Tuesday, November 26

This morning, C. was in top form and greeted us at his arrival with "Hello, gossip girls !" This was a great opportunity to speak about the role of alliteration in English ; for example, "Put a Tiger in Your Tank" was introduced to promote Enco Extra and Esso Extra gasolines in the sixties.

Alliteration is the repetition of a particular sound in the prominent lifts (or stressed syllables) of a series of words or phrases. Alliteration has developed largely through poetry, in which it more narrowly refers to the repetition of a consonant in any syllables that, according to the poem’s meter, are stressed.

M. had brought for each of us a leave and flower of pink Schlumbergera commonly called Christmas Cactus or Thanksgiving Cactus. At first, we thought they were Epiphyllum (/ˌɛpɨˈfɪləm/). We are supposed to plant them : yesterday was St Catherine’s day, when "whatever is planted will take root and grow".
And A. showed us an old book about the Language of flowers by Kate Greenaway lent by her niece this week-end.

Here can be read several online books by Kate Greenaway.

We read the program of movies to be shown in the Utopia this month :

• The boys and Guillaume is supposed to be a comedy, but we found his story was a sad one ;
• as for the indian film The lunch box, after listening to its summary by M., we spoke about lunchboxes delivered to offices in India by bikers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dabbawala A collecting dabbawala, usually on bicycle, collects dabbas either from a worker’s home or from the dabba makers. As many of the carriers are illiterate, the dabbas have some sort of distinguishing mark on them, such as a colour or group of symbols.

N. said that she had enjoyed the visit of London shown on TV last week with The great trip, especially tea-time with scones, cream and jam : it would be nice to plan a real tea-time with her English neighbour who is so helpful, if we manage to find a free afternoon on our diaries.

We looked at the "Mandala Agenda" bought by I. from the Nature and Discovery store and decided to draw mandalas next time with a compass.

C. had brought a beautiful handmade matryoshka doll in felt (natural wool fibres) in which needles and scissors can be stored.

N. spoke about an grand-aunt of hers who is 97 and decided to buy a computer in order to visit museums through Internet. Congratulations ! Thanks to her we learned about an Italian painter of the 15th century Andrea Mantegna.

I don’t know how our conversation jumped back to lunchboxes at school and "doudou" boxes which are referred to by English-speaking toddlers as blankey and lovey.

It was a very pleasant moment, even though we often felt frustrated not to be allowed to talk to our neighbours... in French.