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Sunny days

Finally the sun is shining and normal weather has resumed service.  I hadn't realised how much water had flooded into the car and after 2 weeks I am still trying to dry out the floor and the storage spaces.  My adult grandchildren and their girlfriends are here this week and although the bank is truly broken they too brought the sunshine with their good company, good humour and enthusiasm.

On Thursday we took advantage of a non strike day to go to Paris.  As we were walking down the Champs d'Elysee we spotted a duck and three ducklings heading for the pedestrian crossing.  We were impressed.  The mother duck had a confident look in her eye. She knew that she wanted to get to the river and the crossing was the safest means of doing so.  All was going well until some  silly woman decided to shoo the duck family off the crossing and back to the pavement.  The duck, clearly more intelligent than the woman, kept trying to get round her and as a consequence was forced off the crossing and into the path of 6 lanes of traffic.  Alarmed by their certain death, other people waded in (sorry about the pun)  and threw themselves in front of buses, taxis and other fast moving vehicles.  Most of the drivers screaming to a halt couldn't even see the duck and the three babies and assumed that the Paris residents had finally had enough of the strikes and were hurling themselves in front of moving traffic to achieve mass suicide.  Somehow and miraculously the duck, the ducklings, the woman and various others managed to get across 6 lanes of traffic unharmed and the duck continued her journey to the river.  If only that woman had recognised the superiority of the animal kingdom.

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