Le Café des flamants roses has a small garden where people can talk English to ask questions about what is being said in French in the café

You're right, Mamie, it is jardin ouvrier I've finally consulted my dictionary.

Which dictionaries do people use? Mine is the big Collins Robert. It seems to get heavier each year as I get older. It can't be all the new words being added!

Mine is the Collins Robert too, but quite weightless as it's on my phone. I had to ditch many books when we moved back to the UK, (we moved from a large house in France to a small flat in the UK), so if I had a book on Kindle, I got rid of the physical copy. I actually prefer reading on Kindle now.

Nice to have a pleasant chat about dictionaries with you Antonia!

I was always amused by my weighty Robert being known as le petit Robert and wondered what the heck un grand Robert looked like!
(Like Tiny Computers I still have the huge cardboard box from ours in my loft)

To continue the pleasant chat, I have recently bought the Larousse French (also weightless, also on my phone). I don't know how much more my phone can take, to be honest. It's slow enough already. One more good dictionary should just about finish it off.

As I read these posts, my weighty Harraps, 1971 edition and Petit Larousse are staring at me from the shelf above my PC. Very outdated, but I cannot bear to part with them. Ils ont sauvé mon bacon, on many an occasion!

I see that the Collins Robert has 2424 pages and weighs in at 2.68 kg.

Oh but these weighty tomes came in useful for a) propping doors open, b) pressing my flowers from my first university ball (still got them, 54 years on ) c) jacking up wonky coffee tables - amongst other things.
Gaudeamus igitur! ?

They also look good on the shelf, along with the Latin, German and Italian equivalent. They present the illusion that I am a skilled linguist.? The sad truth is, I have forgotten much of what I have learned. I often can't even write in English these days!!!

Use it or lose it!!!

Un peu comme ça with a few rogues having crept in.

MawBe

I was always amused by my weighty Robert being known as le petit Robert and wondered what the heck un grand Robert looked like!
(Like Tiny Computers I still have the huge cardboard box from ours in my loft)

MawBe, I never understood that either about Le Petit Robert either. Like Marydoll I can’t bear to part with all the foreign language dictionaries.

Marydoll

They also look good on the shelf, along with the Latin, German and Italian equivalent. They present the illusion that I am a skilled linguist.? The sad truth is, I have forgotten much of what I have learned. I often can't even write in English these days!!!

Use it or lose it!!!

Dead impressive when on a Zoom call.
I believe that at the height (depths?) of lockdown there was a market for “brainy- looking” backgrounds.
You could have rented them out by the yard Marydoll ?

Oops- it was Ellianne who posted the pic, but there’s a few of us ???

I know this isn’t exactly the forum for it, but I’ve just watched Kevin Mayer, the French javelin thrower, throw a huge distance and celebrate by shouting YES instead of OUI. Why do you suppose he did that?

Might have been misinterpreted as requesting a comfort break?

MawBe ???

Do they have Wii sports in the Olympics?

Yes Elianne!
Now that would be good. I’m ace at wii archery, wii skiing and wii shooting, but I get just as tired wii cycling as I do in real life!

Ellianne

Do they have Wii sports in the Olympics?

Norty Ellianne ??

Maybe that belongs in the “Over 70’s Olympics?

An update for those who were on the D-day thread, just to say the new British memorial at Ver-sur-Mer is stunning. Beautiful architecture and the sculpture is wonderful. It is all impeccably maintained. It was very quiet and we (unsurprisingly) were the only non-French there this morning.