Whoa, it's been over a week. How time flies etc...

Ok, exciting things would be useful to report at this point, such as my trip to Bordeaux, where they had a Christ(sic)mas Market and, somewhat peculiarly, a rather large antiques' market tacked on at the end of it. While Bordeaux was in itself a rather pleasant city from what I saw of it, the market itself was a tad disappointing. There were no individual-looking stalls, nothing palpably decorative or twee; it was all a little bland it must be said. That and I wanted to buy gloves, but there was not a single glove-selling place which catered for anyone with a Y chromosome. Bad times. However, the trip on the whole was an enjoyable one, and it certainly made a change from a weekend in Angoulême, despite the exciting food that was available there a couple of weekends ago. So yeah, Bordeaux 1 - 0 My Hands.

I have officially decided that many of my students are worse than useless when it comes to actually turning up to things/applying themselves. I discovered today that no fewer than 5 people in one of my classes had been suspended for not doing work or skipping lessons, and was quite frankly astonished that they didn't just get rid of the lot of them and start again. Special mention must go to one of my students today who turned up just to tell me that the others weren't going to, thus saving me 10 minutes' worth of sitting around like a lemon waiting for my non-existent students. He gets a gold star and a sweetie, but the others not so much.

Anecdote alert: I am running semi-regularly at the moment (about four or five times per week on average), and tend to have a pretty similar route every time. However, my regular "back straight", as it were, is a large sports' centre in Ma Campagne which was today being used for some sort of athletics meeting. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I turned the corner, cutting through a gap in the hedge, only to be greeted by 50 or so French cross-country runners hurtling their way around a course which vaguely resembled my regular running route. Cue confusion as this random British boy appears from nowhere into their midst with some momentum, pauses confusedly and scurries off to the side of the course, attracting bizarre glances all the while. At least there was no ice this time...

Charlie x