French Life, Posting Pooh

I have thought long and hard as to how to tell this story. ( see, first line and I have made a subtle excuse for not updating the blog more often)
As a man of a certain age here in France, the French health service wishes to check that amongst other things that I have nothing in my bowels that I shouldn't have ( not that they say what is and isn't acceptable!)
There is a picture opportunity here but I am not going to lower myself!

The means of doing this is that they send you a letter together with a box of tricks.  I ignored the first one as I felt that I wasn't up to the task but then nothing if not persistent they sent me another one.
Now how do I put this delicately?

I was to do a collection of droppings, three times in a row and send them back to them in the post.
I have many times though that my postbox was full of shite but I had never been asked to add to this before.

I plucked up the courage to start the process and opened the kit. This contains 3 what look like hammocks but a bit smaller and for collecting rather than reposing. Then there were three  cardboard spades, the use of which you can guess, and finally a piece of card with three windows on which to spread the goodies.

And then the time came, I spread my hammock making sure they stuck to the sides, sat down,set my aim and fired.  Not sure what we would have done had we had the squatter type WC so favoured in France. Then came a little spade work and a spreadsheet unlike any I have used in the past.
Three times on the trots ( sorry!) I hit the bullseye and then with the card complete to a yell of BINGO, I proceeded to seal the contents, waited until after dark and popped to the post box with my letter hoping nobody would see what I was posting .

I can only imagine the scene, and perhaps smell, at the other end as hundreds of samples arrive daily from all over France. Let's hope they never have a postal strike especially in warm times.

Thankfully about 10 days later a further letter arrived telling me that I was clear