After quite a while away from my WordPress blog I am back again. My absence was because my laptop was getting old and able to do less and less. We debated whether to get a new French one with all its quirks and such an annoying arrangement of keys on the keyboard or to wait and get an English one.

However, I am quite used to the strange location of punctuation and symbols after nearly 20 years of use, a logical English QUERTY keyboard would drive me crazy again. Things that are illogical on a French keyboard:- the full stop is uppercase whereas an exclamation mark is up under the numbers and is lowercase. When I first started writing on a French keyboard my letters home were full of accidental semi-colons as that is in the lowercase position of a full stop key.

What have I learnt while away? Every so often we have a ‘Café Croissant’ service at our french church. Tables are set out, each seating 8 people. A large coffee percolator serves coffee for the next 2 hours and for the children there is hot chocolate. Platters in the middle of the tables are piled high with mini croissants, pain au chocolates, and pain au raisins. As I have bushes that produce pounds of raspberries, I thought I would be generous and supply a jar of freshly made raspberry jam for each table. I was perplexed when I noted that none of the jars were opened. I went to the children’s table and opened their jar, took the croissant off quite feisty lad, split his croissant and filled it with jam. ‘What are you doing, Joy?’ he cried. ‘Letting you taste my lovely jam.’ I replied.

That was the day that I learnt that French people don’t put butter or jam on a croissant. The other jars remained unopened, but at the end of the event when testimonies had been shared of God’s goodness, several people wanted to take a jar home. I prevaricated; that was not the point of taking along the freshly made conserve. But, I learnt something new after almost 20 years in France – if you want to look authentic don’t put jam on your croissant.