16 October 2009

Milk And Two Sugars Please

The poor old Teasmade has recently been voted the 5th worst houshold invention ever, with the electric knife, the 10th worst.

You’ve no idea how bad I feel about this survey because I was an early and enthusiastic user of the Teasmade and think, in concept, it is brilliant and ….. I use my electric knife most weeks. So who organises this survey and who do they ask? Obviously not me!

I had a Teasmade almost as soon as they were released onto the shelves of the stores. It just seemed like the ideal solution to a long-term problem, that of being dug in the ribs at 6am and being told to ‘go and put the kettle on’ prior to our long morning drive into London.

For those of you who have been living in cave for the last 30 years, a Teasmade is a device which wakes you up with a cup of tea at the side of your bed at a prescribed hour. It’s like a combination of a servant and an alarm clock. All very civilized – eh? Unfortunately, the early Teasmade’s were something which resembled, and worse, sounded like something that guy Heath Robinson had developed. Approximately 30 minutes before the time it was supposed to wake you, it started hissing as it commenced the water boiling process and then as time passed, the hissing became a high pitched screech as the steam transferred from one vessel into another. There wasn’t a single morning when I didn’t think world war three had started. It wasn’t comforting – it was stressfull. And then of course you then had to pour the tea and add the milk and sugar, so in the end it didn’t exactly do very much. You could probably achieve pretty much the same thing with a small electric kettle on a timer and it would be quieter, although the newer Teasmade models have become significantly more sophisticated. The first thing you know is when the alarm goes off and there’s a pot of tea (minus milk and sugar) waiting for you. So, despite the early teething problems I grew to like, no love my Teasmade especially the newer versions.

And then there’s the poor old electric knife. The 10th worst device ever! Who says? If mine broke tomorrow I’d be down the shops getting a new one asap. I mean just how does one cut one’s roast beef or slice an uncut loaf? How do you carve up a rack of lamb or slice meatloaf into the wafer thin slices I serve guests? And how would you dock puppies’ tails or threaten to cut the kids’ fingers off? OK – the last one was a joke, but to me the electric knife is invaluable. All that sharpening of normal knives is a dangerous game. How do you tell it’s sharp – you run your finger along the blade of course with the usual gory consequences. Much better to have a knife which never seems to go blunt (I’ve had mine about 20 years and it’s seems as sharp as ever) and which cuts through meat like a hot knife cuts through butter.


15 October 2009

iPhone Review

If you read my blog posting of 30th September, you’ll know that after a couple of years of deliberating, I went and bought an iPhone. Think that was a lengthy decision making process ? It took me and J 26 years to decide to get married so thinking about it in retrospect, maybe splashing my cash on a phone was a bit impetuous – whatever – after playing with my new toy for a couple of weeks, I thought I’d tell you all about it – good and bad.

First of all, the service from my mobile phone company, SFR, (French version of Vodaphone) was brilliant. As soon as I ordered it I started getting e-mails updating me on progress all the way to the point where it had been shipped. They said it would take a couple of days to get to me but it arrived that very day – how exciting!

Of course, Apple’s packaging is quite well done which is more than can be said for its documentation. They probably think that using the iPhone is so intuitive that they don’t need to tell you where the SIM card fits but after reading the documentation several times, and being unable to do ANYTHING without the SIM card fitted, I had to resort to searching on the WEB for an article which explained how to fit it. For what an awful lot of technology commentators call the best device of any sort on the market, to have to resort to the end of a paper clip to help install the SIM card is unbelievable. Anyway, once fitted I was off and running. I can’t quite remember how I got my e-mail system linked in but I did and managed to attach all the requisite photos so that when someone rings you, their picture appears – cute or what? The problem was the ‘synching’ of the contacts between the iPhone and my PC – seems like quite a few of my contacts on my PC disappeared which might have been my fault but I reckon I’ve got them re-installed.

Once I had the basics working, Weather, Stock Market, Blog Sites, etc it was time to start playing with it. It has a GPS device installed so no matter where you are on the planet, if you’re lost, all you do is hit the App and it tells you exactly where you are. It’s brilliant. A 79 cent application (App for iPhoners) turns the iPhone into an Altimeter and Speedometer. Another 79 cents gets you a guitar App, which is amazing. Kitty was really peed off – she’d just bought the real thing! Google Earth can be downloaded as can Skype and we're all waiting for the video calling capability which will allow Skype users not only free calls but free videoconferencing as well. A French Translator App is also free so I won’t go into my local anymore and ask for a wood (bois) when I mean a drink (boisson). I can check the stock market and the newspapers without getting out of bed and having to switch my PC on. This thing has just made me even lazier!

I know when J got her iTouch last year she said it had changed her life (what about the wedding????) but now I know what she means. The iPhone is brilliant. Go on – treat yourselves – go out and buy one.

14 October 2009

Have You Poked Someone Recently?

I’m not being rude – I’m referring to Facebook where one of the things you can do to alert someone to the fact that you’re ‘interested’ in them or that the last contact between you was quite a while ago, is to ‘Poke’ them.

I’ve been quite a ‘poker’ in my time but my wife thinks it’s all a bit, what’s the word, mmm, predatory. If I poke my mates she thinks I’m becoming bisexual (at best) and if I poke her pals she threatens divorce although her pals seem to think it’s OK – I can’t win! I think the problem is that I haven’t poked her for a while so maybe she’s jealous?

I’d actually stopped poking people due to the hassle I was getting at home and then coincidentally I read that a woman had been arrested for poking someone on Facebook. It appears she’d had a restraining order placed against her forbidding her from contacting this other woman but it seems like the courts took a dim view of her ‘poking’ this other female on Facebook and hence her arrest. Or maybe it was just one of those conservative Southern States where women poking each other is not seen by the wider society as a legitimate activity!

Anyway, the article filled me with dread and had me wondering if any my previous pokings would come back to haunt me. But the offender is in the USA and of course, over there, the law is a bit different so maybe I’m ok to poke around a bit more without the Gendarmerie arriving at the door?

13 October 2009

The Fawlty Pergola

Nope – not something I’ve built otherwise it’d be different spelling, wouldn’t it? It’s actually a bar/brasserie Guy and I go to which, in a nation of bad service, really takes the biscuit. In fact, if they gave out a ‘really bad service’ medal in France, they’d have to stop the competition because there’d be none – the Pergola would win by a country mile – every year! I’m sure they are styling themselves on the famous Fawlty Towers, a clip of which is URL’d below.

When we stopped at the Pergola a week or so, Guy asked why, when I’d said we’d never go back again, we were heading through its tatty entrance once more. I answered that I just wanted to see if it really was that bad. It was – and more!

The sun was very hot that Wednesday so we headed for two tables right at the far end of the pergola section where you get some shade under the rickety structure, but no sooner had we sat down than the waitress came up and said, without a hint of empathy, or anything else which a customer might mistake as common courtesy, that the tables were reserved. The words that went through my mind were along the lines of, ‘well what’s wrong with putting a ‘reserved’ sign on the tables then or is that too much like thinking outside the box’. But I didn’t – my French isn’t good enough so we shuffled off into a table right in the sun.

Now the Pergola, because of its location and probably its prices, attracts the builders, the council gardeners and the various other tradesmen in the area so it’s not really a place to take your mum for a nice lunch, but when you get them, their double (foot long) frankfurters in a baguette are just to die for and so we sat there waiting for Miss Congeniality to take our order. And we sat and sat and sat. Now usually at this stage, I storm off making a bit of a scene but this time, Guy and I had plenty of time so in a bit of research for this blog posting, I remained seated and just continued to look at my watch. I reckon it was about 15 minutes before Miss C decided we deserved to be recognized as customers. Maybe she decided to come over after she’d seen me crawling along the floor and drinking noisily out of the water bowl of the dog at the next table to try and impart a message that I was thirsty and might like a drink!

And so she stood there. A face that could have stopped in its tracks, one of the 20 ton gravel lorries which come down the hill opposite the Pergola. It’s not as if she’s an old battleaxe, she’s actually quite pretty but if a smile had ever crossed her face then they should have declared a national holiday because in all the times we’ve been going there, in this masochistic ritual of ours, I’ve never ever seen her so much as attempt to smile.

The paper place mats were thrown down and the cutlery was dumped on the table. This was promising. And then she went off again, returning with water glasses. And then, real progress, she asked us what we’d like to order.

I said, ‘two frankfurters, a plate of frites, a coca-cola and a small carafe of wine.’ And then she looked at Guy and said, ‘and what’ll you have?’ I had to explain to her that that was our joint order. Off she went as if we’d insulted her intelligence and again we waited and waited and waited. No wine – no coca-cola. Eventually after about 10 minutes, she appeared with the drinks, dumped them on the table and disappeared before I could point out that I didn’t have a wine glass. No matter, I’d drink it out of the bright green water glass and make a show of what I was doing to see if she’d notice. Not a bit of it – it never even registered.

Guy had finished his coke and I’d nearly finished my wine before the frankfurters arrived. No frites though – what a surprise! In the 6 or so times we’ve been there, we’ve always ordered a plate of frites (between us) and …… we’ve never received them – never. It’s become something of a joke now so we told the other waiter, not expecting anything to happen and of course, it didn’t! So we munched our way through the chien-chaud (hot dogs) and had just finished the last bite when, yup – the frites arrived. I made a play of giving him my empty hot-dog plate as a sort of gesture of frustration but it didn’t even register. Maybe I’m too subtle for the French?

We paid the bill and left. No tip of course. Maybe that’s the problem – it’s self perpetuating. They give us bad service – we don’t tip. The next time they remember we didn’t leave a tip so we get bad service. Should I break this cycle of mutual intransigence and leave a tip? No chance!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8FypR17bDbw

12 October 2009

Girl Friday Went Home On Friday

Yup – after four days, Vanessa has returned to the UK. We spent a lot of time recounting ‘the old days’ in BT and all the people we used to work with. We actually called a couple up on Skype and they were so surprised we’d called them that they could hardly utter a word! After several years, disappointing or what?

We went to Tourrettes but had such a long lunch that we couldn’t actually visit the medieval part of the village. We ventured into Vence and spent some time in the cathedral which is built on Roman ruins dating back to 239AD and then had dinner one night in the square overlooking the ancient church. Unfortunately, the food wasn’t quite as good as the view but it was still nice to chat. On Friday we hit ‘old Nice’ where we managed (after an hour or so) to find the famous Socca Shop. Socca is a north African dish made from chick-pea flour and water and when cooked in a wood oven is absolutely delicious. Afterwards I insisted we do something touristy so we got on a tram and just sat there as the rather seedy parts of Nice went past at an incredibly slow pace – we’d actually gone in the wrong direction - but I’ll know next time! We also motored down to Antibes, the largest yacht harbor in the Med, but as most of the mega-yachts had left for the winter season in the Caribbean, we had to hunt for the really big ones – but we weren’t disappointed. There were a few moored at the far end of the harbor but one stood out by a country mile – Anastasia.

The fact that it was dark blue and white immediately attracted me but it was the vast swathes of polished wood and it’s sci-fi look which convinced me that that was the one I would have if I won the lottery, until I looked up the website - $200 million it cost! That’s twice the cost of the most expensive house in London, and I suspect, New York, and it’s only a bit of fibreglass and shiny chrome!

Now I know a few mega-yacht captains down here and they tell me that it generally costs around 10% of the purchase price to run one of these things for a year so this piece of flotilla extravagance would cost about $20m a year just to sit in the water – but, by God, it looked magnificent. Look at the spec on the URL below (under ‘Toys’), it has 2 x 32 foot speedboats (what’s wrong with one?), another 2 x 22ft speedboats (tenders they’re called – I suppose having 4 x speedboats would be a bit too much?), 4 jet skis and a myriad of other ‘toys’ for the rich and famous who charter her. There are no prices quoted – at least you’re not allowed to access the ‘charter information’ page without some sort of password but I reckon you’d get little change out of $500,000 a week and that wouldn’t cover fuel! Just like a hire car I suppose?

So – Vanessa and I had a good week. We drank a few bottles and covered the good old times ad nauseum. Vanessa also brought me up-to-date on her new career (probation officer) and we jointly agreed that it was a good job I wasn’t one of her ‘clients’, or offenders as she’s been trained to call them, otherwise I’d be banged-up…… for a long time for misdemeanours in the past.

C’est la vie as the funny locals out here say.

http://www.yachtanastasia.com/