21 August 2009

It’s Hot and Getting Hotter

We’ve had quite a good summer so far with only a 10 minute burst of rain a few weeks ago interrupting a run of some 8-10 weeks of hot, dry weather. It’s been so hot that olive trees and lemon trees, normally unaffected by dry weather, are wilting and in some cases dying – ah! The grass terraces are brown with only the hardiest weeds and long established trees surviving and even the big oak trees have got yellow leaves, indicating some deep-rooted problems. Get it - some deep rooted problems? Oh never mind.

Getting in the car can result in 2nd degree burns (we don’t have any cover for the vehicles) which always makes me remember that I ‘advised’ J not to get leather seats as an option for exactly the reason that they get roasting in the summer and your legs and back get burnt to cinders.

Poor Shadow just lies under the table on the terrace all day, spreading out as much as he can to maximize the amount of his body which is touching the cool tiles. I know he hates water but I would have thought in this heat he’d have been plunging into the pool or at least lying under the garden sprinklers.

J wanders around in her swimming costume all day (not a pretty sight) and I in my boxers (what a hunk) but I do have to be careful in case our lovely little ‘post girl’ comes to the door with a package …… and sees mine!

It’s at night the main problem arises – it’s just too hot to sleep despite a fan which I’m sure J got from a wind tunnel company which must have been closing down. Whether it’s the heat or the fact that I have to keep hold of my boxers to prevent them being ripped off my body by the gale, I don’t know. What I do know is that I just cannot sleep and my blog posts are getting earlier and earlier.

And the latest forecast is that France is going to have a ‘heat wave’ which is not good news. I mean, it’s hot enough down here without them telling us it’s going to get even hotter. The pool gets too hot to swim in and the ice in your gin and tonic lasts only a few minutes before it ceases to fulfill its primary function and just dilutes the gin!

People get irritable (no guesses who) and even riding on my scooter without a helmet (just down to the bottle bank, a trip I have to make twice a day now Vivienne is staying with us), is no relief.

Still, it could be worse I suppose. I looked at the forecast for Glasgow (dear Ol Glecsa Toon) and it said – Light showers (63), Rain(59), Rain (54), Rain (53), Rain (53).

Things are not so bad after all!

20 August 2009

Lunar Labour

I was reading a book a few weeks ago (The Second Angel by Philip Kerr) and within a few pages I’d had a ‘Eureka’ moment although how you can claim to have a Eureka moment when the book has had the idea first, I don’t know? Anyway, the book was set in 2080 and was about a penal colony on the moon, to which the worst offenders on earth were sent. It was like a form of hard labour and there was no means of escape – obviously.

And so I thought – brilliant. Why don’t we do this today? Why not send all these lifers whose crimes are so bad they will never get parole, (i.e. the ones we’d do away with if we still had capital punishment) – why don’t we send them off to the moon where they could build the bases we’ll need for deeper space exploration. If they killed each other – so what? If they knuckle down and build the bases – great. In one fell swoop we get rid of all the low-life in society and get some infrastructure on the moon into the bargain. We’ll save money by not having these people in prison and we’ll make space (pun intended) for the people who should go to prison but don’t because there’s no room for them. OK, it will take a few years to get organized but what a great investment it would be.

Apparently, space travel and the associated prolonged periods with low gravity causes all sorts of health disorders which is a bit of a problem when it’s ‘ordinary’ decent astronauts who have to do it but who cares when they are lifers.

And, as I was sitting dreaming up this brilliant penal scheme, I happened to come across the US web site for ‘Correctional Institutions’ or Slammers as we call them in the UK. I’ve no idea where I found it (and I know it’s only a tenuous link to my blog) but it’s great – go to the ‘Inmate Locator’, type in ‘Bernard Madoff’ and there the old scoundrel is (you remember him – swindled $40 billion off his friends) – release date 2139! Yes – read it again – 2139. We’ll definitely have lunar penal colonies by then – for sure!

http://www.bop.gov/locations/institutions/eng/index.jsp

19 August 2009

Is Pasta Past-It ?

How do pasta restaurants go bust? How can 20p worth of pasta and a bit of sauce, say costing 50p, sold for £10 fail to be a licence to print money? How can a pasta base with some sausage, mushrooms and onions and a bit of tomato sauce, costing maybe a £1 for the ingredients and then sold for £11, not make the owners millionaires? OK – I know they have staff costs and other overheads but really – with a gross mark-up of something like 1000 per cent, I just don’t get it.

J and I went off to a pizza/pasta restaurant last Friday. We used to be regulars at this place but it suddenly shut a couple of years ago and remained closed for months until it re-opened 'under new ownership'. No decorative changes were made during the closure – it was just shut.

Once it reopened, we’d regularly drive past aiming to go in for a pizza but it was always closed but we tried it last Friday just on the off-chance that they’d decided to open and make some money.

As is usual in a lot of French restaurants, it’s a family affair and this place looked no different with mother and daughter doing the waiting, whilst no doubt, the men of the family were hard at it at the pizza oven.

A full thirty minutes after we’d ordered, our food still had not arrived. Normally, I would have walked out but I was in no particular hurry so we sat it out. I wanted to see just how long it took to get our food – J had ordered a pizza whilst I’d asked for Carpaccio of Beef. Again, as is usual in French restaurants, nothing is ever said to customers if there’s going to be a delay and so we sat there in blissful ignorance of what was happening in the kitchen.

The problem with pizza places is that even with the best organization in the world, you can only get 3 or 4 pizzas in the oven at any one time so if the restaurant is busy you are likely to face a bit of a delay. I suppose if we had ordered starters we could have filled in the time before our main courses had arrived but we hadn’t and so we waited and waited.

Eventually the food came. Was it worth the wait? Unfortunately not. J’s pizza wasn’t cooked in the centre whilst my frites were warm rather than crispy hot. We couldn’t be bothered arguing as the place was full and the two waitresses were almost having panic attacks.

We asked for the bill, paid and left. J reckons it might be ok when it’s quieter. I reckon she might be right but if other people felt like I did that night, they won’t go back and yet another pizza/pasta place will close- despite the 1000 per cent mark-up! Maybe if they'd hire more staff instead of just trying to make the place function with family members, things would be better but of course employment practices and law in France is a topic on which this blog could gorge for years and years and years!

And a quick PS – as if to prove my point, Vivienne, who is staying with us until 2011 (joke !) had a pasta meal with a friend Anna, the other night down in Juan les Pins on the coast. When Anna complained about undercooked pasta, the waiter said, ‘our pasta is alright madam’ in such a hostile manner that she didn’t dare complain that she couldn’t find any meat in the bolognaise sauce! I don’t think they’ll be going there again.

18 August 2009

Total Insecurity

I was in my usual position the other afternoon, sitting on the terrace with a glass of Rosé, when the mist came rolling down the mountainside behind the house. Despite the fact that it was probably about 80+ degrees, it reminded me of winter when the weather on the Courmettes (or Cupples Mountain as I call it), can make this place seem like hell or heaven, all in the space of one afternoon.

It was the thought of winter which caused my attention to wander to my log pile and then the usual insecurities started. Have I got enough logs for the winter? Will it get cold earlier and I’ll have to start lighting fires before the middle of October? Will it be a really cold winter (it wasn’t last year) and I’ll use twice as many logs?

I don’t know why this is such a problem, after all, if I did run out of logs I could go into the woods and cut some more and indeed, I’ve already got some trees down in the ‘jungle’ already felled. I suppose it’s just that by the start of October (a few months away I agree) I always aim to have a full winter’s stock of logs, up here, just outside the house and ready to burn. I like to be organised enough so that I don’t need to run about like a madman with my chainsaw if I’m down to my last few twigs.

This is probably a ‘man thing’. I’m the provider – well for logs I am and it would be a major blow to my man pride if we ran out of logs. Of course I could always drag the trailer down to the wood yard and buy a couple of pallets worth but in the 10 years we’ve been burning logs during the winter, I haven’t bought a single bit of wood.

So, every now and then I wander over to my log pile and have a good long look at it trying to work out if there’s enough. This year it’s all oak so it should burn more slowly than last year’s pine.

Crazy eh ? It is hitting 100 degrees here and I’m thinking about winter fires already! And what about the photo – interesting or what?

17 August 2009

A Perfect Sunday ?

Yeah – I reckon it was. The temperature was hitting 100 degrees so it was far too hot to do anything as remotely silly as outside work. I’d cleaned the pool on Saturday so apart from watching the football discussion show on TV in the morning, I had nothing on my ‘to-do’ list.

We had some guests coming over for lunch so after a quick dusting and hoovering, there was nothing to be done except for me to make sure that the Rosé was at the correct temperature, and of course you just have to try it to be sure!

J has been trying to perfect Mojitos over the weekend and as soon as the guests were on the terrace, J’s latest attempt at this rum based drink was handed out. Very refreshing they were too and despite Anna saying she’d never be able to finish hers, I noticed it going down very easily indeed!

J then served a delicious chicken ceasar salad and we just sat on the terrace eating, drinking and talking. My only gripe was that I was in the company of three women who were, of course, all talking about their respective divorces. My sole contribution of, ‘all men are bastards’, was met with unanimous approval and I went off to watch the footie on the TV.

In the evening we’d been invited over to Tan and Angie’s for the Spurs (football) game followed by a meat-loaf dinner and there’s no better way to watch a game involving Tottenham Hotspur, than to watch it with Tan. Talk about a myriad of emotions. Up when they scored first, followed by complete despair as Spurs’ goalie conceded a stupid penalty. Then up again as Spurs scored a second goal, followed by utter elation when the final whistle sounded. High fives all round!

Angie’s delicious meat loaf was a perfect way to follow the game and for the second time that day, a group of us just sat around on the terrace, eating, drinking and talking.


A perfect Sunday indeed.