18/12/02 The state of the nation ...

Here we are again: time to wish all of you a Hairy Gristlemouse and a very Furry New Bear. With chocolate sprinkles on it.


As Malyon has just reminded me, only three more days to go before the Christmas holidays, and then on Sunday or Monday we head off to Pesselière for a week's holiday stuffing our faces. I'm going to cause great cries of anguish because I'll take the portable along in the hope of getting some of the work done that really needs to be done before mid-January - for once I'm actually going on holiday with everyone else, that surely ought to count for something! At least I'll be more or less incommunicado, given that my cellphone only works there if I wander 500m down the road and stand in the middle of a turnip field, which is fine in summer (if you like turnips) but not much of a thrill in the middle of winter.


Not that winter, so far, has been up to much. We're still waiting for some snow down here, but it's been amazingly warm (well, above or about zero) and all we've had to date is rain. Ploppy rain, on a couple of occasions, but rain nonetheless. I can't say that I'm personally too put out by this. Maybe all the Parisians will stay at home instead of coming down here to block the autoroutes.


Got Jeremy's school report the other day, and I was pleasantly surprised. The state of his exercise book is, as his teacher delicately put it, "unacceptable", but his French is passable (we may have to work on that with him, though godnose how, as I'm certainly not competent to do it) and his maths is excellent. He decided to learn how to do division last weekend (they don't learn that yet at school) and found it easy. We'll see.


He'll finish the rugby season and then we'll see what happens with that: he still enjoys playing but complains that the other kids pick on him because he's a New Zealander, and make rude remarks about how Kiwis don't know how to play the game. Unfortunately, advice to eight-year-olds on ignoring the stupid comments of other eight-year-old titheads is invariably ignored. Ah well.


All in all, I think we're gaining ground and he may eventually graduate to join the human race. He was very - and deservedly - proud of buying all his Christmas presents with his very own money: he managed to save up his pocket money for two months and then went out with Margo and blew it all buying presents.


Malyon on the other hand needs to pull up her socks (or sockettes, for the fashion now is to wear socks that just cover your feet up to where your shoes end): she only managed an average of 18/20. There's a bit of extra work to be done there. She's 13 and feels that she should be treated as an adult: for the moment, as far as I'm concerned, she's still on probation. Even if she does remind us very strongly of Saffy, from Ab Fab.


She's much in demand at the college at the moment, as they're off to England early next year and she's the nearest thing they've got to an English-speaker in the class. She'll be able to teach them all about the delights of stodgy pud.


What she really wants is for me to trade up the Alfa 146 for a Zagato or an old Spyder. Not for any practical reason, just so that I can ostentatiously drop her off at school in a racy convertible, and she can murmur to any of her friends who dare to ask "No, that's just my Dad". She'll have to settle for a 156, I think. (Reminds me that some parents have made comments to Margo about my appearance when I drop the kids off to school. "Zombie" is one of the kinder words they've used. It's true that I'm not at my best first thing in the morning, but I still find that a bit cruel.)


Margo is waiting for the end of the year as impatiently as the kids. She finds 20-odd hours a week in intimate contact with ill-mannered, badly brought-up high-school turds rather wearing, and I can't blame her. (I'd probably have committed criminal acts by now, not being nearly so patient or forgiving - or not being paid enough to be so, at any rate.) Next year she's planning on demanding no more than 8 hours a week with college brats, the rest with adults, thanks very much.


As for me, business is ticking over nicely at the moment, even if we do have to make our accountant cut a few corners from time to time. Like today, when one of our clients, Novartis, asked us to bill them - before the end of the year - for about 50 000 euros for work to be done next year: question of finishing off the budget so that they can put justifiably put in a request for the same budget next year. ("If you've got it, you'd better spend it before budget review time") Don't want all that extra cash appearing in our books for this year, so we'll have to put out a false bill - for their eyes only - this year, and another (for the French authorities) next year. And hope they don't pay us before we do the official bill. And for once we've actually got cash in the bank at the end of the year, some of our clients having kindly consented to pay us. (But there's still about 50 000 euros sitting out there waiting to come to papa: if it all comes in at once I may succumb to temptation and flee to Bolivia with the cash. Serve the bank right, useless pack of illegitimate mother-loving offspring of female dogs that they are.)


And my Frankenstein stock-control system continues its life: we're due to roll out the web version Real Soon Now, and we're going to move to version 5 (with EDI interface) in the near future (like, in a couple of weeks, whenever I find the time). Can't complain, it's the first cash-cow we've had, and I plan on milking it for some time yet.


What else is new? Not a great deal, I'm afraid. In theory the builders turn up in March to start work on the attic extensions, after first of all ripping through the first floor here to redo the electricity and bash out a few unwanted walls over the stairwell. Margo is starting to have shivers at the thought of packing things and moving them from room to room as the work advances. The kitten has finally adopted the dog as some sort of cheap biological electric blanket, which is fine.


Merry Christmas to you all


Love,
Trevor & Margo

15/11/02 Apostilles and other religious artifacts

11/11/02

November has come blustering in as usual: rainy and cold. Luckily we had the chimney swept a couple of weeks ago and I got the wood delivered and stacked a while back, so the poele in the kitchen is now doing its job. One thing that has to go into the list of things to be done in the not too distant future is getting a proper pipe stuck up from top to bottom of the old brick chimney and coming straight down into the kitchen where the poele can be hooked up to it: the current arrangement, which we inherited when we bought the place, involving twisty bits of tubing in the kitchen coming up into the bottom of the fireplace upstairs, is illegal, impractical, and unsafe. The problem is that the smoke, instead of heading up into the atmosphere and doing its job of polluting somewhere else and generally contributing to global warming, gets slowed down in the bendy bits and all the tar in it condenses on the inside of the tubing and chimney, where it sits as a chimney fire waiting to happen. Our chimnery-sweep (who used to be a fireman in Paris) has thus given me instructions to take the tubing down every two weeks during the winter and clean it out properly, which is a right pain but I'd rather do that than call the fire brigade.

Tess the cat walked out the front door on a Sunday afternoon a month ago and never came back: sad for all of us, and especially the kids. So now we've a replacement, a little black and white kitten called Mischief who likes to live on shoulders and terrorise the dog (in so far as it's possible for something about the size - and weight - of a box of tissues to terrorise a small hairy pony with the brain of a cockroach). She arrived a week ago, returning with Margo, kids & dog from Halloween at Pesselière.

Speaking of which reminds me that I really shall have to borrow Jacques (or at least his little van) for the next time I head up to Pesselière (probably Christmas) so as to be able to take up our old stove and its (never-been-used) range hood, to replace the centenarian gas range that's there now. 'Cos I got a new oven not so long ago, a great big stainless steel monster of a semi-professional stove that is my friend. Jeremy thinks it's a bit ugly and would like to paint it pretty colours. No comment.

Unconfirmed reports have it that our attic renovations have been pencilled in by the builder for January/February 2003. I just hope that we'll get a few weeks official notice so that we can pack away stuff on the first floor before they start doing electrical things there: and, incidentally, order the radiators that we'll need for the attic. And tell the bank that we want their money NOW.


Speaking of banks reminds me that our bank has once again managed to "mislay" a bank transfer: only 5000€ this time, I suppose I should be grateful. Six weeks after it should have come through I rang the bank and insisted that they check and lo! there it was: "waiting on written confirmation". You may well ask what is the use of electronic transfers if they have to wait for some scribe at the counterparty bank to carve a confirming note on a stone tablet to be delivered by monthly pony express before it's validated ... This time they've gone too far, the transfer was credited the day after my call (odd, that) but effective at that date, rather than six weeks earlier. They evidently take me for an idiot, but this particular idiot is changing banks.


And last Monday, with my client from the SNCF turning up on the Wednesday, was of course the day my office machine chose to wipe out the C drive. No great harm done, apart from the loss of all the e-mail for the past three months (that being when I started using Outlook instead of Outlook Express, and Outlook of course sticks everything - address books, calendar, mail and the kitchen sink - into one enormous file that it puts where it pleases, rather than where I thought I'd asked it to) and two or three days spent reinstalling NT and all the various programs I depend on. And at that I managed to get it wrong: by installing service pack 6 BEFORE installing networking (a note on the Microsoft CDs tells me this is not good) I've a system where I can neither remove the service pack (because IE 5.x, which is no longer present, depends on it) nor reinstall it (because it doesn't want to: my encryption settings are too high, at, variously, 36, 58 and 128 bits). Everything works except e-mail, so I can see I may well wind up (deliberately, this time) reformatting the C drive and trying to reinstall everything in the right order. Either that or I give up and migrate to W2K, which might fix my problems with e-mail (or then again, it might refuse to install, citing inappropriate encryption levels) but would leave me without an NT4 development system. Poohs.


On top of that, yet another registered letter arrived from the Ministry of Employment, Solidarity and Immigration, asking this time that I: return the enclosed birth certificates "revetus d'une apostille"; supply a marriage certificate established by the authorities in the place where the ceremony took place, in the language of the country, specifying our respective origins (and furnished with an apostille as well); supply all possible details on my father's birth, death and marriage (failing which it's the High Court at Nantes that gets called to do the necessary).


I rather feel that I shall contact the embassy, find out what an apostille is (Renaud thought it was some sort of hat, but I think it's either a female apostle or some sort of wax seal) and how much it costs, then write a courteous letter back to the effect that we don't do things that way in NZ and they'll have to be content with our official marriage certificate as it stands, and that by the way all the papers concerning my father were destroyed in the Napier earthquake. Don't know if it'll work, but it might buy a couple of months' silence.


Apart from all that, life's going not too badly. Malyon has a boyfriend (or had, last time anyone bothered to keep me up to date with such things) and yer usual adolescent problems (apart from acne, but maybe that'll come) which mainly seem to involve parents who don't understand anything. Quite right too: no-one actually pays me to understand other peoples' problems. Jeremy still seems to be enjoying rugby (gather that NZ lost against the UK this weekend?) as it's a great excuse for sliding around in mud, and he still wants to learn to play the bagpipes. According to Margo he's getting a chanter for Christmas, so I may have to spend more time in the garden.


Just in case any of you were wondering, the dog has not gotten any more intelligent.

Love,
Trevor & Margo

15/08/02 A weeks-worth of Valium ...

10/8/2002

Here we are on holiday, for once, at Palavas-les-bloody-Flots, Mecca of the Francais moyen. (Not quite true. Mecca is la Grande Motte, just up the coast a way. Palavas is one of the lesser holy places.) Benidorm it isn't, but the coast is built-up, in varying degrees of hideousness, for at least 40km to each side of us.

It's one of those spots where, by tradition, the average Frog-person comes to spend their holidays, and there are many magnificent examples of the species to be observed and even, if you can get close enough to take them by surprise, photographed. The usual collection of bare breasts about, many of which would, unfortunately, be better suited to a museum than a family beach. Still, there are always a few delightful exceptions.

Thanks to the mother of a friend of Margo's, we have a small studio in the casino complex, about 20m from the sea. Directly in front of us is the port, with about 800 boats of different sizes moored at the moment (it's not Monaco either, so don't bother thinking of ocean-going palaces) and just a bit off to the left are the beaches. The apartment itself is a perfect size for two wife-swapping couples, and adequate for us, given that neither of the kids have yet discovered hormones. Be impossible once they develop mood swings and pimples.

Personally I find the water far too chilly for anything more than a quick paddle just to keep up appearances, but Jeremy and Malyon demand to be taken down at least once a day, even if it's only to build sand-castles or, in Jeremy's case, to dig a hole and bury himself in it. The water, it seems, is too cold, and the sand keeps him warm.

We came down here on Monday 5th, hoping to avoid the weekend traffic jams. I suppose we were successful in that, but it didn't stop us taking a couple of hours to do the last 70km of autoroute. Good thing we left reasonably early (or, as far as I'm concerned, unreasonably early).

One of the minor inconveniences of the Mediterranean is the mistral, the south wind which can reach alarming speeds. It hasn't been that bad, but there have been a couple of times when Margo and the kids have been forced to abandon the beach to avoid being sandblasted to the bone.

Anyway, yesterday - Friday - wasn't particularly nice so we decided to go off and have a wander around Montpellier. A charming city. The name comes from the latin "mons pistillarius", spice hill (because the spice merchants - the then masters of the universe - lived there). And the old city is indeed built on a hill - or several of them. Low hills, admittedly, but still hills, or what passes for them around here.

Apparently they tried to do a Haussmann on it in the 19th century and turn it into some sort of southern Paris: luckily they didn't succeed. There is a mini-Opera, more or less a direct copy (in miniature) of the Palais Garnier, and a few grands boulevards, but most of the old city is still a labyrinth of old buildings on tiny cobbled streets and around miniscule courtyards. As luck would have it we went down one of these, attracted by the bridge across the street at the third-floor level, and stumbled across an English bookshop, where we were able to stock up.

Then, investigating a C14 first-floor off-the-wall privy (still, to all appearances, in use, although I imagine that the plumbing has been redone since the installation of the original long-drop) came upon a discreet window with a tasteful display of exotic leather and chain lingerie. The prices seemed excessive for something that was mainly holes. Sort of thing that'd leave nothing to the imagination, were it not that shop dummies have no primary sexual characteristics.

For some strange reason, possibly related to the fact that Margo was with us, we then wandered into the sewing-machine district (yes, there is one, bizarre as it may seem) where Margo came upon a patchwork shop, which made her very happy. The kids do not share her enthusiasm, so the rest of us waited outside in a litte square and amused ourselves with watching grass grow.

Today being fine we spent the afternoon on the beach, making sandcastles, while Margo went off to - guess what - a patchwork exhibition. When that was over she came down and joined us, so I went off to do some serious degustation at the wine fair that took - is, in fact, still taking - place today. As a result we'll be heading home on Monday about 20kg heavier, and that's without counting the collections of interesting shells and the omnipresent sand.

15/8/2002

Back home again to discover the lawn overgrown thanks to all the rain we seem to have missed out on whilst on holiday, and the faithful dog is just as cretinous as she was. Jeremy is now all of eight years old, Malyon will soon be thirteen, and the summer is slowly winding down.

On a practical note, some of you may remember Anne-Laure, the young lady who came over with us last time we were in your neck of the woods. She's at university now ( how time flies) majoring in computer imaging, 3-D animation and complicated things like that which I don't pretend to understand. Whatever, she wishes to do her doctorate and for some really strange reason she'd like to do it either in New Zealand or in Canada. Is there anyone out there who knows if such a degree is possible in NZ, and if so where? There's no great rush, but she'd like to know.

Carry on having a really grotty winter: I personally am going to get back to doing some really disgusting things with a DSP (nothing personal, it's for the SNCF, so that must be alright).

Trevor, Margo & everyone else

13/08/02 Rising damp

08/09/02

Here we are, having closed the final chapter of a pretty mediocre summer (weather-wise, I'm talking) and starting on what will be, if we can extrapolate from current trends, a grotty autumn.Cool, and wet. Excessively so.

Well, things are moving - at a glacial pace - on our naturalisation dossiers: we got a letter a few weeks ago asking us for "legalised" versions of the documents (birth certificates, marriage certificate etc) with which we'd supplied them - God nose what it means but the NZ Embassy people seem to have some idea. It just means getting recent copies of the said documents (they apparently don't like to work with old ones - must be allergic to dust) and sending them off to get translated and struck with some sort of magic wand (or ambassadorial stamp, I have no idea) and, of course, paying for the privilege.

As an aside, they also asked for the birth certificates and, if it existed, the marriage certificate for Margos' parents (not mine - why not?) in order to facilitate the process: "failing which, the High Court of Nantes must be asked to establish the appropriate equivalents".

The big news from our side is that future visitors will be able to stay in rather more comfort. The bed may still be a joke exploding sofa that folds up with you still in it, but at least it'll be in a room that isn't shared by five cubic metres of material and a decade's worth of accumulated junk.Yes, we have the plans for doing up the attic and the bank has agreed to pay for it, so in the (hopefully) not-too-distant future we'll have an extra three bedrooms, two bathrooms and a reasonable living area up there: and if we're lucky and our menuisier friend Philippe gets off his arse, we'll have a staircase so that we can get to them.


It won't really increase the number of rooms available, because the plans are that Malyon's bedroom then becomes my office, our bedroom becomes Margo's junk room, the upstairs living-room becomes just that (rather than Margo's junk room) and Jeremy's bedroom turns into the landing for the staircase. But it will give us another 90 m² in which to complain about the lack of space in the house.


All that remains to be done is to get in touch with the guy that did the quote and see when he can get started. Unlikely to be before 2003, but with any luck he'll be able to fit us in at the beginning of the year rather than at the end. It is, let it be said, a perfect winter job: inside, dry, and reasonably warm.

I've also managed to do something that everyone ought to be forced to do at least once in their lives, namely installing Windiws 98 (or "Windows mille neuf cent quatre-vingt dix-huit", as Jeremy insists on calling it) side by side with Win 2K. It took some time, as only Win98 SE has a utility allowing one to create a bootable diskette that will recognise FAT32 disks (which, of course, Win2K uses by default). Unfortunately, the said utility requires access to a hard disk to create a boot diskette (and doesn't tell you if it hasn't got access, it just goes ahead and creates a totally unusable diskette with all files at 0 bytes) which left me somewhat stuck, as it works only under DOS and the only DOS boot diskette around was one for Win95 (which doesn't recognise FAT32 disks). I finally had to boot my office machine (which has a FAT16 drive) using the old Win95 diskette and do the job there. On arriving home, much to my surprise and alarm the whole thing worked - and for what? So that Malyon can use Encarta 2000 (which won't install under Win2K, with the rather cryptic error message that KALLISTI.EXE is trying to violate something) and so that Jeremy can play a couple of games (one of them was, I must admit, his birthday present, and having a present that you can just look at but can't play is a bit tough). It only took a day or so.

Spent a fascinating afternoon scraping down the windows upstairs: the last three weekends I spent replacing all the panes in the french doors onto the balcony on the north-west side of the house. They were put in when the upstairs was built, some sixty years ago, and the putty had perished and was falling out and anyway the glass was only 1mm thick, so we reckoned it was about time to replace the lot. Not a perfect job, but at least now the wood's stripped back ready for revarnishing, and when the wind howls down from the north it won't be coming into the bedrooms around the window-panes.

13/09/02

Back from a couple of days in Paris, where I luckily missed out on some of the worst flooding in years down in the Midi. Apparently there was just very heavy rain here - drove through some of it heading up. And despite Meteo Frances' promises, things didn't really get better until today. Hope it lasts: we've a BBQ scheduled for Sunday and everyone is busy getting the grapes in for what may well be a somewhat watery vintage.

Have a day of hard physical labour planned for tomorrow as someone turned up with an enormous rotary hoe and dug up the old vegetable garden in the paddock (the one we've been talking about having dug up for the last three years): now it needs rolling down, a big level patch (just big enough for a swimming pool) made in it, and then sowing with grass. Luckily there's only a few hundred square metres to be done. Anyone care to come over to give us a hand?

To round off the day, I discovered where 10000 euros can disappear. Back in April, I billed a Swiss client for doing their website and waited for the cash to roll in, as it usually does with them. After a few months, still nothing: I ring and enquire. Turns out that the temp worker they had in at the time had put the bill on the top shelf and left it there. Time passes, as it does: where's my cash? Ring again, the company has out-sourced its accounting to Young, Rubicam: a few hiccups. Still later - beginning of August - I ring again: goodness me, the outsourced accountants don't have our bank references, so haven't been able to pay us (haven't said anything either, until I asked). We are promised payment that same day, if only I will fax them the bank references. Done. Today, still no cash. Ring the client. Yes, payment went out. Ring our bank. No, nothing's come in. Ring client again. Their account has been debited. Ring our bank again. Still no cash. Ring client a third time, get the bank transfer order details. Ring our bank, give them said details. Miracle! the money is found, sitting in our bank's holding account (gathering interest at LIBOR, no doubt) while they decided what to do with it. Ring client to apologise. Make mental note to change banks, preferably with extreme prejudice. Honestly, sitting on 10000 euros for 24 days whilst "the transaction was being handled"? I want the interest!

They apologised fulsomely (like, "Sorry, see what we can do about getting you your money, perhaps by Monday") but I rather think that we can do without them any more. Such incompetence is rare and doubtless deserves to be rewarded, but not by me.

Margo is back with the language school at Albertville and her hours have been finalised: the good news is that they entail no evening work, and in fact most days she'll be home in time to pick up Jeremy from school. The bad news is that four days out of five she has to be at Albertville at 8am, which means setting the alarm for 6:15. An hour at which (unless I've spent the entire night working and am still awake) I am only barely recognisable as belonging to the same branch of the evolutionary tree as the rest of you. Not that Margo's much better.

And the more brutish amongst you will doubtless be pleased to hear that Jeremy has decided that he wants to play rugby, and has started with the Montmelian rugby club. We'll see how long it lasts. I might be being over-cynical, though, as according to Margo (who gets the job of taking Jeremy through to Montmelian every Saturday afternoon) there's a good atmosphere about the club, and Jeremy is quite capable of deciding that he really does like rugby and will work at it.

Goodnight, all

Trevot, Margo, brats & animals

08/10/01 Back on the radar screen again ...

Summer's been and gone, and September's going out as gloriously as it came in, which is to say not very, as it began with rain, is finishing with rain, and was, incidentally, mostly rainy from start to finish. If only the French hadn't stopped the bomb tests at Mururoa we'd still have a decent climate. Now all the whinging Greens have got their way, and it rains all the time.

Well, we had a busy summer - didn't personally move around a lot, but we had a few people come through. First there was Janet Soler and Kevin who bravely turned up from England (well, Milton Keynes) in their old Bedford ambulance, then there were Laurence and (eventually) Mandy Hobden (the English cousins on Margo's side), then Jill & John Julian, and lastly (only just got rid of him on Monday night) Tom Livingstone. And in between visitors we managed to make it up to Pesselière.

Laurence is Margo's first cousin once removed (or something like that) - avoiding technical details, he's her cousin's son. About the same age as Malyon. Anyway, it was arranged between the pair of them (Mandy and Margo, not Laurence and Malyon) that he would come over here and be subjected to a semi-Frog lifestyle and a cousin, this being an Enlarging Experience and a Good Thing. Which, oddly enough, it probably was. The poor lad turned up as unaccompanied baggage at Geneva one morning to be welcomed by a hero-worshipping Jeremy and a somewhat sceptical Malyon. Fortunately both he and Malyon turned out to have similar tastes in literature and, having introduced her to Warhammer they now communicate regularly by e-mail.

The Julians arranged, one way or another, the loan of a house in the Lozère, which is one of the more isolated districts of France. It's not that after a day there you feel that Taihape is just too crowded, but it's not far off. The place is called Bassurels, a village of some twelve houses a good fifteen minutes drive from anywhere, where the main excitement is counting cars coming up the road. (And given the state of the road there aren't that many.) It's actually rather pretty in a savage way: great gorges, enormous bare rock outcroppings and the occasional C15 fortress perched up somewhere which was once considered strategic.

Anyway, we drove down there the day after dropping Mandy and Laurence off to Geneva airport, found the place no trouble (thanks to Autoroute Express, don't know how we managed without it) and spent four days doing as little as possible. Well, we did make it off to La Grande Motte, which was an experience: this is where - apparently - every single French family there is goes for its summer seaside holidays. The beach isn't bad, I suppose, as beaches go - lots of sand to get up yer bum, and warm brackish water in the appropriate places (and, at any one moment, about 327 Parisians piddling in it, which is why it's warm) - if you can discount the apartment blocks and flash hotels 30m back from the high water line. Then you get the crowds, and it's true that yer average Frog-person is a sociable animal. Let's say, for the sake of argument, that there's a beautiful, spotless, pristine beach stretching for miles in each direction. You arrive and park yourself, Esky, radio, sun umbrella and all the usual paraphernalia, and get settled in to work on a serious case of sunburn, whilst inwardly lamenting the fact that women will keep their bikini tops on. So far so good. Then a French family - or a single French-person, the quantity doesn't matter - arrives. As previously mntioned, there's something like 15 km² of beach space. So, where do the new arrivals settle in? Why, just next to you, of course! As close as possible without actually infringing on your personal space (which is, in Europe, much smaller than it is in NZ). Why is this? Some serious analysts for whom I have much respect (Dave Barry, for example) say that it is because they really want to piss you off and see if they can't make you go away, personally I think it's because they get lonely. Missing the fact that, in Paris, the nearest person is about 30cm away.

Then lunchtime comes around, and all of a sudden the beach is again deserted. We were there, eating Dagwood-style submarine sandwiches and drinking red wine (put it in the Esky to keep it cool, a sin I know but it's still a damn sight better than HOT red wine), and everyone else had disappeared. Retreated, in fact, by about 30m, back to the restaurants, salons de thé, and fast-food joints promising boiled mussels with French fries that lurk on the ground floor of all the apartment blocks and posh hotels. I'm not complaining, I'd just like to know why people think that boiled mussels and chips are an appropriate lunch on a day when the temperature in the shade is something around 37°.

On the way back we did something I've always wanted to do and stopped off to admire the Pont du Gard, the enormous Roman aqueduct that crosses the Gard a bit below Orange. Still didn't make it through to the vigneron in Orange where I used to get my Chateauneuf-du-Pâpe, though. (Perhaps next time ...) It was very, very, impressive. Even the kids were silent for all of 30 seconds - although that may have been for lack of ice-cream.

Spaeking of the kids, we're in for a musical year in 2001. Jeremy is learning the oboe ("hautbois" in French), and Malyon has decided to do the clarinet. Fortunately we can stick them in the library to practice their scales. (TOOT toot TOOOT!) When it starts to get too noisy we can banish them to one of the cellars.

Last week of August Margo took the kids and dog up to Pesselière, and Jacques and I drove up on the weekend in his little Express van to drop off the old coal-burner that's been sitting in the garage for a couple of years, as well as a spare double bed that's been lurking in the attic. Got to see the work that's been done on the place (been quite a while since I was last up there) and I at least managed to spend Saturday not doing very much at all, although Jacques got roped in, as resident expert, to go mushroom hunting at some ungodly hour of the morning.

The stock management system I developed more than a year ago has turned into some sort of Frankenstein's monster, with a life of its own. When I took the job on I dropped the price by about 20,000F and took a cut on future sales, not really believing there'd ever be any: unfortunately the guy has so far sold about 20 copies (at 50,000F/copy that could be worse) so far, has gained an entrée in the big firms and is set to hock off another 50-100 copies next year and the thing has turned itself into a product, which has to be maintained, must evolve from time to time, needs support - all those ghastly things at which small businesses such as ours do NOT excel. We're just not built to do that sort of thing - more "do it quick, do it cheap, get it signed off and move on to the next job" is our style. But now that has to change. I can't complain (although I do): the royalties come in and I bill for evolutionary changes (maintenance is more or less under guarantee) but it would have been nice if he'd managed to sell five systems, each requiring various modifications and add-ins (all billed, of course) at some time other than now. Because right now is not a good time, I'm already up to my neck and the extra just means that I'll get to take a breath of air alternate Wednesdays. Still, better too much work than none at all. I'm starting to learn to say "no" to clients too, which is probably a good thing.

Just to complicate matters Margo has started working virtually full-time as well: 12 hours a week with the state schools at Montmelian (caused some frumping at St Pierre when she didn't get sent back there this year) and the same again (at least) with a private language school at Albertville, some 25km further up the valley. Given that her hours do not necesarily correspond with those of the schools at St Pierre, this involves some juggling of work time on my part so as to be around to pick up or deliver (as appropriate) kids to and from school or whatever. Good thing I'm self-employed, otherwise we'd never manage.

One of the other things that came out of the closet over summer was a system I did years ago for swimming pools and the like - a sort of enormous jukebox thing that brought up the box containing your clothes, knickknacks and wotsits when you went up to it with a sort of badge and a PIN. (The original development was done about 4 years ago and we nearly went under as the customer declared bankruptcy, walked off with the software and never paid. This is another problem with being a small company.) Anyway, a system of this sort was installed at St Quentin, near Paris, and since year 1 they've sent out a request for tender for the software, to which I replied with the original price, and since year 1 there's been no response. This year, when the request arrived on my desk I toyed with the idea of upping the price by 30% (then 30% more in 2002 etc, just to get them off my back) but unfortunately didn't, because as it turns out this year they were serious and actually ordered it. Which meant a couple of weeks in Paris in June/July, which would not count as my favourite time to be in Paris. Hot, stinking (usual cleaners' strike in the Metro) and too many people. Looking on the bright side, I usually managed to stay in the 13th arrondissement and consequently got to eat some pretty good Chinese food. On the bad side, on the last trip I had to stay in St Quentin itself, which has two restaurants, one of which is unspeakable and the other merely vile. At the least bad of the two I ordered a Coupe Colonel, which is normally a lime sorbet with a dash of vodka splashed over it: what I eventually got was a ball of sorbet bobbing about in a beer-mug of vodka, which started me wondering about exactly how they made a profit. Even if they were just using industrial alcohol and flavouring, they must have made a loss on it. Maybe they made their margin on recycling the left-overs from the main course.

Today, incidentally, is the 8th of October and I'm now 43. Alarming but true. I don't FEEL 43. Even if the mirror tells me that I am. Who looks at mirrors anyway?

21/04/01 Out of Africa

Well, there's not much other news (as far as I'm aware, at least) so you're going to get my African diary. All those of you (and I know who you are) who thought I'd explode were in fact wrong: I really loved my time there and I'll be going back as soon as I can (ie whenever Michel will pay for it).

Cameroun 04/4

Traditional trip from Hell, starting with getting up around 3am to get to Satolas with my 40 kg of luggage so as to catch the first leg of the flight, through to Brussells. Where we spend a fascinating 3 hours waiting in the terminal for our boarding call, followed by an even more interesting hour or so on the tarmac whilst the luggage of a non-showing passenger is identified and unloaded. (Which means, of course, unloading and then reloading the entire contents of the hold.) At least it's comforting to know that some things really are eternal, and airline food hasn't improved while my back was turned.

I still think Sabena's a bit cheap for dishing out plastic cutlery with the food, though. (SABENA apparently stands for "Such A Bloody Experience, Never Again)

Happily surprised to find that the cellphone works (more or less) in Yaoundé so we're able to call the hotel from the airport to find that, as usual, Michel is totally disorganised and we have to get from A (the airport) to B (the hotel) under our own steam, which we do in 3 taxis. Despite being ripped off by the porters who latched onto us as soon as we got into the terminal. (I say "ripped off" but it's not really true, they did get us around - rather than through - customs. Which, considering the contents of our luggage, was probably just as well. Otherwise we'd still be in the terminal.) Odd personality - you get quoted a price, haggle and get abused, but once things are alll settled there's no problem. Odd to me, anyway. Temperature around 28° and humidity 75%, so not too bad: better than Hong Kong anyway.

Dinner at a Camerounais restaurant - ate crocodile, which is fairly gelatinous (rather like lamb shank, really) then back to the hotel to squash a few cockroaches before bedding down ready for tomorrow's trip, when we leave at the crack of dawn (about 9am, to be exact) for Nyos.

Cameroun 05/4

11am and a minibus of the aptly named Vatican Express Cab Co (our friendly motto: "Honk when you hit someone") delivers us - more by luck than good management - to a meeting with the Minister - no less! - of science + research where I for one discover that the mission was cancelled on Saturday, only to be reinstated this morning. Much pointing of fingers and slinging of mud trying to establish that no-one's actually responsible for the total lack of organisation. The current plan is to get as far as possible this afternoon in the minibus and RDV with a couple of 4x4 pickups tomorrow for the last leg of the trip.

The road code is fairly rudimentary: honk like mad just before overtaking or arriving at an intersection and then - insofar as the vehicle allows - accelerating.

Arrive after the easy part of the trip - 400 km to Boufassam. Only a couple of hundred km to go. Incredibly lush countryside, with unbelievably red soil. Numerous police road-blocks (we were advised not to travel after dark): the country won "Most Corrupt in the World" twice running a couple of years ago.

Cameroun 06/4

Bafoussam looks like a town which started on a building spree about 30 years ago and then abandoned it 6 months later. The Hotel President, where we spent the night, is a monumental pile, plonked as if by accident in a shantytown, which has evidently never had a cent spent on upkeep and which is slowly crumbling away as a result. Enormous rooms with a 4m stud, electrical cables festooning the ceiling, and only cold water in the shower. (Although oddly enough there was hot water in the handbasin, the plumber must have been a twisted genius of sorts.) At least the flush toilet did, although going on the evidence that must have been an intermittent state of affairs.

Heading further north now, up into the highland plateau where the tea and coffee plantations are. (At least you can get a decent cup of coffee here - in fact it's likely to be better than in France.) It's also the muslim zone, so there are little lath and red mud mosques every couple of kilometers.

The interior of the minibus is adorned with various uplifting slogans like "no conversation with the driver", "no fighting" and "no vomiting" but the one I like the most reads "do not send your head outside".

Climbing higher and higher now, towards 2000m, and we left the tarmac behind a couple of hours ago. This high up there's less planting and more pastoralism, with the emphasis on impressively-horned cattle.

We perhaps made a mistake in leaving today as it turns out that the President (can't remember if he's one of the "for-life" variety or if he gets ceremoniously re-elected every few years) has sent the PM off up here to see exactly how the money allocated to get the road up to Nyos has been mis-spent or diverted, and as a result we're permanently held-up behind the ministerial motorcade. Still, we've hopes of making it to camp before nightfall.

Cameroun 07/4

Not yet 11am and already I've been up for 5 hours. They believe in early rising around here. Bloody frightful. The good news is that there is a shower, with a magnificent view over the lake, but I'll spare you the sordid details of the other toilet facilities.

Still, I don't regret coming for one instant. We arrived just after sunset to see the jet of water rising against the mountains behind: a really fantastic sight. So far this morning I've shot off 3 rolls of film, so when someone next makes the trip into the village for supplies I'll have to see if they can't pick up another half dozen. I'll have to keep some in reserve for the return trip, if only to get some shots of the termite mounds to keep Malyon happy.

Brings home to you just what a poor, disorganised mess this country is when you realise that not far from us there's a little army barracks, with two lorries. A month ago one of the lorries broke down, and two weeks ago the brakes failed on the other one and it went into a ravine, where it rests to this day. Despite repeated calls to the MoD in Yaoundé they still haven't got any spare parts, the military base 3 hours away has neither the spare parts nor the money to buy them, and they're dependent on the camp here to send them food from time to time. Occasionally they send someone out with a Kalashnikov to get some dietary supplements in the game reserve. (The captain of the garrison stopped by tonight - informally dressed in a shocking-pink tracksuit - and was very pleased to find that there was freshly killed pig on the menu.)

What's surprising is that there are still a lot of serious people who really want to make the country work - "like a normal country" - and who work their arses off just trying to do their jobs so that it does, somehow, carry on.

Cameroun 09/4

Well, after two days hard work I've finally got communication sort of established between the station and my PC via a pair of packet radio modems. It's not particularly reliable, and certainly not fast, but it works sometimes. Things haven't been helped by the fact that my HP is not 100% hardware compatible with a standard PC (from HP I suppose that's not really a great surprise) and the radio modems aren't really transparent either. Never mind, I've only wasted a day or so.

Our two septuagenarian geologists are in heaven. They came over to check on the natural dam at one end of the lake to see if it was likely to give way in the near future and, if so, what could be done about it. The elder of the two, Pierre, is tall, skinny and has a habit of going into long rambling discursions of an academic nature. Very nice chap. Anyway, he spent much of yesterday abseiling around a 50m cliff, apparently just for the fun of it. Despite a bad back and an iffy hip.

To add to the pleasure they've found a cave under the dam, which they plan on exploring tomorrow. With an open invitation to any other members of the team who might feel like coming along. I think I shall pass - speleology is not one of my hobbies.

We've been very lucky with the weather so far: apart from the two days on the road we've had no rain. According to the hyper-precise temperature gauge I have beside me the temperature at 19:15 is 26.1742° so during the day it doesn't get much over 32 I suppose, and at 1100m the humidity is supportable. And although there's no shortage of insect wildlife there don't seem to be any of the biting or stinging variety. The ants get to about 25mm long though, and I've just seen a beautiful moth, snow-white all over except for a fluorescent red face.

Cameroun 10/4

The food is excellent: mainly European-style but with a local flavour (much of it due to the heavy use of chili peppers). The vegetable of choice is either potato chips or fried plantain - a bit reminiscent of kumara, really. Lots of fruit - bananas, mangos, watermelon, pineapples and oranges - and plenty of wine (Château Cardboard from Spain), beer and whisky. Alas, no gin, and definitely no dry vermouth.

I do find it difficult getting used to being waited-on all the time, though. There's one guy whose job it is to pour the coffee at breakfast, another who hands the bread around, yet another couple who serve the main course and then there's the beer gofer. If I so much as sit down after grabbing a beer and start swigging from the bottle Pius yells "Trevor, no! Marco! A glass for Mr. Trevor!" (This is Anglophone Cameroun, remember.) I'd better not adapt too well or I'll have problems at home.

A couple of demented toads seem to have the idea that our home is theirs and spend much of the evening hopping about amongst the tents looking for a place to call their own.

Cameroun 13/4

Well, it's been a busy few days. After complaining bitterly about the lack of rain I now have to eat my words as the thunderstorms started on the 11th. The clouds just sort of sneak up on you and before you know it it's pelting down - horizontally, if you're unlucky. As I said, we had the first one Wednesday afternoon, and when I got up on Thursday and went in to the tent which serves as a computer room I found it awash. No harm done, fortunately, and at least I now know how to batten down the hatches properly (or whatever it is you do with a tent - there are lots of toggles and things involved).

Marcus, our chef, has really excelled himself lately. Pierre was getting quite attached to one of the camp cockerels - upset when it turned up on the menu as a rather nice coq au vin. Preceded, may I say, by hedgehog in a slightly piquant sauce. First time I've ever eaten that, and I must say it was rather nice. Then yesterday, as Michel Halbwachs, the guy who runs the show, had to head back to France, Marcus arranged a special treat - spit-roasted kid. First thing in the morning there are a couple of little goats gambolling around and bleating happily, come lunchtime there's one goat less and a goat-skin drying in the sun. It was excellent, but I must admit that the tripe and "organ" soup which preceded it wasn't really to my taste.

Tomorrow is a big day: the villagers from Upper Nyos (they're the ones who escaped the '86 disaster) have all been invited for a look-around to see how the project is getting on, and then in the evening we're all invited to the village for a party. That should be interesting. But it doesn't leave us much time, unfortunately, as on Monday we have to head back to Yaoundé for a meeting on Tuesday with a couple of ministers (science and mines, I think) to give a progress report, and then we fly out on Wednesday. I'll be sorry to leave, really. At least with luck I'll have time to pick up some presents for the kids and Margo - I have some very interesting rocks (pyroclastic splatters from the eruption which formed the lake about 100000 years ago, and a rather pretty but very fragile olivite occlusion in a basalt node which Pierre tells me came up from about 70km below the surface) but I get the feeling that they might not be enough.

Anyway, I'd better get back to work: it's already nearly 11 and I need to test the Inmarsat link again as Michel is really looking forward to starting the thing going by pressing a couple of keys on his PC in Chambéry.

Cameroun 14/4

Well, it's getting on for mid-day, which means I've been up and working for at least 5 hours now. Better put "working" between quotes, because the better part of the morning was taken up with speechifying and visits.

First time, I must say, that I've heard a speech in pidgin, and rather to my surprise I managed to understand a reasonable amount of it. I know I got introduced as a New Zealander who "makes much-big programs for the machines" but I got a bit lost after that.

It was clear that the people had a rather touching faith in the mission that Michel has set up here, and that they really believe that the place will become safe to live in again - I just hope they haven't overestimated our capacities and underestimated the time it'll take. That said, things seem to be going in the right direction, even if the time is getting rather short.

Anyway, I'm looking forward to tonight, even though some of our hosts have interesting skin diseases. And in passing I seem to have established a small legend in the area: no-one here has seen a cigar before. So apparently a certain reputation is going to precede me tonight.

Cameroun 16/4

A few last-minute changes of plan meant that we didn't leave yesterday, as originally foreseen. Instead we leave sometime tomorrow, so I don't know how much time I'll have for shopping at Yaoundé. Didn't make it to the village fête on Saturday either, which pisses me off rather more. But it's true that the 5-hour hike there and back might have been a bit much.

On top of it our working time has been rather curtailed by the weather, which has turned foul. Yesterday it pissed down for about 4 hours, and today we've been treated to a spectacular storm. We were actually out on the lake this morning, doing a few last-minute checks, and decided to head back to shore to pick up a few bits and pieces that'd been forgotten - just as well really as when we arrived the surf was well and truly up and the raft in the lake was rocking back and forth like a rubber duckie in the bath. Hopefully things will calm down a bit soon.

And if it warmed up as well that'd be nice, as I've no great objection to a cold shower when the ambient temperature is up in the 30s, but at 20° I start to squeal a bit.

Cameroun 17/4

After 3 hours in the 4x4 here we are at the Hotel Central Bar-Dancing Complex, as its sign proudly proclaims it to be, at Nkambé. The ambience is something special - 20W red and green lightbulbs in the bar, no running water and decidedly flaky electricity in the rooms. And a very evil-looking black hen perched above the main door. Still, it's somewhere to crash for the evening.

Another of those places that were built in better days and have been disintegrating ever since: the door to my room (rotting around the edges) has - rather optimistically - a lock, but the key I've got fits the padlock which has been retrofitted. And as luck would have it there's actually grass growing in the toilet bowl, so its chances of actually working in the near future (like, tomorrow morning) seem remote.

An eventful day all round, anyway. Went out to the raft in the middle of the lake this morning to check up on the system, settled myself comfortably,opened up the housing and plugged in the CRT and keyboard and went to work. Finished a few minutes later and went to unplug everything, then said to myself "Funny, I could have sworn that the cabling on that flow-meter moved. Must be water pressure." Then I took a second look, which is when I realised that most cables don't have scales. Very very quickly closed the housing again and headed back to shore to find someone whose job description involves snake removal.

It turned out to be 1.5m long and somewhat venomous, so I'm glad I called the experts in. Not really something my time at university equipped me for. Must have been the day for wildlife, as there was a dead wild dog being exhibited around the kitchen shack when I came up - a big ugly brute, with the colouration (and somewhat of the build) of a Tasmanian devil.

Despite that we did what needed to be done and left, even though it was at 19:00 rather than 13:00 as "planned". But I've come to realise that planning in Africa has not yet been elevated to the status of an art-form, and tends to be more of a none-too pious hope rather than a definite statement about the future.

Anyway, the lights are flickering more urgently than ever and we've a long drive ahead of us tomorrow before arriving somewhere we can shower before catching the flight home, so I'm off for a quick slash in the courtyard (NOT going to use the "urinary", I'm afraid to) before turning in for the night. Just hope the bedbugs aren't too active.

Cameroun 18/19-4


Well, from Nkambé to Yaoundé is a good 12-hour drive in a Vatican Express minibus, not counting the stopover at Bamenda. Not that I regret that, at least we got to eat lunch and I managed to buy some material for Margo. Just going from the highlands to the lowlands makes an amazing difference: down here it's definitely tropical, I've already seen a baboon squatting in someone's banana patch, a toucan perched smugly up in a eucalyptus and a flight of beautifully vivid neon-green and red parrokeets. Only five police roadblocks so far, and we still have hopes of arriving in time for all of us to be able to shower before catching the plane.

So much for the shower. Another couple of roadblocks delayed us enough that we arrived at Yaoundé at about 9pm, and we decided to head off directly to the airport - wisely as it turned out, as it took 2 hours to go through the various boarding formalities. As usual 20 porters descended on us even before the minibus had stopped, but we've learnt a thing or two: do NOT hire them all, but you MUST hire one or else you'll never make it to the boarding gate. You'll always find yourself at the back of some line or another - unless of course yu pay someone military to get you through. Whatever, we made it, with half an hour to spare, and what I am really looking forward to is a good gin and tonic, maybe a cognac and then, on arriving home, a really long hot shower. The last one (cold) was on Tuesday morning and I feel greasy!

Now on the Sabena flight from Brussells back to Lyon. Still unshowered and smelly, and as they only let you sleep for about 3 hours on the night flight over and I managed to rack up an hour's sleep at Nkambé that makes 4 hours sleep in 3 days, which isn't really that much. On top of it I uncautiously ate the bread roll that counts as breakfast on Sabena flights and it is really twisting my guts: I might finally find a use for some of those pills the quack prescribed for me before going over.

Still, and rather unexpectedly, I found Cameroun a beautiful place with wonderful people: I'm glad I went and I'll happily go back again: the next time (in June, maybe) I'll do on my own time (as it were) and Michel will just have to pay transport and upkeep. Having seen what the Camerounais are willing to do, I find it difficult to do less.

Trevor.

26/03/01 I HATE camping!

17-03-2001

Back again so soon? I'm afraid so.

Finally moved into the modern world and the faithful mouse has been replaced by a trackball - my right shoulder was starting to play up after a couple of hours mousing around so I though it was time to try something that required less movement. Once you get used to it, it really is quite good. Luckily I've a friend who buys one of everything new that comes out, so once I've finished with the Microsoft trackball I can try the Logitech one ( which does feel a bit better in the hand, but costs about 400F instead of 150F) and go on until I find something I'm really comfortable with and am willing to pay for. But I think the mouse is definitely superannuated, and can take a well-earned retirement. (For info, Tom, the list price here is 159F or something under $50, so if you bought one "on special" at $50 I think someone's getting ripped off.)

In two weeks time I head off to Cameroun for a couple of weeks - to some godforsaken hole called Lake Nyos, near the border with Nigeria. It's a crater lake, and carbon dioxide comes out from the lake floor and dissolves in the water, to such an extent that at 200m below there's something like 15 litres of CO2 dissolved in each litre of water. Unfortunately this is not, long-term, an equilibrium situation - the last time (in 1986, I think) it went out of balance half the lake bubbled up into the air and then godnose how many litres of CO2 went rolling down the slopes of the mountain and suffocated 1600 people. So a client of ours had the bright idea of sticking a pipe down from top to bottom of the lake, inducing a low-pressure zone at the bottom (which causes the CO2 to come out of solution and go bubbling up the pipe in a self-sustaining reaction) to slowly bleed off the gas. So far so good, and it's all in place and apparently working perfectly (he's created the world's first 45m high soda fountain) but none of the remote monitoring equipment seems to be working.

Which is why I get my yellow-fever shots in a week's time and then fly out to a place so primitive that the only phone link is the Inmarsat satellite phone that got set up so that we could monitor the operation from France, spending a day or so in a 4x4 getting there and then ten days with no toilet facilties and a tin bucket with holes punched in the bottom as an excuse for a shower . Oh, and sleeping in a tent. I absolutely, totally, HATE that! At least in theory it's not a malaria-risk zone, but I think I'll take the tablets anyway. As I've no wish to end up with egg all over my face I shall go armed for bear, which means that in the next few weeks I shall have to buy a portable, install all the necessary software on it, and in between time try to set up in the office a close approximation of what there is out in the wilderness so I can do some more testing. Once happy with that all the hardware will get packed up and accompany me over, which means that my excess baggage bill is likely to be alarming.

Fortunately it falls in the school holidays, so Margo and the kids might head up to Pesselière while I'm away. Jeremy had two things to say - the first was "Can I come too?" and the second, after a bit of thought, was "Mummy, I'm not going to be eating nothing but pasta for two weeks." Food is taken seriously in this household.

22-03-01

I went off to see the quack and he told me, very reassuringly, that Cameroon is classed 4 on the 1 to 4 scale for malaria ie it is prevalent and resistant to most drugs, which means I'm on Larium starting one week before leaving and carrying on 4 weeks after returning. The accompanying note states that "sudden mood changes and attacks of vertigo are not unknown, if they persist see a doctor", which is nice. I also have my tetanus, typhoid, polio, diptheria and hepatitis vaccines to get up to date: as he said, I won't be sitting down for a while. And in the same line I have tablets for runny diarrhoea and stubborn constipation, just hope I don't get both at the same time. His final words of advice were "ne fréquenter pas les filles" ie resist the urge to sleep with whatever moves, which I thought was very thoughtful of him.

Whlist I'm away Margo will look at taking the kids and dog up to Pesselière for a week, helping clean up. Ian and Marie have had more work done on the place, including major masonry work, which means (if our experience is anything to go by) that there'll be dust everywhere. Which is not, in itself, unusual for Pesselière, but never mind, Marie has decided that enough is enough.

For the past few days we've been having torrential rain and the usual at-risk zones have once again been flooded, with the usual cries for compensation. The Isère isn't far from the top of its banks, and our stream is running full tit (and very dirty) which doesn't stop Kelly from going and wading through it. The worst was last night, when the wind was strong enough to wake me up about 4am and wonder whether we would still have all our chimney-pots in the morning, but the place was still intact when we got up. From now on it's supposed to dry out a bit, which'd be nice: I'm really looking forward to the first BBQ of the year.

What I'm not looking forward to is the annual ceremony of "dusting off the lawnmower", because as it's been so wet and warm everything is growing like mad, including the grass. This weekend we'll have to sprinkle petrol over the pile of branches from the tilleul we had topped so that they will burn, in the hope that the weekend after we can rent a rotary hoe and go over that patch of wilderness so that it's ready to get grass sown on it while there's still time.

24-03-01

Well, we tried that today - after sprinkling vast quantities of every inflammable liquid to hand (gin supplies excepted) over it the heap still refused to do more than smoulder sullenly for half an hour, and the lawnmower wouldn't work. So the grass gets a week's respite from the blades whilst the mower's off getting serviced, and I think that our plans for grass-sowing are just going to have to be put on hold until my return, when hopefully the wood will be a bit drier and more amenable to immolation. Which pushes things back to the end of April/beginning of May, which is not really the best time for starting a lawn, but there you are. As Blackadder once remarked to Percy, "Once again the devil throws up on my eiderdown".

At least after a week's anxiety my portable finally got delivered yesterday - I was starting to get worried that the supplier's website was a complete tissue of lies and that rather than having 34 of the little beasts in stock they actually had twice that many on order, and that I was going to turn up in Cameroon with an abacus and a picture of a computer cut out from a catalogue. But I'm now the proud (and relieved) owner of a little HP Omnibook xe3, onto which I shall have to (after my return) install an English version of Windows. But for the time being I can live with it in Frog, and I've no wish to get halfway through the installation process only to discover that it requires some warped Hewlett-Packard-specific variety of Windows which is only available by snail mail from their service centre in Mongolia.

Anyway, our two quadrupeds seem to have settled into a reasonably peaceful cohabitation, which involves Kelly trying to lick Tess' bum at every opportunity (godnose why, it's daggier than a back-country sheep back there - maybe that is why) and Tess slicing her with a claw when she feels she's had enough. Kelly still has only two brain cells to rub together but she's a good-hearted dog: she'll obey me (when she feels like it) but her mother is Margo. She follows Margo about the house, and should ever she go out - even if only for 5 minutes - on the return it's as if she'd disappeared for a year.

And at 2am tomorrow I shall have to get up and rush about the house setting all the clocks forward an hour - yes folks, daylight saving again. It will be so nice to have that extra useable bit of daylight.

Back in three weeks -

Trevor & Margo