Baby Stories

Now I’m not really one for serious, sensible discussions on the subjects I’m about to blog on, but I couldn’t let this pass. It’s all about babies. The last week has seen three astonishing baby stories, any one of which could dominate any dinner party chat for hours and hours.

1.      Baby chosen without breast cancer gene – this concerned a couple whose embryo was screened to make sure it did not have a genetic fault which had caused breast cancer in eleven female members of the mother’s family. The various articles did not say if the doctors had found an embryo with the gene and it was ‘discarded’, but that was the implication. It added to the debate about the selection of a baby exactly to your specification and has been the main discussion point since genetic modification and human cloning became a possibility.

My view ?  I’m undecided. I think the world would be a better place if these terrible ailments, mainly cancer, could be eradicated by embryo gene screening but where do you draw the line? Do you eventually get to the stage where every embryo is screened so that no child born will ever develop a genetic ailment? And if you go there, what’s to stop the next generation being chosen to be beautiful, blonde haired, blue eyed human beings?  We’ve been there before! 

2.      Birth two days after death – this is a heartbreaking story where a Jayne Soliman had been declared brain-dead but doctors kept her heart beating long enough for her daughter Aya Jayne to be delivered by caesarean section. The 41-year-old, who was 25 weeks pregnant, collapsed in her bedroom at her Bracknell home, Berkshire, after complaining of a headache. She was airlifted to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, but died at 8pm on January 7, just hours after having arrived. Her daughter was delivered two days later weighing just 2lb 1oz.

She should be called ‘Miracle’ or ‘Angel’.

3.      Co-joined (Dicephalus) twins – this is where an egg, separating into two, to form twins, develops an abnormality and results in a single human body with two heads. Now, much as you might think this is unheard of, Dicephalus twins are quite common as far as their percentage of Siamese twins are concerned. The English couple, against every medical opinion going, including their own medical team, are determined to carry the pregnancy through to birth, saying that they have ‘been blessed’ and that it’s a miracle. Am I being overly cynical in thinking that the miracle will be when the Sun newspaper offer them a fortune for pictures and a story? 

 

AngloInfo – The Funniest Read Each Day

AngloInfo is an on-line information source for the Cote d’Azur which virtually everybody who is an ex-pat reads. From its humble beginnings, it now provides web sites covering most of the countries in Europe as well as Thailand, China and Singapore. It has proved to be an invaluable source of information for everything from buying and registering a car to selling or renting a house and the legal ramifications therein, but it is probably most widely accessed for its forum where users can post items they want to sell or are looking to buy.

I have bought a car using Anglo, sold one, rented my house, had my PC repaired, got rid of duplicate items and have fixed countless problems using its on-line resources. It is probably the 2^nd site I visit when I log on in the morning – it gives the weather forecast and the exchange rate each day. If I’m looking to buy or sell something, I can access Anglo several times a day.

It’s quite obvious that incoming ‘foreigners’ get onto Anglo virtually as soon as they arrive (maybe they get the website address when they buy their bus ticket?) and some of their ‘placings’ are hilarious. ‘Me want job – please call’, ‘Lady available to do anything’, ‘Philipino couple available to house sit in Monaco or St Tropez’ – yeah – join the queue!

Similarly, I find it incredible that someone wishing to sell a €400,000 house simply advertises it thus: ‘Cute House for Sale’. I’ve seen a guy recently try to sell a Rolls Royce, a yacht and the yacht mooring which, given that one advert immediately followed another, simply shouted – DISTRESS SALE!!

One of the funniest was last year when some guy asked for tall, model-like ladies to ‘work’ in a Monaco exhibition. They had to be beautiful with long blonde hair and if they were the correct shape and size they would each be provided with designer dresses and other accessories. I watched with interest as the replies flooded in and tended to fall into two categories, those who were not interested in what the ‘work’ entailed but just wanted to get their hands on some Hermes merchandise and those who wanted to ask awkward questions without damaging their chances of getting the job. Given that the Cote d’Azur is crawling with Russian and eastern-European blondes of all shapes and sizes, I’m sure he had absolutely no problem in filling the four positions on offer.

Of course, with so many eastern Europeans now able to come here without requiring a visa, they flood in and some of their postings clearly highlight the desperation that many of them are in. A €50 bus ticket is all that it costs to get here from Poland but many probably mistake the French benefit system (virtually non existent for non-French) with the UK system where money is thrown at you before you even get off the boat.

Still, Anglo is probably the best way of making their availability known and the best way they will get a job. Have a look at it at:

http://riviera.angloinfo.com/

The Clough Dynasty

This is for football fans – sorry girls!

It’s not always nice to hear of someone losing their job but just occasionally, something happens which means your pleasure at the new appointment overcomes your displeasure at the removal of the previous incumbent. And so it was with Derby County’s appointment of Nigel Clough last week.

Derby were founded in 1884 and were one of the original twelve teams who formed the Football League in 1888. Known as the ‘Rams’, because a Derby regiment had a ram as a mascot, the team had a particularly unspectacular history of achievement until Brian Clough (Nigel’s father) and his loyal assistant, Peter Taylor, took over the management of the club in May 1967.  From being a member of the lower echelons of Division Two, Clough and Taylor took Derby into the First Division as champions two years later and by signing a number of workmanlike, rather than spectacular players, they managed to finish 4^th in the First Division in 1970. The following year, they ran neck and neck with Liverpool and Leeds for the title and, leading by a single point, their season ended……but both of their rivals had a game left. Whilst on holiday, Clough, Taylor and the Derby players learnt that neither of their rivals had won and so Derby were champions of the top division for the first time in their history.

Representing England in the European Cup the following season, Derby were eventually knocked out in the semi-finals in very controversial circumstances, to a Juventus team who had plied the German referee with gifts before the game. Clough, as was his style, called the Italian team ‘cheating bastards’ and made references to Italy’s role in the 2^nd World War.

Now I am no great fan of Brian Clough the man. I reckon however, that as a football manager, he was 30 years ahead of his time. Controversial, egotistical, overbearing and downright rude, the era of Brian Clough was as interesting as today’s verbal tussles between Sir Alex Ferguson and his managerial adversaries. However, after a glorious managerial career (he took a similarly underperforming Nottingham Forrest side from Division Two to two European Cups within four years), Clough retired in 1992. Plagued by alcoholism and forever tainted by the allegations that he took secret payments for ‘helping transfers along’, Clough died in 2004.

When at Nottingham Forrest, Clough signed his son, Nigel. A talented centre forward, Clough junior was Forrest’s top scorer and was roundly admired as an intelligent, thoughtful player. After several honours and fourteen caps for his country, Clough’s career declined almost in parallel with his father’s. He was transferred to Liverpool and then Manchester City but never recaptured the form which led him to be called ‘my number 9’ by his father when at Forrest.

In 1998, Nigel Clough took on the managerial post at Burton Albion, a team in a league so far removed from the Derbys and Nottingham Forrests of this world, that not many people had heard of their league, let alone the team! After ten years of unqualified success and several promotions for Burton, Clough left them last week to take over the reigns at …… Derby County. He left Burton in the highest position in their history and the Derby fans welcomed him with open arms, hoping just a little bit of his father’s magic has rubbed off on the still young Nigel.

Widely liked and apparently an all-round nice guy, Nigel has his work cut out. Let’s hope the board of Derby have made a long-term appointment and give him the time to recreate his father’s enormous success with that famous old club.

   

Blue Skies and White Smoke

The rain and snow have stopped, there’s blue sky about and most of the oak leaves have been blown from the trees and are now clogging up everything in sight. They gather in every little corner and this, I am delighted to say is a job for the kids. I’m sure they will be sitting at school (well Guy will be – Kitty has yet another day off!) dreading the leaf-sucker being pulled out from the garage and handed to them. Very gradually they are beginning to understand that there are numerous jobs which need to be done and that they have to do their fair share. I suppose I’ll have to bribe them or maybe I’ll just threaten not to feed them again – that seems to work a treat. They are now at the stage where the fridge and larder are opened more frequently than their school books and so any ban on snacking might have the desired effect.

But as the blue skies appear, so does the smoke. The thick, smelly, white smoke from countless leaf fires which just hangs in the air and shrouds much of the hills. I stopped this practice quite a few years ago as I’m sure it cannot be good for the environment. Now I either take the leaves and other garden waste to the council tip or I use it to fill in the many holes in the ‘garden’ which remain from the 4 years of building work which finished in May.  

My neighbour usually has several of these fires throughout the winter, but being a ‘man of the earth’ and a reasonably responsible Frenchman (albeit a bit mad on occasions when we cross swords), he waits until the smoke is blowing away from my house before he lights up. The problem is that if it’s blowing up the hill, it blows right into his wife’s washing line, but hey, that’s his problem. I never get close enough to him to smell his smokey shirt – thank god!

Given that everything is soaking, I don’t know how they start these fires. Wet leaves are not the easiest thing to light. My method was to throw a good dose of petrol on them, light a bit of paper, throw and run. But I suspect, these old Frenchies do something less risky (or should that be less stupid?). Whatever they do, it seems to be successful as witnessed by the numerous columns of smoke. Why don’t they let the blue skies hang around for a few days before covering it up or is more rain coming? Maybe they know something about the weather forecast which the ‘Weather Channel’ does not! C’est la vie as they say in Glasgow.

 

My Top Ten ‘Hits’ of 2009

Nope – not predictions. Not records or films which I reckon have a good chance of success. Not even shares which I think will make my fortune. This is my Top Ten list of people who should be ‘taken out’ and dealt with.  Or even dealt with by being taken out!

1.            Vladimir Putin. Now this guy is a weasel. I defy anybody to say that he doesn’t look like the sort of guy to whom you take an instant dislike (see picture). If he worked in your office, he’s the sort of guy who would smell, would sneak looks at the women and who nobody would talk to. He wouldn’t be invited to any of the after-work drinks and nobody, not even the most charitable person in the office, would have a good word to say about him. This guy will cause a major problem in the world before the CIA actually do something about it.

2.            Robert Mugabe. It takes some doing but this little creep has single handedly managed to completely ruin a country, which at one time was being touted as the most successful of the new, black-African states.  He’s not only ruined the country financially, with inflation running at several million percent, but his belligerent attitude to their illness epidemics beggars belief.

3.            Osama Bin-Laden. I probably don’t have to justify this inclusion in my list but I find it incredible that between them, the Americans and the British, with all their sophisticated equipment cannot find this guy. Maybe good old Barack will give him a call and we’ll see Osama wandering around the gardens at Camp David one day with Hilary hiding behind a tree with a sniper’s rifle.

4.            Bernie Madoff – I wouldn’t normally go for capitalist crooks but this guy takes the biscuit. Charities and individuals have suffered alike with his $50 billion fraud. It’s still to be determined where the money went but he probably lost it on bad stock market bets and he probably lost it in a ‘normal’ business sense but to continue to take millions of dollars from charities when he was already bust is despicable.

5.            My old architect Michel Juillard. This was the guy who built our pool in our other house and which is still giving problems several years after completion. At the time of the problem he refused to come back to work on the pool as he thought I would inflict serious bodily harm upon his person. How right he was. If I saw him crossing the road tomorrow, I would risk damaging my beloved Alfa and run the little turd over.

6.            Gordon Brown – how appropriate that he uttered the gaffe of the year when, in making an answer to Parliament, he said, ‘we’ve just saved the world…..’. He actually meant the ‘world banking system’, which he didn’t save but he believes in his own little warped, delusional world that he did! He doesn’t deserve the same fate as the others but his pension should be reduced to the level of those he’s screwed over the last ten years.

7.            Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand – (two UK ‘comedians’ in the loosest sense of the word) and not because of their pathetic little joke on radio but because they represent all that is wrong with the UK entertainment industry where average performers are paid mega-bucks ……. and this is not jealousy.

8.            Sir Ian Blair – the ex-commissioner of the London police force who turned a once proud and well-run institution into just another political organisation which became the laughing stock the world over.

9.            His buddy, the ex-mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who made so many absolutely unbelievable utterances which caused apoplexy amongst the people he represented. In truth, he actually represented himself and his friends who all got huge handouts for doing very little from the multi-billion London budget. The problem is that although he would appear to be in a low profile situation at the moment, the creep is still raking in £10k a time for after-dinner speeches.

10.        And finally – yeah – financial organisations who totally screw up my life. From the taxman in Cardiff who treats me like something unsavoury he’s stepped on, to the bank computer (they say it’s the computer) who continually changes the name on my account so that every now and again, I can’t do a single thing because they don’t recognise my name ! Aaaaaagh !