Bear waved a newspaper cutting under my nose. "I want you to telephone this man and ask if I can go and see his organ." (Hastily put in photo in case anyone gets the wrong idea!) It seems this gentleman has built an organ from scratch and assembled it in his living room beside  a grand piano. Fortunately he welcomed visitors and was on holiday, so we were warmly invited to go over on Wednesday afternoon. Despite the fact that I don't share Bear's fascination with organs I couldn't help but be impressed with the wonderful workmanship and loving care which had gone into creating this little masterpiece. Everything made from wood was his own handiwork. The bulk of the case was made from oak and he had used applewood, pearwood and lime for the decorations. The metal pipes were...

We have managed to reduce our routine visits to the vet to just three times a year - two cats each time. Last week it was the turn of Toby and Chloe and we knew that if anyone caught a glimpse of a catbasket they would all disappear under the bed or behind the computer. So I prepared the willow basket and a new cat carrier that the vet had given us last time in the garage and then went to find the victims. Toby was curled up  on an armchair so it was easy to pick him up but when he saw the basket he became amazingly active and it was a bit of a fight to get him in. Chloe, bless her, was more trusting and quite curious about this new bag so she didn't protest too much when I zipped her in. Toby made  loud cries all the way there but Chloe didn't make a sound. Maybe she was...

The main headlines in the local paper today were: Ardennes: encore un instit insulté (another teacher insulted). Now, in England it seems that teachers have to put up with aggressive pupils and parents on almost a daily basis. It only becomes newsworthy if someone - usually the teacher -  is killed or badly injured. Here, though, there is universal condemnation of such behaviour and when it happens twice in two weeks it makes front page news. However, on neither occasion did it get as far as blows. Two weeks ago, a teacher in Revin was verbally abused by the parents of one of his pupils but yesterday, in a small village school two teenagers accosted a teacher in the playground  claiming to be the elder siblings of one of the children in his class. There were threats and...