Day 719 (Tuesday) 28^th May 2019

I cooked again last night and lit a candle to celebrate our anniversary.

The living room is still very bare and it echoes but we’re definitely getting there but I think the idea of having a housewarming party this Friday is a tad ambitious.

The sun came back out this morning – hooray!

Huw kindly gave me a lift to Nice today and did some much-needed grocery shopping on his way home. Guillaume informed me this morning that he has quit his job and is leaving in three weeks. I’m gutted because I really like him and he was the first person here to give me a real break. He has been very supportive, encouraging and he finds me students! The main Languazur School is in Cannes and the woman who does Guillaume’s job there is going to take over his job here. Anna is very upset about it all as I’m not sure if she’ll keep her job. Guillaume assured me that I will still have a job but it will be very different. Luckily I get to keep my current students until they use up their allocated hours and I have the summer school in International House. I met Benny at the café and when I told her about Guillaume she was sad too as she has arranged many training sessions with him for a few years. She then said that she was looking to employ someone to help with the sale of her products so after our lesson we invited Guillaume to join us for a coffee and they discussed possibilities, so it wasn’t all bad.

After the lesson I went shopping in Bouchara, the shop next door to the school.

It is a bit like a small John Lewis and isn’t stupidly expensive. I’ve had my eye on these cushions for weeks and now that we have decided to stick with our red/orange colour scheme in the living I got these lovely bouncy red cushions.

I also got two yellow ones for the outdoor chairs and they look really quaint next to the green shutters and fake grass.

I got the 100 bus home and as soon as the bus left the stop it got stuck in a traffic jam and we were stationary for quite some time and during this time the road rage started and the honking of horns was loud; it was just like the old days. A few weeks ago I found this article on road rage in France and this is the perfect opportunity to share it with you.

Road rage: Where in France are the most aggressive drivers?

Be prepared for some rage if you drive in France.

French drivers do have a certain reputation for a - shall we say - robust style of driving, but it turns out that some regions are real hotspots for road rage.

Seven out of ten French drivers have admitted to screaming insults at other vehicles that annoy them on the road - way above the European average of 56 percent, according to a major inter-European survey of drivers conducted by motorway operators Vinci.

Almost six out of ten French people admit to honking their horn in frustration, while a third said that they had also overtaken slow-moving traffic on the right on motorways.

The Vinci Foundation's 2019 Responsible Driving Barometer also reveals that the problem is getting worse year on year.

And within France there are some significant regional variations on the level of driver fury.

Topping the rage poll - as will come as no surprise to anyone who has ever attempted to drive round the Arc de Triomphe roundabout - are Parisians.

Is Paris traffic the reason for the city's high rage levels?

Seventy four percent of Parisians admitted to screaming abuse at other drivers, whether with the window up or down, closely followed by the drivers of Marseille and the surrounding Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur region at 70 percent.

By contrast the most mellow French drivers are to be found in Nantes and Strasbourg, where a mere 64 percent admitted to hurling abuse at fellow road users.

Parisians are also heaviest on the horn, perhaps unsurprisingly given the city's notorious traffic jams, with 70 percent admitting to using their horn in anger.

The more peaceful rural routes of Brittany, however, see just 20 percent of drivers using their horn to express road rage.

Here is the full list of regional aggression

Ile-de-France - 74 percent shout abuse and 70 percent use the horn angrily

Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur - 70 percent shout, 56 percent use the horn

Bourgogne-Franche-Comté - 70 percent shout, 64 use the horn

Centre-Val de Loire - 70 percent shout, 55 percent use the horn

Nouvelle Aquitaine - 68 percent shout, 60 use the horn

Hauts-de-France - 68 percent shout, 57 percent use the horn

Auvergne-Rhone-Alpes - 68 percent shout, 55 percent use the horn

Normandie 66 percent shout, 60 percent use the horn

Occitaine - 66 percent shout, 59 percent use the horn

Bretagne - 66 percent shout, 47 percent use the horn

Pays de Loire - 64 percent shout, 58 percent use the horn

Grand Est - 64 percent shout, 55 percent use the horn

The 2019 Responsible Driving Barometer, conducted by Ipsos for the Vinci Motorway Foundation from February 25th to March 13th, interviewed 12,418 people in 11 countries, including a minimum of 1,000 people per country.

French vocabulary for road rage

Klaxon de voiture - car horn

Crier des noms d’oiseaux - literally translated as 'shouting birds' names' this French phrase has a general sense of shouting an insulting remark at someone

Rage au volant - road rage

Putain - if you want to go the whole hog and join with the tirade of French abuse, you will need this handy word.