Adventures with languages
French markets in the UK For a short time, in a small space, you can be in the UK but pretend you’re in France. You just need to visit one of these French markets coordinated and organized by Muriel Charles, the manager of the French company France At Home. They’ve been running since 1994, and…
Bilingual dictionaries can be dangerous things, we were told at school – especially if you’re still at beginner level in one of the languages and you haven’t yet developed a “feel” for it. On the other hand if you know the languages well, dictionaries can be useful and interesting. If I look up a word…
If you look back to your childhood and teenage years, can you see where your interests, passions or even your career, started? We’re always hearing stories about people like Andy Murray and how they started playing tennis aged three, so it’s interesting to think about yourself and what you liked to do then. I thought…
In my recent blog post “From revolutionary to biscuit entrepreneur”, I mentioned how exciting it is to see a friend being interviewed on TV. It’s also exciting to see a friend’s name on the ...
Vienna sightseeing The Schönbrunn Palace was on our list of “must dos” when we planned our trip to Vienna last summer. We had 6 days in the city and planned quite a bit of sightseeing as well as the ...
We're getting deeper into autumn now and nature's making it obvious. It's easy to take beautiful tree photos this time of year, but this one's rare: it's a mist photo. I took it in our local park at ...
One thing I miss in the UK is good bakeries – especially places where you can buy really fresh brioche. The smell of baking drew me into “Aux Merveilleux de Fred". It has branches in Paris, Nantes, ...
In mid-April this year we felt the first strong spring sunshine. From then on we could look forward to about 6 months of longer daylight and warmer temperatures. Annual celebrations like Christmas and Easter punctuate the darker days and colder weather, but then in our family we have birthdays to celebrate in the warmer months. …
Following on from my last blog post, Dog Language, I’ve put together a short Dog Phrasebook to show some typical dog phrases and their equivalent in English. Our part-time dog, Hamish, helped me with the translations on his last visit. You may remember Hamish from my previous post about dog borrowing and dog names : …
