Keep on Reading

Some of you reading my blog postings may have noticed the ‘counter’ which has recently been added to the page. This basically tells me how many ‘hits’ my site gets and other stats such as which countries the readers come from and less importantly, which browsers they use.

A few weeks ago, when I was struggling for subjects to write about and wasn’t feeling particularly inspired by anything (writer’s block?), I considered ‘shutting down’ the blog for a while but thought that before I did, I’d try and find just how many people actually read it, or at least visit the site.

I found a site-counter on the web but struggled for a couple of days trying to get the code onto my blog until Guy wandered past one night, saw me having problems and fixed it in about 30 seconds! Oh the confidence and abilities of youth!

That was about three weeks ago and since then you’ll see for yourselves that I’ve attracted some 700+ hits (not readers I hasten to add, just hits), approximately 200+ a week. But more fascinating than that is the country list of the visitors. Obviously the UK and France feature strongly, accounting for 75% of the hits, and then there’s a large percentage of readers (10%) who come into the ‘unknown’ category!

The US features, where I know I have at least a couple of readers in Allison and my mate Dave, as does Cyprus where J’s sister Cindy relieves the boredom of sitting in the sun each day by putting down her Pina Colada and visiting my blog. Thereafter the country list is quite interesting with readers from the following places having a look every now and again – Canada, Australia, Maylasia, Italy, Poland, Russia, Sweden, Hong Kong, Germany, Holland, the Lebanon and Estonia. And then there’s someone in St Vincent and the Grenadines who visits every now and again! I reckon Russia and Estonia are probably accounted for by my mate Ashley who works in Russia every couple of weeks and Tan, my neighbor who is working in Eastern Europe at the moment, but as to who the others are – I’ve no idea. I got a comment the other day which was in Chinese (I think it was Chinese) and maybe that was my Hong Kong reader – sorry whoever you are I couldn’t make out what you were saying. But I did click on your comment – and was taken to a Chinese sex site. Velly intelesting! For the geeks amongst you, as you would expect Internet Explorer is by far the most common browser used with 40% of the hits, followed by Safari (used by Apple devotees) on 32%. Firefox has a 24% following and there’s one ‘romantic’ still using Netscape Navigator – good on you whoever you are. So thank you one and all. After looking at my counter I was heartened and will continue writing rubbish every day with just the occasional foray into incisive ‘journalism’ when I feel particularly strongly about something – like the French! Keep reading – I love you all, I love you all!

Random Thoughts on the Terrorist Next Door

You might think this post is un-neighbourly – I DON’T CARE. You might think this post is racist – I DON’T CARE.

It all started a few weeks ago when my good friend and neighbor, Tan, went off on one of his working trips to some exotic part of the world. A week later he returned a different man.

Although he tried to blend back into Tourrettan society, he was conspicuous by his changed appearance (see picture) and strange new habits. Once a clean-shaven, bald-headed, loving father and husband, he now sports a foot long beard, wears a dirty tea-towel on his head, has traded his gleaming black Honda 4x4 for a camel and sits on the patio each night cleaning his AK47.

Being a kindly soul worried about the effect this strange new behaviour was having on his devoted family, I would wander over to his house and sit round the camp fire he’d built on the upper terrace and try and make him see sense. Unfortunately, each time I went over, his camel would spit at me. ‘Why’s it doing that’, I would ask. ‘Because you’re an infidel and a Rangers supporter’, Tan would reply and that would be that - conversation over.

I recommended that he keep a low profile but he did not help things when he approached the mayor’s office with a proposal to twin Tourrettes with Helmand Province. The dead sheep hanging from the upper balcony with their throats slit also did him no favours, with every dog in the neighbourhood heading for Tan’s house to eagerly lap up the rivers of blood which flowed towards the pool.

Poor Angie is also suffering as Tan has taken another five wives and is refusing to allow little Violet to be educated. He’s already talking about getting her married to Abdhul in Vence and she’s only 5! And poor Angie is no longer allowed to buy toilet paper as the Taliban only ever use their left hands for cleaning themselves after a ‘number two’, and as Tan was never too good on his right versus left, I refuse to shake his hand any more.

For the first two weeks after he came back from wherever he was ‘turned’, a strange noise was to be heard from his house which is a mere 20 metres away. Upon investigating the small explosions and constant hammering, I found Tan digging under the house to create a 4 bedroomed cave, complete with running water and Al Jazeera.

‘What are you doing’, I asked. ‘It’s to get away from the helicopter gunships which pass over looking for me every day’, Tan replied. ‘Tan don’t be paranoid, that’s just Gerri Halliwell and George Michael going to Monaco for their lunch’, I would say, but to no avail, the helicopters were the enemy and had to be dealt with. Unfortunately he drew more attention to himself when he went into Leclerc’s, parked his camel on the first floor and then tried to buy some SAM missiles. Failing to do so as Leclerc’s don’t even stock fireworks for Guy Fawkes night, he went off to the ladies section where he filled his trolley with all sorts of peroxide hair products and then completed his purchases with three bags of fertilizer. Ever since, a series of increasingly loud bangs can be heard crossing the divide between our houses as Tan obviously mixes his potions with varying levels of success.

I’ve also had to tell Tan that growing 2 acres of poppies is not allowed under the terms of the lease but he just sits there smoking a mixture of weeds and camel dung, chanting to himself and talking to his video camera.

So tensions are high but they will heighten considerably next month when Scotland take on Afghanistan in the international cricket competition. Will Tan Tan the Taliban Man fan the flames of international diplomacy by placing the Afghanistan flag on his roof and encouraging his camel to crap all over my drive or will he be back to normal saying, ‘another beer please Tom’?

Hey Jimmy and Sweaty Betty

J and I were watching an old TV show the other night when there was a scene shot at a greyhound racing track. ‘Didn’t you have something to do with greyhounds?’ my wife asked.

It brought it all flooding, or should I say, ‘racing’ back.

Back in about 1964, when I was 13 years old, my father fell in with a few men who owned some racing greyhounds. To my mother’s disappointment he started to disappear on Wednesday and Saturday nights to bet on them running at tracks throughout the central belt of Scotland.

We never knew if he won or lost because in working-class Glasgow homes, what a man did with his money was his concern but we did notice that on some nights when he returned, the smile was broad, whereas on other nights I would get a slap for still being up watching TV!

A couple of weeks later my father told me and my cousin Gordon to go to an old farm a couple of miles from our home and talk to a man called Frank. Within a couple of minutes Gordon and I had been hired as official greyhound trainers to ‘Hey Jimmy’ and ‘Sweaty Betty’.

We were soon to find out that training these dogs meant very long walks interspersed with getting them to chase fake rabbits pulled along a 100 metre ‘carpet’ by a pulley system, which amazingly managed to get the fake furry things to speed along at about 40 mph. It was all rather Heath Robinson but worked a treat.

I gradually learned that Jimmy and Betty were quite good especially when on a Monday (after a Saturday race) Gordon and I would get a bonus because the dogs had won.

The dogs got better and better, winning race after race but eventually for the consortium who owned the dogs it wasn’t worth betting on them because the odds were so short – i.e. you didn’t get much back if you had bet on them when they won. And there was not much to be gained by betting on the other dogs in the race either because invariably they didn’t win – ours did!

And so the plan was hatched. After a particularly easy win on the Saturday, Gordon and I were told to feed the dogs porridge for the next couple of weeks, which we did.

We later learned, after both dogs struggled to finish their next few races, that the porridge basically sat in the dogs’ stomachs and made them sluggish during races. Furthermore, it was not a drug and hence was undetectable.

The second part of the plan was then communicated to Gordon and myself. The dogs were to get their normal food for the following two weeks and had to receive extra training. Gordon and I didn’t need to be told that the consortium would then bet big at the next race on the basis that the dogs would be back to their best and the bets would return a fortune.

The problem was that when training the dogs on the Saturday morning prior to their ‘big’ race, they managed to slip their leads and ran off. Gordon and I chased them for miles and when we eventually caught them, the dogs and Gordon and myself were completely knackered. Of course, we never mentioned a thing and needless to say, Jimmy and Betty lost their respective races.

That night when my father came in from the greyhound track with a face like thunder - I got an extra heavy slap for still being awake!

Note: Monaco Nigel’s latest post can be found at the URL below but remember it has some adult themes.

http://monaconigel.blogspot.com/2010/03/sexy-serena.html

The Kenya Trip

On the 24^th March J will be off on a working trip to a Kenyan children’s centre (pictured) to support the Isaiah Trust, a charity set up by our good friend Nicky, and which aims to take orphans off the streets and rubbish tips in Kenya and provide them with accommodation, food and an education.

J has had a long held dream to ‘give something back’ to society and despite my view that she does enough by supporting a little girl in Africa and has two children of her own to bring up, there was a hankering to be on the ground and provide hands-on assistance to these poor children who are cast into the wilderness when their parents die.

Left to scavenge on rubbish tips for food, or thrown away items which can realize a few pence, and with no hope of an education because the state often insists on a uniform or shoes before they are allowed to attend schools, they are sentenced to a pitifully short life eking out an existence as best they can.

J, of course was desperate to go once the arrangements had been made but her enthusiasm was heightened greatly by the recent TV programme (Slumming It), where Kevin McLoed, previously known for his Grand Designs series, visited the Mumbai slums featured in the film, Slumdog Millionaire.

If you haven’t seen this two-part series I would urge you to try and find it on the web. One million people live in these slums and despite the fact that the children go off each day immaculate in their beautiful uniforms, many of them return home from school to spend hours raking in the rubbish tips for plastics, metals and other recyclable materials so that their family can exist.

The Kenyan children are not so fortunate and are excluded from school, don’t have even a basic form of housing and are regularly targeted by the authorities who want them off the streets but who do nothing to resolve the problem.

J will travel to Kenya with a willing heart, energy, empathy and love plus the usual bits and pieces adored by the children of the centre – old mobile phones, football shirts and for their studies, writing materials.

I’m sure the trip will change her life. Maybe she’ll take over this blog for a few days when she’s out there and we’ll get her thoughts as she experiences things first hand.

PS – our fundraising event on Friday 12^th March has been postponed. Nicky, the co-founder of the Isaiah Trust who was planning to accompany J on her trip has been hospitialized and is quite ill. Because of this, the trip itself was in danger until a few days ago and it was unfair to continue to tell those planning to attend that the fundraising was ‘on’, it was ‘off’ and then it was ‘on’ again and so we’ve postponed it until J returns.

Details of the Isaiah Trust at this URL: http://www.isaiahtrust.org/

Cooking the Raymond Blanc Way

There’s a new cooking series on the telly; Raymond Blanc’s Kitchen Secrets, and I’ve already worked out what his secret is – get yourself dozens of lackeys to do all the boring jobs and clean up after you.

His first programme, conveniently screened just before we had John and Linda over for dinner a couple of weeks ago, featured chocolate recipes, one of which I thought was just perfect to serve to our guests.

His chocolate panice (??) or tart seemed quite easy to make and off I went to our local supermarket with the list of ingredients:

70% chocolate

Cocoa powder

Cream (by the bucket load)

Full cream milk

Eggs

Corn Flakes

Hazelnut liqueur

Praline paste (couldn’t get any)

Ground Coffee

Gelatine

And on and on and on……..

After making just the base (I’ll spare you the details) I’d used just about every dish and utensil in the kitchen and then I realized what Blanc did. Every boring job he had to do, such as scrunching up the cornflakes, he got one of his sous chefs to do it, and every time a dish was dirtied, a sous chef appeared with a clean one. If the knife wasn’t sharp enough he got a lackey do sharpen it for him. On the other night’s show he had one of his chefs climbing trees (‘go to zee very top’) to get some apples for a dish he was making.

At one stage he was complaining bitterly about the design of a hand whisk which wouldn’t rest in a bowl without falling out (strangely I have also thought about this problem) and then when the commentator asked who had designed it – he looked at it and found out that it was Raymond Blanc! Cue hysterical laughter from the production team and total embarrassment from Monsieur Blanc! I’m sure I saw some of his lackeys chuckling in the background as well.

Anyway, back to the cooking of the chocolate tart.

One of the problems in France is that you just cannot get double (i.e. whisking) cream. They’ve all sorts of other types of cream but not the sort you can whisk into those fluffy ‘clouds’ and so I bought a variety of cartons and jars and tried a few before settling on the Créme Normandie. The chocolate filling seemed ok –ish until I chilled it in the fridge for a couple of days whereupon it turned into breeze-block. Nevertheless our guests were very kind and were quite complimentary about my culinary efforts but as it was so incredibly rich, they refused a second portion – well I think that’s why they refused!

So for the rest of the week, Kitty and I had chocolate tart each night and do you know, slightly warmed up in the microwave it was absolutely amazing. Clever Thomas! I might even make it again.