MmeOiseau comes for tea

What an adventure I had on Thursday!

After the school run I returned home to the sound of a bird squawking in distress. It was so loud that I thought that somehow our dog Daphne had caught a bird and was eating it. Steeling myself for scenes of carnage I searched the kitchen and dining room but could not see anything. Shouting out for Daphne, I was surprised when she wandered sleepily out from under the desk in the office looking rather put out at the shouting and squawking so early in the morning. She is not a morning person, our Daphne.

I discovered to my horror that the noise was coming from the air vent in the kitchen where a bird was trapped. We had some kind of insect trapped in there last year but it either escaped or died in there because after a day or so there was no more noise.

Thankfully my landlord arrived to deal with it. After some moments of teeth-sucking and chin-stroking he identified the problem that there was a bird in the flue. Of course, he had to take my word for it as MmeOiseau decided to chose that moment to wander off and stop chirping. She had been twittering away all day but when my landlord was listening carefully, there was not a sound.

We checked the loft and he looked at the roof and decided he would have to get someone out with a big ladder. Or at least, that is what I understood. We had just returned to the kitchen when MmeOiseau started chirping up a storm. Landlord asked for a ladder (new word of the day: la échelle) and a screwdriver (another new word: la tournevis) to open the vent. He unscrewed the vent, while I went looking for a larger screwdriver.

Suddenly he shouted, "Madame!Vite! Vite! Schnell!" and I ran back to the kitchen to find the sparrow in the corner of the kitchen with Daphne guarding it. Daphne was rather bemused by the whole thing and seemed to be chuffed to have cornered it but unsure how to proceed further.

I moved Daphne out of the kitchen into the hall and the bird flew, not out of the window but into the living room, the door of which we had stupidly left open. Following the sound of her fluttering wings, I found her hidden behind the a chair. What followed would not have been out of place in a Mr Bean episode, as the landlord and I tried to usher the bird out of one of the many windows that were open. In three different languages we implored MmeOiseau to depart la maison. She hid behind the newspaper rack, flew atop of the corner unit before finally sneaking under the couch.

O là là!

I had only a moment to be very relieved that MonsieurLindt had last week decided to move the couch while spring cleaning and had removed a variety of items, ranging from Panini football stickers to bits of bread rolls, slippers, broken glass from the lampshade football incident and even a missing library book, Mme Petit.

Using the walking stick that my father bought and left here for us to transport back to Scotland, the landlord shoved MmeOiseau out from under the couch. She flew back into the kitchen and I hastily shut all doors to stop her going anywhere else. A quick shufty behind the pots and then with a little more encouragement she flew to sit on the top of the window frame. Then with a flutter of wings, she was gone. 

Heaving a sigh of relief, I thanked my landlord for his help. Hopefully that was the last we will see of MmeOiseau. And that if she does comes back, she does not bring her friends.

Stationery Blues

The Stapler Of Doom

I would at this point like to complain about my new stapler. I think I mentioned that I bought a new stapler recently. There is something very satisfying about browsing a stationery department, it really is one of my favourite past times. I compare the merits of the 8x13 index cards to the 10x15 coloured ones, test the pens to see which one writes most smoothly, slobber over filing systems.

Last week my son broke our stapler, by way of rather over enthusiastic stapling, so I set off to buy a new one. I had not had time to unpack and glory in my new stapler until today when I realised to my horror that the new staples do not fit. The staples were right next to the stapler so am I being unreasonable to think that they should fit?

I am cross.

I have thrown the stapler down on the desk, breaking of a piece of metal that is surely an important part of the stapler. I think it is beyond repair.

You can see that I have nothing in my life at present over which I can get annoyed, if this is the worst thing that has happened this week.

My father is here, so I will go and throw myself on his mercy. He is, as my son said yesterday, A Good Fixer.

Hung Parliament , PR and The British Angst

The votes are cast and now the wrangling has begun. While the politicians meet and discuss the way forward, the British angst over a Hung Parliament bemuses the Europeans.

My German husband finds it all very strange, that a party that achieves 23% of the votes only has 57 seats in parliament while the other two parties with a share of 65% of the votes have a whopping 564 seats.

My feelings on this are clear. Electoral Reform is needed, and need now. The British voting system is archaic and unfair.

Why should the 23% of the British public who have voted Lib Dem be fobbed off with so few seats, and so little influence on how our country is run?

Why should the two main parties always have an unfair advantage?

Why, when 35% of the population did not vote Tory or Labour, do these people only have 85 seats in parliament - that is just just 13% of the 650 seats.
35% of the British public did not vote Tory or Labour and are their opinions are not being heard. Ok, these numbers have been simplified and do not take into account the SNP, Plaid Cymru and the Irish parties who have seats, but you get the picture.

I wonder why coalitions are such a bad word in UK. Most Europeans are used to coalitions and welcome them. Consider how UK would look today if Maggie Thatcher had a coalition partner to temper the worst of her policies. The German Green party were able to introduce legislation that has made Germany one of the leading nations in ecological matters. Not only that, but the bill to allow civil partnerships for gay men and women was Green initiative. Germany has had a very stable democracy in the past 60 years despite the coalitions. Or perhaps because of the coalitions.


I had a look to see if I could find the arguments against PR, and found  this blog where Françoise Boucek neatly trashes Cameron's arguments.

For all his talk of doing what is best for Britain it is very obvious that David Cameron and the Tories do not want Electoral Reform, not out of concern for nasty hung parliaments but out of basic self-interest.

The next couple of days will be crucial to the future of Britain. We can only hope that the Lib Dem leadership is not lured by Cameron's offer. Only a fool would believe that the Tories will allow the kind of Electoral Reform that Britain needs.

Saint de glace - or why it is is cold today

At the school gate today, I complained to one of the locals about the cold weather we are injuring at the moment. After several weeks of balmy Spring days it was quite a shock to have to put the heating back on and dig my winter jacket out of the cellar. I was expecting an exclamation of "La Bise, La Bise!" which is normally what happens when the cold wind whistles down Lake Geneva. 

Non. It is apparently the Saint de Glace, the Ice Saints. I can remember from my years in Germany that there was a rule to wait until after the Eisheiligen to put the flowers onto the balcony, and now I find these pesky Saints have followed me to Geneva. 

The school mum explained that it is common for the weather to turn cold in the week before the 11th May. No one in this area plants their garden before that date. Damn. Wish I had known this before I planted my herb garden a couple of weeks ago.


When I got home, I had a look online to find an explanation for this weather phenomena. Easier said than done, as I could find no explanation in English or German. Google translate is my friend so I was able to understand the French websites.

It is all to do with the pesky Saints, Mamertus, Pancras, Servatius and Boniface whose saints days were traditionally celebrated from 11th to 14th May and brought such cold weather that farmers would fear for their crops. You will not find these days marked in many calenders these days because in the 60s the Vatican decided to assign new Saints to these days, and bump the pagan Ice Saints onto the reserve bench.

Is there a meteorological explanation for the cold weather that arrives around these dates? There is according to Wikipedia (apologies for the Wiki explanation but it was the only one that I could find) 

 Some explain the saying by an astronomical phenomenon coinciding with the period of 12 or May 13 of each year, the orbit of the Earth has to cross a very diffuse disk of dust in the solar system, formed both by particles trapped as residues from the formation of planets at the dawn of their existence.  For several hours, the dust is very little barrier to solar radiation.  The decrease in intensity is not observable without extremely sensitive measuring instruments, but sufficient to affect the delicate mechanisms of the meteorology of the globe.The Earth crosses again this dusty disk six months later, on November 11.

 

If you have made sense of that, well done. 

One of the things that I miss when the warmer weather comes along is the open fire in the living room. It has not been on for weeks now. So today I will revel in the short-lived return to cold weather by shutting the shutters, lighting a fire and putting my feet up with a big mug of Cadbury's Hot Chocolate. Bliss.

Mumsnet. A online website for parents - full of bullies?

Sometimes a well intentioned act can go terribly wrong. 

This morning I read an article in the Times Online about the 40 best bloggers. One of the blogs was amusing and I linked to it on Mumsnet, asking if the blogger was a Mumsnetter. Turns out that she is not, and not everyone liked her blog. She quickly took offence and accused MNetters of bullying her. 

For a while, as some more people agreed that her blog was indeed funny, she seemed to calm down and started a lighthearted banter with some other posters. 

No idea what happened next, she suddenly realised that MN was not for her, too unkind, to bullying. Ok, each to their own, if that was the impression that she got then I am sorry for it. 

Instead of letting it go, she then proceeded to tweet up a storm, ranting about "hagsnet", suggesting that we were all suffering from PMT and needed a "good shag" and a job. So far, so misogynistic. When her followers joined in and told stories about the terrible time they have had on MN, and the bullying they have injured, the whole thing took a slightly surreal turn. 

At one point she tweeted that if any journalist was reading, that she could put them in touch with many followers who had been bullied on Mumsnet.

Yes, MNetters can be direct, honest and sometimes for the unsuspecting that can be a bit offputting. Bullying? Seldom, and normally the bullies are taken to task by other MNetters. It is not a website for the faint hearted.

The other side, the less combative side of Mumsnet and the side that does not hit the press very often, is very different. We have seen the support that posters who have been bereaved receive. We know that if a MNetter is in need that she will be helped, often far beyond the normal assistance that would be expected of a member of an anonymous online forum. 

One memorable thread was the story of the teddy bear lost at a London airport and reunited with the Mumsnetter's daughter in Scotland. A MN-husband worked as a baggage handler at the airport and was able to locate the bear and put it on the next flight. 

There are dozens of posts like this. I have been sent Bakewell Tarts and HSM/Ben 10 chocolate advent calenders from a poster in England when I mentioned that I could not get them here in Switzerland. On another occasion I was sent tea bags, when mine ran out. This was not from particular friends, just posters who had chatted for a while and offered so send something.


Recently dozens of Mumsnetters came together to assist those stranded abroad by the volcanic ash plane grounding. Local travel websites were consulted, contact numbers found for bus companies who were organising coaches to travel across Europe. One Mumsnetter was able to save the cost and hassle of a hotel room when she went to Brussels to pick up her DS when she was offered a bed for the night. 

On a slightly more serious note, several times in the past couple of years lives have been saved by Mumsnetters recognising a serious situation and imploring the poster to get help. I am not exaggerating here. There have been posters who, without MNetters' advice, would have died.


It is a shame to see the website maligned like this. I hope that the followers of the blogger (who I shall not name as I do not want to get into another argument with her) go and look for themselves and see what a fantastic website MN is.