What a Job

There are good Jobs and then are great jobs. Of course there are crap jobs as well but nobody thinks about those unless, unfortunately, you are locked into one and then you just think of the great jobs …… and dream.

The great jobs? A football writer or even better, a football commentator. A tourist guide in some exotic part of the world possibly, although you might just end up with some horrible tourists to try and keep happy, so maybe not.

I’m frequently reminded of one of the great jobs as I toodle around on my scooter down here on the Côte D’azur. What is it? A motoring correspondent.

As I was coming back from dropping Guy off at a birthday party the other day, I was held up at a particularly narrow part of the road passing through Tourrettes. Car after magnificent car passed me. Firstly, it was the colours. A wonderful metallic purple (yes I know but apparently I have a feminine side), then a gorgeous light silver metallic then a burgundy red metallic and then an orange, yup – metallic.

Then I looked at the car. As something of an anorak when it comes to fancy cars, particularly convertibles, it struck me that this one was new. I’d never seen it before. The marque on the front of the car was very distinctive – it was the ‘L’ for Lexus.

I’d love a Lexus. They’re apparently incredibly quiet and being a Toyota of sorts, they’re also totally reliable but they do cost a few bob. And this one looked stunning.

We often see new cars on the roads down here. The roads going up into the mountains are wonderfully scenic and any roads used for James Bond car race scenes (which they have been) are obviously the sort of roads which car manufacturers love to use to get the world’s motoring press down here to test their cars and then hopefully, write a positive article on their latest piece of work.

To be a motoring journalist and be told, say on the Monday, to get yourself down to Nice to test a brand new, and as yet, not publicly available, luxury car, is the stuff dreams are made of.

You fly down and book into a luxury hotel in one of the world’s most favourite places. All your foreign colleagues are there and you have a great dinner, looking forward to the following morning when you’re given the keys to a wonderful new car and a convertible one at that. On the day of the test you are given a route to follow and off you go. No ties, no strings – just bring the car back in one piece in the evening.

You drive off and head for the mountains. You’ve been down here many times before, testing Renault Clios, Ford Fiestas, Seat Leons but this is the one you’ve been particularly looking forward to, a brand new convertible Lexus IS250c .

You know a great restaurant up in the mountains and so do your colleagues so you all arrange to meet up, have a fantastic lunch and compare notes. What a day out. The only thing is – no booze of course. The 2000 ft sheer drop on the way back down to the airport is quite unforgiving if you stray too far to the side of the road.

The Lexus convertible is due on sale in the UK later this summer. The US, lucky devils, have it already.

Bloggers And Anonymity

If ever a blogger should remain anonymous and work under a pseudonym, it’s me. But I don’t and following some of my blogs where I have a go at the Frenchies, I wake the next day expecting the usual French custom of protest to take its normal form of a ton of rotting fish dumped in my drive (the cats would love it), burning lamb or beef cattle on my terraces (Shadow would love that) or a fisherman’s trawler blockade (pretty difficult that one!). Still – maybe I’ll get lucky and some stroppy French git who’s taken umbrage at something I’ve written will dump a couple of tons of dung, sorry, manure, on my property – it’ll be great for the plants.

But seriously, there’s been a bit of debate in the UK recently about the anonymity of bloggers. The main case was about a serving police officer who, under the pseudonym of ‘NightJack’, informed his readers of the sorts of things which happened in the murky world of the police and the courts.

The second case was about a lady, under the pseudonym of Abby Lee, who wrote a blog called, ‘Girl With a One Track Mind’ and who described in enormous detail, her sexual experiences, of which there were many!

Both blogs were widely read, indeed Abby Lee actually published a book which I believe was hugely successful and as Abby, she won many blogging awards.

However, the UK press, never one to leave any good thing alone, ‘outed’ both bloggers to their readers and their anonymity was finished.

Both authors worked under pseudonyms for different reasons. Abby just wanted anonymity due to the type of material she wrote and explained that she’d never be left alone, particularly by predatory men, if she blogged under her real name. Nightjack, spilt the beans on quite a few controversial cases, and although he changed the names of those involved and tried, as best he could, to make sure no real cases could be identified from his blogs, as a serving police officer, it was against his contract of employment to write about his work.

Abby (actually Zoe Margolis aged 37) was ‘outed’ three years ago and although she still rails against the junior journalist working for the Times newspaper who tracked her down and published her real name and other details of her upbringing and her life, she has benefited enormously from the publicity, now travelling the world and appearing on a variety of talk shows and sex advice panels.

Nightjack was also outed by the Times a few weeks ago but for Richard Horton, the policeman blogger, the result was rather different. His blog had to be shut down and he was given a written warning by his superiors.

Bloggers and blogging are now a significant area of interest to me and I can sympathise with both Abby and Richard in their quest to remain anonymous. It’s entirely their choice that they did not want their real names to be published for different reasons, whereas from my perspective, whilst I could have worked under a pseudonym, I chose not to.

One family who blog about ‘life in France’ and who live in the next village, remain stubbornly anonymous although they include family pictures and other details which would allow the Times to track them down in a nanosecond. Why do they blog anonymously? It’s not as if they publish really nasty stuff – the most controversial thing they’ve mentioned recently is their dislike of the music played in McDonalds and yet they blog anonymously. Why ? I suppose it’s their decision and I respect it but I’d just like to know why. I’ve even invited them, through a comment on their site, to a ‘bloggers evening’ at my house (how sad is that?) but I never even got a reply. Still – as I say –each to their own.

PS – I forgot that I’ve been blogging for one year now. 243 posts and going strong!

PPS – a showbiz blog has just been sold for $10 million – bet he or she wasn’t blogging anonymously.

Heart Attack Grill – Not In France I Fear

Looks like Hooters have a bit of competition.

Whenever I’m in the US I always try and find a Hooters, not because I’m a ‘dirty old man’ (although J might say otherwise) but because I like the food and the ambience (ha ha !!) but I came across an article on the ‘Heart Attack Grill’, another US burger chain, the other day.

With waitresses dressed as nurses and their range of burgers named after various heart related illnesses, the Heart Attack Grill (HAG) will certainly be getting a visit from me the next time I’m near one.

The home page for HAG is hilarious. It warns you that their waitresses are not real nurses and don’t have any medical training. It also says that people weighing over 350lbs can ‘eat free’. Anything which promotes an unhealthy lifestyle is here for all – even ‘no filter’ cigarettes. They probably even let you smoke inside the restaurant - whatever happened to being politically correct ?

Looking at the size of their burgers (see picture – it’s the quadruple bypass burger), I can’t ever see HAG opening a branch in France. Not that they’d ever get a chance to. For a start, the French don’t eat huge meals like this. All the women are size zero and want to stay that way, whilst the men prefer a leisurely two hour meal with uncooked meat and mouldy cheese. I’ve heard that Hooters enquired about opening a branch in France a couple of years ago and were told politely where to go and I suspect HAG would suffer the same fate.

Trying to get a decent burger down here is a nightmare. MacDonalds burgers are rubbish and taste like mouldy cardboard. Burger Grill burgers are too small and the French chains such as ‘Quick’ serve a poor imitation of the MacDonalds fare.

J once took me to a sort of ‘ladies lunch place’ telling me that they did a great burger and whilst I did not really believe her, I could not pass up the chance and sure enough Les Café Douceurs served a very large, proper, minced beef, burger. The fact that even I struggled to finish it was an indication of its size and so, every couple of months, we head down to Les Café Douceurs for their version of a ‘single bypass burger. It’s great comfort food.

See links for Hooters and Heart Attack Grill below.

http://www.hooters.com/home.aspx

http://www.heartattackgrill.com/

Watching Old Family Videos

Whenever I get the ‘old family videos’ out there are usually cries of derision but last week when my sons and brother were here there was general agreement that we should watch a couple of the holidays I shot, now on DVD, just to have a laugh at ourselves.

There was Timmy at aged 11 (he’s now 29) being a total pain in the ass, sticking his face in front of the camera at every turn. There was Stephen looking every inch the young Tom Cruise and his relatively new step sister embarrassing him by saying, ‘oooh Stephen – you were sooo handsome’. There was my brother Robert looking like Daniel Craig emerging from the water in the James Bond film only Robert was wearing the most ridiculous pair of Speedos you’ve ever seen. And there I was wandering around with a six pack, which now I can only dream of.

There was J looking stunningly gorgeous in every shot and my friends, Alan, and his wife Alison, whose efforts at getting on a lilo in the hotel swimming pool, had everyone in stitches.

There were the long evening meals in restaurants on the beach. The kids jumping from high rocks into the sea and the silly games we all played on the beach, including the ‘egg game’ which generally finished with everyone looking like part of an omelette.

All of this was before Guy and Kitty came along but they watched the DVDs with hilarity, mocking the haircuts of their stepbrothers and the clothes of their mother. The majority of the DVDs were shot in Agios Stefanos in Corfu (Greece) and that’s where we’re returning to in a few weeks but in the 16 years since I was last there, the resort has changed out of all recognition – I’m told they even have streets with lights now! It’ll be fascinating going back there after all this time (J and the kids went there two years ago) and shooting some new family videos which, we’ll undoubtedly show to our grandchildren in a few years time.

The picture is of Agios Stefanos, the north west resort in Corfu which we are heading off to soon. Will the restaurant owner who used to bring my brother back up the hill in a tractor because he couldn’t walk due to his inebriated state, remember me? We’ll see.

Japanese Suitcase ‘Worth’ More Than Singapore

So you’re a border guard working on the trains travelling across the Swiss frontiers and today it’s pretty busy. There are people scurrying everywhere and there’s chaos as the train stops at Geneva. People join and people leave – it’s a real hub on the rail network with thousands taking this particular train so as to be at their desks on time in the multitude of banks which dominate the city’s employment. As the joining commuters settle down into their seats, the train pulls out and you start your checks. Although Switzerland scrapped border controls in 2008, you still have to check for non-EEC citizens who have sneaked into the country and in particular, those carrying large amounts of currency which might indicate a money-laundering operation.

As you wander along the train looking for likely suspects you notice a couple of eastern-looking gentlemen shifting uncomfortably in their seats. You ask to check their passports and they just shrug. You ask them to open the suitcase they have with them and again they are reluctant so you call for a couple of your colleagues on your radio. Once you have the necessary manpower in place you take the suitcase and open it. There are no clothes in it. No shoes or toiletries. Nothing – except $134 billion of US Government bonds hidden in a secret compartment. Note – I said BILLION !

I’ve dressed up the story a bit but last week two Japanese guys were caught with $134 billion of US government bonds in their suitcase. Now $134 billion is more than the total financial output (GDP) of countries like New Zealand and Singapore (i.e. if you add up all the sales and output made in a year the that is GDP) so it was quite a sizeable sum – especially for two diminutive Japanese guys to be wandering about with, secreted in a suitcase.

The story will undoubtedly be hushed up but already there are claims and counterclaims.

The claim is that the Japanese wanted to flog some of their huge pile of American debt (a bond is just a Government issued IOU which pays interest and can be traded like any stock or share) but why they were sneaking into Switzerland to do it is anybody’s guess. I know that Swiss banks are notoriously secretive but an amount of that size would obviously come to the notice of the regulatory authorities pretty quickly.

The Americans have said the bonds were fakes but $134 billion? I could understand a couple of crooks maybe doing say $200million in counterfeit bonds but $134 billion – no way!

The problem behind all this is that America doesn’t like huge tranches of its debt being sold without being consulted. If $134b had hit the markets, the dollar would have plunged, banks would have panicked and then they would have sold their US Government debt and before you know it there’s a full blown financial crisis going on.

We’ll probably never hear the truth behind the story but it makes my brother’s efforts to carry £2000 over to France for me last weekend, pale into total insignificance!