The Versatile, Whinging Blogger

I'm interrupting your usual weekend peace and quiet to fulfill my obligations as a 'Versatile Blogger Award' recipient.

Ta da:

I received this award from the lovely Aidan at Conjugating Irregular Verbs, who made me blush with her kind comments. I love Aidan's blog. She is very funny despite being American and is endearingly honest, which makes her blog such a fun read. This is my favourite post ever of hers.*

In celebration of Aidan's honesty, I am going to be brutally truthful in the listing of my seven facts, as per the Award's requirements. Please look away now if you have a fine or gentle constitution.

1. I hate these bloody award things. Blog awards, Change-Your-Facebook-Status-to-Say-This, forward this email to 30 people or a rogue owl will eat your young chain emails - I hate 'em all. But I do love Aidan, so I'm chugging a nice warm cup of quit-your-bellyaching and continuing on.

2. Living in France can be very, very difficult at times (as a for'ner). It's not like visiting, which is much more pleasant. I don't talk about it much because I'm trying to be a cup-half-full kinda person, and also because I doubt people want to hear me whinging about how hard it is to be living in the south of France. Kind of like when movie stars start complaining about how hard it is to be rich and famous and skinny.

But there have been more than a few occasions when I've wanted to do a Cartman:

3. I love to sleep in, and I'm a total cow in the morning until I have my coffee.

4. I have a real problem with people who don't wash their hands after they go to the toilet.

5. Even though it weirds the mister out, I like it when Frenchmen kiss each other hello. I think it's touching and love the way it flies in the face of traditional Western 'what is manly' philosophy.

6. A couple of years ago I wrote a complete romance novel. An editor asked to see the full manuscript, but it wasn't published. (No, it didn't contain any kissing Frenchmen. It wasn't one of those novels.)

7. I haven't got a seventh fact. Because of 1. above, and because I'm all out of things I think you'd find interesting.

I apologise now, I'm not going to pass this on to 15 other bloggers. But I don't think this will harm the spread of the award, which surely must be giving cholera a run for its money in the proliferation stakes.

Sorry about my whinging, although I'm feeling cathartically mellow now. I might go eat some goat's cheese and sniff my lavender pillow.

While I'm blogging, here were two pictures I missed in my Cassis post:

Loved the view at the end of this street. 

Fancy fan mosaic floors in the St Michel church. 

Hope you've all had a fabulous weekend and managed to fit in something just for you!


* I almost had a moment like Aidan's. The first time I filled the car on my own was after meeting the mister on a long bike ride - he was riding home and I brought the kids back in the car. We stopped at an isolated rural service station, not a house in sight. It was closed but you could still use the pumps with a credit card.

Now, I knew our car took diesel. This point had been made to me many times, as the wife of a conscientious mister. The little sticker above the tank says diesel. Could I find a handle labelled diesel? No, I could not. I found, plomb and sans plomb, which I knew were leaded and unleaded petrol, but no diesel. There was one labelled gazoil. What is this gazoil?  Looked up dictionary, no gazoil. Went to call the mister, then remembered he was on the bike. Plus using cell phones at a gas station is a no-no. By elimination I was pretty sure gazoil was diesel, but that little niggly doubt had me worried.

Then a fellow drove in on his motorbike. A huge, black leather-wearing motorbike rider.  As a woman alone at a deserted service station with her three small children I immediately assumed him to be a rapist, which greatly helped my level of anxiety. After a few deep breaths I decided to just go over (not getting too close) and ask if gazoil was diesel. I was just about to do this when the bike rider stuck the pump in his petrol tank, leaned back against his bike and lit a cigarette.

This greatly crystallised my thought process. I quickly filled up with gazoil and got the flock out of there. When I got home I googled gazoil and found out that it was indeed diesel, which I'd already guessed seeing as we'd made it home without a single engine wheeze. I also checked a French news website to see if any explosions at rural petrol stations had been reported, but it seems the leather-clad smoking rapist got away safe and sound.

Wow, is this the longest footnote ever?