I'm Redundant

The Jungle Complete With Banboo

It’s just over three years since I retired and I’ve always had something to do; mess around in my garage/workshop; fix the cars and scooters or do some repair in the house, but if I was ever stuck for something to do to pass the time, I’d get my wellies on, wander down into the jungle and do a bit of slashing and burning.

I did quite a bit down the bottom of the ‘garden’ about 18 months ago but only because that’s the area nearest to our neighbours’ houses and it’s a legal requirement to keep your ground clear. Then I noticed that the brambles were starting to take over between our house and Tan and Angies’ and I began to clear it away, put down a membrane and generally landscape it a bit.  I was just getting to the tough bit where there’s quite a steep slope and it was there that the dreaded Rubus Fruticosis (bramble to you and me) was making a dash for the pool – crawling under the railings and slithering along the poolside making a desperate attempt to presumably get a drink, or even a swim!

This was going to be a tough job. Indeed, it was taking me about an hour to clear maybe one square meter and I was so scratched and knackered after a couple of metres that I’d go and sit on the terrace, have a glass of wine and (a) look at my landscaping work, and (b) look at the other 2,500 square metres I still had to do, so not much was done in the course of a week. It was either too hot, too wet or I was too tired.

And then there’s poor Tan and Angie.  They don’t know it (they will after reading this) but there used to be a path, ok it was quite steep, but there was still a path which led down to the pump room of their pool, but in the mists of time, the Rubus Fruticosis also took over, and Tan and Angie’s only route into the ‘locale technique’ was to climb over the their railings, clamber down some treacherous rocks, fight through a dense screen of thorns and then wonder what they’d gone down to the pump room for anyway!

Cleared (sort-of) with membrane

My problem was – well keeping up with the growth. I’m a bit of a perfectionist and so when I was clearing the ground, every single weed would be removed before the membrane was put down and even right at the bottom of the ‘jungle’ I’d clear it so well, the old Frenchies would stop, stare and scratch their heads at the mad ‘Englishman’ who was trying to make what looked like a bowling green out of a wild hillside.

So it was with interest and a not inconsiderable checking of bank balances when J informed me (sneakily, the day after I left on my UK trip) that she’d gone and hired a local gardener (jardinerie – I think) to tackle the ‘jungle’. My plan had always been to try and get some French community service convicts to do it for me or even start a bit of a fire (with hoses handy I should add), or just get a bulldozer in, but she’s gone and messed up my plans and all because she wants to build a retirement home for me down the hill, and in order for the architect to design, he needs to see the land contours, and in order to do that the surveyor needs access to the land and he won’t venture on to it until it’s cleared and so on and so on!

It's Being Cleared !

Looking at Thierry’s work yesterday, he was doing a fine job and had cleared quite a bit already. There’s parts of my ‘garden’ I have yet to set foot on (after ten years!) but apparently he’s been round the lot and based on his devi (estimate !!!)  for clearing a mixture of tropical wood, dense jungle and easy-peasy bits I’ve already done, he’ll be rolling in my dosh for years to come! 

Just my luck if on the day he finishes it, the town hall declares it ‘green belt’ land!

My GrandDaughters

That’s them in the photo – Erin right and Amy left. They are the daughters of my middle son Ross and his wife, Pam. They are my only grand children although Stephen (my eldest son) has been in a long-term relationship with Kim who has a couple of children, so who knows, I might get some more, eventually.

Amy and Erin are just delightful and I don’t see them nearly enough.

You see, Ross is not a flyer and a trip down to the south of France from Glasgow in a car with a caravan swinging about wildly behind it would be a bit of a treck, and with two young, boisterous girls in the back seats, even with DVD players to keep them occupied, it would be something of a tiring journey for all concerned.

And so I see them whenever I go back to Glasgow which is generally once a year but because there was a change of plan last year, it’s two whole years since I’ve seen their happy little faces. And don’t mention Skype - although he’s the technical guru for his mother’s company, Ross is a technophobe at home!

I’m known as ‘Grandpa in France’ and although they were slightly hesitant last Sunday when I first sat down on the sofa with them, within a couple of minutes there were cuddles and tickles galore.

They live in a beautiful part of the country, Uplawmoor, just outside Glasgow, attend a lovely little school, and their grandmother (Fiona - my ex-wife) is no more than five minutes away, where she lives in a converted farmhouse with her husband, and when they’re back from University, her three daughters – so on occasions, there are quite a few girls about the place.

As usual when I visited them, Amy and Erin got comics and sweets and some pocket money for their little jars and I got two pictures welcoming me to their home which are now on my office wall.

Aaaah. I love you girls to bits.

From grandpa in France.

Traveller's Travails (Part II)

So, I’ve sat looking at the sign that says BAA are spending £1 billion to make us travellers happy and contented but I’m sitting beside an electrical socket which doesn’t work, I cant get anything to eat  and I’m surrounded by chaos. There’s only one thing for it and here’s a tip for anybody stuck in Gatwick for more than a couple of hours – get yourself over to the Hilton Hotel which is attached to the airport. It’s a 5 mile hike (slight exaggeration) and you have to take one ramp, a lift, go through a car park and then up another ramp but after persevering you will find yourself in the quiet luxury of the Hilton.

No sooner have I reached it than I spot a huge empty leather chesterfield sofa with a socket beside it – bliss! Unfortunately, there’s no WiFi available but it’s easy enough to get  a one-day subscription to BT Openzone and a couple of minutes later I’m watching the Ryder Cup.

Only six hours to go!

About 2pm my hunger pangs cannot be ignored any longer as people are looking around trying to work out where the noises are coming from, so in an unusual act of extravagance I decide to treat myself and have lunch in the Hilton.

“I’m sorry sir – you can’t bring that trolley in here”, says the jobsworth concierge. ‘But I just want to see the menu – it’s three yards away.’ “I’m sorry ----- “. I leave the trolley, wander over to the menu and get a dose of reality – an 8oz sirloin with chips and garden vegetables is £26! That’s almost the same price I paid for my flight (but is half what I paid for dinner on Saturday night) so I get my trolley and hike back to the terminal, get a sandwich from M&S and hike back to the Hilton. Amazingly my chesterfield sofa is still free.

I need a coffee so go into Costa Coffee which has an outlet beside the Hilton’s reception.

‘A white coffee please.’

‘Do you want an Americano, a Macchiato, a flat white or a cappuccino ?’

‘What about latte – that’s a white coffee isn’t it ?’

‘Of course sir – now do you want a roasted hazelnut latte, a cinnamon latte, a Costa special latte, a vanilla latte or ……..,’ and so it went on.

‘Just a plain white coffee please.’

‘So that’ll be a flat white?’

‘I guess so.’

‘Small, medium or large?’

‘Look – can we hurry up – I’ve got a plane to catch in 5 hours.’

By this time a family of ‘Little Britain’ lookalikes are hovering around my chesterfield.

‘There you go sir – that’ll be £2.40.’

I turn with my coffee and my chesterfield has now disappeared under the Little Britains so I have to slum it at a wooden Costa Coffee table. I turn my PC on, start up the golf and have my sandwich. Then I take the cap off to drink my coffee and find that it’s filled right up to the brim. Even a brain surgeon with steadier hands than mine would have spilled some so I take it back to ‘Costa Coffee’s employee of the year ‘(that’s me being sarcastic by the way) and say, ‘could you pour some of this coffee out please – about a third.’

‘Is there something wrong with it?’

‘No it’s just too full – can you pour some out please.’

‘So you want me to pour about a third of your coffee out?’

‘Yup – you’ve got it.’

‘But I can’t – it’s mixed with the milk.’

Eventually, Miss Congeniality got the message but not before saying, ‘it doesn’t cost any less you know.’

I finish watching Europe thrash the Americans in the Ryder cup by 1 point and decide to see if I can check in my bags, which I do and then head through to find a quiet area air-side. Get a seat, switch on the PC and find that my BT Openzone WiFi pass does not work air-side!

It hasn’t been a good day and there’s still four hours to go before I reach the sanctuary of my home. I decide never ever to travel again. 

        

Traveller's Travails (Part I)

I’m not a great traveller. I don’t like leaving my little paradise down in France and going off somewhere which generally has worse weather, but there are times when you just have to pack a bag and go, and I hate it.

This week just past of course, I had a quintuple (??) whammy – seeing my mate Steve (and Debbie of course), then my sons and my brother, my aunt and cousin, then my ex-Chrysler mates and finally my daughter-in-law and my gorgeous grand-daughters. It was a whistle stop tour, but despite the fact that when I worked for BT, I sometimes felt I travelled for a living and put up with it, I now can’t get used to the hassle involved and just for good measure, several things happened at home which made the whole trip seem a lot worse.

First there was J telling me Angie’s washing machine next door had gone kaput and not to worry, she’d ordered a new one and could I transfer the money!  Then, as I knew she would, fed up with my ten year plan for clearing the ‘jungle’, she’d only gone and hired a team of gardeners to clear it for me – at a price which would have bought a Caribbean holiday for a family of fifteen!

Not content with that, J was holding a car boot sale to raise money for her charity in Keyna and I know, I just know that all my favourite clothes will have been sold to some French family for a couple of euros and who I will see poncing around the village in my best sweatshirts and jeans some time in the future! The last time she held a car boot (a vide grenier – an empty loft (I think) in French) all my BT awards were flogged off – a trophy I’d been presented with for winning the BT Yacht race was flogged for 1 euro – it was made of stainless steel – a scrap dealer would have paid a couple of hundred for it! My Supertramp Greatest Hits CD went for 50 cents and I noticed that some of my X-box games were missing.

Anyway, I’m getting off the track here – back to travelling.

My trip back from Glasgow to Nice was not best planned I have to say. I knew I had a 7 hour wait at London Gatwick and I can only assume that it was down to cost and the fact that it was a Monday. Whatever, I knew as my brother dropped me at Glasgow airport at 7.30am that I was in for a long day and I was not happy.

Checking in was easy – all of a couple of minutes and I have to say at this point that I have not lost my knack of getting my case bang on the weight limit – 19.7 kilos this time – although if I’d managed to get J’s order of two hundred Weight-watcher lemon cup-cakes, I’d probably have been over the 20kg limit!

I hunted around for a quiet seat but not finding one I ventured air-side only to be met with a security queue which stretched as far as the eye could see. I couldn’t beleeeeeve it (Victor Meldrew) – and when I got through the first set of double doors, I realized that the queue I’d seen was only one leg of a snake which filled the huge hall.

A sign boldly declared that security was ‘only ten minutes from this point’ which was a joke and then I worked it out – they’d stationed a lady to check your boarding passes at the end of the first ‘snake-leg’ and this was their interpretation of ‘reaching security’. Joke.

A full twenty-five minutes later I reached the security scanner. ‘You know – even at its worst, Gatwick was never as bad as this and they were fined £10 million to sort them out’, I ventured.

‘Please take your belt, jacket and shoes off – oh and your watch’, he countered, completely ignoring what I’d just said. ‘You haven’t got a pacemaker, or any large piercings that I need to know about’, he added. Grrrrr!

To cut a very long story short, I reached Gatwick with no further fuss and thought that as I now had a 7 hour wait ahead of me, the 10 mile walk to luggage collection would be a nice way to waste some time but alas they had a bus waiting to take us to the baggage hall. Sods law!

I hatched a plan. I thought out my strategy carefully. There was an Easyjet flight to Nice at 1.55pm and I would try and get on it – without paying any fees.

‘Hello – have you got any free seats on the 1.55 to Nice?’

‘Yes sir, we have ten seats remaining.’

‘Great – I’m on the 18.15 and I reckon you’re not going to sell any more seats on the 1.55 so why don’t you change my flight for free and you’ll be able to sell my seat on the 18.15. Great plan eh?’

What actually happened was …..

‘Hello – have you got any free seats on the 1.55 to Nice?’

‘No sir but we’ve got loads on the 18.15 – would you like one?’

I headed upstairs to the ‘Village’ where I thought I’d get a sandwich only to find the whole place closed with the exception of a Boots Chemists and a Costa Coffee. I looked for a quiet seat and an electricity socket for my PC but I reckoned the only one I could find – in the multi-faith chapel - would not be appropriate so I wandered off-limits to the admin office area. Result - an upholstered seat with a socket right beside it. I decamped. I got my PC out and plugged it in – nothing. The socket was dead!

Then saw a sign. It said,’ we’re spending £1,000,000,000 on this terminal (note all the zeros they used to impress) to make you happy.’ How can shutting my favourite Burger King make me happy?

Anglo Saxon followed and by the way J, that's not me in the photo!

The Reunion

So just a bit of background for those not familiar with this infrequent event.

Forty two years ago 19 guys started a training course which was to change and define their lives. Twenty five years after first meeting and bonding through a series of grueling and sometimes, soul-sapping physical and psychological exercises, in 1995 we met in Glencoe, the scene of one of the most emotional and demanding tasks we had to perform, and despite the previous hardship remembered by the group in that foreboding location, a great time was had by all.

Now, 17 years after that first reunion, a group of us met in Glasgow to relive old times and past misdemeanors. Two meetings in forty two years isn’t too clever I suppose but as we’re spread all over the place, managing to get two of the original ‘PETs’ in the same place at the same time should be recognized as something of an achievement, so the ten who turned up this year, was a triumph. 

I arrived just after lunch on Friday and after a quick trip round George Square and a look at the stunning City Chambers (pictured), I found, surprise, surprise, a few of them sitting in the bar area, looking just like they did 17 years earlier. O.K. – the hair was thinner and the waists thicker but there was no mistaking who was who. They didn’t even have to ask what I was drinking – I was always the most sophisticated of the motley bunch and they ordered my usual glass of chilled white wine.

Herby was just as he was all those years ago. Dougie was a bit thinner on top but we always knew he was going to be folically challenged so it wasn’t a surprise. Eddie M was as I’d seen him on his German website so I recognized him right away. Harry was always going to be a ‘man mountain’ and he didn’t disappoint. We were joined later by another Eddie (Mac) whom I’ve seen quite frequently over the intervening years and Peter who had removed his ‘tache’ and looked like the fit footballer he always was – not!

Word had reached us from some of the wives who obviously knew their husbands were off on a ‘bender’ for the weekend with very unfair comments such as – ‘a group of 60 year olds going off on a pub crawl – don’t make us laugh’ and ‘pubs don’t let you in with zimmer frames’! In the event, our pub crawl lasted for approximately 100 yards and one pub. We must be getting old right enough!   

The following day Kenny (a bit hairier) and Chic (a bit less hairier!) joined us and we headed for an indoor golf arena which we’d booked but wouldn’t let us play (booking system issues but we finally got on!) and then an afternoon of malt whisky tasting in Dougie’s suite in the Millenium Hotel (pictured) which looks out onto George Square, which now has a "Jamie's' so I suppose Glasgow has finally made it!

Now I know he was the organizer but how come Dougie got a suite for £50 a night when I was in a room where the marks of swinging cats stained the walls and there wasn't enough room to dry myself in my bathroom and I was paying £87 and poor Kenny all of £175! I think we’re due an explanation. 

Early evening and Allister joined us. Like Chic he had changed little although a voice honed from teaching Scottish schoolkids for four decades was definitely more confident. We spent the first part of the evening at the hotel bar before we headed once more out into the driving Glasgow rain for a trip to a chic, and pretty expensive steak-house where we had a great dinner (see picture) which took a huge chunk out of the kitty, before we once again hit the hotel bar which is beautifully situated on Glasgow’s George Square and allowed us to ‘people watch’ which was fascinating in the extreme.

Girls dressed in body-hugging pink plastic dresses tottering around on six inch heels and covered in tattoos (no pictures!), seemed to be the order of the day. Girls dressed as if they were in the Bahamas with little or no clothing above the waist (no pictures) were everywhere, as were the girls staggering around holding a take-away kebab or something similar. Our collective tongues were hanging out, not in lust, but in disgust!

At 2.15am, I made my apologies after unsuccessfully trying to get Herbie to release some more funds from the kitty and made my way to my room. It was a great couple of days – but my liver is now complaining!