1000 Marbles

It was my pleasure to take the Reverend Anne Naylor to lunch on Thursday. I’d been asking her to ‘play around’ for a while but although it was sunny, it was cold, so golf was out of the question!

Anne is multi-talented. She is an author on books about personal success and development, she writes for various websites including the Huffington Post (a US based online newspaper), runs a personal development group called ‘Possible Dream’ and performs wedding blessings for the rich and occasionally famous. Her 2008 ‘claim to fame’ (apart from marrying myself and J) was being pictured in Hello magazine, marrying Jamie Packer, the richest man in Australia.

Now, you may think that the Reverend and I cut an unlikely pairing but she has a lighter side and sends me the most awful jokes, many of which are a bit risqué and then she brings me down to earth by sending something very thought provoking, such as the following story from an unknown gentleman, who given his circumstances, could actually be me.       

The older I get the more I enjoy Saturday mornings.  Perhaps it's    
the quiet solitude that comes with being the first to rise, or maybe 
it's the unbounded joy of not having to be at work. Either way, the  
first few hours of a Saturday morning are most enjoyable.            
A few weeks ago, I was shuffling toward the garage with a steaming  
cup of coffee in one hand and the morning paper in the other.  What  
began as a typical Saturday morning turned into one of those lessons 
that life seems to hand you from time to time. Let me tell you about 
it. 

                                                                 
I turned the dial up into the phone portion of the band on my ham 

radio in order to listen to a Saturday morning swap net.  Along 

the way, I came across an older sounding chap, with a 

tremendous signal and a golden voice. You know the kind; he 

sounded like he should be in the broadcasting business. He was

telling whomever he was talking with something about 'a  
thousand marbles.'  I was intrigued and stopped to listen to 

what he had to say.     

                                                               
'Well, Tom, it sure sounds like you're busy with your job.  I'm 

sure they pay you well but it's a shame you have to be away

from home and your family so much.  Hard to believe a 

young fellow should have to work sixty or seventy hours a 

week to make ends meet.  It's too bad you missed your  
daughter's dance recital' he continued.  'Let me tell you

something that has helped me keep my own priorities.'

  

And that's when he began to explain his theory of a 

'thousand marbles.'  

                              
'You see, I sat down one day and did a little arithmetic.

The average person lives about seventy-five years. I 

know, some live more and some live less, but on 

average, folks live about seventy-five years.' 'Now then,

I multiplied 75 times 52 and I came up with 3900, which

is the number of Saturdays that the average person has

in their entire lifetime. Now, stick with me, Tom, I'm 

getting to the important part.  It took me until I was fifty-five

years old to think about all this in any detail', he went on, 

'and by that time I had lived through over twenty-eight        
hundred Saturdays.  I got to thinking that if I lived to be

seventy-five, I only had about a thousand of them left to

enjoy.  So I went to a toy store and bought every single

marble they had.  I ended up having to visit three toy 

stores to round up 1000 marbles.  I took them home 

and put them inside a large, clear plastic container right

here in the shack next to my gear. Every Saturday since

then, I have taken one marble out and thrown it away.     

I found that by watching the marbles diminish, I focused

more on the really important things in life.'   There is 

nothing like watching your time here on this earth run out

to help get your priorities straight.'  'Now lett me tell you 

one last thing before I sign-off with you and take my 

lovely wife out for breakfast.  This morning, I took the 

very last marble out of the container.  I figure that if I make

it until next Saturday then I have been given a little extra 

time.  And the one thing we can all use is a little more time.' 

It was nice to meet you Tom, I hope you spend 

more time with your family, and I hope to meet you again 

here on the band.  This is a 75 Year old Man, K9NZQ, clear

and going QRT, good morning!'          

                      

You could have heard a pin drop on the band when this 

fellow signed off. I guess he gave us all a lot to think about.  

I had planned to work on the antenna that morning, and 

then I was going to meet up with a few hams to work on the 
next club newsletter. Instead I went upstairs and woke my 

wife up with a kiss...  'C'mon honey, I'm taking you and the

kids to breakfast.' 

 

'What brought this on' she asked with a smile.'  'Oh, nothing

special, it's just been a long time since we spent a 

Saturday together with the kids.  And hey, can we stop at a 

toy store while we're out?  I need to buy some marbles.'                

   

The Power of Blogging

I’ve said many times why I blog. It’s my amazing, wildly extrovert personality which feels the urge to write each day (apart from weekends) and share the incredibly varied things I do with the world. Yeah right!

Nope – I do it for a variety of reasons, one amongst many, is of course, my therapist telling me that in order to retain some degree of sanity (note the ‘some’), I must live out the weird and wonderful fantasies which dominate my every waking hour – hence why I’m writing this at 4.24am!

And so, from that you may deduce that many of my blogs, the things I’ve said and the things I’ve said I’ve done are total bollocks. It’s all a fantasy. It’s like the Fantasy Football thing I do every week. You live out your dreams on a newspaper website – it doesn’t matter what you spend in order to get the best team, it’s all an illusion, a figment of your imagination.

OK – enough of this literary crap. I really just wanted to say that one of the great things about blogging, especially on the Google site (I don’t really know if others do it),  is that you can automatically follow other blogs. You don’t have to remember to look up a particular blog each day, the Google system seems to know when somebody you’re interested in has written something and lo and behold, when you log onto your blogging site, there it is – Allison has posted something fascinating about her life in the USA. Jon who runs a gite or something down in South West France and whose Blogs, unlike mine, are short and sweet, has written something witty about life in the Vendee. The various football writers, whose blogs I follow and who all try to outdo each other, post articles throughout the day and keep me bang up to date on all things to do with the round leather ball – actually they’re plastic now!

It’s terrific. It’s like having a newspaper which only contains the things you want to read, delivered to your door on the hour, every hour, day and night. And, this is the Scottish mean git coming out in me. You don’t pay a thing. Bingo!

And so, this short posting is to encourage those of you who don’t particularly want to share your innermost thoughts, dreams and fantasies with the world, to consider starting a blog – even if it’s just to get all those things you’re interested in reading, delivered automatically right to your LCD.

One example. I would have missed the following article in the newspaper as it was tucked away in the deepest recesses of the sports section, but as it was a blog I ‘follow’, it was sitting there looking at me the next time I signed on. It’s football related but I’m sure non-footie fans will still find it very funny, especially the video at the end, and the one about Beckham is hilarious.

 http://timesonline.typepad.com/thegame/2009/01/footballs-top-1.html

Banks – Aaaaaagh!

A few weeks ago I sent a letter to my bank in the UK over their complete inability to stop the name on my account changing every six months or so. If you read my blog of that date you’ll see that this name-changing problem caused me enormous problems and lost me loads of dosh.

Read the original letter here: (http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2008/11/letter-to-my-bank.html)

I thought I’d update you as to the progress – if it wasn’t so troublesome, it would be hilarious!

One of my gripes to them was that as I lived abroad, it was difficult for me to do anything in person (the Abbey don’t have any branches in France), so it was quite a surprise for me to get a response within a couple of days of my original complaint letter asking me to pop into my local branch where they would deal with my complaint! Great!

I called them to ask if anybody had actually noticed that they’d sent the letter to France and they were most apologetic and informed me that my letter was now the subject of an ‘internal inquiry’.

A week or so later, my ‘formal’ letter arrived. It was nearly as long as my original letter of complaint and went into great detail about the number of computer systems which needed to ‘synchronise’ before all my accounts (all three of them ??) would have the same address. It was quite clear from this that they had some crazy system where each account was on a different computer.

They then addressed my utter frustration at having to deal with Bangalore when it was quite obvious that the people there had no idea how to fix my problem and did not have the tools to even see what my problem was. The solution was to call a ‘special’ UK number.  Round one to TC.

They went on to apologise for all my problems and frustrations and whilst acknowledging that I was ‘inconvenienced’, only offered the usual token sum of £50 to compensate me. Now I know from business life that ‘consequential loss’, which is what I suffered when I could not transfer my money, is not recognised when working out compensation, and therefore I accepted the £50. Round two to TC.

A few weeks passed and I noticed that the £50 had not been credited to my account so I called them on their ‘special’ UK number. Guess what ? they’d only gone and paid the £50 into somebody else’s account! The girl was so embarrassed she could hardly speak and I was so gobsmacked I could hardly speak, so there were long periods of silence on the call.

‘Not my problem’, I said. ‘Now you’ve been informed, just credit the £50 into the correct account’. ‘Can’t do that Mr Cupples’, she said.. ‘We’ll have to contact the person to whom we paid the £50 in error and ask their permission to remove it from their account’. Knockout to the bank.

I was almost at the point where the cat was looking a likely target for my frustration (again) but I calmed down, revelling in the girl’s absolute embarrassment and said I’d probably need a laugh in a couple of weeks and would call back then.

You couldn’t make it up  

A Day When History Was Made

I had everything set. The kids would get home from school and we’d sit down in front of the telly and watch history being made as Barack Obama was sworn in to be President of the USA.

 But Murphy’s Law, which states that if something can go wrong it will, kicked in. Some idiot with a chainsaw (no, not me) cut a tree down and straight through the power lines it went, cutting off the whole of Cupples’ Mountain. For three whole hours we were without heating, lighting, the telly and worst of all, the internet, but as we ‘suffered’ we were aware that a whole new chapter was starting in the good old US of A.

We’ve watched it for about a year now. The rise and rise of Barack Obama. The unknown senator, who has probably the most willing and hopeful nation in history behind him as he becomes the 44^th President. Maybe Americans don’t know this, but Barack is given enormous TV coverage in the UK. After Bush, who was tied to the oil companies and didn’t seem to care who knew it and who nobody seemed to trust, Barack has managed to get the world excited by his ‘man of the people’ persona, his perceived honesty and his common sense.

He probably has the highest expectation on his shoulders than any incoming leader in history. This African American has pledged to ‘unite the nation’ and rid the US of the many inequalities which exist in its society, but time will tell what he actually manages to achieve.

I’m not being overly pessimistic in saying this. At the end of the day, no matter how powerful he is, and what sort of mandate he takes into the Oval Office with him, the establishment will often dictate which route he takes and how fast he takes it.

What is the establishment? In the US, I suppose it’s Congress (or The Senate) plus all the President’s advisers and holders of the various Offices of State. Then there are the big business interests (oil, automobiles etc) and possibly the Unions.

In the UK, they say it doesn’t really matter when Government changes from Conservative to Labour as it’s the Civil Service who actually run the country. OK, there are some changes of flavour and emphasis but at the end of the day, the guy with the grey suit and the grey hair, who sits in Whitehall with his job for life and inflation proofed pension will actually determine what we do and when we will do it.

But back to Obama. The whole world, with the possible exception of some of the ‘terrorist states’, is willing him to do well. If ever a man came upon the scene and had the mandate, and the personality, to unite not only America, but the world, then it is he.

Americans probably are not aware of this but we Brits, and I’m being a bit presumptuous here, are more hopeful and optimistic of Barack than we are of our own leaders.

It’s going to be a wonderful ride and we’re all aboard.

 

Sausage Casserole and Mouldy Cheese

Home alone again – well during the day that is. J has gone off to see her mother and stepfather and other members of the extended Hellon family in Manchester, leaving me to look after the sprogs. The weather in the UK has been particularly cold this last week or so and she headed into the airport dressed as if she was going skiing instead of visiting relatives.

The weather here has also changed from being really sunny last week to being more unsettled. Monday started off with light rain which prevents the continuing job of clearing up the millions of oak leaves carpeting virtually everything in sight. And a strong wind last night meant that I was met this morning by a selection of knickers, boxer shorts and socks hanging in the bamboo down the garden.

The menagerie of animals also don’t like the change in the weather. Shadow hates the cold and the rain, and after his morning stroll, he comes into the house to lie in front of the fire. The cats are similarly lethargic, changing chairs, on which they sleep, every 30 minutes or so, only rising to wander into the kitchen to look for even more food.

So, under normal circumstances, with nothing much going on around the house and the weather preventing any outdoor work, you would think I would get bored – not at all.

I love it when J is away because I have full rein in the kitchen and delve into the freezer to see what she bought several years ago which hasn’t been touched. Problem is, when meat is old and frozen, it’s very difficult to determine what it is and so I look for fish and vegetables, herbs and clearly determined shapes, like sausages. So this evening the kids will return from school for some ‘goutet’, which translated, is a ‘taste’ or a snack. Then I will ‘surprise’ them with one of my specials – a sausage casserole, which has already been prepared and is simmering in the oven. The sausages were soooo frozen they took about 20 minutes to defrost in the microwave and didn’t look too appetising when they softened up, but into the pot they went, along with a variety of frozen vegetables and ‘fresh’ ones which had started to sprout in the bottom of the veggie drawer. Barefoot Contessa – eat your heart out!

Then there will be complaints when I get into the cheese section and force them to eat all the cheeses which J buys on a whim and which lie festering in the drawer. France has 365 different varieties of cheese and I think we have one of each, clogging up otherwise valuable space in our fridge. I don’t usually worry about a little bit of mould on the cheese as many varieties already come with a healthy dose of green growth on them. The kids however, will complain loudly and threaten to call their mum. It’s only the first day of my all embracing parental duties however and so, reluctantly, they will fall into line. They’d better, otherwise they’ll be sent to bed without supper….which, in their view, might actually be a more preferable option!

 

Hangliders and The Buzzards

 

Good name for a group – don’t you think? But no – just a blog posting about the fact that as the weather seems to be getting a bit warmer day by day, the hangliders have started jumping off the mountain behind our house. See picture.

I can watch them for ages as they swirl and drop and rise and fall with the thermals which are obviously pretty good on Les Courmettes. They must be good because there are a family of buzzards up there in the craggy, rocky outcrops and when the hangliders are out, the buzzards start to fly the thermals as well. I’ve often wondered if the buzzards wait for the hangliders to start jumping off the mountain or do the hangliders wait to see if the buzzards are flying? Or do they both sit there and dare each other to go first?  

A few years ago, a group of us went further up into the mountains and several of us went on tandem jumps where you are strapped to the guy actually doing the hanglididng and all you are expected to do, after the initial run and jump, is to sit there, enjoy the experience ….. and pray!

For logistical reasons I could not do my jump (actually it should be ‘flight’) that day and we went back a few weeks later so that I could join the ‘hangliding club’. Unfortunately, there was quite a gale blowing and when we arrived at the launch point, the wind was absolutely howling, which I was sure would mean another cancelled flight.

Hangliding is quite a dangerous sport, starting with the run and jump off the mountain to start your flight. You either take off and fly, or you drop like a stone and I have to say, in some weird, masochistic way, I was looking forward to the thrill and the adrenalin rush as we ran down the mountain and took off ….. or not! However, my flight started as we just stood there on the slope. The wind was that strong, it just picked up the canopy, filled it with air and we were off.

Once airborne, it is deathly (sorry bad use of word) quiet. You just float around, the skill of the pilot being to search out the thermals so that the flight lasts as long as possible. In my case, the flight was over after about 30 minutes which was fine by me as I was beginning to get bored.  Once you’ve seen the fields from 2,000 feet that’s it – there’s nothing much else to do!

Our neighbour, René, is, or should I say, was a hangliding enthusiast but unfortunately, the one thing all gliders dread, the loss of a thermal and the collapse of the canopy, happened to him. We had met René only a few months previously when he and Cathy moved into a new house nearby. Then, after seeing René around and about quite frequently, he disappeared. We were told his canopy had collapsed and he ended up in hospital with two shattered legs. After rebuilding his legs with various bits of metal and keeping him in the Cannes hospital for six months, René reappeared to tell us that the worst bit of the whole experience was when he knew he was going to hit the ground and was too low to deploy his parachute. He had to decide whether to land on his back or his legs. Given that he is now considerably fitter than I, and cycles miles virtually every day, I would say that he made the correct choice.

Another hangliding story, albeit a bit more humerous, involved J when we were on a skiing holiday in Serre Chevalier in the French Alps. I cannot remember the reason but I bought her a tandem hangliding flight where you land on skis when you descend at the end of your flight.

Me and the kids went to the top of the mountain to watch her jump off with her ever-so-hunky instructor (actually her take off was a gentle run down a very slight slope into the wind) and then when she was airborne we took the lift back down to the landing station. As soon as the cable car reached the bottom, we put our skis on and headed as fast as we could over to the landing field where we saw the final moments of J’s flight. A gentle float down onto the landing ski slope, the touching of the skis onto the pristine snow and then a tangle of arms and legs as something went wrong. Guy, Kitty and I all dashed over, expecting the worst, only to find J, face down in the crotch of the instructor with a huge smile on her face. It took her all of 5 minutes to extricate herself! Dirty little toe-rag as they say in Glasgow.

Baby Stories

Now I’m not really one for serious, sensible discussions on the subjects I’m about to blog on, but I couldn’t let this pass. It’s all about babies. The last week has seen three astonishing baby stories, any one of which could dominate any dinner party chat for hours and hours.

1.      Baby chosen without breast cancer gene – this concerned a couple whose embryo was screened to make sure it did not have a genetic fault which had caused breast cancer in eleven female members of the mother’s family. The various articles did not say if the doctors had found an embryo with the gene and it was ‘discarded’, but that was the implication. It added to the debate about the selection of a baby exactly to your specification and has been the main discussion point since genetic modification and human cloning became a possibility.

My view ?  I’m undecided. I think the world would be a better place if these terrible ailments, mainly cancer, could be eradicated by embryo gene screening but where do you draw the line? Do you eventually get to the stage where every embryo is screened so that no child born will ever develop a genetic ailment? And if you go there, what’s to stop the next generation being chosen to be beautiful, blonde haired, blue eyed human beings?  We’ve been there before! 

2.      Birth two days after death – this is a heartbreaking story where a Jayne Soliman had been declared brain-dead but doctors kept her heart beating long enough for her daughter Aya Jayne to be delivered by caesarean section. The 41-year-old, who was 25 weeks pregnant, collapsed in her bedroom at her Bracknell home, Berkshire, after complaining of a headache. She was airlifted to John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford, but died at 8pm on January 7, just hours after having arrived. Her daughter was delivered two days later weighing just 2lb 1oz.

She should be called ‘Miracle’ or ‘Angel’.

3.      Co-joined (Dicephalus) twins – this is where an egg, separating into two, to form twins, develops an abnormality and results in a single human body with two heads. Now, much as you might think this is unheard of, Dicephalus twins are quite common as far as their percentage of Siamese twins are concerned. The English couple, against every medical opinion going, including their own medical team, are determined to carry the pregnancy through to birth, saying that they have ‘been blessed’ and that it’s a miracle. Am I being overly cynical in thinking that the miracle will be when the Sun newspaper offer them a fortune for pictures and a story? 

 

AngloInfo – The Funniest Read Each Day

AngloInfo is an on-line information source for the Cote d’Azur which virtually everybody who is an ex-pat reads. From its humble beginnings, it now provides web sites covering most of the countries in Europe as well as Thailand, China and Singapore. It has proved to be an invaluable source of information for everything from buying and registering a car to selling or renting a house and the legal ramifications therein, but it is probably most widely accessed for its forum where users can post items they want to sell or are looking to buy.

I have bought a car using Anglo, sold one, rented my house, had my PC repaired, got rid of duplicate items and have fixed countless problems using its on-line resources. It is probably the 2^nd site I visit when I log on in the morning – it gives the weather forecast and the exchange rate each day. If I’m looking to buy or sell something, I can access Anglo several times a day.

It’s quite obvious that incoming ‘foreigners’ get onto Anglo virtually as soon as they arrive (maybe they get the website address when they buy their bus ticket?) and some of their ‘placings’ are hilarious. ‘Me want job – please call’, ‘Lady available to do anything’, ‘Philipino couple available to house sit in Monaco or St Tropez’ – yeah – join the queue!

Similarly, I find it incredible that someone wishing to sell a €400,000 house simply advertises it thus: ‘Cute House for Sale’. I’ve seen a guy recently try to sell a Rolls Royce, a yacht and the yacht mooring which, given that one advert immediately followed another, simply shouted – DISTRESS SALE!!

One of the funniest was last year when some guy asked for tall, model-like ladies to ‘work’ in a Monaco exhibition. They had to be beautiful with long blonde hair and if they were the correct shape and size they would each be provided with designer dresses and other accessories. I watched with interest as the replies flooded in and tended to fall into two categories, those who were not interested in what the ‘work’ entailed but just wanted to get their hands on some Hermes merchandise and those who wanted to ask awkward questions without damaging their chances of getting the job. Given that the Cote d’Azur is crawling with Russian and eastern-European blondes of all shapes and sizes, I’m sure he had absolutely no problem in filling the four positions on offer.

Of course, with so many eastern Europeans now able to come here without requiring a visa, they flood in and some of their postings clearly highlight the desperation that many of them are in. A €50 bus ticket is all that it costs to get here from Poland but many probably mistake the French benefit system (virtually non existent for non-French) with the UK system where money is thrown at you before you even get off the boat.

Still, Anglo is probably the best way of making their availability known and the best way they will get a job. Have a look at it at:

http://riviera.angloinfo.com/

The Clough Dynasty

This is for football fans – sorry girls!

It’s not always nice to hear of someone losing their job but just occasionally, something happens which means your pleasure at the new appointment overcomes your displeasure at the removal of the previous incumbent. And so it was with Derby County’s appointment of Nigel Clough last week.

Derby were founded in 1884 and were one of the original twelve teams who formed the Football League in 1888. Known as the ‘Rams’, because a Derby regiment had a ram as a mascot, the team had a particularly unspectacular history of achievement until Brian Clough (Nigel’s father) and his loyal assistant, Peter Taylor, took over the management of the club in May 1967.  From being a member of the lower echelons of Division Two, Clough and Taylor took Derby into the First Division as champions two years later and by signing a number of workmanlike, rather than spectacular players, they managed to finish 4^th in the First Division in 1970. The following year, they ran neck and neck with Liverpool and Leeds for the title and, leading by a single point, their season ended……but both of their rivals had a game left. Whilst on holiday, Clough, Taylor and the Derby players learnt that neither of their rivals had won and so Derby were champions of the top division for the first time in their history.

Representing England in the European Cup the following season, Derby were eventually knocked out in the semi-finals in very controversial circumstances, to a Juventus team who had plied the German referee with gifts before the game. Clough, as was his style, called the Italian team ‘cheating bastards’ and made references to Italy’s role in the 2^nd World War.

Now I am no great fan of Brian Clough the man. I reckon however, that as a football manager, he was 30 years ahead of his time. Controversial, egotistical, overbearing and downright rude, the era of Brian Clough was as interesting as today’s verbal tussles between Sir Alex Ferguson and his managerial adversaries. However, after a glorious managerial career (he took a similarly underperforming Nottingham Forrest side from Division Two to two European Cups within four years), Clough retired in 1992. Plagued by alcoholism and forever tainted by the allegations that he took secret payments for ‘helping transfers along’, Clough died in 2004.

When at Nottingham Forrest, Clough signed his son, Nigel. A talented centre forward, Clough junior was Forrest’s top scorer and was roundly admired as an intelligent, thoughtful player. After several honours and fourteen caps for his country, Clough’s career declined almost in parallel with his father’s. He was transferred to Liverpool and then Manchester City but never recaptured the form which led him to be called ‘my number 9’ by his father when at Forrest.

In 1998, Nigel Clough took on the managerial post at Burton Albion, a team in a league so far removed from the Derbys and Nottingham Forrests of this world, that not many people had heard of their league, let alone the team! After ten years of unqualified success and several promotions for Burton, Clough left them last week to take over the reigns at …… Derby County. He left Burton in the highest position in their history and the Derby fans welcomed him with open arms, hoping just a little bit of his father’s magic has rubbed off on the still young Nigel.

Widely liked and apparently an all-round nice guy, Nigel has his work cut out. Let’s hope the board of Derby have made a long-term appointment and give him the time to recreate his father’s enormous success with that famous old club.

   

Blue Skies and White Smoke

The rain and snow have stopped, there’s blue sky about and most of the oak leaves have been blown from the trees and are now clogging up everything in sight. They gather in every little corner and this, I am delighted to say is a job for the kids. I’m sure they will be sitting at school (well Guy will be – Kitty has yet another day off!) dreading the leaf-sucker being pulled out from the garage and handed to them. Very gradually they are beginning to understand that there are numerous jobs which need to be done and that they have to do their fair share. I suppose I’ll have to bribe them or maybe I’ll just threaten not to feed them again – that seems to work a treat. They are now at the stage where the fridge and larder are opened more frequently than their school books and so any ban on snacking might have the desired effect.

But as the blue skies appear, so does the smoke. The thick, smelly, white smoke from countless leaf fires which just hangs in the air and shrouds much of the hills. I stopped this practice quite a few years ago as I’m sure it cannot be good for the environment. Now I either take the leaves and other garden waste to the council tip or I use it to fill in the many holes in the ‘garden’ which remain from the 4 years of building work which finished in May.  

My neighbour usually has several of these fires throughout the winter, but being a ‘man of the earth’ and a reasonably responsible Frenchman (albeit a bit mad on occasions when we cross swords), he waits until the smoke is blowing away from my house before he lights up. The problem is that if it’s blowing up the hill, it blows right into his wife’s washing line, but hey, that’s his problem. I never get close enough to him to smell his smokey shirt – thank god!

Given that everything is soaking, I don’t know how they start these fires. Wet leaves are not the easiest thing to light. My method was to throw a good dose of petrol on them, light a bit of paper, throw and run. But I suspect, these old Frenchies do something less risky (or should that be less stupid?). Whatever they do, it seems to be successful as witnessed by the numerous columns of smoke. Why don’t they let the blue skies hang around for a few days before covering it up or is more rain coming? Maybe they know something about the weather forecast which the ‘Weather Channel’ does not! C’est la vie as they say in Glasgow.

 

My Top Ten ‘Hits’ of 2009

Nope – not predictions. Not records or films which I reckon have a good chance of success. Not even shares which I think will make my fortune. This is my Top Ten list of people who should be ‘taken out’ and dealt with.  Or even dealt with by being taken out!

1.            Vladimir Putin. Now this guy is a weasel. I defy anybody to say that he doesn’t look like the sort of guy to whom you take an instant dislike (see picture). If he worked in your office, he’s the sort of guy who would smell, would sneak looks at the women and who nobody would talk to. He wouldn’t be invited to any of the after-work drinks and nobody, not even the most charitable person in the office, would have a good word to say about him. This guy will cause a major problem in the world before the CIA actually do something about it.

2.            Robert Mugabe. It takes some doing but this little creep has single handedly managed to completely ruin a country, which at one time was being touted as the most successful of the new, black-African states.  He’s not only ruined the country financially, with inflation running at several million percent, but his belligerent attitude to their illness epidemics beggars belief.

3.            Osama Bin-Laden. I probably don’t have to justify this inclusion in my list but I find it incredible that between them, the Americans and the British, with all their sophisticated equipment cannot find this guy. Maybe good old Barack will give him a call and we’ll see Osama wandering around the gardens at Camp David one day with Hilary hiding behind a tree with a sniper’s rifle.

4.            Bernie Madoff – I wouldn’t normally go for capitalist crooks but this guy takes the biscuit. Charities and individuals have suffered alike with his $50 billion fraud. It’s still to be determined where the money went but he probably lost it on bad stock market bets and he probably lost it in a ‘normal’ business sense but to continue to take millions of dollars from charities when he was already bust is despicable.

5.            My old architect Michel Juillard. This was the guy who built our pool in our other house and which is still giving problems several years after completion. At the time of the problem he refused to come back to work on the pool as he thought I would inflict serious bodily harm upon his person. How right he was. If I saw him crossing the road tomorrow, I would risk damaging my beloved Alfa and run the little turd over.

6.            Gordon Brown – how appropriate that he uttered the gaffe of the year when, in making an answer to Parliament, he said, ‘we’ve just saved the world…..’. He actually meant the ‘world banking system’, which he didn’t save but he believes in his own little warped, delusional world that he did! He doesn’t deserve the same fate as the others but his pension should be reduced to the level of those he’s screwed over the last ten years.

7.            Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand – (two UK ‘comedians’ in the loosest sense of the word) and not because of their pathetic little joke on radio but because they represent all that is wrong with the UK entertainment industry where average performers are paid mega-bucks ……. and this is not jealousy.

8.            Sir Ian Blair – the ex-commissioner of the London police force who turned a once proud and well-run institution into just another political organisation which became the laughing stock the world over.

9.            His buddy, the ex-mayor of London, Ken Livingstone, who made so many absolutely unbelievable utterances which caused apoplexy amongst the people he represented. In truth, he actually represented himself and his friends who all got huge handouts for doing very little from the multi-billion London budget. The problem is that although he would appear to be in a low profile situation at the moment, the creep is still raking in £10k a time for after-dinner speeches.

10.        And finally – yeah – financial organisations who totally screw up my life. From the taxman in Cardiff who treats me like something unsavoury he’s stepped on, to the bank computer (they say it’s the computer) who continually changes the name on my account so that every now and again, I can’t do a single thing because they don’t recognise my name ! Aaaaaagh !

 

It Wouldn’t Happen in the UK

 It’s typical. Just as I spot something I can blog about, the Times’ French Correspondent blogs it first. Still, as he probably has a readership of several hundred thousand and my loyal congregation consist mainly of my immediate family, I suppose he has the right to use the subject matter first.

It’s all about the French Justice Minister, Rachida Dati (pictured), one of Sarkozy’s hand picked ‘maidens’ with whom he filled several cabinet posts when he came to power. General consensus is that they are all incompetent but none more so than Rachida, but she seems to be a pretty shrewd political operator and her most recent stunt of returning to work 5 days after a caesarean, not only has the whole of France talking but probably means that she is unsackable, a fate she was heading for before she had a bouncing baby girl on the 3^rd Jan.

Now - I don’t intend to talk about her perceived incompetence. As she was a minor judge and is now the boss of all of France’s judges and I have yet to be called before the ‘beaks’ in France, I cannot comment, but nobody really gets to be even a minor judge without some degree of intelligence and common sense. It’s only when judges get old and grey do they lose their marbles – but she’s not at that stage yet – most certainly not. In fact she’s quite stunning but then again, good old Sarkozy does not go for plain women. Word is that when he was the Justice Minister (her post now) she fluttered her eyelashes and kept pestering him until he actually started taking her on official functions as his ‘escort’. The rest is probably down to good old lust.

And there is the story. Ms Dati is a single woman and refuses to say who the father of her new-born daughter is. There is enormous speculation about whether Sarkozy is the father. Not – the President, but his younger brother who visited her in hospital. Various other red-blooded males are also in the frame including the former Spanish Prime Minister but they are all declining the honour of admitting to fathering the child. 

Although the French press have it as a key political story, in the UK it would be a major scandal which would have every investigative reporter chasing every possible lead to uncover the father. In France, the privacy laws, which in the past have allowed Presidents to have mistresses who were widely known about and acknowledged, but not written about, prevent stories which are little more than polite speculation. In the UK, reporters would be following her every move and those of her many suitors but my money is on Sarkozy junior. I mean, what are big brothers for if not to pass on those gorgeous women they cannot date because they, themselves are already dating a supermodel?     

Animal Farm

I never read George Orwell’s classic novel. I was never asked to read it at school and have never got round to reading it since. It’s probably a bit out-of-date now anyway, but the book came to mind the other evening when our friend Marj came to visit us and decided after dinner, to stay overnight. Not a problem, except that she  was accompanied by her friend’s two terriers. Given that we have Shadow (our dog) and two cats (Bijou and Coco), it was a recipe for animal chaos but after a faltering start everything worked out fine. The dogs slept on a blanket in the studio with Marj and were perfectly behaved.

The terriers, named Stacy and P1, (don’t ask) remained outside on the terrace at the start of the evening and seemed to be reasonably well behaved. Like every other dog who visits, they scoffed Shadow’s food within seconds of spotting it and, as usual, he couldn’t have cared less. He just watched them with his different coloured eyes and probably thought, ‘why bother getting into a scrap over some dried biscuits – anyway there’s two of them’. Then his water went in a flash and again, despite the fact that he loves his bowl of fresh water, there was complete indifference on his part. He couldn’t have cared less.

The cats however, were quite different in their approach to these strangers. They wandered into the kitchen quite unaware that two terriers were watching their every move through the glass door but as they approached their food bowls, they saw these two little faces looking at them. and backs arched, and hair standing on end, they retreated to the safety of the kitchen door where they could make a quick escape down the stairs if necessary. Stacy and P1, on the other hand, live with cats and so their reaction was one of bemusement as the two cats peered round the corner of the kitchen cabinet with glaring eyes.

After a few minutes, the cats decided that a phased withdrawal was called for and Bijou (Coco’s mother) slipped quietly and slowly backwards until she had made it to the stairs , followed by Coco, who from our previous experience of her exploits obviously fancies herself as something of a streetfighter, or in the current vogue, a cagefighter and who backed off more slowly and with a more menacing look on her face.

The cats gone, we allowed Stacy and P1 into the kitchen along with Shadow, who had decided it was his time to lie in front of the fire and snore. But before Shadow had left the kitchen, the terriers started scoffing the cat’s food. Now this is a complete no-no in our house. If Shadow is caught even sniffing the cat’s food he is roundly chastised and banished from the kitchen, but here he just looked at the terriers enjoying their second meal of the night and his face was a picture. You could see the thoughts going through his doggy mind about the total injustice of these two strangers being allowed to do what is regarded as a major felony in the Hellon/Cupples household. Anyway, Shadow watched them finish off their ‘main course’ followed by the large saucer of milk which the cats had not touched and then he turned and headed despondently for his spot in front of the fire, only to find two little terriers now wanting to play. 

His nice quiet life had been shattered and the look on his face as the terriers got up to even more mischief was a sight to gladden the heart of any animal psychologist.

It’s truly a dog’s life. 

Winter Has Arrived

A fellow blogger, Jon Doust who writes in the Telegraph and who lives in south western France was complaining yesterday, that just like the UK, the merest dusting of snow in his area causes chaos with the roads unpassable, lack of provisions in stores, closures of schools and the like. You can read Jon Doust’s Blog here : http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/jon__doust

I looked at the forecast for our area. It was for light rain yesterday (Tuesday) but light rain/snow for today and that seemed to be reasonably accurate as it was obviously getting colder by the hour (we tell how cold it is by the thickness of the icicles hanging from Shadow’s whiskers). True enough – rain fell yesterday and then it got heavier and then it turned into soft hailstones which fell for a few hours and covered the ground in what, to any eye would look like snow.  

Then the phone calls started. School was being evacuated, not because of the snow fall in town but because some pupils live in the mountains and those pupils needed to get home before the conditions got any worse.

Now, the logical mind would question at this point why the school doesn’t just let those ‘mountain’ pupils go home and continue to educate the others. I’m afraid that’s just too simple a solution for the French education system. Nope – the school is emptied, several hundred kids are thrown onto the streets and then mums, dads and various other adults have to leave work or disrupt what they’re doing just to go and pick up the kids. The buses which would normally transport them to and from school, lie idle in the depot miles away. It’s crazy. 

And so this morning, Kitty came in to the bedroom at 6.30am asking if she had to go to school. The dilemma was that we could take both her and Guy the 8 miles to school, only to be turned away at the gate. It doesn’t take much for French teachers to stop teaching and a sprinkling of snow comes high up on the list. Other reasons include the fact that it’s the 2^nd Friday in the month, a Saint’s birthday, the sales are on in Cap 3000 (the mall) or they just can’t be bothered. C’est la vie!  

I got up and peered into the darkness. It looked like just another ‘normal’ wet morning, not that the weather has been foul recently. It was only on Sunday that J spent the best part of the afternoon sitting in the sun on the terrace but it does change quickly and indeed, the forecast is for ‘sunny weather’ from tomorrow onwards. We’ll see.

Anyway, up there in the darkness on the top of the mountain, I thought I could see ‘whiteness’ (see picture) and was just about to relay my advice that the kids should stay off school when Kitty wandered past me in that ‘zombie-like’ state children adopt before noon – and she went straight back to bed. It looked to me that a decision had already been taken!      

6th Time and Still Enjoying It

There’s not many films I’ve watched twice but Ryan’s Daughter I can watch time and time again. I first saw it when it first came out in 1970, going to the cinema in Glasgow with my girlfriend at the time and I remember being spellbound by the scenery, the acting and in particular, by Sarah Miles.

Strangely enough, I was thinking about Ryan’s Daughter only the other day as I sorted out all our DVD’s and actually remember being disappointed that I didn’t have a copy of this epic film, made by that epic filmmaker, David Lean. But I’ve seen it now, six times in all, four of them in the cinema and I’m still in awe, particularly as I’ve researched some of the background to the film and have become aware of the all the problems and issues between the actors and the director. It’s a wonder the film was ever finished with Christopher Jones (he plays the British Army Major) and David Lean having frequent arguments and the production crew waiting around, reputedly for a year, for the weather to get to the stage where they could film the storm scenes.

The film is mainly set in southern Ireland and although some of the beach scenes were shot in South Africa, most of the film is set around the Dingle Peninsula in County Kerry. The scenery, in particular the rocky shoreline and the storms which lash the coastline, are amazing and would draw anyone to visit that part of Ireland and although you might think that it looks a fairly remote area on a map, there is quite a tourist infrastructure set up with tourist offices, hotels and the like. This can only be for the reasons that (a) Ryan;s Daughter was shot there, (b) it’s the most westerly part of the British Isles and (c) the beaches are magnificent, albeit a trifle windswept.

However, back to the film and my lusting after Sarah Miles. Well, I was only 19 at the time and I was on a roll having just seen The Graduate and an utterly desirable Anne Bancroft, but it was the fact that although I fancied Sarah Miles like mad, bizarrely, I fancied her even more after Rosy Ryan (Sarah Miles character) had her hair shaved and was tarred and feathered for allegedly informing on the IRA. Weird!

The years pass and we all move on although none as far as Ms Miles, who appeared regularly in the tabloid newspapers in the late 70’s and 80’s and acknowledged, supported and even encouraged the various stories which appeared. One of the strangest was that she regularly drank her own urine, but as Ghandi and Nero did it (apparently), who am I to decry the practice.

Affairs with Lord Olivier, Steven Spielberg, marriages to the same guy (Robert Bolt) twice and a dead lover in her hotel bedroom all kept Ms Miles regularly in the news. Those were the days.

        

What Would Improve My Life

       

Well apart from winning the UK lottery (I don’t even win the £10 prizes anymore), or some Russian making an obscene offer for my house, the following (non financial) things would improve my life significantly (and remember, I’m being utterly selfish – this is for ME):

1.                  For my facial hair to stop growing. I hate shaving and it seems that I have to shave at the very last minute to go somewhere. Either that, or I’ve not shaved for a couple of days and I bump into somebody I know who really does think I’ve become the recluse I’m always threatening to be.

2.                  For the French to stop banging into my cars. It’s endemic. Everybody just bashes cars as if they were supermarket trolleys. I once saw a guy parking what was obviously a new £100,000+ Bentley in a supermarket car park. He was either new to France or mad.

3.                  For my acre of scrubland (or wood if you want to be posh) to be magically cleared one morning and for the hidden terraces to come alive and show the true contours of the land. When we bought the land some ten years ago, I reckoned it was going to be a 15 year job to clear it. Well – it still looks like a 15 year job!

4.                  For my neighbour (French and about 80 years old) to very generously offer me the mountains of cut wood which he has stored in his garden and which he never seems to use.

5.                  For France Telecom to actually provide the 8mb broadband link they promise in their contract. Dealing with FT is like punching a jelly, trying to grab an eel or in the case of trying to get somebody who actually wants to help you, like trying to find the proverbial needle in the haystack.

6.                  For my brother Robert to call me up one day and say that the idea of him coming to live out here isn’t so stupid after all. The fact that his ‘bedroom’ doesn’t have any windows and opens up into the garage is but a small problem which could be easily fixed.

7.                  For my team Rangers to win the League and the two Scottish cups and then win the Champions League the following year and for Celtic (our arch rivals) to be relegated – ha ha! And if you’re wondering why this would change my life, then the fact that my three sons are Celtic supporters should help you.

8.                  For my ‘bad back’ to stop complaining whenever I do something strenuous. For my ‘funny knee’ to stop aching when I ski and for my head to stop hurting when I drink too much.

9.                  For me to get some willpower going and start jogging (I hate jogging almost as much as I hate Celtic) so that I can get my six-pack back – ha ha -  double 24 case is more like it!

10.              And finally, for J to actually put things away after her. I wont go into details but ……. no I wont go into details.