The Human Pooper Scooper

Every now and again, there’s a classic on Angloinfo (the ex-pat on-line forum) and yesterday I fell about when I read the latest ‘wanted’ advert. It was for a human pooper scooper. Read the advert and the responses below. Needless to say, I couldn’t resist and posted the final statement.

Start of discussion ……

Probably not expecting many replies to this!

A puppy has just joined our family and we did not realise how much mess one dog could make.

We live in Valbonne and if there's anyone willing enough to come two or three times a week for an hour at a time - we'll pay GOOD money!

Geez! Wait for the dog to get bigger and you will have a real problem on your hands....The bigger the dog, the bigger the poop.

Use nappy sacks, put your hand in and go along and pick it up, once you pick it up turn bag outside in and tie it up put it in the bin. When you take your hand out, if they are scented ones your hand will smell of perfume..... but it is advised to wash your hands afterwards anyway.

The whole concept of paying someone to do this, is very amusing. How much are you willing to pay?

So pathetic - get a life.

OMG are you just going to leave all the poop there the days you can’t get someone to do your dirty work?

If you can't deal with the s**t, then don't take it on in the first place.

This is my ideal job!! I wanted to be a deckhand but now I’ve seen this I’ve missed my calling in life! Please consider me for this position if it has not yet been filled! I have references if you do need them!

What a s**t job!

So what else have I to report?

Nature works in mysterious ways. There we were the other night, just sitting down to dinner when J started to say grace and there it was – a Praying Mantis sitting on the dinner table. PRAYING Mantis – get it ??????

Have a great weekend everyone.

Pont Du Loup

J and I had lunch out last Friday. I had offered Thursday but for some reason she preferred Friday, so Friday it was. We went to Pont Du Loup which is in the opposite direction from Tourrettes and sat in La Source at a table no more than about 2 feet from the main road.

Whilst the passing cars, lorries and buses are a bit of a distraction, the food is very good with steaks to die for so we put up with the noise and rumbling tables and give them our custom a couple of times a month. I’m sure the free glass of champers which J sometimes gets when she goes there is also a consideration although there was nothing free offered on Friday!

Now Pont Du Loup (Bridge on the (River) Loup) is a bit of a misnomer because the bridge is a tiny and nondescript structure, but in days past it must’ve been the centre of life in the village because right on the bridge is an old derelict hotel La Reserve. Across the bridge is a derelict tea room which again must’ve been quite fancy in its hey day. The sweet factory is below the bridge and towering above ‘the pont’ is the old viaduct which once carried the Provence railway. The picture shows both the viaduct and hotel prior to the 2^nd world war when everything was in one piece!

Between the hotel and the viaduct (and I mean literally, not physically), there is a bit of history about Pont Du Loup but the stories are so clouded in mystery and intrigue, one is never sure of the truth.

First, the viaduct. The story is that despite being Vichy France (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France)

  which was supposedly a quiet bit of the country with little or no fighting, there were many Germans in the Provence area (they would come down for a bit of R&R) and hence there was quite a bit of Resistance effort. And the story has it that when the German contingent were leaving the area at the end of the war, they blew up the towering viaduct so that any allied forces could not follow them. The Germans of course, hotly dispute this version of events.

The picture shows the viaduct as it is today. Whoever was responsible, they have curtailed the ability to now drive along the old Provence railway, as whilst much of the old track has now been turned into road, there is only so far you can go before coming to a blown up section. Vandals!

The Loup Gorge

Prior to the war, back in 1907 a fancy new hotel, La Reserve, opened right on the bridge. It was the first in the area away from the coast to have electric lights, luxury accommodation and facilities for cars. It also had a swimming pool carved out of the rocks beside the river, the remnants of which can still be seen. Along with the Auberge which is still operating as an hotel today, and another hotel which is now the village school, these three establishments catered for the multitude of visitors who came up on the Provence railway to wonder at the gorge (see picture) and to visit the perfume factory – now a confisserie (sweet factory).

Some time in La Reserve's past, the story goes that either (a) the owner got into trouble with the mafia who bombed the hotel, placing the charges beside the huge pillars which drop down to the river bed and which support the whole building, or (b) the owner got into financial trouble and blew his own hotel up, blaming the act on criminals and hoping to get a huge insurance payout.

Whatever the truth, the hotel lay in ruins for some twenty years before a South African diamond dealer bought it and started work on converting  the building into luxury apartments.

J met him at a party several years ago just after he’d bought the hotel (when she found out he was a diamond dealer she was all over him like a rash) and today a significant amount of work has been done although it is far from being completed. It's taken several years but much is still to be done - it just shows how slowly things move in good old rural France.

Unfortunately, the viaduct is beyond economic repair!   

You Know Who You Are

For the last six months or so I’ve been looking at stats on my blog site. It tells me how many hits I’ve had and which countries the pages have been viewed from and less interesting, which internet browsers have been used to access my site. I get an average of 22 hits a day (it sometimes hits 50 when I do something really interesting!) and not surprisingly, the UK and France are the countries where most of the readers are based, although Ukraine and Lebanon are surprising inclusions.

To me this is merely interesting although to someone who has adverts on their site (I removed mine pretty quickly after Google started pushing ‘holidays in France’), it helps work out whether they are likely to get any money or not and allows the blogger to ‘sell’ their site to advertisers.

My stats were provided by a 3^rd party company (Easycounter) who have no interest in my blog site, but obviously Google, that all-seeing behemoth, decided that they too should have a stats service and I’ve been looking at their new system with interest.

Unlike the 3^rd party provider, Google includes some data which allows you to establish where the viewers are and in some cases, gives you a clue to their identity and it was this that I was looking at the other day.

Now, I hate casting aspersions (or asparagus even) but one of the tenuous links was to a person who shall remain nameless but a Google search on their name came up with a guy whose main claim to fame was that he’d been arraigned on a $1 million bail for ‘child molestation’ and further Google references to this individual had links to ‘teen sex sites’!

Now I know that Google can sometimes throw up unexpected and spurious results when you search on an individual’s name, but this was shocking!

Is my blog site being invaded by perverts and sex maniacs? Have I written anything which would attract these sorts of people? I reckon not and I reckon that, as usual when you search on an individual’s name in Google, or any other search engine for that matter, you are likely to come up with multiple occurrences of the name you’re looking for, and not all of them will be fine upstanding citizens.

Before my blog started and I shot to the top of Google search results when my name is typed in, there were some real weirdos out there with the same name as me and I dread to think what somebody might have thought had they searched for ‘Tom Cupples’ and seen the results come up.

Hopefully, now, if they do a search and are directed to my blog site, they’ll know I’m a fine chap, with a fine family and a fine woman in tow. Well - that's what my wife told me I could say!

Lunch On The Beach

I’m not a beach person.  During the summer, the roads are incredibly busy, there are no parking spaces and restaurants are so full, it’s almost impossible to get a table. So when our friends Chas and Christine arrived for their annual pilgrimage to our part of the world this year, we decided that we would bury our predjucies  and go and visit them in the villa they use so a trip down to the coast was organised for the Sunday. 

They had arrived at our place on the Saturday for lunch which stretched to dinner and when we discussed where we’d go the following day, J took over and the next thing I remember is her saying something about ‘Royal’. I didn’t sleep too well on Saturday night!

The word ‘royal’ to me means ‘expensive’. We used to stay in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in England and that was expensive, as was Royal Henley (the regatta on the Thames) and so going somewhere ‘Royal’ for lunch meant a huge bill. Now I’m not particularly mean despite what the vast majority of my friends (and even my family) say but I draw the line at ‘royal’. 

We’d decided, sorry J had decided, we’d lunch in Antibes and so we set off and headed for the Royal Beach Club. There’s only one thing which is worse than ‘Royal’ and that’s ‘Club’ in the same sentence. I feared the worst.

The Royal Beach Club Antibes

It was a stunning day. The sun was shining, the beaches were full as were the restaurants, particularly the Royal Beach Club (see picture), but I have to say it was a great location and to her credit, J had managed to book a table right on the beach front. In fact, it was so close to the water, I could have fished from our table. Indeed, at one stage I was feeding the mullet who seemed to know that there was a piscean eating only a couple of feet from their watery environment and who was sympathetic to their needs and threw copious amounts of bread into the bay for them.

Despite the eye watering prices, lunch was terrific.  Christine had a mixed grill of different fish. Chas had some sort of pasta, as did J (with clams), whilst I also had pasta, a ravioli in a rich creamy, cheese sauce. But I did notice that whilst we all probably needed bibs to keep our shirts (and blouses) clean, only J was given a wrap-around bib (pictured) which I also noticed, the waiter took great delight in fitting around her neck and body! Why are all these beach bar boys tanned, good looking hunks?

All 'Bibbed' Up

When we’d eaten, us boys disappeared off to watch the Grand Prix,  whilst J and Christine stayed to pay the bill (yes!). Chas’s apartment (it’s a bit mean to call a €1 million pad an apartment) is in an amazing location looking over the bay at Golfe Juan which is the next bay east of Antibes.

Situated high on a hill, the view is spectacular (see picture) and on Sunday the breeze had allowed the yachties to set sail and so the Med was covered in sail craft of every description.

The View of Golfe Juan

It was a lovely day out. The only downside was that the greasy Spanish whistleblower, known as Fernando Alonso, won the Grand Prix. Still you can’t have everything. 

Those VHS Tapes ..........

Within a few days of my third anniversary of retiring from BT, I am in paid employment again which will shock many of my friends who had heard me say, I’d never lift another finger to earn cash. Not because I am filthy rich (if only) but because I absolutely love doing nothing.

But I’m afraid to say, my ‘new job’ has not met with universal approval from ‘her indoors’, J, who has been in a right strop ever since she found out I was going to earn a few bob doing a bit of, how can I call it, a bit of work on the wrong side of the moral compass.

You see, I was browsing AngloInfo the other day ( http://riviera.angloinfo.com/) when I spotted a request for someone with the appropriate skills to convert VHS cassette tapes onto DVDs.

Now, I’ve been doing this for the last couple of years, working my way through countless family holidays and tapes of Rangers FC when they were a feared footballing force, and converting them onto DVD. Cassette tapes degrade over time so it’s a useful exercise to put them onto a newer medium and as I’ve got the equipment to do it, it was a no brainer.

A few e-mails later, the lady from Angloinfo and I had agreed a price and a place to meet (all very Spooks-like), and the family holiday tapes were duly handed over. All well and good, but not back at Chez Cupples/Hellon/Evans!

The problem was that I just can’t resist winding up my missus. When she got wind of my ‘little earner’ she wanted all the details so I told her that I’d come into contact with a local swingers group who wanted all their ‘home movie’ cassettes converted to disks.

Well, that was it! ‘You’re not bringing that STUFF into MY house’, was the immediate reaction. ‘If you think I’m going to allow MY DVD recorder to be used for that FILTH, you’re mistaken.’ (the capitals are points of emphasis as shouted by J). ‘But we might spot somebody we know’, I protested. ‘That’s even worse’, she wailed.

I let the ‘rumble in the jungle’ carry on for a few days and it wasn’t mentioned until last Thursday morning when, unusually for me, I got up, showered, shaved and put on some decent clothes.

‘And where do you think you’re going?’ said J aware that ‘the transaction’ was approaching. ‘I’m off to meet the representatives of ‘the club’ so they can pass over the tapes’, I replied. ‘Where?’ was the demand.  ‘In the car park – well away from the village police station. I’ve said we should meet at the back of the car park and for them to pass over the tapes in a plastic bag so as not to draw attention to what’s going on’, I said.

Glowers all round but when she sneaked a look at the first tape I was converting (yeah - she sneaked a look - I knew she would)  and saw a delightful young girl playing the piano and a family having lunch, she stormed off, no doubt aggrieved that I’d got one over on her – again!

 It’s just so easy! Doh!