Can we make our own 'from our own correspondent'

[teafortwo]

I love love love this radio show...

news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/default.stm

Can we please please please have a thread that has a vibe a bit like this?

We can have a bunch of parents who live all over the World in all kinds of countries (including Blighty), with all kinds of neighbours and themselves living in all kinds of situations (rural, city, suburbs and anything inbetween) explaining what is happening where they live. Day to day things (what is on sale at your local market, what you ate for lunch), portraits of figures in your community (e.g a lovely old village character), big news stories (e.g student riots), little news stories (a much loved dog has died that used to wander around the town centre), arguements in the cafe (sport, politics, religion), music and dance (e.g I notice all Parisian teenagers like to do this weird wiggling dance and they even have lessons for how to do it on national telly), observations on things that are different from where you come from (I don't know...e.g a New Yorker's take on living in the Lake District), interesting discussions on languages spoken... etc etc... I think it could be fun!!!

So tell me...

Am I making sense?

and..

What do you think? Shall we give it a go?

Oh Sibble! My folks used to take my brother and me to the hotpools outside Tauranga when we were small. Oh! I want to go back. NOW.

Seriously - I would love to have a garden. Me and dh have this little plan that one day we will also have a 'holiday home' in Normandy with a garden and some space. We would love one for weekends, a dog, parties and holidays. But at the moment I will have to do with my three window boxes, inviting people to the couscous restaurant opposite and tripping over each other and things at least once every 15 minutes because our apartment is so so small!!!

eeeerrrmmm.... sorry I forgot.... 'ang on....

Paris fooc

You can come and garden with me, t42. You can help me harvest all the redcurrants and the blackcurrants which are busy ripening.

That sounds just great qs!!! Can we make jam afterwards - it will be just like a summer job I once had... However, between the foocs and I, I'll be there in a minute as I am just doing a foocs plug on another thread.

Jam, yes, and freshly baked scones, and whipped cream..... yum

oh how British! Yum, yum, yum!!!

Yes, but it is one of the best things I have ever eaten, at a farm near Hull, home made jam, still hot from the pot, scones straight out of the oven, while the wife was whipping up some cream.... Mouthwatering. Time would reveal I was one day pregnant that day. Maybe that is why the memory is so fresh and so pleasant.

Wow Califrau, that is HOT. Hope you have a/c in your house.

I like the sound of homemade jam and scones. I too am devoid of a garden, and not very green fingered even where window boxes are concerned, but I´ve made a vow to make a proper go of it this year. So herbs here we come! Very of all of you with prodigious gardens.

FOOC from the greyest of the grey that can be grey. Tromsø

The weather is dull and grey, the clouds are grey, the sea is grey, even the air and the trees seems to be taking on a hue of grey. Quite a contrast to Califraus hothouse Can I have some of that heat? I need some for my redcurrants to ripen without going too sour!

I never managed to get to the museum yesterday, by the time I had helped my husband pack, and got his friend from the airport, and them both to the boat terminal, I was shattered. Relying on the GPS, in the middle of norwegian mountains is maybe a little foolhardy. He rang me last night with some coordinates, and asked me to check on the map where he was, so I could tell him. And could I please calculate some further coordinates to the nearest cycle animal path so he could find his way? Of course, it was nighttime, so pitch black by then.

I am not going to get to the museum today either, as my mum has invited my aunt to come look at our selfbuild. So, that is where we are going. The groundfloor brick walls are up.

Signing off for now

Wow, that is hot hot hot, Cali! DH has just checked the temp outside and we are up to 40 degrees at the mo. I'm cowering indoors but am running out of jobs to do. Ho hum, a bit of MN!

FOOC from Düsseldorf, Germany

We had a wee trip to Holland today as it is Koopzondag. The shops are open on the first Sunday of the month in some of the Dutch towns. Here in Germany there is not a lot to do on Sundays. The shops are shut, only opening a couple of times a year, often in the run up to Christmas and sometimes combined with a market.

This means that the Germans who live in the areas close to the Dutch border invade Holland once a month; this is made even more popular since the advent of the Euro as we don't even have to exchange currency.

We headed for Maastricht, well known because of the contract signed there, a picturesque town often full of tourists, never more so than on Koopzondag. There was an exhibition on by the Dutch police, complete with demonstration by the riot police how they would deal with a riot. They let normal members of the public be the "rioters", including some young boys who had a great time charging the riot police.

DS was chuffed to be allowed to sit on the police motorcycle. (Pic on profile)

Stuffed with waffeln we headed off towards the old town for a wander around the cobbled streets. We discovered De winkel van nijntje a shop dedicated to Holland's most successful childrens' toy, Nijntje or as we know her, Miffy.

Miffy is 50 years old already and she and her compatriots can be visited in the Dick Bruna house in Utrecht.

Sadly, my DCs are a bit too old for Miffy, but they had a good look around Miffy corner.

Mme Lindt, no Miffy vibrator in Miffy corner I hope?

FOOC in Nairobi checking in.

Wow there are some hotter than hot places out there right now. Nairobi is warming up too, but to a pleasant 25 degrees and blue skies with fluffy white clouds. Talking of gardens we have a couple of acres. An acre of cultivated garden in which anything seems to grow, fabulous gerberas, flamboyant trees, jacaranda, frangipani, the ubiqutous bougainvillae, agapanthus and so on. There is always something flowering no matter what the season is.

Today we have been visiting Nairobi National Park, which is a proper game park, that can be found nestling on the edges of the city, under the flight paths of both the international airport and the smaller domestic airport. The world and his wife were there but we managed to find a quiet picnic spot and had a bbq picnic lunch on the site of the place where millions of pounds worth of ivory were burned by the director of the Kenya Wildlife Service in the 1970's. The ivory belonged to KWS and the Director believed that by burning it, it would signify to the world that the value of ivory was not worth the lives of the elephants killed to obtain it. The Director believed they couldn't conduct a campaign to prevent illegal elephant poaching for the ivory, whilst they themselves held millions in store to sell as and when necessary. The ashes remain there to this day.

M&M
No, sadly the Miffy shop was a vibrator free zone

Your garden sounds heavenly. I spread a packet of Aldi wild flowers over my front garden and let them grow. It looks wild and lovely, although I do suspect that my German neighbours find it terrible. It is not unknown for the flowers here to be planted using a spade and a spirit level. Yellow pansy, blue pansy, yellow pansy, blue pansy...

It is infact very reassuring you did not find any Miffy vibrators. I would hate for my boys to ever find a Star Wars vibrating light sabre....

OMG! They do the same here! And with pansies!!!!

FOOC Somewhere in South London

A once met a journo who was employed by a serious newspaper (I think it was the Pink One) to report from Japan. He decided to take a break and hang out with his mates in London. While his secretary filed his reports-as-usual from Tokyo...

I think he got found out when he bumped into his boss walking down the road.

Which is why, though sorely tempted, I am not pretending to be somewhere more exotic. But I LOVE this thread.

foocing in der Paris 'burbs!!!!

Sunday in my town is market day and it really is a big day in our household. We pull the trolley out from behind my daughter's bed. It is the kind only old ladies and invalids use in England but here is the Rolls Royce of market goers bags.

We stop at the bank to get some cash out and then cross in-front of the town hall, down a side street and towards the purpose built "Singing Cockerel Market".

On a Sunday morning the market spills both ways down the street. Outside hot pizza, plastic handbags, toys that break if you so much as exhale one breathe, over priced cooking equipment and flammable clothing is messily sold. For us these are the side stalls for the main entertainer: The food!

My daughter always kisses the picture of a dog with a line through it to tell the public ?no dogs?(she likes the cute dog picture). However, this is a rule it seems ok to break because many people bring dogs to the market. The air smells of crepes because the first market stand is a Breton specialist and she sells hot crepes for hungry customers.

Because we go every Sunday, if we can help it, we have developed firm favourites when it comes to the stalls and stall holders. Today my first port of call was my fruit and veg man. I enquired when would they be getting blackberries in (thanks to QS and all her berry talk I was really craving blackberry and apple crumble). He said they wouldn?t for one to two weeks but he remembered he had seen them on another stall. He insisted on coming with me and got the price knocked down from six euros to four. In return I bought a kilo of his apples and another kilo of his own now over-priced, as the season is ending, Haricot beans ? but wow they were delicious. Success! We next whizzed across to the herb specialist. An old Arabic man who each week greats my daughter by presenting her with a small seasonal fruit. This week a plum! ?Ooooh plum!? She said to him in English ?Merci!?. We bought a huge bunch of both basil and mint. When we got home three more plums were at the bottom of the bag. He is a really special man. Like the character in a children?s story ? I will tell you more about him another day. Last stall today was the cheese stall. It is run by a Grandmother, Mother and son. My daughter had finished her plum in time to tuck into a slice of Tomme cheese. We always buy a bottle of fresh milk and eggs from this family too. ?Six eggs, please? I routinely said. ?What are they for?? The Grandmother asked ?Crème Anglaise? I replied to go with blackberry and apple crumble. She shook her head at the six eggs I was pointing at. ?They are no good for crème Anglaise. You need these.? She brought out anther pack. I thanked her for her advice and imagined some special hens somewhere in rural France being bred specifically to make eggs for good custard as we headed towards our favourite café for our after market drink with friends.

FOOC Kapiti New Zealand.

We are in that place between Winter and Spring here on the Kapiti coast. Yesterday was a glorious day with the bluest, clearest of skies and that clear crisp light I personally have only seen here in New Zealand, I hear Peru experiences this same quality of light, do we have a Peruvian correspondent who can verify this?
We were lucky enough on this day to receive an invitation to lunch from some friends who have built their house up in the Tararua Hills, what a treat! The hills run parallel to the sea from north to south, we live in the land between sea and hills. As the road takes you up and away from the houses the native bush becomes more prevalent the most eye catching of which has to be the Ponga, the native silver tree fern. There is a quality to New Zealand bush which has to be seen to be understood, it is outstanding, the smell and the colours of the bush are in direct contrast to the forests of Europe, which I know and love so well.
The house of our friends is a dream, those clever, ingenious folk built right on top of a small hill which is surrounded by a river. We took a long walk around the property and surrounding bush, with all it's hidden dingly dells and beauty spots. Our three boys turned collectively feral and ended up wading the creek, astounding me again at a childs ability to withstand such freezing water!
We wound back down the hill with the sun armed with a car full of mulch for the garden, fresh eggs and our heads full of dreams for the future...
Today, it is raining....