apartments up above. Can you imagine living in Joan of Arc's old hangout? Europe, I love you.



And this is my gym, which looks like a 19th century drawing room with exercise machines in it. Presumably they actually restored it to look like this, as apparently this street, one of the main axes in Tours, was pretty much bombed to bits in WWII



Flowers I bought last week



I already knew that roosters went cocorico, but according to this butchery window in Les Halles, cows go meuh like a bored teenager...



Sheep do a French version of baaa, pigs... growl?, and rabbits go clap clap? Also, someone has written 'aie' (ouch), which you can see next to the pig, and on the pig (you can't see in the photo) someone put 'ce pub ment' = 'this ad lies'. Not sure if they disagree that rabbits go clap clap (I sure do) or if it's some animal rights thing? If you look closely, you can also see me!

The French girl's guide to winter dressing

Acquire a pair of calf- or knee-length boots, any colour is fine. Tuck your jeans into them. Now put on a plain, generic t-shirt. Anything will do - no-one will ever see your bottommost layer unless you're in the throes of passion in a particularly well-heated room. Possibly not even then, I haven't run all the appropriate tests. Add a cardigan, preferably grey. Now a heavy winter coat. Top with a chunky scarf looped in some sort of an artlessly stylish fashion that I can't replicate even though I'm pretty sure I loop my scarf along the same basic principles. If the temperature has dropped below the 'critical' zone of 15 degrees, you are entirely justified in adding a knitted hat and/or gloves to complete the ensemble.

The French boy's guide to winter dressing:
As above, except substitute shoes for boots and don't tuck your jeans into them. Ditch the cardigan - you, sir, are manly enough to face the cold with only a peacoat and a chunky scarf, also cunningly looped. If you want a bit of Fonz-esque je ne sais quoi, you may choose a leather jacket. For rebel chic, go with a ski jacket and beanie, and lose the scarf (too bourgeois). If at all possible, add a jaunty messenger bag to your outfit. A headband is an optional - but stylish - extra.

The old French man's guide to winter dressing:
Put on anything and add a flat cap and a querulous stare. Congratulations, you are now an old French man.

The old French woman's guide to winter dressing:
Put on weight. You starved yourself for 60 years, you deserve this.