Ninety Minutes in Vence

‘You’re a day late’, said Patrice, my hairdresser. ‘You were booked in yesterday.’

And so with groveling apologies, I asked Patrice what he could do and thankfully he had a spare slot ninety minutes later which I accepted.

Arial View of Vence

It was only as I left his shop that I wondered what I’d do next. I’m not like J who would have happily wandered round the shops, melting her plastic on the way and making Vence one of the most prosperous towns in France. No, shopping is not my thing and working out that if I went back home on the scooter (20 minutes) and then back into Vence (another 20 minutes), it would be a waste of time, I decided to do the tourist bit, but first of all I had to do a few things at the bank.

I wandered in and looked at the refurbishment job they’d done last year. I saw a banker-woman and asked her where the counter was. ‘We don’t have a counter – you have to do everything for yourself’, she said. 

‘OK – I want to pay this cheque in please.’ ‘Right’, she said, ‘just come over here and I’ll do it for you’, taking my cheque, pay-in slip and enevelope. ‘Anything else’, she enquired. ‘Yes – I need some plastic containers for all my copper coins that the kids have saved up’. ‘Here you are – we have a new system. Just put all your coins in this plastic bag’, she said handing me what looked like a Ziploc bag. ‘Anything else?’ she asked. ‘I need some cash’, I said, ‘but I reckon I’ll have to do that myself – eh?’ ‘Well, I could show you if you’ve not used our new machines before’, she said and with that I was given the final part of my new ‘do-it-yourself’ banking service.

I then wandered down to see my mate who has a wine business which he runs from home but he wasn’t in and so I stopped at the Château de Villeneuve next door which is a 17^th Century building annexed to a 12^th century tower (see pictures). I’d passed it many times before but had never had the time to walk round it. Looking at the signs outside, it said there was an ‘exposition’ of art on display but I was more interested in the fabric of the building and stepped inside. I took a few steps up the main staircase when a lady shouted that I hadn’t paid the fee.   

A fee? There had been no mention of an entrance fee outside but I paid the €5 and walked up the staircase once again. Looking around there wasn’t much to show for a 17^th Century castle, certainly not compared to what J and I had just seen in Florence.

I reached the first floor and found that all the walls in the vast rooms had been boarded up to hang the art but I reckoned that this was permanent, there was virtually nothing of the inside of the building which could be seen apart from a few ornate fireplaces.

In the first room, I stood and looked at a piece of art which looked like it had been a bad paint spraying job on a car. It was a board about 1 foot square and was just painted black. I stood there shaking my head and then noticed that a lady attendant was smiling at me – it was obvious she couldn’t work it out either.

The next room also had a lady attendant and was full of about 60 prints of the same guy growing older. The adjacent room had another lady attendant and looked like the walls had been vandalized – but no, it was art!

As I went to climb the stairs to the next level, I spotted the most amazing chandelier and asked if I could take a photo with my iPhone. I was told NO! I protested that it wasn’t the art I wanted to photograph but the one and only interesting part of the château on display which I wanted to record. ‘Non monsieur’, was the reply.

Matisse Chapel and the man himself

I climbed the stairs to the next level which had been given over to an exhibition of Matisse who famously lived in Vence and designed a Chapel just outside the town. This was rather more interesting as you could actually work out what he had been painting but what was intriguing was that there were no attendants present. All the ‘tat’ downstairs was being guarded, even from photographs being taken, whilst here there were dozens of Matisse prints with nobody in attendance! Bizarre.

After about thirty minutes, I headed to the café on the corner but first stopped at an estate agent’s premises as tourists generally do but what grabbed my attention wasn’t the houses for sale but the estate agent’s fees, ranging from an eye-watering 11% of the sale price to 5% for the most expensive properties. And they don’t let foreigners run estate agencies until they’ve had something like 10 years training – talk about keeping the money for the French. Anyway, seeing this ‘fees’ sign reinforced my determination to sell my own house when the time comes.

Then it was the café for a glass of wine and a cigarette. I spoke in French – they spoke in English – how did they know?

I got my wine and sat down outside looking at the Château which was just across the road and then it started – Arabic pop music. Blaring from the speakers it was like a call for all the Moroccans and Tunisians who congregate on Vence’s corners and sure enough they started to arrive and order their tiny little coffees. I could only put up with an 'Arabacsised' version of Leona Lewis for so long before I was driven away. Away for my number two with Patrice.     

International Women's Day

Quite a few of you will already know that J is running a fundraising project to rehabilitate and educate Kenyan children, many of whom are orphans.

I’m pleased to say that over the past few weeks J has raised over €1,300 to help these kids.

Most of this will be sent to the Isaiah Trust, the registered charity which started the enterprise off, some of it has already been sent direct to Kenya to alleviate a food shortage, and J has started a small enterprise of her own, getting scarves (see picture) sent from Kenya which she sells on to the ladies of the Côte d’Azur. This small ‘business’ supports the people who make the scarves, the market stallholders who sell them, and pays a small commission to the student who sources the scarves and sends them to J. 

J has already sold quite a few of the scarves and by the middle of the year, another €1,000 should be raised to send to Kenya.

I’m pleased and proud to say that J’s efforts down here have not gone unnoticed. We now have regular quiz nights (a la British pub style), there are frequent ladies evenings, lunches and ‘bring and buy’ sales which allows people to get rid of unwanted household items which amazingly somebody else always wants!

And as if to underline her efforts, a local publication celebrating the 100^th International Women’s Day listed J in third place after Annie Lennox (who also supports African charities) and Paula Radcliffe the runner (who is a Champion for Peace)!  Of course, virtually every publication has their own list but it’s great that J’s efforts have been recognised. You can find the articles at the URLs below. 

http://uk.mg1.mail.yahoo.com/dc/launch?.gx=1&.rand=3uhnalv4rk1qe

http://www.therivierawoman.com/index.php?module=g_people&page=getLong&id=84

People’s generosity never fails to amaze me. Only last week, a woman who read about J’s exploits arranged to meet her and after hearing what she was doing, handed over a cheque for over €400!

So many people down here, many of whom live privileged lifestyles are looking to help others and when they hear of J’s project, are only too willing to help.

It’s only a few weeks now until J, Guy and Kitty head off to Kenya.

No doubt there will be the usual update when she returns.    

The Beemer is Finished (Nearly)

Now I haven’t been spending every waking hour on it as there’s been quite a bit of waiting for special tools and a lot of internet research required, but finally all the things which have been bugging me are resolved.

After a complete rebuild of the front braking system, the final, usually quick job of bleeding the brakes proved to be something of a challenge. After waiting for Guy to return from a four day trip to his father’s and getting him to pump the brakes for about twenty minutes, nothing was happening. A quick look at the manual and it was stated that it is a pressurized system, which needed either a garage or a special bleeding system, and that’s not a profanity!! The garage option was favourite until I worked out that it would probably cost a hundred euros or so and the tools on the internet ranged from €80 to over €300! Then I spotted a system on Amazon – Eezibleed - cost €25.

I was a bit doubtful that it could be so cheap and work but the reviews were favorable and only four days after ordering it, a rather Heath Robinson looking device arrived and which uses the pressure from the spare wheel. Ten minutes after starting the job on my own (it’s usually a two-man job), the brakes were working. 

I’ll let J test them on the mountain road just to make sure they are ok though!

The next, and related problem, was a BMW fiddle. Even after fixing the brakes, the warning light was illuminating the dashboard and some internet research showed that you need to take it to a BMW dealership to have the system reset but a much quicker fix was simply to cut the wires leading to the sensor and connect them together. Problem solved. I look at my brakes every few months anyway so a sensor is superfluous for me.

The next and rather confusing issue was that the theft alarm kept going off. This was caused by the removal of the battery when I was working on the electrics, and like the brake warning light, the alarm, or rather, the car needs to be taken to a specialist to have the system reset. Removing the fuse wasn’t the answer as the radio was hooked up to the alarm as were the hazard lights. I disconnected the alarm box but it was full of circuit boards which frighten me to death so I simply removed all the connectors, dumped the box and hey presto – everything worked.

And that was it. You may notice that I haven’t photographed the Beemer from the side which has a large bash on it – that’s a summer job and is quite a complicated task necessitating the removal of the bumper, the lights, bonnet hinges and a few other things. I’ll order a wing on the internet, get it painted and then fit it when there’s a few warm days on the horizon.

The next thing of course is to put the Beemer through it’s Controle Technique (MOT) which is always an anxious time but we’ll see what happens this afternoon when I drive it up to the centre and hand it over. It’s worse than childbirth (or waiting for your wife to give birth), watching the guys crawl all over the car, shoving torches into every nook and cranny as they look for the slightest problem.

Given the state of some of the cars on the road over here, it always amazes me when they might fail a German manufactured, superbly built BMW 328i for a slight problem, but we’ll keep our fingers crossed and see what happens.    

And after that it’s the open road. Can’t wait.


Stop Press - YES !!! It passed. 

Internet Buying and Postage

Although you might think these are inter-related subjects, they are and they aren’t – let me explain.

In France, quite a lot of things are very expensive, certainly compared to the UK and so for the last few years, nearly everything we buy, apart from food and DIY stuff, is purchased on the internet.

Virtually all the kid’s clothes are bought on-line with t-shirts flying in from the far east and shoes and trousers coming from a variety of sources. I’ve given up trying to find decent and reasonably priced clothes over here and thank the day that M&S started shipping their online catalogue to Europe.

Of course, we, like virtually everybody else use Amazon but tend to find that Amazon UK is cheaper than Amazon France (for the same book), even when you include the postage costs (Amazon France is generally postage free) and you may have read on my blog that I’ve been buying tyres and other car parts on the net and quite a few of these are coming from the UK as well.

And I reckon I’ve worked out why things are cheaper to get from the UK and that’s because postage charges in France are exorbitantly expensive.

A couple of postage stories – it takes maybe ten days for my insurance company in Nice to send me a policy in the post (well they blame the post) whilst J has had rather large parcels delivered from Kenya in a couple of days which I can’t quite work out given that the parcels eventually get handled by La Poste when they reach French soil.

Secondly, I’ve just had some brake parts delivered from the UK for my BMW. Postage costs were £14.95. The company concerned take back your old parts and give you a rebate for them, which at £30 a time is not to be sneezed at. And so when I picked up my new parts the other day from La Poste, which, amazingly was open for once, I asked the girl to put the package back on the scales to see how much it would cost to send back to the UK because I reckoned I would just put the old parts back in the same box and ship it back for my rebate.

Of course, confusion reigned. ‘You’ve not even taken delivery of your parcel and you want to send it back?’ she queried.

‘No – I just want to see what it would cost to send it back to the UK’, I said.

Well, the discussion and explanation went on for a couple of minutes much to the annoyance of the usual queue in our Post Office which is a space of about 8 feet by 2 feet (I kid you not). Eventually, I managed to get Mrs La Poste to understand that it wasn’t the incoming parcel I wanted to send to the UK but one of exactly the same dimensions and weight.

She plonked it on the scales and said, ‘Cent Trente Neuf Euros.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘One hundred thirty nine’, she said in almost perfect English. ‘And that’s normal post, it’ll be more if it’s express and more if you want it signed for at the other end.’

‘One hundred and thirty nine euros – that’s about £120’, I said. ‘It only cost £15 to send them from the UK.’

She shrugged. I shrugged and in an instant worked out why French things are expensive to buy, and get delivered, on the internet.

PS – on a similar subject, we ordered a new PC battery for Guy off of eBay. It was ordered on 7^th December, the money was debited via PayPal a day later and ……. yup – it never arrived.

By the time the ‘retailer’ in Hong Kong (I should have smelled somefing velly funny) had ‘investigated’ the non-delivery, it was too late to complain via eBay and now the retailer’s e-mail has ‘ceased to exist’. Beware!!

'Bigger Than Mickey Mouse'

I got J an iPad for her Xmas. I know I should have waited until April when the new super-wizzy version with a larger screen and a camera is apparently to be announced but you can wait for ever for these new versions so I took the plunge, ordered it off of the internet, it was delivered in good time, all beautifully wrapped and it was put under the tree and eventually gratefully received. Not ‘eventually’ in that it took my wife ages to acknowledge the gift but that it was delivered early and lay under the tree for a couple of weeks.

Despite not having the usual Windows applications such as Excel, Word or Powerpoint, the iPad comes into its own when used simply as an internet access device. Despite costing twice what a good laptop would set you back, the touch-screen interface to the internet and e-mail is brilliant. Before I got J the iPad, I’d read that once you use an iPad to access the Net, you never want to go back to the mouse based system, and it’s true – as soon as J puts her iPad down, either me, Guy or Kitty are racing to get our hands on it.

It’s not without its faults though. Like the iPhone and the iTouch, there is no ability to run Flash so I cannot watch some videos and cannot see any Flash based football games on it. It doesn’t have a file input device such as a USB port or Bluetooth – everything you want to get on your iPad has to go through iTunes which is a bit of a nuisance. Still – its good points outscore the bad.

As soon as we, sorry, J had the iPad we were looking for the best applications. Very quickly Wunderadio (a digital radio app which gives J her Classic FM and me, my Talksport), Accuweather (for beautifully presented weather forecasts) and Jukebox, were downloaded, soon to be followed by a few free games such as Casino, Paper Toss and a paid one, Angry Birds.

I hadn’t heard of Angry Birds before, I guess Guy downloaded it but it is horribly addictive, encouraging you to play for hours trying to get from one level to the next. It was only developed as an ‘App’ in 2009 but two years later, Angry Birds has become the iPhone’s most popular App, in other words, the piece of software that has been installed on the most number of handsets worldwide (quite an achievement when you consider that it’s one of 300,000 applications on offer) and has quickly spread to Apple’s iPad and other types of phones as well.

The game has been downloaded 50 million times. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, has admitted to a mild addiction, as have a variety of other supposedly busy people, from Dick Cheney to Mad Men actor Jon Hamm. Last year, two brothers, Rodrigo and Gustavo Dauster, competed against each other in a two-month marathon session to see who could score the maximum number of points.

In total, the game notches up 200 million minutes of play time every day, which is close to the number of minutes viewers in the United States spend watching the average prime-time television programme. Versions of the game are being developed for the PlayStation, Xbox and Wii. There is a line of Angry Birds soft toys, Mattel is working on a board game and before long there will be a cartoon series, and, if all goes well, a film.

Rovio, the company behind the development of Angry Birds, certainly doesn’t lack ambition. At a conference in Munich last month, Peter Vesterbacka, the company’s head of business development, boasted that Angry Birds was “bigger than Mickey Mouse”. He was referring to the number of times the two terms were searched for on Google.

It’s certainly the most addictive way to pass some spare time, and that’s how it was developed – for people standing at a bus stop waiting for a few minutes and wanting something mildly amusing and challenging to play on their smart phone, with the ability to pick up where you left off, either the following day, or if you’re like me, as soon as you can find a quiet corner.

Try it - but heed my warning – you will not be able to put it down.

The BMW 'Restoration'

As bought - not much damage visible !

Restoration is probably too strong a word but there's plenty of work to do as I'm finding out as I work my way through the car.

When I bought it, Cindy, the seller told me of the obvious faults: the disintegrating front brakes, the bashes on both front wings and the non-opening boot. She also said that there was a leak into the cabin but as all convertibles leak, some from birth, that wasn't unusual.

When I got it home I started to strip the brakes but didn't get far when I discovered the bolts holding the brake caliper were seized. I WD40'd them and after a few hours including a bit of heat from my blowtorch and they were loose. The other side was relatively easy. It's the same with all cars - the first side takes ages and the second side just seems to fall off!


Having stupidly bought the brake disks and pads from the local motoring supermarket, I then found them on the internet for a quarter of the price. Luckily, I'd priced the calipers at the BMW franchise at €258 each, I was therefore delighted when I found them on the internet for €55 each! 

The non-opening boot was more of a challenge. The trick was to press the panel which raises to allow you to store the folding roof and, once closed, this allowed the boot to open. The design is to prevent the boot lid and the roof cover from jamming together and causing damage. It took about an hour for me to spot a micro-switch which only activates when the roof stowing panel is firmly closed and a quick adjustment of the panel and the micro-switch clicked and hey-presto, the boot could open.

The roof panel however only closes when all the electrics are working and after discovering about two dozen relay switches, none of which I could test, I decided that a couple of latches would do the trick - result! Cost - €7.50.

Next on the list was the manual boot opening mechanism which is used when all the electrics fail. This consists of a particularly flimsy lever under the back seat which when pulled, releases the lock in the boot. Not unusually after 15 years, some of the cables had frayed and needed to be replaced so it was off to the DIY store to get 6 metres of wire cable. An hour later and the cables were replaced. Result! Cost of cable €5.40.

Bumper work - typical Cote d'Azur damage 

The bash on the passenger side front wing was easily fixed. A foot pushed against the outward-facing dent and it 'folded' back into place. There is still a crease in the panel but it's almost invisible compared to what it was like before.

However, the major surprise when I opened the car after two days of rain was the complete flooding of the roof storage bay, the boot and the space under the back seat. The pools of water were so deep you could have kept goldfish in them! Although Cindy had told me there was a leak, the amount of water was a shock. First to get inspected was the roof storage bay. It was quite obvious and very strange that water could flow into the bay - there were no seals or mouldings to divert rain. After 30 minutes of complete bafflement, I spotted a couple of  rubber plugs in the base of each side of the bay and when poked with a long screwdriver, the water flowed out under the car. It's quite obvious that the 3-series design allows water to flood into the storage bay but then drains out through these plugs - success !

Following this rather simple 'fix', and after a few more days of rain, the BMW is now quite dry. Result.

Fixing the bumpers - brakes being stripped

The front bumper has been filled and resprayed and is looking good. Unfortunately, the rather large bash in the driver's side front wing will necessitate a replacement - a summer job I think.


Unfortunately, my brake parts which are coming from the UK have been delayed by of all things, a dodgy computer system although the cynic in me thinks the company wanted to have the credit card cash in their account before they released the calipers however, they should be here by the time J and I get back from Florence this weekend.


In summary then, apart from rebuilding the brakes, all that remains to be done is to have the car MOT'd and then registered and then I'll be roaring round the Tourrettes lanes. 

A Beautiful Morning

After what seemed like weeks of rain, we've now had two weeks of wonderful weather, cold in the mornings and at night but nice and sunny during the day.

This morning was one of the special ones with mist down below in the valley but what was really special and something I haven't seen before was a huge bank of mist over the Med. It looked like it was a grassy plain with a  covering of mist (see picture left).

We've also seen Corsica on quite a few mornings but as usual, it disappeared back into the haze within minutes.

The cars have been covered in a thick frost each morning and after what seems like years of trying, I still haven't persuaded J that pouring a kettle of boiling water over the windscreen is a bad idea! With a two inch crack on the passenger side you'd think she'd never seen one of those repetitive Autoglass adverts.

Still, it's her car although if the windscreen caves in one frosty morning, it'll suddenly become my car! C'est la vie!

My newest addition however, is looking good despite the fact that the complete braking system is in the trailer, waiting to be taken to the dump. The bumpers have been repaired and re-painted and it no longer looks like a typical Cote d'Azur car. It's strange that although it's spent all of its fifteen years down here with crazy drivers, it doesn't have any of those door dings and other little bashes which virtually every vehicle down here suffers from.

The main part of the braking system hopefully is en-route from the UK and it really irked me that having bought the new disks and pads from the main car supermarket, I then found I could have got them on-line from the UK at a quarter of the cost. Luckily, I'd wandered into the local BMW service point to price the brake cailipers and fainted when the guy told me they'd be €258 - each! I got them on-line for £40 each! Still - one learns.

The electrics on the other hand are a nightmare. BMW's, even old ones like mine have a plethora of electrical gadgets and whilst the majority of them seem to be working ok, the powered convertible hood just doesn't work. There's about twenty different relays which do various things, e.g. stopping the boot from opening when the hood cover is unlocked, locking the hood cover when the boot is unlocked but I can't be bothered working my way through the relays and giving BMW a fortune and as we tend not to get sudden downpours here, which necessitates a powered hood, I'll simply rig up a new locking system.

Being a bit of a nut though, I still start the 2.8 engine every couple of days and I just sit there listening to it purring. I can't wait.

What’s The World Coming To ?

Last week I posted a blog which was a bit tongue in cheek but I still got some stick for it, predictably from females, who thought it was a bit sexist. It was about females and football (an oxymoron ?) and I finished with some statements about an assistant referee in a Premier League football match, to whom some commentators were making disparaging remarks, off the record.

Well, this turned out to be a bit of a ‘scoop’ on my part because the story blew up big time and both commentators are now looking for new jobs!   

Well, just to balance things out a bit, this blog is about men, so you girls can have a bit of a laugh and I’m sure the boys will have a titter as well.

Look at the picture on the left. Quite pretty aren’t they? Well, pretty for models. They’re usually so skinny and gaunt (there I go again) but the one on the right appears to have quite a nice body if you like that sort of thing.

Well, I’m sorry to inform you that the models in the picture are one and the same person and ‘she’ is a male!

I’ve lost the original article in one of the papers but for some reason, the guy is in huge demand to model female couture. And it’s not some obscure fashion house using ‘him’. The major couture houses are using ‘him’ and he’s probably raking it in. Maybe it’s because he’s tall and has no boobs (there I go again!).

What's the world coming to ?

And then there’s the story about PC Air in Thailand, which has yet to take to the skies, and which selected three "Ladyboys" in its first round of hiring  to act (perform?) as ‘stewardesses’ for the new airline (see picture below - I'm sure I know one of them!).

In an act to promote equal opportunities for what is dubbed the "third sex" in Thailand, Peter Chan, the new airline's boss, was enthusiastic about his groundbreaking move because of the opportunities it would afford transsexuals.

One of the successful candidates was Thanyarat "Film" Jiraphatpakorn, who won the annual Miss Tiffany "katoey" beauty pageant in 2007. "At first I thought they would just take applications but not actually recruit us, as happened at other places before," said the 23-year-old, adding that ‘she’ was delighted to have been chosen.

Thailand has the largest number of "katoeys" – as they are called in Thai – in the world, with the country's surgeons pioneering cheaper and quicker sex change operations because of the sky-high demand from men wishing to become women.

PC Air did not make proof of sexual reassignment a criteria for the job, merely that the applicants possessed the necessary oral skills and the potential to provide a good service.

The mind boggles.

And finally, a male shop assistant in London is claiming sex discrimination after a 68-year-old woman colleague allegedly slapped his bottom three times while working at the flagship John Lewis department store.

Konstantinos Kalomoiris, 40, says Bianca Revrenna (you couldn’t get two better names could you?) tapped his bottom in the locker room and twice on the shop floor of the Oxford Street shop.

Furniture department worker Mr Kalomoiris, who says he quit his job as a result, told an employment tribunal that when he told her to stop, she replied: "I do that to all the boys."

What’s the world coming to?

La Turbie

La Turbie

The village of La Turbie is one of those places which you only visit if you happen to be passing through it. Positioned on the high road just east of Monaco, it is a lovely little village with a rich Roman history.

In our part of the country La Turbie is never out of the news however, as when the single-lane road heading down into Monaco is closed because of the volume of vehicles, all the motorway traffic is routed through the village, hence it makes the radio traffic bulletins  seemingly on a daily basis!

I had to go to La Turbie twice last week, firstly, to negotiate the purchase (successful I’m pleased to say) of a car I quite liked the look of and secondly on the Friday, to pick the car up and bring it home, which was an adventure in itself given that its brakes were shot!

On the day I was to view the car I got to La Turbie an hour early. Sitting on a very slow moving motorway beside Nice Airport, an overhead gantry sign said I would be in La Turbie in 15 minutes which was scarcely believable. ‘They’ve got this one wrong’, I said but 15 minutes later I was parking in the village!

With an hour to spend, I walked around looking at it’s small area of shops and restaurants, the views down to Cap Ferrat and the quaint alleyways, most of which led up to La Tropheé des Alpes which was constructed in 5BC in honour of the emperor Augustus to commemorate the conquest of the Alps and the submission of 44 Ligurian tribes during Augustus' campaigns in 25, 16 and 15 BC.  An inscription dedicates the ‘temple’ to the son of Ceasar thus:

TO THE EMPEROR AUGUSTUS CAESAR, SON OF THE DIVINE (JULIUS CAESAR)
SOVEREIGN PONTIFF, EMPEROR FOR THE XIVTH TIME, TRIBUNE FOR THE XVIITH TIME
THE SENATE AND THE ROMAN PEOPLE

The picture to the left shows the building as it was when it was constructed some 2,016 years ago. The picture above shows it as it is today.

But that’s enough of La Turbie, now the car.

Even since Guy and Kitty have outgrown the miniscule rear compartment in the Alfa, I’ve been looking for a 4-seater convertible. I’d always fancied a BMW, an Audi or a Saab and it was the other evening when I spotted an advert for a 1996 BMW 328i convertible (yes – in Angloinfo) that my pulse started racing. Despite being almost 15 years old, having 90,000 miles on the clock and having a few bashes and scrapes, I was sold – or rather it was. And when I test drove it and put my foot on the throttle rather too firmly and the car shot off (with Cindy its owner and her two young kids covering their eyes), I was determined to have it.

A quick negotiation, a shake of the hands and it was mine. A gleaming (parts of it!) BMW which is so quick it frightens me. Cindy, informed me that she’d already had a call that morning from a guy who was prepared to drive over with his cheque book and pay her the full price on the spot, so the fact that I got a decent reduction can only be put down to the fact that her kids loved the ‘scary’ ride I gave them!

It’ll be off the road for a few weeks whilst I completely replace the braking system (hubs and all) but then it’ll be ready for the spring and summer months. I can’t wait.

The French Are Such Wine Snobs

No surprise in that statement eh? So why do the bars sell absolute plonk for €1.20 a glass when we’d pay more for better quality wine? Well, the Brits would, we’re used to paying extortionate prices in the UK.

But enough of that for the moment, I’m here to talk about the plumber, Monsieur Patane.

A few weeks ago I noticed a wet patch on the garage ceiling. As the days passed, the wet patch became wetter until there were drips falling. Now, I’m all for letting things fix themselves or until they become a disaster and after dismissing the theory that the water was a result of the ultra wet weather we’ve had recently, I called, or rather, J called our builder, Antonio. I reckoned one of our water pipes, embedded in the concrete kitchen floor had burst, and that would be an absolute disaster.

Antonio turned up the next day and when we met at the front door it was kisses all round and it’s not many builders who kiss their English clients, and it is most certainly unique for English clients to kiss their builders and I’m not just talking about J, I got kisses as well!

In he came, looked under the kitchen sink and shook his head. ‘C’est grave. C’est serieux’, he said shaking his head again. ‘It’s a leak’, he said.

Two things sprung immediately to mind. One – even Shadow could see it was a leak as when he needed water, all he had to do was go into the garage and have a shower, and two - maybe it wasn’t that bad as when he was building the house, Antonio was always shaking his head at J’s designs, saying, ‘C’est grave. Pas possible’! 

‘The floor will have to come up. How many spare ceramic floor tiles have you got left?’ he said, conveniently forgetting that when he’d finished the house, he took most of the spare tiles for his next project!

‘I will call Patane the Plombier’, he said.

Mr Patane called round a few days later and looked at the ‘leak’. He shook his head. ‘No leak’, despite the fact that the floor under the sink was soaking wet. He then checked the other sink in the kitchen (J decided to have two sinks installed in our kitchen – his and his !) and after a few minutes declared that he had found the leak.

It appeared that the water from the ‘proper’ leak was working its way under the floor, along the protective covering and up and out of the other end of the pipe, a physics phenomenon which I will research and cover in another posting when I’m totally bored. Either that or it’s a second leak!

Mr Patane cut out the offending section of pipe and when he was out at his van, I checked the length of copper and noticed that it was one of his joints which had split. ‘This will be interesting if he presents me with a bill’, I thought, also wondering just how long plumbing work is guaranteed in a French new build. Anyway, 15 minutes later, he proudly stated that it was fixed.

As he headed for the door, I grabbed a bottle of wine to give him as a gift in case no bill was forthcoming and as things turned out, he did not present a bill, but shook my hand and said ‘au revoir’. I said ‘thank you Mr Patane’, and handed him the wine.

Instead of thanking me and continuing his walk to his van, Mr Patane set down his tools on the drive and carefully looked at the bottle I’d given him (a nice white burgundy). He looked at the label, he looked at the vintage, he turned it round and looked at details of the chateau which had produced it and finally, held it at arm’s length and nodded in a sort of 'knowing' way.

This wasn’t somebody checking the wine as a form of gratitude. This was somebody looking at it to see if it was the plonk they sell in The Midi! 

I’m a Mystery Wrapped in a Riddle Inside an Enigma

In many respects I’m an old fashioned guy. I think that when I organize a ‘boy’s lunch’, J should not turn up unannounced, simply because she knows I’m there with my mates and she fancies a Kir.

I believe that there are certain household duties which the man should do, whilst the woman should have her responsibilities and don’t think by that I mean the kitchen because ….. I have just prepared and cooked a roast lunch. I do my own ironing and hang out the washing regularly, much to Tan’s disgust. I clean the house and put the washing on, but of course, I only do this so that J has plenty of time for her girlie lunches and doesn’t feel the need to gatecrash mine! So, in many respects the traditional role of women with me is a blurred boundary.

But I do draw the line when I see women writing football articles. I mean what do they know about football? The offside law for a start is completely foreign to them – they haven’t got a clue. And what does a female football physio do when the guy has been kicked in the ‘unmentionables’ – how can she possibly ease the pain by putting a cold sponge on the affected parts without the crowd going into a frenzy?

The Delicious Viki Butler-Henderson

I would hate to see a woman presenter on ‘Top Gear’ and yet I get all hot and bothered (in the nicest possible way) when I see Vicki Butler-Henderson on 5^th Gear, a rival programme. I hate men presenting the weather – give me a shapely female any day, despite the fact that it’s probably a guy who has interpreted all the graphs and statistics and written the script.

Women are technophobes and yet I adore Suzi Perry on The Gadget Show. The fact that she was also a successful motor cycle racer and model just adds to the allure which confuses me and those that know me. If J was single and bought a new telly, it would lie unused for ages until man came into the house to show her how to program it, and I guess that’s the case for most women.

And yet, those that do know me are astounded to find out that at one stage I had four women working on my technical sales team out of a complement of six, and they were all recruited by me – not inherited! So nobody can cast asparagus at me on that score. I knew my clients were a bunch of randy old sods and I just reckoned that the girls would sell more and so it proved.

Suzi Perry

Yet when a crowd of us go out for a meal, I reckon it’s the boy’s duty to organize things and pay the bill. I always open doors for women whether I know them or not and I would never pass a woman in distress. I once stopped a cab I was in because a guy was giving this woman a severe slapping in the street and when I’d dragged him off, I was astonished when the woman started laying into me saying I shouldn’t be so rough with her husband!  Has that put me off? No way, I would do the same again.

So where did all this come from? From a football article in Saturday’s Gurdian newspaper which was something I really wanted to read but which I didn’t because it was written by a  ……. woman! What do they know about football?

Assistant Referee - Sian Massey

And if to prove my point, one of the top football games on Saturday had a female assistant (she’s pictured above) and unfortunately, two Sky presenters were making disparaging remarks about her and her understanding of the offside law when they thought their microphones were switched off!

But to her credit, she got an absolutely crucial offside decision spot on – she would have been crucified if she hadn’t!

What do I know?

I Used to Go There …….

I’ve had so many complaints about stopping my blog postings that I’ve relented a bit. I say, ‘a bit’ because I never said I was giving it up completely, I said I would post occasionally if there was something worth writing about.

It appears that many of you feel lost without my blog in the background as your morning coffee is being made, or if you’re in an office and you are preparing for the day ahead or, more likely, if you can’t get to sleep at night! This is all very complimentary (I think) but as I said previously, the 5-times a week blog is probably gone, unless of course, a rich seam of material suddenly becomes available.

I had actually noted this item down as a potential posting a few months ago but had never got around to writing it but as the launch of ‘One Hyde Park’ takes place in London today, it seems like a good time to put it down in print.

One Hyde Park – the most expensive apartments on the planet with the top one costing a whopping £140 million, $200 million or about €160 million!

You may recall a posting I did a few weeks back about house prices down here (http://tomsfrenchblog.blogspot.com/2010/12/house-prices-we-talk-about-them-here-as.html)  and the fact that Monaco led the world with a price of €45,000 per sq metre, well One Hyde Park completely obliterates that with an average price of about €60,000 per sq metre.

Why am I writing about more house prices? Well, One Hyde Park has a special place in my heart – albeit, back then it was the Bowater Building, a totally nondescript glass and steel framed office block which, when compared with the buildings around it, made it stand out as one of those ‘carbuncles’ (a Prince Charles phrase) which makes you wonder why it ever got planning permission.  

I had to visit a company there not long after I got my first Sales Managers job in IBM and just going into the building was depressing. I remember thinking at the time that I would have hated to have worked there. In the event, we actually did business with the company concerned and I had to spend quite a bit of time at One Hyde Park.

Now, and after a relatively short development phase, the Monaco based, but London active Candy Brothers have transformed the building. I’m still not too sure about the exterior but the interiors look amazing, helped in no small way by the magnificent views over – yup, Hyde Park.

The Old Bowater Buiding

Here are some details of what you get for £140 million:

Prices start at £6.5m for a simple one-bedroom flat and rise to £140m for one of the penthouses. The prices, averaging about £6,000 a square foot, are the highest ever paid for residential space, according to property experts.

As well as interiors designed by the Candys, residents at the highly anticipated development can call on valets, a concierge and butler room service from the next-door Mandarin Oriental hotel’s two restaurants, overseen by Heston Blumenthal and Daniel Boulud.

The buildings have shared features including a cinema, a 21m swimming pool, saunas, a gym, a golf simulator and a wine cellar. There are eye-scanners in the lifts and panic rooms for added security.

The build included 15 different types of stone and marble specially sourced from Turkey, Italy, Brazil, China and Egypt; and £50m of "sparkly" concrete with limestone aggregate.

When the brothers started the project four years ago, it attracted criticism for being too extravagant and expensive. With the onslaught of the credit crisis, many believed that the development would never sell, but the Candys claim that 60pc of the 83 apartments have already been snapped up, mainly by foreign buyers from the Middle East and Asia.

Hurry, there’s obviously a few left if you want to reserve one!

100 Planes Crash - 26,500 People Killed

Monday 13^th December - My Last Day in Kenya

I could have stayed in bed all morning but as John Felix slept, I completed my packing and showered.  Moses was collecting us around 8.30 am and as it was only 8:00 am I had plenty of time.   “Come on John”, I coaxed, “Time to get up! What would you like for breakfast?”  Aware that he usually only had bread, I’d bought in juice and planned on having toast or even eggs.  As I wondered what time Moses would appear, I suddenly heard some guitar music playing.  “What’s going on?” I checked my watch – 8.05 am. I then thought I heard some unmistakeable laughter. “Surely, he’s not here already??” I opened my bedroom door and peered over the mezanine balcony.

“Good morning” chorused not only Moses, but Tatu, Vashni and Paul James.  As they played and sang, I saw that Eric had already made them welcome and given them breakfast.  What a wonderful sight to greet me and what a wonderful send off for this was the day I was leaving to return to France.

I dragged my heels on the way to the airport.  As for John Felix, he grew quieter and quieter .... wouldn’t eat any breakfast.  Eventually as we climbed out of the car at the airport, the tears came.  The little boy just cried and cried. We all tried to comfort him, but to no avail.  We all tried to explain that I had to leave but I was coming back.  As I pulled him onto my knee and hugged him close, his tears not to mention his nose ‘dribbled’ all down my clean t shirt.  I didn’t mind one bit.  It was as if every bit of emotion that child had been hanging on to for the last ten years was released there and then.  Eventually, we walked together around the perimeter fence and made our promises. I bit my lip handing John Felix over to his other 'mum', Tatu, I bit my lip as I said goodbye to Moses and Paul James, I bit my lip as I walked across the tarmac until I was safely inside the plane.....

So it’s now the middle of January.  My return to ‘normal’ life wasn’t quite so hard this time.  After my first trip, there were many nights when I would wake and not be able to go back to sleep worrying about all the kids.  This time has been different.  I look back on the photographs of Eric, Magdalena, Evelyn, John Felix, Ruth and her siblings and smile. Together we have made such a difference to their lives and I know that together we will continue to make it happen.

Bono famously said “If you want to eliminate hunger, everybody has to be involved”.  So my job now is to start by raising awareness. So just for a moment, I want you to imagine a newspaper headline that says, "One Hundred Jetliners Crash, Killing 26,500”. Think of the worldwide media frenzy and implications of this one event as everyone shared the shocking news. Now imagine, the very next day that another 100 jetliners crashed and another hundred the day after that, and then following day ….. but no one did anything about it. It is an unimaginable situation but it will happen today for the world's hungry children and it will continue to happen.  Almost 10 million children will be dead from hunger related causes in the course of this year. And then another 10 million next year and 10 million the year after that.

Let’s try and shrink the gap between the ‘haves’ and the ‘have nots’ of this world. A single airline crash can dominate the news for days so why does the equivalent of 100 planes, each filled with children, crashing on a daily basis, never reach our ears?

Each one of us has a something we can contribute. Whether that is Thomas letting me use his Air Miles for my flights or taking over my role with Guy and Kitty whilst I’m away, Angela sending over a bag of fabric for Violet to practice her sewing on, maybe buying some chickens in place of giving someone an ‘unwanted’ wedding gift, everyone has something of value they can offer be it financial or otherwise. I have prepared a short presentation on my Africa experiences – if you’re looking for a guest speaker for an event you are holding, then please get in touch – I’m willing to travel.

 Thank you for allowing me to raise your awareness!  My next instalment will be after the Easter break when I return to Kenya, this time with Guy and Kitty.

Con Artists

Drivers in France have been warned to be on the lookout for a hitchhiker who is adept at swindling money out of motorists with a string of elaborate stories. Known as ‘Max the Swiss Hitchhiker’, the man manages to talk food, transport and accommodation out of unwitting drivers by telling them he is either a businessman, grandfather or academic whose car has been stolen.

He is so charming that he has been invited home with many a motorist and given a bed for the night. He then invites his hosts to visit his chalet in the Swiss Alps, which, of course, does not exist. He also vows to pay them back for their hospitality, but the promised cheque never arrives.

Because he does not actually ask for money - motorists always offer to help after hearing his sob stories, and whilst some of them do give him money - Max cannot be convicted of fraud.

In a recent case brought by three drivers who spotted him on a bus in central France, he was found not guilty, despite failing to appear in court.

This fraudster is similar to an ‘English spoken’ con artist who targeted people coming out of Nice airport. He did ask for money, usually 50 euros, on the basis that he’d lost his wallet, promising to send it back which he never did. He was very successful in extracting cash but so brazen that his luck eventually ran out and he was lifted, convicted by the French courts and sent to prison.

This happened to me in London a few years ago when a young guy stopped me just as I was leaving the tube station, heading for my hotel. He claimed he had lost his wallet and only needed £5 to help him get a train ticket to get home to one of London’s suburbs. He was so good, he even asked me for a business card so he could send the money back.

I gave him the £5, it was Christmas after all, and went on my way wishing him luck but as I walked to my hotel, I felt something wasn’t quite right.

I walked back to the station expecting to see him asking other people for the rest of his train fare but he was waiting for the public phone to become free. I managed to get quite close to him without him noticing and heard him quite clearly say to the person on the other end of the line, ‘it’s ok I’ve got £5, I’ll get another couple of fivers and I’ll buy the booze before I get to your place.’

As he turned round, I approached him and said I felt mean and that if he gave me the £5 back, I’d given him his full train fare (I was holding out a tenner).

He gave me the £5, I told him where to go, and left him fuming. I’d managed to scam a scammer!  

And with that, I’m stopping my daily blog, which for the last 624 days (excluding holidays and weekends) has taken not a lot of my time, but enough to prevent me from concentrating on my book.

I’ll still post a blog if I’ve something to say, but for the last week or so (you’ve probably noticed) I’ve been struggling, so from now on I will not be posting a blog for the sake of it, it’ll be posted when there’s groundbreaking news of some sort or another!

Watch it Guys – The Missus Could Put You in the Slammer

A husband is facing five years in jail after ‘hacking’ into his wife's email. He suspected that his wife was having an affair and read her emails without her permission.

Leon Walker has been charged under anti-hacking laws aimed at preventing identity theft in the United States. The 33-year-old had suspected his wife Clara, who had been married twice before was having an affair with her former husband.

He is alleged to have used his computer skills to gain access to her email account on the shared home computer and discovered a series of emails which confirmed his suspicions that his wife was cheating on him.

When he confronted his wife, she knew he could only have obtained the information he used from her e-mail account, so she promptly had him arrested.

When I read this I thought of how things work in our house. Nobody is allowed to touch Guy’s PC and he probably has an interface and software on it which would render it useless to us mere mortals in any case. Kitty’s PC is used simply for photos and MSN – there’s nothing else on it which would make it useful to a normal internet user. My laptop is still waiting to go down to Antibes to get fixed and so J and I share her trusty Toshiba but with her travelling netbook and her iPad, she generally uses those, leaving me with the laptop.

The thing is, we all know each other’s passwords so if I found some naughty e-mails between J and the security guard at the Cap 3000 mall, whom she probably sees more than me, could I be arrested and thrown in the local slammer? 

Another case of the US laws being a bit over the top or could it spread to Europe?

Of course, it doesn’t help when guys such as me have the delectable Meg Ryan announcing, ’Three little words – you’ve got mail’, whenever something arrives in our mailbox. Get a copy of the wav file at the URL below and copy it to your ‘Windows/Media’ folder usually found on your ‘C’ drive and then assign it to your mail notification sound on your Control Panel.

http://simplythebest.net/sounds/WAV/events_WAV/email_wavs.html