The Promenade Des Anglais

I was a bit stuck for a subject today but then I thought of my trip along the coast on Tuesday and remembered how magnificent the sea looked - flat calm with that deep azure blue colour which gives the coastline its name. But as I drove along the Bord de la Mer (the coastal road between Antibes and Nice), I noticed quite a few changes and it had only been a few months since I’d previously made that trip.

The councils are always making changes to the coast down here and they’re not always welcome by the locals and holidaymakers alike.

One of the recent changes was to a stretch of beach not far from Juan Les Pins where we used to go a few years ago. It was a private beach with a small restaurant and if you managed to get out of bed and get down there early enough, you could park, half on the road and half on the pavement right outside the entrance to the beach. But now the council have built a small wall along the pavement to prevent parking and so the alternative now is a 1-2 mile walk from the nearest car park! I can only assume that the beach/restaurant is now deserted unless bikers have moved in – they can still park.

One stretch of beach which will not change in any major way is Nice beach and the Promenade des Anglais. Years ago, Nice was in Italian ownership but in return for French help to unify the tribes which ran Italy, Nice was annexed to France and a long history of Anglo/Nicois relations began.

It was about 1830 when the English aristocracy discovered Nice with its fabulous weather, magnificent light for artists and the crystal clear sea for bathing. Escaping harsh English winters, more and more wealthy Brits travelled south and set about turning Nice from a rather ramshackle sea town into the jewel that it is today.

Then the beach dominated the seafront with the dwelling houses located quite a bit back from the coast but it didn’t take the English long to put their stamp on their adopted town. Replicating the promenades back in English seaside resorts, they used tramps, beggars and immigrants to put down the start of what is today 5 miles of uninterrupted boulevard. Christened the Promenade des Anglais (The English Promenade), it now provides a magnificent pleasure area.

There are cycle lanes used both by cyclists and in-line skaters, areas for fishing and even a dance section at the ‘old Nice’ end, where on Sundays, the elderly promenaders waltz and foxtrot away the afternoon. Needless to say, there are scores of restaurants annexed to the beach but given that it is 5 miles long, there are still huge stretches where commercialism has not yet taken hold.

But despite this rather glowing tribute, going to Nice beach in summer would be madness with clogged up roads, few if any parking spaces and when you do get there you sit on pebbles rather than sand. Food prices in the beach restaurants are astronomical and a ‘simple’ drink has you running to the cashpoint to pay the bill.

One small glass of wine, a coke, a beer and a mineral water - €26, £24 or $36 – take your pick. Daylight robbery!

Anyway – enjoy the picture. That’s about as close as I get. 

What’s Happening at Le Brin ?

Jaws - I could have been like this!

Well my guests have gone home now and quite a trip they had too - courtesy of Sleazyjet. They were an hour late when arriving at Nice but it was even worse returning to London. The plane sat on a sweltring tarmac for quite a while and when some muttering started amongst the passengers about the heat, the pilot must have remembered the near mutiny on a flight from Glasgow which sat on the tarmac for 6 hours and so he started the engines and put the air-con on. The plane eventually arrived at Gatwick 90 minutes late, well past my brother's check-in time for his next flight to Glasgow

Having watched the Sleazyjet documentaries on TV and taken on some tips, my brother stormed up to the check-in desk and was about to ‘let rip’ when he was quickly ushered through to air-side only to be informed that an air traffic controller’s strike in Spain had delayed his plane to Glasgow by an hour! 

The next day I read that EasyJet actually had a worse punctuality record than Air Zambia – ha ha!

The weather’s still hot out here – about 30-32 degrees each day and therefore the brambles have escaped yet again so I chose to take my dead PC down to Wolfgang, our ‘tame’ PC engineer who said he’d repaired loads of HP DV6000 series machines. ‘Once I’ve fixed it Tom, it will run like new’. ‘But it is new (well relatively so)’, I told him. I await its return.

Whilst I was down at the coast, J and her pal went off to Ed’s our supermarket which has had a recent refurbishment but still looks like a shed with fluorescent lights. We didn’t need any food but try keeping J away from a shop! As usual in France, you have to watch out for the queue dodgers, old and young alike but Linda (J’s pal) decided to take exception when an Arab looking gentleman did the old 90 degree trick and tried to push in acting as if he’d been queuing all the time. Dirty looks did not work so after he made his last and decisive move, Linda burst forth in French and said ‘excuse moi monsieur – you’re skipping the queue – get to the back and queue like everybody else’, whereupon he said ‘mais je suis handicappe’. ‘I don’t care’, said Linda, not believing a word he said, whereupon the cashier beckoned him forward, pointed to ‘this is the handicapped and elderly aisle’ notice hanging from the ceiling and admonished Linda for being so nasty and cruel. Just then the handicappe Arab whipped out his disabled badge and uttered something in Arabic.

Well – I wish I could have seen Linda’s face. In the car park, desperate to escape the humiliation of it all Linda was cornered by an old French woman. Linda was expecting the worst but she praised Linda and shook her by the hand. We don’t know what she said but ‘bravo’ will probably suffice.

Guy has just left for a month in Ireland and Estonia having just spent last weekend at the Le Mans classic with his dad. They drove up and did a couple of laps in his dad’s Porsche but all that enjoyment evaporated when I took him to the dentist on Tuesday to have the last of four teeth removed. I have to say, his dentist was rather tasty and I was desperately looking for an excuse to have my teeth examined when I remembered the one and only time I previously went there.

Unlike England, the dentist does all the work including any hygene required and when he delved into my open mouth and proudly pulled out a piece of pork I’d had the previous evening (I had brushed my teeth but must have missed it!) and displayed it to everybody in the room, I decide there and then that Mr Zenouda would have no more of my business. The fact that he wanted €7,000 to reconstruct my mouth making me look like ‘Jaws’ in the James Bond films, was definitely the final straw.

And finally, I heard on the radio that there was a major riot in Nice the other night. I immediately thought that the immigrant kids from the dreadful social housing estates to the north of Nice had started their annual summer rioting but no – it was a full scale riot between – wait for it – the police and striking firemen. The police won with 7 firemen being taken to hospital! Only in France.

Shadow’s Blog - Woof Woof

Right, it’s my turn. I’m fed up with my master denigrating me in print and whilst I can’t speak, I can type – I’ve watched him often enough so read on.

I’ve got lots to say, particularly about my food. I mean I’m 12 years old in doggie terms which, depending on which internet site you go to (try www.woof-woof.com or www.single-poodles.com), means I’m somewhere between 78 and 84 in human terms, just slightly older than my master – woof woof.

Right – so they feed me dried biscuits – every day. Sometimes, if I’m really lucky, I get a bone from Ed’s but it’s not a bone I can chew and get to the marrow – no, they get me a bone which must come from the knee of a dinosaur and all I can do with those is to bury them and then when I get home, I get into trouble for having a dirty nose. I mean – a dirty nose – is that all he’s got to worry about?

I’ve heard them say that I’m fed dried biscuits so that I don’t smell in the evenings but I reckon it’s my master who smells and because I can’t answer back and defend myself , I can’t tell people that it’s really him so I just sit there and take the abuse – dog’s abuse if you ask me!

God – these biscuits are boring. What I’d do for a bowl of Pedigree Chum or even a can of Chappie. Sometimes if I can smell Angie cooking some steaks next door, I hot-foot it over there but she’s been told not to feed me because apparently I’m over weight. I mean overweight at 84 – who’s worried?

Fortunately, we’ve got a couple of cats, Bijou and Coco and whilst they get fed dried biscuits also, at least when I eat theirs, it’s different – variety is the spice of life and their biscuits are a change from the norm and when I stick my nose in their milk and gulp it down – bliss! But then I get into trouble again – my master knows the cats never finish their food or their milk, so when he sees the empty bowls he knows I’ve been scavenging. I’ve even tried leaving a little bit in the bowls to put him off the scent but he seems to know – he always says something about my white nose. I’m missing a trick obviously.

And then there’s my grooming. Each year, round about the start of summer, I’m literally dragged down to the poodle parlour for a haircut. I’ve heard my master say that my haircut is more expensive than J’s, and at 70 euros, I suppose it is but included in the price is half an hour in the pen with some tasty poodles and terriers – all females. I know my time with the bitches, sorry ladies is limited because my master picks me up not long after I’ve been finished – damn - so I try to get as frisky as quickly as I can and then when I’m just about to get down and dirty, I realize that I had my bollocks chopped off when I was one! It’s so humiliating when Fifi and Chantelle say ‘c’mon then big boy’ and then laugh! The French are so hurtful. But then I realize that my first owner was gay and I realize that I probably wasn’t supposed to ‘do ladies’, so when I go back home and try it on with Rocky the Rottweiler down the hill, he doesn’t seem to understand and kicks dirt in my face and of course, when I get home, I get a slap for having a dirty nose. It’s just so unfair.

So, life is just a dog’s life for me. The cats get to sleep on chairs and sofas but I’ve got to sleep on the tiles. The cats get tickles and cuddles – I get slaps (for my dirty nose). The cats sometimes get fish and what do I get? The extra spaghetti when my master makes Carbonarra which seems to be about 4 times a week!

Anybody know the number for the SPCA?

Oh and that reminds me, we did get another dog a few years ago, a husky called Harry and boy was he trouble. He used to drag me down to the village about 3 times a week and that’s about 4 miles! And then we’d be picked up by the gendarmes and put in the dog’s home which is called Spacca. My master would pay the fine, pick us up and then I’d get, yes, you’ve guessed it, a slap! It’s the story of my life.  But at least it was Harry who was shipped out, but I hear he ended up in a huge villa on the coast down in Eze and had a lady Yorkshire Terrier called Botche (what sort of name is that) to ‘play’ with. I also hear that their normal dinner was foie gras and sundried tomatoes and what do I get – dried biscuits. Life’s just not fair.  

Get Plastered and Spend $520 Million

We’ve all done stupid things when we’ve had a few. I’ve even done a few myself - such as falling asleep on the train and ending up at the end of the line, forgetting to book a hotel and having to sleep in the office, falling asleep under the table in the reception of the Hilton Hotel in Glasgow, falling asleep on the table at the restaurant where we had our IBM reunion – and that was only a couple of months ago! Sleep and tables seem to be a common denominator!

But the guy who went home from his oil futures trader’s desk and drunkenly spent $520 million must take the biscuit.

He’d actually been trading oil futures (where you buy or sell oil contracts hoping the price moves and you make a profit) in the afternoon and like most traders had ended up in the pub that night. It seems he’d made some losses during the day and when he eventually got home, he decided to try and get his losses back – always a bad move.

In a drunken stupor, London trader Steve Perkins bought 7 million barrels of crude oil in late-night trading from the laptop in his kitchen and actually moved the global price of oil, driving it to an eight-month high, which is no mean feat.

The next morning when he turned up for work at 7.45am (what a trooper) the senior, longstanding broker for PVM Oil Futures was contacted by an admin clerk querying why he'd bought 7m barrels of crude in the middle of the night.

It was only then that he realized what he’d done and was immediately sacked. PVM Oil then had to unwind all his contracts and lost a rather fortunate $12 million, which I say was fortunate because it could have been a lot worse. Unfortunately, the $12m loss was something like twice the usual annual profit, so Stevie boy’s late night buying binge had cost PVM 2 years worth of profits and they had to sack another 12 employees to cut costs.

The thing was that Perkins wasn’t actually an employee of PVM. He did what many other traders and trading companies do – he only ‘rented’ a trading desk from PVM and used their money to buy and sell oil futures and split any profits (on an annual basis) 50/50 with the company. Up to that night he was $600,000 up and was feted as quite a star. No more my boy – no more!

Thanks goodness my broker only allows me to buy and sell between 8.30am and 4.30pm.

And a final observation: the picture is from PVM Oil’s London website and shows St Paul’s dome, just behind presumably, what is PVM’s building. Given that I worked beside St Paul’s maybe I met Steve Perkins in a bar one night – maybe I’m to blame?

The Mossie Burner Con

Or is it?

Every year at the start of the ‘hot season’, I am despatched down to the supermarché to get some mossie burner refills. These are the things that you plug in and hope they work, cause if they do, you’ll end up with few, if any mosquito bites. But if they don’t work because they’ve run out of foul smelling oil, or you’ve forgotten to plug it in, you’ll end up with loads of mossie bites and, if you lie naked, face down and uncovered in bed like me (I know - not a pretty picture) you might end up with a huge red blob on your bum like I’ve got.

And so, another annual ritual is for me to go down to Leclerc and get some refills before we start to look like victims of some plague or other. Now I’ve been in this situation before – they change the design, and hence the size of the refills with astonishing regularity and as I’m too stupid to take the old mossie burner with me, I invariably get the wrong sort.

We only bought the latest mossie burners we use last year so I was pretty confident that I’d be ok  - but no. When I got home, they did not fit the model we had. I cursed myself for being a village idiot and next day, in 90 degree heat, went back to Leclerc’s and obviously had to go to the refund desk which is something of a misnomer in France, because you rarely get refunds, even for things which don’t work!

I took my old burners with me this time, showed them to the girl, lied that my wife had told me what to get and basically acted like a totally downtrodden husband who thought the Leclerc girl was just the bee’s knees (the best thing going). I even compared her to the life-size blow-up Pamela Anderson doll I’d seen in the sex shop in SanRemo the day previously but I don’t think she was too impressed by that comparison. Don’t know why!

Anyway, I’d glued the boxes I’d opened shut so she took them back quite painlessly, uttered something in French and gave me my money back (they don’t just allow you to change things in France – all the refunds and paperwork they do probably keeps 50,000 Frenchies in work) and I wandered off to the mossie burner corner.

This time I took my old refill out and compared it to every model on display, opening about 20 boxes in the process, but there was nothing of a comparable size. My look of frustration must’ve alerted a nearby Frenchie who came up to me and said that they’d changed all the models this year and that I’d have to buy new burners.

‘But I only bought these ones last year’, I said. ‘Ah – it’s for the tourists’, he said. ‘They change the design so they have to buy new ones each year.’

I muttered a few obscenities under my breath and bought three new burners complete with bulbs of foul, green oil - €4.34 each.

I was thinking of not only the injustice of it all but the utter waste of having to throw three perfectly good old burners away when I looked at the display again. You can buy a new burner, complete with oil for €4.34 as I said, but to buy a refill of oil on its own was €4.50! Absolutely crazy! In essence (pun intended), they were paying you €0.16 to buy a new mossie burner!

Only in France! And just in case you were wondering, the new model is on the left.

Bzzzzzzzzz. Bzzzzzzzz.