Leaving Party

The week began with a cock up. Last Friday I had ordered 30 croissants from a baker near where I live, for "mardi matin". This as everyone knows means Tuesday morning, not Monday morning, so I was a bit embarrased to have this explained to me by the shop assistant on the Monday. I tried to collect more successfully on the Tuesday. Why 30 croissants? Well Gregory, our architect, has spent the last 2 months spinning me a tale that it is a French custom for a newcomer to buy croissants. A likely tale, but he had garned quite a lot of support, and the team was threatening to withdraw its foreign language skills. In other words, I was being blackmailed! It was worth it though; it seems odd that a big bag of croissants can bring so much joy, but they practically worship them over here. I must say I am growing quite attached to them myself. Apparently they are a symbol of a successful repulsion of another Turkish invasion during the expansion of the Ottoman empire. Some baker baked bread in the shape of the Turkish crescent, and voila, an institution was born.

It's been much warmer and sunnier this week too. In fact it really does feel like summer is here already, albeit the French don't think that. They haven't spent most of their life in Northern England though, and it feels like May to me at the moment. These funny little beetles only come out in warm weather too, so the evidence is mounting :-) They're called gendarme beetles, and they're very common down here. I've also been told that there will be some quite spectacularly large insect specimens appearing as things warm up; praying Matii for instance. I've only ever seen these in pet shops or elsewhere in captivity.

The week ended with my mentor's leaving party (Friday). I'm feeling a bit less guilty about having his job now (by breaking the last in/first out rule) as he quickly found another, and in fact he is leaving one week earlier than he has to. We went for an Audio Team meal followed by a boozy session in some English pub called The George (I think). It seems that there are some members of the team who have decided to try and fix me up with a French girl. Any French girl will do it seems, and my input doesn't seem to be required, so we'll just have to wait and see how that works out, but they could at least have waited until we'd left the restaurant before starting tonight!