Wednesday, 17 April 2013

Curiosities around the village

We have been taking long walks around our village and came across some interesting things.

The first photo is of the klaxon. It sounds everyday at midday. I guess people need to know when it's lunch time... Apart from the cafes, everything closes between 12 and 2 pm. When we first moved here, this siren would go off regularly to alert the pompiers (firefighters) of any emergencies. We were told what the number of blasts were: One for midday, two for fire, three times for road accidents, I can't remember what four times meant and in the Alps and the Pyrenees, five times was for avalanche. Three years ago the pompiers were issued with pagers, so the siren goes off just once a day now. We live very near the fire station, and we can see them driving up the road like maniacs when there's an emergency, then we see their appropriate vehicles going down the road at the rate of knots.

The klaxon

Detail

The next thing that caught our eye the other day was what we think is a cell tower. Pallottine asked if something he saw in one of the photos of the village was a cell tower (which confused me, as we call them mobile masts). What Pallottine saw was an ordinary electricity post. This one sits much higher on the hill and looks different from the normal posts.

Cell tower?

Detail

Finally, we found this hobbit structure in the middle of the woods. Peter reckons it's a water pumping thingie. It has a vent on the top. I looked for any signs on the door, but there was nothing. We concluded it's not anything to do with electricity and high voltage, as they always put signs warning of "danger de mort." Danger of death!

What could this be?

Detail of the vent

I'm preparing a post with some nice photos and some of the history of the village, but I thought the pictures above were intriguing and didn't want to mix the subjects...

Monday, 15 April 2013

Name these girls - The results

The Leprechaun did it! Pallottine matched 11 out of 13, an amazing result! Here's the winning selection. He switched TW and Betzy. The rest are spot on. Well done, Irish!

1-Spike
2-Queen
3-Sleuth
4-TW
5-CC
6-Mrs G
7-Amy
8-Betsy
9-Regina
10-Rip
11-GrannyJ
12-PGFan
13-Molly

These are the results,which you can compare to your lists at a glance:

01 - Spike
02 - Queen of Sheeba
03 - Sleuth
04 - Betzy
05 - CC
06 - Mrsgunka
07 - Amy (Ottoline)
08 - Tumbleweed
09 - Regina
10 - Ripley
11 - GrannyJ
12 - PGFan
13 - Molly Malone

The runner-up is Betzy (who did very well on her first and only attempt), with 9 correct matches.

Congratulations to the winners!

You proved to be a very competitive bunch, just for the fun of it, considering that there were no prizes involved... New ideas for future competitions are very welcome. This was great fun and deserves to be repeated.

Spike

Queen of Sheeba

Sleuth

Betzy

CC

Mrsgunka

Amy (Ottoline)

Tumbleweed

Regina

Ripley

GrannyJ

PGFan

Molly Malone

Sunday, 14 April 2013

Name these girls - Second chance

The guessing competition is proving to be very popular and attracted lots of comments. I decided to re-post the photos with clearer rules. I'm also doing this to make my life simpler. I would go crazy trying to go through 350+ comments to retrieve your lists!

Rules:

1) People who appear in the photos are allowed to match 10 pictures to the names, to avoid "outing" themselves.

2) Everybody else (not in the photos, lurkers and accidental visitors) may match them all, but anybody with 10 correct guesses wins.

3) If revising your lists, please do not edit. Post a fresh list in a new comment. It would be impossible for me to keep track of the edits.

I will re-post everything again the day before the results and you'll have a last chance to revise your lists.

The entrants, in no particular order, are:

Betzy
Tumbleweed
Molly Malone
Ripley
GrannyJ
PGFan
Spike
Queen of Sheeba
CC
Mrsgunka
Sleuth
Amy (Ottoline)
Regina (Moi!)

Please match the photos to the names and post the number of the photo with the chosen name alongside it in the comments. I'll collect all your choices and announce the winner in a few days, when I'll post all the pictures with their respective names.

Lurkers and newcomers are most welcome to post their guesses. The more, the merrier...

Have fun!

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

10

11

12

13

Saturday, 13 April 2013

Name these girls

The child photo competition is finally upon us! I thought it would make it trickier if all the photos appeared in black & white, but any colour originals will be posted when the results are announced. Some photos have been cropped, enlarged or tweaked for clarity.

The entrants, in no particular order, are:

Betzy
Tumbleweed
Molly Malone
Ripley
GrannyJ
PGFan
Spike
Queen of Sheeba
CC
Mrsgunka
Sleuth
Amy (Ottoline)
Regina (Moi!)

Please match the photos to the names and post the number of the photo with the chosen name alongside it in the comments. I'll collect all your choices and announce the winner later next week, when I'll post all the pictures with their respective names.

Lurkers are most welcome to post their guesses. The more, the merrier...

Have fun!

01

02

03

04

05

06

07

08

09

10

11

12

13

UPDATE

I've observed the selections coming in and realized that if the entrants make choices for all 13 photos, other people would be able to guess them all (eventually) by a process of elimination.

In order to prevent this from happening, I think entrants should be able to select a maximum of 10 photos. People with no photos up there may try to guess all of them, but to make things fair, anybody with 10 correct guesses wins.

Does it sound fair to you?

Friday, 12 April 2013

The Leprechaun

The childhood photo competition starts tomorrow. It was our resident Leprechaun's idea, following a post where his young self appeared and readers were invited to guess who it was. As I didn't give many clues, the guesses were rather amusing. Somebody suggested Paul Newman!

Well... not quite:



I have to admit that Pallottine is just as handsome as Paul Newman in his school photo...

Thank you for the great idea, Pallottine. The competition will be a lot of fun!

Thursday, 11 April 2013

Funny dogs

These dogs (and their butts) are quite amusing: