Put It On Facebook – We Have A New Dishwasher

A few months ago, our relatively new dishwasher went kaput accompanied by a rather large explosion. Although less than two years old, it was well out of warranty as J had bought it when the house was being built and had stored it in the garage for about a year before it was installed. Bad mistake!

It had only been in service for about six months when the bottom drawer (it’s a two drawer top-loading model) stopped working. This fault caused the top drawer to stop working, but by researching this piece of mechanical crap on the internet I was able to get the top bit working again.

We called out a repair guy who stripped the bottom section and stood there shaking his head. Major problem – the heating element had gone although I couldn’t see any signs of burnt wires. Anyway, he wanted €150 for his visit and another €150-€300 for fixing the element. I said goodbye to him and showed him the door, after reluctantly giving him the ‘call-out’ fee of €150. Added to the original €900 we (sorry I) paid for this machine it was becoming a rather expensive bit of useless kitchen equipment. Anyway, the top drawer continued to work satisfactorily until the night of the great explosion and then it was no more.

Enter the Marigolds as Guy and I were regularly up to our elbows in suds as we washed the dishes by hand. I don’t think J knows how to put Marigolds on – I never saw her at the kitchen sink!  Despite my initial enthusiasm for washing dishes by hand I quickly got fed up with the evening ritual. By this time, J was tearing her hair out begging for a new machine which I refused to buy and so it went on Facebook. ‘I am dishwasherless’, was the posting.

 Well you’d have thought that J’s extended family in Manchester had been wiped out by a rogue meteor such was the outpouring of grief and sympathy for her plight.   

Given the original price of the dishwasher and the fact that I thought I knew what the problem was (a couple of small motors), I called out another repairman. Like the first he stood there shaking his head and kept using the word, ‘impossible’, over and over again.

He made a couple of calls and said it again, ‘impossible’. ‘What’s impossible’ I pleaded. ‘I’m not allowed to touch this machine because someone else has taken parts off of it. It’s impossible’, he said.

By this time I was fearing another €150 call-out fee but he refused to take any payment. I think he was embarrassed.  I gave him a nice bottle of wine and sent him on his way.

And so, within an hour of the repair man leaving, the internet was buzzing and a new dishwasher was on its way. Thankfully, one which does not have flashing lights, does not have two drawers and does not have banks of sensors and electronic chips. It’s a straightforward, plain old dishwasher and as a sort of thanks, my wife was kind enough to put my unlimited generosity on Facebook. ‘I’ve got a dishwasher’, was the post.

Life is so exciting on Facebook.  

 

The Escape

It wasn’t like Steve to be a bit down. Ever since I’d know him he was chipper, would talk to anyone about anything.  Dee, too, was not her usual self. The confident American hot-shot lawyer who could tear you to shreds in an instant with her tongue, was now strangely subdued.  It was the drugs of course. The daily diet of drugs which did it.

Tom had stopped taking his drugs. They were plastic coated and so he could stick them under his tongue and spit them out later without the staff knowing. He’d stopped taking them for about a week now and things were becoming clearer. He’d almost worked out how he, Steve and Dee had been ‘forced’ into this place, this laboratory, or hospital or clinic or whatever it was. They had been on a night out reliving the days when they were BT’s ‘big deal’ team.  Those were the days!  

Yes – they’d been for a curry and somehow they’d been drugged and carted off to this place. It was irrelevant now. What he needed to do was get out of there. He’d tried it once before. He wasn’t sure when, but he’d made it as far as the main reception before the guards gently escorted him back to the room where he, Steve, Dee and a few others spent their days in beds facing the same way. Not speaking. Not smiling. Not doing anything. Every now and then, one of them would be wheeled out and would return later and they would not wake for another 24 hours. And then there would be more drugs.

He’d told Steve about his plan to leave and hoped he’d understand but his glazed eyes were not a positive sign. ”‘I’m doing a runner’, he’d told Steve. ‘I cant take you with me but I’ll be back’. Steve nodded but Tom was sure he did not have a clue what he was on about.

It didn’t take long to find a locker with male clothing and a white doctor’s coat in it and he changed into them in the nearest toilet. They fitted too. ‘Just like in the movies’, he thought. As he wandered the corridors looking for the door to the grass square which would lead him to reception and hopefully escape, he noticed the various operating theatres. There was one for kidneys and one for livers and lungs and yet another for hearts. It hit him immediately. They were all guinea pigs. Human’s drugged to the eyeballs and then used for transplant operations to teach medical students how to do it properly without risking hospital patient’s lives. God knows how many kidneys, lungs  and other organs had been in and out of his body. It didn’t bear thinking about.

Eventually, he found the door leading to the grass square. He remembered this from before. He’d gone only a few yards across the grass when a hand grabbed his shoulder. He turned fearing the worst. Fearing he’d be taken back like before but was relieved to see Steve. Steve thrust a few bottles of drugs into his hands and said he’d need them.  Poor Steve – he turned and wandered away in his zombie-like state, heading back to his room, his bed, his prison.

Tom crossed the square and then discarded his white coat before entering the reception room. The clock said it was 3.30am and of course it was quiet. The security guards were in their room at the back of reception. As usual, they were not focused – reading newspapers or playing Solitaire on their PCs no doubt.  The main door was right in front of the security booth. ‘No way out there’, he thought, but there was another glass door at the side of reception which, although bolted, might be worth trying. Tom looked around the room and spotted the one moveable thing which might be heavy enough to break the glass. He picked up the metal stool and threw it at the centre of the door which shattered into a million pieces. He ran outside and looked for the best way to go to escape the guards who would be following him. Luckily there were some streets close by which had lanes and alleyways leading off them. He ran down one, turned left, then right and kept going. He didn’t have a clue where he was. It was definitely London – a street sign confirmed that but which way to go? The guards would be in cars by now, scouring the streets looking for him. He had no coat or jacket so would be easily spotted. He moved along the doorways, all the time looking for a bus heading in his direction, any direction! Damn Ken Livingstone for bringing in buses with doors – what he’d give to see a good old London Routemaster with its open back door. He could have jumped on to one of those and pleaded with the conductor to let him ride without paying.

As he half ran, half walked, all the time with searing pain in his sides and stomach, Tom wondered how he would tell his story. It sounded incredible. A hospital, where drugged, kidnapped people were being used as transplant guinea pigs. Even Julie would think he was bonkers. Anyway – how long had he been away? No idea.

All he wanted was a tube station or a taxi. Eventually he found a station - Seven Sisters. He was in North London but, of course, it was closed. He was an idiot. Everybody knew the tubes did not run through the night.

He was fading fast. The pain was excruciating. Then he spotted a taxi dropping some people off. He waited until they paid their fare and then started to get in the cab but the lady driving it said she was heading home it was the end of her shift. He got out and sank to the floor. That was it – he would lie there until they found him and took him back. He didn’t care anymore. The drugs were not so bad after all he thought.

Then I woke myself up. Yup - it was a dream. A horrible one. What did it mean? It probably means that J is watching too many medical soaps on TV! 

42 Years On

We lived in one of the worst areas of Glasgow. It wasn’t planned like that – it was planned as a new start to take families out of the grime of early sixties Glasgow city and move them to the fresher air of the country. The problem was that whilst the houses, the streets and the schools in Easterhouse were all brand new, nobody had thought to put in any recreational facilities for the thousands of kids who were suddenly transported into a social wilderness. No parks. No football pitches. No libraries. Nothing!

But it wasn’t all bad.   There was the canal where kids fell in with astonishing regularity. There were the two lochs where you could fish if you were prepared to walk the 3 miles to get to them and then there were the floodlit streets, illuminated by yellow sodium lights which allowed the boys to play football late into the night. Adults, of course, objected to normal size footballs battering into their cars and so we played with tennis balls and that’s why Scottish footballers of the time were hailed as ‘tanner-ba’ players. The ball cost a tanner – a sixpence and if you could play football with a tanner-ba, you could play with anything and anybody.

We used to play directly outside my house as the street was straight, was well lit by street lamps and the residents usually took notice when we pleaded, ‘aw mister – don’t park your car there, that’s right on our pitch’.  

And so we played our games, night after night. One side Rangers- the other side Celtic.

And just occasionally a Mr Jim Craig would pass us by and encourage us. That Mr Craig was to become one of the first British footballers to win the cherished European Cup with Celtic in 1967. A trophy not even the mighty Liverpool or even mightier Manchester United had come close to winning, although once Celtic broke the deadlock, Man Utd won it the following year and of course, Liverpool won it several times in the 70s and 80s.

Although a top class footballer, Jim Craig lived in a rented council house just round the corner from the Cupples’. I remember once going and knocking on his door to ask for his autograph. His wife answered and I sheepishly asked if Mr Craig would be so kind as to sign the grubby bit of paper I handed over. He did of course – he was a good guy despite being a Celtic player.

After he won the European Cup, he must’ve moved house because I don’t recall seeing him around but although I was a Rangers fanatic, it was quite something of a schoolboy boast to say I lived ‘next’ to a European Cup winner.   

The thing which strikes me now is that Jim Craig’s equivalent today would be earning well over £1 million per year as a footballer and would be staying in one of the wealthier suburbs of Glasgow. To imagine a star player today living in a council house is unthinkable. And he wasn’t just a footballer. Jim Craig was a qualified dentist but decided football was a more interesting career than looking at the nicotine stained teeth of your average Glaswegian.

So, as Manchester United head into their Champions League final tonight, it will all be a totally different scenario from when Celtic triumphed over Inter Milan on May 25^th 1967. The first British team to win it and with a team full of players, not one of whom was from foreign shores. In fact not a single player was from outside the Glasgow boundary, they all lived within 30 minutes of Parkhead. Astonishing!

 

The Logic of the French

One of the more liberated aspects of French life is for youngsters over the age of 14 to be allowed to ride 50cc scooters on the public roads once they’ve sat a test which encompasses both classroom and practical, on the road, work.

As I stood before the girl organizing the date of Guy’s test, attempting to ask her in my very bad French what was required all she could say was ‘make sure he brings his scooter with him’.

‘But he can’t cause he’s not passed the test. He’s not allowed to ride it until he’s passed the test’, I replied. ‘The police might stop him. Don't you supply him with a scooter to do the test?'

‘No monsieur, we don't supply scooters if he doesn’t bring his scooter, he can’t take the test’, she said.

I left shaking my head at French logic and €150 poorer - the fee for the test!     

It's Another Bank Holiday

It's a UK Bank Holiday today so there's no blog. Despite residing in France, I still like the thought of UK Bank Holidays so I'm having the day off.

But I do want to report that my Blog was hacked into over the weekend and a faked picture of me totally wasted and sleeping under my neighbour's table was put onto my 'welcome' page. I'm consulting the authorities to see what can be done about this intrusion. Thankfully I was able to sober up from our 4-day Baby Shower party and return my Blog site to its normal state.

More about the party next week.

The Icy Cold Stare of a Killer

Ever looked a murderer in the eyes and no, I’m not talking about my wife again !

I was reading the Daily Record on-line the other day and the on-going activities of Ian ‘Blink’ McDonald (pictured). Glasgow’s most notorious criminal was leading the front pages once again. Within the space of three days there had been two separate attempts on his life and this will undoubtedly continue until he’s in a wooden box, six feet down, but it was a mention of one of his previous crimes which made me realise I’d come face to face with the guy a few years back.

Below is McDonald’s summary from his ‘CV’:

Ian "Blink" McDonald is one of the most infamous gangsters in Scotland's bloody history. Life long friend of Paul Ferris, Blinks’ chequered career has involved armed robbery, several allegations of murder and turf wars. Highly respected throughout the UK by the criminal fraternity, Blink is regularly described by the Scottish press as a vicious psychopath.

So now you have the picture of the guy but let me explain where I ‘met’ him. It wasn’t a pleasant experience.

Not long after I started work with BT in London, I used to pop down to the Old Bailey, London’s Central Criminal Court, which is reserved for the highest profile criminal trials. After a few visits I got to know the process for getting into the public gallery of the more interesting trials. It’s not always possible, unless you know the names of the people on trial, to work out what trial is which, so the idea is to ask the officers outside each courtroom what’s happening. They’re usually very good and will tell you if a trial is having a long legal argument (boring), is in the opening addresses (somewhat boring) or is in the final stages when the tension starts to rise.

On this particular day back in 1992, as I was wandering from court to court looking for something interesting, I came across Court No 6 with two armed police officers outside the public gallery. I asked the court officer if I could get in and he replied that as it was a ‘highly secure trial’ I could only gain access if I had my passport on me. Now it just so happened that I had my passport on me, as at that time I was commuting back and forth to Nice, so he was rather surprised when I produced it.

When I entered the court there was only one other person in the gallery, a rather attractive, but heavily made up woman. Not long after, there was a short recess for some legal argument and as the court emptied, apart from the lawyers and the judge, I sidled over to the woman and asked her what the trial was about. She was a bit reluctant to talk but I managed to get something about ‘6 Scottish guys on trial for bank robbery’.

The court then reconvened and the defendants piled into their benches which were just below where I was sitting in the public gallery. I noticed one of the defendants staring at me with a rather menacing look on his face. It didn’t take me long to figure out I was actually sitting next to this ‘gangster’s moll’ so I moved over a bit but he kept looking at me. It was quite disconcerting despite the fact that there was no way he could get to me, but yes, his cold staring eyes made me feel quite queasy.

In the couple of hours I sat through the trial, the alleged crime was laid bare – Blink McDonald (yes – the very same and the guy who looked at me in the court) was on trial with five of his mates for Bank Robbery. They’d made their way south to break into a branch of Nat West in Torquay and had tunnelled their way through from an adjoining shop on the Sunday, with the intention of surprising the bank staff on the Monday morning. But what they didn’t realise was that it was a Bank Holiday and when the bank eventually opened on the Tuesday, they were rather upset.

Unfortunately, there was a problem at the bank and one of the staff was shot, but lived. The police were hot on their trail but McDonald and his pals made it back to Scotland. Rather unprofessionally however, they had left a set of bank plans and other highly incriminating evidence in their caravan which they stayed in for a couple of weeks prior to the robbery. The caravan site owner recognised them, their prints were all over the bank plans, but most amusing of all was that a team of builders who were working on that Bank Holiday Monday saw McDonald and his cronies popping out of the bank for food several times that day! Just a bit suspicious.

McDonald got 16 years but was released after 10.

I did a previous blog on the gangsters in Glasgow – link below.

http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2009_02_16_archive.html

Here Comes Summer

Now if I was in any way IT literate I’d have the song, ‘Here Comes Summer’, playing in the background as you read this. You remember – Jerry Keller. Never heard of him? Well he’s the one hit wonder who wrote and performed ‘Here Comes Summer’.  Anyway, my fellow blogger Allison in the US has music on her blog and I’m soooo jealous. Maybe she’ll take pity on me and tell me how it’s done. My botched solution would be to have a link to ‘Here Comes Summer’ on You Tube and you open a second version of this blog and click on the link. Why not ? Let’s try it – remember don’t close this page – open another and click on the link below.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sePcM7QbraQ

Right – now we’ve got that working let’s get back to the main subject – summer’s here! It’s not rained for a few days and there are certain things which undoubtedly mean the hot days are here to stay. I mean I can actually go into the pool now without needing mouth to mouth resuscitation and a thermal blanket when I get out. La famille is now eating outside on the terrace every lunchtime and evening – this is great cause it keeps the mess outside and do you know – we stay outside talking rather than all rush to see what’s on the telly. Shadow sleeps out every night now – preferring the cool tiles to the carpet in front of the fireplace, and Tan and Angie (the neighbours) are spending more evenings out on their terrace which is bad news cause I’ll be tempted to go over and join them. You remember – lots of drink and sore heads !!

But the main sign of summer arriving is the two world-famous  May events held down here on the Côte d’Azur, the Cannes Film Festival and the Monaco Grand Prix

The Film Festival has started already and of course, after some dodgy weather, amazingly it all cleared up for the film makers and stars, just like you would expect it to. The red carpets are out, the maga-yachts are fighting for mooring space, there’s not a parking space to be had in Cannes (pictured)  and the restaurants are busy, but not as busy in recent years apparently.  The credit crunch even gets to these people. But whatever, the fact is that planeloads of blonde wannabees, looking to secure a film-producer boyfriend, will be jetting into Cannes which is at its finest during the festival . It’s a sure sign that summer is here. Here is a link to a short film showing Cannes during the festival. It was made by some friends who have a website which gives a true taste of this part of the world. The link to their AMB website is at the end. Now you need to end the You Tube song before you play the video otherwise there will be a clash !

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m12aHwiZXGk&fmt=22

The other famous event, is of course, the Monaco Grand Prix, held in the streets of the Principality and causing most of the residents who are on the circuit to either move out for the weekend, or rent their apartments, most of them achieving the equivalent of 6 months rent in those 3, incredibly noisy days.

For weeks beforehand, the street circuit will have been a hive of frantic activity with council workers (probably the best dressed in the world !) putting up the steel barriers which define the track. They will also make sure that there are no lumps and bumps in the tarmac which will, for those 3 days, find cars running over it at speeds approaching 180 mph. The mega-yachts will have moved round from Cannes in a convoy of sumptuous largesse and will again fight for mooring rights, and the restaurants which looked at Cannes with envy, will now enjoy their busiest period of the year.  

I was lucky enough to attend the Grand Prix a few years ago and apart from it being probably the noisiest and most uncomfortable sporting event I have ever sat through, it was also the most exciting and glamorous.  An indication of what it’s like for spectators is defined by what the vendors sell you as you sit in the stands – ear plugs and sun cream! Says it all really.

Here’s the link to that great Côte d’Azur website AMB. Enjoy a browse.

http://www.amb-cotedazur.com/

And here’s a link to some quirky photographs taken at the Cannes Film Festival which appeared in the Daily Telegraph.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/culturepicturegalleries/5351119/The-Cannes-Film-Festival-from-another-angle.html

Now That’s What I Call A Fine

What was the last fine you got - £60 for speeding?  £30 for dropping litter? What about €1.1 billion? I’ll say that again - €1,100,000,000 or, in English, Eleven hundred million euros or even one thousand, one hundred million euros. It’s eye watering but that’s the fine just handed out by the European Commission to Intel, the computer chip maker. And this is only one of the fines it has received for abusing it’s dominance of the computer chip market. Apparently, they (Intel) have been making sure most of the computers built today have Intel chips in them by ‘bribing’ the manufactures.

Neelie Kroes, the EC Competition Commissioner, said: "Intel has harmed millions of European consumers by deliberately acting to keep competitors out of the market for computer chips for many years." She said Intel had abused its dominance of the microchip market to bully its customers into buying only its chips in the hope of squeezing Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), its nearest competitor, out of the market.

The EU executive said Intel paid computer makers to postpone or cancel plans to launch products that used AMD chips, paid illegal, secret rebates so computer makers would use mostly or entirely Intel chips, and paid a major retailer to stock only computers with its chips.

AMD, which alerted various regulatory bodies to Intel’s nasty little tricks,  has already successfully convinced competition authorities in Japan and South Korea to rule against Intel. Intel is appealing against the Japanese ruling.

Under European legislation, Ms Kroes could have fined Intel up to 10pc of the company's annual revenue which, based on sales of $37.6bn (£24.5bn) last year, could result in a maximum fine of almost $4bn so a 25% ‘hit’ is not a bad result!

Today's fine eclipses the previous record €497m fine brought against Microsoft in 2004 for freezing out competitors

Intel Corporation is the world's largest semiconductor company and the inventor of the x86 series of microprocessors, the processors found in most PCs. Intel was founded in 1968 and was an early developer of memory chips and this represented the majority of its business until the early 1980s. During the 1990s, Intel invested heavily in new microprocessor designs fostering the rapid growth of the PC industry. During this period Intel became the dominant supplier of microprocessors for PCs, and was known for aggressive and sometimes controversial tactics in defence of its market position, as well as a struggle with Microsoft for control over the direction of the PC industry.

The problem I have is that whilst I hate ‘dominant market abuse’, and Microsoft are right up there with the worst of them, there’s little I can do about it. I could buy a Mac instead of a PC with Windows but you’ve got all the problems with compatibility and the other thing is that people would think you were Gay! And try buying a PC without Intel chips. There are some with AMD chips or other lesser known manufacturer’s chips but they are few and far between and tend to be ‘specialist’ machines for gamers etc.

So, for the foreseeable future we’ll all still buy Intel chipped PCs with Windows software and not think too much about it and we’ll leave the  regulatory authorities to lavish huge fines on them when they’re caught manipulating the market. Problem is, some of the €1.1 billion is mine – PCs would undoubtedly be cheaper if there was fair competition – so what are you going to do with the €1.1 billion fine Neelie? I think I’d like it to go to charity – maybe buying AMD PCs with Linux for children in underdeveloped countries.  

For Sale - Only €7m

 I’ve said before that one of the most useful things out here is the web site called AngloInfo which not only supplies a myriad of information on everything from when you can burn your garden rubbish to the travails of buying a house or setting up a small business. It also has a ‘bring and buy’ forum where members can sell things which are no longer required in their households, including the house itself.

I’ve been lucky enough to buy a whole host of things from other members of the forum, ranging from cars to dishwashers, garden furniture to scooters and not one of them has been a bad buy. I even managed to rent my house through Anglo with scores of people asking for details within minutes of the house being posted there. It’s a great resource for ex-pats but sometimes people just expect too much from Anglo. Read the following advert and see what you think.  

A luxurious 450 sqm villa in a private and secure domain with a beautiful view of the bay of Cannes.

Luxuriously renovated, the property floor space is 450 sqm plus a 50 sqm guard’s house. This propriety with generous volumes is situated on flat land of about 2900 sqm. The property has a pool, pool house and sea and mountains view. Located in an absolutely quiet domain.

Price: €7,100,000 euros (Can be sold furnished or unfurnished).

€7.1 million euros! Who do they think reads Anglo – the rich and the hoi polloy? Maybe they’re just trying to sell it without engaging an estate agent, the fees of whom are absolutely astronomical. In the UK the normal agency fee can be anywhere from 1.5% to 2.5%, or maybe even 3% if you employ a fancy-dan agency. In France it can be from 6% to 7% on a good day – that’s €426,000 for selling that house described above! Maybe Angloinfo wasn’t such a bad idea after all?

No wonder the estate agents all have fancy houses and drive about in Porsches!

The Obama Burger

Did you see the pictures of President Obama heading off for a burger a couple of weeks ago? It was hugely impressive and hilarious at the same time.

I assume he just decided he fancied a burger for lunch but rather than get a flunky to go out and get one he decided to head off to Ray’s Hell Burger Bar but, of course, the whole motorcade had to be fired up and head down to Ray’s, black limo after black limo, stretching almost the whole length of the street.

I was quite impressed by this common touch  from the ‘most powerful man’ on the planet, who, I’m sure was trying to make it look like a normal activity of his, but watching Obama order a burger made me feel that he hadn’t done it before, or at least, not recently.

He stumbled over what sort of burger to order and then asked about the kind of mustard they had. I’m sure most American burger bars and their clients know exactly what sort of mustard they serve, but good old Barack wanted Dijon, which seemed to surprise a few people and he got a bit of flak for it in the press. I know that when I reach the counter of a burger bar I know exactly what I want – a double bacon cheeseburger with extra mayo.

Anyway – whether planned or on the spur of the moment, his visit to Ray’s confirmed what many of us like about the guy – he’s normal in some respects. I just wish he’d had ketchup or mayo instead of mustard! For the record, Obama had a cheddar cheese burger.

But what about our other ‘world’ leaders? What would they do at lunchtime?

We know that President Sarkozy favours his 3-Michelin Star restaurant (The Hotel Bristol) 200 yards from the Elyseé Palace where he lunches regularly. I bet he doesn’t have a cheeseburger, well not now. Apparently, Sarko has been trying to up his sophistication level since he met and married the very sophisticated Carla Bruni, even taking an interest in the arts which were anathema to him before he got hitched.

And what about Gordon Brown. He’s such a workaholic that the phrase, ‘lunch is for wimps’ might have been uttered by him long before Gordon Gekko said it in the film Wall Street. But we do know that his favoured snack is some sandwiches with the boys in the bunker talking about football, although as a Raith Rovers fan what he thinks he knows about football is anyone’s guess.

The other thing about Brown though, is that he’s a cannibal. Rumour has it that he keeps biting the heads off of his staff. I bet he’s the kind of guy who, when eating a jelly baby bites the head off first!

And then there’s Angela Merkel of Germany whom I do not envy one bit. Having worked just outside Munich for six months I struggle to think of one decent meal I had there. One particularly disgusting meal was hot smoked salmon with mashed potatoes and sauerkraut. Yuck. Poor Angela.

I would proudly take all of them to the Midi in the village for homemade quiche and frites followed by their hot chocolate and pear tart. 

 

Vence – The Best Place In Europe ?

Vence is our local town. It’s about 8 miles east of Tourrettes and has a population of about 17,000 which rises significantly in the summer months when tourists flock to see its history and art and to eat in its multitude of restaurants.

It’s easy to be a bit blasé about your local villages and towns but Vence is not to be ignored. It’s been an occupied site since before 230AD when the Romans decided to settle there and call it Vintium, a fact confirmed by pillars outside the small cathedral, which house a stone tablet, dated 239AD and dedicated to the Roman Emporer Gordian III.

Over the centuries that followed, the Ligurians followed by the aristocratic Villeneuve family turned Vence into a walled town, the battlements of which still stand today as do the five gateways which provided access to the inner part of the town. It was the Villeneuves though who put the place on the map.  

In the early 1100's, Romee de Villeneuve who,  though only the Baron of Vence, managed to marry his four daughters rather well. One married the King of England, the next the King of France, the third the King of Naples and the fourth the German Emperor! Needless to say, Vence, although small, benefited from these royal marriages and became an important trading post.

Today, Vence is a prosperous, multi-cultural town with a wonderful geographic position sitting below the last vestiges of the Alps and overlooking the Mediterranean, only twenty minutes from Nice and the airport. By some reports, Vence is one of the most livable towns in Europe. It has wonderful views down to the coast and one of the Continent's best climates but, it is its history associated with art which brings in the visitors by the busload.

Many artists lived and worked in the area, in particular Monet, Chagall and Matisse. Matisse spent quite a few years in Vence being cared for by nuns in a local convent (the Rosarie Chapel) which he redesigned in his own particular style when he recovered from his illness, as a way of paying the order back for their kindness. A link to the Rosarie Chapel is below.

http://www.vence.fr/The-Rosaire-Chapel.html

 

In addition to the Chapel, which is like one big Matisse exhibition, the town itself has an exceptional art collection, among which, is a collection of Matisse lithographs.

It is the amazing light which attracted the impressionists, and today’s budding artists, who come from all over the world to paint the historic buildings, the fields of poppies and lavender, and the stunning coastal scenes.

So what is it about the light which is so special? I have to admit I didn’t understand it at first until I noticed that on some days, generally after it’s been windy, the side of the valley across from us seems incredibly close and the colours of the trees and the sky take on a particular vibrancy that’s just not there every day.

So the Americans, Germans, Italians and English flock to Vence to be welcomed by the friendly Venceois, the terrific restaurants and the Maisons de Presse ...the places where one buys newspapers... which sell the London Times, the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal as well as the leading newspapers from Frankfurt, Rome, Switzerland and Belgium.

So, we’re very lucky to have such a special place on our doorstep. It’s just a pity it’s not big enough to have a proper football team - then everything would be perfect!

And that last comment will have J calling me ‘a pathetic heathen’!

 

La Centre Administratif (The Prefecture)

I had to reregister Guy’s scooter yesterday and I wasn’t looking forward to it – one little bit!

I set off on my Honda scooter mid-morning, dropping Guy off at the train station so he could work in his dad’s office for the afternoon and then set about trying to find the Centre Administratif by the back roads – scooters with an engine slightly larger than a lawn mower are not allowed anywhere near the motorway. After a few u-turns I managed to find it and headed into the section which deals with all things to do with foreigners and vehicles.

The campus looks like the Drumchapel housing estate in Glasgow, which Billy Connelly once described as ‘a desert with windows’. It’s all anonymous, soulless, concrete blocks and it must be one of the worst postings for a French civil servant.

I’d last visited it six years ago to register my Alfa and on that occasion, it took some three hours to complete the process which was an improvement on the time I had to get a work permit, which took 3 visits totalling some 6 hours! C’est la vie en France!

It was noon when I arrived and any hope that all the Frenchies would be having lunch was misplaced when I got to the ‘Carte Grise’ section (grey card – registration document). Thankfully, they have the first booth manned (or even ladied) by a person who checks that you have the right paperwork – not that it’s completed correctly – just that you have the prerequisite number of documents. A quick glance at mine and all was in order – I was given my queue ticket. Number 607.

I rushed into the communal waiting area, looked at the electronic queue board and saw they were at number 571 – I was 36^th in the queue! Being a nerd, I worked out that the seven booths were handling cases at the rate of one every 10 minutes or so which meant about a 50 minute wait!

I wandered outside to see if I could have a quick lunch but apart from a coffee machine dispensing cups the size of a thimble, there was nothing – not even a chocolate vending machine. Billy Connelly was right – it was a desert! This wouldn’t do.

I wandered from office block to office block looking for the staff canteen (or restaurant as they call them in France) and found it in the 3^rd building. I got as far as the entrance, looked at the menu and was heading towards the stack of trays when I noticed that everybody was swinging their ID badges – foiled! I suppose that even if I’d got in, ordering my steak ‘bien cuit’ (well cooked) would have given the game away, so I trudged despondently back to the Carte Grise section.

A look at the queue board – number 577! They’d managed to process precisely six people in the 15 minutes I’d been away looking for some grub.

I managed to find a seat and started reading the registration documents and then I read them again and again. I studied my water bill (you need a utility bill to prove your address) and then my mobile telephone bill (just in case they didn’t believe the water bill). I was just about to start reading my UK driving licence when the TV in the room burst into life. But why start it half way through a film?

It didn’t need sound. It was obviously about a bank robber who had managed to escape from a prison van and who had taken a female hostage in her own home. He then ‘persuaded’ her to drive him through the police cordons but as he hid in the back seats with a gun pointed at her and she winked vigorously and nodded backwards when the police stopped her, they obviously thought she had a severe case of Tourrettes syndrome and waved her through.

It was just getting to the exciting part when my number flashed up – booth number three.

Well – the face on the woman could have stopped a runaway bus but she had the most enormous pair of boob-a-loobs (just in case the kids read this) and the lowest neckline I’ve seen for years. Where to look? Look at her face and she’d be upset. Look at her chest and she’d be even more upset so I handed my sheaf of papers over and looked at the ceiling.

After a few minutes she handed me a slip of paper which said ‘bon operation’ which means everything was in order and ordered me to the ‘caisse’ – the payment desk.

Off I went and was called up almost immediately. 30 seconds passed and the lady burst into a monologue, not a word of which I understood. She saw my puzzlement and asked if I understood. I said, ‘a little’. So she started again – same words only slower this time. It was something about the new Carte Grise being in the reservoir (printing queue maybe?) and said it would be posted to me. I offered her the requisite 22 euros and she replied that it was free and wished me a good day.

Now at this point, I got a trifle worried. You are supposed to get a new carte grise on the day. In my blog of 24^th April, I told the story of buying Guy’s scooter in what appeared to be a rather shady deal and said it ‘was all too good to be true’. At that precise moment I could see me wandering outside, being surrounded by gun-wielding riot police, thrown to the ground, handcuffed and dragged off to Grasse prison for possessing a less than legal PGO Big Max.

No sooner had I reached home and told J the story and said the police were no doubt on their way, a police siren sounded on the road below.

Watch this space!

Pigs At The Trough

I had a blog posting written about something French but it’ll keep. It’s another political bloggit today I’m afraid, but hang in there – there’s quite a good ditty at the end, if I say so myself.

It’s a laugh a minute in UK politics at the moment. Well, it would be if it wasn’t costing us UK taxpayers a fortune for all these things the average MP (of all denominations) racks up on his or her expenses.

I often wondered why people gave up normal, everyday lives to become a politician at Westminster. Was it the dream of helping people by passing good laws and making a difference? Or, was it that duty called and they simply wanted to serve their country?

Not a bit of it. It was the huge amount of dosh they could rake in by fiddling the ultra-loose House of Commons expense and allowance system. 

Think I’m being a bit all-encompassing or generalistic here, especially to the newer MPs?  Forget it – there have been dozens of reports of new MP’s, only through Black Rod’s door a couple of months, racking up thousands of pounds for ridiculous items which their poor constituents would just love to have someone pay for. The ironic thing is that it’s the constituents who are paying.

Anyway – not wishing to labour the point (get it – ha ha !), I thought I’d finish with this little ditty (dreamt up by your’s truly) which can be sung, or at least recited, to that lovely song, sung by Julie Andrews in the Sound of Music. …….. My Favourite Things. 

Here's the original so you can recall the tune.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dw2VX5wQYQg

 

Bath plugs and porn films, kit-kats and comics

Light bulbs and loo rolls and things alcoholic

Moat cleaning done at the start of the Spring

These are a few of my favourite things

Painting of ceilings and TVs and dresses

Artex removed and replaced without stresses

Bags of manure at the other house in Tring

These are a few of my favourite things

Tampons and Hi-FIs and mortgage relief

Cleaning and pressing without any grief

Porticos built with a doorbell that rings

These are a few of my favourite things

When Sky News calls

When the polls drop

When I’m feeling sad

I simply expense all my favourite things

And then I don’t feeeeeeel soooooo bad

All this came to me as I ripped my hunky body to shreds down in the jungle. I toiled and sweated (yes I did) as I tried to regain control of my land back from the Japanese Bind Weed and the brambles, and all the while I knew that somewhere in a rural idyll on the Sussex Downs, some greedy git of an MP (probably Tory cause they’ve got all the land) was actually getting a team of gardeners to do the same to his overgrown acres back in the UK …… and I’m paying for it through my taxes. It’s a bloody scandal!

Low Cost Airlines and the Cup Final

As soon as Manchester United made it through to the European Champions League final in Rome on Wednesday 27^th May, Easyjet started its rip-off programme.

It’s likely that the airline had already upped its prices prior to the game last Tuesday on the basis that even if Arsenal had won, there would have been a huge demand from London-based fans to get to Rome, but the price hikes were simply eye watering. 

I’m sure most of you know that Easyjet are supposed to operate a fares policy which has a number of cheap seats, some not-quite-so-cheap seats and lastly, expensive seats for the last-minute travellers. As the cheap seats are taken, the fares move up and up so, by the time the last few seats are available, the fares for these seats can be several times the price paid by the people who booked several months in advance. It’s a good model, operated by most of the so-called low-cost airlines and encourages early booking and basically ‘punishes’ those last-minute flyers. 

Now I’m a fan of Easyjet. I probably wouldn’t have been able to move down to the South of France quite so quickly as I did in 1999 if Easyjet had not been operating the Nice-Luton route. Their customer service is, unusually for a low-cost airline, quite good, and in the ‘old days’ it was actually quite fun to fly with the guy who owned the airline – good old Stelios.

But, I’m afraid their money-grabbing exercise last week left a very bad taste in the mouth. Let me give you some examples.

Easyjet don’t fly from either Manchester or Liverpool to Rome. Probably the best routes then are for the Man Utd fans to get to London and then fly from there.

Flying out on the 26^th and returning on the 28^th (the game is on the 27^th) costs a staggering £700+ return – London-Rome.

Flying out on the 12^th May and returning the following day costs only £150.

Assuming these last-minute flights are pretty full and therefore the fares shown are at the top end of the scale, Easyjet are basically ripping off passengers for £550 each!

OK – so they’re a commercial enterprise and need to make a profit but they already make a reasonable profit at the lower fares so raising them is just penalising the poor old football fan.

Ryanair was at it as well although it was difficult to work out their fare hike as the planes on the selected dates were full, but flights on the 25^th and 29^th May were about £400 return whilst a return fare for earlier in the month was about £60!

Good old BA’s price was about £450 return but at least they’ve always been expensive. They hadn’t actually changed their outward fares from Manchester but the return leg had been increased by about 200%.

If it was up to me I reckon I would take a cheap flight to Nice  or Genoa and then hire a car and make a week of it.         

Yup - Him Again

Sorry folks - busy weekend so I'm going to resort to a bit of plagerism today by reprinting a poem I saw somewhere last week. It's about my favourite person whom you've no doubt recognised by the picture. I did actually think about doing my own poem on the political 'snouts in the trough' and I may think about one when I'm down clearing my jungle - it's very theraputic down there and some of my most creative moments come to me when I'm ripping out bushes and getting covered in scratches.

Anywhere - here is the short poem and the You Tube version of G Brown addressing the nation on the expenses scandal. It all seeems so futile now we know old Brownie was not quite as clean as he could be with his brother's cleaner - pun intended!

Gordon Brown is my shepherd, I shall not work on occasions
He leadeth me beside the still factories.

He restoreth my faith in the political opposition.

He guideth me in the path of unemployment.

Yea, though I wait for my dole,
I own the bank that refuses me.

He has annointed my income with taxes,
My expenses runneth over my pay.

Surely poverty and hard times will follow me all the days of his term.

From hence forth, we will live all the days of our lives in a rented home with an overseas landlord.

I am glad I am British,
I am glad I am free,

But I wish I were a dog, and our Prime Minister were a tree.

 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dS37nnFYzZ0 

Behaving Like Adolescents At The Home of Cricket

I was watching the England vs West Indies test match at Lords over the last two afternoons (no surprise there) and every now and again the executive boxes flashed into view. I imagined what would be going on in them and felt jealous. The vast majority of the boxes, of course, would be used for client entertaining. Turn up at the ground a couple of hours before the game starts, have a sumptuous lunch with plenty of ‘refreshments’ and then watch the game whilst being waited on hand and foot and supplied with copious amounts of booze.

More likely than not, when bad light stopped play, as it often does in these early season games, the people in the boxes would then indulge in silly, adolescent behaviour whilst they waited for play to resume, or was that just me when I used to ‘entertain’ clients to Lords?

It’s all part of the deal. Clients expect the best. They expect great food, loads of booze and great entertainment and if the atmosphere is right, they are not averse to letting their hair down. If only their underlings at the office could see what they get up to when let loose on someone else’s expense account. And these people generally are at the top of the tree – you don’t invite the office junior to an event when the cost is likely to be several hundreds of pounds per person.

At IBM, we were lucky enough to have an executive box at Lords, the ‘home’ of cricket. The box was in a great position and was only a couple of doors away from Getty’s box – you know – the famous reclusive Getty. We never saw him – funny that!

Anyway, it was a terrific perk and my sales team and customers loved going there for a good day out even though the early season games were punctuated by bouts of rain, bad light and, I’m sure, snow on some occasions.

Picking the clients to attend on a particular day was a major exercise in planning and diplomacy – there was no point in having a couple of outrageous clients attending with a staid old banker and his wife. That would have been no good at all and would probably have resulted in fewer sales rather than more, which, after all, was the basis of the exercise!

So – we’ve had lunch and masses of champagne. The game has been stopped for bad light. The clients are drinking everything in sight whilst the sales guys are trying to flog them even more IBM stuff. The IBM ladies (wives, girlfriends and fleusies) are entertaining the wives, girlfriends and fleusies of the clients and there’s nothing much to do and then somebody suggests some betting games to liven up proceedings. The ladies have their own games and the men have theirs – usually involving food or drink.

The ladies first – they are allocated a player each and then, eventually when the game restarts there is a vote on which player has the best bum. Yes – really. That’s what they bet on. The lady allocated the player with the ‘winning bum’ won the sweepstake. Very sexist and very silly.

The guys on the other hand were much more cerebral in their choice of games and bets.

Seven guys and seven bottles of beer. One of the ladies places an anchovy in one of the bottles and the guys have to work out which one it’s in – by drinking some out of each bottle. The guy who unfortunately has his Bud ruined by an oily anchovy gets the cash. Very clever eh?

Or there was the sandwich bet. Each guy picks a sandwich (dainty little triangle type) and peels one side of the bread off and then sticks the resulting half to the wall. The guy whose sandwich sticks the longest won the cash in the sweepstake. I found that cheddar cheese and pickle was a good bet!

So we used to have a great time when the play was stopped and once the game had ended we’d all troop into London for dinner and start all over again! Great days – great fun.

For those who don’t understand the game of cricket – here are the rules.

 You have two sides.

One side is out in the field and one is in.

Each man that's in the side that goes in goes out and when he's out he come in and the next man goes in until he's out.

When they are all out the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out.

When both sides have been in and out including not outs, that's the end of the game.

 

The Mayors of Crime and Corruption

Now I’m not terribly aux-fait with local politics but I have learned over the years that local mayors in French towns and villages have a significant amount of power. They obviously have influence, but it’s the absolute power which causes the problems. It’s the ability they seem to have to make major financial and commercial decisions without any recourse to committees, or if they do hold meetings, the committees are generally made up of their cronies, family members and owners of commercial premises in the area who owe their existence to the mayor in the first place.

A fellow blogger recently wrote a couple of postings about the mayoral shenanigans in his village where a library assistant was drafted into the mayor’s office to cover for the normal secretary who was off ill on a long-term basis. She discovered a few financial irregularities with the cash which comes in from a ‘professional tax’ which is levied on local businesses and goes into the mayor’s coffers, for him to fund local projects as he/she sees fit. As you can imagine, mayors up and down the length of France must be tempted to do all sorts of weird and wonderful things with this cash, but sticking it in their own bank accounts is not one which the locals approve of. His guy was caught out and has just resigned but it’s not just Hicksville mayors who are a bit dodgy.  

 In the second half of the 20th century, Nice bore the influence of mayor Jean  Medicin (mayor for 33 years from 1928 to 1943 and 1947 to 1965) and his son Jacques (mayor for 24 years from 1966 to 1990). Jacques had been out of office for about 10 years when I arrived down here but he was still being investigated for suspicious dealings on large, public works contracts which were awarded to companies, who were, in return, quite kind, in a financial sense to the guy who awarded them their multi-million euro contracts. Jacqes Médecin fled France in 1990 and was arrested in Uruguay in 1993, leading to his extradition in 1994. He was then convicted of several counts of corruption and associated crimes and sentenced to prison.

Now don’t get the impression that this is an isolated case. This is happening all over France. Mayors up and down the country are being investigated, are being tried or are in the clink over financial irregularities. A simple ‘French Mayor Corruption’ typed into Google returns 892,000 results!

And it goes all the way to the top. Jacques Chirac, the last French President is being investigated for embezzlement when he was Mayor of Paris. He, allegedly, paid hundreds of council workers who were on the payroll. Thing was – none of them existed and you can, I’m sure, work out where the money went!  

So far our mayor, Mr Bertaina seems to have behaved himself, although he summarily closed down the building of our house for nearly a year because he was not happy with it and then summoned J and I to his office for a ‘dressing down’, not one word of which I understood but I had been warned not to argue and just take the verbal punishment otherwise he could stop the building permanently. And all of this happened without a single other member of the council being involved.

As I say, local mayors have enormous power. The power to allow certain types of establishment to open in their village, whilst other similar ones are refused. The power to use their ‘professional tax’ money to fund pet projects, which in most villages seems to be carried out by companies owned and run by friends and family members.

So for Tourrettes, it's so-far-so good. Let's just hope it stays that way. I'd just hate to see my hard earned cash improving the road down to the mayor's palatial villa! 

PS - the picture is of the Hotel de Ville (Town Hall) in Vence, our local town where I'm sorry to report that the mayor has just been jailed for 9 years for abusing his grandson.

Chrysler Goes Bust

Well not quite – it’s gone into that strange American process called Chapter 11 or restructuring, where basically, as far as I can see, the company basically stops paying all those to whom it owes money and starts again with a clean sheet.

I could go on and on ad nauseum about the number of times I’ve had to try and get a deal when my American competitors were able to undercut me because their company had been through Chapter 11 but that’s not the subject of this blog – it’s about dear old Chrysler – my first employer.

I was about to leave school. University wasn’t an option, even remotely so, and I remember going for in-school ‘careers advice’. The Careers Officer gave me all of about 10 seconds of his time. ‘What is your favourite hobby’, he asked. ‘Fishing’, I said and was then given a booklet on trawler fishing. This was the sum total of my career advice! Pathetic!

Sometime over the next few weeks I noticed an advert in the main Glasgow newspaper. ‘Become a PET’, it said in large, blue bold lettering. It was advertising engineering apprenticeships with the Rootes car company, then one of the largest employers in Scotland.

I attended some interviews and then went on an outward bound selection weekend and ended up one of twenty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed apprentices at the huge car plant at Linwood, just outside Glasgow. I was a PET – a Production Engineering Technician – whatever that was!

Within weeks, Chrysler had bought out Rootes and, in one fell swoop, we all started working for our new American owners. It was all quite exciting and to some extent, glamorous. In those days (1968), there were few, if any, American employers in Scotland and the takeover promised fabulous new cars to be designed and built, and a new approach to labour relations – the plant usually worked maybe two weeks in four with the other time being devoted to that most British of pastimes – striking!  

But, and I’m sure this is not a surprise to you, it all ended in tears.

Chrysler built crap cars. They actually took over just as a Hillman Hunter had won the world rally and they never capitalised on that amazing success. They introduced an American looking ‘thing’ called the Chrysler 180 (see picture - it was so bad they didin't even give it a name!) which was huge by UK standards and just never sold. They never invested in the Hillman Imp which was almost as revolutionary as the Mini and that wonderful little car just drifted into history.

They weren’t much better at labour relations either. Ok, they introduced many innovative American management techniques but when faced with thousands of militant Scottish workers with a problem, they failed miserably. On quite a few occasions when the factory car park filled up with thousands of unsold cars and they didn’t want to make any more, they would instruct me to do something which would cause a strike, and I have to say I was pretty good at it. Speeding up the production line which (under union agreements) produced 60 cars per hour, to 61 or 62 cars per hour, would have the workers downing tools and heading off to the pubs. Similarly, removing all the little huts the workers would build beside the production line to rest in whilst they waited for the next car to arrive, caused an immediate walkout. So did removing all their nudie posters which adorned their lockers and cutting off the electricity to their ad-hoc kitchens. The result was always the same. ‘Right boys – everybody out’, was the cry and off they went.

It was an exciting place to work for seven years but eventually after completing my apprenticeship and getting a great job in the Industrial Engineering department, I was made redundant. As I left on the final day and walked the long walk down the production line to the HR department to pick up my final pay, I’m sure I heard quite a few of the workers cheering.

But despite the constant conflict with both management and unions, the disappointment at seeing the thousands of unsold cars every day and the final indignity of being told my services were no longer wanted, I have always had a soft spot for good old Chrysler.

Just a footnote that when we were in the US last year, our hire car was upgraded (long horrible story) and we were given a Chrysler Sebring convertible. On returning to the UK, I learnt that several motoring journalists had voted it the ‘worst car ever’!! Some things don't change!

     

I'm Trying Not To Fall Into The Trap.....

...of not doing a weekday blog posting. Normally, the weekend is fertile blog writing time. I'm usually up early and write for a couple of hours but the bank holiday weekend was quite socially busy and I've written nothing at all - at all!'

I was full of good intentions this morning but of course we're back on school run duty and then J and I had to go and sort out our dishwasher issues. Returning after lunch I thought I'd be able to write something interesting or witty (I never seem to get both in the same posting!) but then decided to give my nicely warmed up Alfa an oil and filter change and then just as I was sitting down to fire up the PC some friends came over and that was that.  

So - I apologise. I'll try and get back to normal tomorrow - I promise!   

Have A Great Bank Holiday

No blog posting today - it's a holiday in the UK so I'm having a day off. If you've got a Bank Holiday enjoy it.