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?

Califrau, your dentist sounds great. I am too scared to go. My only experience of dentists in the US was awful. I wonder if yours knows anyone in the Windy City.

I like the helicopter story

Nothing to report from my neck of the woods, I'm afraid.

oh califrau it seemed like it was your talented handiwork.

I know what you mean about buying the other - I have a nephew - he is the first boy after 5 girls in the family. So nice to buy blue things.

FOOC Nairobi

Sue, I love it. After the amount of rain we had last night, it took some people 3 hours to do a usual 20 minute journey. This helicopter idea might 'take off' here too .

I too am going to the dentist today. Sadly my experience will be, let's say, slightly more basic than the hi-tech version on offer in California. There is a tv. It shows cartoons. If the signal is working.

FOOC Galicia

Love the school standing up to the helicopter owner.

And the conkers in Paris - teafortwo your daughter sounds very cute.

Here we have horse chesnut trees, but no tradition of collecting the conkers to play with. The first autumn I saw them I got all excited and searched out the biggest, shiniest one to take home. But, because no one wanted to play with me it languished there.

Now, chestnuts are a whole other ball game. The place goes mad for chestnuts in October/November. I´ll tell you more when the time comes.

All this talk of dentists reminds me that I should go. My surgery doesn´t even have a TV, or a poster on the ceiling. So I generally close my eyes and listen to the dentist and nurse gossiping!

Fooc Tromsø

I cannot see the shore on the mainland. Morning mist over the ocean is moving slowly north, shiny silvery in colour, bathed in the rays of the sun. It is often like that, when the sun warms up the sea in the morning, after a frosty night. Only in Automn. You know it is automn now, the grass is yellowing, the leaves yellow and red, and the mist and tiny water droplets gives grasses a sort of transparent cloudy look. Oh, and it is only 6 degrees, so the air has a distinct chill.

I made pancakes for tea yesterday. I sprinkled them with sugar and berries, and rolled into logs, wrapped them, and went to pick up the kids after school. I brought along the kids' Wall-E plastic popcorn buckets from the cinema with me. We drove up to the hills, and I let the kids roam free, with their buckets. Ds1 picked blueberries, and DS2 found a small stream and enjoyed pressing the bucket down to gather water. They feasted on pancakes while I let the "hunter gatherer" instinct take over.

Thank You for the welcome,

I will post further from sunny (at least for today) Bedfordshire, when I can find something interesting to write

Check out my region: Jo Lumley on youtube

(For those foocs who cant access Iplayer)

I love the helicopter hijack at the school. Well done them.

We have loads of conkers here but they are not used as conker should be used. I have been looked at like for even suggesting it.

In this area the children collect the chestnuts and hazelnuts and take them down to Bonn to the Haribo HQ. There the children can exchange them for sweets: 10 kg chestnuts (or 5 kg hazelnuts) are exchanged for 1kg Haribo. The chestnuts are used for the local Deer Park.

This has been going on since 1934 and now attracts over 12000 children from all over Germany.

A couple of years ago Haribo cancelled the chestnut exchange when 2 adults delivered chestnuts in a 7.5ton lorry. They were forced to reinstate the exchange as the children came anyway, emptied their bags in the factory entrance, and blocked the entrance.

Nowadays they have put a 50 kg limit on the amount each child may exchange. That is still a lot of Haribo

Paris FOOC

MmeLindt -

I 'ate 'aribo sweets!!! BLAAAAAAAAHHH!!!

But...

since living in France I have got a leeetle taste for champagne... So... I was thinking... maybe Haribo should definately stop doing that and the Champagne region of France could definately start doing it instead!

Can you imagine all the veryYummyMummy's of the World would be flying their helicopters into school grounds in the Champagne region...

"Yar... sorry... (snort snort) just leaving the chopper here while we deliver the conkies to exchange for champers, daaahhhhrling!!!" He he he

p.s I am going to be watching the French children VERY closely this Autumn - do Parisians do the right thing with conkers - !!!???!!!! I will keep you posted

Paris fooc -

Eeeerrrrmmm... and....

We got "The Sound Of Music" out from the library today and spent the afternoon watching it while washing conkers .

Brilliant stuff - at one stage dd was dancing on the table and when Eidelweiss was sung at the end we couldn't stop cuddling!!!

It made we wonder though... do we have an Austrian fooc? If we haven't got one we should try and get one!!! - I visited Austria many years ago but often imagine living there (perhaps you have noticed imagining living in all sorts of places is a hobby of mine- he he he!!!). Seriously - It truely is such a dreamy, beautiful, rich place!

(Maybe I am still a little high from the film - "The hiiiiiiiiiiiiillls are allllliiiiivvvve with the sound of meeeewwwwooooozzzzzikkkkkk" he he he)

Good night - keep foocing

waht a great thread

oops, I forgot...

FOOC from Düsseldorf Germany

I love the idea of exchanging chestnuts for sweets but lol @ the 7.5 ton truck.

There is no tradition of conkers here, either. I tried to explain the whol thing to someone at the weekend but was met with

Quint, the Joanna Lumley program is wonderful.

I will watch the Joanna Lumley programme when I get some speakers for my computer (dh borrowed them to give to his mother and I still haven´t got them back

Can´t wait!

FOOC Shanghai

It is amazing how much commerce is conducted from bicycles in Shanghai. They weld big metal panniers and fill them up with whatever they need. There are people on bicycles who re-cane or patch rattan furniture, buy your recyclables, sell sun awnings (these bicycles have a striped awning where the front basket would be on an ordinary bike), deliver furniture (we bought a dining table and were shocked when it turned up tied to the back mudguard of a bike, and it is perfectly common to see someone bicycling round with a fridge or a washing machine strapped to their bike), all sorts of things.

One of the classic sounds of China is a man with a megaphone shouting "I fix airconditioners; radios; televisions; washing machines" in a really distinct droney rhythm. You lean out your window and shout for him to come up. When he gets to your flat, he takes off his shoes, hops out your third-floor window and stands on the ledge whacking your air con unit with a hammer while you hop from foot to foot inside thinking oh fuckity fuck, I wonder what my legal position would be if he fell and killed himself.

On Monday night I saw one go past really slowly. He was following a girl who was walking along the footpath. He was shouting (in English) with his megaphone I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU! I LOVE YOU!

FOOC Hackney N London

Drat, I wrote a post all about conkers only to find TFT had beaten me to it! Well I will post it anyway...

September for me means CONKERS. We used to live in a house opposite a line of horse chestnut trees, but my sister and I were always thwarted by older boys with sticks who would steal all the conkers leaving us with the titchy fallers. Now I?m in London I can indulge my acquisitive instincts, especially as most children seem completely uninterested. Our local park is stuffed with horse chestnut trees and the recent windy weather has given us a fantastic harvest. This year I have a partner in crime as DS is old enough to understand the joys of conker hunting (DH is sadly oblivious). We spent a lovely afternoon yesterday ferreting about in the fallen leaves and finding bushels of beautiful conkers. Not the measly tiny ones but big fat thoroughbreds, the ones Molesworth predicts will lose any game at first bash. DS was in heaven (?Conk-conk. Oooh, wow. Pokkit?) and rode back in the pushchair with his pockets stuffed full. Now I need to figure out how old he has to be before I challenge him to his first game

Oh and I have just discovered that conkers are supposed to repel spiders: a very good reason for collecting them

Paris Fooc

No no no Effie - you are confused I was talking about conkies not, conk conks and not pokkits but torkits!!!!

Completely different posts entirely!!! Thanks for posting - it was lovely!!!

Ninedragons - what a great post on bikes!!! I don't know whether that girl should marry him immediately (oh how sweet) or have him put in jail (creepy creep)!!!!

FOOC Nigeria

The helicopter is no longer residing in the school playing fields; whether this is because a deal has been done or whether it's been moved elsewhere for safe keeping, I do not know. I shall let you know if there is any more news on the subject.

Today we had rain. Again. And lots of it. The roads flooded badly and in unexpected places, possibly due to the extraordinary amount of construction work taking place, much of which pays no heed to the damage caused to drainage ditches and pipelines by heavy lorries travelling on fragile roads. Having spent some hours in the car today, that helicopter is becoming rather an attractive proposition...

9Dragons, I loved the AC man story!

FOOC Thailand

Loving all the conkers stories, makes me feel nostalgic for that autumny feeling you get this time of year in the UK.

9, I'm inordinately annoyed that you actually know what the repairman's shouting - we have people driving past in little vans all the time but my Thai is terrible, I have no idea what they're on about.

Actually I'm annoyed in general today. I love being here, and Thai people are great mostly, but sometimes I can't help feeling like people collectively miss the point.

I had to do some emergency shopping on the way into work this morning, which involved going into the centre of (the tiny) town. It should have taken 5 minutes but turned into an epic journey - well, 25 minutes of driving around and around trying to avoid the high school parade conveniently scheduled to go through the busiest roads during the rush hour. I'd go down a side alley and find the road blocked and a load of motorcyclists waiting, engines running. The occasional 4wd truck too (not much point in cars round here), always with the air con on, engines running. It wouldn't bother me so much, except the parade was supposed to be raising awareness about global warming.

So we all used 3x as much petrol as usual so that a bunch of embarrassed-looking kids could walk down the street holding sick-looking plants (in plastic bags) and carrying a banner saying "We're safe the world".

Anyone know the Thai for irony?

Political update - Samak has been forced to step down from his post. Not because of the vote-buying, but because he's a TV chef (see what I mean about missing the point?). Story here. My Thai colleagues have started turning up to work wearing People's Power Party (i.e. Samak's party) t-shirts; it's definitely not over yet.

Luckily we're going away this weekend - I think I need a break . We have a work thing, and then hopefully a few days on the beach and some FOOC reports in a couple of weeks about great seafood!

The other distinct sound of Shanghai is these little trucks about the size of golf buggies that squirt water to wash the gutters. Some (unfortunately not all) play "Happy Birthday To You" as they go along, to warn you to get out of the way.

If you are in the right mood, China is refreshingly eccentric. If you're in the wrong mood, it can drive you up the wall.