My birthday came and went, as they do, with a quiet fanfare and a great big cake. Due to confusion over numbers, a result of advancing years I imagine, I had passed most of last year thinking I was 43, so it was a nice surprise on my birthday to realise I had ‘only’ been 42.

So I have an opportunity to relive my 43rd year. I wonder if I’ll make more of it second time around? This year has been quite successful – plenty of cycling, various website projects going OK, family all in good health etc – so I can’t complain.

One bit of bad news down here – we live a few hundred metres from one of the last five or six bakers in the whole of France to still make bread using completely traditional techniques – milling their own flour, avoiding electric ovens, and so on – as they have been since before the revolution. Sadly the elderly chap that runs it is unwell, and the bakers has closed, never to reopen.

This is a great loss for both us and for France – it is very sad to see such a great institution cease to operate. It really was an experience getting bread from them – entering into the backroom to get bread (they sold nothing else) was more like entering a museum than a shop.

Happily we do still have a fine cake makers in town, called Damien Blanchard if you are ever drifting through Villereal, that make some of the best cakes you have ever tasted. Let them eat cake, as I think Marie Antoinette probably didn’t say.

At 16-20 euros a gateau they probably won’t replace bread in our daily diet for the time-being, but they do make a birthday that much more worth looking forward to. In any case it is quite messy trying to mop out your soup bowl with a slice of chocolate mousse gateau.

Another thing i’ve started looking at is ‘top 10 lists’. Apparently these are a great attraction on a website, so I’ve been compiling a few for francethisway. French classic cars, comic strips, worst French criminals , school dinners, French pop stars and so on. As always, feel free to suggest (or submit) your own ‘top 10 list’ – top 10 vegetables, skiing resorts, politicians, villages in the Loire Valley, whatever tickles your interest.

French classic cars is my favourite list so far, but I was interested when researching the worst French criminals to learn that it was the French who invented the getaway car – the Bonnot Gang started using a car to escape from crime scenes in 1911, when the police still had horses and bicycles, making the chase a bit unevenly matched.

I’ve also changed the website look a bit – I decided it was looking a bit too brown – but I am holding out against Mrs B and her demands that I change this blog to be black writing on a white background. She still complains of headaches and dizzy spells when she reads it, but I like it.

Last thing, with the French elections approaching, i’m a bit concerned that my daughter has taken to walking around the house singing a catchy little ditty:

Une seule solution, la manifestation (trad: there is only one answer – protests!, sung roughly to the tune of ‘2-4-6-8, who do we appreciate’)

I know that manifestations, strikes, and protest form an important part of the French cultural tradition but I’m a bit suprised it forms part of playground entertainment.