The Stigma of a Cloudy Pool ……

It’s a disaster. An absolute disaster. My pool has gone cloudy and has been doing a good impression of a cup of coffee into which a whole load of Crème de Menthe has been poured. It doesn’t smell quite as bad as that concoction I just mentioned but for my pool to go a dirty, greeny, brown colour at the height of the swimming season is an appalling social tragedy.

It started about two weeks ago and suspiciously happened just as Tan and Angie’s pool next door became crystal clear after a period of being a bit greenish around the sides. Now their pool glistens and gleams and draws admiring glances whilst people who visit my place express their deepest sympathy and don’t let their kids near it. When people phone up to ask if they can ‘pop round’ we have to tell them that the pool is unwell and more often than not, they don’t ‘pop round’. It’s like having a kid with chicken pox – they avoid you like the plague.

Now for those of you who have not had the mind numbing responsibility of looking after a pool it is a fairly easy matter. You continue to throw in bucket-fulls of chlorine powder or blocks until the children start to come out with whiter skin than when they went in. If you’ve really overdone it, their swimming costumes will have dissolved. So getting a nice balance is critical. I use the cats for this purpose. Don’t give them any milk or access to water and so they are forced to drink from the pool. If they have a few licks and leave contentedly you have a good balance but if they start rolling about with their legs in the air, their hair standing on end and with their eyes wide and staring (see picture above) then you are almost at the point where children, not just their costumes would start dissolving.

So getting a clear pool is easy – it just costs a fortune in chlorine. However, once it goes dirty then it’s a whole new ball game trying to clear it as there can be several possible causes;

1. Angie next door has thrown a load of sand in my pool so that her’s looks cleaner
2. All the dogs in the neighbourhood come during the night for a swim
3. The pipe for our septic tank has mysteriously re-routed itself and is leaking into the pool
4. Julie is having a wee every time she goes for a swim – this counteracts the chlorine and so algae grows faster
5. The local pool cleaning company is sabotaging my pool so that they get a lucrative contract to clean it up.

It sounds a bit pretentious to say that the situation is so bad that it is difficult to stand on the terrace with one’s Gin and Tonic and look at the pool…...but it is. When the lights are switched on it looks like an illuminated sewage farm. I’ve had nightmares about it – when I wake up from one of these awful dreams where my pool is a stinking, algae-green mass, I initially think it must’ve been a movie I was watching last night (Psycho - where the villain pushes a car into a green swamp) but then I notice my ‘pool owners encyclopaedia’ ( all 691 pages of it) by my bedside and then I know it’s true. It wasn’t a dream.

So today I have thrown another ton and a half of chlorine powder into the pool. They say that having a boat is like throwing pound notes (should be euro notes really) into the sea. Well as far as I am concerned having a pool is like throwing money into a hole in the ground that’s full of (green) water.

Dead Man Walking……

By any measure I should be dead. Readers of my Blog will know by now that I was born in an area of Glasgow where the average male life expectancy is 54. I’m 57 and a half ! The average age of my mother and father upon their deaths was 53. I’m the oldest surviving male in the Cupples dynasty ….apart from my cousin Tom (yup – another one) who is a good, god-fearing lad and probably goes to church each week whilst I’m afraid the words ‘Jesus Christ’ are mentioned frequently by me but not in any religious sense.

All this makes me a bit paranoid. The slightest twinge in my chest and I’m convinced I’m having a heart attack. The slightest headache makes me think I have a brain tumour and I have headaches frequently but Julie assures me that they are the result of spending another night ‘socialising’ at Tan and Angie’s next door ! A twitchy finger and I’ve got Parkinsons.

I’m sorry if all this is a bit morose, morbid, self-indulgent but at my age without a proper job to take my mind off matters, I think of these things. I’ve just applied for my Carte Vitale (French Health Card) which, despite having been in France for over 9 years, is gradually working its way through the French bureaucratic system so I should get it before I’m 60 ! Now this is tempting fate. In the 9 years in France I’ve only seen a doctor 3 times and all those times it was Julie who said I should go. You see in France you pay €22 (I think that’s the amount) to visit your doctor and J likes to support our local village businesses. In fact she goes to see Doctor Fang so often she has her own chair in the waiting room.

Anyway – three times in 9 years should be adequate reassurance that my body is fit and healthy…..but it doesn’t feel that way. My back is dodgy. 25 years ago I lifted a bit of equipment in IBM which put my back out. Today that bit of equipment would be the equivalent of a memory stick ! Nevertheless when I saw my doctor in England about it some 18 years ago she said I could have an operation but she wouldn’t recommend it ! So I’m afraid the days of pushing the hoover (sorry Dyson) around are long gone. Pulling the dishwasher drawer open is a task too far and even taking the top off my gin bottle is just too risky to attempt….. so I have to get J to do these things for me.

My right ear is non-functional. Again readers will know this is partly due to me sticking suppositories in the wrong orifice when I got an ear infection in Spain. Today, my expensive stereo equipment and surround-sound system is money down the drain and even the slightest drop of water in it makes me lose balance. Well – that’s my story. But being virtually deaf in one ear does have its benefits. I make sure J always sits on my right-hand side ! My affliction also gives me the right to have SHS (selective hearing syndrome) which is a huge bonus when the football or cricket is on the telly. It’s great to hear only what you want to hear and know that if anybody says anything about it you can use the ‘don’t mock the afflicted’ jibe. It makes them feel really bad.

Then there is my wonky knee which was the result of a catastrophic skiing injury. Not catastrophic because of the injury itself but because it happened on the first run of the holiday and I couldn’t get a refund on my ski pass ! My ruptured cruciate anterior ligament has never been fixed. Then, they would rip a bit of your tendon out from your thigh and put it in your knee with the resulting scars looking like you’d had a run in with a great white shark. Nowadays, and I recently had dinner with an eminent American surgeon who specialises in this so I know what I’m talking about, they take the tendon from a dead person and put it in your knee using some sort of ‘through the keyhole’ procedure so you’d never know. Anyway, the result of my knee problems is that completely without warning I can fall over. My knee just gives way and I topple over. Now I know what you must be saying but remember what I said earlier – don’t mock the afflicted.

Now individually, these individual problems don’t cause me too much trouble but a couple of weeks ago they combined to devastating effect. There I was at Tan and Angie’s next door having a quiet tipple or two. Julie was on my right hand side and was saying something like, ‘I think you’ve had enough dear’ which I couldn’t really hear. I got up to lift a bottle of wine from the fridge (we help ourselves at T&As) and my back went. I staggered back to my seat at the table and it was suggested I go back home. As I went down their stairs into the garden my knee went and I crumpled to the ground. Later that night my chest was tighter than Julie’s size ten dress when she puts it on, my head was pounding and my hands were twitching so much I could not hold my nightcap steady. I thought my time had come.

Next morning I was fine – amazing isn’t it ?

Sacre Bleue – it’s a Car park……..

When I re-located to Tourrettes some 9 years ago, my partner with whom I had become re-united, would disappear with monotonous regularity to this place or person called Cap Troismille. Julie would invariably stay there all day and would return home a much happier person than when she left. Now this could have meant many things; a French lover; two French lovers; or she had a double life and there was a property on one of the Caps where she regulalrly needed to spend the entire day. Of course, all three could have been valid !

During my investigations, I found Cap Ferrat, Cap D’Antibes and Cap Lardier amongst many others but I could not find Cap Troismille which made me highly suspicious. This was something of a bitter-sweet discovery as all of the Caps around the Med attract the very wealthiest of people. If she was having an affair with some wealthy geezer it might even be the Chairman of Rangers Football Club, David Murray who has a house on Cap d’Antibes. He might be able to pass on some tickets for the more popular games. If she wasn't having an affair but had a house on the Cap - bingo !

Cap Ferrat is one of the most exclusive areas in which to own a house in the world. Paul Allen the co-founder of Microsoft owns (or at least owned) a property there and if you can afford a house anywhere (like he can) and you buy on Cap Ferrat it must have a certain cachet.

The same goes for Cap d’Antibes, a slightly more down-market Cap which only attracts the likes of Paul McCartney and Roman Abramovich. It is less developed than Ferrat as it is more rocky and has a lighthouse situated in it’s centre and so the buildable land mass is more restricted. Nevertheless, I would be quite happy to exchange my present house for any on Cap d’Antibes – sight unseen !

The other Cap I discovered as I did my impression of a Private Investigator was Cap Lardier which is just around the corner from St Tropez and must therefore, by definition, be somewhere rather fancy. This Cap is even less developed than either of the other two.

And so my hunt went on as Cap Troismille entered Julie’s vocabularly at regular intervals. It was obvious she was having a bit on the side (or on the Cap) as she became happier and happier as she counted down the days until her next visit. When the time came, she put on her best gear, smelled like a perfume shop and sang as she went out the door. Even her friends were in on the secret, some of them even went with her – a threesome possibly ! Conversely, within a few days of returning from this Troismille fellow, Julie would become morose and distant. Not willing to share a word let alone a smile.

And then one day I discovered her secret. My heart fell. I gulped air down as my lungs collapsed. My eyes wattered and the salty liquid blinded me. I cried and cried. There was no hope now.

On my way to the airport I had taken a wrong turning and there it was Cap 3000. The biggest shopping mall and car park in the South of France, called Trois Mille because it has 3,000 car parking spaces !

Nine years on and I can honestly state that I can count on the fingers of both hands the number of times I have ventured into its air-conditioned, luxury environment. The reason I don’t go is that it costs you money to go there – today I was reluctantly dragged there to get some new clothes (Julie thinks I look like a tramp) and left several hundred euros worse off. Julie on the other hand loses years off of her lined face and gets a spring in her step as she enters its portals. As she passes through the various mall alleys, shopkeepers shout out, ‘Bonjour Mrs Evans’, ‘Mrs Evans – so good to see you again’. She cannot pass a single shop without the Catre Bleu jumping out of her handbag and dashing to the cash desk where it waits patiently for the shopkeeper to push it into the card reader. Old habits die hard even for inanimate objects when Julie goes shopping.

I’m Never Invited Back Again……

Went to lunch yesterday. Yup – another one. Another BBQ. But I suspect I wont be invited back. This is nothing new. Julie and I have experienced several dozen occasions where we were invited to lunch/dinner only to be ignored the next time an invitation was being issued. I suspect if they felt comfortable about inviting Julie without me….. they would.

Mike and Lesley are consummate hosts. They have run a series of B&Bs both in England and in our area in southern France and know instinctively how to treat their guests. They have a beautiful house, an amazing garden and no kids – bliss ! The Reverend Anne was there as the only other guest.

Lunch started with some dim sum which was delicious. I managed to avoid the crab and prawn based dishes and headed immediately for the pork spring rolls – delicious. God I sound like Michael Winner !

Next up was rare beef with prawns and a variety of salad and vegetable based dishes one of which was grilled mushrooms. Just as we started to work out what we were going to dig into first, the ubiquitous fly appeared. Now, normally after a few swipes these pesky creatures fly off , but not this one. It continued to buzz around landing on every dish which was on the table. I stepped in and said I would rid the table of this critter and promptly demonstrated the art of clapping and squishing the fly between your two palms. After two failed attempts I took another swig of Rosé and tried again. The fly sped past, I slapped my palms together and got it. The fly climbed upwards momentarily and then headed straight into the grilled mushrooms in a glorious death spiral. The table stopped talking as they all looked at the dish of mushrooms. Had it really gone in there ?

Julie and I grabbed the dish and started looking for the 4 legged insect but after about a minute realised that the mushrooms had started to disintegrate during the cooking process and that there were lots of ‘black bits’ . The body of the fly was nowhere to be found but Julie managed to pick out a bit of mushroom which was similar to a dead fly and we exclaimed loudly that ‘we’d got it’. It wasn’t convincing.

At this stage I could have refused mushrooms and stuck to the potato salad but I felt as if I had to show confidence in our body removal process and cagily picked up bits of fungus from the dish and loaded them onto my plate, checking carefully that none of the bits had what looked like 4 legs.

I noticed that nobody else was taking mushrooms and that did it. I didn’t need to be told – that was my last invitation to Mike and Lesley’s.

Now this is nothing new – I have a history of being the worst dinner guest ever. I have broken a three hundred year old dining table and smashed expensive crystal glasses. I have bitten the hostess on the nose (by mistake) and given her a bruise Mike Tyson would be proud of. I’ve done a striptease and cleared a New Year’s Eve Party and given a friend a magnificent love bite on her neck (again by mistake) when she was booked into the Monte Carlo Spa for the following three days. I’ve thrown sausage rolls across the kitchen to the host’s boxer dogs and snogged women for a cigarette, much to Julie’s disgust . I’ve set bits of myself on fire and have generally behaved like a prize prat.

So, I am a liability. If you want a party to end early, invite me. If you want to start a fight just to see what actually happens, invite me. If you want people to get divorced, invite me. In fact if you want a good time with something to talk about during the long winter nights when you’re drawing up your summer barbeque invite list – invite me.

Kids, Kids, Kids

I’m into new territory here. In fact I’ve been in new territory for about 3 years since Kitty turned eight years old. I don’t have any experience of bringing up kids over the age of eight so it’s been a learning curve for all of us, Julie included. Sometimes it’s a nightmare, sometimes it’s a pleasure but it’s always challenging ……..and rewarding.

The first few years were great. A renewed romance, nice kids, family holidays, a new papa, the excitement of moving houses (albeit only next door) then the challenge of building our own house but of course eventually you get into undiscovered parental territory and it’s a struggle to know if you are doing the right thing. It’s even more of a struggle when there are another set of parents (Guy and Kitty’s dad, Clive and his wife Teresa) just down the coast who might have completely different values and disciplines.

Let me say here and now I love Guy and Kitty as if they were my own despite the things they shout at me as I refuse to let them have another tube of Pringles and more Coca Cola 5 minutes before they go to bed. They are wonderful children and complement my own three sons wonderfully in terms of temperament and character.

But I do worry about them – even the older ones. I will explain some of these worries in later blogs but not a day passes when I don’t think of them and wonder how they’re doing – this despite regular phone calls.

Stephen Scott (aged 34 this year) was brought screaming and kicking into this world at RottenRow hospital in Glasgow as his father and grandfather watched Rangers beat Celtic in a pub some 5 minutes away from the hospital, having been informed by the ward sister that the birth would be delayed for a short while. Returning to the hospital rather the worse for wear I was presented with a 3lb 14oz premature baby boy who was promptly given the name ‘Scott’ in honour of the Rangers player who scored the only goal in the game against our arch rivals Celtic. As Stephen was unfortunately to grow up to become a Celtic supporter, his middle name was the butt of quite a few jokes.

Ross Martin (aged 31 today 27th July) was also brought kicking and screaming into the world but fortunately I made this birth. I remember looking at the blood and guts all over the theatre floor whilst Fiona cuddled her second son and was then given toast and jam and a cup of tea by the auxiliary nurse. She could not understand why I did not eat or drink it ! The naming of Stephen obviously still rankled with Fiona as she insisted on calling this boy after her current TV heartthrob, Ross Poldark ! Martin, I presume also came from Fiona as her father had the name Martin, amongst quite a few others.

Timothy Lewis (aged 28 this year) also had a difficult birth. I cannot remember the exact details but he was hospitalised for over a month after his birth. I do recall however the sister asking every week or so if we’d like to take him home but by this time I’d worked out that the newly born Timothy was covered by the IBM Private Health Scheme which paid a daily rate for any family member who was hospitalised so when Timothy actually came out of hospital some 30 days after seeing the world for the first time, a brand new Vauxhall Cavalier, paid for by IBM’s insurance, was waiting to whisk him home. Fiona, by this time, had moved her romantic allegiances to the male leads of The Professionals and although Timothy must’ve had something to do with her Catholic faith the name Lewis undoubtedly came from Lewis Bodie whom she would sit and swoon over as she squeezed my blackheads.

Guy and Kitty’s births were unknown to me (another story) and I’m not aware of any real problems but I have to admit to thinking Kitty was not the most photogenic child I had ever seen (she was about 4 when I saw her for the first time) but it must’ve been a bad-hair day for her because she has blossomed into a very pretty young girl as the years have passed. Guy, on the other hand, was probably the cutest kid I’d ever seen. Sitting on the airport lounge floor pushing a toy car up and down, he looked every inch the sort of boy every father dreams of having.

So to summarise this blog, I am blessed. I have 5 wonderful children. I am immensely proud of my own 3 and watch with wonder, on a daily basis, as Guy and Kitty make their way through the world, eating Pringles and drinking Coke 5 minutes before they go to bed !

Picture is Stephen with Guy and Kitty