Winter trees, black berets and visitors

Although it's raining les chats et les chiens at this very moment, spring is racing ahead, green everywhere, flowers like I've never seen and hysterical birds. But there are still places where winter isn't quite ready to leave and so I've put in a couple of photographs to say goodbye to the beautiful naked trees as it is possible we may not see them again.

I assume that as nobody offered to support me in my cycling epic from Tulle to Bury, that you noticed the date of the last posting. Somebody did suggest I had gone slightly bonkers, which may be true. On the other hand a few people seemed to take seriously the idea of a beret for him indoors, a proper black one, of course. They may be right. He's not convinced as yet, but I'm working on it.





The story about the English cyclists coming from Bury to Tulle was not at all a joke - and in fact Hyphen, the twinning association, based in Tulle, has been very helpful to us, in a number of ways: French conversation classes, social events and contacts. Last week we went to the spring dinner at a nearby Auberge organised by Hyphen and enjoyed an evening of food, kir, wine and conversation with people from at least five countries: France, Holland, Germany, Spain, England. People in Hyphen are so warm and friendly that, although we are only here for a year, some of the people we've met have made us want to stay for longer, to get to know them better.

I may be away for a few days as we're expecting visitors for Easter: two academics and three boys. The weather forecast is terrible. Should be exciting.