31/05/09 Are we all sitting comfortably?

I am - now - the side-effects of a one-metre fall flat on my arse have finally worn off. The blow to the head which is, in any case - or my case anyway - much less delicate, wore off a lot quicker. But I can now sit down without occasioning great discomfort.

You know we've fallen on hard times when Ukrainian hookers are obliged to work the roundabout at Chignin. I went through there this afternoon and spied a couple, miniskirt down to about there (actually, up to about here) and white vinyl boots trying to meet up, fishnet stockings in between (good thing the weather's fine) - I got waved on, there was already an Audi A6 and a Peugeot 607 pulled over. An Alfa just doesn't do it these days. Plus, there were only two of them, they seemed fully booked.

Helped Stéphane, the neighbour, erect his barbecue last weekend and this weekend it was the turn of the bread oven. Under normal circumstances he should have left it for at least 10 days before firing it up but he couldn't wait, so tonight we had pizza "au feu du bois" and it was rather nice I have to say, blistery around the edges as it should be. Not, unfortunately, crispy in the middle, but that's a question of mastering the heat in the thing and that comes with a bit of experience. And learning how your oven works. I'm looking forward to next weekend's effort.

Just by the way, my ham is coming along very nicely. Another month or so, I reckon, and it'll be fit for purpose. James and Lucas (4 and 2, respectively) came round to see it hanging in the cellar, and were suitably impressed. Especially when I trimmed a few bits off for them to eat. Not squeamish, these French kids. Neither, unfortunately, are flies, which is why it's now enveloped in an enormous muslin bag as it finishes curing.

Getting slack, aren't I - it's now the last day of May, and I've still not sent this off. Not for want of stuff, to say, just lack of time, really.

By the way, those of you who want to know what I really get up to on Saturday mornings might could do worse than go off and take a look from time to time at http://frangykitchen.blogspot.com, where I contribute the odd recipe from my Saturdays with Sophie. And others. (Other recipes, that is. Not other women. Just clearing up that little ambiguity.)

Whatever, we managed to get rid of Jeremy for a week for a trip to Germany. What they call a "séjour culturel" rather than "linguistique", probably just as well as apparently they wound up speaking English all the time. Got to see a lot of chateaux (including, I think, Mad Ludwig's edifice), and Jeremy came back with a 1.5 litre choppe and a bottle of decent beer to put in it. Which he didn"t even have the decency to offer to share with me. Yoof of today - no respect.

He's quite decided that he want's to go and do cooking, so we've put his name in for the lycée professionnelle at Grenoble, second choice Thonon and third choice (far down on the list) at Challes-les-Eaux. He'll just have to get his marks up if he wants to get in to Grenoble (or Thonon, for that matter), so now it's up to him. I must admit, he'd probably do well in the hospitality business - though I say it myself he's actually a very thoughtful, sociable kid. Even if we do have to remind him every five minutes to pull up his jeans so that we're not obliged to get full-screen coverage of his knickers. (Or take yesterday morning, when he completely failed to notice that his shower was overflowing and there was 1cm of water on the floor. He finally noticed on getting out of the shower, at which point Margo gave him a mop and a couple of towels and left him to clean up. When he and I left for Chambéry I did have the wit to ask "I assume you've put the towels in the wash? And put the mop away?" Quick as a flash came the reply "Oh, Mum didn't say anything about that ..." Cue a ten-minute delay in leaving whilst he receives detailed orders and executes them ...)

I left him with Sophie yesterday, and as we were munching our way through lunch he started off a rather elliptical conversation - "I don't suppose that by any chance you have some pasta?" "Why yes, I do" - replied Sophie - "why do you ask?" "It's just that my Dad has absolutely no idea of how to do a decent gratin aux pates, and you do it so well ..." When I left she was checking up on the sour cream and grated cheese in the fridge. Learnt this morning, when we picked him up to head off to a BBQ, that he'd wolfed down about a kilo of the stuff before attacking the ice-cream. On the bright side, Sophie really does need to defrost her freezer, and like that there's a lot less in there to worry about.

Anyway, we headed off to this BBQ at Karen's, in Frangy (or as she will insist on calling the place, "Mumblefuck"). I have to admit, it is a bit of a godforsaken hole, all of 1600 inhabitants, many of which are clinically dead. But that doesn't matter so much when it's fine, as it certainly was today.

Did I mention that we've been enjoying temperatures up in the 30s? Thought not. It's actually rather nice. You lot can all wrap up warmly, we're fine.

Whatever, after starting in on the rosé then scarfing grilled piggy bits and salad and bread, I spent much of the afternoon lying on my back under a tree, waiting for cherries to fall into my mouth. Which they obstinately refused to do, I was obliged to rise from time to time to pluck a half kilo or so just to keep the wolf from the door. I think that for once in my life I may actually have eaten too many cherries. And gooey chocolate brownies. (Just to reassure you, I actually stopped drinking around 2pm. The Alfa pretty much drives herself, but she occasionally does silly things ... like overtaking at 140 kph on solid white lines in a 90k zone... so it's best if I'm relatively sober.) We made it back here around 19:30, and quite frankly I couldn't be arsed getting anything ready for dinner and in any case the only person that was hungry was Jeremy, so we left him to fend for himself with left-over bits from the fridge.

I did threaten to tell you the tale of why we've changed our e-mail addresses, and I've calmed down enough to be reasonably coherent, so here goes. We used to be with Tele2, which worked fine and never gave me problems: but in February I got a letter from SFR telling me that as they were merging with Tele2, and given the number and nature of our contracts, they were obliged to cancel them effective May 20th. A month or so later I got another letter saying that someone would be in touch with me, then we each got e-mails saying that our Tele2 mail accounts had been shifted to SFR ones, and that the username and password details had been posted out.

Yeah, like shit they had. I spent quite a lot of time on the phone being shuttled from one hot-line to another: apparently we no longer existed in the Tele2 database (apart from for billing purposes) and did not yet exist in the SFR database. Apart from fort billing purposes. One support person at Tele2 even advised me to change providers, as it was all going to hell in a hand-cart. As time went on I got very rude, even by French standards.

The final straw came when I got through on yet another hotline to someone who told me that it was quite normal that our contracts were to be cancelled, as SFR didn't offer ADSL at Chambéry-le-Haut (where we'd been enjoying it for the past 7 years). So I headed down to the local Orange/France Telecom boutique to organise a switchover. Which, I was pleased to discover, went rather rapidly and quite well. Went down on Thursday and signed the contract, on Monday a guy turned up at the office to switch us over. (Did not, unfortunately, go swimmingly - took until Friday to get all the wiring changes done at the exchange.)

I'd also switched the contracts at both houses, and Margo rang to say that Internet access had gone down at home: indeed, they'd swapped out the Tele2 DSLAM and connected us up to Orange. But no ADSL box! So I spoke gently to the nice man and to his boss, and around 17:30 we went around to the back of his van and he gave me two Livebox, saying "saves me a bloody callout, doesn't it?".

As, indeed, it did. I set one up for Sophie and then came home and did the same here, and lo! it worked. On top of it, it tells me I'm getting 20Mb/s download here, which I must admit I find hard to believe but it does seem quite snappy. On the other hand, the telephony seems to have a hissy-fit occasionally, so I might have to look into that. Because "free calls" (well, included in the price) is quite attractive, isn't it? For info, it's 65€/month, which includes the phone line, internet (no download cap) and phone. Is that good?

The only thing left for me to do is to write an extremely snarky letter to SFR informing them that, as they've cancelled our contracts (copy of their original letter in evidence), I do not expect to be receiving any bills for their services after May 20 and, if I do get any, I certainly won't be paying them. It's petty, I know, but it'll make me feel much better.

OK, you can all go back to sleep now.

Byeee
Trevor

19/04/09 Our friend the pig ...

I note that in previous mails, I've completely forgotten our adventures with a pig. It started back in February, when I arrived home after work to find our kitchen table groaning under the weight of four or five boxes full of bits of the said animal (dead, let me assure you). Shoulder, chops, various unidentified bits, a liver and a whole ham. Much of it is now in the different freezers around the place, I made haste to make an enormous paté campagnarde with the liver, and the ham is now hanging solemnly in one of the cellars: should be ready by June. Unless, of course, I got the salting wrong and bits of it start turning blue and dropping off, which would be a shame - no signs of that yet, luckily.

The paté was an unreserved success, unfortunately the freezers are still full to overflowing so it's rather lucky that BBQ weather has arrived and the pork chops and stuff should get eaten. First BBQ of the season on Monday, good old tandoori chicken - had six legs so did the lot and just as well - Jeremy had a friend, Joyce (male, should you be wondering) around, same scale as he but a few extra centimetres in height, and he managed to eat three. Godnose where it all goes.

Malyon is extremely happy, having found a job and a flat (not necessarily in that order). The flat's just a few minutes walk from the uni, which is a definite advantage on the student residence, and at least she'll no longer be sharing with yoof what think that elementary/alimentary hygiene is something that happens to other people. And it's cheaper too, which has to be good.

The job is apparently as a telephone answering machine: she thinks it's pretty crap but it does pay £50 per day in cash, apparently - not as good as walking the streets but a lot easier on the back.

I have recently discovered that I are eeyore, at least according to little Lucas from next door. He's not yet old enough to comfortably wrap his tongue (and palette, and all the other organs we use for speech production) around too many consonants, and so "Trevor" becomes "eeyore". Cute. I have not yet exterminated him, still pondering the question.

Last weekend, being the 11th or somesuch, and having heard reports of small animals and children going missing in mysterious circumstances, I donned the armour of righteousness (the rather holey cut-down jean shorts that are held together by sweat and faith) and took the flaming sword of whatever-it-is in my hand (cigar actually, sorry to disappoint you but there you are) and went down to mow the lawn. Somewhat to my dismay the lawnmower, which has lived down there under the shade of the tilleul for the last four years with nary a hint of maintenance, started up with the first pull on the cord (OK, I did have to put some gas in, can't expect everything) so I felt rather obliged to continue with the massacre. Took me about 90 minutes, which is rather over par, and I was covered in grass soup when it was all done, but at least we know that Spring is here. By the buzzing of lawnmowers on Saturday afternoons shall ye know them...

Was still feeling a bit stiff after all that effort when, on Tuesday night, I decided in a fit of enthusiasm to rush up the stairs in socks. (Cue a Health & Safety warning video on the dangers of doing this.) Foot at the bottom went too far on the step, foot at the top missed the next step, next thing you know I'm falling a metre flat on my back to land directly with the coccyx on the concrete and, 30ms later, the skull doing the same thing. Mind you, as that's mostly empty, it hurt a lot less. I'm still walking with caution, and paying attention when I bend over, but I don't seem to have actually broken anything. Luckily the boys (see below) were in bed or watching something unmentionable on TV: I'd have felt really guilty had they heard some of the words I used. When I felt in a fit state to use them.

Anyway, being as what we've just ended the Easter holidays, we had three boys for a couple of days: Jeremy (can't seem to get rid of him), the abovementioned Joyce, and a Lucas (one of a number, we really shoud index them or something for easy recognition). I wasn't warned that they'd be staying over for a second night but happily I'd got a reasonably-sized chicken for dinner: it disappeared. I think Joyce actually hoovered the carcasse, to make sure nothing was left.

Unfortunately, although it is the season, there are no morilles. Too dry. You cannot imagine what a bummer this is. No chicken in cream sauce with morilles this year. So any of you who were planning on turning up for a little culinary treat can think again. On the bright side, there should be plenty of wood strawberries, and it did not snow just after the apricot flowered so we might even get a few apricots this year - until they get attacked by blight or mildew before being devoured by hordes of ravenous millipedes. One thing for sure is that we ourselves will not get to eat any of them.

Okay, back to school for Jeremy tomorrow, which means getting up at an unnameable hour to get him down to the train station. Which incidentally means that I'm going to bed.

Byee!

PS: downloaded and watched the first episode of "Diplomatic Immunity" - personally I thought it was quite funny. Is that bad? And why are there no further episodes up on Rapidshare? Oh, and you probably really should watch "Better Off Ted". And "Krod Mandoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire", while you're at it. You'll thank me for it one day.

18/03/09 Pizza Sex

No, this is not something they didn't have room to fit into the Kama Sutra (or which the editors cut), it's just that there are billboards all over Chambéry advertising the "Aphrodisiac pizza". It apparently involves chocolate, banana, caramel and ginger, is delivered to your door by a man (or at least, male person, for a given value of "male" - this may involve students) on a throbbing mobylette, and each one comes with a free condom. You may not have needed to know that, but I certainly needed to get it off my chest.

In other news, I went off on Wednesday and had my armpit drilled, bored and emptied. First off you remove all shreds of dignity and get kitted up with the bright blue paper disposable knickers and standard hospital smock that does up down the back (my personal feeling is that it's just so that the nurses that then have to do the ties up can make rude comments about yer arse), then onto the slab so that they can have a bash at finding a vein to stick the catheter in. Only took three goes, I suppose I should be grateful - mind you the thing's about the diameter of a garden hose so every time they stick it in it hurts like hell.

Once they actually found a vein to plug it into everything went swimmingly - the next thing I can recall after they pushed the plunger down on the horse-doctor's syringe was lying on a gurney hooked up to a machine that went "Ping!" and, on the third line down on the display, said "Warning! Bad contact!" whenever I wiggled my left thumb. Which, out of boredom, I did quite a lot. It didn't seem to worry anybody, which is probably fair enough. (Could have been worse - Windows For Hospitals V3.01, showing a tasteful skeleton on the blue screen as it reboots.) As, after half an hour, I didn't show any of the classic symptoms of actual death, they wheeled me out, cleaned me up, told me to get dressed and shoved me out the door. Luckily they'd actually wheeled me back into the same room in which I'd left my clothes when stripping off for the amusement of the nurses (possibly by mistake), which meant there was no Benny Hill-style humorous interlude where I run about naked groping nurses. Probably just as well, really - I wasn't really in the mood for that. Nor, by their looks, were the nurses.

Whatever, I'm now waiting for the swelling to go down and to get a bit of feeling back in the skin; the surgeon did say he had to go rather close to the nerves. And in a week or so I might even be able to get my arm over my head! (Why, you may ask, would I want to do that? Good question, don't really know.) Still, living with an armpit which is basically a massive bruise is no fun, and I wish you to know that.

Spring are sprunging, or whatever it does: the garden is full of primeveres (them's primroses to you) and things are generally warming up. Like, to 20°+ today. This is good. On top of that, my ham is curing quite nicely down in the cellar, thank you: another two months or so and it should be good to eat. Miam. And on top of it, the bats are out and flitting around again. Godnose what they're eating

Next Friday we have our annual kulcha outing: down to Grenoble to see the annual English production from Upstage, the theatre club at Europole. We started going when Malyon got involved in her first year there, and we seem to have got into the habit. Don't regret it, always well done - at least as well done as anything we ever managed at MUDS: this year it's "The Ladykillers". Whatever, gives us an excuse to go down to Grenoble, get a decent kebab before the show and then sink a drink or two after it with Mr. Simpson (who has usually sunk his drinks well before we - or anyone else - actually show up, but that's another matter) and Didane, the theatre impresario, who really has to be seen/met to be believed. Will be fun, as always.

Jeremy has more or less decided what he wants to do and it involves cooking. Shock, horror. So rather than go on and do his bac(alaureat) he wishes to do a bac technique before getting a BTS in the "hospitality industry". Surprisingly for someone so big (180+ cm and still growing - sigh) he does not wish to leave home - I suppose he is only 14, after all - so it'll probably be off to Grenoble for him too. Which'll leave us knocking around the house like two peas in a large paper bag - weekends excepted, of course.

Malyon's fine: with her triple-A results she's been accepted for the Dean's course next year, which basically means (I think) that she gets to be a research slavey doing extra work whilst the Dean gets all the credit.Mind you, I might be a bit cynical there. Whatever, she's doing well and having fun - most of the time. Which is good.

Sorry, this is just a quickie by normal standards, but quite frankly there's not that much that's happened. You know that if there were, I'd have told you. So you can, as Frog-persons say, "reprendre votrre vie normale", and/or go back to sleep in front of the TV.

Trevor

31/01/09 The mice are committing suicide - we're NOT doomed!

Strange as is may seem, this is true. Third time in a couple of weeks that I've had to fish one of the little buggers out of the dog's water bowl, drowned or frozen as it tried to do a couple of lengths breaststroke. Not house mice either - fieldmice: I can only assume that water's getting a bit scarce, what with the ground being frozen solid (think Arctic permafrost) and of course it's bloody chilly out, and so they come up to get a drink (or a bit of exercise), fall in and drown. Either that or the cat catches them and sticks them in so that she'll have mousie popsicles for later; if that's the case she's doubtless a bit pissed off at me for religiously chucking the things. I'm not sure that the dog actually notices they're there, and I'd rather she didn't sneeze one out of her nose when she's curled up on her cushion.

Today, incidentally, is the 10th, which means I had to deliver Malyon to Geneva airport at midday to catch her flight back to Glasgow. Apart from the vast number of Germanic-style persons heading back home via Switzerland after a week or so on the slopes it all went swimmingly, and the new bit of autoroute from Annecy to Geneva really does cut 20 minutes off the trip time. Much appreciated. Unfortunately, the disruption to my usual schedule meant that by the time I got back to Chambéry and had the usual apéro with Sophie, I had to do the shopping at Carrefour around 15:00. During the ski season. I can now remember just why it is I haven't set foot in a supermarket on an Saturday afternoon for the last fifteen years or so. Luckily I was unarmed, so you're not going to be reading any headlines along the lines of "Deranged Kiwi in Shock-Horror Fruit&Vege Supermarket Massacre" - at least, not because of me.

We're currently enjoying - if that's the word, and in fact it isn't - temperatures that get up to about -5° at the hottest time of day. And just at this moment, we have thick freezing fog as well. This is not good. Even Malyon in Glasgow gets up to 7°, and she's about 1000km north of us, for heaven's sake! What have we done wrong? Perhaps I should go burn some more virgin forest. At least we're better off than the Marseillais, who got 40cm of snow on Wednesday. And I'm not sure that there's a single snow-plough in the entire Bouches-du-Rhone département, so they're apparently having rather a hard time of it. Schools closed an' all, which just doesn't happen around here. Unless there's a major disaster, like the failure of the entire tartiflette crop.

I'm going to assume that your New Year passed without too much incident: ours certainly did. Couldn't be arsed doing anything major so we just had a few friends around, drank unreasonably and then I, for one, headed off to bed around 1am, having come down with a good head cold. Staggered down the next morning, ready to kill anyone who looked at me the wrong way, to find that everyone had slept over, which in hindsight was probably rather reasonable - given that the only ones that would have been classed sober enough to drive don't actually have legs long enough to reach the pedals. Probably a good thing Malyon was in Grenoble with friends: she'd have been disgusted with what her parents get up to. (Funnily enough, it's alright for Karen - she's only 40, and she's not a parent. I suppose that explains it. But I don't want to have to be good. Children are so unforgiving.)

A couple of days later Ricky & Alison Hart, with bratlings in tow, turned up for the weekend which gave us another excuse to eat and drink perhaps more than we should. Not that we really need one. Still, nice to be able to do it in company. Margo took some off skiing at Margeriaz, I took the remainder walking in the mountains. Lovely weather - for once - we really enjoyed it. Although I did feel a bit ashamed looking at the number of wine bottles ready for the recycling bin when they left - emptied them out at night so that no-one could see.

Sordid details ... woke up a week back with a large painful lump under the left armpit. Thinking to myself "Oh dear! This is not good" I rushed off to the quack, who sent me off to have about 5 litres of blood drained from my long-suffering left arm for every test under the sun, and who has now told me it's just cat scratch fever. (No, I am not joking, that's the literal translation. For what it's worth, the latin name is Bartonella Henselae.) So after 6 days of 2000mg of antibiotics per day (which achieved sod-all apart from killing off everything living in my intestinal tract, with results I'm sure you can imagine) I'll have to go through another week or so of other antibiotics, as the bacteria responsible apparently sneers at penicillin and waves its rude bottom parts at other varieties. And if that doesn't work they can always slice me up and cut the sucker out, the alternative being to live with it until it buggers off of its own accord in six months or so. Personally, I think I'd rather go with the alternative, but that may be unadvisable. Apparently.

Malyon has started getting the results from her mid-year exams: so far, so good. Biology and chemistry both As, still waiting on the psychology. She's also trying to get out of the halls of residence: it is quite expensive, one of her good friends there is also wanting to get out, and she's had enough of the yoof. So she's hoping to find a flat to share - perhaps not as convenient (at least, she'll have to pay for her own ADSL connection), but should be cheaper and at least she knows how flats work.

Jeremy just sat his "brevet blanc", the trial run for the real brevet exam at the end of the school year. French and History/Geography he found not too bad - easier, he reckons, than the tests they get in class - but maths was a killer. Whatever, we'll have to see. In any case, he still really wants to go off and get a technical qualification (preferably cooking) so that he can go into the restaurant/hospitality trade. Which might not be such a bad idea: he really is a people person, if I may be forgiven the revolting phrase, and restaurant manager would be better than gigolo, which would be another option. And he genuinely enjoys cooking (not, perhaps, too surprising, all things considered) and is not, in fact, too bad at it. He managed a reasonable forêt noir the other day. Whatever, there's a supposedly excellent cooking school at Thonon in Haute Savoie (and it's a state one, yay! no fees), so I'll look into what's required for applications for that. Might also send him up to Geneva for a few days: Jacques' middle son Vincent runs a wine bar/bistro there and should be OK to take Jeremy under his wing for a few days: see what life's like in a rather more up-market joint, go to the market every morning for the shopping ...

The weather is finally getting better: to say "warmer" would be a slight exaggeration, but sunnier - even up around 9° in the afternoon. And no wind - not since last week's horrendous storms down in the south-west. The primevere are starting to come out, only another couple of months and it'll be spring. Yay!

And finally, on a cheerful note, I have to see if I can't get an appointment with the surgeon sometime next week. Bugger.

Trevor

28/12/08 DNA testing exonerates Ms. Claus ...

... but police are still holding three reindeer and a garden gnome of undisclosed gender for further questioning in this rather sordid case.

I assume that got your attention. As you probably know, the festive season is rapidly approaching and it's with difficulty that I can be restrained from biting small children and scowling at old ladies. Not that they'd notice. Still, a rare smile did flit across my face at the market on Saturday when I saw one particularly unpleasant specimen of the genre get hopelessly entangled in her scythe-wheeled shopping caddy, from which I hope the emergency services took their good time cutting her out. I really, really hate those things.

Of course, for you lot Christmas means barbies on the beach and time to get a sun-tan: over on the wrong hemisphere it means -3° in the morning, soaring heating bills and, of course, snow. Which I also dislike intensely. Because it is wet, and cold, and a right bitch to drive on. Why we can't just banish it back to Siberia where it belongs I don't know, but apparently we can't and so we just have to live with it. Whatever.

It is not, I admit, actually snowing at the moment down here, but the weather forecast is not particularly promising. We're supposed to have another couple of days of fine, sunny (hence, cold) weather before it turns to - you guessed it - snow. Time to look at getting new tires on the front perhaps, the Alfa is tending to get a bit wandery on roundabouts under the rain at anything over 60kph, which as far as I'm concerned is walking speed.

I seem to have failed to mention that we had Thanksgiving up at Karen's. I'm pretty sure that we came away with more turkey than actually went in to the oven: some sort of loaves'n'fishes job, I suspect. But I still find it difficult to imagine what people see in yer traditional pumpkin pie - an inch-thick layer of spiced pumpkin purée on piecrust makes me quiver, I admit, but not for the reasons one might wish. And personally, you can take your chestnut stuffing and stuff it where - oh, right, that's what you did. Um. Just don't expect me to eat vast quantities, that's all.

Jeremy had hoped to play fluffy bunnies - which I expect you know about but of which I was blissfully innocent: apparently you stuff marshmallows into your mouth until you can no longer say "fluffy bunnies", and shortly after that you either throw up or go into a diabetic coma. But when we proposed sticking plastic rubbish bags over their heads to minimise the mess, the kids backed out.

Malyon is well, if extremely poor, and - apparently - working harder than ever. Getting good notes, too. There was apparently a bit of tension in the flat over kitchen hygiene - some people apparently thought that washing-up was something mums did whilst Malyon, who's a year older and has already cohabited for four years, thinks that it's not, and that three-week-old bacon grease is gross, not cute. I can't argue with that.

Whatever, she speaks a lot about food. On her return in January we shall load her down with pancetta (note to self - do not wrap it in tin-foil, don't want anyone thinking it's Semtex) and maybe some confit de canard (well wrapped, so as to avoid grease explosions in the baggage hold).

Jeremy is alive and happy, and his latest school report gives us every reason to be so as well. Definitely an improvement to see his marks in English shoot up to top of the class (where they bloody well should be, all things considered), his French marks are very encouraging - in fact, everything is improving. We're very pleased. On top of that, I found a small hole-in-the-wall joint at Chambéry today that actually makes decent burgers (including one I must try - the Savoyard - which involves potatoes and cheese and cream) so he now knows where he can go on the days when he eats lunch in town. It's cheaper - and probably healthier - than Flunch or Quick.

It's now the 13th, and its only gone and bloody well neiged again. Wednesday and Thursday we had about 40cm down here - great gloppy flakes - and there's supposed to be more coming. Which is good for Jean and Howard, who turn up on the 19th - they might even have a white Christmas - but as far as I'm concerned (see above) I'd be happier if global warming turned out more as advertised. Burn the rainforests, I say! Oh, and nuke the whales. And joss-stick burning people who listen to whale-song CDs, while we're at it. Did you know, by the way, that the right whale has the longest penis in the animal world (at about 2.3 meters) and lugs around one tonne of testicles? (We're talking about the male of the species, here. I assume that the female right whale is suitably adapted. She probably has monumental headaches, too.)

28/12/08

As this was supposed to be a "happy christmas" mail and not a new year's one, I thought I'd better get on with it and send it off. So here goes with our Christmas celebrations: I hope yours were at least as pleasant.

Jean & Howie arrived on schedule at Chambéry on the 19th, although I must admit to a moment of panic when I turned up 10 minutes late (bloody last-minute phone calls) and couldn't find them. They'd got stuck in a lift, or something. Then on the Sunday I headed up to Geneva to pick up Malyon. Who also arrived on time, although she did take 45 minutes or so to whip through customs and pick up her baggage. And I'd like to give a big round of applause to the cretins responsible for the signposting around Geneva, who have arranged it to direct the innocent tourist by the most circuitous route possible onto the Swiss autoroute. If I'd wanted to go on the bloody Swiss autoroute I'd have stumped up for the damn sticker (because you need one in order to drive legally on the things) and gone straight onto it, rather than head into the centre of Geneva only to be misdirected onto it anyway. Next time I'll trust my nose.

Whatever, that's just what I did for the return trip and it worked out quite nicely - straight into the centre, across the pont du Mont Blanc and through to Annemasse, where we got back onto the French autoroute. And I finally got to see the famous fountain against a clear blue sky - every other time we've been to the dump it's either been blowing a gale or gray and dismal. Then we drove straight through to Jacques' place to meet up with the others and devour (literally, in Malyon's case - she hadn't eaten since 5am) some terrine de sanglier and his famous vol-au-vent (which is not something in a nancy pastry case, but a rich stew of veal, veal quenelles, bacon, croutons and as many mushrooms - especially morilles - as you can fit into the dish). Accompanied by vin d'Arbois, the lot followed by raspberry tart and wild blueberry tart ... mmm.

We made it up to Pesselière more or less as planned on the 23rd and, as usual, spent most of our time either preparing or devouring food in meals I can only describe as Rabelaisian. A small sample: Christmas Eve, oysters, foie gras, smoked salmon, chapon (that's castrated cock to you), followed by bûche de Noel and Christmas cake; Christmas Day rather more simple, just foie gras, cuisses de canard confites with salad and pommes dauphiné, cheese and more bûche; Boxing Day, scallops in white wine and cream sauce, jambon à l'os caramelised with honey and mustard, cheese and still more bûche.

To go with all that lot Philippe made a heroic, if misguided, attempt to start emptying the cellar (have to make room for new arrivals) so we were more or less forced to polish off an alrming amount of ten-year old Burgundy and Bordeaux, punctuated with Sauternes and vendanges tardives. Without mentioning the bog-standard rosé and Muscadet we used to wash lunch down with.

All of which left me personally feeling a bit pear-shaped, so I tried to work a bit off by strolling briskly around in the icy wind direct from the tundra which blew over the beetroot fields for the entire time. At least it was bright and sunny.

Ian has a little Piaggio mobylette (or cyclomoteur, I don't know which) stashed away in one of the various junk rooms there and Jeremy fell in love with it. Having persuaded Ian to let him ride it (by the simple expedient of greasing up to Marie) he was out and about on the noisy thing at every available opportunity, despite the aforementioned arctic gale. I suppose it's a good place to start - there's virtually no risk of coming across any other traffic - and he did discover that trying to do a hard turn on gravel may not be the best of ideas. Good thing, too, that the little beasts run on the smell of an oily rag - although they do have the pedals, so if worse comes to worst ...

We left yesterday, in a number of flocks (as it were): I had some stuff to do in Chambéry and Jeremy wanted to go get his bloody Xbox 360 so we left at the crack of dawn (not literally true, we left at 6am which is about 1:30 before dawn - which was, incidentally, quite spectacular), then Margo and Malyon around 11 and everyone else headed back to Paris that afternoon.

We made quite good time: got into a park at Chambéry at 10:15 with only one incident en route - got a bras d'honneur from some Parisian twat who was evidently in a hurry to get to the ski fields and couldn't see why I wasn't overtaking at 160. Didn't like it when I touched the brakes as he was about a metre behind me with lights on full, but personally I felt much better for it: haven't pissed off a prat for a while now, and I was wondering if I wasn't out of practice. Margo and Malyon, on the other hand, didn't turn up here until after 19:00. Ski bunny traffic jams, as usual at this time of year.

Got back to find the house still standing, central heating still running, and the dog comfortably (and totally illicitly) installed on the sofa. She didn't even have the grace to look guilty: just rolled on her side and stuck one leg up in the air to have her tummy scratched.

Whatever. Hope you had a happy Christmas, hope you have a good New Year - we'll spend ours quietly (noisily) eating and boozing here with a few friends. Spare a thought for us as you're recovering from your hangovers.

Trevor

24/11/08 Concerning significant others ... or whatever else escapes your spam filters

It has come to my attention (there has been some moaning from the cheap seats) that I've not mentioned Margo enough recently. To some degree this is her own fault: she's been gallivanting off to Alsace and England, so that when I finally got up the courage to turn fifty she was in London and when Jerry got his thumb smashed she was in Glasgow (I think. Or it may have Milton Keynes.). So there. But I'm ready to admit I've been remiss, so here we go for a bit of Margo-related news.

Basically, she's been trying to get her website up and running, which involves learning how to use Joomla! and other such pretty content management tools. It also involves me trying to learn Joomla! so that I know what the hell is going on and can try to be of some use in the process. All this learning stuff takes some time, and both our brains are full.

She also has her blog - textile related, and which she doesn't keep as up to date as she should - and teaching (still!) and sewing, all of which fills time. On top of that she got a call from the Banking Fraud department of the bank the other day to say that they'd spotted suspicious transactions on her credit card, and the upshot of that is that her card has been cancelled and she's had to go back through all the transactions for the past few months to find those which aren't hers in order to contest them. A right bummer.

11/11/08

Into November now and today is a public holiday - Armistice 1918. We don't do dawn parades over here: it's more around 11am so that the municipal band can wake up sufficiently to tootle on time, and it's all followed by a hot meal and copious quantities of rouge for the local dignitaries. Good day to go up to the office: no phone calls, no interruptions, and I can finally get a bit of paperwork out of the way. It's also persisting down, has been since last evening, so somehow stacking the wood that Stéphane delivered on Sunday seems an unattractive idea.

As it happens, on Sunday I went off to see Jacques and we came back down from the mountains with about 2kg apiece of chanterelles. These do not go well with a salmon/sour cream pizza, so I decided to dry them and I now have two big glass jars full of smokily aromatic dried mushrooms, ready and waiting to go in the pan juices with a bit of roast beef or a chicken in cream sauce - or why not, a boeuf bourgignon? Whatever, I managed to miss the wood delivery and so Jeremy had to hump it all down the path and on to the decking, where it sits under a tarpaulin even as I write, just waiting to get stacked away.

Friday we had a little party oop't t'office. The very first edition of the now-traditional mid-autumn fête. A lot of wine, rillettes de lapin, cheese, good bread, more wine ... and a blind tasting courtesy of one of our neighbours in the building that was absolutely exceptional. Just three whites: one I'd have put as a rather good Pouilly, the second as perhaps a sweet southern job, the third a Trockenbeeren Auslese or some such. But no. They were all Marestel, from Yenne - about 30 km from here: a dry 1996, a vin de paille and a 199something vendange tardive. I didn't know anyone did vendange tardive around here! Amazing. Then three of Jean-Charles' paysan mates from Yenne turned up: one whipped out an enormous home-made saucisson from his overalls (you do not want to know which pocket), another one did a conjouring trick with a peppery cheese, and the third apparently was afraid that there'd be insufficient wine and plonked four more bottles of white down on the table. I piked out around 9:30, what with not having a mattress ready in the office and all, but apparently things went on for quite some time, although interrupted momentarily by having to move the tables into the entrance hall of the building to stop the alarm going off. At last count there were 16 empty bottles which, for twelve people, is hardly excessive.

14/11/08

Toddled off to Jerry's parent-teacher meeting, where everyone was extremely positive - which is nice. The difference between the public and private schools was fairly apparent: his history/geography teacher congratulated him fulsomely on his participation and oral work but said that the written side needed more work - so she gave him her email and suggested that he write up his work, mail it off to her and she'd correct it and send it back in the evening. Maths and German along the same lines, and his French teacher has decided she likes him (now that she knows he lives in an exclusively English-speaking household) and on top of it he's working hard. Even giving up TV-watching to do his homework.

The only one to rip into him was his English teacher (whom he does not appreciate) for being rather arrogant at the start of the year ("I am a native English-speaker, what can you teach me?") and for having no ambition to higher education. She made the excellent point that you're always learning something new about your language (unless you're clinically dead, or a member of the Academie Française, which is more or less the same thing) and that with his talents there was absolutely no reason for him to cut himself off from going further. I think he'd rather have eaten dead rat than admit it to her, but he has decided to carry on.

Shortly after that he had his "stage en entreprrise" at the resto routier (truckie's restaurant) 10 km up the road, at Coise - went very well. He came out of it knowing how to prepare iles flottantes in the microwave (I must admit I'd never have thought of that one), get salads ready, operate the big machines (yes Virginia, restaurants have some big, scary machines) and with 30€ in his pocket and maybe a summer job. The owner is a friend of Stéphane (the neighbour), good to know that we won't have to go around and apologise.

I also had a bit of computer repair and recovery work to do (non-paying, unfortunately - Rémi & Lucas, and Pierre). AVG unleashed a buggy antivirus signature file which marked our old friend USER32.DLL as a Trojan, and kindly offered to stick it into quarantine, which resulted in an endless cycle of boot, BSOD, reset, boot ... had to set up a bootable Linux distro on a USB key to fix that one. A right pain. And on top of it the weather's grot. Not proper winter yet, just cold and damp ... not nice.

The 13th, you'll recall (those of you with PDAs and an organised lifestyle anyway) is Margo's birthday, so I managed a little filet de boeuf Rossini for dinner. Always goes down well. Shame about Jeremy slouching about at the table - sort of spoils the candlelit effect. Whatever.

On the more miserable side, some of you may remember our old client Data Environnement (the one I went to Cameroon for). They've spent the last 8 months or so setting up a degassing column in lake Kivu, on the border between Rwanda and Congo, and the other day, on a calm night, about a week before starting the thing up and (hopefully) getting methane out, the whole kit and kaboodle went to the bottom. 350m down, which is not exactly a Sunday stroll. Not as though you can stick a fishing line down and drag the lot back up.

Update on that one: it seems that the Rwandan government has decided to find another 1.5m euros to restart the project. It may - or may not - have been sabotage, it appears that there were internal politics involved, but Pres. Kagamé has apparently decided to fire a minister or two and carry on. Which is good news for all concerned, not least for the Rwandans employed on the project who risked losing the first jobs they'd had in their lives.

19/11/08

Bloody typical, cows in't frikkin' paddock again! Margo finally managed to find the farmer's phone number to let him know, and he complained how late it was - he finally sneaked in at some ungodly hour this morning and extracted the cows, but naturally enough didn't actually bother to get rid of the cow-shit, fill in any of the holes in the lawn, or stick the garden chairs back upright. Next time I think we call the butcher straight away, cut out the middleman. Must remember to make some room in the freezer.

When I have time I go through the approximately 10 Gb of photos on the machine (not too much, considering I went digital in 2003) and stick them up on Picasa. Anyone who's interested just needs to point their browser at http://picasaweb.google.com/tbimler to see what's up. (Not much at the moment, but I'll get more, I promise. Once I sort them out.)

This is getting ever more fragmentary - now the 24th. Had a big party up at Karen's at Frangy on Saturday night, fell into bed (luckily we were sleeping over) and fled into the morning mist at 10am before anyone else woke up and asked us to help with the cleaning-up. Of which, let it be said, there was in all evidence quite a lot to be done. I don't feel guilty at all, which is probably a symptom of a diseased mind, but there you are. It was a good party - I even danced! Dragged out the old Billy Idol and Gary Numan and Sisters of Mercy CDs from the car, and cranked up the volume. Luckily they have no close neighbours.

And then last night, faithful to the rendezvous, it snowed. Small fine flakes and then big fat lazy ones: woke up to about 5cm of the stuff this morning. Bugger. And once more, with feeling.

Trevor

02/11/08 The mice are winning - we're all DOOMED!

Back again with more of the usual trivia, I'm afraid.

First up, those of you who follow this thing may be aware that Jeremy had a quick (loooong) trip to A&E for an exploded thumb. They put a couple of stitches in, which he decided to remove the other night rather thean head off to get the quack to do it. A quick snip with the scissors, a tug ... and then a yell for the butterfly bandages to hold the edges together. DIY, that's what it's all about here.

Then, of course - unrelated to the stitch-pulling thing - I get a call from him saying he'd fallen asleep on the train back from Chambery and was now at Frontenex. Silly thing that I am, I confused Frontenex (about 25 km from St Pierre) with Freterive (about 3 km, and has no railway station) so I said I'd pick him up. So off I went to Freterive (on the teeny route départmentale, yet) where I fairly rapidly realised my mistake and compounded it by carrying on. On the teeny, admittedly touristic route départmentale, which goes through places I'd always managed to avoid on slick roads covered with wet leaves (for it had been raining). Something I think I'll avoid in the future. Next time he sleeps through to Frontenex, he can catch the train back here.

After which I turned up - as is my wont - at Sophie's on Saturday for our usual after-market apéro to discover her obsessed by mice. Well, that's perhaps too harsh a word - let's just say that she'd discovered mousie-dung (do not confuse with Mao-Tse-Dung, a respected elder statesman aka the Great Helmsman) in the clothes dryer, a hoard of cornflakes in an old boot and a stash of walnuts in a hole in the wall. She was, understandably, concerned. (Especially as the cat had, as a special treat, left the eviscerated bottom half of a mouse on the bonnet of her car.) So we spent an agreeable half hour sticking rat poison into every available crevice in the house. Have to see if the little suckers go for it. It's supposed to be quite painless for them ... and even if it weren't, I feel no guilt. (I'm still puzzled by the walnuts. If I didn't know better, I'd say she had an invasion of squirrels. Which are, I suppose, just mice with hairy tails. So that's alright then.)

27/10

A bit chillier than I could wish, but still fine around here. But not, unfortunately, at Grenoble, where I rushed last Thursday on a mission of mercy - more precisely, delivering Malyon's resuscitated laptop to her friend Sarah, who was going to join her in Glasgow for a week. Mission accomplished, the swap was made, and as I stumped off back to the car wearing my scowly face so as to frighten wee children and elderly ladies, and generally make people give me a wide berth, I was accosted by a young lady (unusual enough in itself) and made to smile. You must admit, having someone offer to be a ray of sunshine in your apparently gloomy life does have that effect. (And before your filthy minds go off into overdrive, let me point out that it was not what you're thinking. She was a charming young person out trying to sign people up for Medecins Sans Frontières, and had evidently learnt that the thing to do with a scowly-faced person was to break the ice with a tactful but humorous offer of cheer. Well, it worked, didn't it?)

We got Jerry's first school report the other day, and his notes are going up. And the "appreciation" from his head teacher was definitely more upbeat - "Jeremy seems to have undrstood the stakes at play in this last year of college. With disciplined working methods he should certainly succeed". Which is all rather good, and was the main objective of sticking him there, rather than carrying on at St Pierre. It almost makes getting up at 6:55 to get him to the train on time seem an acceptable price to pay.

Then we got a call from Malyon to say that Sarah had arrived but had forgotten the laptop at Roissy. Where it had been neither blown up (as tends to happen to unattended bags) nor stolen (which can happen to any sort of bag), but had been taken into the care of the lost and found department. So when Sarah comes back next week, she will (if she remembers) pick it up, bring it back here and I will send it over to Malyon through the good offices of UPS or FedEx.

And it was indeed a lovely day. Bright blue sky, marred only by the discovery, when I went down to the car to head off to the office and get a bit of work done in peace and quiet, that some helpful sod had tried to steal my wing mirrors, and had succeeded only in breaking both of them. It could, I suppose, have been worse. He could, exasperated by his evident incompetence, have decided to break the windscreen and ruin the paintwork for good measure. Which he didn't, so I really ought to be thankful for small mercies.

02/11

One of those small mercies was, I suppose, the fact that I had to go off to the Alfa garage to order new mirrors, then back again to get them fitted. Something for which they did not, in fact, charge me any money. Which made me very happy. As did the fact that I took advantage of my presence to hop into Alfa's latest, the little MiTo (which is, despite the rather ridiculous name, a nice little car - if you happen to be childless or, failing that, have a family of amputees), and then the Brera. Which looks - and feels - beautiful. I know that, according to Clarkson, its acceleration is measured in geological eras - it apparently gets from 0 to 100km in 7.2 seconds, which is slower than about anything other than a John Deere tractor - but I don't care. Just sitting in it and fondling the gearshift almost had me drooling. Or something.

On the other hand, I woke up on Wednesday to find that it had snowed down to 600m, which is rather too close for comfort as far as I'm concerned. Then it turned to what is technically called "pissing down", and I was extremely glad to have my rearview mirrors back as I drove off to Annecy to see a client. It's not the overtaking I mind, it's pulling back in afterwards that has me nervy. Godnose how I managed in the old Alfetta, which came standard with 1 (one) inside mirror. Maybe I'm spoilt now - or maybe I just drove faster then, and didn't need to worry about people being alongside when I pulled in. Your choice.

In other news, we had a little party last night - not really for Halloween, just because. We locked the boys in one of the cellars to sleep around 3am, and going by the number of bottles it must have been a success. I had decided to do the Frank'n'Furter thing - dress shirt, waistcoat, stockings and high heels, and may I just say that even if I can still remember how to put makeup on I've gotten a bit out of practice concerning walking around on heels. But I only got them caught in the decking once, which isn't too bad. And it certainly surprised the neighbours. Even at fifty, my calves aren't too bad. (Pass on the rest, no comments please.)

All of which may explain why I'm feeling a bit dissipated today - happily Jerry's gone off to Frangy for a few days with Karen and Phillippe, so tonight I can perhaps settle into bed early with a mug of cocoa. Or not.

Oh, and Sophie's mice/squirrels have apparently been TWEPped, so you can all sleep more safely tonight.

Whatever.
Trevor