You Know It’s Going to be a **** Day When ……

The kids complain about the toast at breakfast – ‘It’s too burnt Thomas. I’m not eating it – why can’t mummy make our breakfast?’

I’m relaxing in the lounge after a battle over the breakfast toast and then driving the kids down to the bus stop (at 7.20am) and I get a text from the bedroom asking ‘where’s my tea?’ A text from the bedroom !!!!

I go all the way down to the jungle to cut some logs and within 5 minutes the chain has come off the chainsaw. That’s it finished for the day.

Later, I set off on the scooter to go to the bottle bank and I get a puncture before I get to the end of the lane.

Never having taken a scooter wheel off before, I think the best idea is to load the scooter into the trailer and go to the garage (8 km away) to get the tyre blown up (to establish if it really is a puncture) and when I get there the air machine is not working. I swear, to nobody in particular and the guy at the garage thinks I’m an English pratt.

I get home planning to have a nice fried lunch cause that’s what guy’s need when they’re stressed and I find that J has made me egg and tomato sandwiches – egg and tomato sandwiches !!!!

I spend all afternoon trying to get a good fire going and when J returns after having her nails done she says, ‘crap fire’.

I eventually decide to take the scooter wheel off but the wheel nut is tight and when I try and loosen it with a sharp hit from a hammer I hit my hand – blood everywhere - dumbo!

I finally get the wheel off and travel another 10 km to Chateauneuf to the scooter shop only to find it’s closed for the day.

I settle down to do some work on the PC and it crashes and now there’s no sound.

I get my PC working and sell some bank shares only to find they rise even further after I’ve sold them.

I try even harder to get the fire going and when J passes again she says it once more, ‘crap fire’.

I’m sitting on the sofa reflecting on what a crap life I have and thanking the UK for clarifying the laws on assisted suicide when I feel something moving in my hair. I pick it out and it’s a live wasp – I HATE wasps.

I go into the kitchen to see how dinner is coming along and I spot two empty champagne bottles waiting to go to the bottle bank – she can’t have drunk that much whilst preparing dinner – surely?

It’s been a really **** day and it’s only 6.30pm! Still – there’s always tomorrow but that could be worse!

And it hasn’t started well – 3am and I’m up sneezing with hay fever – still there’s always tomorrow!

Cricket - Scotland Vs Afghanistan – Yes Really

Scotland Defeated by Afghanistan 25th Feb 2015

OK – most people laugh when the Scotland Cricket Team is mentioned. Scotland – Cricket, an oxymoron if ever there was one. But it’s true – every year they take part in the UK and International Twenty20 and One Day series but generally get well beaten despite having players with names such as Moneeb Iqbal, Majid Haq and Qasim Sheikh!

But it was me who fell about laughing the other day when I read about the Afghanistan cricket team qualifying for the World Twenty20 tournament. I don’t know why – it just seemed strange that this war-torn country played cricket and yet when you think of it, the fact that they border Pakistan, who are a great cricketing nation, obviously rubs off on them. Pity it doesn’t work for Scotland that way!

Recently, Afghanistan won five of their six matches at the World Twenty20 qualifying tournament, beating Ireland twice and achieving an especially sweet and slightly ironic victory against the USA. They will now play in the World Twenty20 proper, which starts at the end of April.

Behind these recent results however are 10 years of hard work, not just by the Afghan cricketers but also from a variety of volunteers from across the cricketing world. Afghanistan became an associate member of the ICC in 2001, just four months before the first bombs fell on Kabul. Two documentaries about the rise and rise of Afghan cricket are already in production but if a film is ever made there will be some curious casting decisions to be made along the way.

Who, for example, will play Mike Gatting? It was Gatting who captained the MCC in a pioneering exhibition match against Afghanistan in Mumbai back in 2006. The MCC lost by 179 runs, and Gatting was caught behind without scoring.

Monty Panesar, a current England international player had his helmet broken by the first ball he received from an Afghan fast bowler. So they’re not woosies then?

I can’t wait for April – Scotland versus Afghanistan – what a match in prospect.

Song Writing Factories – Did You Know About Them?

There’s a tune on TV at the moment which I just love. It’s the Ford Focus advert music and I decided it would make a great ringtone for my iPhone. (See YouTube clip below). But what I job I had in finding the music on the internet. Eventually, after lots of Google searching I found out that the music is by a ‘group’ called ‘The Cool Hearts’ and the music track is called ‘Halfway Home’. Further research indicated that the writer (of the music) was a guy called Morgan Van Dam. Wrong! Morgan Van Dam is a music production company based in Soho, London and they specialize in writing music for adverts such as the recent one for Ford. They’ve also written the music ads for McDonalds, Shell, Citroen and many other leading brand adverts and it was after a bit of digging on this that I discovered the world of ‘music factories’.

I had always assumed that music was generally written by a single person who maybe used an arranger to fine-tune the melody. I had also known that many songs were collaborations between more than one person – e.g. Elton John and Bernie Taupin, Lennon and MCartney etc. What I hadn’t realized is that these ‘music factories’ exist to churn out tunes and songs by the dozen on a weekly basis. I suspect if you managed to get a glimpse inside the Soho factory, you’d find guys and girls sitting in booths just staring into space dreaming up great, catchy tunes. Of course, maybe they all collaborate and just sit in a big room together, smoking dope and dreaming up these tunes which get stuck in our minds and which we can’t forget – the sign of a great tune or advert.

I then came across a company called Xenomania – another music factory but this time churning out hit songs for the likes of Cher, Kylie Minogue, The Pet Shop Boys and the Sugarbabes to mention just a few. Based in Kent, Xenomania employ songwriters and musicians to produce the music we all know and love, and all along we probably thought that Kylie had maybe written her songs herself. Girls Aloud are probably their biggest success at the moment having written many of their hits however it seems that many artists are not quite happy enough with Xenomania's efforts and take the finished tune or song and then change it out of all recognition. This is what Brian Higgins of the company says about these ‘failed collaborations’: “the big artists were fine until they got into the mix room and then they basically pulled the record to pieces. So I took my name and writing credits off the record. Because they're assholes they only sold about 20,000 copies and they've never been seen since.”

Note the reference to ‘writing credits’. These guys must make an absolute fortune given that the songwriter generally gets up to 50% of the royalties every time one of their songs is played, so the next time you hear Girls Aloud’s ‘Sound of the Underground’ or ‘Something Kinda Oooh’ being played on the radio or MTV, somebody down in deepest Kent is raking in another few bob.

And as for getting the tune onto my iPhone - what a pain in the ass. 'Halfway Home is only released on iTunes in Germany and in any case the song is different from the advert music, so I had to find some software to 'capture' the music from the internet, then I had to find some more software to 'edit' it down to 30 seconds (iPhone doesn't like ringtones more than 30 seconds long apparently!) and then I did it - problem is I haven't had a call on my iPhone since I put the ringtone on it! Typical!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ha4oYH-9WDI

Death at Dinner

We had Irish Dave chez nous for dinner last Monday night before he headed back to Belfast after a two week stay down here in the snow and rain – poor thing! As we chatted in the kitchen, (I was doing the cooking – a truly international dinner of meatloaf followed by crèpes suzettes!!) mention was made of his first visit to the Côte D’Azur a couple of years ago when he and his friend, Michael, were invited to a lady’s house for dinner. They’d met at church that morning and in true Christian spirit she (let’s call her Maxine) had invited them to dinner to relieve them of the burden of cooking at the camp site where they were staying.

Dave and Michael duly turned up at the appointed hour with the appropriate flowers and bottle of wine and after an aperitif sat down for dinner. Sometime during the meal when Maxine was preparing the next course in the kitchen, Michael got up from the table and went off to the toilet. Not having been told where to go he opened the first door he came to, switched on the lights and entered the room. He was back out in a flash as white as a sheet.

‘Dave’, he said, ‘there’s a dead man in that room’. Dave knew Michael didn’t drink alcohol so assumed that he’d maybe mistaken something for a body or was maybe even joking. Michael persisted with his claim of a body in the bedroom so Dave opened the door and switched on the light and there he was – an elderly man laid out on the bed as dead as a dodo.

Dave and Michael sat back down at the dinner table and waited for Maxine to return from the kitchen. They looked at each other waiting for the other to raise the subject of ‘the dead man in the bedroom’. Eventually Irish Dave could stand it no longer and as diplomatically as he could, said he’d gone into the bedroom by mistake and that he thought there was a dead man on the bed. ‘Oh that’s my dad’, said Maxine. ‘He died yesterday and I’m waiting for the undertakers to come tomorrow to pick him up’, and with that carried on serving dessert as if nothing had happened and it was all quite normal. Quite a dinner story – eh? And Dave who is a good Christian boy says it's all true.

Then there was Lisa, an expensively ‘sculpted’ blonde who was a friend of J and mine. We’d had lunch and dinner a few times with Lisa’s parents and it was obvious that Lisa’s dad did not have long to go, poor thing. A few months later he was taken into hospital in Nice and sadly, died. Lisa who did not have much money at the time attended the hospital to make the appropriate arrangements and was horrified to learn that it was going to cost a couple of hundred euros to have her dad’s body transported to the undertakers. ‘Do you think he’d fit into the back of my Ford Escort’, Lisa asked the mortuary nurse. ‘What’, was the reply. ‘I don’t have much money and if I could get some help to put him in the back of my car I could take him to the undertakers myself’, Lisa said quite seriously.

Now – that much is true. What happened after that we never found out because Lisa met a handsome, French aristocrat and we never saw her again!

PS – when trying to find an appropriate picture to accompany my posting, I came across the following site – have a look at some of the designs. J would probably like hers in the shape of a Prada handbag!

http://www.creativecoffins.com/?gclid=CO29rojG-Z8CFUsA4wodhmsiWA

All Socialized Out

Well – we did get to le Moulin de Mougin on Friday and very pleasant it was too. It’s great to receive really good service and from the minute I dropped the car off with the bell-hop (is that what you call them?) until the moment he escorted us back to an already started and heated car holding an umbrella to shelter us from the rain, it was terrific. Even the sommelier took the trouble to explain what the various wines were and seemed really chuffed when J refused the New Zealand white and stated her preference for a Côte de Gascogne aged in Armagnac barrels. The food was amazing and J positively shuddered with pleasure when her starter arrived – see picture (if only I looked like a king prawn !!!). From the moment they served us complimentary glasses of champagne when we arrived until my credit card melted in the machine when I paid the bill, we had a terrific time. I would recommend it. J has already said we should do it at least weekly !!!!

Saturday was pretty much normal in the morning but as we had some people coming for dinner, I was left to clean the house in the afternoon (in between watching the footie on the telly) whilst J shopped for the food. I thought she was a bit longer than normal but didn’t give it a second thought until Linda arrived in the evening and said that she and J had had quite an afternoon drinking champers in the village bar!! What a lush!

Dinner was very pleasant and finished at 2am and it was only when I woke at 8.30am on Sunday did my head try and tell me just how much I’d drunk the previous evening. I wandered (or should it be staggered?) into the kitchen and J, who had risen early to go to church (she didn’t make it) asked me if I would like a nice breakfast. I envisaged a Full English with black pudding, bacon, fried bread, mushrooms, fried and scrambled eggs, hash browns, tomatoes, sausages and fried potatoes. What did I get? A reheated pain au chocolat from the microwave!

In order to clear my head I got my chainsaw out and headed off into the ‘jungle’ to cut some logs. I reappeared back chez moi (??) at just after noon. My head was still a bit ropey and the only cure by that time is a ‘hair of the dog’, so I poured a glass of wine, lit a cigarette and wandered over to the other side of the house to chat to Tan who was walking around his terrace.

No sooner had Tan and I started to chat than J appeared on the balcony, dressed only in a towel and told me we were off to lunch, which was a bit of a surprise, but the biggest surprise was when we reached the restaurant and I saw Tan and Angie and David and Sarah sitting there. It was my birthday treat – although I’m sure I paid the bill! How does that work?

Thereafter it was back to Le Brin, more champers, more cigs, the Spurs game on the telly and then bed at a ridiculously early hour. Hence why I’m now wide awake at 3am and posting this!