Index of Old Blog Postings (2)

3^rd Nov 2008               The Agony and the Ecstasy

4^th Nov 2008               Interviews

5^th Nov 2008               Go and get a Bucket of Steam

7^th Nov 2008               Remember, Remember The 5^th of November

8^th Nov 2008               Not Centre Forward Shoot but Shoot The Centre Forward

10^th Nov 2008             Fast Food Slow Building

11^th Nov 2008             The Institution

12^th Nov 2008             No Wonder Pensioners Panic

13^th Nov 2008             Letter to my Bank

14^th Nov 2008             The Con with Cam Belts

15^th Nov 2008             Is That You Darling?

17^th Nov 2008             It’s Our Two Year Anniversary

18^th Nov 2008             A Good Start to the Day

19^th Nov 2008             Yes M’Lud

20^th Nov 2008             Baby ‘P’

21^st Nov 2008             Eye, Eye

24^th Nov 2008             Monday, Monday

25^th Nov 2008             It’s A Chill Wind …..

26^th Nov 2008             Kitty Cat ….

27^th Nov 2008             Happy Birthday to You

28^th Nov 2008             Beaujolais Nouveau

1^st Dec 2008                Lost in Space

2^nd Dec 2008               Monkey’s Head? No Sir It’s A Haggis

3^rd Dec 2008                It Made The News Today

4^th Dec 2008                Lucy is Dead

5^th Dec 2008                No Blog Today

8^th Dec 2008                Murder, Mystery, Intrigue and €500 Million 

9^th Dec 2008                The Great Debate

10^th Dec 2008              Rendition – It’s Extraordinary

11^th Dec 2008              Wind and Sails

12^th Dec 2008              Money, Money, Money

17^th Dec 2008              Off to London for Lunch

18^th Dec 2008              It’s The Skiing Season

19^th Dec 2008              It’s a Wrap

22^nd Dec 2008             A Rather Sociable Weekend

22^nd Dec 2008             Oh Deer, Oh Deer

24^th Dec 2008              Oh Brother

25^th Dec 2008              Happy Xmas Everyone

26^th Dec 2008              The First Ski of the Year

28^th Dec 2008              Go Further with the Lipo Car …..

28^th Dec 2008              Riverdance

31^st Dec 2008              Leonard M P Mackie R.I.P.

1^st Jan 2009                 Happy New Year

2^nd Jan 2009                A Bit More Positive Today

5^th Jan 2008                 What Would Improve My Life

6^th Jan 2008                 6^th Time And Still Enjoying It

7^th Jan 2008                 Winter Has Arrived

8^th Jan 2008                 Animal Farm

9^th Jan 2009                 It Wouldn’t Happen in the UK

12^th Jan 2009               My Top Ten ‘Hits’ of 2009

13^th Jan 2009               Blue Skies and White Smoke

14^th Jan 2009               The Clough Dynasty

15^th Jan 2009               AngloInfo – The Funniest Read Each Day

16^th Jan 2009               Baby Stories

19^th Jan 2009               Hangliders and the Buzzards             

20^th Jan 2009               Sausage Casserole and Mouldy Cheese

21^st Jan 2009               A Day When History Was Made

22^nd Jan 2009              Banks – Aaaaagh!

23^rd Jan 2009               The Power of Blogging

26^th Jan 2009               1000 Marbles

27^th Jan 2009               The £1 Shop

28^th Jan 2009               Arizona (Sheriff) Joe

29^th Jan 2009               Nigel – An Interesting Lunch

30^th Jan 2009               The Great Oak

2^nd Feb 2009                Davos – A Meeting of the Great and the Good

3^rd Feb 2009                Capitalism – Alive and Well in France

4^th Feb 2009                Atishoo – The Hay Fever Season Has Started

5^th Feb 2009                The Sanglier

6^th Feb 2009                It’s The Weekend – Time for a Thai

9^th Feb 2009                Forecasters Are Useless, Satellites Don’t Lie

10^th Feb 2009              Like Father, Like Son

11^th Feb 2009              What Footballers Have to Put up With

12^th Feb 2009              La Poste and the Case of the ‘Cheap’ Earrings

13^th Feb 2009              Saudi Arabia – C’Mon Guys – Sort Yourselves Out

16^th Feb 2009              No Mean City

17^th Feb 2009              A Couple of Woosies

18^th Feb 2009              And Not a Woman Driver in Sight

19^th Feb 2009              Sarkozy – The Duracell Bunny

20^th Feb 2009              Oh Gordy – Sorry, Prime Minister

23^rd Feb 2009              Happy Birthday and Happy Anniversary to Me

24^th Feb 2009              No Blog Today

25^th Feb 2009              My Wee Girl’s In Paris

26^th Feb 2009              David Cameron’s Son Dies – Aged Six

27^th Feb 2009              Ryanair Hates Bloggers – It’s Official

2^nd Mar 2009               You’d Think That Life Would Get Easier

3rd Mar 2009              The Sale of the Century and J Missed It – Thank God

4^th Mar 2009                The Fat Duck

5^th Mar 2009                The Jungle

6^th Mar 2009                Kids, Cats and a Jeep

9^th Mar 2009                Berlusconi – He Makes Gordon Brown Look Positively…

10^th Mar 2009              Etrangers and Nouveaux Arrivants

11^th Mar 2009              Two days in The Merde

12^th Mar 2009              Slough and Afghanistan – Wars on TV

13^th Mar 2009              France – Can We Join The Club Again Please

 

I’m On Gréve (Strike) Today

Yesterday was one of those days we have many times throughout the year when there is a national strike to protest about Government reforms. I’m not quite sure what yesterday’s was all about, probably more of Sarkozy’s ‘social initiatives’, but as usual it was on a Thursday.

These strikes don’t bother me that much. I don’t use the trains or the two buses a day which go off to some of the local villages. I tend not to have too much to do with Government offices and the fact that some of the French radio stations were apparently playing music all day instead of their current affairs programmes, completely passed me by. We don’t have French TV so if there were programme cancellations we didn’t notice them (shame on us I hear you say but French TV is not very good) and as far as I am concerned the village worked as normal, although come to think of it, I didn’t see the guy who sweeps the roads yesterday.

In fact, although the local internet forum had warned us of the strike, I had completely forgotten about it until the kids were going to school in the morning when I heard them hoping that when they reached school they would be sent home again as teachers are notorious in their penchant for taking strike action.

Thereafter, throughout the day it, (the strike) completely escaped my notice as, (a) I was working down in the jungle again, and (b) the kids were obviously kept at school because there were no frantic phone calls to pick them up. Indeed, it was only when they returned at night and Guy moaned about the fact that they had only had Pasta as a main course for school lunch and that they’d had to use plastic cutlery, that I remembered about it.

Now, returning to my first paragraph and why it’s usual to have the strike on a Thursday (or even a Tuesday). It’s because the strikers will then take the Friday (or the Monday) off and have a long week-end. It’s called the ‘pont’, or the ‘bridge’ and it’s got something to do with the spare day, in today’s case, the Friday, being the ‘bridge’ between the strike day and the weekend.

Everybody thinks the ‘bridge’ is a French invention but I have to say that in the bad old days of the UK’s car industry in the 60’s and the 70’s, it was not unusual for the workers in the car plant to ‘walk out’ on a Thursday so they could have the Friday off and have a long weekend. Indeed, in the case where too many cars had been produced and they were being stockpiled because of poor sales, the directors would get me in my role as an Industrial Engineer, to start a strike, usually on a Thursday knowing that the workers wouldn't bother coming back on the Friday, by removing the little shanty towns the workers built beside the production line, or by speeding the line up ever so slightly which was noticed immediately.

‘Everbody out’, was the cry and depending on what action had been taken, between two and eight thousand workers would down tools and hit the streets.

A couple of weeks later, when the spare cars had been shipped to dealers and the workers were beginning to feel the pinch financially, the strike would be resolved and everything would be back to normal, until the next time!

So, I think I’ll go on strike today, but it’s probably too late for it to have any effect. I’ve already made the batter for the kid’s breakfast pancakes and I’ll have to run them down to the school bus. I’ll work my socks off in the jungle for a couple of hours and I know there’s a few little things to fix around the house. I’ll probably take J out to lunch and the cats and dog will need fed. Oh and I’ve just washed the dishes from last night (the dishwasher is dead – R.I.P.).

Strike? It’s not worth it. I’d just have to do twice as much tomorrow, and anyway it’s a Friday. Nobody in France strikes on a Friday!  

A Digital Digit !!

Did you hear about the guy in Finland who had to have a bit of one of his fingers amputated after a motorcycle crash and had it replaced with a USB memory stick ? No ? Don’t believe me ? Look at the picture and read on.

It’s not as far fetched as you would think. My initial reaction was that the memory stick was somehow linked up to the nerves in what remained of his finger and he was able to ‘send’ information from his brain to his digit and henceforth on to the memory stick and hey presto into the PC and furthermore, onto the screen. Just think what trouble that could get you into. I’d never be able to have my finger plugged into the PC if Britney Spears appeared on TV. But then I’m weird like that! I suppose it might come in useful for some things but none spring to mind at the moment. I mean keeping a memory stick handy is no big deal. You can keep them in your pockets these days, they are so compact. Getting one put on your finger is just a bit of a gimmick.

In fact, as you might see from the picture above, the prosthetic finger is literally ‘stuck’ onto what remains of his shortened digit and can be removed, and the USB bit is ‘hidden’ under his false nail, so when he needs to stick his finger in he simply peels back his nail and off he goes. Also brings new meaning to the phrase, which I used in my blog only yesterday, about ‘getting or pulling your finger out’.  And I suppose when he passes his memory stick to someone else to use (yuck), I suppose that’s him ‘giving the finger’. Ha Ha !

What was even more hilarious and I don’t know if it was planned or just a cruel twist of fate but alongside this story was an advert for …… yup…… ‘The Ironkey – the world’s most secure flash drive memory stick’. If that was planned by the ad company it was brilliant but somehow, as I say, it was probably just a weird coincidence.

So what else can we say about this advancement of ‘micro’ technology (get it?)? Well as some of you may know the normal memory stick is a male part, i.e. it plugs into the ‘female’ USB port on your computer so does he get a little shiver every time he ‘plugs in’ (I’ve got to be careful here cause kids read my blog and I don’t want to have to classify it as ‘18’) and when he does ‘plug in’ or insert his digit does he first cover his PC with a blanket or something? And, if, by some chance, the guy is gay, does he have to – no, let’s not go there.

But let’s just suppose those surgeons had gone one step further and had actually connected his nerves, and therefore his brain to his USB digit. What difference would it have made? Well, for a start he could just look at stuff on the TV or a film and simply transfer the images going through his brain, down through his USB into his PC and you’ve got a copy. No illegal downloads here.

With the right software, you could simply ‘think’ e-mails and hey-presto, they would be produced and sent.

What if he smoked and used his USB finger to hold the cigarette. Is there a chance all his data could go up in smoke? 

Any other ideas? Post them in a comment and let others see them.

 

The Second Day of Summer?

It was a stunning day yesterday and no, you’re not reading a repeat of yesterday’s blog. That’s two days in a row where we’ve had amazingly warm sunshine. It was time for yet another expedition into the unknown – my jungle.

I was down there at 9.30am, just after the UK stock market opened (where nothing much was happening), clippers, chainsaw and various other garden implements at the ready.

My arms are aching like a guy who has done two hundred press-ups with all the cutting I’ve been doing, so yesterday I thought I’d burn some of the bushes I’ve cut down over the last two weeks or so. It would be less tiring – or so I thought.

In a previous blog, I said I don’t usually burn my rubbish but there’s so much of it down there that I’d be forever running to the déchèterie (local tip) to get rid of it, so burning it was. Guy had tried to burn some with me the other day but he’s a fan of Ray Mears (jungle survival expert which is probably appropriate) and after about 30 minutes of trying to light a fire by striking two stones together to get a spark, or rubbing two sticks together, I told him to ‘get his finger out’ and use the lighter! 

Anyway, yesterday I took a lighter and some BBQ fluid just in case, but after loading a few dried up bushes on the fire circle, I lit it and whoosh – up it went. No problems there. Several more bushes were loaded on and the fire was getting a bit fierce and starting to spread so I did the flailing branch trick – just beat the flames and out they go.

Just then I heard the unmistakable drone of the Canadair Fire Planes. They’d obviously seen the smoke from the fire observation post at the top of the mountain just behind our house and had called the planes in to investigate. They are based at Mandelieu just outside Cannes and whether or not they had been flying around or had actually taken off from their airfield to see what was on fire, I know not, but they were now ‘buzzing’ me to establish if this was actually a proper forest fire or just some pratt in his garden. After spotting it was the latter they did one more pass, a bit lower this time and headed off back to their base. 

Apparently, if you do have an out-of-control fire on your property, they’ll drop hundreds of gallons of orange coloured water on it and then return with a huge bill so I was keen, understandably, to keep the flames in check. Rumour has it that the orange coloured water is so that they can trace the actual land where they dropped it so as to present their bill to its rightful owner!

These Canadair planes are the ones which you sometimes see at the coast dropping onto the surface and skimming over it to ‘suck’ up water, swimmers and windsurfers and anything else on the surface as they pass. Apparently the old apocrophal story about someone finding a dead scuba diver in a tree after a forest fire had been extinguished by these planes, is just that - apocrophal.

We had a fire in the woods just above us a few years back and the pilots are amazing. They fly at the same angle as the mountain, only a couple of hundred feet above the surface and once the water has been dropped, usually with astonishing accuracy, they soar back into the air and off down to the coast again for another load. Picture is of one of the planes picking up water from just off Cannes. You would have thought that there would be too many yachts out there for them to do that - wouldn't you?  

We also have fire helicopters out here which hover over swimming pools and suck up the water before flying off to the fire. Imagine turning up, back at home on a hot summer’s day, ready for a plunge into your pool only to find that it’s …… empty!

Still these people are the ones who ‘volunteer’ to lose their water in this way and who pay much less for their rates or water bill so they shouldn’t be too surprised occasionally if their pool is empty. Problem is it can take 2-3 days to refill – a real pain.

The First Day of Summer?

It was a stunning day yesterday. You could tell at 6.45am when the curtains were pulled back that it was going to be really nice as there was that familiar orange glow over the Med.

I wandered down into the ‘jungle’ to cut down another square metre of prickly bushes and had to take my sweater off because it was so warm. At lunch, I could have sat on the terrace, but didn’t, and the pool even looked inviting despite the temperature only rising over the last few days to a positively blood-chilling 12 degrees.

I have to say it’s strange to see the sun shining in the sky when there are no leaves on the trees and the only flowers in the ground which are blooming are the daffodils and the violets. The weather has been gradually getting more settled over the last couple of weeks and old, more preferable habits are coming back.

It’s nice to get up in the morning and it’s light. It’s nice not to have to put on all-weather clothes when I take my scooter out. It’s nice to be able to hang the washing on the line and it’s good for my bank balance not to have to put on the central heating every day.

The town centres are busy again with people sitting outside in the open-air cafés and convertible cars have their roofs down. Girls have got their sunglasses on, the kids are playing football in the village square and everything just seems a bit more positive.

However, and it’s a big however. Look at the photo above. It was taken on the 6^th March a couple of years ago and shows that even in this spring like weather the snow can fall and take you unawares although with my ‘new’ satellite mapping web site, it shouldn’t now take us by surprise – we could see it coming.

My old French neighbour still has his frost protecting nets over his lemon trees so in theory we could get another cold snap but let’s hope that the Cote d’Azur weather has now changed for the good and this is the start of the nice weather.

 

D..I..V..O..R..C..E

Not a happy subject I agree and I speak with some authority on it, as I was divorced in 1991, but there are a couple of ‘separations' going through the courts at the minute which are causing some mirth and not a little discussion.

Firstly there is a guy called Brian Myerson, a fund manager who made millions running a hedge fund (a fancy way of betting on the stock market) who divorced his wife last year. Being worth some £25 million, he was ordered to pay his wife (sorry, ex-wife), a not inconsiderable £11m, presumably on the accepted basis that as she had lived the good life, she was entitled to continue to live the good life and spend a sum equal to the GDP of a small country each month on the upkeep of her rather well turned out body.

The problem is that as the credit crunch has taken its toll, poor old Mr Myerson’s business has crashed and the shares he rather shrewdly kept in his company as his part of the deal, are now virtually worthless, so he’s gone to the Court of Appeal in London to have the original payout slashed.

As his lawyer was presenting his ‘down and out’ client’s changed circumstances (he’s down to his last £5m m’lords), one of the judges was heard to mutter, ‘Oh what a rum do’, which is exactly what you’d expect to hear from one of these bewigged, octogenarians who are totally divorced (sorry) from reality.

One other aspect of this case which needs to be mentioned is that the lawyer retained by Mrs Myerson, is one Nicholas Mostyn, the husband of a girl who used to work with me in IBM. Nick Mostyn is one of the top divorce lawyers in London, frequently achieving multi-million payouts for his female clients and when Lucy (his wife) turns up at our annual IBM reunions, I have to warn her not to impart, even if asked, alimony advice to any of the females there – particularly J!

The second case, which I find gives me a severe case of schadenfreude, is that of Formula 1 supremo, Berni Ecclestone. Good old Bernie made £2.4 billion, yes billion, by stitching up the TV rights to the Formula 1 motor races, and then selling them. In a desperate attempt to keep the taxman away from his millions, sorry, billions, he transferred most of his fortune to his statuesque wife, Slavica, who at 6ft 2 in, positively towers over her 5ft 4 in husband of 24 years (see picture). Poor old Bernie was at a motor race somewhere when the news broke that his wife had moved out and wanted a divorce, stating ‘stress and anxiety’ as the reason. She then managed to get a 58 second divorce for his ‘unreasonable behaviour’ without Bernie knowing anything about it and is angling to keep most of his, sorry, her, fortune. They say that possession is 90% of the law and therefore we must accept that she’ll get to keep 90% of £2.4 billion.

I suppose the ‘unreasonable behaviour’ was based on the fact that he only transferred ‘most’ of his £2.4 billion instead of the whole lot!

Finally – see Billy Connoly singing about D..I..V..O..R..C..E   at the following link…  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzZzGxReXmo