Les Sches

24 July - Slept in today, which was very pleasant before heading off for a run. Alice kindly drew me a map of the local area and gave me vague directions to get to a local resort with a lake I could run around. The area is quite sparesely populated so running through the town means just going past a couple of dozen buildings - a few places it was a bit delicate because there was nowhere to run on the side of the road and the cars were going a bit fast. The resort was quite interesting - lots of hills and a few lakes - apparntly it was originaklly a quarry, it was then was turned into a dump and the quarry was filled - then, the locals decided it wasn't very nice having the area used as dump so they dug it all up and turned it into a resort. Natural progression really. Think I might be coming to the end of my training, I think - i've only got a bit more than a week to go so I may have one or two runs in Paris just to say i've done it before packing it in - i'm certainly not going to get any fitter and the onlything that can happen is that I hurt something i'm going to need.
When I got back I saw a red squirrel in the garden stealing walnuts (never seen a squirrel before in my life until Hyde Park [there are grey ones there] and now i'm seeing them everywhere) - ALice says that there are also pheasants, deer and wild boar in the area (am really hoping to see some of them but it's doubtful i've been told). There are also two very cute but very naughty french bulldogs living at the house, Petula and Gizmo. They get alongvery well excpt when they're trying to kill each other (they often draw blood). I went out in the garden and found a pine cone - I threw it to Petu who took it and then wouldn't drop it. With the long pine cone in her mouth it looked like a she was smoking a fat Cuban cigar and she was the spitting image of Winston Churchill. If I still had a camera I would have taken a photo with it bui don't so I had to use my camera - am not sure how well it turned out but will see when I workout how to get the pictures of my camera.
Also met Papi Mueller in the afternoon (the patriarch of the French connections) - the quintessential French gentleman, very gallic in every way, fought in the resistance, made loads of cash afterwards, doesn't speak a word of English. I introduced myself with 'Bonjour Papi, je suis Sax, Diana's filles, qui est ce' - I am aware that something may have been lost in translation. I stayed out in the garden helping a bit with a wheelbarrow but the conversation was limited - he did try 'Sprecken de Deutsch?'(there are probably spelling mistakes here) and I had to reply, 'Nine!' However, he still gave me a tour of the well appointed house and Alice eventually rescued us by acting as translator (she has been a bit o a godsend, I really wouldn't like to be the only one who speaks both languages with thwo foreigners - it can get a bit tiresome I would expect).
That night Alice, Marcel and I headed out to Meaux to see an all-female music festival - unfortunately the town was rather dead and most of the acts had already finished (Marcel had predicted this) so we started to head into Paris then decided that Disneyland would be a better option (much closer). Not exactly what I expected from my first night out in Paris - we were just in the village which is pretty much exactly like Fox Studios (noiw I know what it's modelled on) but had a great time with the company. Very nice day.