The Highest Wastepaper Bin in Europe

Back in 1987, I remember the UK Director in IBM addressing our sales branch. He had been told by the US to cut costs, and why I don’t know, but what he said that day, or rather one single phrase he said that day, has strangely stuck with me.

He held up a waste paper bin, showed its base which was about 1ft square and said, ‘this bin costs me £70 a year just to sit here on the floor’. The office (it was just off Oxford Street in London) was ridiculously expensive even by London standards costing, yes - £70 a square foot in rent each year. He then said, looking me in the eye, ‘so if this bin costs me £70 a year, how much do you think your rather large office costs Tom?’

Well, I gulped and decided from that moment on that I would help IBM reduce their costs – from now on, I’d order a slightly cheaper bottle of wine at lunchtimes!

I jest. The real story is that of London office rental costs. It’s strange to think I was reading a story in a paper this week that London office rents are reaching the heady figure of ……. £70 a square foot again.

It’s a peculiar old business. In order to meet the demand, or more accurately, the likely demand of the London office market, developments have to be started and more importantly funded, maybe ten years in advance. And then when you’ve finished your beautiful new skyscraper with 1,000,000 square feet for rent, there’s a recession, which nobody saw coming, and your building lies there empty, gathering dust whilst your company goes broke.

It was the London Shard project which made me think of this again this week. It’s been years in the planning and now, its head should be poking above the high hoardings which surround the site just outside London Bridge station. It’ll be quite a few years before the building, which will be Europe’s tallest skyscraper, will be finished of course, but that doesn’t stop the London property market from playing their own version of financial snakes and ladders.

It appears that way back when the building was first mooted, TFL (Transport for London – the public body which runs London’s buses and tubes) decided that it just had to have a lot of space in what would be Europe’s finest office building and signed a lease to that effect at a healthy £38 per sq ft per year.

The Arabs (their nationality – not a derogatory term) who are building The Shard, this week decided that they’d take a chance and offered TFL tens of millions to tear up their contract for space in the building. TFL who are facing huge bills following the collapse of some of their bigger projects, nearly bit the Arabs’ hands off, which is a bit ironic given the propensity for hacking off limbs in the Middle East, but I digress. The Arabs reckon that the London office market can now sustain that good old figure of £70 a sq ft again and so they’ve bribed TFL to ‘vacate the premises ‘ whilst they tout around for new tenants. 


So - there you go. Once more, a wastepaper bin in London will cost the princely sum of £70 a year just to sit on the floor in a London office. This time though, it'll be the highest wastepaper bin in Europe!


Oh - and Nigel's been misbehaving again in Europe. Read about his latest exploits at the following URL:
  http://monaconigel.blogspot.com/
    

Rain, Rain and More Rain

We play silly little games in our house. The first one starts around 6.30am when the kids’ shower goes on. I keep absolutely still and my eyes shut, for if I move or even flicker my eyelids my missus will know, I’ll be nudged and I’ll have to get up and drive the kids down to the school bus stop. On the other hand, if I’m successful at playing ‘possum’ then J will get up and do the school run.

But, if I’ve been unlucky enough to have done the school run and I crawl back into bed, there’s another nudge and the usual mumbling of ‘cup of tea – cup of tea.’ Even if I play ‘dead’ a second time, J will know that I don’t go back to sleep that quickly and will continue to demand a cup of tea until I get up again.

Usually, my view is that it’s better for me to get up and do these things as J is not the sharpest tool in the toolbox in the mornings. Take Wednesday – I did the school run but managed to get back into bed before she could utter the demand for a ‘cup of tea – cup of tea.’ Sometime later, I was astonished to find a cup of tea at my bedside. I reached out and blindly tried to find the handle of the cup. Nope – turn the cup around a bit more. Handle ? Nope. I opened my eyes and yes it was a tea cup, the familiar but a bit poncy Port Merion design. I turned the cup around 360 degrees – handle ? Nope. She’d only gone and served my tea in the sugar bowl which is exactly the same size as a cup but without a handle!

But then I switched on the news. We’d had heavy, actually, very heavy rain for the last 36 hours – probably about 4 inches according to the levels in the pools but the news was saying that the next Department to the west, The Var (see map), had had something like 14 inches of rain in 24 hours. There had been heavy flooding and 11 people had died, swept away by flash floods.

The weather this year has been appalling. OK, we had a mildish winter with only 2 days of hard frost and only 1 day of snow – but what snow – about 8 inches in a few hours. But the summer so far has been cool and wet. Strangely, it was on Monday that I decided that since we’d had no rain for over a week I’d better water the plants which is a sure sign that it will rain within the next 24 hours, forecast or no forecast of rain.

And sure enough it did rain. And it rained and rained, morning, noon and night. But luckily as we’re on the side of a mountain we don’t see too many signs of the water. It runs down the roads and paths, eventually working its way down into the River Loup a couple of miles away.

The VAR however is a different matter. Quite flat near the coast, it has extremes of weather all year round. Very windy in the winter and extremely hot in the summer, it obviously also gets lots of rain all year round, as yesterday’s floods testify.

I sometimes jokingly say to the kids that we’re lucky we’re over 350 metres higher than the coast and that years from now we might not need a pool as the coastline will be at the bottom of the garden, all due to global warming. They laugh, but it might not be so far fetched – the weather here has definitely changed quite significantly in the 10 years I’ve been here with extremes of hot and cold and rain. Unfortunately for those in the Var, we had one of those extremes yesterday.

PS - and as I post this blog on Thursday morning, torrential rain is falling again.

Customer Service – French Style (Version 127)

Fresh from my inability (almost) to spend a lot of money in our local garden centre last Friday, I had another run in with French Customer Service (oxymoron ???) on Monday. I had been meaning to make the call to my mortgage bank for some weeks but had not really got around to it and I wasn’t in a particularly good mood so they’d better beware.

I’d discovered my pristine white, expensive Quicksilver jeans were not so pristine, or so white. They were covered in grass stains and before you get any ideas, it was all quite innocent despite the fact that it was my neighbour’s wife who was involved and not my own!

Apparently, and I have had to solicit independent advice on this, when I was being ‘escorted’ back to my house following yet another of Tan’s 12-hour BBQs (actually Aydin’s 1^st birthday party), I decided to fall into the lavender bushes which line the stairs. It seems that I was being ‘escorted’ or helped as Angie put it, by both Angie and one of the friends of her nephew, when I was suddenly grabbed round the ankles by this wicked lavender and ended up rolling around getting all green but smelling wonderful. It seems that on my way down, the lavender also grabbed Angie but she escaped the green stains by landing on top of me!

Now, I have to say, I remember nothing of this but the evidence of some ‘rolling around’ was there for all to see on my jeans. A can of stain remover later I’m still trying to get the marks out so it was with some degree of anticipation that I phoned my bank. After all, every call out here to a ‘service’ department is a hoot in a sort of masochistic way.

Amazingly, I hadn’t actually spoken to my mortgage bank for some 6 or 7 years. They used to be Abbey National France but had sold out to Bank Paribas. I feared the worst, after all, the Abbey had been staffed by English people and understood us in more ways than one.

But, I was a bit surprised when a girl called Tiffany answered my call and spoke perfect English.

‘Hi – I’d like to confirm the outstanding amount of my mortgage please.’

After several ‘security related’ questions …..

Tiffany – ‘what do you mean ‘confirm?’

‘Well I think I know how much it is but I’d like you to confirm it.’

Tiffany – ‘you can’t possibly know how much it is – it’s a very complex equation.’

‘Well yes I know it’s complex but I’m quite numerate so I think I know how much it is.’

Tiffany – ‘you can’t know – we calculate the interest daily.’

‘Listen Tiffany – I’ve designed spreadsheets which would make your eyes water so just give me the number.’

Tiffany – ‘what date would you like me to calculate the outstanding balance?’

‘August’

Tiffany – ‘well the outstanding balance on the 5^th September would be xxxxxx.’

‘Nope – I said August.’

Tiffany – ‘the outstanding balance on the 24^th August would be xxxxxxx.’

‘Would you be surprised to know that I’m only €50 out Tiffany?’

Tiffany – ‘I told you you couldn’t do it.’

End of call!

By the way, the picture is of Aydin’s birthday cake. The left ear is missing because Aydin’s sister, Violet, said that I had picked a toe off of her birthday cake last year and she was doing a ‘Thomas’ !!

Life – But Not As We Know It

Dr Craig Venter, a multi-millionaire pioneer in genetics, and his team have managed to make a completely new "synthetic" life form from a mix of chemicals. They manufactured a new chromosome from artificial DNA in a test tube, then transferred it into an empty cell and watched it multiply – the very definition of something being alive. Artificial life had been created. See picture above.

Now Dr Venter believes the organism, nicknamed Synthia (wait for it), will pave the way for more complex creatures that can transform environmental waste into clean fuel, vaccinate against disease and soak up pollution.

But his development has also triggered debate over the ethics of "playing god" and the dangers the new technology could pose in terms of biological hazards and warfare.

"We are entering an era limited only by our imagination," he said announcing the research published in the journal Science.

Scary or what?

But let’s think positively about this astonishing development. First of all, I have an affinity with Synthia – after all it’s got the same name as J’s sister – my sister-in-law. Synthia - a single cell organism not capable of anything rational – ha ha!

So if we’re only a few years away from ‘more complex creatures’ which will ‘help’ mankind – what could they do? Dr Venter has already mentioned a few things it/they could do above.

The interesting one is cleaning up pollution. BP could certainly do with a few trillion organisms ‘eating’ all the oil leaking into the Gulf of Mexico but what does one do with a couple of trillion oil bloated organisms? What do you do with them when they’ve finished their job? Just let them swim away?

I suppose another interesting ‘application’ along the same lines would be organisms or Synthias which you would spray under your arms and other sweaty places and just let them ‘munch away’, keeping you smelling as fresh as when you stepped out of the shower. In theory an organism like this, let’s call it a Sweatganism, could be a roaring success in France where even your friendly bank teller or supermarket cashier seem not to know that anti-perspirants and deodorants exist. But would they use them? Maybe not – after all, it’s not particularly difficult buying a can or two of anti-perspirant and spraying it on each morning. But maybe it’s the daily application which is the problem. If you sprayed on a Sweatganism and it lasted for a month – bingo – a fragrant French society!

And if I could buy a few billion bramble-eating ‘brambleisms’ and I sprayed them on my jungle and hey-presto the ground was cleared – we’ll I’d pay quite a bit for some of them, just as long as they knew not to eat my Cala Lillies or my palm trees.

And what if you could buy Oilisms which you put in your car engine and you never needed to change your oil ever again?

Mouldisms which you spray in your fridge and eat all that green furry stuff which ruins your food?

What about Liceisms which the kids in French schools could spray on their hair so that they never get Poo (lice) again?

The list is endless and thanks to Dr Venter, all these things will probably happen one day.

Thanks Synthia – when are you out here?

How Difficult Can It Be to Spend $1000?

I use $1000 (rather than euros or pounds) because it seems more impressive but it didn’t impress the French!

Those of you who have been religiously following my blog will know that these last few weeks, I have been hemorrhaging cash. Bills galore, new washing machine, multiple lunches and dinners out, electrician’s bills and finally having to buy a new debroussailleuse – let’s call it a Stihl from now on cause I never get the debrous….. spelling correct. The Stihl is a bushcutter or industrial strimmer and a new one costs - yup - $1000 or €750.

You’ll also know that I stupidly left my previous debrous, sorry Stihl out in the rain and had to take it down to the repair shop. That was the start of the story.

Franck, as I came to know him later, looked at what on the face of it was a fairly new machine (it was actually about 6 years old but well maintained), took my telephone number and said he’d call when he’d had had a look at it. One week later with no call, I went back down to Gamm Vert (a garden centre which also does hay and stuff for horses etc and it also has a repair workshop) and asked Franck about my Stihl. He shook his head, said the engine was ‘kaput’ and it would cost about €300-€400 to fix it. He somewhat justified this fee by showing me a new engine block with a €195 price tag on it and said by the time he’d spent several hours on the machine, it would not be worth it – I should buy a new one. He invited me to follow him upstairs into the shop and showed me the new Stihl bushcutters.

‘What size is your land’, he asked. I got a bit confused and instead of saying ‘5,000 square metres’, I said, ‘500,000 square metres’. He was just about to take me to the tractor section when I realized my mistake and corrected myself. ‘You’ll need the FS 400 then’, he said and added that, ‘if you trade your old machine in we’ll give you €200 off the price of a new one.’

Always suspicious of French tradesmen, retailers, doctors, dentists and anybody really who speaks with a French accent, I said I’d think about it, took my old machine back, stuck it in the garage and pondered for a week, in which time the grass was starting to get so thick that it was difficult to see Shadow when he was in it looking for his mouldy, old buried bones.

In that week, I considered trying to fix my Stihl myself but realized that I’d still have to pay out over €200 in parts and would probably be left with bits left over and eventually came to the conclusion that I was a tight git and should just go and buy a new one. But what if my Stihl was really ok and they just wanted to sell me a new one? Anyway, after much soul-searching, I adopted the Julie Hellon-Evans-Cupples approach to replacing things. If the washing machine filter is clogged up with hairs, don’t bother cleaning it, just order a new machine !!!

So on Friday morning, plastic card in hand and old Stihl in the car, I went back to Gamm Vert. Despite a large queue at one of the cash desks, a lady was sitting staring at the roof at a closed ‘caisse’. ‘I’d like to buy a Debroussailleuse please’, I said.

You’ll need Franck for that.

And where’s Franck?

He’s up the back somewhere.

I go looking for Franck and come across a guy I had talked to during the week when I’d popped in to check prices etc. I’d asked him the following question: ‘If the Stihl FS400 without discount is €859, why is the larger more powerful Stihl FS450 only €799?’

Fifteen minutes later there were about 6 guys gathered around the Stihl stand all arguing furiously about my question. When they’d finished, I asked, ‘Well then?’ They shook their heads and dispersed.

Before the last ‘assistant’ vanished, I asked him where Franck was. ‘Downstairs in the workshop’, was the reply.

I got to the workshop and assumed the greasy, mechanic looking guy who had declared my old Stihl ‘kaput’, was Franck.

‘Are you Franck?’. He was bending over another customer’s Stihl trying to get it started.

‘Oui’ - without looking up.

I waited and waited. I talked to the guy whose machine was being ‘serviced’ by Franck and not once did Franck look up. Eventually I wandered off into the office and spotted a guy who had Patrick on his namebadge – ‘I want to buy a Stihl’.

What size is your land?

Never mind that, I know exactly what type of machine I need.

Oh – you’ll need to speak to Joe then.

Where’s Joe?

‘He’s in the storeroom’, and as we walk towards it, Joe comes out.

This person wishes to buy a Stihl FS400.

Joe – what size is your land?

Never mind that. I want an FS400. Here’s my old FS450 now can I please buy an FS400. Please.

OK. OK. I’ll go and get one. You do realize that the €659 price is after discount?

Yes – now can I have an FS400 please.

He gets the box and spends 20 minutes building the machine for me. Eventually he gets to the point where he has to test it, but stops.

‘What’s the matter’, I ask.

Joe - I’m not allowed to start the machines. Health and Safety you know.

So who does start the machines?

Ah - that’ll be Franck.

Ah Franck. Can you go and get him then.

Can’t – he’s on his coffee break now. He’ll be back in 20 minutes.

Aaaaaaagggghhhhhh!