Frocks - Showing My Feminine Side

Actually, it’s dresses today. ‘Frock’ is a word used by parents, Oxfam shops and probably Glasgow guys who haven’t moved south. Ouch!

It’s confession time. I don’t particularly like Liz Hurley. She’s a celebrity because of one thing and one thing only – ‘that’ dress. You remember the one – it was held together by safety pins and she wore it when she attended the premiere of ‘Four Weddings and a Funeral’ hanging onto Hugh Grant’s arm back in 1994. Since then, she’s made a career out of attending film premieres, escorting or marrying rich men and actually ‘starring’ in really bad films.

But that dress. Magnificent was the only word to describe it - a little black Versace number which fitted her perfectly and which must have sent millions of adolescent boys, and probably quite a few older males, into apoplexy.

It was the picture to the right which caused the press to go wild of course. That tilted back head, those boobs and the fact that nobody really knew her, all combined to catapult her into world stardom – well UK stardom.

That dress was actually voted the ‘greatest dress ever’ a couple of years ago but there may be a new contender for the crown – a dress worn by Gwyneth Paltrow last week, also to a premiere in LA.

Designed by somebody called Emilio Pucci (yeah – ok I’ve heard of him), Gwyneth, only second in my book to Jennifer Aniston in the ‘Girl Next Door’ stakes, looked sensational in her little white number, held together by gravity and a few strands of material.

Gwyneth doesn’t quite have Liz Hurley’s body, but at least Hurley wore knickers with her dress (I think) but us fashionistas were too interested in Gwyneth’s fabulous strappy sandals to notice the fact that she didn't have any on, until it was pointed out to us of course!

This is an unusually short, concise posting and is dedicated to Alison in the US who is always complimentary about my blog and who I know loves fashion. It’s also for all the boys out there – if you guys want ceiling sized copies of the photos, just let me know!   

PS – as I was writing this last week, Liz Hurley was busy divorcing her Indian husband and shacking up with the cricketer, Shane Warne. Talk about ‘bowling a maiden over’ – ha ha!

Have a great weekend everybody.

J's Trip To Kenya Part I

Saturday 27^th November

First leg of my journey!  Took an age to get to sleep last night, I was so excited having spent the evening with friends celebrating my birthday and my return trip to Kenya.   A little too much champagne and lots of talking have left me with a croaky voice this morning.  Quick shower, final checklist, cup of tea and off to airport. 

What a nice surprise to see Robin (our local BA pilot) checking in on the same flight and as soon as I saw that wonderful blue uniform with silver braid, Thomas was dispatched whilst I was whisked through the Executive Club security check in, all very civilized. First job on landing at Heathrow is to find a trolley (for my two suitcases), find left luggage for the heaviest case (so I can leave it there until tomorrow), draw out £200 on Thomas’s card (thank you darling) and take tube to Arnos Grove to meet my friends Chas and Chris who are putting me up for the night.

Sunday 28^th November

Chas dropped me off at Terminal 5 at 8:00 am.  Retrieved second suitcase from left luggage, tried to obtain Kenyan Shillings from Travelex (no joy despite booking on-line!) and queued and queued just to drop bags off.  By the time I had gone through security not even time for a Starbucks – the flight was boarding. 

‘Would you stand to one side, Madam’, the British Airways purser said as I boarded.  YES I was going to be upgraded.  Business Class is no longer a seat but a kind of ‘pod’.  I settled back with a glass of champagne.  Could I really take out my M&S packed lunch (well breakfast actually) and start eating it?  Each time I went to retrieve it from my bag, a stewardess approached and asked if I would like some more champagne. By my 3^rd glass, the hunger pangs had gone. 

Paging through the online movies, I chose to watch 'Salt' with Angelina Jolie.  Real edge of the seat stuff (except that the stewards kept interrupting to ask if I would like more champagne).  I was engrossed in the climactic ending of the film when the partition slid down between me and my neighbour ...   what did the Chief  Purser want this time???  Madam, would you please come to the Galley.  Well, I was desperate for the loo so I followed him .... ‘I have another seat for you, Madam – in First Class’! 

My Very Own Pod

The curtain was held open and I entered what looked like a private cinema.  As my eyes became accustomed to the darkened area, I could make out the occasional body cocooned in cashmere blankets fast asleep. I sat in my new, even better pod and was shown how to work the touch screen TV....  ‘Does it get any better than this, I asked?’ And then Martina Navratilova got up from the seat in front and said ‘Hi’.....fortunately she didn’t want to climb into my pod!

Arrival in Nairobi

The Nairobi Skyline

God Bless Florence and Wilberforce who met me at the airport.  I even managed to fill in the correct Visa forms this time. The rest of the First Class passengers weren’t queuing though so where had they disappeared to? Anyway in no time at all my two HUGE suitcases were in the Taxi and Wilberforce was driving us to Florence’s apartment.  


I have to say that I was a little apprehensive when we approached the group of largely unfinished buildings and deeply rutted roads but Wilberforce carefully navigated the car around the largest rain filled ponds which seemed to stretch from one side of the road to the other. 

At the entrance to the apartment block stood a guard – well that certainly made me feel a bit better even though he was about 70 and smaller than me!  As we hiked up two floors with my bags, I regretted the extra clothes I had packed. Florence’s orange metal door was unlocked by putting a hand through a hole in the door and unbolting it from the outside.  She proudly showed me around her two rooms, kitchen and tiny bathroom.  It was neat and clean with n furniture, just a three-quarter size mattress on the floor in one of the rooms. I’m not sure what I expected but we sat and had Kenyan tea and nibbled on some chapatis.  We caught up on our news and eventually by midnight, we were tucked up together under a mosquito net. 

I lay on my back listening to Florence’s breathing.  It reminded me of the times I had shared a bed with my sister, Cindy - momentarily I was a bit homesick.  My eyes got used to dark and I could see every outline in the room as the security light on the stairwell crept into the room through the gaps in the piece of fabric that was hung at the window.  I could hear the noises of neighbours close at hand, the crying of a child, the clang of another metal door and its bolt being drawn.

Where was I?  I had no idea where Wilberforce had brought us along the pot hole filled roads, no phone contact with anyone. Was I actually safe here?  Could someone break in? Am I being a responsible mom doing this? In my tiredness, my imagination was running wild - I calmed my breathing down and said my prayers.

As I fell into an untroubled sleep, a smile crept onto my lips as I thought about God’s sense of humour – British Airways First Class upgrade, unlimited champagne and flat screen TV and then a dark Nairobi tenement with no running water, no electricity, no furniture, two mugs of Kenyan tea and an old mattress on the floor.

To be continued……

French Customer Service - Captain's Log Star Date 2635

Yeah – I know. I’m going mad and that stardate above, some 625 years from now, is probably just when France will be beginning to embrace customer service. But I’ll be in the loony bin long before then, and we’ll probably all be cosmic dust so they’ll never reach that seemingly impossible objective of making customers feel good.

This time it was the pizza parlour. Parlour? Is it a pizza parlour – is that what you call them? Anyway, it was the place (Mr Pizza) from where they deliver pizzas all over the area, only on Sunday night, I was passing so I got Angie to call in the order and I planned to pick it up on my through Vence.

I’ve never been to the actual establishment because we’ve always had our pizzas delivered but when I got there at 7.15 on Sunday night, there was a queue almost out of the door. Obviously people prefer to pick up their ready-made, piping hot pizzas and get them home before they become cold slabs of paper thin dough, with a scattering of congealed vegetables and meat which is usually what happens when the delivery guy brings them round on his scooter.

When I eventually fight my way to the counter I tell them about my telephone order (Angie’s order actually) – 3 mega Espagnole pizzas and a free Normande, free because I’ve got some ‘loyalty’ tokens. I try to work out how much I owe them but Angie has ordered extra beef on the 3 megas so I’m not quite sure what the exact bill will be despite waiting 20 minutes for the pizzas to come out of the oven and reading the wall-size menu and pricing chart whilst I waited – actually, whilst we waited – I’d been picking up Kitty from her boyfriend’s house.   

Three megas at €12,50 each makes €37.50 plus something for the extra beef I calculated.

‘That’ll be €51’, said the guy working the till and the phones.

Without thinking, I handed over Tan’s €50 note (it was his treat) and looked for another euro coin.

And then I started to think about it. €51 – that meant they were charging the grand sum of €13,50 for a few scraps of extra beef. I could have had another pizza for that price and scraped the beef off and still have been quids in! Sorry - euros in.

I called Mr Till over. ‘Excuse me – I don’t understand this pricing’, I said.

‘What’s the problem?’

‘Well – you’ve charged me €13,50 for some extra beef which is crazy. How much is extra beef?’

‘Well, it’s on the menu.’

‘Show me.’

‘Ah – it’s not on the menu’, he said, a bit surprised. I reckon he was new to the job.

‘So how much is extra beef ?’ He asked one of the guys making pizzas.

‘It’s about €2.50 per mega.’

‘About! OK – that makes an extra €7.50, not €13,50’, I told him, thinking that good old Dominos back in the UK probably only charge about £1 for extra whatever, but I was causing enough of a problem in the pizza parlour without making comparisons between UK and French pizza parlours. They don’t like nationalism over here.

Mr Till looked at the menu again and had another chat with the pizza maker who was trying to entertain the restless crowd by throwing the dough around, a la an Italian chef but without much success.

He grudgingly went to the till and took out some money and even more grudgingly handed it to me. I made the point of looking at it and counting it out. The queue got even more restless.

‘€6.50’, I said. ‘That means the extra beef is €7 for the 3 pizzas’, and as I was trying to do the maths, which I’m sure didn’t work, Kitty was pleading with me to take my pizzas and go.

I called it a day, after all Tan was paying and we walked to the car.

‘I still don’t think that’s right’, I said to Kitty.

‘Well, what he said was that they cannot charge you for items which are not priced on the menu so he just gave you your money back for the extra beef’, she informed me.

I was just about to go back in and ask for the other €7 when Kitty started the car and begged me to drive. 

Life's Too Short To Stuff a Mushroom

Well, my cooking stint is over as J returns today so she can pick up the responsibility of making sure the kids are well fed – morning, noon and night!

The problem I found and which I found quite dispiriting is that sometimes it took me one and a half hours to make a meal and it was all over in 15 minutes as Guy and Kitty gobbled down their food, desperate to get back to their PCs! 


All that peeling of potatoes, carrots and other veggies, the preparation of the chicken, the cleaning of all the pots and pans afterwards, and it was all over in the blink of an eye and that was with me trying to slow things down by having a conversation during dinner with the kids.

No wonder ready meals are so popular. They’re probably just as cost effective as well, as by the time you take the cost of labour and the ingredients, the gas and electric (we cook on both) and all the cleaning up time, a ready made lasagne or chili is probably a good deal. Stick it in the oven or the microwave and then you simply throw away the cooking container – no washing up! 

And of course with the traditional made meal, you still have all the garbage to get rid of. Mountains of peelings as well as bones to hide from the dog and the cats and if J conveniently ‘forgets’ to put these bits of left over animal in the bin, the dogs and foxes rip open the bag and next morning, the drive is covered in rubbish – and that’s another half hour of my time spent cleaning it up.

People decry ready made meals. They say they’re not nutritious but I can’t believe that’s true as so much marketing goes into the positioning of these meals in the ‘healthy eating’ stakes and even in the Weightwatchers guides.

OK - this one doesn't look quite so good!

Despite being retired and having plenty of time on my hands, I just get so frustrated that cooking isn’t quicker and easier – ok it’s nice to prepare food for a nice dinner party but for the normal family evening meal, I think I’ll be heading to the ‘ready meal’ section next time I’m left in charge!

As Shirley Conran once famously said, ‘Life is too short to stuff a mushroom.’

House Prices - We Talk About Them Here As Well ...

Not as often as they do in the UK granted but it’s s till a topic of conversation especially when prices are supposed to be going down.

Many ex-pat properties on the Côte are mortgage free of course with people selling up in the UK and downsizing when they retire out here so they’re not particularly interested in what house prices are doing – it’s their heirs who will benefit from any rise in the value of their parents’ bricks and mortar. Despite this legacy for their kids (in France you have to leave your property to your children), many couples would prefer that prices do not rise, as France has a wealth tax which kicks in at quite a low level so the lower the value of your property, the less tax you need to pay.

But of course, human nature as it is, house prices do come up in conversation quite often, especially when friends you know are trying to sell, or buy, but down here it’s quite easy to work out how much a house is worth. You take the square metres of living space and multiply it by the value for your area and away from the coast there is a uniformity of sorts in that most decent properties are worth around €5,000 per square metre.

On the coast in say Cannes or Juan les Pins, the price can rise to €6,000 and even €7,000 per square metre, but in those cases you are paying for the view of the sea and the caché of being where the action is.

A Room With a View in Monaco

Of course, Monaco is in a different league where square metreage is almost irrelevant, with even a modest one bedroom apartment raking in a cool €1 million and that’s without a view of the harbour. A view of boats bobbing up and down uplifts it by 50% and another 50% is added if you can see the Palace. It’s all to do with tax of course, or no tax to be precise and therefore the sums are easy: work in Monaco, pay a one-time hit for an apartment (there are very few houses) at a cool €45,000 per square metre and pay no income tax for ever – well as long as you live there.

Cap Ferrat - My Ideal Spot

Not far behind is Cap Ferrat where there are fewer apartments but fabulous villas all over the promontory. The price of a square metre in Cap Ferrat according to Chesterton Humberts (the up-market estate agents) is around €32,000 which means if I could move my house down there (a landslip maybe?) it’d be worth a fortune.

But then, once we’ve finished discussing house prices, we move on to estate agents who charge a staggering 6% for selling a house and sometimes on a first viewing. Even down here, estate agents are the scourge – especially when they pick up €60,000 for what seems like 5 minutes work!