Life’s A Grind

It’s been a pretty quiet week at Le Brin apart from Tuesday when I was out and about in Grasse trying to get the State to recognize that I exist and that I need a French driving licence (I don’t really but it’d be nice to have one if I’m ever stopped in the UK) and that I also need to get my latest scooter registered.

Of course there is frantic activity each morning. I am up every day at 6.30am to cook my darling children’s breakfast (pancakes, spam fritters, cheese on toast have been some of the highlights this week) and run the poor little souls down to the bus stop, whilst J just turns her electric blanket up a couple of notches and gives me her order for breakfast. Such is life as a married slave!

Wednesday and Thursday were so wet that there wasn’t much we could do. I even offered to take J for lunch on Thursday to relieve the cabin fever but amazingly she refused and instead started cooking a meat suet pudding. An hour later she was begging me to take her and the kids out for pizza as she’d discovered it takes around 2 hours to steam!

But the highlight of the week, and this is pretty nerdy I admit, was when I ventured into the local DIY shop to get a latch for the guest bathroom door. Unfortunately, a friend had got locked in last week and she’d been shouting for a while before anyone had heard her cries for help. All pretty embarrassing, so I’d resolved to get a new latch this week. Having picked it off the shelf, I went to the check-out with gnashed teeth as I knew it was going to cost £10 whilst I could have ordered one in the UK for less than £1 !!! A complete rip off!

But, as I headed for the check-out I stumbled upon a range of power tools which caught my attention because right there in the middle of the display was a chainsaw chain sharpener.

Now I’ve been looking for one of these for years. I’ve tried special rounded files to hand sharpen the teeth. I’ve even tried a Heath-Robinson contraption which looks like something you’d use to study the stars but once I’d worked out that neither of these devices worked, I’d started taking my blunt chains down to a local gardening shop where he’d sharpen each one for €6. The problem was that despite me telling him when I’d return for my chains, he’d never do them in time and I’d be left wandering around his shop whilst he hunted for and then sharpened my chains. The usual French service!

Anyway, I couldn’t wait to get my new toy home and within 20 minutes I was grinding my chains to razor sharpness. By the time I’d finished all four chains, I’d actually paid for the grinder – all €24 of it. And I won’t have to spend an hour every couple of months wandering around the garden shop looking for my chains that he’s lost!

The problem is that whenever I mention my chainsaw, J goes a whiter shade of pale, thinking back to the story a couple of years ago where an English guy who was pruning his trees, fell off of his ladder (which his wife was holding) and unfortunately cut her head off in the process.

http://www.poe-news.com/stories.php?poeurlid=47847&rejected=T

The sharper the blade, the neater the cut!!!!

Sailing Into Troubled Waters

So what is it about our sailors which keeps getting them into trouble and the UK into all sorts of diplomatic difficulties?

No matter how enthusiastic I was about filling the mainsail with a good wind, I would make sure I stayed well clear of the waters anywhere near Somalia but the Chandlers (appropriate name for a sailing couple don’t ya think?) breezed down the Indian Ocean and of course the inevitable happened. They were captured and a ransom demand was issued.

Now what made the pirates think a couple’s family could raise a £4m ransom I don’t know, (maybe they heard the Chandlers were from affluent Royal Tunbridge Wells?)and I don’t reckon old Gordon Brown will stump up the cash so it’ll probably end by some charity paying the cash or the Chandlers being released after some military exercise and then of course, they’ll come home as heroes and sell their story for a million!

Then we have the Navy sailors who were captured by the Iranians last week and who were fortunately released yesterday. OK, they were sailing a racing yacht but why sail so close to Iranian waters? And the excuse that their boat developed a fault is just hogwash – why sail so close in the first place? Why not leave a clear distance so that even in the case of a problem, there’s still plenty of water between them and these nutters presided over by that funny little creep – I’ma dinnerjacket or whatever his name is?

This latest navy blunder just mirrors the hostage taking 2 years ago when Iran captured 15 navy personnel who had just happened to ‘drift’ into Iranian waters. In that escapade the hostages were held for quite a few weeks and I seem to recall one of them breaking down because his captors had taken his iPod away from him. Eventually, they were all given cheap, badly-fitting suits, paraded in front of the world’s press and then released as the UK squirmed at the spectacle before them.

What is it about sailors and sailing which seems to turn their brains to seaweed? Is it the constant splashing by salt water or what? They’re all numpties. Rant over!

La Prefecture – Part 15 !

Yup, I was back there again yesterday. That place where they issue official documents such as driving licences and car registration papers. This time it was the Sous-Prefecture (sub office) in Grasse.

I’d gone to the Prefecture in Nice a couple of weeks ago and after waiting the usual couple of hours I found that, (a) I was in the wrong office in the wrong town for my driving licence and (b) the car registration place shut early because it was having computer problems!

I was dreading Grasse. The Nice Prefecture has already featured in the news because of near riots as people queue for hours and I was hoping Grasse would be a bit more civilized. Thankfully it was.

A smiling guy on reception gave me my two queue tickets (one for licence – one for vehicle registration) and helpfully suggested that I get down to the licence queue quick as there weren’t too many people downstairs. True – it only took an hour to be called and then the paper-trail inquisition started. I handed my wad of papers over and then the red pen came out, but only to mark official notes on my documents. It looked promising and then her face fell. In a mixture of French and English she said that she couldn’t process my new licence because I’d forgotten to put a stamp on my stamped-addressed envelope. What a wally!

I put on my saddest face (not hard – I mean it’s not hard to put on my saddest face) and asked if there was any way she could hold the papers until I got a stamp. She agreed and I disappeared off down the high street to find a post office. No luck but there was a bar and against all expectations they said they could sell me stamps but only a book of 12. No problem said I and handed over my €20 to pay for the €6.60 of stamps. ‘Sorry – no change’, said the hard-looking woman behind the counter. I felt like asking if business was that bad that a bar doesn’t have change but decided against it. I gave her another €1.70 and said to just give me €15 change – forget the pennies. Well, It took her about 5 minutes to work out what was going on but eventually she worked it out, gave me my stamps and off I went back to the Prefecture.

I was handed a bit of paper and informed that my new French driving licence would come through in the post, and all the while I was thinking, ‘if it does it’ll be a miracle’. The licence I’d handed in to exchange for a French one was ‘lost’ 20 years ago so it’ll be interesting to see what happens when they send it back to the DVLC!

Right - upstairs to see that the queue for registering the scooter would take another hour+ so I decided to run down to the DIY store to get a few bits for the house. Closed for Inventory Taking the notice said. I stood there and looked at it. Then I looked at the security guard who pointed to the sign. Then I looked at the sign again. I mean this was Tuesday – a trading day. The store is closed on Sundays – why don’t they do Inventory Taking then? But this is France I reasoned – there’s no logic to what happens in this country on a daily basis.

Back to the Prefecture – another hour waiting in line and finally all the paperwork was processed. I handed over my €30 and was about to query why it had cost precisely zero to re-register Guy’s scooter 3 months ago, when I thought better of it, smiled and left.

A triumph I thought as I left the building, two big admin jobs completed in one day. I was so chuffed I went to my favourite square in Grasse (pictured), sat at an outside table in the sun and had the most delicious burger which I reckon I was due after Sunday’s disappointment.

A Soggy Birthday – In More Ways Than One!

It was Tan, my neighbour’s birthday on Sunday. We had arranged to meet him down on the coast for a celebration lunch but a combination of a mutual friend unable to make it due to being stuck in London for a second day after missing two flights (!!!!) and monsoon weather, caused a rapid reappraisal of where we should go. Tan’s view, quite reasonable in my opinion, was that lunch on the coast is great if you can see the sea but with visibility no further than the end of the car bonnet, there was no point. Well said that man.

The region’s social secretary, aka J, went round to Tan’s and a new venue was booked – Café Douceur which roughly translated means the Café for Softies or something like that.

Now I like the Douceur, not because of the name but because it does the best burgers this side of Monaco and I was quite impressed that (a) J had thought of me when booking a new place to eat (sorry Tan) and (b) that she had managed to get a booking for 10 people with one hour’s notice. Clever girl!

The Douceur was quite busy when we arrived despite the rain which by now was causing some light flooding of the roads. Like many eating establishments down here, the business expands due to the fact that they can double their space in summer by having tables outside but then when winter comes and they have half the space, it can sometimes be a bit chaotic but the waitress did her best to settle us in and get drinks.

A selection of salads were ordered for us to share and then the majority of us ordered either the duck or the steaks – unfortunately, the burgers were off that day. The food seemed to go down well and wine carafes seemed to be arriving every couple of minutes and everything was going swimmingly until ……….

Angie, Tan’s wife, decided that Eiden, their new baby needed its soggy nappy changing. Now I don’t know if I’m being a bit ‘old fashioned’ but changing a baby’s nappy at the dining table in a busy restaurant isn’t my idea of proper decorum but I suppose without nappy-changing facilities in the small loos they have out here, there were few alternatives. I reckon the cloakroom could have done but hey, what do I know?

Not being a fan of nappy changing (I think it was just soggy thank God) I looked the other way and there was Charlotte, the wife of Tan’s friend breast feeding her baby at the other end of the table. Where to look?

Thankfully, after a few minutes all this baby stuff stopped and things got back to normal, that is until Eiden wouldn’t settle whereupon, Charlotte whipped out her boob again and suggested that Eiden might like a nibble or a drink or something.

I had another drink at that point and asked Tan if all this 'baby-boob' swapping was a precursor to formal wife swapping, whereupon J clipped me round the ear and dragged me out into the rain!

Happy Birthday Tan.

Every Little Helps

Yes – it’s Tesco’s slogan which I suppose means that saving pennies on all those boringly branded Tesco own-brand goods, actually helps. The old proverb of ‘look after the pennies and the pounds will after themselves’, is probably what they’re getting at.

But they don’t appear to practice what they preach. I mean who in Tesco’s purchasing department paid exactly £984,000 for six bicycles?

£984,000! What did they think they could sell them for? Having said that, I have witnessed the zeal with which some Tesco shoppers brandish their Club Cards and buy that little extra thing just to get an extra 20 points. There’s always a chance then that a Club Card happy shopper might have snapped them up, irrespective of the price.

The problem was that Tescos bought them from a right barrow boy who won’t give them their money back. And who is this barrow boy? Step forward Mike Ashley, owner of Sports Direct, a major sports company and the owner of Newcastle Football Club.

The thing is, I suppose like all major corporations buying something from another major corporation, forms and computer e-mails fly back and forth as they do, with purchase orders being sent and returned with acceptance of the Ts&Cs (terms and conditions). So it’s highly unlikely that a mistake was made in that area – I reckon some keyboard happy clerk, who is probably on the complaints section of Tesco’s worst store now simply keyed three zeros on the end by mistake. I seem to recall that some computer keyboards actually have 00, 000 and even 0000 as single keys to reduce keystokes and prevent errors. Not in this case!

Anyway, it’s all gone legal with Tesco claiming it should have paid £984 for the Muddy Fox Suspension Bikes and it is seeking restitution of the overpaid monies from one of Ashley’s companies, Universal, according to a legal action filed at the High Court.

Universal, an Essex-based company majority-owned by Sports Direct, has allegedly paid back £863,000 but Tesco claims it is holding on to more than £121,000 in outstanding funds. As well as the £121,412 it claims it is owed, Tesco has also sought legal costs and a further £1,783 – the sum the retailer claims it is owed in interest at a rate of 8pc a year.

8% interest a year – nobody gets that rate these days!

Back to the story. I don’t suppose Ashley has a leg to stand on. I mean, it’s quite obviously an error so what has he got to gain by not repaying the cash? Maybe he had cash-flow problems and needed the money short-term to tide him over at Newcastle? Whatever, it’ll all end in tears. Tesco will never buy another thing from Ashley’s companies and the poor clerk will never again be allowed near a computer keyboard although if he or she is on a checkout somewhere near you, you might get 984,000 Tesco Club Card points credited to your card rather than the 984 you were expecting! Of course you might also get a bill for £2,000 for a carton of milk!