tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-54087252410884093602024-02-02T23:30:28.094+01:00The Random Babblings Of A Disturbed MindTrevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.comBlogger441125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-83131382430301175092023-02-22T20:57:00.003+01:002023-02-22T20:57:48.442+01:00Byeee ...<div style="text-align: justify;">Seems to be the fate of all blogs at some point, to be abandoned when you've either nowt more to say, or no particular motivation to say it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Goodbye.<br /></div><br />Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-90455836575822260202021-12-28T16:15:00.000+01:002021-12-28T16:15:38.126+01:00Here In My Car, I'm As Safe As Can Be ...<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody><tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgKm2eAqtEcnHzGI4vgZVVaaIPY05dKtbFCAuAgrJZWULy_Fiino2x-Mjp1AGz9wpVHRRvH_bJzZts1oCCvJjlOmKqYT8fb4XEjaFWw3Soit3jD360vWIq-79AwO0kwF1u_5RuyxUpeWBIDjWBjkldNRi00SHZn1nBetERDfG2tX7n7NLtRq2bAC6L_=s3840" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="3840" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgKm2eAqtEcnHzGI4vgZVVaaIPY05dKtbFCAuAgrJZWULy_Fiino2x-Mjp1AGz9wpVHRRvH_bJzZts1oCCvJjlOmKqYT8fb4XEjaFWw3Soit3jD360vWIq-79AwO0kwF1u_5RuyxUpeWBIDjWBjkldNRi00SHZn1nBetERDfG2tX7n7NLtRq2bAC6L_=s320" width="320" /></a></td></tr><tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Son et lumière, Strasbourg, Juillet 2021<br /></td></tr></tbody></table><div style="text-align: justify;">Oh well, the Christmas feast has been duly digested and so, if I may judge from the fact that my upper left arm is no longer swollen and painful, has the COVID booster shot.<br /></div><div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">For us it was foie gras, turkey and chipolatas and roast spud and parsnip purée and sprouts and baked ham and godnose what else: how was it for you? At least the sun was out in these here parts, and 15° is a bloody sight more than we could have realistically hoped for ...</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The saga of little Lilibeth continues. For those of you who ca<span>me
in late and can't be arsed reading the Cliffs Notes version, last we
saw her she was up on the hoist in Philippe's garage - having had her
engine removed, the gearbox unmounted and subjected to his tender
ministrations, everything stuck back together and back into her body -
with an unconnected lead direct from the battery to the starter motor.</span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpmCs36QUF2iPzi9iN-iut8qxaDd3bcKUpm_D09RUmv6YkyWnYZ_gvtNKGwLPnhQB9ePkRn6iLXOh4ZnvLG4MgnIH18czw62ObbC9UYuwMAUjOG3OhK8drvb0L0oqHxjSDTuBF6mUCsdu0q9qxOx41LeUE2-oXT3TnUuA6k1pdEd4lGE45o3OfGxnq=s3840" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="3840" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjpmCs36QUF2iPzi9iN-iut8qxaDd3bcKUpm_D09RUmv6YkyWnYZ_gvtNKGwLPnhQB9ePkRn6iLXOh4ZnvLG4MgnIH18czw62ObbC9UYuwMAUjOG3OhK8drvb0L0oqHxjSDTuBF6mUCsdu0q9qxOx41LeUE2-oXT3TnUuA6k1pdEd4lGE45o3OfGxnq=s320" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Having fixed <u>that</u>
little problem and having got the transaxles and brand-new shocks back
in place it seemed like a Good Idea - at the time - to make sure that
all was in proper working order: sadly, this turned out not to be the
case. For lo! there was a whinge in the transmission, which is not
exactly a good thing.<br /><br />But having been through all this before we
just unhooked the gearbox from the engine, leaving this last in place,
and Philippe once again proceeded to pound his head against a wall
working out how to realign the differential ...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTBhcl9WFsnI9V_LxGpxgzou1wEi6EE0M6gvxVKu1kCXb77JQFZ2oz3q6mVQGKYMrNhptgWcWyTn9sTBuD5kYt3Sg7owsReCAeER6ypuSi7eYV3NRn8pYl4bWSl19ejBT1Unfr9GG0MJngoLFebc5F57U2BURBSpJc9bk_a1RXcAkJYDYV6iR5SOty=s3840" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2160" data-original-width="3840" height="180" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgTBhcl9WFsnI9V_LxGpxgzou1wEi6EE0M6gvxVKu1kCXb77JQFZ2oz3q6mVQGKYMrNhptgWcWyTn9sTBuD5kYt3Sg7owsReCAeER6ypuSi7eYV3NRn8pYl4bWSl19ejBT1Unfr9GG0MJngoLFebc5F57U2BURBSpJc9bk_a1RXcAkJYDYV6iR5SOty=s320" width="320" /></a>With
only a few square cm of missing skin and the odd ding in my (luckily
rather thick) skull we managed to get the gearbox back in place and
tidied up a few bits and pieces - like sticking hideously expensive oil
into the box, installing the fanbelt that drives the water pump and
radiator fan, stuff like that - and then, of course, it was time to
start her again.<div style="text-align: justify;"> </div>I
should be so lucky. Turn the key, the solenoid goes "clunk!" in a very
smug way, and nothing happens. It happens very suddenly, mind you. So
check the battery voltage: 11V, not so good, on the charger and we'll
see tomorrow ...</div><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjAzGtJyYab0wTrMnHVJPHV1Bipv9j8HBBsuezWbqEUpjMBaOiq88Q47508kuAT-OEkx5dO-auqV3JWvW5SjH2L_Ni8cFer2QBouEgMXGq1iAMUktnfEpw6lJnQOULsVAllqDsYWgm9rEYlorG_kq0V7YywAi974VdcAfSyliUkoj6saOpDPrxHLn6-=s3264" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEjAzGtJyYab0wTrMnHVJPHV1Bipv9j8HBBsuezWbqEUpjMBaOiq88Q47508kuAT-OEkx5dO-auqV3JWvW5SjH2L_Ni8cFer2QBouEgMXGq1iAMUktnfEpw6lJnQOULsVAllqDsYWgm9rEYlorG_kq0V7YywAi974VdcAfSyliUkoj6saOpDPrxHLn6-=s320" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> I have heard that one of the definitions of insanity is repeating the
same sequence time after time and still expecting that this time around
things will turn out differently: doesn't happen. <i>"Perhaps"</i> said Philippe <i>"la batterie is morte?".</i> Fair enough, it dated from 2014 and it had been a rather chilly few months ...<br /><br />So
order a new battery, hurry up and wait. As one does. Much to my
surprise it turned up two days later so off I trotted, hooked it up, and
oh dear! same old thing. But this brand new battery is only at 10.5V
... WTF? With feeling. Drag the charger back out ...<br /><br />You were
expecting a happy ending? Battery at 14.2V, start, clunk, 10.5V ... even
to my befuzzled mind, something is not right here.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXwpelJzH_MVZ5FQ9tbAN3dMQ7NjKeXywgX6_e25FdPlWbuvq9ZZ7BjCo9QJgdN5ifP4Saz4NrSuPX2Fdmad3Ninh4fG1Lt6zKiTRiAnxzwIB9QqVVo6i1a9wXv-UoM8-RIC-lAKqceUaCMnRiKZ-ZEpz08Epk9iUa1Xrh0fKjt3RMFVezCMuA_fEG=s3264" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgXwpelJzH_MVZ5FQ9tbAN3dMQ7NjKeXywgX6_e25FdPlWbuvq9ZZ7BjCo9QJgdN5ifP4Saz4NrSuPX2Fdmad3Ninh4fG1Lt6zKiTRiAnxzwIB9QqVVo6i1a9wXv-UoM8-RIC-lAKqceUaCMnRiKZ-ZEpz08Epk9iUa1Xrh0fKjt3RMFVezCMuA_fEG=s320" width="240" /></a>When
insanity has failed you, you've few other options but the relentless
application of logic, belated though this may be. So what was the <u>last</u> thing that changed? Fan-belt. OK, remove the sucker. Gosh, the motor turns over!<div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Now
it is time to work out why, so remove the water pump and radiator fan
assembly (luckily, this is held on to the engine block by but three
bolts, only one of which is totally inaccessible if you don't have the
right sized/shaped hands) and take a look at that: at which point it
becomes clear that at some time in its past the metal shrouding around
the fan has been seriously mugged - or fell down the stairs at the police station - and in its current shape is preventing the fan from
turning.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">My
personal opinion is that it hadn't turned for years - given the state
of the old fan belt, much of which we found semi-digested in the
radiator ...</div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhz2mjV1oZPnIdG1_pmbNbxkgb_GFG6PtQ5P54aTXqu8s5k84CX1YUu9WjFeJ2kOE735GOV0AnBaP7BUeKlgcP-MerJQNWZCJ3q_rssNMmRFDs0jay9s3aWyBN8cleiH_Bp4C_8CMSXp_eZc30wyzIP8FPS7o5cXMwsqVJXSQezo0OlYGxXlf4zAYAI=s3264" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEhz2mjV1oZPnIdG1_pmbNbxkgb_GFG6PtQ5P54aTXqu8s5k84CX1YUu9WjFeJ2kOE735GOV0AnBaP7BUeKlgcP-MerJQNWZCJ3q_rssNMmRFDs0jay9s3aWyBN8cleiH_Bp4C_8CMSXp_eZc30wyzIP8FPS7o5cXMwsqVJXSQezo0OlYGxXlf4zAYAI=s320" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Cue
a few hours bashing the shroud into some semblance of an actual circle -
there's still a stiff point when it turns which probably means I should
order new bearings and seals for the damn thing, but that's pretty
straightforward. Stuff's in stock, only have to wait another week -
anyway, that can be a problem for another time, because now it becomes
apparent that the gearbox is pissing oil.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Fuckery! I am <u>so</u>
not going to take that bloody gearbox out yet again: so unbolt the side
cover (for once, right-hand side and more or less accessible except for
two bolts which you can't really get at with a standard spanner and the
head of one has been knackered at some time in its life) and pull that
off insofar as possible to discover that the new gasket is not in the
best of shape.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">(Getting
to this point, I will remind you, has already involved removing the
gear selector and the right-hand mounting bracket from the gearbox so
that it can be dropped low enough to get one's hands in there.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEijOUWa3h1JpvwYbimgneVl98TR9qbTpwY0Tw6Z_8L84jPir8J4qlGrvF69iY5AfuzoUAl1bM2glZNHxXhqfBx0cBD1SXQxDmINkcai0lPMu3dqwrE55rM3pho3INE61HmJ5jlbgsjxczNVOhH_6fjGcKEl6t_fycCtzmksVqudkaYKuGELRAOMP6ZB=s3264" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEijOUWa3h1JpvwYbimgneVl98TR9qbTpwY0Tw6Z_8L84jPir8J4qlGrvF69iY5AfuzoUAl1bM2glZNHxXhqfBx0cBD1SXQxDmINkcai0lPMu3dqwrE55rM3pho3INE61HmJ5jlbgsjxczNVOhH_6fjGcKEl6t_fycCtzmksVqudkaYKuGELRAOMP6ZB=s320" width="320" /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Whatever,
oil is now dripping out into a <i>bac</i> and in the not too distant future there will be
silicon mastic on each side of the gasket and everything will go back
into its appointed place and all will be well with the world, but I now
see why it is that mechanics are, as a general rule, cynical bastards.
Who may, let it be admitted, occasionally overcharge their clients to some degree, but I can totes
understand this.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I am still hoping to be able to take her for a spin in January: hell, what else could possibly go wrong?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">(Actually,
I know the answer to that one. Once she is operational I shall still
have to give Philippe a hand with his 2CV, which currently has her guts
spilled across the garage floor, conveniently blocking the door.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg8Mj9PfsBeBlG9HE9uU3r1W2WARyn4nQ7L-EzB6Z0pffHN0I6_Ovd3bnupj8zK72SZr9ePwbQjB2cnM0x6MRPbTRybbRO_ztyRCbffAc05YhwaVOnoFXqfCct64_VGChhHmybU2e3xHBL4GGGN-kYiH5zc3T_J3P4KGl7KvQ9_rkODR_OMEn0jEx88=s3264" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEg8Mj9PfsBeBlG9HE9uU3r1W2WARyn4nQ7L-EzB6Z0pffHN0I6_Ovd3bnupj8zK72SZr9ePwbQjB2cnM0x6MRPbTRybbRO_ztyRCbffAc05YhwaVOnoFXqfCct64_VGChhHmybU2e3xHBL4GGGN-kYiH5zc3T_J3P4KGl7KvQ9_rkODR_OMEn0jEx88=s320" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I think I mentioned a little while ago
that I was planning a wine run to pick up some Uby? I decided to give
myself a birthday treat and booked a room in a chateau-hotel about 3km
from the winery, and set boldly off for the Gers ...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's
been a bloody long time since I took that road - maybe twenty years or
so - so I was surprised to find it so familiar. But this time I boldly
drove into the centre of Auch when it came time for lunch: do you know
that that endangered species, the free car park, still ekes out a
precarious existence there?</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">No
prizes for guessing what I had: foie gras and a couple of glasses of a
rather excellent Gascon white, walked some of it off (partly by heading
back down the monumental staircase that gets you up to the old town) and
carried on to Cazaubon and my rendez-vous with wine.</div></div><div><br /><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgr77nu4UlauHYcF41z9-vKJGFGitf-p_AEaIm4BYXgnPd3UW5vuSH_dV_yyniAEqNaB2Iq2QfqloZxYN-41ZE_q9F5P1hhc9EWVCOEXbXCMTHmcDVzBhVOZngMP7uULwc44u_X6s-91Sv82UNcH68l8Zj4yXqfWQ5nfDaOoM_7ORD9K9Zr12bFk7lk=s3264" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2448" data-original-width="3264" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEgr77nu4UlauHYcF41z9-vKJGFGitf-p_AEaIm4BYXgnPd3UW5vuSH_dV_yyniAEqNaB2Iq2QfqloZxYN-41ZE_q9F5P1hhc9EWVCOEXbXCMTHmcDVzBhVOZngMP7uULwc44u_X6s-91Sv82UNcH68l8Zj4yXqfWQ5nfDaOoM_7ORD9K9Zr12bFk7lk=s320" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'm glad I did that, even if - after a pleasant <i>dégustation</i> - I wound up with four crates of wine and a few bottles of Armagnac in Sarah's boot before finding the hotel.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;">Which was, as you may notice,
very nice indeed but be warned, October can be a beautiful month but you
still run the risk, in a chateau, of having a bit of frost inside the
windowpanes first thing in the morning - just saying.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Dinner,
incidentally, was excellent: foie gras (what else?) followed by roast
quail in a red wine sauce with muscat grapes, then a rather sumptuous
dessert. Sadly I don't, as a general rule, bring my phone to the table
or I'd ha<span>ve snapped the label on the bottle of red they served me
(to die for) and wound up coming back with more booze than even I'd
planned on.</span></div></div></div><div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div style="text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj3jk_dmn6xVjZD7c5fTN4MwsEautGvRwUcCEdIkUgSju8VOnIPRtCFF2nV62RCmgq96XHXa4qyrMtlDe8nyvRRVALHEfbhGAnUGxNZ10Ps8XrQoOMuRMqnoraexaAVs00QMAMijiRqssRxlfk_tv9o0MqirrpotJZR1r1PzG2qWVBxExg_zJId7xEL=s3264" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="3264" data-original-width="2448" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/a/AVvXsEj3jk_dmn6xVjZD7c5fTN4MwsEautGvRwUcCEdIkUgSju8VOnIPRtCFF2nV62RCmgq96XHXa4qyrMtlDe8nyvRRVALHEfbhGAnUGxNZ10Ps8XrQoOMuRMqnoraexaAVs00QMAMijiRqssRxlfk_tv9o0MqirrpotJZR1r1PzG2qWVBxExg_zJId7xEL=s320" width="240" /></a>And as it seems to be a tradition, or an ancient charter or something, for me to rant at least once, can someone please tell me why it is that Goofle has form taking a perfectly usable product and then "improving" it until it is no longer so? Even Microsoft does it the right way round. Eventually.<br /></div></div><div><p style="text-align: justify;">It's just that the Blogger interface has become complete shite. Back in the day you could click on "insert image", select a dozen files to be uploaded and, when done, select just the one you wanted to go in such and such a place. The next time you tried, you would see the thumbnails of the files you'd just uploaded, pick the one you wanted, rinse and repeat.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">These days? Doesn't work. To see the newly uploaded photos you have to select "from this blog" and then scroll down through 2000-odd photos ...<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Text justification is crap - even more so than once it was - but my fave fuck-up is that when you wish to edit a post it will automatically go into "HTML view" mode. Despite your having last used it in "compose" mode.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">I could live with that, the problem is that when you select "compose" mode from the menu a smug little message pops up to say something along the lines of <i>"Your html code is invalid! You may lose content. Continue?"</i>. So basically what we have here is an editor that can't even re-ingest the html code that it itself generated. Really gives you faith, doesn't it.<br /></p>Whatever, I'm going to drown my sorrows in a glass of Knut Hansen gin, from Hamburg. If ever you spot some, buy it: you'll thank me later.<br /></div>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-50815464018531707852021-12-11T16:59:00.000+01:002021-12-11T16:59:12.843+01:00May Maggots Eat Their Living Brains ...<div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvDKtXkuT7BkeR93QEkZvek6EHSnuv3nj9Q1VQ7sBGMxpDGBuJQG6bGvXJ8Xjepf3aVyslLZViPC46f6nXSAjwyR_CAkibrS8hfTZOeqLAfzFQ9jS4LUNDdy4Cgat6z0sCCwBf980E-m4/s2048/P7038507.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjvDKtXkuT7BkeR93QEkZvek6EHSnuv3nj9Q1VQ7sBGMxpDGBuJQG6bGvXJ8Xjepf3aVyslLZViPC46f6nXSAjwyR_CAkibrS8hfTZOeqLAfzFQ9jS4LUNDdy4Cgat6z0sCCwBf980E-m4/s320/P7038507.JPG" width="240" /></a></div> ... yes, as you've probably worked out<p></p><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"> a) Microsoft have screwed me about again, and</p><p style="text-align: justify;"> b) Margo bought a Hewlett-Packard printer a few years back.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Sadly, there is some shite which requires me to run Windoze, so for about a week I had to boot the trusty laptop up under Windows 10. Which required leaving it for a few hours as it downloaded accumulated updates and installed them ... then, one day up in Strasbourg, it decided to spend all day downloading some crap "quality of life" update that would bring me massive satisfaction with the inclusion of Paint 3D! (as if) and then, around 5pm, chose to install this huge pack.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"> </p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyDsWnSXJNwidwX9FrixC0Iu07i6l8uhkQg-Fcy1vkhaSfPNFm85ZfIsXYrRfjP-iCzZTObQYUNZkea5l-XL_4z1hJKfCfyxBQkIguEU2VbTDh6ptKUtx8GDHAbEjjcvP-fZCi5aAL4zc/s2048/P7038503.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyDsWnSXJNwidwX9FrixC0Iu07i6l8uhkQg-Fcy1vkhaSfPNFm85ZfIsXYrRfjP-iCzZTObQYUNZkea5l-XL_4z1hJKfCfyxBQkIguEU2VbTDh6ptKUtx8GDHAbEjjcvP-fZCi5aAL4zc/s320/P7038503.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>Which was hideously inconvenient but luckily after half an hour or so it rebooted - as it will - and I took the opportunity to turn it off and hie me back to the hotel, where I let it go about its business whilst I ate ... and when I got back to the room after a couple of hours it had got up to 60% done and then, in front of my eyes, displayed the rather alarming message "Windows is trying to recover your previous installation ...": this is <b>not</b> the sort of thing you really need. Especially when far from the office.<p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Luckily for me it seemed to succeed, so I tried in every way known to man to turn off automatic updating: this is not, it seems, possible with Windows 10 Home, albeit only mind-bogglingly difficult with the other versions. But despite my best efforts a few days later it tried to reinstall the borked update ... now, when I have to boot Windows I have Wifi disabled and I unplug the Ethernet cable. I suppose I could give the thing a static IP address and set up the router firewall to ban all incoming/outgoing traffic for that address, but that seems overkill.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHN17bf5mJnwdfYi4_beyY6nJDaMH43EnaAFY-6eNHp_oFzQ9zAdJVl0p0BE_-MX_B6Oyu_vk_NxNlsR9sCbiqbkcrGQmDSqEGNV3olqYTyaI0d_uUgEylQ5t0f8CLZhxerZkuqj9PdSs/s2048/P7038512.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhHN17bf5mJnwdfYi4_beyY6nJDaMH43EnaAFY-6eNHp_oFzQ9zAdJVl0p0BE_-MX_B6Oyu_vk_NxNlsR9sCbiqbkcrGQmDSqEGNV3olqYTyaI0d_uUgEylQ5t0f8CLZhxerZkuqj9PdSs/s320/P7038512.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>And as for the printer, sometime last year it decided to download a firmware update that basically bans the use of any but HP toner cartridges. Which Margo discovered when she bought some rather cheaper-than-HP "compatible" cartridges, and the beast threw a hissy-fit. She complained to the toner company who sent out replacements only to have the same thing happen: so I went goofling, as one will, and found (in addition to a large number of disgruntled ex-HP customers) a tool that <u>should</u> let one downgrade the firmware.</span></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span>It started off promisingly enough, with first of all "Erasing" and then "Programming..." but of course things that seem too good to be true usually are not, in fact, true and this turned out to be the case because the bugger reset halfway through the process and still obstinately refuses to recognise the new cartridges. According to various forae there should be an option in one of the setup menus to enable firmware updates, but of course this does not exist on this particular printer ... also, it now comes up with a "Fatal Error 200" on random occasions, and still won't print.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVHhP4NvEtiawQ5g-nMOZ8Rl7vhNd6cV3KfaqDAZUYoCX1UWFVcFbi10MIgz1UP_ZEq6ivz4X3R0FQjno9lAA8pYYSpOiBNy_o-sxOJCwrqXM7D0oeMwD40cQhUY92o5rsFD3aI0G-L2c/s2048/P7038537.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVHhP4NvEtiawQ5g-nMOZ8Rl7vhNd6cV3KfaqDAZUYoCX1UWFVcFbi10MIgz1UP_ZEq6ivz4X3R0FQjno9lAA8pYYSpOiBNy_o-sxOJCwrqXM7D0oeMwD40cQhUY92o5rsFD3aI0G-L2c/s320/P7038537.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>So we have a borked printer, two sets of colour cartridges, and slightly elevated blood pressure - which I'm going to do something about in the immediate future. Just remember, people - never, EVAH, buy an HP printer. Call me old-fashioned if you will, but when I buy a bit of consumer electronics I do rather expect it to belong to me ...</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>(Just as an aside, it's now reposing at the local tip where it can contemplate the errors of its ways. Rather spitefully, I actually feel good about that.) </span><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span>In other news, little Lilibeth looks a bit sad just now, up on the big hydraulic hoist in Philippe's garage with nothing in her rear end, what with the engine sitting on the floor on a pile of sawdust and the gearbox and differential disassembled on a couple of workbenches. Still, a little jaunt to Carcassonne got me three of the four bearings for the gearbox, and as it turns out the front bearing on the main shaft - which is rather difficult to find - is in good nick and doesn't actually <u>need</u> replacing, which is kind of convenient.</span></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI8gqj4erDmJRNLpP-3XSGTW62U35HvEMcpM6LKAbf8dO7QVFm8JtTc0OnXWUfJcB1PqAE9bkxIwOfIebfsTnwsU9D7zhrF6vLNO2HOm7pq5Yew4PnazLSaY6zSemrPe_HjF_4nwdkx-8/s2048/P7038561.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiI8gqj4erDmJRNLpP-3XSGTW62U35HvEMcpM6LKAbf8dO7QVFm8JtTc0OnXWUfJcB1PqAE9bkxIwOfIebfsTnwsU9D7zhrF6vLNO2HOm7pq5Yew4PnazLSaY6zSemrPe_HjF_4nwdkx-8/s320/P7038561.JPG" width="320" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>And I've found online and duly ordered the synchro slider, the synchro ring, the two springs that go with it, the spie joint for the driveshaft and a full set of gaskets (not to mention rear shock absorbers and a few other bits and pieces): all of these things should arrive before the end of the month so with any luck she'll be in running order by October. That would be rather nice ... next project, an Alfa Spider, anyone?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span></div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguAsXsrAXpyS0lUsSX8cjJeAkw9LHdIUaRQtgdiBqTHSvn0H7DnfAgrmPc7DWUnEr8mB_RoN2ifjkdix63rrhwYM6AyFqAu9X4IrzBUYM5q-xYtzThwEhBCu6pPN0YblQOR24cOfRBqcw/s2048/P7038566.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguAsXsrAXpyS0lUsSX8cjJeAkw9LHdIUaRQtgdiBqTHSvn0H7DnfAgrmPc7DWUnEr8mB_RoN2ifjkdix63rrhwYM6AyFqAu9X4IrzBUYM5q-xYtzThwEhBCu6pPN0YblQOR24cOfRBqcw/s320/P7038566.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div><span>Ah well, there's many a slip twixt cup and lip, and the Red Guy is always there ready and waiting to throw up on my eiderdown ... looks like this is going to be a Christmas/end-of-year missive rather than the one I'd planned for somewhat earlier. Never mind.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>Lilibeth is still up on the hoist: once Philippe had redone the gearbox we bolted that back onto the engine, stuck that back into its compartment, lost some skin putting the transaxles and shocks back where they belong, hooked up all the various cables for accelerator, clutch, choke ... and couldn't get her to start. The starter motor engaged, but refused to turn.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>Fortunately the RTA has the full wiring diagram and it didn't take me too long to realise that we'd omitted the basic step of connecting the battery lead to the starter ... in my defence, let it be said that the lead was actually hanging hidden behind the radiator fan.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZJoOWMmIlRuNhzOORAdu4hz8NHQSvdS1QIUAHHDFpRgaHch7FWUKDeIrTqlyOuJqEQ5AXZXIHNuWqn4noa6UvpXcd0VvDdzwoITBx3BkhMutF4wkKYWBUhKfg7dCQNew-Cu08S-wa5LY/s2048/P7038570.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZJoOWMmIlRuNhzOORAdu4hz8NHQSvdS1QIUAHHDFpRgaHch7FWUKDeIrTqlyOuJqEQ5AXZXIHNuWqn4noa6UvpXcd0VvDdzwoITBx3BkhMutF4wkKYWBUhKfg7dCQNew-Cu08S-wa5LY/s320/P7038570.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>Having corrected this basic but totally understandable error she started on the second go - not so bad, all things considered - and the gearbox works perfectly: sadly there was an - unusual - noise from the diff so ...</span></div></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span> </span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>... as it happens you can in fact, if you're correctly equipped, uncouple the gearbox from the motor and then just drop the former out from underneath. Which is what we did. I am assured that adjusting the differential on an 850 is a complete pain in the arse which, unless you happen to have the proprietary (and long-since unavailable) Fiat tool for the job, best recalls the tedious process of successive approximation for N iterations (where N is a number too large for comfort) which I had to do for maths, a long time ago. (Luckily, these days we have Excel and the like to do such shit for us.)<br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>Whatever, it's done, she can be put back together <u>again</u>: sadly it's about 8° in the garage and although the entire job should take no more than a morning that's assuming that your tiny hands are not constantly frozen. So she can wait for a spell of warmer weather.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJPwTvhU5rKJ7zFVNtpXzYepLayHMCSWrHDKt3o7XolEfQtMh6NnRGOh75CaSEnMIdSqQ9NZZAhwAaBON8CfOg3vbF-vJK4WsrJ7cGYCd7fRI4mA2-DoGz1GQUPhzUAFec2IPRdz9QuVo/s2048/P7038584.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJPwTvhU5rKJ7zFVNtpXzYepLayHMCSWrHDKt3o7XolEfQtMh6NnRGOh75CaSEnMIdSqQ9NZZAhwAaBON8CfOg3vbF-vJK4WsrJ7cGYCd7fRI4mA2-DoGz1GQUPhzUAFec2IPRdz9QuVo/s320/P7038584.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div><span>In other news, it would appear that our bar is cursed: all those that take it over seemed doomed to ... well, doom, I suppose. Let's be clear, I am sufficiently French by now to feel that there's absolutely nothing wrong with having an affair - come to that, why stop with just one, if you happen to enjoy it?</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>But even (maybe especially) in France there are rules for this sort of thing, and the first (and possibly only) rule is that You. Are. Discreet.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>So if Sandra decides she wants to shag Fabrice (the "why" escapes me, I can only assume that he's a really exceptional lover, because to all appearances he nicked his nose from a bust of Julius Caesar and his voice from one of the cartoon extras in Roger Rabbit) then that's none of my business: not only do I not care, I don't want to know.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQJJ6ci7VodOYKRtmJxqFKhw41pFKwVOzBB6tsIxF7pstVHfGJy2ukIAHwRZnILWFJrDoTEEchF773-RDZAfeJDplPablNmPZBVhk-r23Iv7me_Li4sSsPVZZu4vToVBM5dVY1H2SnEiI/s2048/P7038601.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQJJ6ci7VodOYKRtmJxqFKhw41pFKwVOzBB6tsIxF7pstVHfGJy2ukIAHwRZnILWFJrDoTEEchF773-RDZAfeJDplPablNmPZBVhk-r23Iv7me_Li4sSsPVZZu4vToVBM5dVY1H2SnEiI/s320/P7038601.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>Unfortunately "not knowing" did not seem to be an option, and soon enough a number of people <u>did</u> know, and then of course Eric found out, which led to a scene ... neither the <i>ambiance</i>, nor the <i>clientèle</i>, are what they were: I might have to fall back to Fontcouverte.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div><span>Still, it's a shame. Godnose I'd not have expected anything better of the fawning little tit, but I'd thought Sandra was rather smarter than that. It would seem that I was mistaken.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span>On the bright side, it's given the village something to talk about for the next six months at least, so all the vicious old biddies who like to regret the lamentable lack of moral fibre in the yoof of today will be able to die with smiles on their faces.</span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><br /></span></div></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><span></span></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik8-I5-HJulPMmFp3R0nDYXy6VKPt3NiBnI2DvK-dO5SuM8wsjWnQOdQL4la2DDKNaCmgyREcvtVv48qypqa_Si_StwAQKlhBX3FNRUy4eeLr2Z0n7Na26kMowGx8UeMfhK2GfmXyys9E/s2048/P7038617.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEik8-I5-HJulPMmFp3R0nDYXy6VKPt3NiBnI2DvK-dO5SuM8wsjWnQOdQL4la2DDKNaCmgyREcvtVv48qypqa_Si_StwAQKlhBX3FNRUy4eeLr2Z0n7Na26kMowGx8UeMfhK2GfmXyys9E/s320/P7038617.JPG" width="240" /></a></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><span>Whatever: it has not escaped my notice that the new year is approaching. The end of 2019 was very bad as far as I was concerned, 2020 was a completely shite year that's best forgotten, and 2021 has been an admittedly mitigated disaster.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><span> </span></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span><span>So here's hoping that 2022 will be a little brighter. Mind how you go, now. </span> </span><br /></div></div><div><p style="text-align: left;"></p></div>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-46716954917870229142021-07-23T22:50:00.001+02:002021-07-23T22:50:55.296+02:00Chairman of the Bored ...<p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEALWqMa8ImNPneI_qThrqGtivO7T6EwOSJdUV8C3Pq7UTuKA0BfwZ-OqLxgjDljDQrqh72BMyQSJzH52GcOgh_eYSgCkcV2_KYfL49kNTTrqkYi0xmFN_YIsvWOdz9Zz_TQ0fTNBtSOM/s2048/P6268468.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><div><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEALWqMa8ImNPneI_qThrqGtivO7T6EwOSJdUV8C3Pq7UTuKA0BfwZ-OqLxgjDljDQrqh72BMyQSJzH52GcOgh_eYSgCkcV2_KYfL49kNTTrqkYi0xmFN_YIsvWOdz9Zz_TQ0fTNBtSOM/s320/P6268468.JPG" /></div></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Well, here I is in Strasbourg - or more precisely in Lingolsheim, some 10 clicks to the west - and already after only one day I am heartily bored. Bored completely witless, doing a Neville, <i>ennuyé à mort</i> ... the most exiting thing that's happened all day, apart from a good stretch and a discreet belch on waking up, was watching a hedgehog snuffling around on the admittedly immaculate lawn this evening.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Tomorrow and Friday will surely be more of the same (although let it be said, there's the promise of a <i>repas gastronomique</i> tomorrow lunchtime, shame I'm not really a fan of hearty lunches), which will give me the entire weekend actually doing something vaguely interesting ie wandering about Strasbourg and poking into its crooks and nannies before being confronted with a whole glorious week of terminal ennui, after which I can go home for a week before yet another five days of the same ... have I mentioned that it's gray, cold and damp? Didn't think so.</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYlS19zsiuGY8l0d1abmBulahfzMh7Upe5RKE3Xot_lAn04ygx0qtEUU53M3q93MbKZdI6A_fkItduQWXSgtkdLfN8fZKN3oapO1yT4puFLuAb2dm4IL6CKswpsIn2PG5ZZsi_hVCuV_M/s2048/P7038514.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYlS19zsiuGY8l0d1abmBulahfzMh7Upe5RKE3Xot_lAn04ygx0qtEUU53M3q93MbKZdI6A_fkItduQWXSgtkdLfN8fZKN3oapO1yT4puFLuAb2dm4IL6CKswpsIn2PG5ZZsi_hVCuV_M/s2048/P7038514.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYlS19zsiuGY8l0d1abmBulahfzMh7Upe5RKE3Xot_lAn04ygx0qtEUU53M3q93MbKZdI6A_fkItduQWXSgtkdLfN8fZKN3oapO1yT4puFLuAb2dm4IL6CKswpsIn2PG5ZZsi_hVCuV_M/s320/P7038514.JPG" /></a></div>To be quite honest, I've already come to the conclusion that the whole jaunt is a waste of my time and their money but there you go, such is the glamorous life of the free-lance programmer. There's no Netflix on the hotel TV, no porn on my laptop, and I didn't even think to bring the collected works of the Brontë sisters to while away the tedious evenings so I shall just have to count flyspecks on the ceiling until I fall asleep.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Happy update! I must have done some good deed at some point in my life, for the client has come to exactly the same conclusion as I: namely that my presence for the next week is surplus to requirements! Consequently I shall catch a somewhat too-early train back southwards on Sunday moaning for another two weeks of basking in the sun before heading back up on the 19th, and at least for that week I should be doing something useful and actually productive, always makes me feel better.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQuH-vLnRGG1Vuoa5bhyJ6Bj8lfrV6W8CeusNMYCXnhI1P4eHPeEmLdh0MCZ-VkNp1tI1r0Bd_jCUaUFlXQ0MM1KYIKsj8BboAY47qdc4tlzZbllSGkNb0nDCPARSw7Ok_pYbi2CBfWYI/s2048/P6268474.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQuH-vLnRGG1Vuoa5bhyJ6Bj8lfrV6W8CeusNMYCXnhI1P4eHPeEmLdh0MCZ-VkNp1tI1r0Bd_jCUaUFlXQ0MM1KYIKsj8BboAY47qdc4tlzZbllSGkNb0nDCPARSw7Ok_pYbi2CBfWYI/s320/P6268474.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Always provided, of course, that I can actually get my old copy of MS VB6 (from 1998, yet) installed on my laptop … at the moment it is "searching for installed components", has been doing so for at least fifteen minutes and seems set to carry on doing so for at least another half hour.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Anyways, I made it into Strasbourg and had a fine old time wandering about: place is as lovely as I remember it from 30-odd years ago. And the beer is exceptional, you really should try the <i>blanche</i> should ever you find yourself there (and there's a very pleasant bar on the <i>place du Marché Gayot</i> which will happily serve it to you, but don't forget to specify 25cl unless you're really up to knocking back a full half-litre).</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio1u4uvgUIsKLPhayXx2-TRAc7sTqpSEP85DBx46BqQs70o2tWy1NB_twFuY19wJ-9dtrO3oKXfTB42JBUMx7tZ1kXYZKp9MH6mqDuUeec2AjZ9qoQ6LW51aZPzH8yZulDNc7syxRlB24/s2048/P6268496.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio1u4uvgUIsKLPhayXx2-TRAc7sTqpSEP85DBx46BqQs70o2tWy1NB_twFuY19wJ-9dtrO3oKXfTB42JBUMx7tZ1kXYZKp9MH6mqDuUeec2AjZ9qoQ6LW51aZPzH8yZulDNc7syxRlB24/s320/P6268496.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And a very nice lunch at a <i>winstüb</i> just down from the cathedral: a little martini rosso as <i>apéro</i> followed by a fairly decent (if a bit under-seasoned, to my taste) <i>foie gras</i> with excellent toast (yes, this is important) and a glass or two of pinot gris to help it go down. The only thing that disappointed was the fact that a bowl of piping-hot <i>frites</i> turned up as well but I quickly shooed them away, for it would have been an abomination. Yah, I know, I'm an old snob. Guilty as charged.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">Handy hint, by the way, for identifying the actual Strasbourgeois: they're the ones with the skins the exact same delicate milky white of a troglodyte axolotl. Suppose they don't really get out in the sun that much …</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGfpV4ex0bwPWUBoWWXgDYR_RrhcUR0jFAp-CG2geMgv8pYaz8W1TYWsaJ8y-XKNfZsTdmU0DqXoiIAxbSSgJwOFLLePYetx_hHgCmJ1TctLT8GWRHdkyhQWRgMHeZRc02Q4MqYrG6vBY/s2048/P6268497.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGfpV4ex0bwPWUBoWWXgDYR_RrhcUR0jFAp-CG2geMgv8pYaz8W1TYWsaJ8y-XKNfZsTdmU0DqXoiIAxbSSgJwOFLLePYetx_hHgCmJ1TctLT8GWRHdkyhQWRgMHeZRc02Q4MqYrG6vBY/s320/P6268497.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Getting back here, I found myself (as one will) at the bar the other day and there, sitting on the counter, was a bottle of Uby. This is a wine I've met before, fell in love with and then, sadly, forgot … I'm glad we've encountered one another again. The N° 4 is semi-sweet, which is not usually to my taste but it's so good I'm willing to make an exception, with incredible notes of pineapple and passionfruit … I think it must have been the very first wine I tasted where I could actually pick up this sort of thing. Not that it hits you about the head with it, but you can't help but notice.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I asked Eric to order me a half-dozen bottles the next time he has occasion to top up the supplies (judging by last night's crowd that'll not be far off): I suppose I could just head off to CDD at Lézignan, who have the stuff in stock, but I kind of have moral objections to dealing with them unless it's absolutely necessary (ie run out of wine on a Sunday afternoon).</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinDSirPZGERv6_mIhLRQmUKQbWTByIFXFJD3kCR7oRC3IH3eYQOKCEnaJc7gK2oYaEVrxkN9VPFBSxRjaQ5mWT_7CWRHQA2v7Udu3mXMuIvDqIY9bb0xEI_dYC-YnYa4Jj1LGmRjhVXac/s2048/P7038515.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinDSirPZGERv6_mIhLRQmUKQbWTByIFXFJD3kCR7oRC3IH3eYQOKCEnaJc7gK2oYaEVrxkN9VPFBSxRjaQ5mWT_7CWRHQA2v7Udu3mXMuIvDqIY9bb0xEI_dYC-YnYa4Jj1LGmRjhVXac/s320/P7038515.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sadly, although the chateau does in fact have a website it's of precious little use to me because there's no possibility of ordering online. So I can see that at some point, maybe September or October, I shall just have to gird my loins, feed Sarah, and undertake a three-hour drive to the Gers for a proper <i>dégustation sur place</i>. And, being the prudent man that I am, find a decent restaurant (these are not hard to find over in Gascony) and a hotel for the night, before heading back here.<br /></div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcGeuktkdjLGE7elU7h9P_KVl8UBzvDPE9qtS2SQcAHtHHbllp0yzOdXf8SqxbIJTMfITD00bFfBLMMjstvp7EN0ggbBFT7B4gEvg9mOTIhPKSSftjeAifttIOJ3MD1pfj2dvLvhD6UjQ/s2048/P7038523.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgcGeuktkdjLGE7elU7h9P_KVl8UBzvDPE9qtS2SQcAHtHHbllp0yzOdXf8SqxbIJTMfITD00bFfBLMMjstvp7EN0ggbBFT7B4gEvg9mOTIhPKSSftjeAifttIOJ3MD1pfj2dvLvhD6UjQ/s320/P7038523.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Otherwise, things are getting back to some new kind of normal: masks have become a reflex going into a shop (and I'll not tell you how bloody painful it was to have to wear one for seven hours on the train to and from Strasbourg) but out in the open not too many people bother - me amongst them, let it be said, but then we're both of us fully vaccinated so I'm not that bothered.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And the <i>bise</i>, or the hearty handshake, seem to have pretty much gone into retirement for the nonce.</div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDy8FfYnuog5ParboJTEoFmnsyYg1oZep_KxYCsMjj-6kH9LgfMfdQHMw0N56vxUAdckBjW8TTsZHG3geQw6cEEwA16-1WuH1HumM66O6d7pzCH7vurjD7h2XbH-yokgkaWs_r_tcwOnE/s2048/P7038538.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDy8FfYnuog5ParboJTEoFmnsyYg1oZep_KxYCsMjj-6kH9LgfMfdQHMw0N56vxUAdckBjW8TTsZHG3geQw6cEEwA16-1WuH1HumM66O6d7pzCH7vurjD7h2XbH-yokgkaWs_r_tcwOnE/s320/P7038538.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Time has gone by, as it does, and I once again find myself in Strasbourg, although admittedly getting ready to leave at an ungodly hour tomorrow moaning. Still, it was much more agreeable to actually be doing something useful, so I don't regret it, and this time one of the blokes at the company took pity on me and offered to take me out to see the Strasbourg night-life on Wednesday night. I'm very glad I took him up on that.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Out around the old port district to start with: it's been titivated and generally had shitloads of cash thrown at it, and is now positively heaving with crowds of Bright Young Things from various startups enjoying <i>apéros</i> on the riverbank. I need to go back there.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then around the EU district, to have a gawk at stuff like the <i>Palais de l'Europe</i> and all the other institutions that are crammed into the city, then down Embassy Row where the US and Russian embassies sit sullenly next to one another, then find a car-park to get ready for the good stuff ie wandering around <i>Petite France</i> and the covered bridges ...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho0xJEa-3ANNQ60oN0KbZW7Z0i6tDOmrzVf_Y1wAw5LeI2hJmM0IC-BWfcwNjzgJf2IBfAmXWVb4M6aeoq8NN_yJUhwkbztQV18MmLisidJpsBXX1mczM5yiWwty31qhg2Bp-37x_NZl8/s2048/P7038543.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEho0xJEa-3ANNQ60oN0KbZW7Z0i6tDOmrzVf_Y1wAw5LeI2hJmM0IC-BWfcwNjzgJf2IBfAmXWVb4M6aeoq8NN_yJUhwkbztQV18MmLisidJpsBXX1mczM5yiWwty31qhg2Bp-37x_NZl8/s320/P7038543.JPG" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Wound up around the cathedral at about 21:00, and so of course it was time for a meal ... Le Gruber is a <i>winstüb</i> which, to my admittedly uneducated palette, seemed perfectly acceptable, and I must say that I have decided that I really <u>do</u> like a pinot gris.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And by the time we'd finished that it was, as luck would have it, time for the <i>son et lumière</i> projected onto the cathedral. It must have cost a mint, but the <i>ville de Strasbourg</i> really got their money's worth because it was breathtakingly spectacular. Absolutely magical, and even though they don't do it justice I shall try to extract some of my shite phone photos ...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMfNjO9GCkfLCm8zSOH8EBMZFpfHcyhLG4LDivQuGgg3psrATgRf0oytPHXVSufPtANB4lrw7pAp45avFa-UJGdYvrhTZm4OVTK8C1WQ6EwwYbnmw65xZuGN0DBUPTvZ05OVZgu5y2kC4/s2048/P7038551.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMfNjO9GCkfLCm8zSOH8EBMZFpfHcyhLG4LDivQuGgg3psrATgRf0oytPHXVSufPtANB4lrw7pAp45avFa-UJGdYvrhTZm4OVTK8C1WQ6EwwYbnmw65xZuGN0DBUPTvZ05OVZgu5y2kC4/s320/P7038551.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bottom line, Strasbourg is a lovely city which has the added advantages of having a river running through it and loads of vast green shady parks and gardens (when I come back, shall have to spend a morning wandering about the <i>parc de l'Orangerie</i>): try not to miss it if ever you're over that way.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I should go and pack, for I have no wish whatsoever to be in a rush at 5:30 am: mind how you go.<br /></div></div><div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"><br /></p></div>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-14316839617648268032021-06-28T15:34:00.002+02:002021-06-28T15:34:35.986+02:00Out on the streets ...<p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5NP7D1Fw5MWirZDACbry3Kg5MKHU0fURj6N9kKDmCfoTZ2RIsIovdK8b50VcI-QQcuyxDv6aG_C9Rz42-JHx_x89tySxOx0oB5046mqSy5mjJKCR8yoYfg_BHzT1oPDfnfEEj8c9zhQ8/s2048/P4038358.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5NP7D1Fw5MWirZDACbry3Kg5MKHU0fURj6N9kKDmCfoTZ2RIsIovdK8b50VcI-QQcuyxDv6aG_C9Rz42-JHx_x89tySxOx0oB5046mqSy5mjJKCR8yoYfg_BHzT1oPDfnfEEj8c9zhQ8/s320/P4038358.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">OK, it's been a while. Sorry. As you may probably imagine, other things have been on my mind, such as it is these days, for quite a while now ... I am now fully vaxed and feeling much happier about that as it means that I can actually go off and see some old friends that I've not seen since BC <u>without</u> feeling obliged to wear a full noddy suit and respirator, can go out to bars and have a merry glass of vitamins under the plane trees, and can eat in a restaurant. If I think to book ahead. Also, no longer obliged to wear a mask in outdoor public spaces ... this is definitely a better place to be.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDzCeAYty5GO_OWGpSTALafaF_b0kdzeg2av0fs6QHJzOH3elySfj4zBiv7WMDGZmWHGQ1dCl9fqv0_y8Jjkl441YKiXcSQr8Xj4wrR-A5CeHyxwZioMS22jhyphenhyphenFUeK8ZL-wyfK2H3pJOI/s2048/IMG-20210605-WA0000.jpeg" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1152" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDzCeAYty5GO_OWGpSTALafaF_b0kdzeg2av0fs6QHJzOH3elySfj4zBiv7WMDGZmWHGQ1dCl9fqv0_y8Jjkl441YKiXcSQr8Xj4wrR-A5CeHyxwZioMS22jhyphenhyphenFUeK8ZL-wyfK2H3pJOI/s320/IMG-20210605-WA0000.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Also, there's a new addition to the family. All Philippe's fault, of course. I'll grant you that Margo happened to mention over dinner one night that she'd once had a Fiat 850 coupé ... but then I started to get email referring to ads on <i>leboncoin</i> for such things ...</div><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><p style="text-align: justify;">There was a rather nice cabriolet going for about 4 grand, but it appeared to have spent the last twenty years of its life in a stable, next to the horses, and needed quite a bit of work - also, it disappeared literally overnight.</p><p style="text-align: justify;"></p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMBf-RrMkiUGw5eXJMkraEVytDY2WnZuL1DWzr1QFIz437F0RTcUGa0bsvDf6dm00_EUIgd6oTqwqOjdMl_eOu0giyPGNuEIWVnFINc0dSp8dYrx5_odgWWT5jDRS6JBvnLTV98X9BbLA/s2048/P4038361.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMBf-RrMkiUGw5eXJMkraEVytDY2WnZuL1DWzr1QFIz437F0RTcUGa0bsvDf6dm00_EUIgd6oTqwqOjdMl_eOu0giyPGNuEIWVnFINc0dSp8dYrx5_odgWWT5jDRS6JBvnLTV98X9BbLA/s320/P4038361.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But this one was at Montpellier so one fine day Philippe and I headed off, ate (of course) and looked her over. The bloke had paid 12K for her and was willing to sell her for 11K, so Philippe told me that as the brakes needed looking at and the gearbox would have to be dropped out to fix the "normal" whine in 4th gear, I should offer 8K. Which is what I did.</div><p></p><p style="text-align: justify;">When I told him the next day that it'd been accepted, he said - typical French - "<i>Merde! Le con voulait vraiment s'en débarrasser ... Should have offered 7 ...</i>" Never mind. A week later I rented a trailer, borrowed John and his Landcruiser, and went to pick her up - because it was all twoo about the brakes, and the gearbox, and trying to drive her back on the <i>autoroute</i> seemed unadvisable (also, neither wing mirrors nor seatbelts, makes me nervous) ...</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Whatever, sometime in the immediate future when the 1934 Belilla has advanced to the point where serious carpentry skills are required, she shall go into Philippe's garage and onto the hoist and get hands stuck up her skirts. And I shall learn a bit about <i>la mécanique</i> ...</p><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwe603xip2lvyw3W-a9UioJmeX-pyQ-bLwOhSX7YOV_R47nNg3eFs42h-z9m8h6lmiDTtpY9DHWOUHowM-3ZpCyWVkSDRjE5pLQv2rYEoAPaXWTDsO8mVlHj3CfYsNPx0jMdUXy0JSJs/s2048/P4038363.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJwe603xip2lvyw3W-a9UioJmeX-pyQ-bLwOhSX7YOV_R47nNg3eFs42h-z9m8h6lmiDTtpY9DHWOUHowM-3ZpCyWVkSDRjE5pLQv2rYEoAPaXWTDsO8mVlHj3CfYsNPx0jMdUXy0JSJs/s320/P4038363.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">But then, even if I can't really describe it as a mid-life crisis (that actual time being rather past in my case), what better time than in your 60s to do something on a <i>coup de coeur</i>? I mean, if you're still working and aren't Italian you'll have got rid of the kids and consequently have a bit of disposable income once again, so why not? Especially as you've a fair chance (despite my own best efforts to the contrary) of living another ten years or so, so as to be able to actually <u>enjoy</u> your little <i>folie</i> ...</div><br /><div style="text-align: justify;">Anyways, so it is, oh dearly belovèds, that we is got ourselves a 1966 Fiat 850 Coupé (Serie I), and rather plan on having fun with her.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-p0zestkeBM5ElZacrObnz2K7pIr-Gu9mQFymzldrtTZeKCbpB1i_vZBzAnWBoKmGdHkVUzWNjRFIP0ALLuUlhkMA-yf8XO2-rSfpuvSLHKSyhA20dcGQ2hdfBhltyIrjj5faR6Aag0/s2048/P4038376.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEio-p0zestkeBM5ElZacrObnz2K7pIr-Gu9mQFymzldrtTZeKCbpB1i_vZBzAnWBoKmGdHkVUzWNjRFIP0ALLuUlhkMA-yf8XO2-rSfpuvSLHKSyhA20dcGQ2hdfBhltyIrjj5faR6Aag0/s320/P4038376.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Speaking of working reminds me that I shall probably be spending much of July up in Strasbourg, picking up the pieces of a turn of the century (that's around 2000, <u>not</u> 1900, although you might be forgiven for thinking otherwise) stock control system written especially for garages in VB6 and using the dreaded MS Access as a substitute for a database. Apparently, most of their hell-desk calls are from clients who are having problems with Access, and need to rebuild the thing ... I honestly didn't know that it even existed any more.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In any case, no good deed goes unpunished and you don't get to spend over 40 years in computing without picking up a bit of archaeological cruft which the yoof of today have had the good fortune to have avoided, so there you go: as I too am guilty of VB6, am frighteningly competent and not outrageously expensive, that, it seems, is how I shall be spending some of the summer.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Don't get me wrong, Strasbourg is a lovely city, it's just that up until now it'd not been included in my travel plans. <br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmDFo2l1xqa2o1Zyp0TKg7bdyT9wa92sxIkZR4k_GOhLtca1r2rof1dJAu4nhY-1Hd84qw5rlGBTw3UrtIqvTOkDR1fJDQghUiUGoUbiMfxxCo_awhfDg0Whc0WWDa7iVlDFgggXBsrog/s2048/P4038380.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjmDFo2l1xqa2o1Zyp0TKg7bdyT9wa92sxIkZR4k_GOhLtca1r2rof1dJAu4nhY-1Hd84qw5rlGBTw3UrtIqvTOkDR1fJDQghUiUGoUbiMfxxCo_awhfDg0Whc0WWDa7iVlDFgggXBsrog/s320/P4038380.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In other news, summer is indeed upon us but luckily the temperature has plummeted from the high thirties we were enjoying over the past week or so, and so actually doing something is once again an option. Not, to be honest, that it's an option I've actually taken, but it's nice to have the choice. "<i>Hack out some more shite code to fix some boring once in a lifetime bug that probably no-one cares about anyway, or have another gin in the hammock?</i>", that's the sort of problem with which I find myself confronted.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's a difficult choice but what the hell, I can always assuage any slight feelings of guilt by telling myself that crap code can always be pounded out next moaning, when it's cooler, and in any case they always seem slightly shocked when I manage to deliver on time and I'd hate to be responsible for a heart attack or whatever by dropping off something operational and fully tested earlier than scheduled. (This is what happens when you manage to get peoples' expectations sufficiently low.)<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieV5l1w8SWFKXaHed0sz-YDw8hyxAuOcP3Sso8A4I7H_VAhDEfjbRB-PDUnloWSoA6u8Uunb0RDHrJCYm_wU_2UpKc3ynpBlUwmYYFwq9hIU5iz2Rwem80UhXFLzoiy1nWOmYMaoAiMhc/s2048/P4038390.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEieV5l1w8SWFKXaHed0sz-YDw8hyxAuOcP3Sso8A4I7H_VAhDEfjbRB-PDUnloWSoA6u8Uunb0RDHrJCYm_wU_2UpKc3ynpBlUwmYYFwq9hIU5iz2Rwem80UhXFLzoiy1nWOmYMaoAiMhc/s320/P4038390.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The other thing about summer is the summer thunderstorms, which tend to be kind of spectacular around these parts, as well as sudden. Yesterday's little effort involved hailstones as well - about the size of my thumbnail - glad I wasn't actually out in it, I've enough dents in my scalp as it is.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I'll spare you the gory and admittedly tedious details, but despite the <i>mairie's</i> best efforts to prove that they are - collectively - a pack of incompetent arseholes who wish to have a bar that caters exclusively for the 10% of the population who are incontinent and over 90, Sandra and Eric have reopened for business.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU9IJA4tXogv0zqPnxHTIyTnUCO9bJ_0rCRRfKygYpyEG2rm-bZpyZKjoKQLwWFl1VYlzosDpxeRSmPB5M7Ft66vHSoB30wXrvMvrX3gZI8yMwbeYLb94xQ9CB-9AtuiUOsvtknZVqdYo/s2048/P4038391.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiU9IJA4tXogv0zqPnxHTIyTnUCO9bJ_0rCRRfKygYpyEG2rm-bZpyZKjoKQLwWFl1VYlzosDpxeRSmPB5M7Ft66vHSoB30wXrvMvrX3gZI8yMwbeYLb94xQ9CB-9AtuiUOsvtknZVqdYo/s320/P4038391.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And so not only can I seek out bad company and enjoy a (unmasked) drink or two in its presence, we may dine (and Sandra's <i>oeufs cocotte</i> are worth it) if it's not pissing down with rain (see note above, on thunderstorms), and I find myself once again solicited to supply <i>foie gras</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sadly I did not make as much as usual last winter - at the time, there seemed little point - and there's but one <i>bloc</i> left in the freezer that's maybe the best I've ever made to date, involving Timut pepper and chili flakes and Bourbon, that only I and a friend who appreciates such things are ever going get to stick in their mouths, so they shall have to wait if they've another massive order (or buy the stuff from Metro, like everyone else): did manage to hand over a kilo for her <i>salade périgourdine</i> on Father's Day though, so that's alright.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisyYyxugWciwAfaz6fHEc3Sn2lXF-jRsEv1OPmzIsW0_0PyMfoId6RkEjkWbRxlaaTOGq3eFvoTmKfzk55W8T0nbyRyIK1xINj2sf_l2nPUz8y8nwGgg836YwMAdFoEzJGXJMo27PDwnI/s2048/P4038392.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisyYyxugWciwAfaz6fHEc3Sn2lXF-jRsEv1OPmzIsW0_0PyMfoId6RkEjkWbRxlaaTOGq3eFvoTmKfzk55W8T0nbyRyIK1xINj2sf_l2nPUz8y8nwGgg836YwMAdFoEzJGXJMo27PDwnI/s320/P4038392.JPG" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">I've still not quite come to grips with the fact that I, definitely not-from-here and in fact not even French, am generally acknowledged to make the best <i>foie gras</i> in the region, but there you are, I can live with that.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Completely off-topic, but I am very proud of young Moses. The other day, for the first time in his life, he cocked one leg up and pissed on a car tyre. Big, grown-up boy! (Speaking of "big" it was time for his booster shots this moaning, and I was slightly embarrassed to discover that he actually weighs in at 17.5kg. As the vet remarked, "<i>he's not fat, but you can tell that he has a few reserves ...</i>", so he might be moving on to somewhat shorter rations from now on.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZj8DruME9F0Ro_fsGnZfdHSduhTDGc-k9Jw7ZDtwfImtsC4ZM-fX9-lgtsQofYlplwNcCqsQoWq0tbsF_-wwVuPU_bvp02xnJ0IHM41oHvdGkrHonikxCnGT-WtkYsYl9WJRiRFIGXZc/s2048/P4038393.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZj8DruME9F0Ro_fsGnZfdHSduhTDGc-k9Jw7ZDtwfImtsC4ZM-fX9-lgtsQofYlplwNcCqsQoWq0tbsF_-wwVuPU_bvp02xnJ0IHM41oHvdGkrHonikxCnGT-WtkYsYl9WJRiRFIGXZc/s320/P4038393.JPG" /></a> Anyways, I hop onto the TGV to Strasbourg tomorrow for ten days of whizzo fun and games, so time now, I'm afraid, to get some of the boring but necessary stuff like billing done before packing (not forgetting the camera, <u>and</u> a spare battery pack because I'll not be caught out again). Mind how you go, now.<br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-49291176939321329752021-03-07T20:44:00.000+01:002021-03-07T20:44:02.062+01:00Moanings ...<p style="text-align: justify;"> It is sad, but true, that when it comes to buying food I seem to be incapable of moderation. For Margo expressed a wish for a nice roast chicken for the Christmas feast, and with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart off I duly trotted to <i>Maison Bertrand</i> to get a week's worth of protein ... like chunks of pork for which the pig in question no longer has any particular requirement, tail end of beef fillet which apparently nobody but I really want, for they hock it off at - literally - half-price ie 17€/kg and I have no objection to that, rack of lamb, <i>escalopes de veau</i> ...</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And they had some grain-fed, free-range chickens: or more to the point, <i>chapons</i>, and not thinking of the downside I bought one. But let it be admitted that 3kg of castrated rooster is a bit much for two ... hence Rick and Mary's presence. Still, given that the purchase was not, for once, a spur of the moment thing for that night's dinner, I had the time to brine it for a day or two and, having hoiked it out of its bath, brush the skin with molasses and leave it to dry. And very nice it was too, after a suitable amount of time in a hot oven: as tender and moist as one could wish, with crispy skin ...</p><p style="text-align: justify;">The leftovers - for there were <strike>some</strike> lots - found their way into chicken and bacon pie, with decent suet pastry just as god intended, and three nights later the dogs were happy beasts because leftover leftover leftovers is just a bit too much.<br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">One might think that this would have served as an object lesson but alas! this turns out not to be the case, for I promptly re-offended a week later, buying 1.5kg of a pork rib rack. Which also spent a few days in the fridge, having been well-rubbed beforehand with <i>gros sel</i>, sugar and loads of pepper ... I boned it out, as one will, before serving with slices of fried and caramelised apple and as luck would have it Caroline and Philippe were around to help demolish the meat and gnaw on the ribs - much appreciated.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">... somewhat (a lot) later ... <br /></p><p style="text-align: justify;">D'you know, it's kind of hard, under the circumstances, to feel much enthusiasm for writing. Some of you lucky b'stards live in places relatively untouched by COVID: sadly, we do not. Our first lockdown started in March 2019 and lasted three months: then we got June/July off for good behaviour only to go back into another lockdown, and as I write there is still a 6pm-6am curfew which does - as you might think, and as was intended - cut down on social interaction. It is getting to the point where one might reasonably ask if it's not better to possibly die from COVID, or to almost certainly die from ennui. There are friends we've not met up with for four months.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">And although I'm not a particularly sociable man - most of my experience with crowds involving the question "how do I get the fuck out of here and onto the periphery?" - let it be said that one of my simple pleasures involved heading off to the excellent <i>boulangerie</i> at Ferrals to pick up a few baguettes and then stopping off on the return trip at the little bar at Fontcouverte for a glass of white vitamins and a cigar on the terrace, under the brilliant blue sky and the shade of the plane trees, watching everyone else enjoy themselves. This is now a distant memory, and it hurts.</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Have I mentioned that there are friends I've not seen for a long time?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">Also, I've not taken the camera(s) out for yonks?</p><p style="text-align: justify;">You take care ...<br /></p>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-37908996426811442822020-12-06T11:51:00.000+01:002020-12-06T11:51:00.532+01:00Back In The Jug Agane ...<div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf4cZ2S5G5siHMuJ-RmMKjDgFisMGFGtSjLtRxv84qVLnd1ONa9Y7fHXHBQbfbXO8QxvVBI3qvPTg_QrDOyLJqlHFMVGd2mWcZSm4_k2OB2oxOFx10MmYOV5nh2rMBXQGHK2FuHXTMROU/s2048/P5038248.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjf4cZ2S5G5siHMuJ-RmMKjDgFisMGFGtSjLtRxv84qVLnd1ONa9Y7fHXHBQbfbXO8QxvVBI3qvPTg_QrDOyLJqlHFMVGd2mWcZSm4_k2OB2oxOFx10MmYOV5nh2rMBXQGHK2FuHXTMROU/s320/P5038248.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Three days into our second lockdown, and I'm already bored witless ... I
also find myself with two hares and a bloody partridge in a pear tree
in the freezer, and can't really invite anyone around to help eat them,
which is a bugger.</div><p style="text-align: justify;">Not
as much of an embuggerment as trying to get used to Blogger's new
interface, which is outrageously annoying and sufficiently different
from the old one that I had come to know and - if not exactly love -
then at least accept.</p><div style="text-align: justify;">And
the text formatting is broken, so it won't justify text if it doesn't
think the column is wide enough, if you select some photos to upload it
will indeed do this thing but when you've selected one to insert and
wish to insert another it does not pop up the list of the photos you've
just uploaded, oh no, you have to go into the bloody Blogger catalogue
of every single photo you've ever uploaded and pick them from there ...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMLr-EFW30zRy91x9Yjy6KWYulYnszMHdJ59qEfuzcHZzbJWG-h_RwgVOQ8ERwPZ7bRNk1Kz1nLs30kfsfw1Jr9WACJHllhi2NQaTiLNbSIEVvzJzYrMh6YnksHAzY3-K2EXw0h6mplxs/s2048/PA248326.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMLr-EFW30zRy91x9Yjy6KWYulYnszMHdJ59qEfuzcHZzbJWG-h_RwgVOQ8ERwPZ7bRNk1Kz1nLs30kfsfw1Jr9WACJHllhi2NQaTiLNbSIEVvzJzYrMh6YnksHAzY3-K2EXw0h6mplxs/s320/PA248326.JPG" /></a></div>And sometimes, for some completely random reason, you can justify a photo left or right and a) it will not be justified hard up to the margin, unlike all the others, or b) text will not wrap around it. And I can't be arsed editing the bloody HTML - which is now, incidentally, displayed as a solid block of text rather than the halfway formatted stuff I vaguely remember from the Before times - I could go on and on, but life's too short.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">We have also been more or less forced to live through the cluster-fuck of the US presidential erection, rather an unpleasant experience (like the time, some forty years ago, when I was first introduced to the business end of a colonoscope and subsequently walked uncomfortably for a day or so afterwards) but sadly, necessary, for one cannot spend all one's time watching Magnum PI on Amazon Prime. Although one <u>can</u> spend quite a lot of time watching <i>Good Omens</i>, just saying ...<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB7wnrtoVOihBIdBs6mhLhazzircqb5r6zFb4T3d2BGZMNWMEo1LGl6XV9KAYxmyfbLMucKVpDH3IbC99MjcszVY4s7YidhJzSMmLjGEACvaEOnkQbhoTSr26sOL4c6FFju-toO2u4dl4/s2048/P5038253.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiB7wnrtoVOihBIdBs6mhLhazzircqb5r6zFb4T3d2BGZMNWMEo1LGl6XV9KAYxmyfbLMucKVpDH3IbC99MjcszVY4s7YidhJzSMmLjGEACvaEOnkQbhoTSr26sOL4c6FFju-toO2u4dl4/s320/P5038253.JPG" /></a></div>On the brighter side, being in <i>confinement</i> does have its advantages. The autoroute is a bloody sight quieter, for one thing, without the usual constant subliminal hum of traffic, and the air is cleaner ... it makes no difference to my working day, having worked more or less exclusively from home for the past seven years or so, and as we've never taken to shopping as an Olympic sport that too doesn't really cause any problems. And let it be said that, when I <u>do</u> head off on the weekly outing (for one must still eat, you know), the lack of crowding is really rather appreciable.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">On the down side, some little trips to quaint villages that I'd rather been planning have been postponed, and even on a glorious day such as last Wednesday I cannot pack young Moses in the car and head off for a walk somewhere else, with the enticing prospect of a bar, complete with shaded terrace, at either end ...<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzjtSt1jgsWRDY8f4btom5URWKzm6I3k0blHlFqQWs3zz9uqqeIGakGtT1ngceTU8bBhgvX3NdOe-wwKx7zSIHmHh1gSo2q9WqJcV86LMfpVFEblu6LB9zfidELyhr9kHAlfNS-i2Qn50/s2048/PA248330.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzjtSt1jgsWRDY8f4btom5URWKzm6I3k0blHlFqQWs3zz9uqqeIGakGtT1ngceTU8bBhgvX3NdOe-wwKx7zSIHmHh1gSo2q9WqJcV86LMfpVFEblu6LB9zfidELyhr9kHAlfNS-i2Qn50/s320/PA248330.JPG" /></a></div>Oh, we have now learnt what may or may not be at the root of the arson cases and tyre slashings that have so <strike>disturbed life</strike> given us something to talk about in out peaceful little village, and as usual it seems to be Béberts fault ...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Bébert is the local mason: short, rotund and jolly, with an unfortunate penchant for nicking the mike at karaoke events and refusing to give it back until he's bellowed his way through 5 LPs-worth of <i>la chanson française</i> and sent half the clientèle out into the streets with wodges of Camembert stuck in their ears.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And since he divorced, godnose how long ago, he has had a tendency to pick up partners (serial, not parallel) who share his general tone-deafness: now as it happens, Bez - the owner of the Stelvio that got torched (which is definitely a crime) - knew of the latest girlfriend and thought it wise to warn Bébert that she had a certain - uh, reputation - in Narbonne ...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi17n8KaCHCoVxEPXFxVVnK7TMnO1Dh3Keq7rgfJpfq2uq26M3tezxoBh7_3dCZB1g7seGoBA2H4uu5XpEaM2x4nlYNosZQXwkoGhA14LF_XsznLR2JUH7YoG7b5hernI-5tG5FI2Yjwb0/s2048/P5038255.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi17n8KaCHCoVxEPXFxVVnK7TMnO1Dh3Keq7rgfJpfq2uq26M3tezxoBh7_3dCZB1g7seGoBA2H4uu5XpEaM2x4nlYNosZQXwkoGhA14LF_XsznLR2JUH7YoG7b5hernI-5tG5FI2Yjwb0/s320/P5038255.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>News which Bébert digested in his own fashion, and a few weeks later he decided to say that she was not really his type, thanks very much, and unfortunately mentioned the friendly little warning. And shortly afterwards, the Alfa went up in flames; some point the finger at Lionel, who also knew the woman in question.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Then the tyre-stabbing started, and a short while later the house Lionel was renting went up in flames, and the tyre-stabbing continued. But not for too much longer, because ...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbloFcuiau7BTSw66gFbLVpIjW1sGmnSxPQVw-qZXBO0X6qdpGz9CCphnVBEtJenSYC_pvkLKyrfNQsYiIFcEJonmdK4H3lzzit3HBedUySExCWePrqjrB2zBFj42qWcF6tW7D958WkBk/s2048/PA248334.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbloFcuiau7BTSw66gFbLVpIjW1sGmnSxPQVw-qZXBO0X6qdpGz9CCphnVBEtJenSYC_pvkLKyrfNQsYiIFcEJonmdK4H3lzzit3HBedUySExCWePrqjrB2zBFj42qWcF6tW7D958WkBk/s320/PA248334.JPG" /></a></div>... shortly after all that excitement, Bébart himself had <u>his</u> tyres slashed, sadly this was outside the bar (yah, back in the days when bars were actually open) and there was a witness and the <i>gendarmerie</i> nicked Lionel's daughter for the deed. That's about the only incontrovertible fact in the whole <i>histoire</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">For there are some, to whom I give equal credence, who say that the whole story is a pile of dog's bollocks.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Whatever, damned if I know, but it's probably the most interesting series of events to have occurred in Moux since they installed gravity.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-2nyxd6jZ4V2SIMuBzptGKodQa1fpdmcefZFlKK6lQAQFaEmP8XKN_zzW4vIIyV1JyW_QS26hYg9ATM7nquOvuVNiI1Q2nJ_Z8EmpSikEXcJAKeB_1yxAhUxi4sytc1DIrEeC0HXCPMQ/s2048/P5188266.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1536" data-original-width="2048" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-2nyxd6jZ4V2SIMuBzptGKodQa1fpdmcefZFlKK6lQAQFaEmP8XKN_zzW4vIIyV1JyW_QS26hYg9ATM7nquOvuVNiI1Q2nJ_Z8EmpSikEXcJAKeB_1yxAhUxi4sytc1DIrEeC0HXCPMQ/s320/P5188266.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Even when confined, some hunting is allowed: for the pests, such as wild boar and deer. Which is rather pleasant, for joining the partridge and the hares in the freezer there are now a few <i>cotelettes de marcassin</i> - just enough for two, which is good - and a haunch of venison got dropped off on the understanding that I should cook it and then take it and some Cumberland sauce around to José's to be eaten. (A totally illegal operation, of course, under the circumstances, but what the hell ...)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Luckily - as far as I'm concerned - the thing had thoughtfully been peeled before I got it: still had the hoof attached though. I suppose I could have kept it and got someone to make me a posh knife with a roe-deer hoof for the hilt, but as I don't go hunting I reluctantly abandoned the idea ...<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUAf0FARo7sIlWVPynhJ2AWn1qsHjhtFTMkfFH3sb9cP9ZlhV-eo36U3q6f_6CGbZIx6oxxUYtm54n3lXfT-QeSVES15gSX-lrNgDLzA1DhR9YP-PBk2rLxjiz5pB3gdRcpFc9Sj_ODqE/s2048/PA248337.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhUAf0FARo7sIlWVPynhJ2AWn1qsHjhtFTMkfFH3sb9cP9ZlhV-eo36U3q6f_6CGbZIx6oxxUYtm54n3lXfT-QeSVES15gSX-lrNgDLzA1DhR9YP-PBk2rLxjiz5pB3gdRcpFc9Sj_ODqE/s320/PA248337.JPG" /></a></div>Sadly, as middle age creeps up on me I seem to be falling to bits. Back in 2018 it was the muscle behind the knee that went: the other day I woke up to find that I couldn't raise my right arm. So I hied me to Lignère's surgery, and after only a two-hour wait was told that one of the tendons had torn ...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So I've an appointment on Tuesday for an X-ray and echography, and while I'm waiting I'm on horse-doctor's doses of cortisone, and a codeine all-you-can-eat buffet, which helps.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Just as an aside, I had to let Cla-Val know about this, for we'd a conference call arranged for the Friday afternoon and as I was spending most of that in the quack's waiting room we pushed it back to Tuesday and then I got the appointment for the radio and so it had to be pushed back yet again - so I felt I rather owed them the reason.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1h_b0JAqxz5LzoMYriaMqvfC1ttR-JmAat5jtNrJAppwVdT85D-uBTNeMo7hDJdc9O7X5fNOWAE3yml0O_m9zbefNlDXeZAYyub7csvjD3daGcfzQpjXZk8ctBESgMyMn8M13L4hB-EA/s2048/P5188270.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1h_b0JAqxz5LzoMYriaMqvfC1ttR-JmAat5jtNrJAppwVdT85D-uBTNeMo7hDJdc9O7X5fNOWAE3yml0O_m9zbefNlDXeZAYyub7csvjD3daGcfzQpjXZk8ctBESgMyMn8M13L4hB-EA/s320/P5188270.JPG" /></a></div>And all Karim could think of to say, in between sniggers, was to suggest that I either stop masturbating so much, or else to use my left hand: as he said, <i>"Like that, it feels as though someone else is doing it for you ..."</i>. I found that rather hurtful.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Whatever. As I write the lockdown restrictions are being eased somewhat: we may now go out for "personal exercise" for up to three hours so long as we don't go more than 20km from home, and non-essential commerces are open again, although sadly bars and restaurants are going to stay closed for some time yet.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The point of all that is of course to give small shop-owners some respite by allowing them to profit from the Christmas season, but looking at the complete lack of crowds around the commercial centres, not to mention in the inner-city shopping streets, it all looks rather gloomy. I rather suspect that there's an awful lot that will just put the keys under the door ...<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1MHkm3TB1cKr8Xz61UiVE07yzctd2l4k_k6YawdJzok6A4ToltmlLvXBsNolVOmtVi8d-wZNZAa7Urq01AMbacD0Okjq2W_3T7qSFasc2D2J6vwCbJauHQ6Q-VukamqKSEpxg9DNSVwc/s2048/PA248339.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="2048" data-original-width="1536" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1MHkm3TB1cKr8Xz61UiVE07yzctd2l4k_k6YawdJzok6A4ToltmlLvXBsNolVOmtVi8d-wZNZAa7Urq01AMbacD0Okjq2W_3T7qSFasc2D2J6vwCbJauHQ6Q-VukamqKSEpxg9DNSVwc/s320/PA248339.JPG" /></a></div>Same goes for places like our bar in Moux (who were already half-planning on taking on an affair some place else, thanks to the attitude of the driveling mouth-breathers who run the <i>mairie</i>), and the bar at Fontcouverte which always made for a pleasant stop for a glass of vitamins out on the terrace, in the sun, after getting some decent bread at Ferrals. I shall regret their passing.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It's a funny thing, but at the end of 2019 my friend B. decided that 2020 was going to be a year of health and happiness. We turned out to be rather mistaken, didn't we? Better luck next time, I suppose - mind how you go now, and take care.<br /></div>Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-74377239239792893902020-09-27T14:08:00.001+02:002020-09-27T14:08:15.780+02:00Venez, Tentez Le Gout De Mon Blanc ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVdoOI2iD9AOmBC2ro8DGTQPQwMZeF6wGqBaWyNEkGX3_i-n087c_Vgt4P9zq0FRheoH-INTBAZ277jcx96qSNcCtwKqQQsuUgWT6bMyDe5lWLuBqtN_-ldH9jAF35gwMxXEOmuwKTARw/s1600/P4258162.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiVdoOI2iD9AOmBC2ro8DGTQPQwMZeF6wGqBaWyNEkGX3_i-n087c_Vgt4P9zq0FRheoH-INTBAZ277jcx96qSNcCtwKqQQsuUgWT6bMyDe5lWLuBqtN_-ldH9jAF35gwMxXEOmuwKTARw/s320/P4258162.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
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Sometimes you have to wonder ... I mean, when you come across a headline reading "<i>Porn star arrested for toad death</i>" then you know that something is seriously wrong, although with what exactly I'm not entirely sure. (In the interests of total disclosure, I did not actually look at the story that would have followed, had I clicked on the link. The headline by itself was quite enough to put me off.)<br />
<br />
Anyways, we is now out of lockdown, gatherings of up to ten persons are permitted provided that social distancing is respected, bars and restaurants have reopened. (The ones that have not closed definitively, that is.) I am not sure just how well all this is respected, given that we were numerous at the bar on Friday night and today - being the <i>fête de mères</i> - there were at least forty, mingling: still, you have to die of <u>something</u>.</div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTOZ7X1B81oyIVQDZcMEcZspzNPVebfEaZiANJMAmG_hkkJv1JknPAWtqQUqYncdJ2IiNUyPaUFuzhwS6NZli2RLC7JlzZQR7hjP9GiRIqqcQ6pNJ3SjYz3J95LtZQPIdr92Gt9LSQU10/s1600/P4258164.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1200" data-original-width="1600" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgTOZ7X1B81oyIVQDZcMEcZspzNPVebfEaZiANJMAmG_hkkJv1JknPAWtqQUqYncdJ2IiNUyPaUFuzhwS6NZli2RLC7JlzZQR7hjP9GiRIqqcQ6pNJ3SjYz3J95LtZQPIdr92Gt9LSQU10/s320/P4258164.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
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As in, if you died for no reason at all, that would be rather embarrassing, I think. Just saying. (Note to self: make sure to have a good reason to drop dead. Preferably at a fiscally advantageous time.)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;">Much, much later ... somehow, I seem to have other things on my mind than writing, these days: you too may have found this to be the case. And to be honest, this being Moux, and our not having much inclination to get out and about these days, there's rarely much to actually write about anyway.<br /></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisKfUAMjjVOz72kqbQvdM7jz9eaikbe5n6gmfPhNcprO0q3D4QbUcAthkBgEO9qn0iprX7bVe68_bM7J7af8yJ_X57npV2T-pV9tsCdkuDKJdua7ZdizRWv49HdlA6G8-2h3n0Yf8akH0/s1600/P4258167.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisKfUAMjjVOz72kqbQvdM7jz9eaikbe5n6gmfPhNcprO0q3D4QbUcAthkBgEO9qn0iprX7bVe68_bM7J7af8yJ_X57npV2T-pV9tsCdkuDKJdua7ZdizRWv49HdlA6G8-2h3n0Yf8akH0/s320/P4258167.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">Let it be admitted though, the enforced seclusion does give you time to do some of those things you've been meaning to get around to for quite a while now but somehow have never found the time: like changing the spark plugs on the septic tank, or finally watching that four-hour long French art film of paint drying.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Or, in my case, framing and hanging something like 60 photos: I bought the frames over a year ago but always had something better to do - no longer a valid excuse, so I pulled finger and did it.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Three times, in fact, because about halfway through the job I actually looked at the framed photos and said to myself something along the lines of "<i>Bloody hell, those look really washed out! Don't tell me I shall have to get new glass ...</i>" and then as I got the next one ready realised that there was, in fact, a sheet of protective film on the glass.<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"> </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR_R61mL5tRNAYJVutsKZ0M3KGXwAX-CsN-7WNtnzttTo6_yAWFCpz2u45Ok_RLwMNfyyEDEApm-nDfm0MkJ74WktApDcAbf3FZ4mCOxqFI77HYf3a7YlFuu6jvaPJYOBcUOox5naTKz8/s1600/P4258176.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhR_R61mL5tRNAYJVutsKZ0M3KGXwAX-CsN-7WNtnzttTo6_yAWFCpz2u45Ok_RLwMNfyyEDEApm-nDfm0MkJ74WktApDcAbf3FZ4mCOxqFI77HYf3a7YlFuu6jvaPJYOBcUOox5naTKz8/s320/P4258176.JPG" width="240" /></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So I turned back to the pile, opened up the frames, pulled the glass out and stripped the film off, then put everything back together again - only to see that they were <u>still</u> washed out - at which point I repeated the whole damned exercise, taking care this time to remove the film from the <u>other</u> side of the glass ...</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">And oddly enough there was no excuse for it, because I'd bought the same frames before and I knew bloody well that they had this film on them - and had I bothered to read the packaging I would have been reminded of this simple fact.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Whatever, it's done - took, admittedly, rather longer than absolutely necessary - but I seem to have temporarily run out of wall space so there's still twenty or so waiting to be hung.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><div>But
just occasionally things do happen: the open-air markets have reopened
(wearing a mask is, of course, mandatory) which is always a pleasure,
although sadly we've now arrived at that dread time of year when there's only
dull, boring produce available, the nectarines and apricots and luscious
peaches and melons having disappeared.</div><div><br /></div><div>(Not
entirely true, for a short while there'll still be pears to remind me
of what fruit tastes like, and if you search long enough you can find
the odd tomato that hasn't fallen off the back of a lorry from the
Netherlands, and consequently doesn't taste of the cotton wool it grew
on.)</div><div><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: justify;">
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><div><div>Still,
while the weather's fine I shall continue to head off and buy what I
can, and sit out at a suitably socially-distanced table at a bar and
inhale a few vitamins in the sun.</div><div><br /></div>
And
speaking of the sun, just at the moment that's in pretty short supply.
Less than a week ago we were still enjoying temperatures up in the 30s,
too hot to take the dogs off for a long walk: at this very instant it's
all of 12° out there (not counting the wind chill, for the Cers is
gusting up to 50kph) and hence too damn cold.</div><div><br /></div></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;"><div>But
if I can trust the long-range forecasts (about which I'm always somewhat dubious) this is but transitory, and we
shall soon enough find ourselves back in the 20s, with the normal Indian
summer lasting through October ...<br /></div><br /></div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
At least, whilst it was still sweltering a few weeks ago, I found myself in the Ariège with my piratical friend Philippe, checking out a vintage car auction. For several months ago he bought himself a 1934 Fiat Belilla roadster as a restoration project - destined, no doubt, to end up in the air-conditioned garage in Versailles next to the Sizaire Torpedo and others - and as they happened to have a chassis for sale, which he wanted for parts, that is where we went. ("We" for he does not currently have a car, due to an unfortunate incident involving the rear end of a heavy lorry ...)<br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">I left the autoroute at Castelnaudary, possibly an error for Goofle Maps binged frantically at me as she hastily recalculated and took me along roads that in other circumstances I would not have wished to find myself on, but no matter, we made it ... spent a happy few hours looking at some of the lots on offer before heading off to find a decent restaurant, then back for the actual <i>vente</i>.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rather to my surprise the Lamborghini GT2+2 stayed at the reserve, 450K, whilst the Spitfire went for 17K, double the low estimate, and a TR4 went for about 26K, also way over the odds. Don't ask about the Rolls. And Philippe's chassis went for a thousand - estimate 200 - which saddened him, but too bad. A fun boy's day out, anyway. And good food - once we found a restaurant that was actually open.<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">Otherwise, we are wondering if there is not a secret pyromaniac in Moux, for but recently a car was torched in <i>rue de la Pompe</i>, and I found myself dragged from innocent slumber about 2:30 Friday morning by the <i>pompiers</i>, who had learned that I have the keys to Nicole's place on <i>rue de la Paix</i> while she's away: as the house next door to hers was blazing merrily away, getting the keys at least meant that they could check her place out without going in mob-handed and bashing the front door down. (Very thoughtful of them, really ...)</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">So, as you might imagine, there is some speculation in the village as to whether or not these incidents are linked. My personal hypothesis is that it's Antony and Sarah Jane, trying to maintain property values by flushing the undesirables out of the <i>quartier</i>, but no-one takes me seriously.<br /></div>
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
Just in case anyone's wondering, the title is of course a <i>contrepetèrie</i>, the French equivalent of a spoonerism but <i>obligatoirement obscène</i>, or at least somewhat vulgar. (Or <i>grivoise</i>, although what a thrush has to do with it I've no idea ...) Once you've swapped letters and flipped a few it comes to "<i>tentez le bout de mon gland</i>", and of course you know that a <i>gland</i> is a penis ... thanks for that, François. I should really go rinse my brain. With bleach.<br />
<br />
Also, "<i>j'aime vachement ton frangin</i>": as is the custom I shall leave that as an exercise for you, dear readers. Mind how you go, now ...</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-92191541394088075732020-06-01T21:40:00.002+02:002020-06-01T21:40:40.580+02:00Love In The Time Of COVID19 ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Wouldn't that make a good title for some dreary Spanish novel?<br />
<br />
As you may have noticed, over here in Ole Yurrup we has been somewhat preoccupied with various matters of late, which goes some way to explaining my general laxity. However, finding myself with better things to do and no particular wish to do them just at the moment, now seems a good time to catch up ...<br />
<br />
Before you feel obliged to ask, we are all - this being us, various dogs and cat - well. To be quite honest the lockdown hasn't much affected us: I've worked from home for the past seven years and we don't really practice shopping as an Olympic sport, so being confined to home and village is not that much of a hassle.<br />
<br />
But more on that later.<br />
<br />
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For
reasons which need not concern you, I had occasion to go off to
Carcassonne a while back and, on the way back home, found myself
spending some fifteen minutes staring at the rear end of a plumber's van
in front of me which, for some reason, obstinately refused to drive off
the road and into the ditch. All very well, but what I mostly remember -
apart from the pressing need to push him off the road and then eat his
liver raw using only a plastic spoon for the operation - was the URL
that was proudly blazoned on the back of the van: www.ass-sales.fr<br />
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br /></div>
There
was also a phone number, which - somewhat to my credit, I feel - I have
not yet been tempted to ring, having no immediate need to purchase an
ass.<br />
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And then, feeling desperate and in sore need of a salad, at the beginning of January I went off and bought a
string bag of tomatoes - or at least, tomato-shaped red balls from
Holland's finest hydroponics plants. Seven weeks later they still have
no flavour (apart from a slight hint of cotton wool) and, rather to my
surprise, they show no signs of wanting to rot either.<br />
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Not really being able to get out and about (apart from the totally authorised one-hour dog walk each day, which we choose to interpret to mean an hour par day per dog) we don't meet very many people, so fascinating anecdotes are not easy to find. But for reasons which escape me I recalled one of Philippe's, which he told me over a couple of (bottles of) gins a while back, and so now seems as good a time as any to dust it off ...<br />
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I think it started when we were telling tall tales about our past
adventures, which for my part involved a couple of sadly unforgettable
hotels in the Parisian <i>banlieue</i> and a number in Cameroon, which reminded him of his time in Wallis and Fotuna - when the wife of the French military <i>attaché</i> fell in love with him, and he would get back to his beach-side bungalow (think <i>"Death In Paradise"</i> here) to discover the locals sitting on his sofa watching <i>"Les Chiffres et le Lettres"</i> on his wide-screen TV, having emptied his fridge of beer and tinned tuna, leaving a few kilos of freshly caught lobster in exchange.<br />
<br />
But as he said, <i>"You can only eat lobster so many times a week before getting bored, and anyway they hardly ever left the really good stuff that they ate themselves ..."</i>.<br />
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Anyways, this was a while after that, when he had occasion to head up to Libourne, on the Gironde, and had to stay the night. Found a hotel that seemed reasonable, explained his needs and booked in. At which point the young woman behind the desk asked <i>"OK, single bed, do you require a couverture?"</i>.<br />
<br />
At which, he told me, he thought <i>"what the hell? Of course I want a blanket on my bed"</i> and promptly said so.<br />
<br />
To be (he swore) surprised when there came a knock at the door around 11pm, and a somewhat under-dressed young woman standing outside it. She, it seems, was the <i>"couverture"</i>.<br />
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Being in lockdown does mean that there are certain things you just cannot do, such as - for instance - head off to Carcassonne or Narbonne to buy new jeans. Let it be admitted that this is not really a major problem all things considered but it still annoys me unreasonably, because I still have an honest 28" waist and no hips to speak of, and there are very few shops that sell such things ...<br />
<br />
And on top of that, when I do find them, I find that they're "comfort fit" ie made for fat people who'd like to believe that they're thin: 2% elastomer in the fabric so that the bloody things stretch out an extra two inches or so and after a few hours I find the waistline dangling somewhere around mid-thigh.<br />
<br />
OK, it's a minor annoyance, but I take it personally ...<br />
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And there's another thing - back in my doubtless mis-spent youth, as some sort of testament to the urge to continue the species but not tonight thanks very much, one would <strike>occasionally</strike> often find condoms lying limp and sad in the gutters.<br />
<br />
I am not entirely sure that finding disposable latex gloves in their place is actually an improvement, but I'm willing to admit that I may be wrong.<br />
<br />
Whatever, lockdown = social distancing (and somewhat to my surprise, the French actually respect this, by and large, very well) = no markets, so no fresh fruit or veg. Wailies! Luckily the market gardener at Puicheric has been allowed to remain open so some of my wants have been assuaged, but frankly there's only so much asparagus I can eat ... luckily, some markets have now reopened, although your options are somewhat limited.<br />
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Of course the supermarkets are still open, with varying rigour as to how many people are allowed in at a time and under what circumstances, but I do not like supermarket vegetables at the best of times (for flaccid greens thinking wistfully of days weeks ago when they were fresh and erect do nothing for me) and in any case until recently you could find neither yeast nor flour for love nor money - godnose why, were people really planning on spending three months locked up doing baking?<br />
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Because that would rather surprise me, if true.<br />
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Also, despite being gloved and masked, every time I head boldly off to get some of the pure necessities of life I come back home with an admittedly purely psychosomatic dry nose and itchy throat, which is annoying.<br />
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But mostly, bars are closed ... but at the time of writing it is June 1<sup>st</sup>, and so tomorrow I may be able to enjoy a glass of rosé after the (small) market at Olonzac before repeating the experience with Philippe, here at Moux.<br />
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Mind how you go, now.<br />
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Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-76457105747910707822020-01-03T15:22:00.000+01:002020-01-03T15:22:04.923+01:00The Joy Of Printing ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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... in which, amongst other things, The Shamblings acquires a new, networked printer. Margo decided that it would be nice to have a colour laser printer about the haüs, and preferably one that was connected to the network so that we didn't have to trudge about the place, and so anyone foolish enough to come here as guests could just print stuff off from their phones or whatever, so - "make it so".<br />
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It is a shame indeed that HP apparently does <u>not</u> have a team, completely separate from the actual printer development team, that writes the manuals for these things. Because - as usual - the documentation is pretty crap. For one thing, it is assumed - given that the writers use the stuff every day - that the user interface is "self-evident", and that there is no need to explain that you need to use the left and right arrow buttons to navigate through a list of options, and that depending on the option you must either press "OK" to select a sub-list of further options, or use the up and down arrow buttons to change the option value (before pressing "OK" to confirm) ... talk about consistency, they've heard of the concept.<br />
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And there's another thing: let's say you want to set the IP address for the beast. The documentation happily tells you to "<i>press the little button with a picture of a spanner on it, navigate to the 'Network' option, then navigate to the 'IP Address' option, select 'Fixed', and type in the required value</i>". All very well once you've worked out how this navigation stuff works, but the thing is - and why this should be, I have absolutely no idea - many of these options are not in fact available if there's no paper loaded.<br />
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And why it should be the case that a printer which is "network-ready" with wired Ethernet and Wifi interfaces, and more computing power than the first mainframes I used to work on, should only be capable of using <u>either</u> Ethernet <u>or</u> Wifi, but not both, I simply do not know. Let it be admitted that this fact is at least disclosed in the manual (bottom of page 17, <span style="font-size: xx-small;">6-point type</span>, upside-down) but still I put it to you that this is an unnecessary and somewhat frustrating limitation.<br />
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Never mind, it does actually do the job once set up: both our phones found it all by themselves (OK, it's not using Wifi but it is on the home network which, of course, has a Wifi router so same difference) and it worked, and somewhat to my surprise my Linux development system <u>also</u> found it with no prompting from me. It would probably have been too much to expect for it to have chosen the correct driver on its own, rather than forcing me through the sort of procedure that I'd thought died out around the Windows 95 era, but it makes me feel useful ...<br />
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On to the obligatory "cute puppy" section: I try to take young Moses off for at least a 10km walk in the weekends, he enjoys it and it's got to be good for me (the exercise is probably the only thing that has so far kept me - despite my best efforts - technically alive) and a while back I took him off along the Canal du Midi, heading from Puicheric to Marseillette. Bit of a shame really, it being a fine Autumn day and all, that when I heard gunshots not too far off I recalled having read an article that very morning concerning the death toll from hunting (8 so far, and doubtless counting), and how there were those who'd like to see a mandatory breath-test be done before the hunters go out.<br />
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(Having come across hunters in the wild, sitting down enjoying a very liquid lunch with an unbroken gun on the ground or leaning up against a tree, I am not personally against that.)</div>
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Anyways, I'm extremely glad that the bridle-path along the canal is some 3m lower than the surrounding countryside. Makes me feel a bit more at ease.<br />
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And while we're on the subject of hunters, José turned up the other day with a fine young pheasant, shot recently enough that it was still warm inside when I pulled its insides out ... sadly, the breast had been somewhat massacred and in any case Margo doesn't really <u>like</u> either roast or casseroled pheasant, so I did what any sensible person would do under the circumstances, and gave our old friend Jacques a call. He being a master of these dark arts, I am now in a position to tell you what you may do should you, like me, find yourself with a spare pheasant on your hands:<br />
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For about 400gm of actual pheasant meat (some are scrawny beasts, mine was pleasantly plump but your mileage may vary), take the same weight of pork shoulder chops and fresh poitrine, a couple of shallots (the real <i>échalote</i>, not a bloody spring onion - that is, according to Larousse, a Québecois thing), two cloves of garlic, four or five slices of stale bread dunked in milk and then wrung out, and 100gm of chicken livers (in addition, of course, to the liver of the bird itself).<br />
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Note that you may not be able to buy only 100gm of liver - I know I couldn't - but never fear, the cat will probably appreciate the surplus and if not you could always just sear them exceedingly rapidly in butter and maybe <i>flambé</i> them with cognac before adding them to a green salad, just saying.<br />
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Chop the lot into smallish chunks, stick into a bowl and sprinkle with decent salt (you may need more than you think you will, 8-10 gm should be OK but you may not think so), freshly ground pepper and grated nutmeg, then mix well. Let me emphasize at this point that you really do <u>not</u> want it to be under-seasoned. Put all that though the coarse grill of a mincer (8mm holes are correct, according to Jacques, but it depends how chunky-textured you like your terrine, really) and back into the bowl. (Do not try this with a kitchen whizz, you'll only wind up with an unappetising paste.)<br />
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Add two eggs and as much cognac as you like and mix well: at this point, if you're paranoid or perfectionist you can actually take a teaspoon of the stuff and poach it, to check for seasoning. But life is too short, so I didn't bother.<br />
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Then you will need a terrine: if you're lucky you'll have one of those nice porcelain or ceramic oval lidded jobs sitting around somewhere. If not (I do, but they were too small) one of those oblong Pyrex cake moulds does the job perfectly well, using tinfoil to lid it. You may or may not line the thing with thin bacon - that's up to you - but you should definitely fill it with the mixture, stick a couple of bay leaves and a healthy sprig of rosemary on top, seal it and cook in a <i>bain-marie</i> in the oven: 20 minutes at 240°, then up to 60 minutes more at 200°. It's cooked when a skewer comes out clean and the juices are clear ...<br />
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But don't leave right now, because you're not done yet. To get the correct texture, once it's out of the oven you should weight the terrine: place something flat atop the paté (I used a smaller cake mould) and put a kilo's worth of tinned fruit or whatever onto that. I used a large preserving jar full of expensive organic biodegradable rice, which let me note that the stuff was no longer entirely vegan, as the rice itself was crawling with those bloody foul little moths and caterpillars. Not impressed, never mind, chucked the lot later on.<br />
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After maybe four hours of that just stick it in the fridge and forget about it overnight, or for a day or two: it will thank you for this. All that delicious juice around it will probably <u>not</u> gel into a firm aspic, so personally I'd avoid hassle by serving it from the cooking vessel. But if you want to unmould it feel free, just don't come complaining to me when it all ends in tears and meat juice all over the floor.</div>
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Still on the culinary note, but bringing Moses back into it, a little while back I foolishly left open the doggy gate that bars access from the living room to the rest of the house (not exactly the Black Gates of Mordor, but you get the idea) and on returning not even 30 seconds later found that he'd discovered garlic (most of a head) and dried red-hot chili peppers (over half of one of Mary's finest). I suppose I should give thanks that he'd not found the root ginger ... surprisingly enough, none of that seemed to worry him (nor his digestive system) one little bit.<br />
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Nor, as it happens, did the Imperial Meatloaf I'd left on the kitchen bench for a while before popping it into the oven: a mince/egg/breadcrumb/herb mix rolled up around a stuffing of fried <i>poivrons</i>, onion, carrots, curry powder and plum sauce. I looked gloomily at the wreckage, made an executive decision that the little that was left could not plausibly be cooked anyway and its odd appearance passed off as a "kitchen incident", and so we ate kebabs that night. A shame, I was really looking forward to that meatloaf.<br />
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Whatever, I shall spare you details of the incidents involving indoor gymnastics and Margo's new best-friend coffee mug, also the third pair of glasses, not to mention a wooden shoe-rack. He really is a lovely puppy, I promise!</div>
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I am, as usual, overdue with all this: please forgive me, the end of 2019 turned out to be pretty much shite. Here's hoping that 2020 goes better.</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-15541228191913731552019-11-24T22:17:00.000+01:002019-11-24T22:17:53.675+01:00Timor Mortis Conturbat Me - Again ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Just recently I have discovered in myself a rather unexpected talent. Our friend José, the hunter who won't touch game, turned up one fine day with a plastic bag containing a large hare in the wild state - apart from being dead, that is. I managed to hide it in the fridge for a couple of days but this is not a situation which can go on indefinitely, so I eventually got out a few rubbish bags and what I thought to be the appropriate knives, resorted - as one will - to YouTube, and set to work.<br />
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It took me longer that it would have done for someone raised in the art, but I can now peel, empty and dismember a bunny. Might be a good party trick ... but still I find myself with a certain quantity of hare in the freezer. Shall have to organise a stew, or something.<br />
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Waily waily, all is wailies - for the bar has once more rolled down its shutters for the last time. Not, I feel, from any lack of custom, more because of Lionel and Magali's unwillingness to do the work. I do recall going in there once and asking how the day had been ... <i>"Terrible, mon Trevor, absolument terrible ... rushed off our feet, not a moment to ourselves, we normally have eight to ten in for lunch and today we had over twenty."</i> I'm sure that many would be happy to have such problems.<br />
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And whilst I'm all in favour of a chatty bartender, I <u>do</u> rather draw the line when said bartender natters away for five minutes with someone that happens to be propping up the bar, all the while studiously ignoring the queue of punters lining up for a drink, some of whom are obviously dying of thirst.<br />
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Now the <i>mairie</i> owns the bar and - more importantly - the licence, so they get to pick from those who want to try and make a go of it: according to Dominic - <i>maire-adjoint</i> - the deliberations should be ended before the end of the year and the lucky candidate(s) chosen. Which'd mean that the place could reopen sometime in January - OK, this is France so let's be honest, more like end of February. Old Jean-Claude - who pootles about on an elderly quad when he's not driving the Porsche, and who is also in with the <i>mairie</i> establishment, is somewhat less sanguine. "<i>There are still</i>" he said, "<i>another three couples to be interviewé, and then there must be a décision made which is not likely before Noël - luckily, I no longer drink ...</i>"<br />
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Fortunately the bar at Fontcouverte, which had been closed for years, reopened - as we discovered thanks to Nicole G. - mid-June. It's been nicely done up inside - although the <i>déco</i> is not really on a par with that of the <i>Grand Café</i> at Fabrézan, but never mind - and is rather nicely situated on the square, well-hidden from the main road.<br />
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And it has a terrace, with the inevitable plane trees. It also has the advantage of being only 4km from here, for while the bar at Siran is equally nice it is - sad to say - rather further away, and accessible only through some rather twisty, narrow roads.<br />
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Which doesn't stop me going there on a Widdlesday afternoon after puppy school if the weather's fine, for it is but a hop, skip and a jump from Azille, and of an afternoon the ditches have less of a tendency to leap out at one.<br />
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Although you still occasionally happen upon some hopped-up Polish driver at the wheel of an articulated lorry coming the other way, a situation which involves dextrous driving and decent sphincter control.<br />
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Whatever, we has found our backup solution and no longer have to play at our itinerant "Chez Réné" of a Friday night, which is good.<br />
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And speaking of puppy school, much to my surprise and pleasure Moses and I shall soon move up to the "advanced learners" stream. What exactly that involves I do not know, but I suppose I shall find out soon enough. Now if only I could get the little bugger to remember how to walk correctly on a leash ... (Also, tomorrow moaning I take him off to the vet to get his testicles ablated. I do hope that won't dent the <i>rapport</i> that we seem to have established between us too much.)<br />
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In other news, the garage has been more or less emptied of all the
junk that came down with us from Savoie all those years ago: to
celebrate we promptly filled one corner of it up with a one-tonne pallet
of <i>granulés</i> for the stove, and Margo took delivery of her potter's wheel. The kiln is yet to come. So anyway, prospective visitors are duly warned: pottery may be performed. (Along with shoe-making, but that's another story.)<br />
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Anticipating a disastrous Brexit, our friends John and Ann decided to apply for French nationality a while back. They successfully navigated the administrative minefields and - on the fifth of October, coincidentally the day I'd chose to celebrate my bththda - actually became official Frog-persons! So now they're allowed to complain properly, along with all the other French.<br />
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About, for instance, the mairie having taken on four new <i>employés municipaux</i>. Let it be admitted that apart from the initial outlay it won't cost us too much: I don't think that they have a pension plan or anything along those lines, nor are they even paid. For Moux now has four municipal sheep, currently grazing on the sports ground and - I note - being fed baguette ends and other unhealthy shit: is a bit of a bitch, as I can no longer take Indra up there to run after the ball, as she is way too interested in the sheep. And let's face it, the sheep are <u>very</u> interested in her.</div>
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Still, when summer comes and there's no more grass for them to keep down, there's always an upside: I rather suspect that they'll wind up as a <i>mechoui</i> for July 14. Rather them than the actual human employees, most of whom are a bit too tubby to make pleasant eating ...<br />
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Finally, as weeks go the last one of October turned out to be complete and utter shite. Cash and Terry, friends and neighbours of ours, decided to sell their house and move back to the UK: I even went round there ten days before and helped load a lorry with most of their worldly goods. They were planning on following them a few days later. But before that could happen Terry got rushed to hospital with paralysis from the waist down: they had planned on operating but apparently the surgeon took a look at the scans and said that there seemed little point in it.</div>
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And while we're waiting for him to die, got the sad news that my old uni friend Ross had just gone and done so. Now given my lifestyle, which involves a diet of cigars, duck fat, and heroic (yah, I'm talking Norse sagas here) quantities of alcohol, I had rather expected to predecease just about everyone I know. This turns out not to be the case, which is kind of sad because I was actually rather looking forward to my wake. Not that I'll actually be there for it, but still ... a brown paper bag full of ashes in the middle of the table, surrounded by food, bottles of rosé and N° 5 <strike>Whisky</strike> paintstripper.<br />
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Cancer really is a bitch. Do not like.<br />
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On the other hand, found myself pointed to a little poem by Dorothy Parker, two verses of which I shall now reproduce (with permission - tacit, because she's long dead now):<br />
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"Four be the things I'd been better without:<br />
Love, curiousity, freckles, and doubt.<br />
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Three be the things I shall never attain:<br />
Envy, content, and sufficient champagne."<br />
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Mind how you go, now.</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-79255964249425540502019-10-14T12:10:00.000+02:002019-10-14T12:10:50.405+02:00Packaging, Puppies ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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One of the many pet peeves I seem to have acquired as I get older and grumpier is - TADA! - packaging. I mean, I got a couple of parcels today full of picture frames, and each was fuller of crumpled kraft paper than it was of actual merchandise - but that's alright, after smoothing it out a bit we'll supply a few sheets at a time to Moses so that he can piss on it (and then he will try to turn it into papier maché, but that's another problem) ... no, what gets to me is things like coffee, where a 250gm foil packet is, for some strange reason, wrapped and glued into something that resembles Kevlar rather more than paper, and then two of these packets are wrapped and glued together in even <u>more</u> Kevlar. I spend more time trying to get to the actual coffee without getting half of it over the floor, and not too many knife wounds to my thighs, than I do waiting for it to brew.</div>
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But my most recent favourite has to be <i>Petit Brun</i> biscuits. (Which are kind of like a rectangular tea biscuit, if you really want to know - anyways, <u>I</u> like them.) Back in the day, these used to come as a packet of 48 in a filmed corrugated cardboard sleeve for protection (for nothing is worse than trying to pull one out of the packet and finding it to be broken into minuscule shards) and that was fine by me. Open the packet, pull out a few to nibble on, and by the end of the week they're all gone.</div>
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But this is no longer sufficient - maybe there really are people who just can't manage 48 smallish biscuits in a week - and now the packaging contains eight cellophaned packs, each containing six biscuits. So while you've not opened a pack, it's going to stay fresh and not go all soggy, isn't it?<br />
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Apparently, some marketing 'droid thinks not, because the external packing is now proudly marked "<i>Emballage refermable pour garder le fraicheur</i>" (aka "<i>New! Improved! Resealable packaging for more freshness and no damp bikkies!</i>") which seems a) pointless and b) totally sodding pointless, because the thing is, you can't actually <u>open</u> the bloody package. Not without resorting to scissors at least, at which point you've cut the sticky resealable bit of packaging away ...<br />
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The next phase, I imagine, will be to have each individual biscuit machine-wrapped and heat-sealed in 0.25mm non-recyclable stainless steel: much like airplane "meals", really. (Anyone else old enough to remember the precious little snacks they used to dish out on ANZ internal flights? No, I thought not, and I've tried hard to scrub it from my memory too.) Rather like that passage from Pynchon, by the time you eventually get to the contents you've lost all interest.<br />
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Come to that, at long last I got around to ordering a nice bit of wood to stick up on trestles in my office, replacing the serviceable but sagging folding plastic workbench that I've been using as a temporary measure for the last seven years. So a week back a random delivery guy turned up at the gate with a slab of beech, 180 x 80 x 4 and weighing about 50kg - and guess what, that was heavily packaged too! Polystyrene foam around all the edges, bubble-wrap all over, corrugated cardboard around <u>that</u>, and then the whole lot had been filmed onto a palette for transport.<br />
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OK, there I can sort of see the point, having actually paid for something nice (to be kept out of the reach of puppies, so that it <u>stays</u> nice) you really don't want to have it dinged up by the tender ministrations of the transporter ... and the foam did come in useful as Rick and I manhandled the unwieldy thing up the two flights of narrow, twisty stairs to the top floor.<br />
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And I have discovered another thing that you should take care to keep out of the reach of puppies - I mean, apart from sandals, sneakers, and other items of clothing that you'd rather stayed in a semi-presentable state - and that's credit cards. I suppose it gives Mo something to chew on, but by the time I discovered the wreckage there was no way I was going to be able to slide it into an ATM. Not without seriously jamming it, anyway. (Luckily it was the old one, which is why it wasn't in my wallet but awaiting its rendezvous with a pair of scissors - and there's another thing, would you believe it took me three phone calls explaining that Chambéry was not on my travel plans any time soon and could they please, please, just send it to me in the post?)<br />
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Speaking of puppies, Margo thought it would be a Good Idea if at least one of our pack was properly trained, so starting in October I, Moses, and a large bag of doggy treats head off on Widdlesdays to Puppy School, at Azille. I shall be interested to see how that works out: shan't get my hopes up too high for, as the suspiciously cheerful woman said on the phone, "<i>He <u>is</u> a hunting dog after all, and sometimes you will just have to accept that he's going to follow his nose regardless ...</i>". We shall see, at least it'll get me out of the house.<br />
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Which in turn reminds me that a lot of our French friends and acquaintances are in fact <i>chasseurs</i>, and each has taken great pleasure in informing me that Moses was going to be a great hunter. In fact one of them - Gilles, the ex-motorcycle cop from the Ariège - invited Moses and I off with them the next time the go out after wild boar. I have no objection whatsoever to eating <i>côtelettes de marcassin</i>, and said so, but I can do without spending a couple of uncomfortable hours up in the <i>pinède</i>, getting pissed on cheap <i>rouge</i> out of a plastic cubie and trying to avoid getting shot myself.</div>
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Been a while hasn't it ... sorry about that. I am now certifiably 61, have discovered a number of decent little restaurants around the area, and am learning how to become a puppy., Also, as if anyone actually cared, Brexit is going to happen in about three weeks time and that <u>will</u> be fun, now won't it?</div>
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And thanks to having had a bththda, I also have a new camera. Well, when I say "new" I actually mean "old", for it is an Agfa Optima-Parat dating back to 1963. A lovely piece of work, all stainless steel and aluminium: 35mm but half-frame, and automatic exposure/shutter speed, thanks to a handy little selenium cell. (Yep, no batteries!) I shall have to get used to the rather odd format, and the fact that it's a viewfinder model as opposed to the SLRs I've been using pretty much all my life: 200 ISO film is still easily available (if you do Amazon, that is - your mileage may vary with the local photo shop) but to actually get prints done is going to require a chat with a photo lab, and the nearest is in Toulouse ...</div>
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It may be a hand-me-down, for Birgit had it given to her by a great-aunt or something, hoping that she would take up photography, back in 1968 or thereabouts: but I think that I shall have fun with it.</div>
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Did a fair bit of touring around with Sarah in the Herault over the summer, what with it actually <u>being</u> summer and having Cla-Val take their staggered holidays and not decided what exactly they wanted done before heading off to wherever it is that the Swiss go on holiday: so I felt no guilt about heading off with the trusty old Olympus to places like Azillanet, La Livinière, Siran, Agel, Aigne, St-Chinian ... and it is not really a coincidence that there is good wine around these places.<br />
<br />
And as these things do rather tend to go together, there is also good food ... having been there once with B., looking at this place in Azillanet, took Margo off one very fine day to lunch at <i>la Table d'Azillanet</i>, which is, should ever you happen to be in the area, a very pleasant little restaurant which sources pretty much everything locally (insofar as possible), and the menu changes daily: Mme cooks in the spanking-new kitchen, and Mossieu handles the service. (But avoid the beef until they've got the hang of it: the meat is of excellent quality but the steaks are cut too thin and grilled over too low a heat. Just saying. They'll learn.)<br />
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Sadly, they were closed for some reason or another, so instead we took the back roads and wound up eating at one of the two restaurants in La Livinière (both are, incidentally, excellent): rather copious but that's just me, in any case they know how to cook lamb chops correctly, and very pleasant it was out on the terrace under the shade of the <i>platanes</i>. Such moments as these remind us why we now live here ... but I had slight sads to find out that there were no more lobsters in the tank inside. Not that the lobsters were complaining.<br />
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I can also whole-heartedly recommend <i>La Luciole</i>, at Luc-sur-Orbieu: a family affair, where the daughter - who I'm told trained in one of the rather better restaurant schools in France - cooks, mother does service, and father does unspecified but doubtless necessary things out back. Once again, locally sourced, and the food is imaginative without being pretentious: it being lunch, when I don't really eat that much, I settled for the <i>foie gras poelé avec réduction de griottine</i> (this latter being a rather old-fashioned cherry <i>apéro</i>) and was extremely glad that I did. Quite delicious, but any more would have been too much.<br />
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Also, Luc-sur-Orbieu is in the Boutenac region, which just happens to be where some of the outstanding Languedoc wines are made. Odd, that.<br />
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You can also eat quite acceptably at Bize-Minervois, especially now that most of the tourists have disappeared, or - closer to home - at Puicheric and even Lézignan, if you know where to go.</div>
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Somewhat to my surprise, the puppy training is getting on very well. Young Moses is intelligent and extremely eager to please, and bribery does - as it will - work wonders, so "come", "sit", "coucher" are more or less done and dusted already: where I can see that I may have to be somewhat more patient is in the walkies department, and this concept of "heel". Whatever, I shall buy a 20kg sack of doggy treats, and we shall get there.<br />
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And in a last bit of puppy-related news, we managed to avoid getting two new dogs the other day. We'd loaded up little Suzy with junk from the garage (yes! After six years or more, we're finally clearing it out) and headed off to the tip to see two dogs erring along the roadside, and coming back they were all over the place, so to avoid road-kill we stopped to see if we could pick them up.<br />
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Which we quite literally did: the poor buggers were exhausted, filthily matted and very happy to see someone, so we in fact picked them up, put them in the boot, and made an unscheduled trip to the vet. And I hardened my heart, because four is enough, and we left them there in good hands.</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-11705975879805820322019-08-28T18:10:00.000+02:002019-08-28T18:10:59.231+02:00Estate Agents And Other Pond Scum ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Contrary to what one might think, buying or
selling a house in France is in fact a simple matter. It takes a
minimum of three people to tango: a seller, who has a house and wants money
for it, a buyer who has money but no house, and finally, a <i>notaire</i>. Who usually has both, but would like to have more. (It also takes a fair amount of time and patience, but that's another matter.)<br />
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As a general rule the <i>notaire</i> enjoys about the same
popularity as a six-months dead otter: this is not entirely fair
because although it is true that their fees are eye-watering, what
is called "<i>les frais du notaire</i>" - which come to about 8%
of the purchase price - is a sum which is in fact handed over to
the state, as the equivalent of stamp duty. Apart from the fees,
the bloke (for most are, in fact, blokes) makes his money from
parking this cash in a well-remunerated bank account for six
months or so before handing it over to the <i>Tresor Public</i>.<br />
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Back in the day, should you be interested, unkinder tongues than mine were wont to comment on the notoriously weak bladders of provincial <i>notaires</i>, for the simple reason that when the deal was signed for a given - admittedly extremely low, but never outrageously so - amount, the <i>notaire</i> in question would feel obliged, by professional ethics (or <i>déontologie</i>, should you be French) to leave the room and go to the toilet whilst an undeclared wad of greasy banknotes changed hands, with a few possibly falling onto his desk.</div>
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Whatever, in principle the <i>notaire</i> is a
totally impartial person, working only to facilitate or grease the
transaction and to pocket any extra cash that might happen to come
his way: in practice, this is may turn out to not be the case.
Which is why my good friend and ex-spook Philippe recommends
having one's <u>own</u> <i>notaire</i> in such affairs: as he
said, "<i>if they're working for the seller, they're not working
for you ...</i>" - very true, sad to say.</div>
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Take a case in point, a good friend who was taken
by a house in Azillanet, put in an offer for it, and had it
accepted - at 1K less than she'd she'd offered, which I suppose
should really have started warning bells ringing straight away ...<br />
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Be that as it may, the procedure in France is that you first sign a "<i>déclaration
d'intention d'acheter</i>", then - at some specified date - the "<i>compromis
de vente</i>" (which stops people from gazumping, and is thus a
Good Thing) and finally, after the statutory 10 days to repent and
rethink, at some point the actual "<i>acte de vente</i>" is
signed, at which time the place is legally yours. The exact state
it is in when you get it depends on what is specified in the <i>compromis</i>,
which is where I'm going ...</div>
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So B. put in an offer, at which point things went
slowly titsup. Of course, not living here, the signature would
have to be done by proxy ... no great problem. But being nobody's
fool she asked to see the <i>compromis</i> before authorising
anyone to sign, which is where things started to go bad. For
starters, the signature was fixed for Widdlesday: and this on Friday. Which makes it a bit of a rush job ...<br />
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Then she read the <i>compromis</i>, and there were a few things therein which gave her pause. Such as, there is this thing in France whereby companies in the building trade are supposed to subscribe to a special insurance policy which guarantees their work for ten years, whether they still exist at that point or not. As it happens, any and all renovation work in this place had been done either by the owner or by a company which had <u>not</u> taken out this insurance, so tough titty if problems crop up. <br />
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On the other hand, despite the fact that you'd buy "as is,
where is" and any hidden defects are strictly the buyer's problem,
there was an out - in that the seller, having admitted to having done
some of the renovation work himself, could be held, as a "<i>vendeur professionel</i>", personally liable.
But it would be pretty cold comfort spending ten years in the French legal system, should things go titsup and if you
chose to go that way. (An alternative, I suppose, would be to firebomb his house, which although satisfying is frowned upon.)<br />
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Whatever, it was at just that point that Philippe gave me the name of a friend of his who just happens to be a <i>notaire</i> at Gruissan, and then things started to get interesting.<br />
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For on the Monday the seller's <i>notaire</i>, at the request of B's <i>notaire</i>, sent off copies of the bills for all the work done on the place. All in all, they added up to a rather fascinating fictional <i>oeuvre</i> totally new to me, innocent that I am ...</div>
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They had all been established one fine day in 2016 (truth to tell I cannot speak to its actually having been a fine day as such, but it's one of them literary conventions or some-such) and paid on the nail: although surprising this is not in itself illegal.</div>
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Somewhat more surprising was the fact that a goodly amount of the work billed - and paid for - had not, to my certain knowledge, been done. This too is not illegal as such, and may indicate no more than that the buyer was a very patient person, willing to pay for work and then wait three or more years for it to be completed. I can only applaud this sort of behaviour, and wish that there were more such as he, they would make my life so much easier ...</div>
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But what <u>was</u> in fact illegal was that the company that had made out these bills in 2016 and, to all appearances, accepted payment, had ceased to exist in 2012. The existence of zombie companies is considered unusual, even in France - all the more so as the company, not existing, could hardly have paid the state the 10% VAT indicated.</div>
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You'd think that the seller's <i>notaire</i> might have done a little bit of due diligence but apparently not, it was left up to the real-estate agent to confess, when prodded with a sharp and pointy stick. These bills were totally fake, and existed purely so that when the house - a <i>résidence sécondaire</i> - was sold, they could be presented to the taxman to justify a mammoth reduction in the capital gains tax.</div>
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The tax department considers this to be a Bad Thing, and fiscal fraud is definitely not something I would wish to try on, for it is frowned upon. The odds of there being a <i>contrôle</i> may be small but the risk is there, and I personally would not care to be made an example of.</div>
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The final straw in the coffin, or nail on the camel, came with the results of the valuer's report. (I did not know this before, but there <u>do</u> in fact exist in France such things as chartered surveyors and property valuers. Many of them seem to be English: I assume that they cater to a small but select English clientèle who want a place in France but have no particular wish to be ripped off. Something which is difficult for the average French seller to understand.)</div>
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It was kind of damning, noting that most of the work had been done by amateurs using the cheapest possible materials and without any consideration for building standards ie "<i>don't jump on the dining room floor, you may find yourself in the cellar</i>". Concluding that without some major investment the place would be unsaleable.</div>
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So she walked away from it. Still looking, I hope she finds something a bit more honest.</div>
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(In an amusing twist, I heard the other day that the estate agent who tried to foist this place off is still sending her proposals. Quite shamelessly saying "<i>I rather think that you might find <u>this</u> place rather interesting. Properly done up, nothing at all like that cowboy job - which I <u>so</u> didn't know about until you paid 1400€ to have it surveyed - in Azillanet</i>".</div>
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And this despite having earlier said that the first seller was a personal friend and <i>un homme très serieux</i> ... maybe this is why estate agents are generally regarded as mouth-breathing bottom-feeders, more or less on a par with used-car salesmen and those people who ring at random hours trying to persuade you to buy double-glazing.)</div>
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In other news, I read in <i>El Reg</i> of a speech by "<i>Huawei's rotating chairman Xu Zhijun</i>". I'm pretty sure I know what they <u>meant</u>
to say, but I'm not sure that they went about it in quite the right
manner. I still have the occasional vision of an impeccably-dressed and
doubtless inscrutable Chinese gentleman revolving slowly about his
vertical axis, getting perhaps slightly dizzy in the process: somewhat
as a sugarplum might, when dancing. (The possibility of his spinning
about a <u>horizontal</u> axis is an amusing one to contemplate, and it
would do much to enliven babyfoot games, but that way lies madness and
I'll have no part of it.)</div>
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Mind how you go, now. </div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-37285762407287972182019-07-14T17:22:00.001+02:002019-07-14T17:22:16.664+02:00Just When You Thought It Couldn't Get Worse ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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... some pitiful excuse for a human being restores your faith in the sheer depravity of humanity by dumping a litter of six-week old puppies on the side of the road, on the way from old Henri Bataille's mausoleum up to the autoroute, to die in the heat. Nice one, that guy.<br />
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Luckily for the pups old Nev had headed off on his daily jog oop't Alaric (yes, in 35° heat, go figure) and spotted some of them, and as I was going blamelessly about my own business - heading up to the bar for some vitamins at midday - he burst all a-quiver out of his front door to tell me all about it ... so little Suzy took us off to the spot and we spent a good (but sadly, extremely sweaty) while thrashing about in the undergrowth without finding anything.<br />
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Then Margo took our three off for their walk at 14h and came across old Alain, who has a <i>remise</i> up that way, <u>he</u> had found one and had planned on dropping it off at the <i>mairie</i>, and she offered to take it home instead and organise things with the SPA and such. So after giving the poor little sod some water, off to the vet's he went for a quick check-up ...<br />
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And about the time when the thermometer's heading up his bum who should walk in but Mme Lignères, wife of the local <strike>doctor</strike> <i>vigneron</i> (Chateau la Baronne, worth checking out), to announce that her husband had found five puppies at the spot when returning from the vines, and brought them back to the <i>cave</i> after ringing ahead to make sure there'd be food and water awaiting them: at which point the vet grabbed ours and held it out to her, saying "Do they look like this? Want a sixth?".<br />
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Sadly(?) the answer was a firm "No", although I gather all his siblings have found homes: as has our one, because we now has four dogs, the youngest being called Moses because of being found under the rushes. After a couple of years of relative peace, we're starting to get used to cleaning up random piddle again. Also, not much sleep for me: the vet diagnosed him with an intestinal parasite infestation and said to keep him inside at night - so the other dogs don't go and have a nice midnight snack of diarrhoea - for the next week, and to avoid much wailing and gnashing of teeth he's caged in the dining room, and I sleep on the sofa close by ...<br />
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Doesn't stop the little bugger from waking up at 6am, mind you.<br />
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Let it be admitted that I've not watched TV for maybe a couple of years now, neither on the honest-to-go idiot box nor via streaming or Youtube: just somehow got out of the habit of doing so, I suppose. Still, I look through the odd review just so that I know what I'm missing/can avoid appearing a complete idiot on social occasions - and let it be said that, having rather enjoyed the book, on a number of occasions (as well as rescuing it from Emma) - "<i>Good Omens</i>" does rather tempt me.<br />
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But that is neither here nor there: the thing is that as I was looking through a (p)review in <i>Ars</i> of "<i>Black Mirror</i>" I couldn't help but notice what I can only hope was a typo that went unspotted by the proof-readers: "<i>Ashley O., who isn't nearly as upbeat as her pubic image would suggest</i>" ...<br />
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May/June turned out to be busy months for us, socially: had Dijaan staying for a while, then Vic and George - old friends of Margo's - came to stay overnight on their way back to Germany. It was a memorable enough evening - or at least it would be, if I could actually remember that much of it, because to be quite honest all that sticks in my excuse for a memory is that I actually cooked a relatively decent meal for once, that there were three empty bottles on the table the next moaning, and that we hit the whisky sometime around midnight ...</div>
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I've said it before, I know, but I shall say it again: I is definitely getting too old to do this sort of thing on a regular basis.</div>
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Then Janet and Kevin turned up in their hi-tech camper-van (Kevin is actually rather proud of the swing-out gas barbecue he's built on at the back) for a few days on their way down to see the Spanish cuzzies, and Malyon arrived to a) get some of her favourite food and b) use us as a convenient base to head off to a wedding in Aberdeen and then Space Camp in the Auvergne.</div>
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Also, her friends Greg and Yumi turned up, from Lyon and Toulouse respectively, and stayed the night: more cooking, and many thanks to Greg for the excellent bottle of whisky ... you can see where this is heading, can't you?</div>
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Let it be admitted it was all very pleasant, but when the last lot had left we sort of looked at one another and sighed in relief. As the old saying has it - "<i>family, friends and fish: chuck them all out after three days</i>".</div>
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Fortunately July is, to the best of my admittedly sketchy knowledge and ability, untainted by visitors - with the sole exception of the Pope, who supposedly turns up at Carcassonne on the 23rd and then leaves again at some coyly unspecified date (which I can only assume to be after that, although I'm never too sure with him and he might well decide to leave before he arrives, just to piss me off).</div>
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Then we've a wedding at Montbrun on the 27th, and on the 28th, heads permitting, we shall confide all the dogs to Angela and Martin's tender ministrations for a couple of days and head off to Pesselière to catch the tail-end of a large party and, incidentally, pick up Howard and bring him down to these benighted parts for a few days.</div>
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Margo just bought herself a new laptop, on the entirely reasonable grounds that her old one predates the Flood, and I do not think that my poor delicate ears have ever been treated to such invective and vituperation as thay have today, when she decided to set it up.</div>
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I will admit that only a few days ago I was heaping abuse upon the sadly far-off heads of the "developers" of Wrike (this being, should it interest you, a web-based project management platform whose user interface can be - to my taste at least - somewhat problematic) and some of the words I used, as I got more and more frustrated with the bloody thing, were - I will agree - bordering on the obscene: nonetheless they were as light-hearted banter compared to what I heard coming from Margo's lips.</div>
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First of all, of course, you must decide whether or not to log on using a Microsoft account: in my experience this does actually work provided that you always have internet access which for us is not always the case: so "<i>set it up to log on using a local account</i>" I cheerily said, and went back to considering my glass of <i>rosé</i>.</div>
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Sadly that was interrupted, because the bloody setup procedure <u>forces</u> you to set up an account, even if you don't use it: once you get onto that screen you can't go back, you can't go forward, and you definitely can't get out of the game unless you do so.</div>
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Then there were even more fulminations, because you must supply a phone number or an email address, your date of birth, any identifying marks ... and then it gets worse, because the damn thing tries to persuade you to sign up for OneDrive <u>and</u> Office (secure in the knowledge that most people will forget to cancel the subscription before it becomes paying) and then ... and then ...</div>
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I'm well out of it.</div>
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On a cheerier subject, and just whilst I think of it, we have been goofling relentlessly and looking at photos and everything, and it would appear that our little Moses is what passes around here for a more or less pure breed <i>griffon bleu de Gascogne</i>. Which is good to know, at least he has his <i>lettre de noblesse</i> ... <u>if</u> I can trust various doggy blogs, the breed is "<i>extremely affectionate and loyal</i>" but also, somewhat more disturbingly, "<i>adventurous and highly excitable</i>".</div>
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Also, "<i>requires exercise</i>", which is typical enough for a hunting dog ... whatever, we're used to that, keeps <u>us</u> active too.</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-70593320161874376682019-05-31T21:52:00.000+02:002019-06-01T21:54:05.736+02:00In Which I Is Pissed Off ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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See what happens when bar-owners find out about flowcharting, and decide to incorporate this new-found knowledge into their signage? Nothing good will come of this ... mind you, it just goes to show that not so much has changed since the days, many years back, when I was working for the PNCC: this pretty much encapsulates the decision tree we used to have to work through at 11:30 on a Friday morning.<br />
<br />
Of course things were more difficult back in <u>our</u> day - you younglings just don't know how easy it is now - for we had an extra question, this being "<i>can we be arsed driving somewhere, and does anyone have a car in working order?</i>" and if the answer was "<i>yes</i>" then we might head off to The Homestead at Fielding: if not, then it would be off to The Stable. Which had the advantages of being a) just around the corner and b) the best French restaurant in Palmerston North. (Proper <i>foie gras</i> was of course unheard-of, but I still remember fondly their chicken-liver <i>pâté</i>.)<br />
<br />
And it was, incidentally, immediately below what was once my very first office: if you can dignify a walk-in closet with a single grimy window and an attached toilet full of bound lineflow program listings (66 lines of 132 columns per pale-green and white fanfold page) with that name. I was but a lowly intern: I took what I could get, and anyway it was still rather more spacious than a lot of student accommodation.</div>
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Ineluctably the hours would pass, and then we'd note that we'd finished the post-dessert cognac and it was about 16:00 and thus past time to head back to the office so that we could officially leave at 17:00 and head across the road to the upstairs bar at The Commercial Hotel, where Maggie presided behind the bar covered with plates of buttered extruded white "bread" slices, and steaming bowls of saveloys and tomato sauce.<br />
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Tell that to the young folk today, and they just won't believe you ... and fair enough too, for truth to tell we were in fact great liars back in those days. It all ended in tears of course, one day when the then Town Clerk remarked gently that, given the amount he was shelling out on the EDP budget, he would rather appreciate having at least a skeleton staff available in the EDP Department of a Friday afternoon ... <i>sic transit gloria mundi</i>, and all that.</div>
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Back in the beginning of 1987, when we split our time between Vitré and Paris, we'd stay in Alain Porcher's fuck-hutch, conveniently situated just off the Allflex offices, under the mansard roof of one of those Haussmannian buildings a stone's-throw from Opéra. From there it was about a 3km walk to Ile de la Cité ... done that a number of times, and walked around outside Notre Dame, but never once set foot inside the place. I suppose that now I never shall.</div>
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Like I've said before, the only problem is that sooner or later you will find yourself in bad company - I must admit that for some reason this seems to happen to me rather more often than the laws of probability would normally indicate, but that is <u>so</u> not my fault ... as usual it was Philippe, and as we inhaled some vitamin supplements out under the sun we fell, for some reason, to exchanging stories (possibly somewhat embroidered, or enhanced, or Photoshopped) of Hotels from Hell.<br />
<br />
So after Vitry, and Yaoundé, St-Dénis and that place in the backblocks of Cameroon whose name I cannot for the life of me remember it was his turn, and he told me the woeful tale of his experience in Libourne a while back when, having occasion to pass that way, he took a hotel room for the night. Seemed a reasonable place, took a single room, single bed, and then the woman at the desk asked "<i>avec ou sans couverture?</i>". "<i>What</i>", he asked himself, "<i>is this? Of course I want a blanket on my bed</i> ..."<br />
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And was then - he says - somewhat surprised to open the door to a knock at 9pm and find a young lady of negotiable affection waiting there: <u>she</u> was the <i>couverture</i>, turning up as ordered.</div>
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For some reason, mostly having to do with someone giving me a hat-tip
about a chateau which had some rather good wine, I headed off the other
day to do a bit of exploring: Azille, to take a look around the market,
then to La Lavinière to see if I could find the wine, and then - because
I could - off to Caunes-Minervois to have a poke around the old town
and the abbey. All very well, and the first leg took me to Olonzac, just
a bit north of here ... and that, of course, was when it started to go
all titsup. As things will.</div>
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Now things are getting better than was once the case - I can still
remember arriving at Tours way back when and encountering exactly two
road signs coming into the place: one pointed left, and said "All
directions" and the other pointed right, and upon it was written "Other
directions". (If memory serves I barreled straight ahead and we found
ourselves in the centre of town, which was - luckily - where we actually
wanted to be.)<br />
<br />
But I digress. There are a number of
road signs in Olonzac, some of which are in fact not entirely works of fiction and one of which will direct you to Azillanet, which
you might reasonably think was not too far from Azille: you would, of
course, be wrong. At which point I thought "<i>OK, let's get the phone out and ask the great Goofle ...</i>"</div>
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Of course, the previous night I'd let the phone do its update thingy, and it had updated Google Maps but failed to update Google, and as it turned out Google Maps wouldn't even start: cue a furious search in Sarah's pocketses and finally find an honest-to-god paper map (remember those?) and fortunately I'd thought to take my reading glasses. This has happened before: I am getting used to it.</div>
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<br />
Whatever, I made my trip, no thanks to modern technology, and got
home with three cases of wine (six bottles of a rather tasty Grenache
gris, six of a respectable Cabernet Sauvignon, and a last lot of an
excellent 2015 Syrah which should last for another few years yet), but
the GPS business still rankled ... so I did what any other fearless IT
guy would do under these circumstances, and fired up Google Play to see
if I couldn't force an update for Maps.<br />
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Somewhat to my surprise, Google Play wouldn't start either: nor, come to that, would Gmail, or anything other googly - which started to get me seriously pissed. So I uninstalled the updates and lo! the apps were there and would start, but were completely non-functional, which is of very little use to me.</div>
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<br />
I fairly quickly guessed that either some failed update had totally
borked the phone, or that - it being a Huawei - updates and
functionality had been blocked thanks to the orange turd, so "<i>what the hell, head off to the Bouygues shop at Carcassonne and pick up a Samsung, or something</i>" which kind of annoyed me because I actually rather <u>like</u> the Huawei gear, and I <u>hate</u> having to shift my life from one phone to another, and I had better things to do than make a trip to Carcassonne.<br />
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But then again, it must be admitted that the poor thing was three years old and the screen had developed an unsightly yellow stain in one corner that looked for all the world as though the cat had pissed on it, so gritted teeth and off I headed.</div>
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<br />
And after half an hour or so following camper vans and old farts who
seem to think that the speed limit is in fact 70 kph I made it to the
big commercial centre on the western side of Carcassonne (because of
course it would be on the wrong side from us) and found the boutique and
went in and looked at the phones on offer, and an obsequious flunky
came over and asked if he could service me.<br />
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Not being a complete fool I said yes, and asked what he had that was about the same size as my little P8 but which was <u>not</u> a Huawei: and he showed me a couple of Sonys, and a few Samsungs - and that is when things <u>really</u> went bad, or at least morphed into the old Python cheese shop sketch.<br />
<br />
For every time I said "<i>OK, I'll take that one</i>,<i> my good man</i>", he would pop out the back and check and then come back and say, with a perfectly straight face, "<i>Sorry squire, could've sworn I had one but the bloody cat's got it ...</i>"<br />
<br />
I swear to god, this is a perfectly notional phone shop with no actual phones in stock ... by the time I made it back home, with no new phone, after a good fifty minute round trip under a baking sun and fifteen minutes wasted in this apology for a "shop" that doesn't seem capable of actually <u>selling</u> anything (which I'd always thought was their <i>raison d'être</i>), I was marginally furax. So I had a gin. Things always seem better after that.</div>
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<br />Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-36087028867525183152019-04-14T14:44:00.002+02:002019-04-14T18:13:03.391+02:00Kamikazi Lemmings ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Over here in Ole Yurrup we is all watching, in some sort of ghastly obsession, the on-going suicidal cluster-fuck that is Brexit. Or perhaps "train-wreck" would be a better word to describe it ... it's an unedifying spectacle, and everyone wishes that they'd just get it over with and put us out of our misery (cries of "Jump! Jump!" come up from the crowds below) but for some reason they seem incapable - or maybe just incompetent - of doing even that.<br />
<br />
Don't know exactly why the sorry saga should be quite so gripping - it's not as though there's an actual story-line or anything, things just seem to lurch from one non-event to the next - and it's not even as though I had skin in the game, I mean, what's it to me, really?<br />
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Come to that, I'm not even sure exactly why Theresa May should be quite so reviled: certainly, her husband used to watch porn on the taxpayer's dime, and she is possibly not the most empathetic of people, but to be fair she did inherit the whole bloody mess from her pink-cheeked pig-kissing predecessor (last heard of swanning off to a rich mate's Tuscan villa or something) but no-one seems to blame <u>him</u>. At least, not these days.<br />
<br />
Whatever, I guess that's one of the mysteries of British politics - along with the thorny question of exactly why it is that Nigel Farage, Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg weren't strangled at birth. Then cut into small pieces, burnt, and the ashes scattered to the winds ... these are topics that we choose to avoid of a Friday night, mostly because although it would be easy enough to wind people up, these <u>are</u> my friends, and I'd rather not be responsible for anything bad happening to them. Like, biliousness, or dyspepsia, or an actual heart attack.<br />
<br />
A more kindly eye than mine might look on the whole sorry mess as a fine example of the good old Blitz spirit, the old tradition of having a knees-up and a nice cuppa before muddling through as usual: being less than charitable, I tend to see it as a manifestation of the equally venerable British tradition of total bloody incompetence. Just wish they'd get on with it ...<br />
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But on the bright side, Spring has arrived and all the wildflowers are out: maybe a month ahead of time, but I can live with that. The little dwarf irises which somehow manage to thrive in the stones of the <i>pinède</i>, the normal or garden-variety irises which, despite being completely untended, do quite well for themselves on the banks of the road, the poppies, and any number of other flowers which I personally tend to lump together as "plants". Also, the crows have started building their nests: for a given value of "building" which involves making a pile of sticks somewhere and shitting on it in the hope that they'll stay in one place. The corvidae seem not yet to have learnt that crap is not, as a general rule, a good adhesive. As usual, you should avoid walking too close past the church if you happen to have to go that way.<br />
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I imagine that this may come as a surprise to those of you who recall
my youthful looks and healthy lifestyle, but I really am getting too
old for this sort of thing. I had occasion to go past the bar late the
other night, not so long ago - bringing the hairy retards back from
their evening bowel and bladder exercise - and could not help but notice
that it was full of bad company. Which is usually pretty good company,
so having dropped the beasts back home (for they are not old enough) I headed back despite myself ... and of course one of those bad companions
was Philippe from the château, who welcomed me with open arms and
insisted on my accompanying him in a serious effort to empty the one and
only bottle of cognac in the place (he'd already managed to polish off
the Jack Daniels).<br />
<br />
We managed that, completely
unaided, and started on the armagnac, but around 2am I came to my
senses, reluctantly tore myself away from the den of iniquity, and went
back home. Just saying, I can no longer expect to do this sort of thing without there being Consequences later on.<br />
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Which, as it happens, there were, for at an absolutely unheard-of hour of the moaning that very day, two
extremely youthful young men (well, they seemed that way to me: I'm sure
that they were actually of legal drinking age and maybe had to shave
once in a while) turned up at the doorstep, having managed to back the
front half of a semi-articulated lorry up <i>rue de la Calade</i> to get
here. For which, felicitations: I do realise that removal lorry drivers
probably get special training in such things but even so ... and then
they started unloading the thing.<br />
<br />
It was, of course, a
swag of stuff from NooZild so we now find ourselves with another
dining-room table and chairs, a comfy chair, even more china and
silverware (not yet unpacked), and some pictures: so later on I spent
some quality time with a laser level and a drill up on a ladder, putting
up more picture rails because now that we actually have a bit of room
around here and don't have to squirm around boxes just to sit down for a
meal, I'd rather like it to stay that way, for a while at least.<br />
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Possibly for the first time in my life, I have to admit defeat before a bottle of gin. (Second time if you count the bottle of "Lemon Gin" ie industrial alcohol with artificial lemon oils in it that I once, when a student, consumed more or less in its entirety at a party one night and consequently regretted it bitterly ... staggering bollocks-naked through one of the more elderly halls of residence of Massey University at 5am, in search of a shower, is <u>not</u> a happy memory.) The Lidl budget supermarket chain has all sorts of odds'n'sods that turn up from time to time, and when Martin mentioned the other day that they had some award-winning London gin and some Irish gin with which he was very taken, it became a moral imperative to buy it. That too is something I rather regret doing now.<br />
<br />
The London gin is indeed very good, but the Irish stuff should not have been let out of the pages of a Tom Lehrer songbook ... purely in a spirit of scientific enquiry I set out to discover exactly <u>why</u> I find it so disagreeable, and I can only conclude that it's the presence of coriander (which I've never particularly enjoyed, to be honest, and improve those recipes that call for it by omitting it) and pine in the list of botanicals that make it so foul. Gives it - for me, at least - an oily, camphor-like taste that reminds me of extremely bad retsina. Not that there's any other sort ...<br />
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Luckily tonight is pool night oop't bar, and I rather
think I shall take the bottle with me and hand it discreetly to Lionel
with strict instructions that he can serve it to whomsoever he wishes,
so long as it's not <u>me</u>.<br />
<br />
Later ... it was probably a good thing. I swear that before picking it up and heading off, that bloody bottle had started following me around the house, humping up against my ankles and trying to make friends. Godnose what would have happened had I kept it another night, the damned thing might have forced itself between my lips (and why, Great Google, does auto-complete suggest "legs" at this point?) as I slept and smothered me. I'm well rid of it.<br />
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<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">It's rude to stare at bus stops.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
A few days before was <i>la fête de la bière</i> organised by the <i>comité des fêtes</i>, and so having memories (admittedly vague, because of reasons) of last year's effort, I decided to head off. Sadly I did not take my phone with me, for otherwise this post would be enjolivated with a (crap) photo of young Jeremy, wearing neon-green socks, kilt, weskit and tam'o'shanter: all, I suspect, liberated from over-enthusiastic St Patrick's Day participants. But after careful consideration, perhaps it's for the best after all.<br />
<br />
This being the south of France things were running late: not only that but I got cornered by Ninou and, as soon as it was decently possible to do so, ran off into the night to avoid having my ears reamed and my brains dripping out of my nostrils ... so it was that I missed the "Fucking Vintage" set.<br />
<br />
Well, mostly. Standing out on the terrace much later that evening, the sound of some crowd who really didn't like AC-DC that much but were being paid to play it was pretty clear.<br />
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It may seem strange, but you <u>can</u> have too much of a good thing. Take asparagus, for instance: every year, as Spring approaches, we look forward with glee to the arrival of the first tender spears, but now? I'm just about overdosed on the stuff. Or scallops, <i>les coquilles St-Jacques</i>. I dragged a packet out of the freezer (they, and popsicle lobsters, are about the only seafood I'll consider sticking in there) and had my usual way with them ie sear them, <i>flambé</i> them in whisky then finish them off in white wine and cream ... very nice they were too but the next day we still needed something for lunch out on the terrace so I headed off into Lézignan looking vaguely for something edible.<br />
<br />
And went past the rather excellent <i>poissonerie</i>, where I couldn't help but notice that they had 3kg of scallops for 20€, what's not to like?<br />
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Apart from the fact that the plastic bag they were packed in had a small leak somewhere, so Sarah smelled a wee bit fishy for a few days ... I will admit that by the time you've shelled and cleaned the sods you've not much change out of 800gm, but these were extremely fresh and rather big, with loads of coral: even so they are very rich and in any case that is still too much for the two of us at a sitting. Didn't help that, just for a change, I poached them in white wine and stuck them in a gratin dish with a bit of <i>sauce Mornay</i>, breadcrumbs and cheese on top and under the grill.</div>
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(Incidentally, my invaluable <i>Nouvelle Larousse Gastronomique</i>, which is only "<i>nouvelle</i>" for a value of the word involving "forty years old", tells me that in the US scallops are only available <u>without</u> coral. Which seems rather peculiar to me, but it does perhaps explain why, a long time back when I was getting dinner ready for twenty, this American house-guest wandered into the kitchen and asked me - in broken French - what that strange orange stuff was. Go figure.)</div>
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Whatever, I have some paperwork to put off: mind how you go, now.</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-66905879091067658062019-03-24T17:09:00.001+01:002019-03-24T17:09:23.633+01:00A Cheeky Little Claret ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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So I headed off to the bar the
other night for the birthday bash: couldn't be arsed getting out
the glad rags so just slipped on a caftan, which is at least
extremely comfortable although not, I admit, a particularly 80's
thing. Have to say the greatcoat over the top of it looked a bit
out of place, but I wasn't trying to make a fashion statement,
it's still only the middle of February after all, and things were
getting a bit nippy north of my knees. (For reasons which will
become apparent later on, I need not have worried quite so much,
as it turned out ...)<br />
<br />
The place was already starting to
fill as I hove up and plonked a half-kilo of foie gras onto the
bar as my little contribution to the festivities: old Neville had
really outdone himself with a rather funky Elvis wig, mirror
shades and tats up both arms. Quite impressive, really. And at
least he wasn't being miserable.</div>
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After the second or third rosé, as
things were definitely getting busy and the music got cranked up
(pretty dire but less so than I'd feared, what the hell were we
all smoking back in those days?) it became clear that someone with
too much time on their hands and the sort of sense of humour that
finds fart jokes bloody hilarious had headed off to the little
shop in Carcassonne that sells <i>farces et attrapes</i> and
bought a job-lot of particularly hairy merkins, for Lionel was
wandering around with a tray of the things, distributing them to
all and sundry. They were supposed to be attached with a little
loop of elastic and I can tell you that it does rather cut the
circulation: Albert S., smarter than I, hooked his over one ear,
where it looked quite rakish.</div>
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I pulled myself away around 8:30 -
the place was booming but a man - no matter <u>how</u> dedicated
he might be - can only drink so much, and all that rosé needed a
bit of company. In principle I could have eaten there but it was
by reservation only and I had not reserved: also, I think that
over the years I've eaten quite enough bloody <i>tartiflette</i>
to last me a lifetime, thanks very much.<br />
<br />
Luckily I'd had the
foresight, after getting the latest batch of <i>foie gras</i>
ready, to cut some <i>hampe</i> into very thin slices and put it
in to marinate, chop up an onion and some garlic and steam a bit
of broccoli, so the stir-fried saté beef was pretty much ready to
go when I got back. Which was a Good Thing, for I shall admit that
I was just a bit wobbly at that point, and being in charge of a
sharp knife could have been too much to ask.<br />
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Took the two younger dogs out for their late-night walk after
that (being somewhat steadier on my feet at that point), and as I'd rather expected people were still turning up and,
despite the cool, spilling out onto the street, so being a glutton
for punishment (and a semi-professional alcoholic) I went back,
sometime before 11. Managed to slither my way in (standing room
only, and it looked as though they'd tried to pack about 60 people
in there before the yoof spontaneously overflowed on to the
pavement) and got yet another glass of vitamins - sadly, just at
the time they put on a Boney M mash-up, starting off with rah!
rah! bloody Rasputin and getting worse as it went on, which meant
I damned near spilt it.</div>
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Did my usual trick
and squirmed from group to group, chatting of this, that, and of
t'other, but after a while and another few glasses it seemed like
a reasonable idea to find a wall not too far from the bar and prop
it up, lest it escape. At which point, having more or less blended
into the background, I took up my favourite hobby and started
seriously watching people.<br />
<br />
As spectator sports go it really is
rather good, requiring no special equipment apart from the ability
to be inconspicuous: my only fear is that one day, as I'm scanning
the crowd, I'll spot someone in the shadows on the opposite wall,
studying <u>me</u>. It's happened once or twice, and I find it
rather unnerving.<br />
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It seems that every single self-service pump these days comes equipped with a 9" LCD display, the better to serve you untargeted and (incidentally) completely crap ads while you're filling up the car. I mean, personally, when I'm giving Sarah her 60l of finest diesel I am not actually thinking about getting the trees that don't exist in the garden that I don't have trimmed so it follows that the ad for "<i>Languedoc Elagage</i>" is - apart from being crap - completely pointless and totally wasted on me, but whatever: fortunately, I no longer have anything to do, even peripherally, with publicity campaigns.<br />
<br />
The thing is that these really cheap montages with their nasty soundtracks are interspersed with ads for the media company (two guys with a camcorder and a dog in someone's garage) that is responsible. At our local Intermarché, this turns out to be one "<i>Poop Digimedia</i>": I am not sure why anyone thought that was a good name.<br />
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Completely off-topic, but it turns out that there are advantages to being 60. For some strange reason my presence is required in Bordeaux on Monday, but as it's a four-hour drive and I'm supposed to be there for about 9:30 I thought I might as well check the train situation. And as I'm now over 59, the return ticket, first-class, from Carcassonne to Bordeaux cost me all of 50€: even with an overnight stay on Sunday night at a nice little hotel in the centre of town it <u>still</u> works out cheaper than taking Sarah through, and also means that I can get up at a reasonable hour and have a decent breakfast and still be on time for the meeting.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje-yjSYCqv1E3OQmEZ-wkk5DYXVXT8AxPTJR29vVHacPS0NgECPKLezvRVzyQy171JwjHNiW7mNaN7MC8sDPak4_JNlFYjPiRKddD1TpzeziswObNRpinqUpXlYIrLCLJw5v3nwVhl-Jw/s1600/P3177077.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEje-yjSYCqv1E3OQmEZ-wkk5DYXVXT8AxPTJR29vVHacPS0NgECPKLezvRVzyQy171JwjHNiW7mNaN7MC8sDPak4_JNlFYjPiRKddD1TpzeziswObNRpinqUpXlYIrLCLJw5v3nwVhl-Jw/s320/P3177077.JPG" width="240" /></a>Having turned up at <i>Gare St-Jean</i> mid-afternoon I then had to find my way to the hotel, which was located just around <i>les Quinconces</i>. Luckily, Goofle maps exists: but I am enough of a Luddite to not have spotted that I can try to persuade the damned thing to give me pedestrian directions, so it sent me all around the bloody one-way system (also, Bordeaux has all these grands boulevards which are off-limits to cars, so I had to avoid those as well: shame, as the hotel was just off one of them: <i>cours de l'Intendance</i>, if you feel like looking it up ...).<br />
<br />
Having come to my senses the next day I decided to try the walking directions, and let it be said that it was fine: were it not for the fact that my phone is, of course, set up for English and the silly bitch was trying to speak Frog. So, "<i>turn left from Boolyvar Cl-e acute accent-mon-soh on to roo Gene Jor-e grave accent-z</i>": truth to tell, I found it easier to make her shut up and just follow the map rather than trying to decipher <i>boulevard Clémenceau</i> and <i>rue Jean Jaurès</i>.<br />
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Incidentally, Suez/Lyonnaise des Eaux Mission Control at Bordeaux has a control room worthy of NASA: a big grid of twenty-odd huge screens up on one wall, in front of an enormous horseshoe-shaped desk with twelve screens, keyboards and various rodents, and then a large glass-topped desk with an absolutely ginormous touchscreen set flush into the top, for when you feel like playing at <i>Minority Report</i> ...<br />
<br />
And to one side of the desk an executive leather swivel chair, of the type in which Bond villains love to lounge, and on the chair a rather tatty cat basket, and in the basket a cheerful tortoiseshell cat who has - it seems - adopted the place. The only problem, really, is that as the place is considered vital infrastructure and is currently in DEFCON 3 the cat - who doesn't have security clearance - has to be swiped in or out as required, by someone with an access badge.<br />
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Also, I'm not entirely sure what they put the cat food down as on the operating budget.<br />
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The hotel itself was very comfortable and the staff not only competent but also friendly: however, the bathroom in my room had obviously been created by the simple expedient of sticking up a partition about 50cm from one of the walls, then heaving toilet fittings in there to see what stuck. So you had an ancient shower at one end (with the traditional half-hour wait for hot water to actually arrive), hand-basin in the middle, and then the toilet ... when you were on the toilet your knees were under the hand-basin, and to get from there to the shower you had to squeeze - naked, for there was no room in there to undress - through a 15cm gap between the partition and that ice-cold porcelain. I'd still recommend the place, just be aware that you need to be rather lithe if you're planning on taking a single room.<br />
<br />
Also, don't eat out in Bordeaux. The choice of eateries is vast, and the wine is uniformly excellent, so you're likely to spend an hour or so just agonising over where exactly to go.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA1KSHW0AmxFl9vbfr6bdXJlL_1lC-B8K-U0ZdpT6cpeTDjLp5I9U80Mi2DvcUQND8MAjeWsAtt0HI_05dwoKDDxqKSLZupLg58PLwGai6xlicO381Ihyphenhyphenu5EeH_Si4CPQumgrSdOjNeq0/s1600/P3187089.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgA1KSHW0AmxFl9vbfr6bdXJlL_1lC-B8K-U0ZdpT6cpeTDjLp5I9U80Mi2DvcUQND8MAjeWsAtt0HI_05dwoKDDxqKSLZupLg58PLwGai6xlicO381Ihyphenhyphenu5EeH_Si4CPQumgrSdOjNeq0/s320/P3187089.JPG" width="240" /></a>Whatever, a couple of weeks back Dr. Lignères - the local <i>vigneron</i> who
has a sideline as the village quack (maybe that should be vice versa,
but I rather think I've got his priorities right) - lured me into his
office on some pretext in order to take some blood samples. Not
something I really enjoy: not because of the pain or anything, it's just
that I'm pretty sure that when I get called back to have the results
explained at me, there shall be Words said about the fact that my blood
is, in fact, about 90% ethanol. But he insisted ...<br />
<br />
And
so, a week later, a plain brown envelope turned up at the house -
addressed, just because, to one "M. Trésor" Bimler - containing the
results. Much to my relief they don't seem to test for the alcohol
level, but everything else is resolutely normal (my cholesterol is
perhaps towards the low end) and there are no signs of prostate cancer. Which is probably a Good Thing.<br />
<br />
And finally, Nicole has taught me something new. Having set up her Livebox and TV decoder and fixed the Homeplug problem it was only natural that she should call me when her new printer failed to work ... the first two rules, under such circumstances, are to ensure that a) it's got power and b) it's plugged in. I wasted half an hour downloading new drivers and suchlike, having ignored the second rule: guilty as charged, Yeronner, but let it be said in my defence that I did not believe it possible to plug a USB type B connector in upside-down. Now I know better.</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-69583707104060448912019-02-23T13:35:00.001+01:002019-02-26T14:50:41.651+01:00The Ricardo Memorial Lecture ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Having better things to do the other day, I found myself - as one
will - up at the bar, getting some vitamin supplements. Magali
clambered down from her precarious perch, trying to hang a disco
light up for the next weekend's festivities (because it'll be the
bar's birthday), for the obligatory exchange of smacks on each
cheek, and once I'd shaken hands with Lionel and the three or four
elderly guys seated at the bar and got my drink, life went back to
normal - that old tradition of redoing the world. (No, I am <u>not</u>
joking, the French phrase is "<i>refaire le monde</i>" and it is a
game best practiced when a) you have no idea what you're on about
and b) you are slightly lubricated, thanks to pastis ...)</div>
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And of course talk turned to the eye-watering amounts that the
French must pay in social security charges, and taxes. You really
shouldn't get me on to that one, because having been self-employed
for the past 25 years or so I have actually lived with it for most
of my adult life: suffice it to say that the word "<i>entrepreneur</i>",
for all that it is in fact French, is almost universally employed
in a pejorative sense. Because the French are, at heart, a very
conservative people, with statist ideas dating back at least to
Colbert and his ilk, and their idea of a magnificent career is
that of an uncivil servant. If you can make it through the exams
and become a <i>fonctionnaire</i> (aka "petty bureaucrat"), then
you have reached apotheosis - a job for life. Hell, I have heard
people speaking admiringly of some distant nephew or something
that managed to get employed by the <i>police nationale</i> ...
these are the ones that follow the Fred Colon school of policing,
and tend to avoid going anywhere that policing might actually be necessary.</div>
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Anyways, as a member - these days - of the <i>professions
libérales</i> I do have a bit of the respect grudgingly afforded
to the sort of semi-official people with whom one must deal - like
<i>notaires</i>, <i>avocats</i> and - horrors - <i>huissiers</i>:
but still there is a certain wariness. Not to say, disdain.
Because if you're not employed by the state, or failing that a
state-owned business, or even just employed by someone else, you
are obviously gaming the system and screwing honest hard-working
employees out of money that really belongs to them, in some hazy
and ill-defined fashion. (Of course, if you're not employed by the
state then your boss is doing exactly the same thing but that's
OK, when you get too annoyed you can always go on strike and smear
dogshit all over his 40-year old Renault Fuego, which is all he
can afford ...) But from the point of view of the smug,
self-satisfied 40% with secure government jobs, the self-employed
are somehow grinding the faces of the poor.</div>
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Which is probably fair enough. It's a harder job than you might
think (the grinding bit, that is), and no-one thanks you for doing it - certainly not the
poor, whom you'd think would be used to it by now. Dirty work, but
someone has to do it.</div>
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Where were we? Redoing the world, that's right. So the old guy at
the end of the bar piped up and said "<i>What we need is a decent
war. A proper one!</i>" Then, apparently, everything gets blown
to bits and at the end the state will step in and dish out
enormous amounts of cash for reconstruction and we'll have yet
another <i>trente glorieuses</i>. Yep. Simple as that. Lionel has
his own ideas, and as he said, "<i>I am not an economist</i>"
which is a) true and b) probably a bloody good thing for all the rest of us, but
his concept - mind-boggling in its elegant simplicity - is that
if, like Renault, say - you have replaced people on the assembly
lines with robots, you should have to pay 3000€ per month in tax
per robot.<br />
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This figure being arrived at quite simply, because
you'd pay about 1000€ for a human bean working an 8-hour shift, so
a that for a robot that works 24/7 you should pay at least three
times more ... Some obstreperous bastard at the other end of the bar pointed out
that the prices of cars would automatically go up, but apparently
the answer to that is price controls. I'd not thought of that,
mind obviously not stellar enough, I shall forget all about that Nobel for economics.</div>
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So I finished my glass, said "goodbye" all round, and was kind of
glad to walk out into the sunlight under a bright blue sky -
because I don't get paid for nodding when people say stupid shit.</div>
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Of course it went downhill from then on anyway, because it does:
I was just topping up the oil in Sarah's power steering circuit
when Neville spotted me and came by for a decent moan. Or a
whinge, whatever. But more of a moan, I think. Whatever, can't
call it communication because it's strictly one-way, but ...</div>
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Now don't get me wrong. Despite being, to all appearances,
constructed entirely of sticks, string, spit and chewing-gum,
Neville is a warm and generous man, and I actually rather like
him. In small doses. For his emotional ground-state is one of
paranoia, perpetual anguish, and a vague feeling of
ineffectiveness.<br />
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Maybe it's something to do with coming from
northern England? Or maybe he's actually a reincarnation of
Goethe? He is totally convinced that, no matter what he does it
will a) be wrong, b) be useless, and c) The Man will stick it to
him anyway. (I'm not entirely sure exactly <u>which</u> man, but
it may be an entire class.) He might actually be right about the first two, but it doesn't matter because he will go and do it anyway ...
and don't get me onto the subject of that ageing VW combi that he fell
in love with and bought despite everyone from whom he asked advice
saying "<i>Don't go near it with a bargepole or any other kitchen implement</i>" ...</div>
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Still, with the incompetent cluster-fuck that is Brexit looming
ever closer, he really should stop talking to other Brits. It only
makes him worry even more. Last night he and Reet had dinner with
a couple of other ex-pats who foolishly mentioned that they were
looking at getting <i>cartes de résidence</i>, and then mumbled
something about their health insurance, and of course that went
straight to his brain.<br />
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Never mind that, in preparation for the
Doomsday scenario, the French are putting legislation in place to
ensure (if the UK is willing to do the same) that Brits in France
will continue to be covered by the extremely generous French
social security system, never mind that he doesn't actually <u>have</u>
a top-up private health insurance scheme (unlike about 95% of the
French) and so is unlikely to see any major changes there, never
mind that he's not paid income tax in either country for the last
ten years (but still moans bitterly about the fact that he might have to) ... that bloody Man is still, somehow, sticking it to
him.<br />
<br />
(Actually, I tell a lie. About three years back he did in fact get a tax bill - I remember the wailing and lamentations at the time - for the princely sum of 340€. Which, by a strange coincidence, happened to be just about the amount of money he had lying about in an undeclared bank account in the UK - to this day he is convinced that The Man found about it, and decided out of spite to confiscate it. Yep, that Man is an evil, shafting bastard.)</div>
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I listened with half an ear as this litany of woe washed over me (and
FFS Neville, ten years in France and you <u>still</u> don't know
that "au" can mean "until", or "up to"? WTF?) then closed the
bottle of oil, wiped my hands and said "<i>Sorry, Nev. Can't help
you with that one.</i>" Which was, oddly enough, completely
true. And sent him off to see Rory, who might know more about such
things than I (and there's another thing: an English ex-pat who
lives in France and yet positively loathes the EU, to the point where FU EU is spray-painted on one of the unfinished walls. Godnose how he
deals with the cognitive dissonance in that one ... luckily, not
my problem), and then, to clear my head, headed off for a walk in
the hills, which are just starting to smell like gin again.<br />
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Also, this weekend's theme is - apparently - the 80's. Which makes me shiver with anticipation (not) at the thought of the music we'll be listening to ... but now I must head off into the wardrobe and find some authentically 80's clothes. I know, most of my wardrobe does in fact date from the 80's - all those pure wool slacks and the business shirts I paid good money for back in the day when we were working and had disposable income, and which followed us over to furrin parts - but sadly, at some point (possibly when I developed colour vision) the banana-yellow cord trousers which were, god help us, in fashion at one time, and the paisley shirt in tasteful muted browns both disappeared. Probably a good thing, really.</div>
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Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-29273992843911389922019-02-03T14:39:00.001+01:002019-02-03T14:39:45.018+01:00Fecking Frigid ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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I've said it before but it's worth repeating: anyone who thinks that the south of France is uniformly warm and sunny really needs to check into one of those secluded resorts where the staff talk in cheerful but hushed voices, and the amenities include rubber cutlery, padded walls and those stylish shirts that do up down the back ... Today the sky is light, bright blue and the sun is shining valiantly: a few clouds are scudding high above for the simple reason that our lazy wind, the Cers, is gusting up to 80 kph. Let it be admitted that it's an absolutely brilliant day, ambient temperature's about 5, maybe 6° - the wind-chill, of course, knocks 10° off that.</div>
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And in but a short while I shall don the armour of righteousness ie sunglasses, scarf, closely-buttoned jacket, overcoat and gloves and go out to find a few bay leaves (some things have to be done, <i>noblesse oblige</i> and all that) to accompany a bit of slow-roasted pig towards its apotheosis along with yams (yay!) and kumara and stuff like that: but it will be a short walk, as short as I can make it, and I will stick to the more sheltered paths. Not that that's saying much, but you sometimes get at least the illusion of some respite from the breeze.</div>
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As an aside, I really don't know why it should be only the Brits who get such a bad press for - supposedly - always talking about the weather. Assuming that you yourself are foolhardy enough to go out for a walk, and that someone else is stupid enough to be out with the same goal, and that you should happen to meet, I rather think I've got the ensuing conversation scripted.<br />
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As such things will, the washing machine chose an Inconvenient Time to stop working: made even more inconvenient by the fact that the thing puts itself into lockdown - ie the door is actually physically locked - while it is running, or when it feels that there is an error. (For those of you not familiar with these things, I should perhaps explain that about 99% of European washing machines are in fact front-loaders, with a sort of porthole thingy at the front into which you feed any foul linen that is to be cleaned, with the drum mounted directly on the horizontal motor axis at the back. Although there is a subset, destined for tiny Parisian apartments, wherein the drum turns about a horizontal axis anchored at both ends and driven by a complex system of cogs and pulley-belts, and access is via a sort of trap-door. This latter sort <u>do</u>, I admit, have the advantage of not requiring a 20kg counter-weight on the axis, but are otherwise small, cheap and completely shite.)<br />
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So as opposed to a washing machine made the way that God intended, with the drum rotating about a vertical axis and - crucially - top-loading, once you start a wash cycle in one of these the door locks and stays that way until it ends, because otherwise you might open the door by accident and wind up with water all over the floor, and that would not be nice, now would it?<br />
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By sacrificing mice (I think) Margo managed to persuade it that there was not any water in it, and it reluctantly let us extract the washed but sopping load: then I went off and called the local service-person to organise a house call.<br />
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How to feel like a bloody idiot: the first thing he did, of course, was to wrestle the beast into an inclined position and then open the cap on the pump filter, from whence he extracted the half-eaten toe-end of a sock, and a toothpick. I honestly have absolutely no idea how these things came to be in there: as Jeremy is no longer with us missing socks are not an issue any more, and as a general rule we do not wash toothpicks. Still, I now know - for next time - and I suppose we shall have to start calling it the Eater Of Socks or some other cutesy name.<br />
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Once again it's the occasion for one of the occasional Health & Safety hints from The Shamblings™: this time, it's just to say that you should <u>not</u> pick up an ouch! burny! ramequin one-handed, from above, and try to deposit it elegantly on a plate. This is because it <u>will</u> slip from the oven glove's tenuous hold, fall (bouncing off a chair <i>en route</i>) to the floor and shatter, and then send food-splatter all over the tiles. Not to mention the chair.<br />
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Unusually, we have a solution for you: quite simply put, get at least one dog and invite it (or them, in our case) in to take a look at the problem. In about five minutes the floor will be completely innocent of any traces of scallops, shrimp, and creamy sauce (the exact details will, of course, depend on what exactly you had in your ramequin), and the cane chair seat will never have been so clean. So now you know.<br />
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So anyways, last night was that peculiarly French ceremony, <i>les voeux du maire et du conseil municipal</i>. For those of you who came in late and thus missed the beginning, this is a little ceremony sometime in January where (the mayor's idiot nephew having been shut in an outhouse for the duration) the mayor gets up and gives a speech telling all and sundry what happened last year and what is planned for this one; assorted dignitaries do the same; then after the obligatory wishes for health and happiness for the new year it's open season on the tables laden with crisps, pizza, and Label 5 <strike>paintstripper</strike> whisky. Usually there are lots of kids in attendance, because they're bloody expensive to feed and this one evening you can stuff them on pizza and soggy-bottomed quiche ...<br />
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I usually manage to go but this year it was cold and dank and windy, and besides I had something cooking that really needed some attention, so I missed out - but as will happen in a small village, I got the blow-by-blow account later. I was not the only one to be AWOL, apparently: our Dear Leader has managed to sufficiently piss off enough people that attendance was particularly sparse, and the speechifying was over and done with in a mere ten minutes - which has to be some sort of record.<br />
<br />
Still, there was one thing of interest to me, namely that fibre is to be rolled out to the home in 2020. This will be a Good Thing: do you know just how frustrating it is to know that all that lovely fibre-optic cable is running under the main street (with a branch off north to Montbrun), and to think that it is dark, and that I am not connected to it? It doesn't help, either, that Orange and Bouygues and Free keep rubbing it in by sending me emails to suggest that maybe, as a professional, I should upgrade to their Fibre Pro contract: of course, when I check up as to eligibility on the appropriate website (for hope springs eternal) the brutal reply is always "No!". I has sads.<br />
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It is very true that one of the most difficult things to do in a foreign language is to use obscenities correctly. I mean, you really have to be expert ... so why do the French persist? I can still remember when we first turned up here, in Brittany, coming across a huge black-on-yellow poster for a tour by some particularly obscure English pub band which screamed "THE FRENCH FUCKING TOUR!!!", but that was a long time ago, thought that just maybe they'd got it out of their systems.<br />
<br />
Sadly, this turns out not to be the case. The little Moux newsletter turned up at the door the other day and as one will I read it avidly, checking out births, deaths and marriages (no, I am <u>not</u> joking, I do that), a brief summary of some guy's master's thesis in archaeology, studying the <i>Castrum de Moux</i> (this being the ruin half-way up the Alaric), and turned eagerly to the announcements of the summer events. From which I learn that the vaguely Irish music at the beer festival towards the end of April will be provided by a French group calling themselves "Fucking Vintage". Gods help us all.<br />
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Whatever, time goes on - as it will - and the days are getting longer: the almond trees have their startlingly pink blossoms and soon enough it will again be Spring. Also, we seem to have missed out on the snow that was half-promised for last night ... point is, if I want to get this out the door before March I should probably hit the post button now. Mind how you go.</div>
<br />Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-56168363839454179292018-12-28T12:54:00.000+01:002018-12-29T13:34:20.519+01:00The Letter "D" ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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... is an extremely important one, as Martin never tires of reminding
us, for without it the part of Callan would have been played by one
Ewar Woowar. (For those of you too young to remember the eponymous TV
series, forget it.) <br />
<br />
Anyways, after five years settling in here at The Shamblings™ it seems we really will have to leave, as the place apparently does not exist. Or so I deduce, from the fact that a UPS overnight delivery took a week due to repeatedly sending my parcel back to the Narbonne distribution centre to get the address corrected because no-one could find us: it seems that a lot of GPS systems still don't have "place St-Régis, Moux" in their database. And those that do tend to misdirect people to Fontcouverte, four km to the east ... still, I would've thought that the driver might just have phoned me. I mean, I think that's the whole <u>point</u> of my supplying them with a contact phone number.<br />
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Also, up till now I have managed to go blissfully through life thinking that "Murkin" was a word used by people from Canuckistan to refer to their rather more boorish neighbours to the south. But my illusions have been rudely shattered, for I have just found out that a) I got the spelling wrong and b) a "merkin" is in fact a pubic wig. It's rather a shame really, I would so like to pull that one out at Scrabble.<br />
<br />
Christmas is approaching, and the supermarket shelves are groaning under the weight of packets of Révillon chocolates - the only things worthy of gracing a French Christmas table - (there are also bloody Ferrero Rocher, and those disgusting cherry liqueur things, not to mention <i>marrons glacés</i> but the less said about all those the better) and the big cooler cabinets are stocked with duck thighs, duck breasts and - my favourite - raw <i>foie gras</i>.<br />
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<div style="text-align: justify;">
I was very restrained, and only bought three: which I shall now have to devein. Not, I admit, the part I really enjoy, but it has to be done. (If you happen to have access to a supply of hypertrophied duck liver, and have no moral objections to eating the stuff, the recipe - more a technique, really - I use is <a href="http://ruhlman.com/2011/05/how-to-make-torchon-recipe/">here</a>.)<br />
<br />
(By the way, should "recidivated" be a word? As in, the act of recidivism. Because I <u>did</u> go back to the scene of the crime, as it were, and bought another two. Just so there's no risk of my running out. Also, I really did want to find out what would happen if I marinated one in Baileys and very strong coffee. I'll let you know how that one turns out ...)<br />
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Strangely enough, for a country that prides itself on its
food, France seems to have had perhaps more than its share of
food-related scandals. There was the time when literally rotting duck
was sold in the supermarkets (the odd thing being that no-one actually
seemed to notice, perhaps they thought that's what "gamey" is supposed
to be), horse meat being passed off as beef, and of course that time
when a great fuss was made when it was discovered that the pigs in the
big intensive farms were being fed on dry food which involved a fair
percentage of shit - both their own, and human.<br />
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So it's kind of ironic that the results of a study published the other day in <i>le Gorafi</i> show that there are possibly dangerous amounts of McDonalds in human faeces.<br />
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Completely unrelated is the fact that I shall be back on
my usual dry-toast-and-tepid-water post-excess miracle diet, for Angela
and Martin, finding themselves with a surplus-to-requirements haunch of <i>sanglier</i>,
invited Rick and Mary and Margo and myself around to eat it last night.
He'd stuck it in a bucket with a few gallons of red wine and the usual
suspects in the <i>aromates</i> department (ie juniper berries, bay
leaves, carrots and the rest) a week ago, and had hauled it out that
morning to go into the oven for eight hours of slow-roasting.<br />
<br />
And once that was in and cooking, Angela set about making <i>gougères</i> and baked red cabbage and concertina potatoes and cauliflower cheese ... this last being something I personally will not touch, be it with a barge-pole or any other kitchen implement, due to unfortunate memories of <i>la grande cuisine Anglaise</i> wherein an otherwise innocent vegetable is boiled into something that most closely resembles, in texture, colour and aroma, a half-rotting brain. Margo tells me that it was in fact absolutely delicious, and I am quite willing to believe her, but it's just one of those irrational phobias I don't seem to be able to get over.<br />
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So we started off with cheese puffs, then <i>foie gras</i> before attacking the pig and its trimmings, which Martin insisted on our washing down with copious quantities of a 100% syrah from the Côtes du Rhone, then after a pause for the nicotine junkies (and doing our bit for global warming), we got onto toffee pudding with caramel sauce; which is every bit as sticky as you probably think. And because, somehow, we were not totally bloated, we polished off the last bits of the <i>foie gras</i> along with a <i>vendanges tardives</i> Gewurtztraminer. Which pretty much finished me off.<br />
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Hence this morning's resolution to be rather more restrained, at least until the next time.<br />
<br />
Which turned out, as it happened, to be some ten hours or so later, because I'm not going to skip heading off across the plain to Montbrun for drinkies of a Sunday evening.<br />
<br />
If you ask me (that's a purely rhetorical question, I'm going to rabbit on anyway) artificial intelligence - at least the sort that gets stuck into phones and suchlike - is not yet fit for purpose. Case in point, the auto-complete feature. It's tripped me up a couple of times when writing text messages: once I had written <i>"Enquiring minds want to"</i> at which point the bloody thing suggested <i>"vomit"</i>, and another time I'd got as far as <i>"Right now, I'd really like to be eating"</i> and the word that popped up was <i>"you"</i>. Which, if not necessarily inaccurate, was not entirely appropriate, all things considered.<br />
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And as that has brought us back to the subject of food once again, as time goes by it seems that the Christmas-time contents of the big chest freezers in the supermarkets get more and more exotic. Used to be there was just venison and ready-marinated <i>sanglier</i>, set to go directly into the oven: a few years after that they were joined by kangaroo and emu steaks.<br />
<br />
This year I couldn't help but notice the vacuum packs of zebra, llama and, of all things, crocodile steaks. I have eaten crocodile before and I can't see any point to ever doing it again: as far as I'm concerned the stuff tastes like chicken and is even more gelatinous than a lamb shank.<br />
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Speaking of which reminds me that there's a rather large (for these parts) flock of sheep and lambs pastured below us, down by the railway lines. We'll have to avoid going that way for a while: not only are they well-guarded by three or four lovely <i>bergers des Pyrenées</i> who take their job very seriously, but the road down there is covered in what the dogs think are exotic puppy treats. Do not want.<br />
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Christmas day was bright and sunny, so we had high hopes for the traditional Boxing Day walk oop't Alaric ... sadly, it also seems to be a tradition that the weather should turn overnight to dull, gray, cold and windy, and on top of it the bloody <i>chasseurs</i> were running a <i>battue des sangliers</i> up there, and personally I have no wish to become a statistic.</div>
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</div>
<div style="text-align: justify;">
<br />
So Martin and Angela and their two dogs and I (everyone else had begged off, deciding - not unreasonably - to stay curled up inside, in the warm), thinking that discretion was the better part of valour, headed east instead, down to the Chateau La Baronne (excellent wine, by the way) and then up and over the east-west ridge that projects from the eastern end of our little mountain.<br />
<br />
Then we found a relatively sheltered spot not too far from Martin's Chicken Bush (don't ask) and as I'd thought to bring a ham-and-egg pie and a bottle of red and three glasses <u>and</u> a corkscrew (somehow, you always seem to forget the little, important, things) and we had our little picnic.<br />
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Whatever, tonight it's the end-of-year bash at Ann and John's, and finding myself - beyond all understanding - with a piece of cod, and given that I always have root ginger and garlic and chilis and actually managed to get some lemongrass which doesn't look too foul at Carrefour the other day, I shall go off and turn it all into little Thai-style fish cakes to take along. Maybe some salad too, so that we can all play at hunt-the-slug ...<br />
<br />
I missed out on the chance to wish you all a Hairy Gristlemaus, so you'll just have to make do with a Furry New Bear.</div>
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Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-49198390430489344382018-11-28T19:44:00.000+01:002018-11-28T19:44:38.122+01:00We Shall Overcome ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Welcome back, my friends, to the show that never ends ... the always unedifying spectacle of the French, taking to the streets to protest - although against what exactly is not always entirely clear. I'd actually started to think that, just maybe, we'd grown out of it - for there's been nothing like a proper mass demonstration for the last few years - but sadly, this turns out not to be the case. This time it's mostly about the admittedly eye-watering hikes in the price of diesel and so, as one will, everyone is out with their cars, blocking the roads.</div>
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So it's a day of enforced immobility for me, no point to even thinking of heading in to the market at Carcassonne ... on the bright side, the subliminal hum of traffic from the autoroute has stopped, and it's eerily silent. Apart from the occasional sharp report from the vines, as some hunter takes a pot-shot at a group of hikers.<br />
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Speaking of which reminds me that if a friendly local hunter supplies you with a pheasant or two, you could do a lot worse than turn them into <i>faisan vallée d'Auge</i>, just saying. It's an especially good method if you're unsure of the age of the bird - not really a problem here as most game is farm-bred and then flung out into the wilderness to be shot at, but you never can tell - as it involves braising rather than roasting. It also has the advantage of being quite simple.<br />
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Basically, take your bird and wrap it in slices of bacon, then truss it and brown it in a suitably-sized <i>sauteuse</i> over high heat before getting to the fun part, wherein you slosh a shot glass full of Calvados over it and flambé the poor thing. Wipe away the remains of your singed eyebrows, turn the heat down to low, pour an appropriate quantity of dry cider into the pan and then, once it's come to a simmer, put the lid on and let it bubble quietly away for a while. Depending on the age and the size, this might be anything from twenty to forty minutes so do check from time to time, you don't want to have the meat actually fall off the bones.<br />
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While that's going on, take a couple of apples (Golden Delicious are pretty good, they hold their shape quite well), peel and slice, then fry the slices on both sides in butter, sprinkling with sugar as you go: you want them to caramelise nicely. And if there's still some calva left, you could flambé them too.<br />
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Finally, when the bird is done to your taste, put it aside to settle before carving and reduce the sauce, if necessary: add a healthy dose of cream and continue to reduce until thick, remembering to stir in all the nice brown bits. Rather than serving on an elegant dish such as the porcelain monstrosity you got years back from some distant aunt, just put the bits back into the pan with the apple rings on top, and spoon a bit of the sauce over. Even though buttered noodles would be the traditional accompaniment, you should remember to have hunks of baguette on the table, to make it easier to mop up the sauce ...<br />
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OK, cooking class is over, normal service will now be resumed. But you may thank me for it later.</div>
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The taxman is still doing his very best to get as far as possible up my nose. There are two sets of taxes paid on property over here: there is the <i>taxe foncière</i>, paid by the owner, and the <i>taxe d'habitation</i>, which is paid by whoever happens to be living in the place on January 1st. Lumped in with this latter is the <i>redevance audiovisuel</i>, better known as a TV licence, which you pay for the privilege of being able - in principle, but finding anyone who will admit to actually doing so is difficult - to watch the uniformly dire public TV chains.<br />
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So in 2016 I actually got off my arse and sent off a little <i>déclaration sur l'honneur</i> that we did not in fact have a TV here at The Shamblings™, and rather to my surprise, in 2016 and in 2017 I was not charged 136€ on top of everything else - so why, oh gods, do I find myself in 2018 being asked to pay for the TV I do not have? I mean, I'm sure I'd know if I'd gone out and bought one during the year ... never mind, another series of fruitless phone calls ending up in a rabbit-warren of twisty little full voice-mail boxes before I finally decide to go in and moan bitterly in person. You get used to it.<br />
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In later news, the yellow jackets blockading roundabouts and autoroute <i>péages</i> have mostly folded their tents and gone home, which is kind of good news for those of us who enjoy being able to go out at any random moment and buy - let's say - toilet paper. Because I went off to Carrefour yesterday to get a few basic necessities and, luckily, bog-rolls were not amongst them, because in the usual spree of panic-buying the entire alley dedicated to such things had been emptied. (Come to that, there was exactly one packet of doggy-poo bags - such as one carries about to clean up the inevitable <i>déjection</i>, for so it is called over here - left on the shelves, which I suppose goes to show that the French are rather more civic-minded than one might think.)<br />
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There was also no fresh milk, only two pats of organic butter, and virtually no meat. An embuggerment, 'cos what I really wanted was, as it happened, some meat, some butter, and some milk ...<br />
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Still, I suppose that even hardened protesters like to have clean bottoms, for now the supply trucks are once more rolling in to stock up the shelves and we may again wallow in the luxury of wiping our bums with luxuriously soft pale lavender rose-scented paper, rather than glossy pages torn out from last year's Home & Garden (which are <u>not</u>, if you're wondering, really fit for purpose).<br />
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It is now, I note, a week since I last set fingers to keyboard: the trucks are still rolling for - possibly for the first time in the history of the Fifth Republic (yeah, we index them over here, possibly something to do with Cartesianism) - the CRS have apparently been told <u>not</u> to turn a blind eye to unlawful behaviour, such as it might be emptying a dumpster-full of pigshit at an autoroute access.<br />
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Be that as it may, there was still a <i>manif</i> planned for Saturday moaning in place Gambetta, which is where I always park, so I thought the hell with it, there's always the Olonzac market of a Tuesday so why go looking for an <i>emmerdement</i>?<br />
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And as it was - for once - a glorious day, the sort of day you're <u>supposed</u> to have in autumn down in these parts, Sarah took us off to Montséret down in the southern Corbières to see a little <i>expo d'artisanat</i>. And if that sounds like dribbly teapots, hand-made jewelry and earnest basket-weaving to you, you'd not be too far off. (Actually, I exaggerate. It was nowhere near that bad: no teapots, for one thing.)<br />
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But it is a pretty place anyway, apparently full of <i>maisons de campagne</i> and "artists" - both for the same reason I guess: it's cheap, and the weather is - usually - good. It also nestles at the foot of a <i>colline</i>, which is sort of a bonsai mountain, at the top of which there is a ruined <i>chateau fort</i>. From a distance it's easy to mistake it for part of the rock, but closer up you can see that it's actually a built thing (for a given value of "built" which involves piling stones one atop the other and hoping gravity gives them a break and they don't fall down out of sheer boredom).<br />
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There's a walking track up there, and I am willing to bet that the view out over the Corbières would be really spectacular, but feet were not appropriately attired for that sort of thing and I will put that one off for another day.<br />
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Apart from these minor logistical problems, and the existential dread that the bar will in fact close (I'm giving it another month or two, there's no official book been made on it yet but that will doubtless come), we know that in another month the winter solstice will arrive and then the days will start to get longer and before you know it, spring will arrive.<br />
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Whatever, I must have lead a virtuous life - either that or I have been rewarded by mistake instead of some other poor sod who really deserved it - for I went out this morning to take the dogs off and lo! on the doorstep was a large box of what I have managed to identify as <i>lactaire délicieux</i>, aka the saffron milk-cap.<br />
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Let it be admitted that I'd completely forgotten about meeting old Jean-Claude last night, over at the bar in Montbrun, and that he'd asked if I liked mushrooms. Not being a complete idiot I replied with a yes, and he murmured something about dropping some off some time ... and then one thing lead to another, as it will, and it had totally slipped my mind.<br />
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Just goes to show that you really should cultivate an amicable relationship with such people. At least I know what's for dinner tonight - after cleaning them delicately and making sure they're not worm high-rise housing, they will go into a very hot pan with a large lump of butter. Once they've started to sweat, get rid of the water, turn the heat down and add garlic (of course) before sprinkling with parsley to serve. Sounds good to me, anyway.<br />
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Any left-overs, by the way, go down quite well scattered on a sheet of puff pastry which you have previously slathered with sour cream and - why not - thinly sliced strips of bacon, then sprinkled with moah parsley before baking in a hot oven. Just so you know.<br />
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Anyway, I should probably get back to more profitable pursuits ie work. For some strange reason my <i>petits suisses</i> want my favourite blue boxen to work as Wifi access points (with, of course, all the security problems <u>that</u> poses, but that is parked in the "Not My Problem" department) and so I have spent rather more time that I care to recall looking for USB Wifi dongles for which I can locate drivers that a) will build under Linux 2.6.35 and b) actually <u>work</u> with the dongle in question.<br />
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This is not always as easy as I think it should be. Especially when products which are advertised as using one particular chipset in fact use another, requiring a different driver ... never mind, these are my problems and I am reasonably well-paid to solve them. It keeps the wolf from the door, anyway.</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-72147013546508907682018-11-12T18:52:00.000+01:002018-11-13T18:57:10.049+01:00Toilets, And Taxes ...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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So Sarah very kindly consented to take me off to Boutenac and Gasparet yesterday, so I could get my fill of the autumn colours. Driving along the twisty little roads amongst the huge stony outcrops and pines, I don't think I will ever get tired of the landscape in our little part of the world. It's not what you could call "pretty", and certainly not for everyone, but it suits me just fine. The sky could have been bluer, but you can't have everything ...<br />
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Also, can't go out every day taking photos, which is why I found myself at home today, bored witless ... and as he will, the Devil found use for idle hands, and I now have a sparkling-clean knob.<br />
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Nine of them, in fact, for not content with cleaning the stove-top and the grills, I pulled off all the knobs and cleaned those too. Do you know how boring that gets? I must have had something really important to put off.<br />
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Someone once asked me why I don't just let Margo take care of that sort of domestic task: but she takes the not-entirely unreasonable view that not only am <u>I</u> the one that wanted this hideously expensive stove in the first place, but also I am the only one allowed to use it, on pain of pain, so I can bloody well clean it. No-one's ever asked that particular question again. Not since I mentioned the state of the chainsaw, anyway.</div>
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Now Boutenac is a nice little town, centre of the <i>appellation</i> of the same name: sadly, they seem to have decided to dig up all the streets in one fell swoop and so whichever way you arrive you will be confronted with a large and alarmingly yellow sign saying "<i>Deviation</i>" pointing you off on to some side street. Which, as a law-abiding citizen, you will follow.<br />
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Later on, there will be yet another such sign - "good", you think, "I'm getting out of here" - and then, somehow, in some godforsaken carpark, they seem to have run out of signage, leaving you lost and abandoned. It is at times such as these that I tend to remember that excellent episode "Countrycide" from Torchwood, way back in the day.<br />
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<u>Not</u> helped, I may say, when after I'd parked in the unsigned carpark and got out to wander a bit and met no-one for ten minutes or so, an elderly woman with a stick appeared from a crook or nanny and said something along the lines of "<i>Ooh! Are you taking photos of our village?</i>"</div>
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At that point I should probably have knocked her to the ground, stolen her stick and dentures, and been on my way - but there was a group of small children between me and the car, so I thought it better to be prudent.<br />
<br />
And I explained that yes, I was indeed a visitor - from Moux, almost 20km away, and that I was indeed taking photos - I could just as well have said that I was some tentacled monstrosity from Mars because she took no notice, other than to say "<i>I've just walked around the village, and it's deserted. As if there's no-one here</i>". Then she tottered off into the distance: I weighed my options, made my way as calmly as I could back to the car, and left as discreetly and as rapidly as possible.<br />
<br />
Gasparet, on the other hand, is the sort of place that you know will be empty as soon as you arrive. Not so much a town as a cross-road in the middle of nowhere: and even the chateau/cave was closed, despite the welcoming signs announcing "<i>dégustation et vente de vin</i>".<br />
<br />
Still, I had nowt better to do, and the other chateau - from the early 1800's if I'm any judge - was worth a look, and there were no frighteningly calm old ladies wandering about. In fact, there was no-one. Not a single human being. (Apart from two Parisians, who don't really count and in any case quickly got into their Volvo and headed off.) Didn't even see a cat - at least, not one that was moving.</div>
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So from thence I went to Thézan, where at least the <i>presse/tabac</i> was open (the young guy behind the counter was suspiciously friendly, which leads me to suspect that they don't see too much new blood in those parts), so I bought a couple of cigars and smoked one to calm my nerves ... which was probably a good thing, because from there on the way back to Ferrals and an approximation of civilisation I had to start by following a Spaniard in a BMW who had obviously not entirely come to grips with the facts that a) you are at the wheel of "the ultimate driving machine"; b) yes, roads twist - that's what gears are for, not to mention the actual steering wheel and - if you absolutely must - the brakes; c) the speed limit in these parts is <u>not</u> 50kph.<br />
<br />
Last I spotted in the rear-view mirror he had not ended up in a ditch, so I suppose all's well that ends more or less satisfactorily. For Sarah and I, at least.</div>
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In other news, it seems that our bar may <u>not</u> actually be closing! Bloody rumours, frightening me like that. What in fact happened that Magali, for reasons which escape me, is pregnant - which does, I'm told, rather cramp one's style - but if the financials are such that they can afford to take on Benedicte permanently behind the counter then they will do this thing, and stay open.<br />
<br />
You cannot imagine what a relief this is to us.<br />
<br />
Anyways, this weekend got off to quite a good start, apart from the Incident when I woke Sarah up. I'd plugged my phone in to charge, and then when I pushed the go-tit I was all of a sudden surrounded by hysterical drug-addled Daleks, screaming "Exterminate!" in unison. In my usual befuddled state (hey, Saturday moaning, remember?) it took me a while to realise that Sarah had recognised my phone as a storage device, found some music on it, and had then turned the stereo on for my listening pleasure - consequently playing my ring-tone in a never-ending loop. At very high volume.</div>
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<br />
In the Grand Scheme of Things that's really pretty trivial - once I'd found the off button for the stereo (although I know, from bitter experience, that from now on until some random time in the future she will continue to turn the stereo system on every time she starts) and things went well, until maybe an hour ago.<br />
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Not quite true, because there turned out to be a gaggle of Catalan bag-pipers in <i>place Carnot</i>, which was a bit of a bugger. The pipes are not, despite what you may think, the exclusive preserve of the Scots: they are just the most notorious practitioners. It seems that almost every civilisation arrives at a point where they say to themselves "<i>Hey! Wouldn't it be a great idea if we stuck some pipes up a goat's rectum and squeezed to see what kind of noise it makes?</i>"<br />
<br />
To which I can confidently reply that no, it is possibly the worst idea you could ever come up with, do not even try it because the kind of noise it makes is <u>not</u> a nice one. You'd think they'd have learnt by now ...<br />
<br />
But true calamity struck when José came past, pulled up, opened the boot of his enormous Beemer and handed me a large plastic bag. I was wondering why he had chosen today for a wine drop, and then "<i>You will, of course</i>" he said, "<i>have to plume it</i>". Because as it happened, the bag contained a rather freshly-dead hen pheasant.<br />
<br />
I had not planned on spending my afternoon plucking and drawing a bird, but these things do - I'm told - gang aft agley, and so that is in fact what I shall be doing. But it will be <u>after</u> going off to the butcher's to pick up a nice bit of lamb (for I have no wish to turn up with feathers coming out my nose) to be roasted with the giant parsnip I picked up at the market.</div>
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I
don't know why, because I'm not really that keen on the things, but
Margo likes the stuff: I have received strict instructions that the meal
will involve roast parsnip (check), roast potato (check), roast kumara
(check), steamed Brussels sprouts (check) finished off in the lamb fat
while the roasting draws to a close, and - of course, more as an
afterthought than anything else - roast lamb.<br />
<br />
If all that seems a bit heavy on the carbohydrates to you, you are not alone: but I have my orders.<br />
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<br />
But back to the bird - I have never, in all my life, done that sort of thing to any animal, although I had vague ideas that one should maybe drown them in boiling water (seems redundant, the beast was already dead as far as I could tell) and then enthusiastically pull out great wodges of soggy feathers. And as for removing the entrails, it's true that such things are usually done for one, but I have your cook's basic knowledge of anatomy and anyway how hard can it be to stick your fingers up the poor thing's bum and pull everything out?</div>
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As it happens, and luckily for me, there's any number of videos up on YouTube illustrating the act of <strike>sexual hygiene</strike> pheasant-plucking, one of which seemed remarkably simple and involved no faffing about with water at precisely 83°C or anything like that, so I watched that - twice - and set about doing it.<br />
<br />
A bucket-load of feathers later, and with some rather disappointed dogs who were convinced that gizzards would make a great doggy snack, I found myself with an admittedly scrawny but definitely bald bird on my hands: following advice I stuck a paper towel where its digestive tract had once been, wrapped it in more paper towels, and stuck it into the fridge to - um, mature - until Widdlesday, when I shall bard and roast it.<br />
<br />
Unless, of course, things start getting a bit whiffy in there, in which case I shall have to stick it in the freezer until required.</div>
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Please pardon a slight digression here, but over in these here Furrin Parts you can head off to the supermarket of your choice and take your pick from a bewildering array of toilet paper. They range from rolls of what look like badly-recycled newsprint up to the top-of-the-line 5-layer stuff, luxuriously soft and infused with aloe vera or other essential oils. (Margo's preference is for "Just One", a complete misnomer in my opinion because if you can get your bum clean with just one square of toilet paper then you are a much better man than I, just saying. Or, possibly, extremely parsimonious, and willing to live with the consequences.)<br />
<br />
In fact the only sort you can no longer buy - I suspect it's reserved for public toilets and the SNCF - is the stuff that comes in what appears to be boxes of paper tissues (bet that's fooled more than one) and looks like shiny squares of nicotine-stained baking paper: also, completely useless at its stated job.<br />
<br />
Anyway, the point is that I am informed by a member of the prominent Sources family (you know, "Reliable", "Highly-Placed", and "Confidential", to name but three of the cousins) that in inner-city Aldi supermarkets in Germany you may buy a brand that is called - and I am <u>not</u> making this up - "Happy End"*.</div>
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Whatever, I spent this moaning most unproductively: off into Carcassonne to queue for two hours just to make an appointment to see a tax-person. Under normal circumstances I would have arranged that by phone - yes, I <u>did</u> think of that - but right now any time you call and go through the comedy of punching in numbers to get through to the right department, you inevitably wind up speaking to an answering machine that says "<i>Hello, your call is important to us. Voice-mail is full right now, please press 8 to leave a message which will not be recorded, because we're full. Thank you.</i>"<br />
<br />
It seemed easier to stand in line and listen to other peoples' ringtones, and the odd intimate conversation. (Do these people really not give a shit that I now know things about their sex life that I really, really did not want to know?)<br />
<br />
Whatever, huge dark clouds are rolling in ominously from the Mediterranean, and I have a rolled pork rib roast slowly cooking in the oven with garlic and herbs and milk, so I should really go occupy myself with that. Mind how you go, now.<br />
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* <span style="font-size: x-small;">See? I told you so ... </span></div>
<br />Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-54359329687067263422018-10-29T19:45:00.001+01:002018-10-29T19:45:09.307+01:00Things I'd Not Planned on Doing ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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By now, world + dog probably knows that we've had a once-in-a-century flooding event: one of those Rumsfelds. You know, as in "shit happens". We got off very lightly - thank gods we didn't buy one of those picturesque houses on the banks of the canal du Midi, nor in Trèbes (where there is not only the canal, but also the river Aude), nor in Lagrasse, through which the Orbieu runs (only under normal circumstances, it runs well <u>below</u> street level). Truth to tell, the only problem <u>we</u> had was the verandah being awash in the morning, and when it all cleared up and the blue sky came back in the afternoon, we discovered why.</div>
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The verandah was roofed by a twisted evil genius - or a complete idiot, take your pick, although I'm going with the latter option - and so there's a sort of sheltered gully in it, with its own gutter, which goes into its own downpipe which then spews water all over the terrace. When it works. What we found was that the gutter, and the downpipe, were completely blocked with a few decades-worth of dried cat-shit, and the water had to go somewhere. Dripping into the verandah, as it happens, as a <strike>vaguely</strike> extremely unappetising turd soup.</div>
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So cleaning <u>that</u> out turned out to be our afternoon's job, and let me just say that I'd much rather not have had to do it.<br />
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The vines, of course, have very soggy feet, and around here - where the transport infrastructure is pretty much third-world quality anyway - some roads now have places where they're covered with other bits of road, where slabs of tarmac have been undermined and then come free and bobbed happily around for a bit. At least they'll now have to do something about those potholes which is perhaps just a little more sophisticated than chucking the odd shovel-full of hot-mix into them from the flatbed of the municipal truck (every once in a while, when they find a bit of spare petty cash down the back of the mayoral sofa, they splurge on a tub of tar and a cubic metre of gravel), but this being the south I'm not going to hold my breath.<br />
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In other news, it is once more time to drag the hi-viz jackets out of the wardrobe and dust off the doggy bells, for the hunting season has opened - with, of course, a bang. You can tell this not only from the occasional sharp report up in the <i>pinède</i> or in the vines, but also from the odd dazed pheasant wandering about the village, with what passes for its mind preoccupied with major existential questions like "<i>what the hell am I doing here?</i>". It would probably be better off pondering "<i>how <u>long</u> am I going to be here?</i>", but there you go, I guess that prioritisation has never been a forté of the bird brain.<br />
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(Just as an aside, there's a "fake news" site over here that I look at from time to time: one of their later articles reported on the joy of the various hunting associations on discovering that the competent ministry had significantly raised the quotas on hikers and trail bikers.)<br />
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Hunting season also means it's Autumn, and with that come the gentle breezes (gusting up to 50 kph, today) which make it quite a hard slog walking into the wind. And when you're walking with it at your back it's not so good either, as it blows straight up the dogs' bums and up to what they are pleased to call their brains, making them even more bubble-headed than usual. <br />
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José, the <i>menuisier</i> from Montbrun, came past a while back to drop off two large wardrobes that were surplus to requirements, and now that the borer has been put to the sword one of them is in the verandah by the front door, ostensibly for stashing coats. But it is capacious enough to conceal a multitude of gins, so Margo ever-so-gently suggested that it would be a Good Idea if I sorted through the (large) box of boots that came down with us on our epic voyage five years ago, and has been sitting out there ever since.<br />
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Quite frankly, I don't know why we bothered. Bringing them, that is. Probably because they were sitting at the front door in Saint-Pierre, and towards the end of the proceedings, when it became evident that there was not nearly enough time to sort things properly, it was a case of "<i>fling it all into bags or boxes, load it into the lorry, and we'll sort it out at the other end</i>".<br />
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Which has, finally, been done. Of eight pairs of boots - some dating back to the Bronze Age - seven are now in black plastic bags to go out on the street for the next time the mayor's idiot nephew comes past with the truck to do "<i>les encombrants</i>", and one pair is in the wardrobe, waiting for me to attack it with a brush and the vacuum cleaner.<br />
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Which I shall do with some trepidation, for over the years they have become full of dog hair and dust and godnose what else, and I rather expect that at the toe end there will be a highly-developed civilisation of fluff which I shall have to wipe out.<br />
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I has news! Not, unfortunately, good news. It would appear that our bar is to close at the end of the year, which is a complete embuggerment. OK, it wasn't entirely unexpected, but still ... the thing is, Lionel gets all a-flustered as soon as more than four people come in wanting food, and when he's busy chatting with a mate you could die of thirst before getting served at the counter. The best part, it seems, of running a bar is when you get to pop out and sit down for a fag, with no-one importuning you for service: otherwise, it's too much like hard work.<br />
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Still, it's hardly a spur of the moment decision, I would think, so I have to ask myself why they invested in a fancy kebab grill and a huge - and doubtless hugely expensive - sound system only recently. Makes no sense to me, but then it's not really my problem, I guess. I mean, apart from the fact that we will, once again, be barless. Which is <u>not</u> good.<br />
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Oh well, we shall just have to fend for ourselves again, I suppose, hoping all the while that the <i>mairie</i> doesn't take an age to find a replacement - preferably one that's competent, and doesn't mind working.<br />
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Whatever, we are currently "enjoying" a cold front that seems to have come direct from Scandinavia. From 22° about a week ago it's plummeted to 6° today: the sky is grey, dull and dismal, there is sporadic spiteful rain, and the wind is gusting enthusiastically. Also, thanks to the end of daylight saving, it is dark and gloomy around 18h, which is emphatically not nice.<br />
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Still, it could be worse. I had occasion to drag myself away from the fire and brave the weather to go help Nicole out, as she had not Internet: the phrase "computer-illiterate" was invented for her. So I reset the router, and then re-entered the WiFi key into her iThing, which had decided, for some reason, to forget it. And don't get me on to the subject of why the bloody things can't use WPS for key exchange ...<br />
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And then she had gmail working on the tablet but not on the laptop because somewhere along the line she - or, more probably, her daughter - had changed the password: you can't actually see the password on the iThing because it's protected by TouchID, which didn't seem to want to work, so I couldn't put the right password into the laptop (also, frikking Edge seems to have saved every password for every site <u>except</u> that for gmail), and if I reset the password via the laptop (because Google won't allow you to reuse an old password) I would have had to edit the password on the tablet and as that's protected I couldn't do that either ...<br />
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I do not know why complete strangers come up to me in the street to tell me that Apple gear is so simple to use, I really don't. I now have a brief answer for them, but I fear it may be impolite.<br />
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Anyways, the <u>point</u> was (originally) that we are having only light breezes compared to Corsica, where gale-force winds have kept the ferries in port. So think of us, will you?</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-83000316978237930822018-10-15T11:24:00.001+02:002018-10-15T11:24:38.244+02:00Hippo Birdie ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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<span id="goog_1210530804"></span><span id="goog_1210530805"></span>Once again, the French bureaucracy reveals it self in all its Byzantine glory. Now that we have a new window - one that actually functions, and lets light into the place - I have received a letter from the <i>Direction des Finances Publiques</i>, with a few questions for me. I say "a few", but that is an understatement. For a slight, simple change to the façade, they are asking for the total surface area of the house, the surface area on the ground, the number, usage, and surface area of every room in the house (do not forget that a "<i>salle d'eau</i>" is <u>not</u> the same as a "<i>salle de bain</i>", as the former may or may not have a shower in it, but the latter has an actual bath), the principal construction materials, whether or not there is electricity, gravity, and ... the list goes on.<br />
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Always the optimist, I do like to believe that as they have all this information anyway the issue can be resolved with a simple, cordial phone call in which I gently explain all this, and the droid at the other of the line replies something along the lines of "<i>Oh certainly sir, no need to bother yourself, I'll just mark your dossier as closed, shall I?</i>" but as usual this turns out not to be the case.<br />
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First of all, the phone lines are only open on random half-days in the week, and secondly, when you do not get a recorded message telling you this, you get a recorded message telling you that your call is indeed important to them but everyone is frightfully busy right now and could you please call back.<br />
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Oh well, it's not as though I had anything better to do than waste a morning sitting in a dingy waiting-room in an ugly, grimy prefab concrete office block in Carcassonne.<br />
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And while I'm happily whingeing, why not whinge about Orange? One of our neighbours is an English bloke who bought a house here as a holiday home, but has decided to spend more time in France so thought that perhaps getting the phone line reconnected and getting a Livebox for the innatübz would be a good idea. But his French is kind of approximative, and trying to organise that from the UK would be rather problematic anyway, so I rather foolishly said that I would see what I could do.<br />
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Rather to my surprise the initial phone call to organise everything was actually a rather pleasant experience: the guy that took my call was courteous and helpful, and in about 20 minutes max everything was done: the Livebox to be sent off here to The Shamblings<b>™</b> with an appointment for 8-9am the following Monday for the technician to come past and do whatever it is that they have to do (sod-all as far as I can see, apart from smugly manipulating a multimeter, but what do I know?).<br />
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I got a swag of SMS over the weekend to confirm the appointment, the Livebox duly turned up (I cheated and opened the box, just to make sure it wasn't full of empty), so on Monday I didn't worry about things, thinking to myself that Cliff could probably handle stuff from that point on. As it turned out, I was mistaken: no fault of his, I hasten to add.<br />
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For around 15:30 that very afternoon, as I was browsing the industrial cheese and yoghurt aisle at Carrefour, I got a call from some bloke announcing himself to be a technician from Orange, but I bent down to inspect a tub of mascarpone and the call got cut off - doubtless blocked by the rubber Gruyère. He'd a masked number so I couldn't call back, and apparently he felt he'd done his duty because <u>he</u> didn't call back either, so when I got back home I had a little rant at Orange.<br />
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Which seemed to have some effect, because the very next day I got an apologetic call (from a non-masked number, this time - yay!) proposing a new appointment for 10am on Wednesday, which I guessed would be just fine, and took it. And around 12:30, still no sign of a technician on the horizon: and the phone number went straight to the answering machine, and I was starting to get kind of pissed off.<br />
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At which point I rang Orange - yet again - to make my displeasure known (and also, if truth be told, to see if I couldn't piss someone else off, just to spread it round) and they managed to get hold of this second technician and patched him through to me. He was very apologetic indeed, said he'd not been able to make it himself and had despatched one of his minions but said minion apparently didn't make it: someone would, he promised, be there forthwith.<br />
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This word, "forthwith", seems not to mean what I think it means, for it is now 17:00 and still neither hide nor hair of any sort of technical person of any description. This is the south of France, I know, and "time" is an elastic notion, slippery to pin down: nevertheless I rather think that I shall get all mediaeval on them very, very soon. I think that I shall also suggest that it would be good PR to <u>not</u> charge the 60€ "<i>frais de déplacement</i>", under the circumstances ... That will be when I can get through to them, of course, because right now it goes straight through to a recorded message to the effect that "<i>Awfully sorry but there's a shitload of irate people calling us right now, please check out our really neat web site? Oh look! A squirrel!</i>".</div>
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Anyways, in other news I is now officially 60, and feel none the worse for it. Spent much of Friday afternoon getting stuff ready because I loathe last-minute rushes: rolling out puff pastry and smearing it with grated cheese and mustard and cream to be rolled up into logs and go into the freezer ready for later baking, making fillings for club sandwiches, using that pristine <i>mandoline</i> of mine to slice potatoes and make proper <i>tortillas de patatas</i> ... which left me time to go off to the bar, as is only right and proper.<br />
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Speaking of the bar reminds me that Magali and Lionel have invested in a kebab spit and grill, so of a Wednesday evening you may - if you feel in the mood - head up and get yourself a reasonably decent kebab. (Personally, I like the meat to be rather more crispy, but there's no accounting for taste.) On the other hand, for the next little while it might be prudent to ring and order in advance, for Lionel tends to get inexplicably flustered when there are more than five people in the bar at a time so if you turn up without warning your order <u>will</u> be late, and personally I'd be surprised if, when it did come out, it was actually what you ordered.</div>
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Whatever, all that prep paid off because it meant that when I awoke on Saturday moaning, with a smile on my lips and a song in my heart, I had plenty of time to do a swoop through the market with Mad Karen before coming back with a half-dozen baguettes and slicing some rather nice authentic Corsican <i>coppa</i>, pulling a kilo of <i>foie gras</i> out of the freezer just on the off-chance that someone might want some, and buttering sliced bread for all those club sandwiches. (Let it be said that the smashed banana/honey with Marmite and sprinkles met with a - mixed - reception, but person or persons unknown liked them enough to ensure that there weren't any left over at the end of the night. Or maybe they met a more ignominious fate, discreetly tipped into a bin.)<br />
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Also at the market there's a woman who makes and sells bread, one of which, the Vollkörn or something like that, is the closest I've come across to good old Vogels whole-grain bread. Looks rather like a German black bread, dark and heavy: not really the sort of thing you'd want to throw to ducks, as they would sink. But quite delicious, and as Bob! had told me of the guy just close by who sold real, fresh <i>fromage frais</i> I picked up a kilo tub of that too, which got slathered onto slices of the bread along with chives and garlic and freshly ground (is there any other sort?) Madagascar pepper.<br />
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Eventually people started turning up, which meant it was time to slice the cheesy logs and slip them into the oven (I am <u>so</u> glad I bought some more decent baking trays), stick the bread in a plastic bucket along with a breadknife, and take everything out to the table on the terrace - along with copious amounts of rosé. Of course, because one does.</div>
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Our friends down here know me perhaps too well: I am now richer by three bottles of good gin, an excellent Cognac, a bundle of Cuban cigars and more bottles of rosé than even I can shake a fist at. All in all, it could well have been worse. I can even say, quite honestly, that not too much later that Sunday I woke up with a mouth like a baby's bottom: sadly, <u>not</u> smooth and soft to the touch. But still feeling chipper enough to wake Sarah up and persuade her to take me out with the camera that afternoon.<br />
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Sadly, that was the last day of decent weather: from about 26° it has plummeted to maybe 18°, and the sky is overcast and grey. Plus there has been torrential rain, which - with the wind coming from the wrong trouser-leg - meant that I spent some time Wednesday moaning out in the verandah with the industrial wet+dry vacuum cleaner, sucking up about 30 litres of water. <u>Not</u> one of my favourite jobs.<br />
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On an unexpectedly fine Sunday, you could actually do worse than leave Moux for Douzens, thence through Comigne to Montlaur, and from there to Labastide-en-Val, through Saint-Polycarpe (the abbey's well worth the detour) and then off to Alet-les-Bains. This is the scenic route, which - luckily - avoids such places as "Dead-man's Peak", and just as well too. I've been driving around in mountains and through hairpin bends for 25 years, and I was thankful to have the experience. Let's just say that on those roads you do <u>not</u> want to meet someone coming the other way, especially if it's some local <i>chasseur</i> in his huge frikking 4x4.<br />
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Still, provided you've remembered to pack enough brown paper bags for those in the back seats, the scenery is in fact nothing short of spectacular, especially at this time of year when the trees (there's quite a lot of deciduous stuff up there, rather than the omnipresent pines and cypress over this side) are changing colour, and the low sun plays on the occasional bit of pasture off to one side. Much greener, too, than here. Were it not for the fact that I can't persuade anyone to come with me when I go out on a photoshoot in the benighted backblocks I'd have packed a picnic, or taken the CampingGaz burner, a pan, some scallops and cream, a bit of <i>foie gras</i>, decent bread and some wine ...<br />
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Alet is worth the visit: ancient stones and half-timbered houses. I wandered around until the battery of my camera gave out: at which point I debated having a drink but decided to head home instead. But I took the quicker route, via Limoux and Carcassonne: it seemed prudent.<br />
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Finally, if anyone out there is worried about us - don't be. Although it might be a little tricky to actually leave Moux just at the moment, what with the roads being underwater and all, the village itself is at the magnificent height of 90m above sea level, whereas the plain is at about 30m. So apart from the streets being awash with water heading - as is its wont - to a lower level, we're fine. Better here than at places like Trèbes, or Carcassonne, where either the Aude, or the canal du Midi, or both, have burst their banks.<br />
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That's the thing about a Mediterranean climate: you never know if you're not going to get a flash flood at some point, and find the river at your doorstep has suddenly risen by seven metres or so.</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5408725241088409360.post-66691062094809944942018-09-23T13:11:00.001+02:002018-09-23T16:57:49.143+02:00Pond Scum, and Used-Car Salesmen ...<div style="text-align: justify;">
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Both are unsightly, but at least the pond scum is useful ... seriously, if there's one thing I loathe (not actually the case, there are many things I detest with every fibre of my being - orange crimplene shirts, to name but one) it is chasing people up to get them to do something that should have been done, and would have been done much more easily, yonks back.</div>
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Case in point, two years ago we bought Margo's little Mito at a garage in Carcassonne. ("<i>Prestige Autos 11</i>", if you want a name to avoid: "<i>Ah, the wide boys</i>", as John sighed later on. Maybe I should have asked him before venturing onto the lot.) In principle it came with cruise control - as it turns out it had a speed limiter, not exactly the same thing but we live with that - but what it did <u>not</u> have was the handbook and, more importantly, <i>le carnet d'entretien</i> - the service booklet. "<i>No problem, squire, I have but to ring the previous owner and I'll have it in a jiffy ...</i>"</div>
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Fast-forward two years and a goodly number of phone calls, and I am starting to get exceedingly annoyed. Getting actually angry I find to be usually counter-productive, but I am <u>so</u> close ... especially when, on today's fruitless call, the guy had the temerity to say that he'd willingly give me the owner's phone number and I could chase it up myself.<br />
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At which time I pointed out that perhaps it was <u>his</u> job, rather than mine, to do that; that it was in fact illegal to sell a car without these documents - then I said I'd ring again next week, wished him a lousy day and hung up the phone on him.</div>
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That last will rankle, I know. It was cruel of me, but a French-person who is not allowed to end a conversation on a superficially cordial note will not be happy. He has not been permitted to make an implicit excuse, nor say that it's not really his fault, you understand, and now he will just have to swallow the guilt. (Mind you, car salesmen may prove an exception to this general rule.) Whatever, I'm glad I don't know if he has a dog, because I'd hate to feel responsible for it getting a couple of unwarranted kicks when he gets home.<br />
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For thirty years now I've laboured under the misapprehension that "<i>37°2 le matin</i>", title of a book and then a film, was referring to the temperature. An easy mistake to make, especially as it starts off in Gruissan, in summer, where it really does get that hot in the morning.<br />
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But finally, thanks to a hat-tip from a friend, I actually bought the book ("Betty Blue", in English, but just maybe I should get it in the original and re-read it, to see what was lost in translation) and discovered that I was, as usual, completely wrong. Well, maybe not entirely: it <u>does</u> refer to the temperature, but more precisely that of a pregnant woman - 37°2, in the morning.<br />
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Those cultured few of you lot out there who've read it before may now snigger up your sleeves at my ignorance if you wish, but I would still recommend it. A rather beautiful love story, for all that the author is French.<br />
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End of lit-crit, on to the rest.<br />
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Is it something in the water, I wonder, or am I getting cynical, or are they actually breeding kids to be retards these days? I mean, I went off and did something I don't do enough of these days - to wit, grab the camera, fold myself into the car and head off to take some photos. So I was wandering the quiet sun-baked streets of Luc sur Orbieu, snapping merrily away, and I acquired a cortège of two bratlings - ten, twelve, I guess.<br />
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And having watched me take photos of buildings and godnose what - I guess the only entertainment in the place is what you make for yourself - the eldest piped up and asked "<i>Sir, sir, what are you doing?</i>". Department of the bleeding obvious, I replied "<i>taking photos?</i>". "<i>Oh. What of?</i>". "<i>Buildings, young fool. They tend not to run away</i>". No, but seriously: you ask someone with a camera pressed to their eye what they are doing? Yoof of today.<br />
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Anyways, we is now mid-September and we are still enjoying what passes for summer. Bright, blue and warm; but I <u>have</u> dragged a pair of jeans out for the morning and late-night walks. The cool is pleasant, but still ... Margo tells me that the beginning of next week it should drop to about 21°, before going back up to 26° or so: I can live with that. If it could only stay that way through till November that would be much appreciated, and who knows - stranger things have, as they say, happened at sea.<br />
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What I'd <u>really</u> like is for it to be warm(ish) for the first week of October, for on the 6th - the 8th being, most inconveniently, a Monday - shall be commiserating my 60th birthday with a not-so-select group of friends and other semi-professional alcoholics. I shall have to lay in another 40 litres of wine, I feel, and Margo rather maliciously suggested making club sandwiches ("l<i>es tartines d'association</i>?") because they always go down well with the French. I am seriously toying with the idea of making up one lot with smashed banana, honey, and Marmite ... would that be bad of me?<br />
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And still in this festive vein, I is a Happy Camper, for my birthday present arrived rather early. I am sick to death of bloody box graters removing my knuckles, and the sheer excess (and the cleaning overhead) of thinly slicing potatoes using some special disk-like blade (which you can never find when you need it) in the kitchen whizz is enough to put me off the idea, and in any case I am <u>supposed</u> to be able to do it quite adequately with a knife ... which is true enough but life's too short, so I ordered a <i>de Buyer</i> mandoline.<br />
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It is very pretty, and quite spotless, and I think I shall leave it unused for the next six months so that it stays that way - just take it out from time to time to look at it - which brings me to my current problem, this being "where the hell shall I store this thing, in my tiny kitchen?".<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq3P5DSdSly0oEFhhc08QYYQ13-kEX1f6JvzMLsFsv1c-hyBGRrSMhhsDATxfAYDRyWLfD4Qhop6uywLqLpVX0KgWfNVYCZNikZQra7aEuY5Vv9zsfHwwGaHbtTf8uRllwF9tjbylqI3I/s1600/P9226417.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiq3P5DSdSly0oEFhhc08QYYQ13-kEX1f6JvzMLsFsv1c-hyBGRrSMhhsDATxfAYDRyWLfD4Qhop6uywLqLpVX0KgWfNVYCZNikZQra7aEuY5Vv9zsfHwwGaHbtTf8uRllwF9tjbylqI3I/s320/P9226417.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
Because all the cupboards are full, and chucking out cooking gear is <u>not</u> an option because despite what one might think there is in fact very little of it that I do not actually use. (Apart from the bread-maker, which followed us down from Savoie and sat in the pantry for five years until, just the other day, we managed to palm it off on Julian & Batu, and maybe two of the three waffle makers we seem to have. And a number of the six muffin tins. Also the electric frying-pan that Margo bought some years ago, unwrapped, and put on a shelf - from whence it has never, to my knowledge, moved an inch.)<br />
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As a temporary (and, therefore, permanent) measure, I suppose I could shift one of my huge cast-iron casseroles someplace else: it's only moving the problem around, I know, but if I can keep doing that long enough it will eventually cease to matter.<br />
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Also, going off to MatCol and buying another couple of decent, sturdy stainless steel 30x40 baking trays that won't warp in the oven (making a hideous pinging noise in the process, and incidentally tilting your little gratin dishes just enough so that the <i>crème brulée</i> custard runs out) didn't really help matters in the storage department.<br />
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Whatever, the bells started a random cacophony this morning, bidding the faithful to prayer, as it seems that the ambulatory vicar is here today. Sadly, there are fewer and fewer of the faithful, and even more sadly they are mostly on the elderly side, and thus arrive by car.<br />
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And being as what they probably got drivers' licences - if in fact they did - back in 1914 or something, the concept of <u>not</u> double-parking, thus blocking in we innocent heathen folk, seems to be totally alien to them. Probably a Good Thing then that I didn't really need - or want, come to that - to head off to the supermarket this morning.<br />
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Be all that as it may, it is far too nice a day to worry about such small matters, for there are more important things to occupy my mighty brain. Such as, for instance, just how shall I while away an idle afternoon, waiting until it's time to head across to Montbrun for drinkies, and whiling away an idle evening?<br />
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This is the sort of problem with which we are constantly confronted down here in the south, but I (rather nobly, I feel) suffer it so that you don't have to.<br />
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Cheers - speaking of which, maybe it <u>is</u> time to open another bottle of rosé. Need moah vitamins.</div>
Trevorhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09735886770584642505noreply@blogger.com0