At the first meeting since my last report we read and translated an account of the life of Simone Veil, a distinguished French politician, only the fifth woman in history to be accorded the honour of being interred in the Pantheon, the last resting place of especially distinguished Frenchmen since 1791 ( Mirabeau & Voltaire) During the reinterment ceremony this year following originally being buried at Montparnasse last year she was eulogized at by President Macron.

We followed this with an amusing French account of the nuisance of smartphones.

We read and translated an article about the problems faced by French bistros whose number is declining as a result of the difficulty in earning a living from mostly small transactions.

At two consecutive meetings we read and translated from a book by Éric-Emmanuel Schmitt entitled  “Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of the Koran” dealing with the Interaction between a young Jewish boy and a Sufi Muslim Turkish grocer,  a short book based on an earlier play (also made into a film).

As our meetings are weekly we have covered much more material since I started this report, so I will stop here and continue in my next report.

Brian Caulkett