What’s Happening at Le Brin ?

Le Brin d’Olivier (the Olive Branch) - where did that name come from? Can’t remember being consulted. People think it’s a Jewish retirement home! I suppose they’re right – I’m 'careful' with money (according to my missus), I’m retired and I’ve had the op!

Actually, It’s pretty quiet these days chez nous. The kids returned from Corfu on the 23^rd and they have now left for a month in Southern Ireland with their father. It’s strangely quiet. No bickering over who has control of the TV remote. No slowing of the internet as Guy and Kitty download music and watch You Tube several hours a day. No continuous queue at the fridge as they harvest whatever food there is on the shelves like a couple of locusts. It’s idyllic, although J is already missing her ‘little dears’. I’ve fixed Skype on her PC so she can see them every now and again so we’ll see just how much they are missing their mum as they will be the ones to initiate contact.

Changing to the weather, it’s been really warm for the last 5 weeks or so. The ground is parched and the sprinklers are on every second day. It’s too hot to do much. Within a couple of minutes I’m soaking in sweat even if I’m just doing light outside work but of course, there is the pool and I have to say it’s almost worth working up a sweat just to be able to jump into the refreshing, clear, blue water and cool off…….. several times a day. It’s so hot that I’ve had to go and get a haircut only 6 weeks after my last trim which is unheard of. The ‘coiffeur’ (barber/hairdresser) doesn’t speak English so it’s a wonder that I emerge with something resembling a decent haircut. Yesterday, we were having a chat about the local music festival (Nuits du Sud - see URL at end and make sure you choose the English option) and he kept saying, ‘Moriad is playing on Sunday – you must know Moriad’. I shook my head, ashamed that I hadn’t heard of this famous, English group. Eventually he went off and got a brochure and proudly pointed to a picture of Murray Head. I’d never heard of him but seems like he’s quite popular in France!

Having installed Skype to be able to have video calls with Timmy, my youngest son who is in Qatar, I am pleased to say that we’ve had quite a few online sessions. His latest comment is ‘7 days in – 116 to go !’ He went off to Doha on his first weekend off but is now working 12-14 hour days. When I ask him what’s he’s doing out there he says he could tell me but then he’d have to kill me! All I get is that it’s 130 degrees and the food is great.

It was Angie’s birthday yesterday and last night J and I went over to help her celebrate. Tan had got her a beautiful necklace from a very expensive jewelers in Cannes and as you would expect, Tan asked the shop assistant some searching questions, the most illuminating of which was, ‘what’s the most expensive thing you sell here?’, to which the reply was, ‘two million euros sir’. I made a mental note not to let J anywhere near Boucheron.

So, that’s it from Le Brin. The weather is scorching. The animals are listless and I feel very guilty in proclaiming that it’s just too hot to do any work. Still the Ashes (cricket) is on and the football season has almost started with friendly matches now taking up the boring TV hours between 9 and 11 at night. C’mon the Gers.

http://www.vence.fr/Nuits-du-Sud-Music-Festival-2009.html

Stelios and easyJet

I first came across Stelios when I started flying from London to the south of France on a regular basis with easyJet. The airline had only been going for a couple of years and the service was patchy to say the least. If a problem occurred in the morning, that problem would multiply so that when I flew in the evenings, delays of a couple of hours were not uncommon. Throughout all these problems however, the owner of easyJet, Stelios, would there at the check-in queue reassuring passengers. He would then wander up and down the aisle during the flight, asking for feedback and invariably if there was a delay, he would offer everybody (139 with a full plane) a free drink. Given that a Gin and Tonic was approximately £3, it was a costly freebie and probably wiped out his profit on that flight.

Stelios, then floated his airline on the stock market and it has gone from strength to strength, certainly in terms of number of routes and the inventory of new planes they leased.

Today, on my occasional forays to the UK, I travel with one of their competitors, Aer Lingis who, in my opinion, offer a much superior service. Seat allocation when checking in. Large, leather seats. More legroom. No hassles with slightly overweight baggage. But Aer Lingis only operate out of Gatwick which is ideal for my current flights. Any other destination and I will be back to easyJet.

Why am I writing about an airline and it’s founder? It was an article I read the other day about Stelios in which he described his approach to money. He was given a sizeable loan by his shipping-magnate father (£500m is the estimate) and went onto to become a sizeable competitor to his father’s shipping line, selling it eventually for £1.4b. Makes nonsense of the old adage about how you make a small fortune. You start with a large one – ha ha!

It was one of the things he said in the article which prompted this post. He said that when he became successful, he changed his clothes (I can only assume he meant he improved his dress sense) and got rid of his Porsche. Well, I don’t know about the Porsche but I was always amazed when I saw Stelios wandering about on the Monday flight to London. Here was a billionaire who dressed liked he’d slept in his clothes on a park bench. He was so untidy. He is a big man and it’s sometimes difficult to dress big men but this guy was the proverbial tramp. The back of his suit trousers hadn’t seen a press since the suit was first worn. His jacket was similarly creased but he was always niceness itself, even signing autographs for stupid passengers who thought he was some sort of celebrity.

Since those early days in easyJet, Stelios has gone on to found a number of other ‘easy’ businesses. The ill-fated easyInternet Cafés. The easyRentacar which seems to have disappeared. He’s now doing easyCruises but again, I haven’t seen the distinctive orange cruise ships which used to stand out like a beacon when we looked down to the Med.

He also founded, if that is the correct word, an easyBus service which took passengers getting off his planes at Luton and ferried them into London for a £4 fare. I once followed this billionaire (he claims he’s not worth that much) off of a Luton bound flight and watched him selling his £4 bus tickets on the concourse at Luton Airport. Ever known a billionaire to do that?

Anyway, if you’ve got 10 minutes to spare, read Stelio’s thoughts on money and entrepreneurship in the URL’d article and remember what Dell Boy once said – ‘d’ya know, the French don’t have a word for entrepreneur’!!!

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/personalfinance/fameandfortune/5931325/I-ditched-my-Porsche-when-I-started-easyJet.-Ive-had-a-Smart-Car-ever-since.html

Lavender

It’s lavender cutting season. Well, for me at least. It’s not a job I enjoy, cutting the flowers off of about 50 yards of lavender plants, but at least when it’s done, the garden looks a whole lot tidier.

I planted most of mine as quick-growing ground cover several years ago. It needs next to no water, produces masses of lilac/purple flower heads and attracts a multitude of bugs, bees and butterflies. Apparently, laid across a doorstep or a window sill, it also acts as a deterrent for the horrible scorpions which we get down here and which can give a nasty sting if encountered.

One of the side benefits of the lavender cutting season chez nous is that I smell gorgeous for a couple of days, even after I’ve been in the pool. The smell lingers on and on and is one of the reasons why its dried flowers are bagged and used for wardrobes and clothes drawers. You can even put some under your pillow and drift off to sleep in a lavender enthused stupor, although in my case it would probably just make me think of all the cutting I still have to do.

Of course, commercially, lavender is big business in the south and higher regions of France, with the flower heads mainly being distilled to produce a highly sought after oil which is used in a variety of ways from perfume making through to medicines and soap making. One ton of flower heads (and that is a lot of flowers!) produces anywhere between 5kg and 20kg of essence. Me – I just put them in my trailer and dump them at the tip, a rather unglorious end to a glorious growing season of vivid purple flowers. Maybe I should take them up to the perfume factory a couple of miles away and see if they’ll give me anything for them?

A bottle of after shave would suffice.

Rip-Off Rome

Italian tourist authorities are apparently going apoplectic about a couple of Japanese visitors who were charged €600 (£500) for a fairly average meal in a Rome eaterie. OK, it was a fairly expensive restaurant but the meal of pasta, a dessert and a bottle of chardonnay should have cost no more than €100 for the two of them – not only was the bill a bit over the top, the tip the restaurant added was €115! The tourists, probably not wishing to cause a scene, left the restaurant and went to the police and the whole affair kicked off. In the aftermath, the restaurant had its licence removed so a justice of sorts was done.

The article went on to say that the unwary traveler to Rome is ‘ripped-off’ as soon as they reach the airport with unlicensed taxi drivers conning tourists by charging €100 for the trip to the city centre, whereas the licensed drivers only charge €40. An ice cream at the Colloseum costs the princely sum of €6!

This happened to me years ago in Rome (the taxi bit that is) and you wonder why the authorities, if they know it’s happening, allow it to continue. Of course, you tend to get ripped off everywhere you go these days although I cannot think of one instance of it happening when I’ve been in the States.

Only a few weeks ago I was charged €28 (about £25) for four drinks in Nice, two of which were cokes. The scam was quite a clever one. I asked for a large white wine and when he listed the wines available, I chose an average one. When the bill came, I noticed that he’d charged me €16 for a large glass of Chablis, when I’d chosen Chardonnay. Had I complained, all he would have said was that he’d misheard me. I could have pressed the point but it’s their loss, I’ll never go there again but hey, we were tourists to them. They probably never expected to see us again anyway!

I was also the centre of a huge rip-off in Portugal quite a few years back. BT had booked a conference on the coast and we went to a rather up-market restaurant whose speciality was fish. The waiters came out flourishing huge plates of fruit de mer with large lobsters featuring prominently – this was the starter. Despite my reservations at the cost of £36 per person (just for the starter), the majority of the 30 or so people ordered it. Of course, when it came, there was plenty of crab but not a bit of lobster in sight. I discussed this with my director (he had asked me to pay the bill) but as we were hosting several senior American directors he asked me not to make a fuss and so we let it go. This was some 16 years ago and the bill eventually came out to some £3,500, about a £1,000 of which was the starter.

A few years later, I was the guest of Visa in exactly the same resort. As I was known to have visited said resort before they asked if I knew of a particular restaurant. Yup – it was the same one and they’d booked for 40 people! I told the organizers my story and off we went to the rip-off joint. I took the greatest pleasure in cancelling the booking and telling them why but they were probably still full on that particular night and probably ripped off even more unsuspecting souls.

Of course down here on the Côte d’azur, every non-French person expects to be ripped off if you call in a builder, plumber, electrician etc etc etc. It’s estimated that prices for jobs are inflated by anything up to 40% and as there seems to be a bit of a cartel operating, (i.e. every tradesman quoting to a non-French adds up to 40% extra) you always get a high price so the choice you have is what high price shall I choose!

The problem is that no matter who quotes you a price, you just assume you’re being ripped off which is a sad way to live life. The secret is to find friends of Guy and Kitty whose fathers are tradesmen and then become VERY friendly with them. C’est la vie.

Home From Home !

Ever since Timmy was a sprog, just out of nappies, his diet has consisted solely of burgers, pizzas and anything which has seen the inside of a deep fat fryer. When he came out to our house a few weeks ago, delicacies such as foie gras (goose liver paté), pied a couchon (pig’s trotters) and daube sanglier (wild boar stew) were completely lost on him. I tortured him mercilessly until the final day, the day of his departure, when I took him to the local bar and he salivated as he ordered a steak haché (burger) and frites but was crestfallen when I told him there was no chance he’d get the staff to put a slice of cheese on his burger. In the Midi, it’s either on the menu or it’s not. Full stop!

Last Monday, Timmy flew out to Qatar where the Americans have an air base which supports the coalition Air Forces as they cross the Persian Gulf on their way to Afghanistan to support the ground troops. Despite his mother’s severe reservations, Timmy couldn’t wait to get out there and I applauded his enthusiasm. In Qatar he’s not in a conflict zone but supports those who put their lives on the line every time they fly in to bomb the Taliban, but following his posting to the Al Udeid air base, Timmy is likely to be posted to Helmand Province in Afghanistan itself and that will be an altogether different scenario.

But back to the current posting. Timmy was positively drooling when he was telling me about Al Udeid. Because it’s an American air base, it has all sorts of facilities the Brits can only dream about. It reputedly has a Burger King, Pizza Hut, a KFC, bars, cafés and even lawyers and accountants. It even has a hut when you can order a car and have it shipped to the US!

Of course it was the ‘gourmet’ outlets which Timmy enthused about and last night when we were ‘Skyping’, all I got out of him was the excitement of wandering about an air base the size of a small town (25 square miles) looking for eateries. He'd already found a 24 hour mess which no doubt pleased him immensely given that at home in Glasgow, he is prone to going off for a McDonalds at 2 in the morning! He was definitely looking forward to a real good serving of American food.

In that respect I am with him 100%. I love American food. I love the way they seat you, they serve you and the fact that nothing is too much trouble – even an extra slice of cheese on your burger! I’ve had the best meals ever in the US. I still drool over the buffalo meat I had in Freemont, California. The meat loaf and corned beef hash in New York. The Southern food in Charlotte and the burger and beer I had at the Braves game in Atlanta when they asked for proof of my age – I was 41!

So Timmy, if you read this (and I’m sure he will – he’s a recent convert to my blog believe it or not), I am soooooo proud of you. Everybody out here in France is proud of you. I am jealous of you. I’d love to be there too, serving my country and supporting the Americans and the Brits in Afghanistan as they try to rid the country of a regime which made Saddam Hussein look like a charity worker.

I’d love to wander around the base with you looking for all the 24 hour food outlets but we both know we’d be like barrels within a few months – well I would!

So Timmy, when you’re loading a bomb on the next Brit plane, chalk on the side, ‘To Bin Laden from TopCat’ (my nickname at school). ‘Rot in hell with your son’. Yeah – nuke them! Sorry – getting carried away.

Here’s a URL for the Al Udeid airbase. Picture is of Timmy (aka Maverick)… or Tim as I’m supposed to call him now.

http://www.weekspace.com/Qatar/qindex.htm