Kids, Cats and a Jeep

About five years ago I decided to ‘splash the cash’, which is quite unusual for me and bought a really high spec home PC. It was top of the range, had huge amounts of memory and even huger (sic) amounts of storage, had a fancy sound card, seven speakers and all sorts of other gizmos. I bought it in the UK and my son and I brought it over on Sleazyjet, long before they introduced excess baggage charges on things like bum bags and newspapers.

Once installed, the family loved it but as we didn’t have broadband because we were too far away from the local exchange, trawling the internet was a bit of a test of patience and therefore it was used for storing music (converting all our CDs to MP3), gaming and processing and storing pictures.

Three and a bit years later and the PC started to go wrong – actually, it just fell over and died! Now I was expecting this because the warranty on our BT laptops expired at precisely 36 months and one day, so I reckoned that these electronic marvels probably had a shelf-life of about three years but I was still annoyed that all our family’s music and pictures were stored deep inside its decidedly dead recesses.

By this time, we had a couple of laptops and, drum roll …….  broadband. March 2008 will be a month long remembered by our family. We were finally in the 21^st century. We could now browse the newspapers without having to go and make a cup of tea whilst the next page was loading. We could actually download music from iTunes without leaving it running overnight. And so whilst the new laptops, ever present in the kitchen and sometimes the bathroom, were much more convenient than the big black desktop, I still hankered after the Mesh’s amazing graphics, its superb stereo sound and it’s pure processing power. Games were old hat by now but it was the photos which caused the most angst. We had ‘lost’ several years of the family growing up. J’s different hairstyles. Shadow becoming a fully grown doggy. Kitty, with and without the tell-tale bulge of nappies, and a variety of other, never-to-be-seen-again subjects, such as the jeep without any dents!  Despite Guy being a computer genius, we had almost resigned ourselves to writing off a whole tranche of Cupples-Hellon-Evans family history.

At this stage you’re probably all shouting, ‘take the hard drive out and get the photos transferred’, but I always think there’s a better (and cheaper) option and so it turned out. On our local ex-pat forum, I simply asked if anybody fixed PCs and within minutes I had received several suggestions. Wolfgang down in Antibes sounded the best. He proposed a fixed charge for his time no matter how long it took to fix, plus materials costs, and to a tight Scotsman, this sounded like a deal, so the big black box was duly delivered to Wolfgang.

A few months later and after regular updates on the progress, or lack of it, we were told the PC was ‘alive and kicking’ again. It was duly returned to its place in the corner of the hall and switched on and there in glorious technicolour were our holidays in Corsica and Kos with the kids looking almost angelic! Our gleaming new Honda Jeep without a single scratch. The bare ground leading down to the swimming pool gradually transformed into something resembling a garden and J’s fifteen hairstyles over the period of 8 years or so.

It was absolutely fascinating looking through all the pictures again. We had only been denied looking at them for a period of about 15 months but when they are there, you don’t feel the need to do so, but, of course, as soon as they’ve been removed, you feel a deep sense of loss!

Anyway, as I trawled through the thousands of snaps (Google Picassa is brilliant for this and it’s free), I came across all of our animals. There was ‘Tigger’ our very first cat who just disappeared one day and whom we had completely forgotten about – cats are such transient pets up here. There was Coco and Lucy (the two feline sisters) who were also to have shortened lives, and then Bijou and her kittens.

At the time, we knew Bijou was pregnant and prepared all sorts of comfortable places for her to have her babies but as the time grew close (we knew cause she started doing strange things), one day she just disappeared. A couple of days later after frantically searching for her, we heard some whimpers from underneath Kitty’s bed and there in a box of old children’s clothes, which J had kept for sentimental reasons, was Bijou with three tiny balls of fluff. Aaaah.

We kept one, Kitty named her Coco (Coconut !!!) and she’s the one in the back corner of the box. We chose her because she seemed such a quiet, sweet-natured cat. How wrong can one be? She regularly beats up her mother and terrorised poor Lucy before she died (Lucy that is) a couple of months ago.

Anyway, we now have the snaps showing that she was once a gorgeous little ball of fluff, and of course a snap or two showing that the jeep didn’t have a single dent when we bought it, despite what J says!

   

The Jungle

Now this could mean many things to many people. To those horrible, horrible Celtic fans (my three sons included) it was the ‘shed’ where the more vociferous, or should that be vicious, Celtic fans used to gather at that dump known as Parkhead.

 To any old Japanese readers, it probably brings back memories of hiding in the undergrowth waiting for the war to end, unaware that it had actually finished 50 years before!

To me – it means my ‘garden’. An ever-present reminder of how lazy I’ve become since I’ve discovered the joys of retirement but over the last week or so, as the weather has steadily improved, I have ventured down into bits of my ‘garden’ that I have never set foot on - ever. Amazing!

When we bought the house, we had the 'jungle' cleared by some guys who needed work. It cost a fortune which luckily I managed to get the vendor to pay half of but since then (about 8 years ago) it’s been left to its own devices, growing prodigiously, especially the areas which ‘benefit’ from the outflows from the various pipes (don’t go there). And so I’ve been trying to get to bits of the land which, frankly, are impenetrable and if you think that’s an exaggeration see the picture, although it probably does not accurately convey the savagery of some of these plants. Yesterday, in an effort to cut down some of the trees which have just sprung up, I had to cut my way into the northern side of the ground with a chainsaw. Some of the bushes are so thick and prickly that even the chainsaw struggled to cope but eventually I made it to the base of trees which have not felt a human hand on their little trunks for over 8 years.

Being in a fire risk area in summer, the land has to be kept clear in case of a carelessly jettisoned cigarette end and indeed we do get the occasional letter in early summer telling us to make sure land is ‘cleared’ within 50 metres of other houses. Apparently, failure to do so means a gang of council workers descend on you and once they’ve cleared the land, a huge bill lands on your doormat. Luckily, despite the fact that my jungle would keep the council in work for months, they’ve never so much as threatened me – maybe the spiky bushes have put them off? Or it could be that they are concentrating on my neighbour’s land (not old Frenchie) which is far worse than mine – let’s hope so.

The motivation and ultimate reward is to stand on the balcony of my house and look down upon my manicured terraces and glow with pride. But that will just be the start. As soon as it’s in great condition, it will start to grow once more and the whole cycle will begin again. In the meantime, I will continue to venture into areas of my garden which have rarely seen the human form and in the process get covered in cuts and scratches. 

Stop Press: J has got sick of my lack of enthusiasm with respect to the ‘jungle’ and has asked some guys to provide a devis (an estimate) for clearing it. I steadfastly refuse to pay for something I am doing in my own time. Watch this space!   

The Fat Duck

We used to live in Maidenhead, Berkshire. It was a great place to stay because the house was virtually on the river Thames and the banks were a great place to have long Sunday lunches and summer barbeques but Maidenhead was a real pain in other ways. The transport into central London, about 25 miles away, was very poor and the town centre was an appalling mixture of 60s and 70s concrete blocks unlike other Berkshire towns which had tried to keep their medieval heritage.

But exactly one mile away from the house was the village of Bray. Almost untouched from the middle-ages, the houses were higglety-pigglety and criss-crossed in those black and white squares so often seen in old villages along the Thames. The single road through the village, originally designed for a single horse and cart had never been widened for motorised vehicles and drivers had to observe a sense of politeness to allow one car at a time to pass through. It was a ‘chocolate box’ image village with pink and white washed cottages surrounding the ancient church and the village cricket square.

It was also populated by the great and the good, ranging from pop stars to TV magicians, chat show hosts and lesser known celebrities. It was THE place to live and despite the fact that I tried to get my post code changed to Bray, it stubbornly remained Maidenhead. It was only a few fields away but those fields made all the difference to the post code!

In those days (the early to mid 90s), I was into pub lunches both on a Saturday, after the weekly shopping trip (to get over the trauma) and if nobody was coming to lunch, on a Sunday as well. There was nothing better than getting a huge pile of Sunday papers and having a long lunch generally comprising roast beef and all the trimmings,  accompanied by a pint of lager followed by a couple of G&Ts.

Given it was within walking distance, the Bell Pub in the centre of Bray was our preferred ‘watering hole’ It served great roasts and had a huge log fire in the winter, making it feel as if you were eating in your own dining room. And then, in 1994, it closed. Tragedy!

For a few months there was frantic activity in the shell of the old Bell as they turned it into yet another Thameside restaurant of which there are hundreds in the county of Berkshire and then they hung the name over the front door – The Fat Duck.

A quick look at the menu most certainly put me off. Both the price, at around £100 per person for dinner, and the menu, multiple courses and including such delicacies as Snail Porridge and Bacon and Egg Ice Cream, were just too much for my wallet and my stomach to handle.

Although ‘just another’ fancy restaurant to me, The Fat Duck started to get the attention of the food critics and the general press. Heston Blumenthal was a professed ‘food alchemist’ rather than a chef, indeed he had never had any culinary training. Some of his cooking processes were out of the chemist’s lab rather than the kitchen. For example, he would put his joints of pork under running water for 48 hours to improve the texture of the meat. He would use liquid nitrogen to ‘cook’ his ice cream and would use flavours most chefs had never even considered.

Once word spread, The Fat Duck became very popular and it was extremely difficult to get a table either for lunch or dinner. It became even more difficult in 1998 when it got its first Michelin Star. In 2001, it got its 2^nd Michelin Star and was awarded the title of ‘Restaurant of the Year’. Three years later it reached the pinnacle with a 3^rd Michelin Star and finally in 2005, it was voted The Best Restaurant in The World.

Not bad for my old boozer – eh?

If you get a chance to watch any of Heston Blumenthal’s ‘cooking’ programmes, I would urge you to watch them – they are utterly fascinating.

The following is the link for The Fat Duck….just in case you wish to make a booking for 2011! And just in case you're wondering why the price is so high, the retaurant only serves a maximum of 40 covers a night and to look after those 40 guests, there are ........  40 chefs!

http://www.fatduck.co.uk/   

    

The Sale of The Century – And J Missed It - Thank God

Now – let it be known that virtually every day I get a heartfelt plea from J for me to portray her in a rather better light than that with which she is depicted in my daily blog postings.

‘People will think that all I do is shop, get my nails, hair and feet done and go to lunch’, to which I reply that virtually every day when one of her friends phones the house, that’s exactly what I have to say! I had to say, ‘nails’, yesterday. The day before I had to say, ‘shopping’ and today the answer was, ‘lunch’. I rest my case.

One day I will do a blog posting on her many good points but, (a) it will have to be heavily censored and (b) people will never believe me!

Last week however I was pleased, no, I was ecstatic, that she remained at home most of the time. Why? Well, the sale of the century was being held in Paris and it raised over €300 million  (although other reports have it at €800m - why the discrepancy?)  ….. and J wasn’t there to spend a cent. I bet her little purse was twitching in her handbag though. I thought at one stage that she had called Kitty, who just happened to be in Paris, to tell her to hot foot it across town to the Grand Palais and to stick her hand up and get some of Yves St Laurent’s items which are being auctioned by his partner (male partner – Yves was decidedly gay).

The auction was causing much comment over the last few weeks as it would be seen as a test of whether the credit crunch had hit the art market, but with some items going for 10-15 times their estimated sale price, the answer appears to be a definite ‘NO’.

Now, I have often wondered about the sense of paying several million for a piece of art but then the next time it is sold, the price has risen significantly, so it would appear that most original and collectable art is a good investment, but when an individual pays so much over the odds for a painting or a sculpture, is it such a good deal? Time will tell.

The items for auction in the Grand Palais was an almost entire life’s collection of every kind of art. There were paintings by Matisse and Degas, ancient artefacts looted from Beijng in 1860, furniture, some bits of sculpture and bits of rock – yup, bits of rock.

The prices achieved were stratospheric. An armchair, art deco in style and the only one made, was estimated to fetch €2m-€3m but actually sold for €21m! The Chinese sculptures, heads of a rabbit and a rat by an unknown artist, sold for €16m each when they were expected to raise no more than a couple of million between them.  The prices being bid, and paid, staggered Christies’ staff which is saying something as it’s not unusual for a piece of art to significantly exceed its estimate, but for every item on sale (some several hundred items) to make more than expected is unheard of.

I suppose what grabbed my attention was the ‘bit of wood’, pictured above, which sold for an astonishing €26 million. Yup – that’s correct. Something you could find being ‘constructed’ by kids in just about every crèche or playgroup in the land, but was actually made way back in 1914 (!!!) by a Romanian sculptor ( more !!!), sold for €26 million.

Anyway, as I say, I am eternally thankful that J did not make it. She might have put her hand up for that awful chair thinking it was on offer for €21 instead of €21 million euros!

You’d Think That Life Would Get Easier

OK – I retired early. I’d worked for just about 40 years and reckoned that was enough for anybody. At 56, I was still active, my brain was still searching for new things to learn and I looked forward to a long, happy and financially trouble-free retirement.

Some chance!

I’m not going into details about my bank (The Abbey) again other than to say that during my ongoing complaint about their computer changing my name and address, seemingly at will, and then the Abbey paying my compensation into someone else’s account, and then reading that of all the UK banks, the Abbey had been voted as the worst for customer service (fills you with confidence for the ongoing battle), I actually started getting calls and letters at regular intervals from them updating me on the progress of my complaint. It was almost like the CEO had been mortally offended by coming last in the ‘customer service league’ and had dramatically improved the bank’s treatment of its clients – hurrah! Anyway, the penultimate letter said they would be increasing my compensation, to a level equivalent to 5 lunches in the village – not bad – I’ll eat and drink to their health, and then I got another letter saying they hoped everything had been sorted to my satisfaction. Wow – what great service.

Final point on this is that I have every confidence that the computer will change my details again very soon and another little bit of ‘compensation’ will come my way. Don’t knock it – the money they pay me is the equivalent to the interest for having thousands of pounds on deposit….which I don’t. Long may it continue. 

Now after that little aside, the thing I wanted to gripe about was all the time I have to spend chasing financial problems. I should be gardening or lunching or working on my car or taking day trips to Italy, but no, I’m on the phone constantly chasing money which is rightfully mine. It’s a complete drain on my retirement. When J comes back from whatever she does all day and asks me what I’ve been doing with myself, I just list the phone calls I’ve made that day and their duration. It’s not unusual to be on to the tax people for over an hour at a time!

The Abbey issue actually took quite a few weeks to resolve but that pales into insignificance when I think of the time I’ve spent chasing a quite considerable sum from the UK Tax Authorities.

From a standing start last March, I’ve been chasing these people every two weeks for my money (on which they will pay no interest) and at one stage in July of 2008, I actually got a letter from them saying my payment was agreed and that it would be ‘on its way soon’. Some hope!

A couple of days later, the letter arrived. I ripped it open, hoping to see a cheque with lots of zeros on it only to find some rather official text saying that all my tax details were to be moved to Cardiff. No problem I thought – we’ll just call them to see what’s happening. That was 9 months ago and I’m still chasing them. Every day another person who knows nothing about my case. Every day, I repeat the same old story about being a poor pensioner and don’t they feel pity for me. Nope – they don’t. I’m afraid the young girl who answered this morning got it after yesterday’s call when, after waiting on the line for over 30 minutes, they put me onto the totally wrong section – aaaaagh!

And then we have the water company. I made a bit of a mistake last year and overpaid them, so for the last 9 months I’ve been in credit and as such they don’t actually send me a bill, they send a statement of use, showing the declining credits I have left but the dear old computer knows I should have had a bill, notes that I have not paid the bill I didn’t get, and slaps a fine on me for late payment! It’s incroyable!

How we’ll get this one sorted I don’t know. They actually have a ‘foreign’ section, essentially for those absentee landlords who might have had a bill and want to query it from their homeland in a language other than French, but ……. it doesn’t work! The line has been disconnected. Incroyable again.

So, going back to my first few sentences. Although a complete pain in the ass, at least I’m compus mentus enough to at least try and resolve these little challenges. What happens to the 85 year old lady or man who needs help even to get their shopping in? What hope have they got?