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. …
Surprises
Dog Phrasebook
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 : …
If only she could talk – what would your dog say?
This article includes a guest post by my canine friend Jessica. To start with, she kindly posed for her photo in the garden of the house where she lives with her humans. This is what inspired me to ask Jessica to provide the guest post: The other day the website www.borrowmydoggy.com was advertising a new…
Find your feet: the high ropes and the barefoot trail
The Forêt des Vert-tiges is a fantastic tree top rope course on the northern outskirts of Pau, south west France. We spent October half-term this year in Pau with our friend Jacqueline. What a great play on words: Forêt des Vert-tiges. Yes, it really is a forest of both vertigo and green branches. It’s described…
Family holidays “abroad” in the old days: a car’s story
I’m a Ford Cortina, rescued from the scrap heap many times. My heyday was the 1960s and ‘70s, and my speciality was Family Holidays. Seatbelts were not considered necessary; you just crammed several children and a dog onto the backseat and set off. There were no child safety locks; you just banged the doors hard….
Give a dog a good name
A dog by any other name….? My daughter’s been longing for a dog for years. When she was about 5 she chose a book in a shop in Germany with the title “Ich will einen Hund”, by Helga Bansch. “Ich will auch einen Hund”, she said. It’s a great story about a girl who pleads…
Travel journals – blogging in Germany, 1912
Just for a change, I’ve been traveling in time for this post! How I was given a family travel journal from 1912 When I started studying French and German at university my Grandmother unexpectedly gave me a leather-bound travel journal written in 1912 by her German grandfather, Johann. Until then I had no idea that…
Hygge, and how we recreated it at home
I first heard of the Danish word “hygge” last winter, but this winter it’s all over the place in the UK and helping to sell lots of Christmas decorations and gifts. Candles, thick brightly-coloured socks, books, pastries, coffee, hot chocolate….The closest translation is “Gemuetlichkeit” in German. We don’t have an equivalent in English but the…
German textbooks: how they’ve changed!
It’s easy to forget how much language learning has changed over the years, unless you think back to your schooldays. You probably spent five lessons a week with “La Famille Bertillon”, and got to know them very well. Longmans Audio Visual French? Le Francais d’Aujourd’hui? Jean Pierre est dans le jardin. Beep! I’ve been looking…
“Victorian Bakers” – and Victorian Butchers
My daughter and I watched the recent “Victorian Bakers” programmes on BB2 and were shocked at what a hard life the people had and the things they ate. Someone was making a bone marrow sandwich and we saw them slicing up a very tongue-shaped tongue. That reminded me of stories I’d heard about our German…
