23/08/08 Yet another newsletter, including Paris Hilton, fully clothed!

Given the anguished cries of existential angst emanating from certain quarters I thought that perhaps I'd better confirm that Malyon did indeed make it back here more or less as planned (flight only two hours late - apparently they had to wait for some Aussies to turn up at Seedney and never managed to make the time up) and boldly made her way from Roissy CDG down here. Since when she's already disappeared for a weekend, disappearing again this weekend, then disappearing to Avignon the weekend after ...

You know you're hitting 50 when all your friends start divorcing ... what's it all about? Chalk up another couple down the tubes as after Renaud and Sophie in May (yes, that's my business partner and his wife) I now learn that our friends Steve and Isabelle are divorcing. The only thing they have in common is that they know us, which should perhaps alarm me. Perhaps I should start to keep a scoreboard, lay odds, place bets and that sort of thing - on the other hand perhaps not, life's tricky enough as it is trying to stay friends with everyone, no point in looking for problems.

Whatever, in mid-August we're off to Pesselière with Sophie and the boys in tow for 10 days of calm and tranquility watching wheat grow. Don't know what to do with Malyon as she'll go stir-crazy about three hours after Elise and Caroline leave. We'll have to work that one out, I suppose. I'm still looking forward to a week or so of doing absolutely sod-all except consume unreasonable quantities of rosé, mind you. If I get too bored, I could always take one of the bikes out for a bit of exercise. (Update: Malyon's off to Grenoble to get a bit of city living in. Good idea too.)

Astoundingly enough, as England appears headed for a month of cold, rainy weather, over the water it's actually fine enough to fire up the BBQ and - more exceptionally - sufficiently settled to be able to actually plan a BBQ more than three hours in advance and still stand a reasonable chance of it's not being rained out on the day. Which is pretty good, and stands in stark contrast to last summer when the only thing certain was that it's start snowing about half an hour after the coals started glowing nicely.

On a completely random note, Oostvogels Transport (of Belgium) have a really nice motto on their trucks - in English yet! It goes - and I swear that this is true - "Only God can stop us". Which sounds rather alarming to me, in a sort of Damianesque excorcistential way. Trucks from Hell loose on the autoroutes - is no-one safe? (The Belgian bit reminds me of one of the headlines in El Reg, which was - and I quote - "Windscreen-licking Belgians barely escape GPS of Doom". El Reg is not known for quality investigative journalism. But their Playmobil reenactments of various current events are definitely worth looking at.)

Have finally organised getting Mal off to Glasgow - now I have to organise getting myself back, as I don't think my liver would stand a prolonged stay. Need to get a cheap hotel for a night or two as well. Oddly enough you can't in fact get there from here - not directly anyway: I had the choice between Lyon/Stansted/Glasgow, Genava/Edinborough then train to Glasgow, and Roissy-Glasgow and oddly enough, as Malyon has a student card for the SNCF it turned out cheaper to take the TGV to Paris and fly out from there. (Easyjet give you the breakdown of your ticket price - very transparent: the Stansted/Glasgow flight costs more in airport taxes than the actual flight.)

Also took delivery of a laptop for her - cheapest I could find, a Dell Vostro 1000 for under 400€ all-up. Of course, these days they all come with Vista pre-loaded, and whilst it's true that you can get an "upgrade" to XP that adds another 80€ to the price. This being France, the thing came equipped with a Frog version of Vista, the very idea of which caused Malyon to froth at the mouth, so I was very pleased to find that the installation DVD so kindly supplied had an English version on it. Which was when things started to go pear-shaped.

I installed Windows Vista Family Premium (not Family Basic) and then started work on the Dell-specific device drivers. First off was the video driver, which installed, but which Vista wouldn't use. It insisted that it wasn't right. And just to make the point, occasionally on booting the screen would come up all hashed and completely unusable, and you'd have to turn the thing off and on again - which often fixed the problem. And for some strange reason, despite the power settings being as I wanted them, closing the lid put the system into sleep mode - not what I wanted, as I'd hooked up an external monitor - and worse still put the screen into 640x480 resolution.

I have a little KVM (keyboard/video/mouse) switch at home: it's a handy arrangement that lets me plug two machines (home machine plus laptop) through a little box into my monitor and keyboard and mousie, and swap between the two machines. Works perfectly, and means I don't have to use a ratshit laptop keyboard or look at its ghastly 1280x800 lo-res screen. Unfortunately, with Vista every time I swapped to or from the laptop it beeped sullenly at me and insisted on installing a new device. And, every other time, resetting the screen resolution to basic VGA.

All of which annoyed me greatly, but not sufficiently to make me nuke the thing - and let's face it, Vista is nice eye candy. What tipped me over the edge was when I hooked the beast up to the home network and tried to access the shared network hard-drive. It's not that it didn't work - it's just that from the moment when I clicked on the network hard drive icon to having the directory contents displayed I went and had a coffee, then a shower, then scratched myself all over and got another coffee. So after a happy evening googling for various solutions (none of which worked - for me, your mileage may vary) I decided to bite the bullet and get rid of Vista.

Having nothing to lose I downloaded all the XP drivers for the beast, reformatted the drive, installed Win2K and then the XP drivers: much to my surprise it just worked. Video, sound, Wifi, Ethernet ... only thing I haven't checked is the SD card reader, and I'm not losing any sleep over that. Spent another four hours or so installing diverse software packages, and it is now - as far as I can tell - fit for purpose. Anyone want a 5-language DVD of Windows Vista?

(Yes, I could have installed Linux - it was in fact the first thing I thought of doing. But that would have involved Mal having to learn new things, and the risk of its deciding spontaneously to no longer recognise the video card and requiring a kernel rebuild to correct the problem. Not good. Or I could have bought an EeeeeeeePC or equivalent, but quite frankly these days you'd have to pay me to take on a computer with a 10", 800x600 screen.)

Whatever, having disposed of Malyon (with a CARE package of ground arabica, a packet of filters and some home-made bacon) we headed off to Pesselière. Margo went up with Sophie and the dog, and I got the three boys - I'm pretty sure who got the better end of the deal, even if the dog did spend half the trip farting. Let it be said that there was not too much wailing and gnashing of teeth (OK, I was armed) and we arrived, more or less intact, mid-afternoon: just finished unpacking when Margo & Sophie swanned up.

Poor Sophie, incidentally, had been sufficiently naive - I mean, she's known me for 20 years! - to take rather literally my description of the place as an isolated farmhouse in the middle of a blasted moor with nowt but turnips as far as the eye can see. In my defence, this is - in winter - perfectly true. Admittedly it's something else again under a bright blue sky with mile-high white clouds and wheatfields rippling golden to the horizon - perhaps I should go and lie down until the poetry passes.

Of course, it's being summer means that the blackberries are coming out, and we eventually returned with a couple of kilos of the things. Hunting the little sods involves wandering off down twisty little lanes, all the same, with signs which - if you happen to come across them from the right direction (ie that from which they're actually visible) - point you towards places like "Les Billards" (not actually a pool table) or worse, "Chauminet" (which, with a "D" in the right place, translates as "Hot Kitty" or something rather more vulgar if you prefer).

It's being summer also means that the weather was pretty variable - ratshit is too harsh a word. We'd either wake up to rain and then have a bright sunny afternoon, or take breakfast outside and dream idly of tanning before the storms rolled over. Still: by some strange alchemy the sun always came out around 18:00, which meant BBQs and eating outside. And of course, quantities of rosé. Because you shouldn't drink the stuff without sun - something to do with the photosynthesis in your skin transforming the alcohol into vitamins. I had it all explained to me very clearly once - on a sunny day, oddly enough - by an extremely amiable chap whom I suspect of having being slightly drunk, but he made a great deal of sense. Or at least, it seemed so at the time.

The boys did a lot of biking, and about the only touristy things we forced upon them were visits to St Fargeau and Guedelon. St Fargeau is a Renaissance chateau absolutely dripping with history (owned by the first cousin of Louis XIV who got exiled for backing the wrong side ...) and still actually lived in. Which I think is very brave of them - personally I wouldn't want their heating bills. Those enormous french doors look lovely, but insulation-wise ... not good. Sophie, whose degree is in history, was going all weak at the knees, and when she discovered that Lully - the guy who wrote "Au clair de la lune" was discovered in the kitchen there before being packed off to the Court - we had to drag her senseless from the room

Guedelon is getting along nicely - another 20 years or so and it'll be done. None of the lads got lost or strangled, although it was a close call for Jeremy, whose loving parents came this close to doing the deed themselves. You know, sulky young adolescents, already been round once about 13 years ago, don't need to see it again and certainly wouldn't be seen dead doing it with the parents ... good thing I'm not a Dalek. Daleks are not good parents. They have a tendency to exterminate the fluffy toys.

Sadly enough, it took us until Monday to discover the existence of a young American in the village - all of two houses down the road. His mother is a Choux (yes, I know, it means cabbage ... over half the population of Pesselière are either cabbages or related to them, so just get used to it) who married an Indian and the lad has spent all his life in Boston. Spending a month in Pesselière was not, perhaps, his idea of a great summer holiday, but there you go.

Whatever, we came back (when I say "we" that means "the boys and I" 'cos Sophie took the train to Marseille and Margo and the dog headed straight home as quickly as possible) we stopped at Vezelay for a bit of medaieval kulcha (yes, the basilica is definitely worth a look) and then I plunged into the teeny routes départementales around Avallon to get to the Chateau de Montjallin. It's been years that I've meant to go there, finally got around to it.

It's a fairly classic C19 chateau, situated on an eminence (not a cardinal or other clergyman, a small hill) so a nice view over the valley, a private forest off to one side and the big lawn, stables and other apanages out the back. I personally found that the bike propped up against the parvis around the back was a nice touch, as was the swing on the front lawn. Whatever, didn't go there for that, went there 'cos the owner has a private car museum. Like Southward's, but a bit more focused: his thing is cars that belonged to heads of state. There's various Citroens used by de Gaulle, Mitterand's Peugeot, a beautiful four-door Citroen-Maserati SM, JFK's Cadillac, Eisenhower's Chrysler Imperial ... definitely worth a visit, should you ever find yourself in the vicinity.

Time to catch up on missed TV shows now - byeee!

Trevor

06/07/08 The future of relational databases may involve quantities of red wine ...

Or, of course, not. Sorry about that - reading through my old copies of BYTE magazine (up to 1992 now) for a bit of a laugh.

No sooner had I hit the send button for the last one but Jeremy presents us with more proof - should it be needed - of his anti-electric nature. Saturday night and we headed off to the neighbours for dinner (yes, we had actually been invited, it does happen) with anticipation, as Stéphane does a pretty mean barbecue. Once we'd got on to the digestifs it would've been cruel to keep Jeremy around just to make him listen to obscure and unfunny jokes and the usual convoluted adult conversation so we told him to head back home: five minutes later he was back having tripped the main circuit-breaker, blown a fuse and exploded two light bulbs simply by trying to turn on the kitchen light. And my UPS was screaming blue murder, as it does when there's no power ... I don't know what it is, but career paths involving electricity are perhaps not for him. It may be a bit fetishist, but perhaps a full rubber suit would be a good idea ... (Later update - he's also managed to throw/drop his cellphone into a lake. It doesn't work anymore. Why am I not surprised?)

I also forgot to mention the weather - forgetting my Anglo-Saxon roots, sorry. Bloody foul, is the polite way of describing it. Grey, wet, dismal and cold - kind of like Gordon Brown, really. There aren't any cherries, and those that are taste of water. The strawberries are soggy. The apricots rot if you look at them sideways (and we don't have any anyway 'cos it snowed on the flowers). I think I shall be inspired to write a Russian novel - perhaps not "War and Peace" because it's a bit long and anyway it's been done before, I think - by the BBC - but definitely a few hundred pages in which everyone (have to think about the casting) talks about interesting things that used to happen but don't anymore and what they will do but somehow never get around to (unless that's in the sequel) and nothing ever happens. Ever. Except for rain. And problems with the household staff. And bloody Uncle Vanya - the odd one.

Did manage to gather a handful of girolles up in the mountains with Jacques (after a mountain-goat descent from a ridge through a thicket of head-high nettles and then back up to another ridge, where apparently the mushrooms lay their eggs or spawn or do whatever it is they do) but only just enough to go into a cream sauce with our chicken on Sunday night. Jeremy, poor benighted lad that he is, does not like girolles - nor morilles nor trompettes nor, in fact, any mushroom of whatever variety (he has also expressed the opinion that sweet peppers are the spawn of the devil, but what would he know) - which means more for us and just as well too. Absolutely delicious.

Wednesday night it was off for a raging testosterone-filled evening at Albertville, for a "Tribute to AC/DC" concert. Which was not, in fact, bad. They'd got a swag of French session musicians together with a maniac on guitar (wearing schoolboy uniform - no satchel though) and it came off rather well. The audience was mainly grandparents out for the night with the littlies - with a few notable exceptions, like me - which I suppose shouldn't have surprised me too much. Whatever - it was fun. I really should have taken some earplugs though.

After a bit of a hiatus, we've made it into July. The weather is still foul - we get up in the morning to a rather chilly 26° and during the day it gets up to 38° in the shade on the balcony. Do you have any idea what it's like mowing the lawn in that sort of heat? Thought not. And lest you ask - yes, I do still have to mow the lawn, it's still green and growing healthily. On the other hand, last Sunday morning I went down with the sprayer full of North Korean nuclear goo and paid some attention to the brambles that were working on garden domination. Naturally enough it rained on Sunday afternoon, but I think they're dying regardless. I hope so - my stock of napalm has passed the use-by date and I certainly wouldn't want to get botulism from outdated total herbicide.

We have actually managed a couple of barbecues - it's been sufficiently predictable to organise something that doesn't turn out like the Searle "Non-arrival of the English Grape Harvest" festival. Coincidentally, rosé consumption has soared and I can see I'll have to order in another tanker. Luckily it's cheaper than petrol.

It being July we've now got into the official silly season, and France is closed until the end of August. We'll still be around, panting in the sparse shade - about all we've planned on is heading up to Pesselière for a week in August. And Margo heads off to Rome for a few days around the 14th for a sort of school reunion - I think it'll be the first time that she, Vic and Raewyn have been together since they joined up in Mali about 20 years ago.

Malyon turns up in Paris in a couple of weeks: she is a grown-up, independent and empowered young woman which is just as well as she'll have to hump her luggage from Roissy to Gare de Lyon and then buy a TGV ticket to get down here. Which is not to say that I wouldn't buy her one if I could (in fact I can), it's just that I can't get the actual bloody ticket to her and so it's not much use, is it? I could order the ticket, but she'd need the credit card used for payment to pick it up (that is not going to happen), and the SNCF has for some reason abandoned the system whereby they'd e-mail you your (nominative) ticket as a PDF file which you could happily print out. Quel bummer. Whatever. After making it down to NZ and back, I think she'll manage to get from Paris to Chambéry.

On the other hand, we do have to worry about Chambéry-Glasgow, which is not quite as simple. There is a Geneva-Glasgow flight with Easyjet, but not during the summer - too many moths or something. So it might involve Lyon-Stansted and then change for Glasgow - or alternatively TGV to Roissy and thence direct to the dump ... why can't I just go to some website and get the answer rather than have to work it out myself? My brain is full!

Currently July 6 and it's been persisting down all day, having started at some ungodly hour in the morning and kept up from then on. It's warm enough, but the rain's a bummer. It'll only encourage the grass to grow, which we really do not need. Fortunately it was fine yesterday - I say "fortunately" because otherwise I would have been highly pissed off as the neighbour's BBQ would have been rained out and the fireworks down at the lake would've been damp squibs.

Otherwise there's not much to report: Janet & Kevin came over from Milton Keynes for a few days, which was very pleasant - even if they did bring over photos from seven years ago when I actually had hair (forgotten what the stuff looks like these days, makes visits to the hairdresser a lot cheaper mind you), we had the Fête de la Musique at Chambéry (which was pretty crap this year if you ask me, but still another occasion to sink a few bottles of rosé between friends), and the dog contracted Lyme disease, which luckily got caught before irreversible renal failure and she's once again her usual clumsy retarded loveable self.

Been working a bit from time to time - had to head off down to Grenoble on Friday to Alstom (for whom I've been trying - and apparently succeeding - to fix a few problems with a satellite antenna) to be present at a meeting with them, Thalès Aerospace and the DGA (which is the Direction Generale de l'Armement, or the military pork trough). I made an effort, put on a decent shirt and a tie for once and went "wibble" from time to time. Just so that no-one thought I was asleep. Then we all went off for lunch and I had morue, or salt cod, which may have been a mistake. Because it tastes, basically, of fishy salt, and it requires washing down with heroic quantities of wine. Which is not, in itself, a bad thing unless you're planning on driving anywhere in the next three months.

Whatever.

Trevor.

13/06/08 DARPA death-bot droid denies relationship with R2D2, slags Paris Hilton ...

Well, lets see if that one gets past the spam filters.

We headed off to Pesselière for the weekend on the 30th to meet up with the cousins - not just the Parisians but also Heather & Mike (who've kindly let Malyon squat their place whilst they're away) from Wellington. As it was just for two nights we left the dog, cat and guinea pigs to the tender ministrations of the neighbours (think 3year-old James stuffing straw up guinea pigs' orifices - to encourage them to eat) and took the Alfa up, then spent Saturday and half of Sunday lazing around /cooking for the masses (pizzas, quiches, BBQ pork). We ate and drank far too much, which is more or less par for the course. Against all reason we had good weather, which was rather nice. I even managed to straddle a bike again.

Of course a problem with all this is that no-one's going to mow the bloody lawn, are they? And as it is warm and humid, the damn thing is growing as though it were trying to make up for Amazonian deforestation. Which it might well do, given the diverse life-forms I find down there sometimes. Whatever, it meant that last weekend I spent quite some time turning soggy grass into green soup, and I really did appreciate my shower afterwards. It is a good thing that most of our neighbours do not understand English.

Got back from Pesselière and Jeremy went to turn on a computer: as usual, he blew the power supply. Damned if I know how he does it, but it's the third in a row. Whatever, I was in the market for a computer case. Headed off to the little place not too far from the office to pick one up ("cheap" and "quiet" are, apparently, incompatible which is a bit of a bugger but never mind) and brought it back home.

Now things are never simple around here, and when I opened up the dead machine (which we use as a media server for watching pirated videos and all) I discovered that it was in fact an old Intel server motherboard in some weird ATX "plus" format, ie it would almost, but not quite, fit into the new box. Quel bummer, Bruce, as we say around here. But never say die - I had another new box: the one that is my machine. Into which the old board should fit. As indeed it did. But ...

... first of all, my motherboard has to go into the new box. Physically, no problems. Press power button - no power. Oh. Dear. Bad box? Back to the suppliers, who discover that the power supply - cunningly mounted at the front of the box - has been installed with the (inaccessible) power switch in the "OFF" position. Stands to reason. Right, back home. Remember, we are not at home to Mr. Cock-up.

Put the motherboard back in the new box. Connect all connectors. Push power button. There is power, the fan spins - for 1 second - then nowt. Bummer again. Back to the supplier. Again. Where I discover that

• 6-month old motherboards have a standard ATX power connector and a 4-pin 12V connector (which I knew about)
• more modern motherboards have a standard ATX power connector (thank god) and an 8-pin 12V connector
• new boxes have standard ATX connectors, a 4-pin 5V connector and an 8-pin 12V connector which you can split in two should you wish to do so
  

I had plugged the 4-pin 5V power supply into the 4-pin 12V on the motherboard, which didn't work that well. Had to laugh, really.

Anyway, I must admit that once I'd got past that the brain transplants went swimmingly, although I may have to consider banning Jeremy from actually touching computers until he's gone through some sort of static discharge routine.

On an unrelated topic, at some point in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future Malyon should let us know about when she's coming back here and when she needs to get to Glasgow. At that point we will have to see if we can fit her travel requirements into our busy holiday schedule (which, as usual, involves doing vast quantities of nothing).


Next Wednesday night I'm off to Albertville (named after a Belgian king, not Victoria's Prince Regent, should anyone be worried) with Jeremy for his first live concert. (Should I get him to ground himself before we go in? Wouldn't want speakers to explode ...) It's a "Tribute to AC/DC", which should be fun. And don't look at me like that, he was the one that wanted to go. Kept finding the fliers on the table - and on my chair - and on my desk - finally got the hint.

And just in case it interests anyone, I did get to the bottom of the problem for Alstom. The solution wasn't particularly pretty, I still don't know exactly why it wasn't working before, but what the hell, it works now. I'll settle for empirical. So will they.

Trevor

08/05/08 The usual tripe, but cooked for rather longer ...

Another way of saying "sorry chaps, late again". But it's alright, I have perfectly good excuses, and a note from the doctor just in case.

I actually started putting down some notes in January (yes, this is not just spontaneous creative writing, takes effort tossing off careless nothings - probably why Noel Coward felt so hard done-by, his own fault for making it look easy) but things got a bit out of hand.

Wind up the way-back machine to take us to the start of the year, notable for Jeremy's ill-fated snowboarding career. It started off fine - following Sophie's advice I took him up to Margeriaz for a days lessons, which went very well. On the first school outing he unfortunately fell (or fell unfortunately, either would be correct) and broke his wrist. On the upside, he missed out on cross-country skiing, which he cordially detests. On the downside, having shelled out 180€ in ski hire for the season I took the gear back two weeks later and got a "pro-rata" refund in the form of a 30€ gift token, which succeeded in pissing me off enormously. Shall not be going back to Montaz ski hire next year.

Not long after that debâcle my sister Ali and niece Rosie turned up in Old Yurrup. We had plenty of warning, which was just as well because I needed it to deal with the demented SNCF website, trying to reserve tickets for Eurail-pass holders. It seems that it is possible to do this provided that you know the secret codes, if not you're stiff out of luck and as it turns out these secret codes are distributed on a need-to-know basis and not even Sarkozy has them. Certainly the average SNCF booking agent doesn't ... and on top of it they broke the website.

That is something that really annoys me, because it used to work well enough - a bit stodgy, I agree, but at least you could fairly easily go on, check out the timetables and book a ticket without having a doctorate. At some point they apparently decided that "just working" wasn't good enough and hired some Web 0.3 consulting firm who persuaded them that the thing to do was set up a portal through which you must pass to do anything, to lard said portal with cunningly animated Flash menus in stunning black text on darker black background, make it compatible only with IE7 and then make sure it doesn't actually work. As in, if you want to see the trains that leave, say, Chambéry for Paris between 14:00 and 19:00, you'll get a page with maybe five trains and a little button to see the next page. When you push the little button, it shows you the same page again. You have to note the time of the last train on the first page - say, 15:47 - and change the departure time in your request - this is, very conveniently, shown in a little sort of panel thingy off to the left. Now when you push the button, it takes you back to the search page, with all fields blanked out. After the third time, you get used to it: much like a lobotomy I suppose.

Another odd thing is that it doesn't (didn't) handle accents, which is odd for a language was uses them liberally. I won't go into the details, suffice it to say that it was all rather depressing. And totally avoidable. I mean, why did they screw around with it? What came over them? Were they all sitting around smoking dope one day and decide it'd be a real giggle, or does someone there actually believe in what's been done? Sadly enough, probably the latter.

Whatever, by dint of actually getting off my arse and into the station at Chambéry I actually found someone who could service my requirements, as it were, and Ali & Rosie turned up as promised and on time, having negociated their way from Strasbourg to Chambéry via Lyon. We had a lovely time - well, Margo and I did, and no-one else complained. Finished by heading off to Paris with them for a few days - they needed to get to Madrid and you can't get there from here (well, you can, but you wouldn't want to), and it would be a bit of a shame to spend time in France and studiously avoid seeing the Eiffel tower. I'd managed to book a really cheap (by Parisian standards) hotel in the fifth arondissement, on Boulevard St Michel opposite the Ecole des Mines and the Jardins de Luxembourg (Hotel des Mines, if that interests anyone - personally I'd recommend it) and we spent two days being tourists. Rather nice actually, been a while since I was one of them (tourist, that is) at Paris.

We did almost get lost in the Louvre, I must admit. I may have been holding the map upside down and instead of going from "Greek Antiquities" to "Chinese Curiosities" we wound up in Italian statuary after a detour through an Egyptian sarcophagus, or something along those lines. Whatever, we did manage - godnose how - to find our way into the Salle Apollon, which is amazing. Think gilt, and roccoco - then double it. Double it again, then go and lie down for a bit, because you're not there yet. Like the ballroom in what used to be the Hotel de la Gare d'Orsay (now part of the museum of the same name) it really does have to be seen to be believed.

I really do like Paris, it's just that I don't want to live there - not until I have the money to buy a 200 m² apartment in a C16 tower on Ile de la Cité, anyway.

Around this time I got interested in charcuterie, or the fine art of curing meat. Having eaten enough of the stuff, it seemed a reasonable idea to attack it from the other end ,as it were ... Let me just say that if you happen to have (as we do) a dry, airy cellar, making your own bacon or pancetta is both easy (as in effortless) and rewarding (as in having bacon that isn't 90% water when you fry it. It is 50% fat, but that's the nature of the beast ...). Unfortunate side-effect: everyone around here is now spoilt rotten and I can't buy bacon at the supermarket anymore.

Confit de canard is even easier and keeps really well in the freezer: I have to get around to trying duck prosciutto. And making a smoker out of flower-pots so that I can try smoking the last lot of maple-syrup cured bacon ... that should be good. I shall slowly work my way up to doing a whole ham, cured and smoked. Miam.

In the not-so-amusing department, Margo went back to NZ in April to be with her father before he died. Can't really say much more than that, can you? Apparently it was viral, very quick, and she and Ian made it back in time to see him - which is what matters.

Anyway, tomorrow is May 8 (over here, anyway) which is of course a public holiday (like every other day in May), Friday no-one will go to work anyway 'cos there's no point and Monday is also a holiday (Pentecost, if any of you are Catholic). A five-day week-end. Bliss. Nowt to do but mow the lawn and plan the barbecues. Oh, and try to work out just what the hell is going on inside one of Alstom's radio-telescope positioning systems that causes it to hang every once in a while until rebooted, behaviour which is starting to annoy Thalès Aerospace. I love industrial archaeology.

Trevor

01/01/08 That was the year that was ...

Well, since last I wrote we've been to a Bat Mitzvah and a couple of expositions (not at the same time), bought heaps of glittery stuff that we don't really need from Ikea, and seen the year out through an alcoholic haze. Not bad going. A Bat Mitzvah, should you be wondering, is the feminine version of a Bar Mitzvah, rather than a spelling mistake. This particular one belonged to Caroline, the daughter of friends of ours, and it was quite a big deal: the family came over from New York and we had a very long lunch at the Chateau des Comtes de Challes, which was definitely gastronomic.

As for the expositions, there was the Foire Internationale de Grenoble (which we forced Jeremy to attend), of which the best part is the food hall (we made it away quite frugally, with only saucisson and chorizo and paprika fumé and curry to weigh us down), then there was the silk exposition in Lyon (of which the highlight - for me, anyway - was definitely the building: the Palais de Commerce in the 2ème arrondissement is a huge late C19 gilt and baroque pile which is definitely worth a look) and then it was back to Grenoble for the Salon de l'Artisanat. What took my fancy there were some rather nice Laguiole table knives with rather odd-looking but surprisingly comfortable handles made from semi-precious woods and/or polished stone. Shame there's no way I could justify €300 for a set of six, and I don't think they did matching forks. Probably just as well, 'cos if they did I would have had to buy a set, wouldn't I?

On the other hand I did manage to justify getting a couple of nice stainless-steel saucepans and some other cooking utensils from the new Ikea store on the way back. Margo made hummus a while back and left the pois chiches to boil just a tad too long, so that particular grey enamelled pot will never play the violin again ... and on top of it I've been looking for a decent whisk with a Teflon coating on the wires for a while now, and the stainless-steel roasting pan with grill was an absolute steal, even if not, technically speaking, indispensable ...

And of course last night was New Year's Eve and so we left Jeremy at home with some chili con carne, tortilla chips and a friend (with strict instructions not to eat the friend, nor to burn the house down) and we went off for champagne with Arlette and Pierre to whet the appetite before all going to Karen's in the middle of Chambéry for buffet and booze. Foie gras, samossas, a rather yummy roast turkey and then cherry tart and sticky buns - along with quantities of wine. For me, anyway - Margo was designated driver this time around.

Like every year, Christmas was overfed and foggy. We headed up to Pesselière on Sunday, thinking that like that we'd avoid the worst of the traffic - which may well have been the case, but it's not saying very much as the traffic was still pretty appalling. At least once we got past Beaune the fog cleared (be reassured, it rolled back in again for Christmas day). Monday night was the traditional "stuff yer face" feast with oysters and salmon and foie gras and capon and chestnuts and bûches swilled down with copious quantities of wine. Every year I have more difficulty forcing at all down - it'll get to the point in a few years where I sit in a corner nibbling on a rusk and sipping tepid mineral water. Not there yet, though.

It was a bit odd not having Malyon with us, mind you. Normally she and Elise would be merrily bossing Caroline and Jeremy around and making them do all the dishes (having themselves ostentatiously "set the table" by flinging the odd fork down as their contribution to the household tasks), but this year Elise had to do all the bossing by herself and her heart didn't seem to be in it. We all left on Thursday, and we had a reasonably quiet trip back (in the fog, yet again), finally catching up with the sun as we emerged from the tunnel de l'Epine, just west of Chambéry. The cat and guinea-pigs seemed happy enough to see us - insofar as you can tell with creatures whose main activities are lying down, eating, and going "wibble". No more signs of the mice in the cellar - maybe the cat's done her job, although I have my doubts. (I know there were mice because the little sods got into the Sarde cheese I had maturing down there, having eaten through the tea-towel I'd wrapped it in, leaving masses of mousie dung as their visiting card.) I hope they have gone, because I've taken the sugar-cured bacon I'd made up before Christmas out of the fridge and hung it up to air-dry, and I'd like it to be whole when ready to eat.

I'm now the proud owner of a certifiably brand-new PC (emphatically not an office hand-me-down) bought in bits and pieces over the last few days and put together over an evening. All because we unplugged - as is our wont - the various computers around the place before heading off for Christmas, and in the general flurry of reconnecting to check e-mail and such on our return Jeremy's power supply went poof (and left a smell of ozone that lingered for some while, but that's another matter). Second time that's happened - I can't help but wonder whether he doesn't have issues with 220V. (The first machine was a slimline Compaq from the days when the company designed everything to be non-standard - the power supply was an interesting dodecahedral box with 16 pins on the connector instead of the more usual 20 - and is now used as a doorstop. I've removed everything that could conceivably be of use, and will get around to taking it to the tip Real Soon Now.)

Whatever, having - as one does - a spare power supply lying around I stuck that in, but no joy. So as I passed by a computer store the next day I popped in, picked up a new case to replace the hideous purple Compubox one, a ten-euro DVD/CD burner and - for all of 15 euros - possibly the last motherboard in existence which would accept an Intel Socket-1 P3 (yes, his machine was that old) and rushed home with them. Still no joy, so I bit the bullet and on Saturday got an up-to-date motherboard, a Core Duo processor and 1Gb of RAM to go with it. Before putting all that together I thought I'd give the old gear one last try - I hate chucking out obsolete kit - and then I noticed that the fan on the processor wasn't working (must have fried with the power supply) and when I replaced that it all started to work. Unfortunately the BIOS on the new old motherboard was so out-of-date it wouldn't recognise any drive bigger that 16 Gb, and those are getting to be rare beasts - even around here - so I put everything back as it was, original motherboard and all (in the purple case, even) and it carried on working. So Jeremy has his machine back (saves transferring all his bookmarks and MSN contact list and whatever), we have a really cheap surplus-to-requirements motherboard which we could use as a wall hanging, and there's a new machine onto which I suppose I'll have to shift all my stuff once I've bought a huge SATA hard drive for it (only one IDE interface, unfortunately).

Which is a pain, because some of the software I have predates Noah and I'm not sure I even have the disks for it (not too much of a problem really, 'cos software that old usually doesn't have an installation procedure - just copy the directory) and for other stuff - mainly Microsoft DDKs - I'm not sure which of the fifteen versions is installed and what I had to patch to make it work. Mind you, there's not much demand for Windows 95 device drivers these days, so I suppose that's not really a great hassle either.

I'm still not entirely sure why I insist on hanging on to old gear, though - apart from sheer stupidity stubbornness and the feeling that even if it is a bit old it's still Good Enough. Which in most cases it is. Even so - the case and power supply were €35, €10 for the CD/DVD, €30 for the DDRAM, €50 for the motherboard and €70 for the CPU (could have got an Athlon at €40, but they didn't have one in stock ...) makes a brand-new machine with all mod-cons for a grand total of €200 (not counting a few flesh wounds from slicing fingers open on sharp eges of the case). Of course it too will be obsolete in three months, but that's another problem.

We also found time to get a little more work done on the house in the past few days: light fittings and spots and stuff for the top floor so that it actually looks sort of finished (four years with naked bulbs dangling from wires sticking out of the wall is enough) and then finishing off the entrance hall downstairs with curtains and a bit of wood panelling to hide the water pipes and circa 1920's electricity cables snaking around the ceiling. Next job - the first floor!

Slouching around on Sunday morning (technically it was morning - just - I was having breakfast at about 11:30) and had an unexpected knock at the door - Jill & John Julian with kids in tow, on their way back to Barcelona after a week's skiing at Val Thorens. Had a good long chat about this and that, and decided that we really need to go back down there before they head back to NZ (probably in October, unless Jill can manage to postpone it again) to pick up a spare Vespa for Jeremy. And maybe get a bit more sightseeing done than we managed three years ago. Whatever they do, their eldest son Michael will be staying: he's been accepted at Sussex University and hopes to be able to get into Bath after resitting the exams in a week's time.

Anyway, I'm going to watch Voyage of the Damned - the latest Dr Who Christmas special, so I'll just wish all of you a happy New Year. Hear from you soon - I hope.

Trevor

01/11/07 Of graven idols, and bowing before them ...

1/10/07

For yea! and it did come to pass that it got colder, not to say bloody frigid, and so they got them up from where they were (which was in fact the comfy chairs) and they berobèd and bedizened themselves with all manner of dizens, and laved them they did also, even under the armpits so as not to smell pooey. And when all this was done, and it was good, did they get them to the landing, and there did they open the first of the three doors that were before their idol. And they did bow before it, and address it they did to the sound of the harp, and of the tambour, and of the Peruvian nose-flute, for their idol had sod-all taste in music. And the words that they spake went something like "Where the hell's the bloody instruction manual? How do you expect me to remember the right bloody knob? Oh, I think we just turn this one from the little hot-water tap onto the picture of a radiator".

And thus the central heating was turnèd on, and they returnèd them to their comfy chairs, and it was good, for there were no longer icicles in the bedrooms.

I must admit we've had a bloody good run up until now, but virtually overnight we went from a relatively balmy 14° in the morning to around 2°, so yesterday evening I did in fact go up and turn the knob and now the house is heating up nicely. Which is good, because outside it's pretty damn chilly, especially in the wind, and as at the moment we have the bise - the northerly from Siberia - blowing, that means you're always in the wind.

You may not actually need to know this, and it's true that the question is unlikely to come up in Trivial Pursuit, but did you know that there is an Austrian logistics company called - and I am not making this up - "Fluckinger Transport"? No? I thought not.

Another question you may not have asked yourself - "exactly how difficult is it to take photos of yer side mirror when going down the autoroute at 140 kph?". Well, I do this sort of thing so that you don't have to, and I can tell you that the answer is, in fact, "not very". But do try to make sure that you are more or less alone on the autoroute (because you will wander a bit), and focus on the mirror (well, on infinity, more or less) so that you get a nice shot of what's behind you (hopefully a really nice sunset or something) rather than a picture of the actual mirror itself, which would not be very interesting at all, now would it? Do try also to ensure that the driver's window is relatively clean and free of birdshit, if not the results may be disappointing.

Under nomal circumstances I probably wouldn't have seen Herr Fluckinger's enormous ... truck, nor would I have tried taking photos through the side mirror, but as it happens I went down to Grenoble on Saturday for emergency spice refuelling. So off to St. Bruno and the Carrefour Asiatique for sesame oil and marinades and spice rubs and dried mushrooms (and I always wind up with a few packets of something that I've no idea how to use, and the instructions will be sod-all use because I don't actually read Chinese, but never mind) and then, having half-filled the backpack, amble vaguely back to Ste-Claire and the Irish shop (to get a new coffee mug for Margo), the posh grocer's whose name I can never remember (for decent curry powder and other goodies) and diverse patisseries for cornes de gazelle and bakhlava. Had I known that my faithful trackball was going to die on me I might also have stopped off at the FNAC to pick up a replacement, but I didn't - so I didn't - and have to use a mouse until Amazon send me a Logitech trackball. (Microsoft no longer make one. Which is extremely annoying, as they were very good. Bah.)

The business about cornes de gazelle reminds me that it was the end of Ramadan last weekend, which explains why, when I popped into the butcher's on my way to the market, I had a large cup of very hot, very sweet mint tea stuck into one paw and a plate of extremely sticky things stuck under the other. I nobly drank the tea and nibbled on a sticky, because I wish to stay on the right side of my butcher. He's the only one I've come across (apart from the long-gone Vertongen's in Palmerston) who trims and prepares the meat before weighing it.

28/10

As a general rule, Saturday is pretty quiet around our way: after the market in the morning and the apéro at lunchtime with Renaud & Sophie there's the buzz of lawnmowers (in summer, anyway) and the blue haze from the cows as I contemplate an afternoon's doing nothing. Unfortunately, yesterday was not like that. I'd planned on heading up to the office in the afternoon to do a few final tests for the SNCF, and I set off with a spring in my step, a smile on my lips and a song in my heart as I plucked innocent young vegetables from the stalls and dropped them into my basket to nestle (perhaps uncomfortably) with the peppered goats cheese. Unfortunately it all went rather pear-shaped when I got back to the car and found it leaning forlornly on one very flat tire.

An annoyance, but not a great problem, so after a few minutes I worked out how to get the hi-tech emergency kit out of the boot, jacked up the car and discovered that the spare is one of those stupid half-width pancake things. Stuck it on (there not really being any other option), let down the jack, and curse as the spare reveals itself to be flatter than the tire I'd just removed. Quel bummer. (I might point out that while all this was going on I provided wholesome entertainment to at least ten families who drove slowly past to gawp - wholesome, that is, if you assume that they couldn't speak English and understand some of the words I was using.)

Much to my surprise, when I went down to the carpark office, the young man in charge came up with a foot pump and pumped the tire up (to 4.5 bar yet!) despite my protests that I could at least do a bit, before disappearing again - having expressed the wish that I should have a really nice afternoon. Damned if I know what the country is coming to.

Of course my afternoon was not quite as I'd planned it, because of course I wasn't going to be able to get the tire fixed before the garages reopened at 14:30, so I went off and helped R&S get rid of a bottle of wine and some lasagna. By 17:00 - when they'd finished replacing both the front tires (well, they were just a little bit bald) it was pretty clear that I could forget about the office, so we headed back home to unload the groceries and I got collared into helping Emily, the neighbour, get their ADSL connection working.

Our Australian friend Sue had naturally enough chosen that day to drive back from Montpellier with Vél, picking up Zeina at Grenoble en route (forgot to mention that it was the first day of the Toussaint school holidays) - arriving to find that their central heating had broken down (which, at this point in time, is NOT good, believe me) and their computer was having a hissy-fit. So they turned up for dinner, which was rather convenient actually as it gave me a chance to try out some obscure chicken rub I'd picked up somewhere - it turned out very nicely, if you're interested. Turkish, I think it was.

Otherwise, we're back to winter time: a bit more light in the morning, but night closes in around 18:00, which is far too early as far as I'm concerned. At least it hasn't snowed yet - give it another three weeks ...

If any of you are interested, we're watching Reaper (motto: "the Devils' biggest tools"), Pushing Daisies, Criminal Minds (season 3), Supernatural (ditto), Bones (ditto again), second season of Ugly Betty and the fourth season of Desperate Housewives. Plus a few other bits and pieces. I will personally have to find the time to watch "Star Trek - Enterprise" again (well, I liked it, even if no-one else did) and the "Borg Collective" episodes.

13/08/07 Important Health & Safety Advisory

Yes, today - thanks to the miracle of Al Gore's Internet and e-mail - this newsletter is privileged to be the first to bring you an important safety hint. Women may skip the following, but all those who leave the toilet seat up (yes, we know who you are) need to read this. It may seem obvious, but do not, I repeat do NOT, urinate immediately after massaging Tiger Balm onto one or other of your appendages. Not unless you've washed your hands 37 times with carbolic soap and sulphuric acid - or, of course, you like that sort of thing. Or, possibly, if you use tongs, or oven gloves.

In other breaking news today, I'm privileged to share with you the following instructions from a packet of spice mixture: "Slim the non-bones chiken fillets as requested large. Pour into one pot The Mixture. Fill some water into another pot. Firstly, wet with water the slimmed fillets, and then include into The Mixture. Afterwards, make hot the fat on the fire and heat on the hot oil well the chicken fillets two sides you included The Mixture. Enjoy your meals." I think that about sums it up, don't you? (It was, by the way, delicious. Given that I was unable to follow the instructions completely, I can't vouch for its authenticity though.)

We headed off to Rome on the 29th, ostensibly to pick up our friend Karens' children and bring them back to Chambery, but the sad reality is that we were looking forward to spending a rent-free week in an apartment in Rome. Not central Rome - damn good thing too 'cos I'd never have dared trying to drive around there - but at the southern end of one of the two metro lines. Basically, it was a ten-minute walk to the station (admittedly a tough job in the heat) and then a ten-minute ride to the Coliseum station.

Rome's a dump. Literally. The place is full of ruins, which apparently they haven't had the time to either demolish or renovate in the last 2000 years or so, and rubbish, which appears to have been accumulating for at least 2000 years. Our parking spot just outside the apartment came with a little notice saying that we'd better not be there the second Wednesday of the month, 'cos that was when the rubbish truck might come round - bit of a shock for us poor country bumpkins used to the twice-weekly visits here in St-Pierre. The Romans themselves blame the filth on the immigrants, a practice that also dates back at least 2000 years.

Whatever, we finished by getting used to streets that reminded me more of Africa than of Europe, and as we had but three days we thought we'd better get our money's worth out of the place. Which we did, in typical Bimler fashion, by wandering aimlessly until we got to places we wanted to be. So on Monday we emerged from the metro at the Coliseum, kicked three would-be tour-guides in the nuts until they stopped importuning us, and set determinedly off through the various forums (Jules, Augustus, Trajan ...) until we got to what the American GIs apparently called the "wedding cake": the enormous, vulgar, over-the-top and totally out-of-place white marble monstrosity of the Victor-Immanuel monument. I must admit it is worth seeing, which is fortunate as you cannot, in fact, avoid doing so.

Karen had given us detailed directions to the best ice-cream shop in Rome (and therefore the world), consisting of "find this shop" (we did, I must admit, have the name) and by dint of rather aggressive questioning we eventually found the place, only 100m down a side street from parliament. Handy, I suppose, if they get peckish. The sorbet or gelati or ice-cream or whatever was, however, excellent, and copious enough that Jeremy couldn't finish his. Unfortunately he'd picked a coconut/banana crush combination that neither of us was willing to finish, and we didn't feel up to hawking second-hand ice-cream around all the other tourists, so that wound up in the gutter (no rubbish bins - this is Rome).

>From there it wasn't too difficult to find our way to Saint-Louis des Français (or St-Luigi des Frogs, in the local dialect), which has three Caravaggios depicting - respectively - the selection, temptation, and martyrdom of - I think - St Matthew. But I could be wrong. Whatever. Churches are good. They have thick walls, and it is cool inside. In a Roman summer, this is very good, and is why you will find many people in churches. It may explain why Italians are (nominally, anyway) Catholics. But don't tell the pope I said that.

On Tuesday we did something resolutely touristy and made our way (after kicking another three would-be tour-guides in the nuts) to the Trevi fountains - you know, the one Britt Eckland jumped into in La Dolce Vita. Or whatever. I think that's what Jeremy liked best - not Britt, the fountains. Then we picnicked by the Tiber and watched the birds dodging oil-slicks and other bits of crap before heading off to the Vatican.

Unfortunately the pope wasn't actually in - not to us, at any rate - and having walked down Mussolini's hatchet-job of an avenue to the piazza in front of St Peter's we thought we'd forgo the 30€/person for a tour of the museum and the Castel St Angelo and tried to find the gardens which are supposedly on the hills on that side of the Tiber. But they hid from us (you will notice that I am not saying "we were lost" because it's not true, Rome is poorly signposted), so we went off down to the Campo di Fiori (which I suppose may once have been a flowery field, but it's difficult to believe now) and said hello to Giordano Bruno instead.

Karen's two kids and their grandmother (very Italian, despite being American) came back from the beach on Wednesday, so we waited for them to turn up before going off to the Villa Borghese and the Etruscan museum, where we spent most of the afternoon. As we went through to the Spagna metro there were no would-be tour-guides waiting for us, rather lucky really as I was starting to get cramp in my right knee. At least we got to see the Spanish Steps, and some very expensive-looking shops.

One church, one museum - I don't think we overdid things, quite frankly.

Anyway, that night we got hauled off (as honoured guests, let me reassure you) to the full Italian family dinner with various aunts and uncles. Despîte not understanding a word I like to think that we acquitted ourselves honorably, and Jeremy (being a cute blond) can go back whenever he wants.

On the way back all went well until we decided to try an unscheduled visit to Pisa, to check up on the tower of that name. As it was a no-brainer we didn't bother setting it up on the GPS, and the resultant débâcle could serve as an object lesson on thirty-minute divorces. You get off the autoroute and onto the urban expressway at Pisa nord, and follow the signs to Pisa centre. After a while there aren't any more of those, just ones to Pisa sud. Quel bummer. So you get off the expressway, and find signs pointing you to Pisa centre, and follow them. They expire at a roundabout where there are many signs, none of which point you to Pisa centre. At this point you may reasonably start to wonder whether you haven't wandered into "The cars that ate Paris" by mistake, but the inhabitants show no overt signs of cannibalism ... I hate being lost, and I especially hate being lost with only 5 litres of gas left on some godforsaken wop town where the petrol pumps won't accept credit cards and there are no street signs, so I got back onto the autoroute and left Pisa behind. Going by the souvenirs they were selling at the filling stations, the tower's not that great anyway. If it's still standing the next time we go down, maybe we'll have another go.

Unfortunately the GPS chose to go depressive on us on the tangenzionale around Turin - this seems to happen a lot. As we came up to the Fréjus exit (on the right) it firmly instructed me to stay left - which I did, as the things work so well you tend to trust them implicitly - before getting us off at the next exit so as to get back on going the other way. So we come back to the Fréjus exit, and once again the thing said to stay left. Had we followed the instructions we'd still be there, doing epicycles around a shortish bit of the ring-road until Hell froze over or they decided to shift the exit to let us get off. Maybe the place is the European equivalent of the Bermuda Triangle.

At about that time the weather took a decided turn for the worse: from 35° at Rome it plummeted to 15° and by the time we got up to the actual Fréjus tunnel it was bucketing down.

For those of you who've just been waiting for a good reason to come and visit, I can now give you another one (apart from the food, the wine, the cheese ...): amongst the attractions now proposed by the Tourist Office here at St-Pierre is a guided tour, with commentary, of the wallpaper at the Mairie. I'm sure that's got you salivating.

For those that care ... Malyon should arrive (despite a lively exchange of e-mail concerning her baggage allowance, and the latest ticket I've received, which has two of her going) at Auckland around 5 am Sep 02. Should you see her, be nice, and give her chocolate.

Trevor

Trevor