On climate change, and why it is A Good Thing ...

28/01/10

God, I hate snow. What the hell am I doing, then, in a part of the world where it will insist on snowing in winter? Still trying to work that one out. Whatever, I woke up with a start in the office around 6pm to find that the world was - once again - getting covered with a layer of white stuff, which can make getting home rather difficult. And you can sort of start to understand road rage as you head down the hill following cars doing 20kph because, I assume, they're afraid of something bad happening. Like, running over a snowman? I mean, if they're that scared, why don't they just walk? They'd have got wherever they were going (doubtless some dismal retirement home, which I suppose might explain why they didn't really want to get there) a damn sight quicker, and I wouldn't have had to sit behind them wondering why I didn't have the forethought to get the Executive version of the Alfa with rocket launchers behind the headlights. Nor would I have fervently wished to eat their livers raw, with a plastic teaspoon.

Mind you, the autoroute was a bit gross. Three or four cm of slushy snow means that traditionally snappy manoeuvres like pulling out and overtaking have to be done in slow motion, as you can no longer depend on your car just going wherever you point it. Which is a bit of a bugger. (Although I must admit that if you remember to turn off the ASR the Alfa's not actually too bad in snow.)

And the summation - a bit gross - pretty much applies to the whole day - at least for Margo. She's become the Frog distributor for SewEzi sewing tables, and she was supposed to receive a truckload today. Which did eventually turn up - unfortunately GPS systems only recognise the top of our street (the bottom part, where we actually live, is apparently consigned to the nethermost pits of Hell) and of top of that no-one had thought to mention that it is, in any case, a narrow street. So the truckie backed down as far as he could (about 30m up from our place, couldn't get any lower as the overhead power-lines were too low) and then off-loaded 6 cubic metres of poorly put-together stacked palettes straight from China onto a little side alley, and left Margo to deal with them.

Which she did - unloading the palettes, sticking the boxes into the arse-end of the little Suzuki and shuttling them down to stack them up in the garage - until the car battery decided to die. (Spending the previous night out in the cold probably didn't help.) Definitely a bummer. And of course I was up at the office with a client all day, and Jeremy finished lycée at 13:00 and wanted to be picked up and brought home before being taken back in to Chambéry to sleep over at a friend's ... some days are better expunged from the calendar.

Incidentally, I note that when I catalogued Glaswegian cuisine I forgot to mention one of the highlights - deep-fried pizza. That has to be just so revolting.

5/2/10

Things have got no better, it snowed again this morning. This is getting boring - so boring, in fact, that I decided to let my beard grow a while back, just for the thrill of it all. So much more fun than watching the septic tank back up. After a week I've decided to get rid of it - back when it was red I could always stick an eyepatch on and pretend to be a pirate, but now that it's mostly gray I find I look like a rather overweight old Labrador, and I can do without that.

The biggest thrill of all would have to have been Thursday, when we woke up to find that the central heating had decided to shut off in the middle of the night. And it stayed that way until Friday moaning, when the nice M. Damiani came around and fixed it. Which was much appreciated, as it was starting to get rather frigid upstairs. And I do like to have a shower in the morning - all part of my little ritual for becoming human. Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny, or something like that..

And of course, now that it's February and the school holidays are coming up, it's ski season. Which means that you really do not want to be taking the autoroute if you can possibly avoid it. I was lucky heading into Chambery, apart from the odd squished backpacker and one or two Parisians afraid of the snow it wasn't too bad, but come mid-day it was absolutely frightful. The usual 20km traffic jams. This is not my favourite time of year.

At least, with the snow, there were fewer old ladies with their frikkin' towalong trolleys at the market, which is good for both my ankles and my blood pressure. On the other hand, the lettuces were frozen - again - and there was some sort of oompah band making foul squeaky noises and committing tootling: something which would, if I were in charge, get them thrown in the scorpion pit. If only, of course, we had one. I must put that in the suggestion box at the mairie. At least I managed to pick up some batusson at the cheesemonger - now I need to get some more filo and introduce the one to the other (with an eye to a goat's-cheese mille-feuille or something along those lines) before Jeremy eats it all. (Because if cheese suddenly turns up in the fridge it is apparently a gift from god, and he must eat it before god gets pissed off and makes it disappear again, as silently as it arrived.)

Spent much of the afternoon helping Margo get ready for this big salon up at Paris next week: first up to Jacques' at La Chambre to pick up his Dacia van which he's kindly lending her (driving there through snow yet, gross) so that she can go up like some sort of Gypsy Queen with all the stock in the back, then shifting about 90 sewing tables from the garage down into one of the cellars. Ninety trips up and down the stairs from the terrace down to the courtyard may not sound like much, but I reckon that it comes to at least 1 km walking on a 45° slope, and my little legs are tired. Oddly enough, Jerry wasn't around to help; he'd doubtless scented something in the wind and disappeared to watch a handball game up in the village. Great timing.

Whatever, that's it for now. The days are getting longer, it's no longer pitch-black when I get up or when I get back home; Spring can't be too far away. Have to keep an eye out for swallows.

Trevor

16/01/10 Humbug, and other seasonal grunts ...

In theory, the last newsletter was going to be the last one of the year, and in fact it'll turn out to be so because I doubt that this one here will get sent off much before the end of January, but even so I still feel as though I'm cheating somewhat by starting in 2009. Be that as it may, you may recall that we've been having hassles with the RSI (the Régime Social des Independants, or the health and retirement insurance body that handles the self-employed). Mind you, everyone is having hassles with them: since the government merged the three bodies that used to handle the different aspects (health, retirement, and widows & orphans) and put the resulting mess (with the same number of staff, evidently) under the direction of the least competent of the three, the situation has been absolutely dire. You can't get in touch with them, and they won't actually send anything out until a payment (which you weren't informed you had to make) is about 6 months overdue, at which point they'll add a 10% penalty fee.

In fact, their website actually says "In order to provide a better service, we no longer answer the phone, and our offices are closed to the public on Tuesdays and Wednesdays." Well, I made up the bit about answering the phone - they don't actually say that. But it's what happens. If you do ring you go through three layers of voice menus and then get invited to type in your social security number, after which you will either get a terse message saying "no-one's available right now, please try again later", or be put on hold for ten minutes, after which you'll get cut off with the same terse message. Should you, by some miracle, get through to a human being, you will have to supply your social security number anyway despite having typed it in, as it doesn't actually come up on the screen of the person who answered. (The developers probably reckoned that there was so little chance of a call actually getting answered that there was no point to complicating the system unnecessarily.)

Anyway, as we were starting to get recommended letters I thought I'd better do something about it, and so boldly went down on the 23rd to the RSI offices at Grenoble to find out WTF was going on. The guy I spoke to was charming and helpful and did his best to explain what is basically inexplicable (ie how the hell do they calculate how much you owe them?) and arranged for my payments to be spread out over ten months and Renaud's over a year ... great. But although he had the authority to do that, he couldn't change the mailing addresses in the files so that all mail got sent to the office: he had to send off an internal e-mail to someone else asking them to do it. What is going on here? Come to that, I still haven't received a copy of the repayment schedule that we agreed on, which certainly doesn't help matters. Bloody marvellous.

Christmas day we had lunch with Karen & Philippe at Mumblefuck: foie gras, caviar and sour cream dip, roast boar, mushroom strudel and scorzonera, followed by Christmas cake and washed down with copious quantities of wine. A fairly light affair compared to the Roman feasts at Pesselière, much appreciated. Doubtless did my liver no end of good. (Scorzonera, in case you didn't know, is one of those forgotten vegetables - black salsify, or vegetable oyster. Looks like a long black rustic carrot and, oddly enough, does have a sweetish taste which is very reminiscent of scallops. An interesting discovery, shall have to see if I can't spot some at the market some time. They're simple enough to cook.) I actually started the day making the strudel, and so it was about 11:30 before I headed off to have a shower - only to discover that the boiler had had a hissy-fit and decided not to produce any more hot water that day (probably thought, it being a Friday, that no-one would be having a shower after 8:30, so when Margo and Jeremy between them used all the hot water it just couldn't be bothered). Showering under water at all of 6° is not much to my taste (for some strange reason it's called "une douche écossaise" here, doubtless a reference to the celebrated thriftiness of the race) so I played with knobs until I found the override. Half an hour later it was still a bit tepid, but at least on the right side of 20. Merry Christmas.

Completely off-topic, I spend a little while each day reading The Register, an English on-line rag which focusses (albeit hardly with laser-like precision, more in a rather bleary, hungover fashion) on IT and technology subjects. It's a bit of light reading, and they're also the home to the BOfH and the PFY. (Those of you who've ever worked in computer operations will recognise the Bastard Operator from Hell and his - or her - side-kick, the Pimply-Faced Youth.)

That's by way of introduction to the bit where the pair of them are in the computer room trying to remember what the hell happened at last night's Chistmas party (which, incidentally, found them with a couple of dead hardware vendors on their hands - or in the dumpster), and the PFY dredges up the memory of a piano-accordion solo which ended well. And just how, asks the BOfH, does a piano-accordion solo end well? With a gunshot, replies the sidekick.

Which is, let it be admitted, my opinion as well.

Whatever, we spent a quiet new year's eve: Jerry was off at a friend's in Chambery and I think we ended up in bed with a warm cocoa each before midnight had even struck. Rather sad, I know, but true nonetheless.

At least like that I didn't have to spend all the next day recovering, which in turn meant that when I had to head off to Geneva to pick up Malyon at some ungodly hour on Saturday moaning I didn't feel too bad about it. In fact, 8:30 am turned out to be rather a good time to be taking the autoroute, as it was almost deserted. Four hours later that was emphatically not the case: the north-bound traffic jam started at the Chignin péage and continued 12km through to the autoroute junction north of Chambéry. Glad I was headed south, really. Oh, we returned four hours later because the baggage handlers were on strike at Geneva airport. So Mal's plane arrived ahead of time, around 9:10 at Geneva, and I still had to wait til after 11 for her to get out. A right pain.

Then on Sunday night it started to snow. We woke up to about 25cm of the stuff all over the place, and it finally took me three hours to get to the office - a trip that normally takes no more than 25 minutes. I detest winter. Not only is it cold, and often damp, gray and miserable, the fruit and vegetable stands at the marker are pretty bare. OK, there are clementines, apples and pears, and of course bananas (not local, I admit) are present all year round, but unless you're willing to include cardons, flaccid courgettes and palpably limp, soft aubergines on your list of desirable greenery, you're pretty much limited to broccoli and brussels sprouts. And whilst these are splendid vegetables, they get a little boring every other day, even when interspersed with salad. (I seem to have forgotten cabbage, and cauliflower. Good. You can also find carrots occasionally, but they're invariably horticultural society monsters that would make better tent pegs than food. And it's best not to speak of the turnip.)

Mal headed off to Grenoble during the week and as I had, whilst googling Mr Simpson to find out what play Upstage would be putting on this year, come across a rather interesting anglophone website on life in Grenoble with some addresses that interested me, we went down on Saturday (through snow and sleet, I'd like to point out) to pick her up. As late, she specified, as possible.

At least, that was the reason we gave. The main reason was to find Rajah Bazar, World Market, Saigon Store and, of course, The Cake Shop. A bit of a b'stard, 'cos it had snowed quite heavily at Grenoble and so it was extremely slushy underfoot - and do you know just how slippery smooth white marble paving stones are under snow? And being Grenoble, there was the omnipresent glacial wind, come direct from Siberia (or at least that's how it felt). Anyway, the first three are, as you may have guessed from thier names, "épiceries exotiques": asian groceries, in other words. As I personally start to tremble a bit at the knees when I get a good whiff of a decent satay and will in fact snort Madras curry like coke, you can perhaps imagine how I felt going through the doors of these places. Carrefour d'Asie, at St Bruno on Cours Berriat, is still my favorite, but Rajah Bazar, which is more Indian-oriented - and has a good selection of at least 5000 Bollywood DVDs if that's your thing - would have to come a close second. World Market (which I find difficult not to call World Company, but that's just because I used to watch the Guignols a bit too much) is also excellent and has a great selection of hair extensions. Saigon Store was less my thing - they don't actually stock much in the way of spices, which is what really turns me on, but if you're looking for frozen or chilled Thai food (prepared ingredients or finished meals, your choice) it would have to be the place to go.

The Cake Shop, on the other hand, makes and sells proper iced cakes, themed as you like. (I'm talking up to multi-tier wedding-style cakes here, if that's what you want.) Plus they seem to do a roaring trade in muffins, scones, bath buns and all those other delights of English cuisine, and they've a nice line in utensils (but do I really need a silicone pastry brush?). They also - and this is in fact the true reason we made a special visit - have a seemingly endless stock of Philadelphia cream cheese, without which you cannot make a true cheesecake. Nor may you make cream-cheese frosting for a carrot cake.

It was there, incidentally, that I managed to find a little (admittedly belated) Christmas present for Sophie: a slim volume entitled "Les Recettes Erotiques des Paresseuses" ("The Lazy Woman's Erotic Cookbook", if you really want to know), and some orange and clove chocolate. With any luck the offering of chocolate will save me from getting my head bashed in by my outraged friend, although let it be said in my defence that some of the recipes did actually look rather attractive. (Although not all of them struck me as being particularly erotic, but that may be symptomatic of a lack of imagination on my part.)

You might recall that I wrote earlier about some of the Scottish culinary delights to be experienced by the casual visitor to Glasgow, and Mal told us about a few others. Like, the time she asked for a hamburger and got a hamburger steak battered and deep-fried, then stuck inna bun. Not, perhaps, too surprising as this is the country that gave us the battered deep-fried Mars bar. Basically, if it doesn't involve deep-frying, or at least swimming in fat, they'd rather not know about it. No wonder Glasgow is heart attack capital of the world.

A final word - having a bit more time to myself than is usual the other night, I went ahead and posted all the newsletters I still have on the computer - you can, should that interest you, find them here:

http://therandombabblingsofadisturbedmind.blogspot.com

They go back to the beginning of '99, mostly due to Al Gore not having invented the internet before then. I must have another ten years or so on paper, but I'm damned if I'm going to retype them. Maybe I should see if I can't get a grant or something to get them scanned and formatted ...

20/12/09 Last of the 2009 vintage ...

Well, with a bit of luck I'll get this sent off before 2010 rolls around. Hope so, anyway.

Anyway, after weeks of fine, warm (relatively, anyway) weather the cold has just started. Yesterday as I was having my usual after-market apéro with Sophie we watched melted snow plopping sullenly on the decking, and I don't think it's got over 2° all day. Not good, especially as we're promised more of the same for at least the next week. Some people - those that think that Christmas should be white - would probably like it, as it means we'll probably get snow: they are idiots and if I had a large 4x4 with decent ground clearance I would run over them. Repeatedly, until they were flat.

Speaking of Christmas, we won't be heading up to Pesselière this year: I think that's probably about finished. Robert and Huguette (that's Maries' parents) are definitely not spring chickens any more, the kids have other plans (come to that, Malyon won't even be in the country), the logistics - with the dog - get complicated ... the alternative would be for us to head up to Paris which involves a 6-hour drive (minimum) and leaving the dog here, so it'd be basically going up on the 24th and coming back on the 26th. This is not going to happen.

So what we are going to do is have a quiet Christmas Eve at home, then head off on the day to Mumblefuck for an extended lunch with Karen and her lot. At a pinch, we could send Jerry off on the train earlier, so that he could amuse Amelia ... on second thoughts, maybe that's not such a good idea. Current plans are for roast boar as a main course, work out what to accessorise it with at some point I suppose, could try to leave that up to Karen but somehow I don't think I'll get away with that. Bugger.

I have, incidentally, seen Jerry's current girlfriend, and even spoken with her mother, albeit briefly and in passing (for I did not know her to be such at the time). We went off last weekend to the parent-teacher meeting for the lycée (missed the only appointment he'd actually managed to organize, question of being 3 nanoseconds late) and as we were hanging around waiting for the actual class meeting to go over the details of their two-week stage, I couldn't help but notice that there was a girl draped around his neck most of the time. Not bad going really, given that he's 1m85, she didn't even have to stand on tiptoe.

Whatever, we went into the meeting and found out which restaurants they were all being sent off to, got the pep talk and all that, then after a decent interval I asked Jerry to stop sucking tonsils and come along. At which point a blonde woman who also seemed to be waiting came over and said that she rather admired my disinterested air before turning to the pair and saying that she hoped the hotels they were in were at some distance apart. I though that was quite tactful. I suppose we're going to have to start worrying about contraception and stuff like that. Oh bugger.

I notice, incidentally, that I've completely forgotten to mention what a "stage" is, let alone why Jerry's doing one. As it happens, it's "work experience", and Jerry has 22 weeks of it during his three-year bac. For this one, the first, he's off for two weeks at the Hotel Mercure in Aix-les-Bains, doing one week serving, then the next cooking. Food, board and washing are all taken care of, and he might - if he's lucky - find a bit of cash in his back pocket when he leaves. Or not, depends on the hotel. Whatever, the object of the exercise is that he learns what it's all about: I think that one of the first lessons would be that the hours are shit. Despite the strict rules in France on working hours for minors, he's been getting off at 23:00 - fair enough, that's when the clients start to leave.

19/12/09

Well, there's a boeuf bourguignon simmering away on the woodburner in the kitchen making comforting meaty smells, for winter is definitely upon us. Late, but with a vengeance. It started snowing yesterday and today I think the high was up around -2°, and there was a brisk wind to boot. Not good. Still, we can at least eat comfort food without guilt now. Hence the stew, which'll probably get eaten in a couple of days, once it's ripe. Still time, too, for the traditional Christmas BBQ: I've got some rouelle de jambon in the freezer which could do with the barbecue treatment, and it also helps to confirm our reputation as raving loonies.

Of course the sudden arrival of snow will gladden the hearts of all those Parisians and other foreigners that've booked chalets up in the stations. Had it not arrived they'd have looked like complete and utter prats cycling around in green paddocks innocent of any trace of snow. Whereas as it stands they'll drive down from Paris today (usual three-hour traffic jams on the peripherique and the Transilien extended to five hours) through half a dozen multi-car pileups towards Lyon before getting stuck behind a snow-plough just after Chambéry, with another three-hours drive still on the menu. In snow, which is always so much fun.

Personally, it annoys me intensely. I had to drive through to Chambéry this morning slooowly with filthy slush getting splattered on the windscreen, had to drag the big overcoat out of hibernation just so as I could keep warm walking around the market, and I couldn't even buy a decent bloody lettuce because they'd all frozen overnight. (I am not joking. There where some on sale, but they were stiff. Crispy, even. Only good for making soup with, and as I don't do that, I didn't bother buying any.)

We've Malyon turning up for ten days or so on January 2nd, looking forward to seeing her again. We do actually miss her, you know. Even if she does have a funny accent now - she tends to say "aye" rather than "yes".

Whatever, happy Christmas to all of you, and all the best for 2010.

Love

Trevor, Margo, assorted animals & Jeremy

17/10/09 Another year down the tubes ...

Well, I've had my 51st birthday and winter is almost upon us, so I suppose it's about time to come out of hibernation, however briefly, to keep you up to date on what little of notice has occurred in our drab lives. Whatever.

I see that I last summoned the energy to write over three months ago, a short time before we headed off on our luxurious week-long holiday at the family seat. As it happens there were in fact eleven of us: three adults (more or less) and eight bratlings all up. For once it was fine and sunny most of the time, thankfully not totally scorching so as usual the grown-ups spent much of their time getting absolutely plastered on rosé whilst the kids did whatever it is they do. (And, in case you were wondering, I've no particular desire to know just what that is.) We still managed to head off to Guédelon again to check up on progress, I took Brian off to the chateau at Druyes les Belles Fontaines, and we ate an unseemly amount of barbecued food. Just to soak up the rosé, really. Had we not drunk the one, we wouldn't have had to eat the other, and vice versa - or something like that.

Headed back on the 29th and dropped Karen and her kids back at Mumblefuck (aka Frangy, in Haute-Savoie, but her name is quite fitting) and then I whipped off to Geneva to pick up Ross Barkman and his partner Madeleine from the airport and then drop them off at the Hotel-Chateau des Allues, just across the paddock from us. I think I can recommend it. As the name suggests it is in fact a chateau - 18th century, I think - with its own little park around it, and about eight rooms available. The couple that run it are gayer than gay Paris - one does the desk and buys in the raw ingredients for the food, the other does the cooking.

When I turned up with Ross and Mads in tow I got the full guided tour and was quite impressed. OK, it's a chateau so the decor is definitely overstuffed, not to say baroque, but comfortable - the kitchen is small but well-equipped and when I went through the guy was making his own pain d'épices and it smelt rather wonderful. And they offered me an apéro to drink as I wandered around. On top of that it was only 130€ the night for a double room, which is a damn sight less than you'd pay for a pokey walk-in cupboard in Paris, so that has to be good. And they'll do you dinner if you remember to ask in advance.

So the next time any of you turn up around these parts, remember that there's a classier alternative to slumming it here.

Anyway, the object of their arrival was in fact a little reunion with Julianne and Graeme, who duly turned up the next day as part of their epic voyage through Yurrup. I think most of my time was spent in an alcohol-induced daze so I'm a bit hazy on the details, but I do recall having rather a good time with all of us about. Too short, unfortunately.

Then Malyon turned up in August, evidently trying to escape from the Glaswegian rain/drizzle/fog. She's good, we're very proud of her, and glad she's in Glasgow. Which she is enjoying, still.In her usual, level-headed, Saffy way. (AbFab, for those of you with Alzheimers.)

Otherwise, Jeremy's installed as a boarder at the Lycée Technique at Challes-les-Eaux, some 18km from here, learning the hotel trade. Service and cuisine. Which is good. Although, when he comes back here for the weekends he shows few signs of wanting to demonstrate what he's learnt in the cooking department, which I suppose is fair enough. And he did have the culot (or chutzpah, if you prefer) to criticize my boning knife for not being sharp enough. Which is probably true, but it's good enough for me.

In other news, I headed off to a nuclear power station a few weeks back. One of the safety systems is a black box that basically sniffs the amount of radioactive xenon and other such gasses, and is supposed to go "ping!" when it gets to the "you're all going to die horribly" point. Of course the black box is an old OS9 system, the source code has long since disappeared (although I gather that they did manage to scan in an old lineflow listing at some point), and the people that set it up have long since retired and/or died. So I wnet up, kitted out with another ancient OS9 system, to at least clone the hard drive of a known-to-be-working black box so that another one can be built.

Basically, we turned up around 8am. By 11am, the hardware had passed security and was on-site, and I'd got my hard-hat, security badge and password. Then I spent half an hour doing what I was being paid to do, then another five hours or so hanging around. Couldn't even get elegantly wasted, the site is dry. (Also resembles nothing more than a high-security prison, not that I've ever been in one of those but the concrete blockhouses and razor wire seem a pretty good indication to me.)

Mind you, did have an acceptable dinner at Nevers the night before - surprising, as I turned up around 21:30 when most cooks are off to bed. My hopes were raised when I saw that they had dry martinis (well, the french call them "martini-gin") on the drinks list and then dashed when I asked the waiter and found out that they did not, in fact, have any dry Martini - but they at least served me a neat gin and thern a ginormous slab of foie gras with fig jam, confit d'echalottes, plenty of toast and butter, and a huge glass of sauternes. Had I known about the sauternes I wouldn't have ordered the carafe of rosé to go with the rather copious goat cheese salad that followed the foie gras, but there you are. I drank it anyway. To accompany the salad. Which was, in fact, rather good. I was very pleasantly surprised.

All this was at Belleville-sur-Loire, some 500km or so from here - and, incidentally, not too far from Pesselière. Next time we go there, might take that route for a change. On the way back I got from there to Macon without incident, then on to the autoroute with only 250 km to go thinking "Goody! Back for 10pm" until a front tyre blew out at 140 kph. Not something you really want to have happen to you. Fortunately there was a rest stop about 100m further up so I managed to limp into there and change the tyre (with help from a truckie - the aluminium rim had welded itself to the hub and needed a few blows from a two-metre tyre-iron to get it off).

Unfortunately, what you get as spare tyres these days are what frog-persons call a "galette" or flat cake - a sort of pint-sized thing that's half the thickness of a standard tyre, is blown up to about 5bar and on which you may not go more than 80kph. So my dreams of getting home at 10pm were sadly dashed, as I had to leave the autoroute (I was so not going to go through the tunnels at 80k with a swag of big trucks behind me honking) and take the maze of nasty nationales and even - gulp - departementales. Finally got home at midnight. Quel bummer.

And on top of that, once I'd had the front tyres replaced, one of them went sadly down the following Friday night - of course I didn't notice until I took the little départementale from here to Arbin and spotted that I was bottoming out on bumps I normally would've sneered at - luckily it was under guarantee. Still, another Saturday morning wasted hanging around.

Finally, Sophie and I had our birthdays last week - 5th for her, 8th for moi. (That's the day of the month, not the age - although I wish ...) Had a party the Friday night - Margo had of course chosen that day to come down with some disgusting lurgy and decided not to share her germs, so I went on my little lonesome, having thoughtfully prepared steamed pork bums for Jeremy and Rémi (Sophie's youngest, who was spending the night at our place).

Usual French party: 300W sound system mumbling quietly to itself in a corner, breasts flying and bums flashing, and waaay too much food. Mind you, saves cooking for the next week or so. Nah, honestly, it was fun. Despite the fact that my brains were oozing out my nostrils when I left (around 2am, if you're counting). I got gowled for accidentally (I swear, it was on an Apple, and I don't know how to handle fruit) putting Blondie on instead of "30 Years of French Accordeon Rock", but I can handle that. And teachers (Sophie's a teacher, have I mentioned that?) are great fun when completely cut. Or cuit, as the French would say. And this time around I thought to decant the '98 burgundy into a carafe on arriving, so it was actually drinkable when we needed it.

Not that I was drinking that much: I'd no designated driver and the spare beds had all been pre-booked by the Marseillais contingent so my options were pretty much limited to driving myself safely home or crashing on a sofa around 6am: guess which one I chose.

And of course I've wasted about three days getting my laptop back up and running - once from Thursday night (just before the party, and prior to going up to Paris with it to see the SNCF) when my BOOT.INI file went inexplicably missing, and then on Wednesday moaning, when Microsoft's Patch Tuesday saw fit to replace MSVCRT.DLL with a version that caused the poor thing to reboot endlessly. Thank god for bootable Linux distros on USB keys.

Oh, and we've just turned the central heating on - 12° in the bedroom was getting a bit chilly. I expect you're all dusting off the barbecues. B'stards.

Trevor

05/07/09 Ever had one of those days?

Or, more to the point, one of those weeks?

We've been suffering temperatures up in the high thirties for the past week or so, cooling off to around 32 as we head off to bed and then I wake up to a balmy 24 ... it's all a bit much, especially as the giant thunderstorms we've been promised for so long are basically skulking around the massifs, farting a bit just to let us know they're there, then not doing anything. Which at least means that I don't have to mow the lawn just at the moment, as it's about as arid as the Sahel down there. Apart from the weeds of course, which are flourishing. I'll get them yet, though. May involve napalm.

Whatever, with weather like that it was just natural that we should get a leak under the sink, dripping a couple of litres a day onto the floor. It's also natural - given the age of the house - that the pipe in question was more or less completely inaccessible, so I ripped a fair amount of skin off yesterday trying to patch it up with that miracle stretchy rubber tape - to no avail, alas. I suspect that I also terrified the cat and any passers-by with my language, especially when the skin came off.

So we left the house dripping merrily away this morning to head off at some ungodly hour to Pierre's Bar Mitzvah. I have nothing against this sort of thing - truth to tell, I find it all quite friendly, and oddly conducive to a quick nap (provided you can do this without falling over, so as not to call attention to yourself, and it's good if you've learnt how to sleep with your eyes open) - but spending two hours in slacks, shirt and tie in a small stuffy synagogue with the sun blazing against the windows (which don't open to let in any fresh air) does, I admit, make me start to wither a bit. And then, after the ceremony, when we were all released from the Off-White and Institutional-Green Hole of Calcutta, seeing Jeremy dressed all in black lounging around in the sun soaking it up as though he was some sort of lizard made me feel like melting down on the spot. Went back to the car and spritzed myself instead, which worked for a while.

Then came lunch, which was (remember, I told you so) leisurely. And well watered. Jeremy, surrounded by girls, seemed to be holding court at the table reserved for the adolescents - we just sat, ate and chatted - and, of course, drank. No rosé, sorry. Nice cold white. Probably drank more than was reasonable, but I promise I went on to a water-only régime around 16:00.

Got back home, having done none of the usual market/supermarket/butcher visits which make up my normal Saturday moaning, and girded my loins (metaphorically) to attack the plumbing. First of all, a quick trip down to the hardware store to get a spanner or two of the right size. (Of course, they weren't. They'll come in useful sometime.) Then down on my knees under the sink with a jigsaw to remove the back panel of the charming 1970's sink surround so that I could actually get to the pipe in question without removing any more skin (I only have so much, you know), then time to play with the spanners. Which is when I found out that I have to use the frikkin adjustable wrench 'cos I still do not have a 19mm spanner. I must have everything but that ...

As it turns out, the little rubber joints or seals or whatever you want to call them don't last more than fifty years. I probably should have guessed, having had to replace one in the cellar a month or so ago - I really should stock up, as I'm sure that there'll be others that give up the ghost in the next few months. At least we no longer have a swimming pool in the kitchen.

Jerry has, by the way, been accepted for the lycée technique at Challes-les-Eaux. We need to buy him white shirts, black trousers (not baggies), decent shoes, safety shoes (for the kitchen), chef's apron and toque, knives ... I really should have gone in for financing an America's Cup contender, I'm sure it would have worked out cheaper. And probably feel better, scrubbing yourself with $100 notes under a cold shower ...

Anyway, as you may have guessed France has gone into summer recess. Now that July has kicked in, the place has basically shut down, and will remain that way until September. Which gives us two months to finish our plans for world domination, using Sarkozy as a glove puppet. (Which will be literally the case, if our fiendish plot to catch him on the beach at Cannes and pith him like a frog - which of course he is - works out.) Mwahahahaha! I just have to buy myself that big volcano somewhere in Africa, and stock the subterranean lake with sharks. Ones with lasers on their heads, of course.

Apart from that, our plans are to head off to Pesselière in the last week of July with Jeremy, dog, Lucas, Karen and her four brats in tow for a week of admiring the wheat fields. Sounds good to me. (On the other hand - three adults, at around 60cl of rosé per day per person, for 5 days - that comes to at least 10 litres, not counting special occasions like getting the barbecue to work ... perhaps I could work out a discount at the supermarket for buying in bulk.) Whatever, it should be a good week doing absolutely sod-all, apart from the odd bike ride and yelling at Jeremy to stop sucking Amelia's face off. And trying to stop Julia from climbing up Jeremy (understandable mistake, she's only 12 and thinks he's some sort of climbing pole).

On top of that, Margo has just informed me that the sink in the first-floor bathroom is leaking. Maybe my spanners will come in useful after all. Although I rather doubt it. I'll order in some skin grafts, just in case.

OK, I'm off for a glass or three of red. (Can't be arsed going down to the cellar to get another bottle of the other stuff. Too hot, anyway, don't want to move.)

Trevor

29/06/09 Not more bloody rosé ...

Hello again, all of you.

Sorry this has taken so long, but we've been rather busy what with one thing and another: nothing particularly time-consuming in itself but when you add up all the little things the weeks just fly past. And on top of that it's getting hotter so the rosé consumption goes up, and quite frankly after a half-bottle you don't really feel like doing much apart from lying out on the lawn soaking up the sun. Which is what I usually try to do on a Sunday afternoon, after time up at the office trying to keep the paperwork up to date.

On the upside, although the asparagus, strawberries and cherries are about finished, now is the time for peaches, nectarines and apricots. So I go to the market and fill my bag up with these - along with a rougette lettuce or two, and some baby new potatoes, and beans or whatever else takes my fancy - before scowling my way through the assembled hordes of little old ladies with their frikkin trolleys, hoping to get back to the car with the fruit more or less intact.

So far it's worked, I've not yet been obliged to make jam when I get home.

We've a social summer lined up: Janet and Kevin have already passed through (on the way down to, and then on the way back from, Corsica), David turns up (supposedly) on or about the 15th of July, last week of July we head off to Pesselière with Karen and sprogs for a week of doing absolutely nothing (apart from drinking rosé), then on the 31st I need to be at Geneva to pick up Ross & Madeleine before Julianne and Graeme turn up the next day.

Jeremy of course has his brevet to sit:the equivalent of what used to be school certificate, back in the faraway days when I knew anything about the NZ education system. Unless he does domething particularly stupid he should not actually be able to fail, given the points he has from internal assessment. After which, next year it's off to Challes-les-Eaux to learn about cooking. Hopefully.

Malyon is, apparently, fine - was planing on ringing her tonight but when I sent her an SMS to suggest this she sent back to say that she was off to Edinburgh for the night, so we could forget about that. The latest news I have is that she gave up her office job, is working full-time (nights) in a classy bar (had to dye her hair black from blue, apparently that didn't fit in with the image) and has modelled socks. Could be worse.

Otherwise we still seem to be alive: suffering through long hot muggy days, but at least the lawn isn't growing too furiously so Saturday afternoons are not always filled with the angry buzzing of the lawnmower. Which is doubtless a relief to the neighbours. And certainly is to me, even if it does mean that I'm not working as hard as I could be on my tan.

Work goes on - not as easy as it could be, but it's not yet disastrous. Don't know what it's like on your side of the pond. Whatever, we'll get by. But I really do hate having to talk to bankers. Even though ours is rather good-looking.

Next weekend we've a Bar Mitzvah to attend: I rather skimmed over the invitation and thought "hey, I can go to the market and then turn up for the skullcap biz ..." - I should be so lucky, we have to be there at 9am. Followed by a long lunch (if I'm any judge) at midday: don't plan on being back home much before 17:00. Another Saturday to be spent getting elegantly wasted.

This is, I know, rather a short effort - not at all up to my usual standards - and I apologise unreservedly, fulsomely, and doubtless fruitily. (Anyone remember "Beer" from Blackadder?) Whatever, it's this or nowt, so live with it. You could always try sending back a big chatty reply; who knows, I might even answer.

Trevor

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