A Night on the Tiles

Fuck you, penguin

2009-10-19T22:36:00.004+02:00

From "Fuck you, penguin"

French for penguin is "pingouin".

Except if you call a penguin a "pingouin" in France all the french people will shout at you and tell you that what you are looking at is not a "pingouin" but a "manchot".

They are very pedantic about it, "pingouins" come from the arctic and are auks and can fly, and there is only 1 species left. What everyone else on the entire planet calls a penguin, those tuxedoed bastards, come from the Antarctic, can't fly and are "manchots".

Now put "manchot" into google language tools and it will tell you penguin. Put "pingouin" into google language tools and it will tell you . . . penguin.

Bloody French.

Don't Re-install Windows

2009-10-04T13:20:00.002+02:00

Unless you have a clue.

I only have a bit of a clue.

This old Dell has been running slower and slower. It's hard drive would chatter away while it figured out what to do. I'd sit in front of the little hourglass slowly going nuts.

Over the last 4 years so much crap has been installed and removed off this poor PC that it doesn't know its arse from its elbow, so I thought a clean install would make things sweet.
I slapped an external hard drive onto it, backed up the whole shebang, and then rebooted it in DELL mode an chose the re-install option.

The good news is that it is much happier.

The bad news is that the back up did me no good whatsoever. Sure, I've got my data, but it's the software that's a pain in the arse.
From the new config I had to re-install the various SPs for Windows XP, download AVG antivirus and remove Macafee. Remove Microsoft works, and discover I don't have Office install CD. Download Java virtual machine, Download Vuze, rip a copy of Office off Pirate Bay and install.

Biggest pain in the arse is all my old mail is incorporated in Outlook Express. Apparantly what I should have done is export all my mail first so that I can import it back into my newly installed Outlook Express.

So, mixed success.

Last Night on the Tiles

2009-07-02T19:34:00.004+02:00

That's it. It's all over.

I've found a new job near Angouleme, starts Monday 6th July.

No more shifts, no more weekends missed. And with le Tour starting Sunday that's just as well.

It's all a bit strange because I've been working there for nearly 5 years, and the tile factory pretty much defines who I am in France. Now that's all finished and a new adventure starts.

My last nightshift coincided with a couple of colleagues' birthdays. So we decided to have a BBQ during the midnight break. I brought cider, Charentaise prunr tarts and the cups and plates, Stephane provided the saucisses and merguez, and Jean-Francois brought tyhe bread, cognac & schweppes and wine.

Here we have all the guys from "E" Team:

This is me giving my old faithfull press Mulder a last farewell caress. Comment elle etait capricieuse, la saloppe!

And the "Loubert Quatre" team: Pascal: responsable, Didier: transbordeur, and Stephane: attrapeur like me. Pascal, Didier & I have been together the whole 5 years. They have worked at the factory for over 20 years.

20 words for snow

2009-06-07T20:23:00.002+02:00

People often say that the Esquimeaux have 20 words for snow.

I've never been particularly impressed by that, after all; the English probably have 20 words for rain:
cat-and-dog weather, cloudburst, condensation, deluge, drencher, drizzle, fall, flood, flurry, hail, heavy dew, liquid sunshine, mist, monsoon, pour, pouring, precip, precipitation, raindrops, rainfall, rainstorm, sheets, shower, showers, sleet, spate, spit, sprinkle, sprinkling, stream, sun shower, torrent, volley*, wet stuff, window washer

In English there also exists these cunning things called adjectives, so in effect there's no need to have a word for every nuance of something because you can qulify the noun with adjectives: heavy rain, driving rain, cold rain etc.

Anyway, what got me onto all this is that I love andouillettes: sausages made from pig offal. I love them, but Fiona can't stand the smell (they smell like pigshit) and I'm only allowed to cook them outside on the barbeque.

So I was reading the list of ingredients on the packet and it's not complicated. Pig's stomach, pig skin, and "chaudins". Illoked up chaudins in the dictionary because I didn't recognise the word and found:

En France, en vue de son utilisation en boyauderie, le côlon de porc est divisé en deux parties; le chaudin, boyau bosselé, épais, tendre, rose clair, et le suivant, non bosselé, lisse, tendre, rosé ou blanc

"In france, because of it's use in sausage stuffing, pig intestines is divided in 2 parts: the large intestine, bumpy casing, thick, tender, light pink, and the small intestine, not lumpy, smooth, tender, pink or white"

That's the French for you: 20 words for pigs intestines.

The mother of all storms!

2009-05-14T13:50:00.004+02:00

After another day of wasted effort on my part: I spent a day spraying grass and weedkiller around the stock yard only to have it all washed away in the mother of all storms.

Those pics, and the following is translated from Charente Libre, the local paper. I had to pay a Euro for the benefit of downloading the artcle.

An apocalyptic vision! 1000 hectares of vineyards in the Cognac shredded and Rouillac. Hailstones three cms in size in drifts in much of the Charente. A land that looks like a shroud. Roads turned green with shredded vegetation. Lights broken. Cars damaged. Houses flooded. Roofs blown away. Fleurac, Mérignac, Foussignac, Vaux Rouillac, Rouillac devastated. The storm swept the Charente from west to east between 17:30 and 20:00 yesterday. A storm of unprecedented violence.
"I've never seen that in thirty years. I crossed the courtyard tee-shirt to go to secure the vehicles. It ripped the skin from my arm. The power was impressive. The hail damaged the bonnets of the cars" said Alain Reboul, a wine grower in Fleurac, who has lost its 15 hectares of vines.
He finds himself with five of his colleagues at the Bois-Noble at Fleurac. The facts are bitter. "And the prunings are destroyed. We can do nothing for two years. We must wait for nature to resume its cycle. This is catastrophic" he said, still in shock.
Anger was mixed with dismay. "It's 80 to 90% of our income that has gone. We have already lost everything with diversification. We lose everything with the weather. "The same thoughts come back. There is talk of huge damage not covered by insurance."

Technicien à la Coopérative agricole de la Charente (ACC), Jean-Paul Dupouy attempts to take stock. He puts forward some figures "Six million, just for the vineyard. But there are also oilseed rape, wheat, the barley, sunflowers, which are destroyed."
The specialist had never seen a such vast area, stretching down from St. Cybardeaux touched.

Rofs made in Everite fell to pieces. The Center for adults with disabilities in the Gachère is plunged into darkness. The hairdresser at Marcillac Lanville a foot in the water. The market square at Rouillac green with sheared leaves
"Outside, it is like in January in the snow. On the roads, it is slippery" said a resident who does not believe his eyes.
A house collapses in Soyaux
Having attacked the Cognac, the storm continued its progress towards the south of the department and Angoulême before slipping late in the evening to the east and Charente Limousine. "The hailstones were as big as pigeon eggs. It was an unusual violence between 19.30 and 20:00" said a Rupificaldien. Telephone lines were cut. At Mornac, hail went through the roof. Smashed computers. Glass gave way. Around the church, the flood.
At Touvre, a few hundred meters away, the Montbron road is blocked by a meter of mud The council had to call out the backhoe excavators.
At Soyaux, firefighters broke down a home cut through by lightning at Mimosas Close.The first floor has fallen. The occupants, who were watching television, got out on time.
At Angoulême, La Grand Font tunnel was closed. Floods prohibit access.
At Villebois-Lavalette, residents of the old people's home took refuge on the first floor. There were forty centimeters of water at the ground floor. At Roumazières, the roof of the car dealership collapsed under the hail. The gardens are crushed. "Tomatoes, lettuce, potatoes, there's nothing. It has just started to calm down. "It was crazy" said a resident at 22:00.
The storm has flashed into the heart of the night. The stuff of nightmares

Voyante Véronique

2009-05-12T18:32:00.002+02:00

Taureau
Confusion reigns in your household today because Saturn is ascending in the sixth house, and the Moon is dominant.
Confusion also reigns when you try and speak french because your accent is so shit.
Marteau, monteau, moto, mouton, menton and matelot all sound a bit similar to the English ear. But unless you want to try say that you hammered a sailor on the chin while wearing a sheepskin coat on a motorbike, best practice first.

More Jobsworthyness

2009-05-11T16:41:00.002+02:00

After the debacle with the gate our next mission was to paint the inside of the mould workshop. We took most of the first morning preparing the site, moving stuff away from the walls, sweeping out etc.
We wee supplied with 4 10 litre pots of white paint, 3 tired rollers and some cheap paintbrushes. The walls we were to paint were unfinished grey concrete blocks. when this workshop had been built, instead of plastering it or painting it, the machinery and stuff had been moved into the unfinished room, the water pipes, power lines, enormouse water resevoirs put in place in front of the unfisnished walls. As a result the room has always been dim and dingy because of the raw grey walls.
The unfinished cement just drank our paint. I'd dip the roller in the paint, roll it down half a metre and ther'd be no paint left.
I tried diluting the paint. It rolled onto the wall better, but the grey came thru and the coverage was too poor.
Because of all the pipework, machinery and elecric cabling we were buggering about with paint brushes in the areas where the rollers wouldn't fit. By the afternoon we had painted a small corner of the room and used a shit load of paint.
Once again the director came by and told us to stop. He got on his mobile and ordered some more paint, exterior stuff that should cover better. We packed up for the day.
I missed the next day because of leave and when I went back, the guys had got hold of 2 spray guns. What a difference! with the right tools you can really get a job done. We whipped thru the rest of the white paint and then went around again with a 2nd coat of the exterior paint to finish. the place looked much better.
After finishing we were told that some guys would be coming round with a high pressure water pistol to clean off the floors.
AFTER we'd painted the walls. the hose will blast crap all over the work we've done! Cart before horse again.
With the workshop painted and the sun shining it was time to retry the gate.
Now we are armed with spray guns, but the factory air lines won't reach the gate, so we wasted more time while a compressor was found.
A dinky 50 litre compressor, that couldn't keep up with the demand of 2 guns. So we took turns painting until we had run out of paint. The gat looked quit smart, all white and fresh.
Now, the hollow bars of the gate take water in the rain, andthen, full of water, in winter they freeze and it bursts the the bars. So our genius chef tells us to get a drill and pierce holes in the bottom of the bars to let the water escape.
We do so, and black, stinky water comes pouring out all over the undried paint of the gate leaving it stained and nasty.
The cart firmly attached to the front of the horse again.
Ils sont même pas capable d'organiser une fête dans une brasserie is the English expression which doesn't translate too well in French. Un bordel de merde is the French phrase that doesn't translate at all into English

Have a go . . .

2009-05-10T20:40:00.002+02:00

Am-I-Dumb.com - How Dumb Are You?

Impossible-Quiz.com - Fun Hard Quiz

The quiz setters are USAian so cut them some slack. BTW the number on a bottle or Rolling Rock is 33. Apparantly everyone in the world knows that.

Lazy Workshy Jobsworths

2009-05-10T10:31:00.002+02:00

And now I'm one of them.

Since the factory has stopped production we are all supposed to be on maintenance duties. I've been assigned to the "environment" team, painting gates and fences and stuff.

Everyone has an attitude of "don't rush to finish anything, they'll only find you something else to do"

In our little team of three, our first assignment was to paint the big steel automatic gate at the front of the factory. It was pretty rusty and nasty. We would first have to get rid of the rust and the flaky old paint.

Clock on at 8:00 am. Meet at the maintenance yard 8:05. Put the cafetière on and talk bollocks while the coffee comes thru. Fill the wheelbarrow with rags, gloves, paintbrushes, paint, sandpaper and traipse down to the gate. 8:30

Boss decides we need mini angle grinders to get the rust off. We stand around in the sun while he goes off to get the machines. 9:00 he's back. Hooray! We have nifty grinders to get the rust off. But no disks, so we do some more sun bathing while he goes off looking for disks. 9:15 and hooray, we have disks, but no extension cable, so moer sunbathing while he goes off to find one.
Just before 10:00 and we finally have everything we need to get started, but 10:00 is coffee time so we traipse off back to the maintenance yard to put the cafetière back on ...

By the end of the day we had de-rusted half of the gate. This was a Friday. It rained all week-end and rusted up the work we had done. The following monday saw the same chaos and us runing back and forth between the gate and sheltere everytime it started to rain.

The paint was water-based white paint for metal, but it was cheap nasty stuff that even after 3 coats still wasn't covering properly. The factory director (called "Mickey" because he always wears a safety helmet with integral ear muffs that look like Mikey Mose ears) finally told us to stop wasting time and money with this rubbish paint and find something else to do.

So they decided that we would paint the inside of the mould workshop. And thus started another week of farce ...

La Fesse

2009-05-08T18:17:00.002+02:00

There's a comic on the French radio station Rire et Chansons called Jean-Yves LaFesse. His schtick is telephone gags. I heard this one the other day and it had me laughing out loud.
He's making out to be an old lady hard of hearing and he's phoned these people pretending to be a friend of the family. As she mishears the conversation she gets at cross purposes about the health of the couples' mother and as they try and explain it gets worse and worse.
When they say "Elle n'a rien" She mishears "rein" and thinks the mother has kidney trouble. When they say that there has been no "accident" she pics up on "dent" and thinks the mother has problems with her teeth. "rien de grave" gets misheard for "greffe" or graft. And finally, as the woman on the phone breaks down with laughter Madame Moisan thinks she's crying.
Have a listen, it'll be good for your French.

Trouble at t'mill

2009-05-08T16:53:00.002+02:00

The economic crisis continues to bite.

The factory's stock yard is nearly full of tiles and we aren't selling enough. So We stopped all productopn on the 24th April and will ot start again until the 13th May.

The stoppage is no doubt linked France's tax system whereby companies are taxed on their stock. That's right, their stock is taxable. In June. So the bean counters want the stock as low as possible at the end of May. This is also the reason why we keep so few spare parts. Those parts would be stock and thus taxable. The companies that make the parts don't want to keep them either because then they'd be paying the tax. As a result, large portions of France's stock is permanantly hidden "in transit".

Another reason for the bean counters shutting down the factory now is that May has 2 long weekends. By putting all the production staff onto day shifts the company doesn't have to pay out the extra dosh for the shifts that would have worked on the public holidays.

To give them some credit tho, at least no one's been laid off. Yet. We've spent the last 2 weeks cleaning and generally wasting time.

Ouch!!

2009-03-20T08:41:00.002+01:00

Here is today's lesson:
When using a chainsaw, always use two hands to hold the chainsaw, and wear gloves.

I should be relieved I didn't cut my bloody hand off. Quel con!

In full Spring mode, I had cut back a hazel nut tree and was using the chain saw to cut up the trunks and branches for firewood in a few years. My chainsaw is quite light, it has a 40 cm blade. Fiona was using shears to cut off the smaller branches, some of which we'll keep for kindling and the rest will be put on the bonfire.

I had developed the lazy and dangerous habit of sometimes holding a slimmer branch in my left hand and the chainsaws one-handed in my right, and using the chainsaw to trim off twiggy bits.

Suddenly the chain bit into the junction between twig and branch and pulled the branch (and my hand) into the chain.

Some choice swear words followed, followed by the immnse relief that my stupidity had only inflicted a small wound and not left me handicapped and unemployable.

Because I'm a craven coward I decided immediately that I didn't have to see a doctor. A doctor might decide to stitch it! Lots of thick dark blood pouring out of it convinced me that it was flushed clean. Obviously I wasn't going to be catching tiles at the factory the next day. I phoned in to tell them, and the next day saw the doctor to get signed off for a day or two. The toubib signed me off for a week! Happy days! The weather report says subshine through to Sunday.

I don't shower in your toilet...

2009-03-14T22:27:00.002+01:00

Jesus some people are disgusting pigs.
We had our monthly meeting last week. Every month the bosses get each tem in and discusses safety, quality and performance figures with them. It's actually quite useful. They often bring in examples of the tiles made by each team, and show what was wrong with them and how many had to be chucked in the bin. Anyway. At the end of this meeting we get to the stage of "any other business". All this stuff is written up on a board in front by the way, so we get a chance to read ahead, (and think up excuses). At the bottom of the board in the "other business" section is written. "some of the teams have a cleanliness issue in the showers" It turns out there is someone who is shitting in the showers.
wtf?
In the men's block there are five shower cubicles. What is this sick bastard thinking? If the showers weren't cleaned what was he going to do after day 5? The lady who cleans up is a lovely young woman from Madagascar. Another case of immigrants doing the work that locals think is beneath them. I swear this cleaner is the most valuable employee the factory has. This poor lady has to occasionally face a turd in the showers. Her job is rough enough having to clean the toilets and showers and change rooms as it is without facing the filth of some sick bastard.
I swear if I was management I'd get everyone to sign a paper agreeing that it's an instant sacking offence and then locate the bastard. It can't be too difficult. A check on the showers at the start of each shift will quickly identify which is the guilty team. Once that's done it should be easy to find out who, in that team, showers. I never use the work showers (people shit in them for a start!) I'd rather have a bath when I get home. It should be straightforward to narrow it down to a handful of people. From there, questioning colleagues and knowledge of people's character should be able to narrow it down further. What happens when the shitter goes on holiday? Suddenly the showers are clean for 3 weeks until he gets back? Disgraceful behaviour.
Back to this meeting. It's held in a little office near the kilns. And this time, the air conditioning wasn't working. And the meeting was held as we started our middday shift. So the team before us had just finished their meeting and had spent 45 minutes in this room before us. When we filed in the air was thick. There's your main problem I thought. Not that "some of the teams have a cleanliness issue in the showers" but more like some of the teams never seem to shower at all.

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lab.drwicked.com

La Créativité dans la Cuisine

2009-02-23T22:41:00.005+01:00

Vous prenez deux pommes de terre dans son filet. Vous prenez également un saucisse de Strasbourg. Il faut que les patates ne doivent pas trop grandes. Si leur peau est un peu ridée tant mieux.
Puis, vous faites de votre mieux pour être aussi créative que possible. Reflichissez bien des toutes les possibilités.

Moi, je me suis régalé.

Friday Caption Competition

2009-02-20T13:07:00.004+01:00

OK, I'll try and make this a regular thing. People come to visit, and they bring airport novels with them and leave them behind. I love books and can't bear to throw them away, even pulp fiction. Most end up at a book exchange.

But I'll send one to you if I like your submission for a caption to the photo below of our glorious statuesque president and his rather dowdy wife.

Give me a winning caption and If you win you can later email me your address and I'll send you your choice of one of the following books:
Alan Titchmarsh: Rosie
Jonathan Tropper: How To talk To A Widower

Sarah Harrison: The Grass Memorial

Marcia Willett: Winning Through

Andrew Goss: The Dark Tide

Hey? What? How's that for Red Hot? Big Prizes!! Fame and Fortune!
Remember you can always stipulate that I DO NOT send you one of these books if you find them all equally horrible. But Spring is on its way and you need a pot boiler to read while you sit in the deckchair with a hankie hat on your head.

Financial Crisis & The Tile factory

2009-02-19T09:55:00.002+01:00

"La Crise"

What with La Crise & the erosion of our "pouvoir d'achat" the french are more depressed and pessimistic than usual.

Pessimists! I swear, every time I go into the café to ask for advice or opinions all I get is "o la la" and hand waving. Like when I was after advice on installing an arial aireal aereal une antenne. But that can be another post another day.

Because of the big recession, nobody is building any new houses. So the demand for roof tiles has dropped. We have a yard full of product and sales are way down. So the factory has to cut production. But it would be mad to have staff hanging around being paid to do nothing, so the first thing they did was drop all the interim staff. That enabled them to cut a team.

We usually run with 5 teams and the presses turning 24/24. Last year on the accessories lines we even had a sixth team running during day shifts. In January it was announced that they need to lose 18 more people. If they can find these 18 through voluntary reduncancy, early retirement etc then there won't be any need to fire anyone.

The worrying thing for me is that I was one of the last people taken on full time contract. So if the operate a "last in, first out" system I'm at risk.

Rumour is that they already have eight or nine who have agreed to leave. In the meantime though I'm going to get the whole family down to the dentist and the optician to get the maximum out of the company's medical aid just in case I am axed.

The last few months I've been really hating this job, but there's nothing like the threat of "chomage" to make you appreciate employment.

The Bad Blogger

2009-02-17T10:46:00.003+01:00

So, no blog entries since 8th December.

This is due to:
a. Fuck all happens
b. Life
c. An excellent young forum of nice clever people: Come play with us.
d. French stuff that was novel and amazing 5 years ago has now become routine. I need to rediscover some innocence and a sense of wonder.

My apologies for all those who clicked and saw the same page week after week.

Stuff I have failed to blog on and will try and catch up:
New Years Eve at the salle des fetes
Comic Book festival at Angouleme
The Tile Factory rocked by the financial crisis

Yesterday I finally got the bike out and cycled to work. 3:00am and -4C degrees! Yow! Worse than the cold was my utter lack of fitness and wobbly legs. I'm in lycra & jacket right now about to jump on the bike to go to the midday shift (+5C degrees).

On the scales I am 87kilos (192lbs) Who ate all the pies? That puts me 20lbs overweight. Fuck, that's a lot of cycling and lettuce.

Pretentious book meme

2009-02-15T17:45:00.001+01:00

From nullifidian

This meme is all over the web.

Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.

I've tried to track this back to source, but failed. It sometimes leads to The Big Read, but I can't find the original claim for "the average adult will only have read 6 of the books on this list" I think it's bogus. I reckon the average is more like 25 and most decently read people will be in the 40 to 60 mark.

Anyway

Instructions:

1. Look at the list and put an ‘x’ after those you have read ENTIRELY
2. Add a ‘+’ to the ones you LOVE.
3. Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4. Tally your total at the bottom.

My reading list:

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte X
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee *
6. The Bible X
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell X
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller X
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks X+
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger X+
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald *
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens X
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X+
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh *
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X+
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame X+
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens X
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen X
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini *
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres *
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell X+
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy *
48. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan *
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert X
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons X
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth *
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley X
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez X
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X+
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov *
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road - Jack Kerouac *
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding X
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie *
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville X
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens X
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson X
75. Ulysses - James Joyce X
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath *
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray X
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro *
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton X
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad *
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks X+
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams X+
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole *
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute X
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare X
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

Total 42/100

Why is Lion Witch & Wardrobe doubled up by Narnia Chronicles?

I ain't tagging no-one. If you like give it a go.

Plane Stupid

2008-12-08T17:42:00.001+01:00

My email sent to Plane Stupid, the climate change protesters who caused havok at Stanstead this morning.

Subject: You bunch of cunts

You useless pricks. My kids are in tears because their mum didn't come home today.

I have to take time of work tomorrow and Wednesday to sort out sitters because I work nights. This involves me driving the 2 kids around instead of them catching the school bus home.

Petrol wasted.

My sister in law who drove my wife from Eastbourne to Stanstead will have to drive her back there again on Wednesday.

Lots of petrol wasted.

We have to pay for an alternate flight with Flybe. Money I don't have just before Christmas. Why do you think I work night shifts in a factory? As a hobby? It's because I need the money.

Money you have stolen from me in your stupid, pointless protest.

You useless, useless shits.

Stewart Paterson

La crise

2008-12-07T12:57:00.002+01:00

As the building sector has been hit by the financial crisis, the knock on effects have finally reached the factory floor.

The investment company that bought us out a few years ago bought iur 2 billion debt as well. Not a wise move in hindsight. PIA now has 11 billion of debt.

It's not just us though, our competitors ovef the road are closing for 4 weeks over Christmas and next year will close 2 lines, one for 7 months and another for 5 months.

Like us, their sales are down and they have a park full of stock, so they have to cut back on production.

We are going to axe one of our 5 teams. To do this without firing any full time employees we will first let our temps go (bye-bye Sad Sack) and then offer early retirement to the guys who are close to 60/65.
Apart from Sad Sack, who is a miserable little shit, it's a real tough break for the temps, to get the push just before Christmas. "Jouyeux Noël et allez-vous faire enculer".

The plan will then to run the factory with a different line closed each shift. That should enable us to run at a lower turnover, with fewer staff and do more maintenance on the lines that are not running. Hopefully we can ride the thing out. PIA have announced that they do no forecast any improvement until the end of 2010.

Chris Alden the PDG of Paribas Affaires Industrielles said "A little garlic and parsley really help to bring out the flavour of an omelette aux morilles"

To cheer us all up here is a sketch by Patrick Bosso about Marseilles grammar. The Marseilles accent is the french equivalent of geordie.

Apparantly in Marseilles grammar they replace the comma with "putain", the full stop with "enculé" and instead of the conditional tense to indicate uncertainty thay grab their balls "couilles"

enjoy.

Grammaire_marseillaise
envoyé par chopin_du_21

A plague

2008-12-06T09:58:00.003+01:00

The picture is from The Times

The suffering of Zimbabwe's people continues – and worsens. The Infectious Diseases Hospital, about five miles south of Harare on the pockmarked highway to South Africa, is the only government hospital still open in the capital. Between five and 15 cholera fatalities arrive at its mortuary every day.

"It's well past time for Robert Mugabe to leave," Condoleezza Rice, the outgoing secretary of state, said on Friday. "I think that is now obvious.
"If this is not evident for the international community, that it is time to stand up for what is right, I don't know what would be."
Miss Rice, speaking on a trip to Denmark, said it was up to Zimbabwe's neighbours to take action. "Frankly the nations of the region have to lead it," she said. "Southern African states should be the most responsible."
The country's cholera epidemic has given new impetus to condemnations of Mr Mugabe, who retains the presidency despite coming second in the last contested election, in March.

I get to vote again

2008-12-03T12:23:00.003+01:00

I've just voted in the 2008 élections prud'homales.

The what?

France has a unique system of industrial tribunals. Employees and employers vote to select their representatives in these tribunals. The elect are called "prud'hommes" - "valiant men".

The French industrial tribunals are different from other European systems because they are wholly elected and jointly-run courts. The 271 tribunals are composed of elected non-professional judges, half of whom are employers, and the other half paid employees.

They mainly decide pay claims, compensation, descrimination etc and apparantly tend to rule in favour of the employee. The elections are held every 5 years and the last time round turnout was poor, just over 30%. So there has been quite a bit of publicity this time.

I voted Force Ouvriere FO because they get the most done at the factory.

The French Minister for industrial relations said "Have you tried these croissants? They are magnifique". Bernard Thibault, the general secretary of the Confédération générale du travail (General Confederation of Labour, CGT) the largest of France's five main trade unions added "This year's oyster harvest has suffered from bad weather, but the No. 3 "Pepins" from Ile d'Oleron are delicieux"

Voyante Véronique

2008-11-28T15:38:00.003+01:00

Bélier
Now is not a good time to try and get to grips with all the different French words for bread.
Is it une baguette or un pain? Une miche or une ficelle or une boule? Should you ask for tradition or festival? Tranché or nature?
Best just to stick to your usual method in the boulangerie and just point at the bread you want going "oui, oui".

Stop Sylvia Browne

2008-11-02T12:08:00.004+01:00

I've made a few posts in the past about this nasty woman, and the stirling work done by Rob Lancaster at his Stop Sylvia Browne website.

It seems that while Rob has been ill, the domain for his original website had expired and GoDaddy sold it on without giving him the opportunity to renew.

Some slime bought the domain and has modified it to be full of woo and praise of the witch.

So I've updated all my links and this post is to inform and also to give Google more hits on the good address. So forgive this opportunity to use Sylvia Browne's name a few times with links to the correct domain.

Sylvia Browne is a nasty predatory woman who makes a lot of money by lying to emtionally vulnerable people. It is a shame there are no legal means of stoppping Sylvia Browne from doing this.

Plant Exchange

2008-10-30T15:21:00.005+01:00

Last weekend we went to our friends, Philippe & Christine Egalité, near Villebois Lavalette for their annual plant exchange. They've been doing this for thast 4 years, friends arrive with seeds and cuttings and cake. Everyone takes home new plants. It is such a fine plan.
Philippe & Christine are well whacky. He plays a pile of instruments and makes a living hosting workshops and going around schools showing kids how to make instruments ouit of anything, vegetables, junk, old tins, pipes.
His alter ego is "Père Cucu" who is a malignant forest gnome. As Père Cucu he puts on a pixie hat, a green beard and french blues, and clogs strapped to his knees as he kneels in front of the audience. So he appears dwarf height. It's horrible. His shows are excellent. he has produced a few cds which he has sold to friends. For you I have uploaded L'Oiseau Migrateur and Petit Cougna. It has an African sound because of the marimba.

L'Oiseau Migrateur
Petit Cougna
Mousse

In this pic unfortunately Phillippe has his back to us. You can see Fiona and our snake gourds over on the right.

Some textures

2008-10-27T16:06:00.002+01:00

From around the house and garden

Photos by Fi.

2008-10-22T13:50:00.002+02:00

"I would like to withdraw 5 million Euros in cash please"
"Yes, can I have 27 proofs of identity please?"

So there's this french block who's got The Fear because of the financial crisis, and he goes into his local branch of Credit Agricol to withdraw all his money. All five million.

As the article points out, there are logistical problems with his request: using 200 Euro notes, 1 million Euros weighs 10 kilos, so his haul would weigh 50 kilos. But then there's insurance. Brinks Mat are only insured up to 2 million per truck.

He could try taking it out of the cash machine, but with a limit of 200 Euros per day it would take him 68 years.

Incroyable, impensable, inimaginable mais vrai! En tout cas, de mémoire d'employé de banque, c'est du jamais vu au guichet d'une agence. Et pourtant, cela s'est passé en Charente il y a quelques jours. A Angoulême, dans une agence du Crédit agricole, un très gros client paniqué par la situation financière mondiale est venu exiger dans les plus brefs délais et en liquide tous ses avoirs et placements.

Rien de très exceptionnel en soi, si ce n'est le montant de la somme que représente ce retrait: 5 millions d'euros. Or ni le Crédit agricole, ni la Banque de France d'Angoulême ne disposent d'une telle somme. «C'est légal et possible techniquement. Nous avons les liquidités pour une telle opération, assure-t-on à la direction de l'antenne régionale de la Banque de France de Poitiers prête à effectuer l'opération. En revanche, il est hors de question que nous prenions les frais de ce transport exceptionnel à notre compte.»

C'est à l'établissement bancaire concerné de banquer. Et c'est là que le bât blesse dans l'histoire. Si un virement à un autre établissement ou un chèque remis en main propre ne pose pas de problème, le réaliser en liquide nécessite une logistique qui à un coût et non des moindres.

«En dix ans dans le transport de fonds, c'est la première fois que j'entends un pareil retrait pour un particulier», glisse-t-on au siège social parisien de la Brinks, la société spécialisée dans le transport de fonds. Pour autant, les responsables refusent de communiquer les conditions ultrasensibles d'un tel transfert. Il faudrait monter une véritable opération commando estiment des spécialistes.

Cinquante kilos de billets

dans trois camions

Cinq millions d'euros, ce n'est pas très volumineux. En coupure de 200 euros, il faut compter environ deux kilos pour 200 000 euros, dix kilos pour un million d'euros. Cinq millions, cela ferait donc 50 kilos de billets. La difficulté vient plus des assurances. En effet, les camions de la Brinks ne sont assurés qu'à une hauteur maximale de 2 millions d'euros transportés par camion. Il faudrait donc affréter trois camions avec au minimum quatre transporteurs par camion. Ou prévoir trois navettes, discrètes.

Du coup la banque, qui ne désespère pas de parvenir à raisonner son client afin qu'il renonce à son projet, négocie toutefois avec lui l'organisation et les conditions de ce transfert de fonds. D'autant qu'il faut peut-être envisager une escorte policière. On imagine mal un tel convoi traverser la région pour rallier Poitiers au domicile du particulier. Car, sauf à ce que le client fasse la navette tous les jours à sa banque pour retirer des petits montants, comment lui remettre autrement une telle somme en liquide?

L'histoire, aussi cocasse qu'elle apparaisse, n'amuse pas la direction du Crédit agricole. Pour des raisons de sécurité, de confidentialité et d'image, elle se refuse au moindre commentaire. Les responsables de la caisse régionale Charente-Périgord se bornent à dire «qu'il n'y a aucun mouvement de panique de masse enregistré à ses guichets». De masse peut-être pas, mais à cinq millions d'euros c'est au moins un coup de bambou!

Hate Speech

2008-10-21T21:48:00.002+02:00

This is cross posted at my other blog.

Follow the link and be apalled.

And maybe go to the lady's blog and use the "flag blog" option to alert google to the nastiness.

Whoops

2008-10-20T21:37:00.002+02:00

The annual report for Birmingham International Airport (Report and Accounts 2007-2008) is available online as a pdf.

On page 11 on Security there is a photomontage running accross the page and incluided is an x-ray of a case.

I presume it is a woman's case and I presume she was travelling alone.

Did the designers of the annual report do that on purpose? I hope so. Good humour.

I'm on a roll!

2008-10-17T09:16:00.004+02:00

After the gate, I'm now progressing nicely with the trailer. It's ridiculous how expensive a new trailer is. I little one will cost 500Euros.
My little blue trailer (you can see the carcass beside me) was made of wood. Because I had been given it, I was a bit careless with it, left it outside too often. So it got rotten, and one day recently, when the guy at the sawmill was lowering a charge of wood into it with his forklift it cracked underneath.
The wooden one also had the axle bolted to the blue box and the towbar bolted to the box, so it was possible for the towbar to come away, and leave the trailer careering down the road.
The new version I've welded up has the towbar integral with the frame. I've also welded on four nifty threaded chain links on the sides that can be used to attach ropes or chains.
Today I must finish decking the floor of the trailer so I ca at least use it to fetch more wood.
Then I must work out a cunning way to build the trailer box, and I want the hinged tailgate to be removeable, so I need to find a plug that can take the 5 wires for the lights/indicators.

The trailer's first job will be to cart the old blue box down to the tip.

In other news, France is in a panic over Tunisian supporters whistling during "The Marseillaise" during the International friendly the other day. This lack of respect for the national anthem is causing angst because it is evident that the Tunisian supporters are in fact French born, children of immigrants.
The locals are full of "send them all home". When I point out that they ARE home the response is "send the whole family home".
The government's response is to abandon any future match where such whistling takes place. the difficulty is that matches are played under FIFA rules. Only the ref has the authority to cancel a match and whistling during the national anthems is not one of FIFA's criterea for abandonment of a match.
There is an added difficulty of trying to get thousands of dissapointed and angry fans out of a stadium after the game they have paid to see has been abandoned because of te actions of a few hundred.

It is EXACTLY like the cricket crisis in the UK a dozen years ago. English people were appalled to discover that the children of immigrants were supporting Pakistan or India during Test matches against England.

Amateur Archeology

2008-10-15T09:41:00.003+02:00

I mentioned in this post that I had to build a gate to replace a temporary fence thing that we had put in place 5 years ago.

Well, the gate got built OK, and even got hung OK, but because of the slope of the ground between the pillars I knew I'd have to level the ground under the gate.
The gate of course had to be hung level. If you hang the gate to follow the ground, it won't open.
And I didn't want the black bitch digging under the gate. So I bought some cement blocks (parpang in french) and started digging a wee trench to bed them in.

Only to discover hidden stone paving slabs between the pillars.

Un fortunately they ran with the ground too, plus they are about 6 centimetres below the current lawn surface so I couldn't expose them without creating a swimming pool.
But what an example of how stuff gets buried and disappears. Only to be dug out by archeologists years later. And in 200 years if someone digs again, they'll find my stuff laid on top.

I decided to lay the blocks on top of the stone flags, simply bedded on sand to take up the difference in level. Behind me is the village church.

Hey! It looks like a grown up did that. You can see our little garden and garage and a runaway laurel hedge that I will shortly cut right down to ground level and allow it to regro, but at a manageable hight.

Today's project is rebuilding my little blue trailer that has rotted away.

The Day of the Triffids

2008-10-13T14:12:00.004+02:00

Earlier in the year Fiona and the kids planted some Snake Gourds. The pack of seeds showed some nice twisty gourds painted all zigg zag and pretty like snakes. That'll be fun.

Our neighbour Jean-Marie called us to show us the gourds.

We hadn't noticed them because they had grown over the wall and were hanging down in his garden.

What the hell is going on? Snake gourds? Bloody Python gourds, Anaconda gourds more like. They've taken over his wall and there's tons of these beasts.

The Minister for phallic references was unavailable for comment.

Hyper Inflation

2008-10-10T09:14:00.002+02:00

Inflation in Zimbabwe is rising so rapidly that a new means of measuring it has had to be invented.

Steve Hanke, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, and an expert in exchange rates and inflation, has developed the Hanke Hyperinflation Index for Zimbabwe (HHIZ).

Given the non-existence of government statistics for the money supply and the unreliability of its inflation statistics, it uses market-based price data instead to calculate the figure. As of this week, the HHIZ showed inflation in Zimbabwe was 2 trillion per cent a year.

Two trillion percent. I can't write that as a number because I'm not sure how many zeros to use. Because I read this in The Telegraph I'm assuming they are using the non-American definition of trillion which has 18 zeros after the figure and is known in the US as a quintillion. A US trillion is known in the rest of the world as a billion.

The highest inflation in the world, ever, was post-war Hungary, where it reached 4.19 quintillion per cent.

In August last year the Zimbabwe government knocked 10 zeros off its currency.

Some Criminal Activity

2008-10-08T14:10:00.003+02:00

First the good news - Sad Sack is gone. What a pleasure! Someone from another team requested transfer into ours. he's been with the firm longer than I have and he has worked on the press before, so it was goodbye Sad Sack. The new guy, Stéphan is a really nice bloke. He's also slow, but it's slow like a big bear, rather than slow because he's shiftless and can't be arsed to pick up his feet. Always smiling, always happy.
Plus, the press was well adjusted and it was a real pleasure to turn a shift without having to nursemaid someone.

Now to the scandal. I post a news article from Charente Libre dated 27/09/2008. You'd better bloody read it because I paid 1 euro to download the article from their web site

L'ouvrier vendait ses ordinateurs pour arrondir ses fins de mois

Il est quadragénaire et ouvrier d'usine. Son hobby, c'est les ordinateurs et l'homme semble avoir un véritable talent en la matière. Au point qu'il s'était fait spécialité d'approvisionner le secteur en ordinateurs assemblés maison. Il avait pris l'habitude d'acheter des composants sur internet, de les assembler, puis de revendre ses machines. Dans la foulée, il installait les logiciels adéquats et proposait un produit prêt à l'utilisation contre un petit millier d'euros. Un business d'appoint qui n'a pas fait que des heureux. En mai dernier, l'un de ses «clients» est venu se plaindre à la gendarmerie. L'enquête s'est poursuivie jusqu'à lundi passé et l'interpellation de l'informaticien amateur.
Au cours de leurs recherches, les gendarmes se sont rendu compte que l'affaire était juteuse. En 2007, l'homme aurait ainsi fourni clés en main dix-sept machines. Pour les enquêteurs, la notion de travail dissimulé s'est vite imposée. L'homme posait même quelques affiches de pub sur son lieu de travail ou dans les colis livrés pour inciter le bouche à oreille. Et son activité n'était bien évidemment pas déclarée.
Surtout, les logiciels installés n'étaient en fait que la copie de l'unique exemplaire que l'homme avait acheté. Tous ses «clients» avaient donc le même numéro de licence, ce qui leur interdisait les mises à jour. Mieux, il téléchargeait sur internet des logiciels de jeux gratuits qu'il facturait néanmoins aux acheteurs. Et les machines ne bénéficiaient bien sûr d'aucune garantie. Les gendarmes n'ont pas tardé à traduire tout cela par abus de confiance. Lundi, ils sont allés interpeller l'homme. Placé en garde à vue, il a reconnu les faits. Il a été laissé libre mais sera convoqué en justice. Avec un adversaire de poids: Microsoft s'est constitué partie civile.

Here's a quick and dirty translation:

A labourer sells computers to make ends meet
He's in his 40s and a labourer in a factory. His hobby is computers and he seems to have a real talent in the trade. To the extent that he sepecialises in providing the neighbourhood with home built computers. He would normally buy the parts on the internet, then assemble and resell them. He would also install the required software and offered a product, ready to use for about 1000 euros. A business that could only make everyone happy. Last May, one of his complained to the police. Their enquiries led to the arrest last Monday of the amateur technician.
During their investigation, the police realised they had got a juicy one. During 2007 the man must have supplied 17 machines. For the investigators this led immidiately to charges of undeclared earnings. The man had even posted adverts at his place of work to encourage word of mouth. And his activities were obviously not declared for tax.
But above all, the software installed was made from the single copy that the man had bought. All his therefore had the same license number, whiche prevented them from getting updates. Better still, he had downloaded free games from the internet and charged for them. And the machines, of course, had no guarantee. The police didn't delay in seeing all of that as abuse of trust. On Monday they went to arrest the man. detained at the station, he admitted his guilt. He was released but will be brought to trial, against a heavyweight opponent. Microsoft is the civil party bringing suit.

It turns out to be one of the shift bosses. I had seen the ads, they were a regular feature on the noticeboard of the canteens.
Nothing wrong with supplying homebuild PCs but using a single copy of the operating system was silly and charging for free games was just greedy. It only took one disgruntled customer to bring the whole thing down.
He'll probably get a suspended jail term, but an ENORMOUS fine between the tax man and Microsoft. he'll be paying it off for life.

Building a gate

2008-10-07T14:33:00.002+02:00

There never was a gate into our garden. Two big stone pillars, but no gate.
Four years ago I strung up a fence, a temporary fix that in typical Paterson fashion became permanent.
Because the grass got too long for our mower, a nearby farmer with a ride-on mowed it for us, but I had to cut down my fence to let him in.
So a gate had to go up in its place.
I initially thougt of welding up a fate in steel, to save some money, but finally decided even more money could be saved with a wooden, picket type gate. And since our neighbour has a gate similar it would look OK.
Well in typical french country style, nothing is easy. The stone pillars which are over 200 years old if they are the same as the house are not straight, either with respect to the ground, or each other. the ground between the gates is not level, so the left gate is nearly touching the ground while the right gate is higher up.
the problem is that black bitch Bella, highly strung poodle/whippet/rat who will dig under the gate given half the chance.
So now I have to go to BatiLeclerc to pic up some "parpang" which will go in a trench under the gate to both make the ground more level and give some resistance to dog claws.

Tomorrow morning it's a 4:00am start at the factory for another 6 day cycle. I hope to not see Sad Sack, because the planning showed a week of shit tiles and I don't need it to be made any shitter.

On the other hand there is some juicy gossip of a colleague taken away in handcuffs after being caught working on the black and defrauding a major global enterprise.
More details tomorrow....

France - not very internet savvy.

2008-10-06T18:35:00.005+02:00

The latest trends in web traffic have been released and I find it very revealing about french internet habits.

Comscore lists the sites most visited by french internauts for the months of July and August 2008.

It's not merely the NATURE of the sites visited that is revealing, but also the number of hits.

This pic shows the sites that have had the most improvement in traffic.

So the most popular sites are sports, music download, social networking, TV listings, music lyrics and an online bank. The high score for the sports websites is down to the Olymic Games

Most visited sites by French net users?

Google, Microsoft, Orange, yahoo, Yellow Pages
Where's the porn?

DailyMotion is like YouTube

Sad Sack

2008-10-06T09:28:00.003+02:00

The guys I get to work with in the factory ....

the press I work at is the oldest press in the place. The last press where a human being has to get his hands in the way and touch a tile. Touch - catch actually. The press runs at 14 tiles per minute and I have to grab these tiles as they fall and do a quarter turn and place them on the wodden pallets behind me.
2500 times per shift. And the heaviest tiles weigh over 7 kilos (15 lbs)
It's a shit job, nobody else wants to do it.
As a result I have a steady stream of gophers to partner me.

The latest is Sad Sack.
God what a useless, shiftless, idle slacker.

every time I look at him I think of this character from Asterix

He's been with me for a few months now and he is still useless. He can't catch the tiles and because he drops them, they end up going round the clay feed and overloading the mill, or causing a blockage on the conveyor belt in the cellar.
We've changed the mill head together umpteen times and he still can't do it on his own, gets things in the wrong sequence and does things half arsed.

He's about 18 or 20 and in good enough shape so I don't understand why he's so crap. The french would describe him as "mou" which means soft or floppy, like Kevin the Teenager. Last week I told him to go tidy up under the grappins while I cleaned the press. he wandered off and a few minutes later whne it hadn't been done he said he couldn't find a shovel. Which means he couldn't be arsed to walk 50 yards to go find one. I've taken to sending him on errands to fetch things to get him the hell out of my way while I get things done. If I hassle him he'll do stuff, but why should I hassle him? I'm not his boss.

With a bit of luck he might be leaving us soon. I can't wait to see who the next gumby is.

In case anyone missed it, this is my beloved press:

An experiment in beaurocracy

2008-09-24T21:34:00.002+02:00

We've been in France 5 years now.

Officially I can now apply for French citizenship. And I will. I want to. It bugs me that I can't vote here. It will make me feel like I belong. Ever since I was little liked joining clubs and organisations.

So I went to the mairie and asked the wise woman, Yvette, what I need to do. She gave it heaps of "oh la la"'s and much tongue clucking. Luckily for me she had some application forms in the office. Apparantly someone else had once entertained the idea, but had given up because it was too difficult.

There are 2 forms to be filled in. Full of the usual stuff about me, the family dates of birth etc. The dossier will also require my parents birth certificates.

They also want a list of addresses and descriptions of all the jobs I have ever done.
They want a list of all the addresses I have ever lived at.
They want my last three payslips and the payslips for the months of December for the last three years.

All certificates: my birth certificate, Fiona's, the kids' birth certificates, our marriage certificate have to be translated into French.

Then, armed with all this they will ask the police to run a background check on me and request any UK police records. They will interview the mairie to ensure I am a person of good morals.

I will then be tested on my understanding of my civil rights and understanding of my civic duties and finally, my mastering of the French language.

AT the end of all that I can become French. I can hold dual citizenship so no need to renounce anything.

I will be able to vote but I will still be unable to donate blood. Crazy french.

It's over.

2008-07-30T13:31:00.003+02:00

The Tour de France has finished, and another glorious July of cycle racing is over.

This year's tour was fantastic, the yellow jersey was swopped about 6 times or more, and you didn't know who was going to win until the last two days.

Highlights of the tour were:
Valverde's early win and lead, promising so much after his perfomance in the Dauphine Liberé.
Mark Cavendish's four sprint wins, even if he did drop out at the Alps. he's no climber and there was no point killing himself weeks before the Olympics.
Successful anti-doping controls. The italian Ricco was on the latest generation EPO and still got caught.
Cadel Evans fighting off the CSC team in the Alps, strung out to dry by his team Silence-Lotto
Some spectacular crashes on the hair-raising descents
Some excellent young riders showing promice for the future.
French riders in most of the breakaways and some french stage wins.

A great champion in Carlos Sastre. he took the risks when he had to, on the stage when he had to, and was supported by some brilliant team riding by CSC.
Sastre has a fan club in Aalter, a town near Gent, that has now grown to nearly 450 members. This fan club raises money for a children's cancer charity. Whatever money they raised, Sastre would match it. He's not even belgian, and the kids probably don't even know who he is. (That's about to change)

Check out his website. He seems like a nice guy.

100 kilometers

2008-07-08T14:01:00.003+02:00

It's good to be back on the bike again.

I've been cycling to work the last few weeks, morning shifts, night shifts, rain or shine. It's encouraging te see the fitness coming back. My poor old bike had the same tyres on I used for PBP in 2003.

Looking around locally for a club to join I found a cyclotouring club in Exideuil, not too far away. I phoned the club president for info on joining and he told me they were organising a 100k ride on Sunday 6th July. Great, I thought, I'll do it.

The distance was no problem, I've done dozens of 100ks and longer, and only the weekebd before I'd ridden 65 with a friend.

No, the real challenge was that Sunday 6th was the last of my night shifts. I would be getting to bed at 4:30am and waking up again at 6:30am to get to Exideuil for a 7:30 start.

100k on the back of an 8 hour shift and 2 hours sleep was a little more daunting. i decided to go straight to the start from work and sleep in the car. Less comfortable, but a benefit of more time asleep.
I parked under the trees in the salle de fêtes car park. It started raining during the night and the big drops falling onto the roof of the car were incorporated into my weird dreams. I woke up at 6:50, before my mobile phone's alarm had gone off.
People were about, and there was coffee and cake at the little clubhouse. I paid my 4 Euros entry fee and was given a map of the route.
The weather was miserable and drizzly. I didn't want to ride alone so I hopped on the bike and follwed some riders out onto the road. I decided not to wear a rain jacket. Even though they are light, I sweat so much in them I get just as wet as I would in the rain. I kept arm warmers on.
At about 20k I found myself in the company of two geezers from the Exideuil club. they were stronger than me so I tucked in behind them and drafted selfishly. At 40k there was a rest stop - sandwiches, cake, juice, wine (wine?) and toilets. My feet were freezing and the rain hadn't let up.
I introduced myself to my two "team-mates" and apologised for not helping. They were an excellent pair of old boys, early 60s I guess. That's something in common with the long distance riding in the UK, it's a sport for the "mature"
Talking amongst ourselves as we rode, the miles flew by. There were a couple of monster climbs, and we came in to the finish in under 4 hours. That's an average of 25kph which I'm quite pleased with.
Proof:

the club has regular rides Wednesday mornings. My next shift doesn't start till Thursday morning, and the weather report looks good for tomorrow ....

Zimbabwe - hyper inflation

2008-06-20T14:29:00.002+02:00

The press is always going on about Zimbabwe having an inflation rate of 200,000%

It's hard to understand what numbers like that mean.

2 days ago I tried a currency calculation on XE.com

It gave 1USD worth $4,952,500,000.00 ZW Dollars.

Today I tried it again.

1 USD now = 6,718,055,555.56 ZW dollars.

That's a drop of nearly 2 Billion dollars in just 2 days. the currency is devaluing at the rate of 1 Billion dollars a day.

Try it yourself and see how much its fallen since this post.

It's abit of a worry since my parents still live there.

This is what it feels like to have hay fever

2008-06-19T12:07:00.000+02:00

My eyes itch and are red & teary, my nose runs like a tap.
When I need to sneeze, which is often, it is difficult, because the hay fever has aggrevated my asthma. So that deep breath in before the sneeze? I can't get it in. So I do a wheezy half-hearted gasp for air and then a feeble "chbibblechthth!" which sends a dribble of snot down my chin. And because it is only a half sneeze, it doesn't satisfy. So there'll be a quick succession of rubbish sneezes: "wheeze....chbble!, wheeze....chabropplech!, wheeze...fffchhischh!
The back of my throat and soft pallate have the itch that can't be scratched. But I try and scratch with the back of my tongue, and by making snorking, grunting noises down my throat so I sound like a cat hoiking up furballs.
When I'm sleeping, the asthma slowly builds up until I sound like a kettle coming to boil: "wheeeeeeee.....heeeeeeeeee". 4 seconds silence. "wheeeeeeee.....heeeeeeeeee" Poor Fiona. It finally wakes me up and I have to grope around in the dark for the Ventolin. A few puffs and the whezing stops. But just before I drop of to sleep again, it comes back. Like a mosquito: "whee........hee!"

Yes, Summer is here, and grass needs to be mowed.

French learning English & vice versa

2008-06-18T13:19:00.002+02:00

It's a lazy blogging, slapping up YouTube videos but I like to share ...

The first is a great sequence of Steve Martin as Inspector Clouseau trying to learn English.

The second is from Friends. Phoebe trying to teach Joey to speak French.

The third is an advert for French lessons.

The last is a delightful young french woman telling us what NOT to say in French. I love it when she says "Don't do zat"

Gene Kelly was a short-arse

2008-06-18T11:21:00.003+02:00

One of the most beautiful, sexy and graceful women ever to appear in film died yesterday.
Cyd Charisse was born March 8, 1922 and her real name was Tula Ellice Finklea. Thankfully, because her older brother couldn't say "sister" when he was little she was called "Sid" from early on.
Her website with lots of pics here.
She took up dancing to build up her strength after suffering from Polio. At 14 she auditioned for the Ballet Russe and toured Europe and the USA as part of their corps de ballet. To fit in with the programme for the nearly all-Russian company, she was first billed as Celia Siderova, than as Maria Istromena.
She first appeared in film in 1943 in a ballet sequence in the musical, "Something to Shout About."
"Singing in the Rain" with Gene Kelly was a breakthrough. The vid is embedded below.
Cyd was 5 foot 6, and yet she looked so lithe and tall. When you see her next to Kelly you realise he was a bit of a titch, though pretty bloddy fit & strong with it.
I've always preferred Kelly to Astaire. Cyd Charisse danced with both of them and said they were very different.

In her autobiography, Charisse compared the two leading men, saying Astaire's coordination was better than Kelly's, but Kelly was the stronger of the two, adding: "When he lifts you, he lifts you!"
"To sum it up, I'd say they were the two greatest dancing personalities who were ever on screen. But it's like comparing apples and oranges. They're both delicious,"

Watch the "Silk Stockings" sequence. Was she hot or what?

Telegraph Article
Obituary in Telegraph

Why I left Britain to live in France

2008-06-17T13:23:00.002+02:00

A convicted criminal has had his curfew lifted because the electronic tag he was forced to wear did not look good with his shorts.

A self-confessed supplier of heroin. It seems like the script for a sketch on Little Britain, but no, it is your actual, real life news from the BBC.

In many parts of the world, heroin possesion and traffic carries a death sentence. In ZaNuLabour Britain it gets you nine months, suspended for two years.

And then, you get to go back to court, and have your lawyer argue "the tag would not look good with the shorts he was required to wear as his new uniform."

And the judge will say ~~"What nonsense, stop wasting my time"~~ "Wearing an electronic tag is not a fashion item when it comes to working in shorts and trying to sell windsurfing equipment." and rule that your tag may be removed, thus overturning the pitiful previous sentencing.

It is important when reading and/or writing about stuff like this that a stiff drink is at hand and a couch nearby so you can go have a little lie down to avoid the anurism that is likely to occur as the blood boils in your brain.

The baby with the bathwater

2008-06-16T15:24:00.003+02:00

New York dog sucked into street cleaner

These machines are supposed to sweep up the dog-shit, not the dog as well!

The 57-year-old said he believed the truck had exceeded the speed limit in the area and was investigating legal options.
The city Department of Sanitation called the incident "a rare and unfortunate accident."

I'm sure these machines are more complicated to manoevre than you might imagine.

I while ago I made a post about the guy at the factory who got his head crushed in the machinery.

Apparantly he was a bit of a numpty before the accident. His air-headedness was probably a major factor in the accident occuring. Anyway, he's back at work and more doolaly than before. So the bosses are thinking what they can do with him so he won't be a danger to himself and others.

"I know", says one, "we can put him on the sweeping machine. He can drive around, sweeping up. What harm can come from that?"

So we'd gotten used to seeing him driving around on this machine, a bit like the ones you see at airports, it's got rotating brushes and a big vacuum cleaner and an orange flashing light. The guys at work swap stories at the breaks of his latest exploits. For example, he was seen driving the thing outdoors, taking it to one of the tips, to empty it. It had been raining and he was driving it, with brushes and vacuum going, through all the mud and puddles, great clods of mud flying about. The machine had to spend a day having the mud cleeared out of it and having the brushes replaced.

I was at my press when I heard him in the corridor behind me, seemingly stuck on tight lock, the machine whirling round like a mad thing, with him clinging on, mouth open, eyes half closed. There was a great burnt rubber scorch mark on the floor after he'd gone.

It's very sad really.

The end came, we had just left for our break, and Mr Sweeper Man was in action nearby. We came back from the break, and the press was dead. No power to the console. or to any of the other consoles on the line. How mysterious. Pascal immediately asked Mr Sweeper Man if he had accidentally bumped anything. He pointed to one of the bank of electrical cabinets that line the wall.
Bugger.
We called the electricians. They poked about with their testers trying to find the answer. The answer was in front of us. If we had only followed the clear vacuumed path of the sweeper we would have seen it leading directly to one of the electrical cabinets. And we would have seen that 4 banks of circuit breakers had been "swept" by the machine as it did a tight turn. the end result was 2 hours of the presses out of action and an electrical engineer having to upload the presses' programs from a laptop.
And while that was going on, Mr. Sweeper Man went and DID THE SAME THING at the other side of the factory, taking out the robot arms that pack the tiles onto pallets.

It's not funny, it's tragic. I haven't seen him since. Those sweeper machines weigh a ton. they have steerable rear wheels like a forklift and are avery bit as dangerous. I hope they find a decent solution for him.

It is of such things that legends are made. The still tell of the maniak fork-lift driver, who, while loading a german lorry, put his forks through the tyres, bursting them with a loud explosion. He also knocked over a lorry load of tomatoes while putting tiles into a truck that was going to carry a shared load. And also put his fork-lift through a brick wall, and when found, in his fork-lift, surrounded by bricks and dust said "It wasn't me"

It's too cute...

2008-06-16T11:41:00.002+02:00

Too much candy from Capucha on Vimeo.
Turn up the speakers and enjoy. The cutest little french girl in nail-biting sweetie drama.
With sub-titles

It's in the stars

2008-06-10T15:17:00.003+02:00

I make no apologies for my opnion of astrology and astrologers. It's bullshit and they are either deluded or hucksters. Or both.

imagine my surprise and disappointment to find that the French football team manager Raymond Domenech is a keen astrologer and uses astrology to help choose players for the team.

Domenech has admitted to distrusting Scorpios, such as Robert Pirès. This led to the choosing of Vikash Dhorasoo who played an important part in qualifying but not in the finals. He later fell out with Dhorasoo after he made a behind the scenes film called "Substitute".His decision to leave out FC Barcelona star Ludovic Giuly in favour of Franck Ribéry, and subsequent refusal to explain that decision, left many French players and fans mystified. [1]. Domenech chose Pascal Chimbonda, a low-profile player with no international experience, for the squad. Domenech's selection for the France's World Cup squad was further criticised when he publicly announced that Fabien Barthez would start ahead of Lyon goalkeeper Grégory Coupet. This decision was met with derision in the French press and also led to Coupet walking out of the national squad before the tournament, though he was later to return. [2] His exclusion of A.S Roma back bone defender, Philippe Mexès, has also raised a few eyebrowes. Mexès, named Hope of the year in 2000 and being an all star defender for A.S Roma since his arrival to the team, still has to participate in a competitive senior tournament under Domenech.

from Wikipedia

His mistrust of Scorpios means he would never have rated Maradonna (Born October 30)

More False Friends

2008-06-10T14:30:00.003+02:00

Some more of those french words that sound similar to english words but have a different meaning.

I think all newcomers to France trip up over the differeece between monnaie (change as in loose change or spare change) and money which is l'argent. Cash on the other hand is called liquid pronounced "leekeed".

Éventuellement in french implies "possibly" or "if need be" whereas eventually in english implies that something will occur, but at a later time.

This next one is a real pronunciation hassle:
In french a single s is pronounced as a z, and a double s as a soft, normal s. So when some English people pronounce dessert like "dez-urt" and desert like "dez-it" it causes mass confusion amongst the french.

These next few are a minefield:
baisser (pronounced with a soft s) means to lower.
baiser (pronounced with a z) is coarse, and means to fuck.
un bisou (pronounced with a z) or un bize is a kiss.
So, asking for a kiss, or trying to say "I kissed her" is fraught. If you're talking about kissing, use the verb embrasser to be safe, or use the noun, "je voudrais un bize" or "Vous ne me donnez pas un bisou?"

If using the verb baisser to mean "lower" pronounce it properly. Telling someone to hurry up and fuck the forklift doesn't help.

Lastly, your homework. practice these toung-twisters:
Une bien grosse grasse mère avec de biens beaux gros gras bras blancs

Des blancs pains, des bancs peints, des bains pleins

Trois gros rats gris dans trois gros trous ronds rongent trois gros croûtons ronds.

Un chasseur sachant chasser sait chasser sans son chien de chasse.

How English sounds

2008-06-08T13:30:00.003+02:00

Over lunch and a few glasses of wine our friend Bernadette told us a phrase that the french reckon, if said quickly, sounds like English:

"Tes laitues naissent-elles? Yes! Mes laitues naissent!"*

So English must sound very sibalent to french ears.

Sge also gave us a phrase that they reckon sounds German, and I agree:

"Baisse ta gaine Berthe que je tate!"**

Said with the right rythm it comes out like "Bestagen bertke schtadt" (Which means nothing in German"

In the spirit of mock language I give you the Swedish chef

*Are your lettuces sprouting? Yes! My lettuces are sprouting.
**Drop your corset Berthe, so I can squeeze your tits.

Old & Warty

2008-06-07T13:59:00.002+02:00

Wisewoman: When I fancy people, I sleep with them. Oh, I have to drug them first of course! Being so old and warty.

A classic line from Blackadder.

And now I find I am in the same predicament. Of course I don't have to drug the people I fancy, my smooth charm, quick wit and buns of steel still work their magic.

But I do have a wart.

So I've got some stuff called Cryogena. Its an aerosol of liquid nitrogen (I think). You fit a little foam pad into a a plastic key, push the key into the aerosol for a few seconds and then apply the super-cold foam pad to the wart.

The advert shoes a smiling laughing teenager with a skateboard, caring not a jot as his mum zapz his wart.

I did it and it bloody well hurt.

I know the blogosphere are on the edge of their collective seats to find out if the cure worked. I will post phtographic evidence of a wart-free well-toned thigh as proof. As soon as it is
a. wart-free
b. well toned

Revisionist History

2008-06-06T16:24:00.000+02:00

In the same manner, that is is a crime to deny the Holocaust (or Shoa) as it is called in France, a french blogger will go to court on 17 June in Tulle, Haute Vienne, for publishing an account on his blog of the massacre at Oradour sur Glane.
According to his site, the massacre took place because the SS, while searching for a cache of arms, known to them to have been hidden there by an active Maquis, had not searched some of the men who were packed in the church with all the women and children.
It was these armed resistance members who kicked off the massacre.
That a massacre took place is of course undeniable. 642 men, women and children. Revisionist versions like this one take root because:
a. There were very few surviving witnesses.
b. Many questions remain unanswered, even after the trial of the SS soldiers (who were French, from Alcase & Lorraine, and got off very lightly

The author of the blog gives no source material for all his information, which is a great shame.

He is being brought to trial in a civil action by the collectif Maquis de Corrèze. They say they came across the blog in March. They feel that the content of the blog as a whole is false, and want to maintain correct history on the web, so that children researching history won't find corrupt history.
See also (in English) Oradour-sur-Glane 10th June 1944

Jambes Lourdes - Heavy Legs

2008-06-05T17:59:00.005+02:00

French TV is full of adverts for treatment of a dreaded syndrome - Heavy Legs.

Fi and I had never even heard of the malady of Heavy Legs until we started watching french TV. Now every night we are treated to adverts showing women tiredly trudging up stairs, then, after taking product X, lightly skipping up the same stairs.

A Google search on "heavy legs" on google.com nets 460,000 results while a search on "jambes lourdes" on google.fr pulls a whopping 646,000. French menopausal women are obsessed with heavy legs.

But British women suffer too -

ANTISTAX Leg Vein Health Capsules - a clinically proven natural health supplement - asked 400 women over 45 if they suffered from problems with their legs and also asked how they felt it affected their daily lives. The results were astounding!
- 75% said they suffered with leg health issues
- 50% said they suffered with TAHLC (Tired, Aching, Heavy Legs
Complaint)
- 71% said TAHLC interfered with their daily lives
- 75% said it affected them more than the menopause!
- 75% said it affected them more than sight deterioration
- 77% expressed concern for their leg health
- 66% are concerned about the pain and discomfort caused
- 51% said they are hindered in their daily lives by having to
keep their feet up as a result
- Women over the age of 45 are more likely to suffer with TAHLC than
thread, spider or varicose veins and find TAHLC more disruptive to
their everyday lives than these other leg health problems

Most of the adverts for heavy leg remedies are herbal type snake oil stuff. The market is huge, and I am very suspicious of the efficacy of this stuff. I'm also very suspicious of surveys conducted by companies that sell a "cure"

Here is one of the more popular french remedies "Jouvence" by l'Abbé Soury.

The blurb says: the formula is based on plants (Hamamélis, Viburnum, Calamus, Piscidia) traditionally recognised for the properties against heavy legs.

Strangly, a google image search on "jambes lourdes" seems to show more "jambes svelte et legère" I feel obliged to post one for your (my) edification.

Found at http://www.italiq-expos.com/blog-shopping/2006/05/29/220-jambes-lourdes

Get the bucket I'm gonna puke!

2008-06-03T21:11:00.002+02:00

via Devils Kitchen I find out about a mob called Les Jeunes Européens Fédéralistes, a bunch of painfully annoying young people who are gung-ho a&bout a larger, constitutionalised Federal Europe.

Why are they annoying?

Watch their video.

Lipdub Europe United par les Jeunes Européens - France
Uploaded by JeunesEuropeensFrance

Watching it may cause nasea and rage blackouts.

As DK says:
"Murder them all, the nauseating French bastards...*

* Not because they are French, you understand, but because they are nauseating, fucking naive federalists. I mean, what kind of stupid cunt would associate "democracy" with the European Union?"

Les Faux Amis

2008-05-31T20:08:00.004+02:00

False Friends, is the phrase used by the French to describe english words that are similar to french words, but have a different meaning. They trip us all up.

Here are some of the false friends that I found troublesome.

Fixer in french means to fasten, not to repair. If you want something repaired you need it to be either 'depanné' or 'reparé'. Any mechanical object that is broken down is 'en panne', as opposed to 'cassé' which leans towards the sense of a broken object.

When eating, if you are full, you are not 'plein'. Petrol tanks can be 'plein' and in agricultural terms, any livestock that is pregnant is 'plein'. This is why english speaking women telling their hosts 'Je suis pleine' brings a smirk. You can rather say 'J'ai assez mangé' or 'Je cale'.

Here's a good one: 'expérience' in french means experiment, but if someone is 'experimenté' it means they are experienced!!

If you are out walking and you see a sign warning that the path is 'accidenté' it means that the path is uneven. Tho' that could lead to an accident after all.

If the French say that someone is being a 'comedian' they do not mean that they are being funny, only that they are acting. A comedian is a 'comique'

And to end this issue, (coz I've got tons of these) A few years ago, while I was still in the UK, I was talking to a french colleague on the phone. It was summer 2003, stinking hot. I said to him 'Mais vous avez le air-con chez vous?' assuming that trendy young french businessmen would use the english short version for air-conditioning. He explained that air conditioning is called 'climatisation' and that 'air' means 'to have the appearance of' and 'con' means 'bloody idiot', but stronger.

A bit like the Americans, we are divided by a common language.

Strictement Interdit!

2008-05-30T19:32:00.003+02:00

Many things in France are against the law. Smoking in public places for one. And while the French legislature and parliament love making new laws, the French people largely ignore them. Which is why Michel, our café proprieter always has a 'clop' hanging out of his mouth.

L'interdit ? C'est une pièce fermée à clef avec tout ce que je désire à l’intérieur.
Richard Hawley, chanteur

- Qu'est-ce que l'interdit ?
En gros, ce qui est "interdit" n'est pas consenti. POURQUOI PAS ? Qui dit "interdit" dit "on a interdit". Il y a dans l'histoire un être humain, ce petit con aux motivations souvent puantes d'arrogance, de peur, d'ignorance, de rancœur. Il faut fouiller là où l'on nous dit "interdit". Car, dans l'absolu, tout est permis
Jasmine Bande, chanteuse

According to Charles Bremner there are 9,500 laws in force and parliament passes 70 new ones every year. A further 120,000 decrees have been issued by trhe state ranging from "interdit", through "formellement interdit" to "rigoureusement interdit".

One such law is the ban on using foreign words in advertising or broadcasting without an accompanying French translation. Thus, theoretically a football announcer should not say "A la suite d’un corner, le Cosmos a bénéficié d’un penalty" but rather "A la suite d’un coup de coin, le Cosmos a bénéficié d’un tir de réparation". This one is known as La Loi Toubon. It is largely ignored in everday use because it is so impractical, and impossible to police. A list of troublesome words (bulldozer, computer, disk-jockey, design) and their improbable replacements is discussed here.

Some of the French laws seem very odd to Anglo Saxons. The dates of shop sales being fixed by the Prefecture for example. The interdiction of selling products at less than cost price. It is illegal to cut any children out of your will.

But more bizarre still, is the things that are NOT illegal in France. Like incest. Apparantly incest was dropped from the Penal Code by Napoleon 200 years ago.

Anyone know of other crazy French legalisms?

What the hell is this?

2008-05-25T17:26:00.004+02:00

Dr Seuss-inspired species from hell that we found in the bath.

How did it get in the bath? Did it come up the drain or fall from the ceiling?

Deborah (dnd) got hold of this post before I pulled it. Well, done Deborah it was only live for about 30 seconds! and says:
it's a Scutigera Coleoptrata and I think they are really cute
Wiki entry http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutigera
Very useful things to have in the house. Between them and my cellar spiders I've not seen any house spiders but I do wish they would eat a few more of the mossies that are increasing at the moment :-D

Briony's friend Manon says it's a "mille-patte" and that they eat flies and losquitoes and stuff and don't bite. But the French call anything with more than 8 legs a "mille-patte" and the wiki entry suppled by Deborah says:

Because they eat household pests, house centipedes are considered among the most beneficial creatures that inhabit human dwellings, but because of their alarming appearance, frightening speed, and painful bite, few homeowners are willing to share a home with them.

although

Most house centipedes are incapable of penetrating human skin with a bite or a sting.

Fact is it's a horrifying looking beastie. Now that I know they eat other nasties, I'll refrain from killing them, but I draw the line at sharing my bath with one.

Panic on the streets of Chassenieul

2008-05-25T16:21:00.003+02:00

First many thanks for the concern for Callan. He is feeling much better and will be back at school tomorrow. He is currently in a sulk because I told him off after I found out he has just been skateboarding in the barn. "I'm not doing jumps or anything!" I can just see myself back at the hospital trying to explain to the surgeon and the social services why he was skateboarding 3 days after an operation to pin a broken arm.

Anyway, back on topic.
Hard-up french fisherman are blockading access to fuel refineries at Gonfreville in Normandy, La Rochelle and Port-La-Nouvelle in the south. They are also blocakding the ports at laRochelle, Le Havre and elsewhere. They want the price of marine deisel to be pegged at 40 centimes per litre. Currently running at 80, they say it is no longer worth them putting out to sea with fuel at that price.
They did it last November too.
All of a sudden, panic sets in at the fuel stations around our area. The pumps at the Champion chain of supermarkets were closed, so the whole world gets in the cars and form queues at all the other stations. According to the rumours at the factory, at one station, the till operator was forcibly restrained for a short time while motorists filled their cars for free.
I phoned Fiona when I heard of the "crisis". She looked out the kitchen window, saw no cars at the pump over the road at the cafe. She put 30 Euros in since the car was empty.
Now, days later, everything is as normal, all the pumps have fuel, and the whole thing was stampeded by panic buying.

News from May 24th indicates the fishermen are getting bored and going back to sea.

Technorati tags: France
politics
press

Trauma!

2008-05-21T21:38:00.002+02:00

Short version: Our son Callan fell and broke his arm, Monday night. Pompiers, hospital, operation, tension.

Long Version:
You may have seen the video of Callan doing wall flips. He's very keen on gymnastics and free running and parcour. He's a fan of David Belle and he often practices his moves on the steps and walls of the village.
It was abut 6:30 in the evening, I was on the computer when I heard the strange, loud shouting from outside. I leapt up and opened the door, there was Callan holding his arm, face as white as a sheet.
"I don't believe it!" he shouted, "I've broken my arm, I don't believe it. Is this a dream?"
His forarm was bent down and hanging and looked wrong. It just looked WRONG.
Fiona sat him on her lap in the kitchen and held him still. He was moaning and saying "ow, ow", but not crying. I asked Fi if we should take him direct to the hospital ourselves or call the pompiers. She wanted to call the pompiers, because she didn't think it would be a good idea to drive the 40 minutes to the hospital trying not to bounce his arm around in the car.
I dialled 18 and the phone was answered immediately. I told them what had happened and where we were. They sent the ambulance out immediately and then transfered me to SAMU. The SAMU guy asked for more detail - how high had the fall been, did he hit his head, had he always been conscious, was there an open wound?
What he'd done, the silly bugger, was a vault over a rail, on top of a wall. It was a vault he'd done often before, but this time his foot caught the rail, he fell the three feet onto the wall, which broke his arm, and then a further four feet to the ground. He then had to walk the 50 yards back to the house, holding his floppy arm.
Sitting on Fi's lap, waiting for the ambulance, I told Callan he was going to have to be brave. I told him he was going to have to show true courage, the kind where you know that pain and bad times are ahead and you have to just take it. I told him the ambulance ride was going to be uncomfortable, and it was going to hurt when they immobilise his arm and get him into the ambulance.
I phoned a neighbour to take care of Briony while we went to the hospital. Alexandra and Didier Quichaud have three little boys and they are the best of people. They kept Briony overnight, and the next morning I picked her up and got her sorted out for school. Briony was an angel, and took all this mayhem without any fuss.
The pompiers arrived in about ten minutes, sirens on the go. Four of them, plus Fi and me made for a crowded kitchen. They put an inflatable sling around his arm with an ice pack. Once they had him in the ambulance, they were messing about with oxygen levels and pulse meters, so I left Fiona to go with them in the ambulance while I went ahead to the hospital.
It worked well, because I got the Emergency guys to fill out all the info on computer before they arrived. They took him straight in and slapped in a drip with paracetemol and saline. Being the evening there was no chance of getting it reset until the next day. They x-rayed and the pictures showed both radius and ulna broken, in a splintery sort of long break, and the two bones were displaced and overlapping a bit. I thought to myself that it would be tricky resetting it.
This whole time the little soul hadn't shed a tear. He was writhing when the pain surged, or when he had to be moved and gritting his teeth, but he took it better than I would have. If it had been me the air would have been blue.
The nurses put his arm in plaster to stop it moving during the night. He was put in a room in the pediatric wing and Fiona stayed with him overnight. They have fold out beds for the accompanying parent in the room. Fiona had a rough night, as Callan slept fitfully, and each time either of them got to sleep it seemed the nurses had to come in to change drips or take temperatures or something. I slept badly too, and couldn't get the image of his arm all bent out of shape out of my head.
He went in to have the arm reset under anaesthetic at 11:00 am. They said he'd be back after an hour. It was over three hours before he returned. The break was comlicated and they had to put two metal rods, INSIDE each bone, the full length of the forearm. Post-op x-rays show that he'll be setting off metal detectors for a while. I told him he was like Wolverine from X-men.
He then had a crap day, in pain as the anaesthetic wore off, but slowly improving as the immobilised arm settled down. The nurses kept him topped up with paracetemol and anti-inflamatories.
He had to stay another night and I took over from Fi so she could go home and sleep. The next day (that's today) another x-ray to check that nothing had shifted during the night. The surgeon said the metal bars will stay for six months and then another operation to take them out. He came home at 6:00 this evening and is a lot better for being at home and having the drip removed from his arm. How crap must it be to try and sleep, in pain, with one arm broken and immobilised and the other arm trailing plastic pipe that gets tangled on the bed ironware every time you move?
So, there it is. Could have been worse. Much gratitude to friend and neighbours, people who step up in a crisis - Alexandra and Didier for looking after Briony, and to our friend Bernadette Helou who brought them home from the hospital, pompiers, nurses, doctors, and surgeons, cleaners and cooks, Carte Vitale and mutuelle.

Eenie meenie ....

2008-05-18T22:44:00.003+02:00

... minie moe

That's the way we did it in the playground.

In France, as usual, it's different. It goes like this:
Ams, tram, gram,
Pic et pic et colégram,
Bour et bour et ratatam,
Ams, tram, gram.

And, it sounds like this (an advert for a french lottery - )

Am stram gram pik et pik et colégram
envoyé par dhauss

Like the eenie meenie version, this french count-out has no meaning and there is disagreement about how to write it, but is thought to have come from ancient German, the ams tram dram being a corruption of old "Ein, zwei, drei"

Fuck the French

2008-05-18T09:37:00.002+02:00

A clip from Bob Stanhope, an American stand-up I stumbled upon yesterday.
He's very rude, very contravercial, but the points he tries to make tend to have substance, even if you don't agree with him. His sketches on drugs and child pornography make hard watching, and definitely not suitable for work, or when the kids are wandering around the house.
Anyway, here he addresses the classic "If we hadn't saved their asses during two world wars they'd be speaking German now".

Jesus' less famous brother, Charles

2008-05-17T13:49:00.003+02:00

Legend has it that Joseph of Aramathea took the Holy Grail and Mary Magdalene to France. The Magdalene was said to have been married to the Christ, and the Holy Grail is said to symbolise their blood line, rather than being a physical object.
I now have firm evidence that members of Jesus' family did indeed make it to France, in order to found a cornichon preserving business.

Charles Christ, part of the SOCIETE CHRIST (web address www.christ.fr) is a family business. The business motto is "de père en fils" or "from father to son". I rest my case.

Goodby Humphrey

2008-04-29T18:41:00.003+02:00

Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton 23 May 1921 – 25 April 2008

I'm a relative youngster (compared to Humph anyway) and as I only came to the UK in 1990, I only discovered I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue towards the end of its run.

I'm still very saddened that Humph has gone. His delivery was so good.

Here is an episode from 1995 replayed by the BBC in tribute.

Have a listen, it's excellent as usual, and shed a tear for an era gone forever.

Brasserie de la Rainette

2008-04-28T19:21:00.005+02:00

A jewel, a veritable jewel.
In the UK I had occasionally dabbled in home brew, and I was thinking about brewing some beer here in France. But I didn't know how to source the material - malt, hops, or even a beer kit. In the UK I would just pop into Boots. I searched the net, and found some French suppliers, but the delivery costs were high.
I then joined a forum for amateur brewers, and through them discovered that there is a brewer here in the Charente.
Only 20 minutes from me, the Brasserie de la Rainette is run by Alain Mitteau.
I can't recommend the place enough. It's in the village of Chazelles, in an ancient water mill.
Alain had no brewing experience, he's ex-military, and on retiring decided to give it a go. He had to completely renovate the mill. He dredged out the old weir and rebuilt the weir wall. He renexed the mill wheel and works and, after some research went straight into setting up a serious little brewery.
He said he researched and created the recipes for his four beers, and has never had a failure, and not changed the recipes.
And, let me tell you, his beer is good. Very good. He makes an ambrée - brown complex, tasty. A sweet stout, dark and burnt, and a rarity in this part of France. A bitter ale that is superb, and a white beer that is hoppy and flowery.
Fiona and I spent the afternoon with Alain and his lovely wife Sylviane, with the sound of the water over the wier, talking about everything and tasting his excellent beer.
He makes about 4000 litres a year, and only sells it from the brasserie. He says he doesn't want to get into supply contracts with supermarkets because he brews for the pleasure of it. Once he's tied into production contracts it'll stop being fun.
If ever your in the area, you could drop in because between June and August he's open every day except Mondays, but outside of those dates give him a call, and he'll be able to organise a visit.
But I'd recommend, rather than just dropping in, make a day of it, visit the chateau at La Rochefoucauld and spend a few hours by the river, drinking Alan's superb brews.
I decided to wait a day before writing this, in case it was the effect of the beer that was fueling my enthusiasm. You know how you have a lovely bottle of wine at a restaurant on holiday, so you buy a bottle, and when you try it back home it tastes awful, because the relaxed holiday ambiance isn't there?
Well, lunchtime today we opened a bottle of Alain's bitter ale, and it is just as excellent as the stuff we had yesterday.

The dredged and renovated weir.

The mill wheel

The mill's mechanism. Alain uses the river water to cool the wort. It also generates electricity.

Chewing the fat.

The master brings another beer for tasting.

Their dog is thespitting image of Santa's Little Helper from the Simpsons

Happiness is a bag of beer

French Taxman supports gay marriage

2008-04-25T17:53:00.003+02:00

I wouldn't know whether to laugh or cry.

In today's Charente Libre newspaper is the story of Mr Gérard Chaillou, a habitant of Cognac. he is divorced with one child. As such he is entitled to a family allowance.
He has a friend, who lives alone in a large house. "My mate had a very big house in which he lived alone. He invited me to move into one of the rooms to avoid paying a rent."
This Gérard did, in October 2005, and being a good and conciencous citizen, he noted on his tax forms, that he was staying rent-free.
But he then received a letter from the hôtel des impôts saying that this benefit is only applicable to widows, single parents or divorcees, and "according to their information" Gérard was living "en concubinage" with the man who owned the house. Thus, equivalent to married, no single parent benefit.
Gérard is very bitter about the way he has been treated by the female civil servant in charge of his file. She had always refused to meet with him to discus his case.
"Basically, she's treated me like a homo" said the sixty year old through gritted teeth. The "according to our information" suggests someone had had shopped him.
He moved out of the house, and through a mediator was re-embursed the missing allowances, amounting to about €100 per month.
What has made him bitter was that he received no apologies or any recognition that he has been treated badly.
PS - I've taken some liberties with the translation, not being au fait with french fiscal terms like CSG, RDS and une demi-part fiscale, but I'm not far off the sense of the thing. Anyone who can clarify is welcome.

So civil servants have absolutely nothing against same-sex unions, provided there is some kind of tax to be gained from it. This is the way forward for equal rights. Don't bother arguing about social justice or equality, just find a way to point out to government that they can earn revenue from it. Man those equality laws will be on the books before you can say "ooh get her!"

A superb language resource

2008-04-23T22:38:00.002+02:00

I give you the Le Grand Dictionnaire from the Office québécois de la langue française.

It is a very good technical French/English/Latin online dictionary. Technical terms and phrases.

Let's give it a whirl. I know many technical words in french that I learned in France. I don't know the English equivalents, because I learned everything about tile production here in France.

For example, the suspended trays that carry the tiles to the other part of the factory are called balancelles. The dictionary gives me "suspended tray conveyor" with the synonym "swing tray for overhead conveyor". Spot on, that's exactly what it is.

Last week, on the DTP press, a "goujon" was replaced by the mechanics and they put in the wrong sized "goujon" and as a result all the "bagues" on the "moules" were pushed out of place. Bagues is ring, of course, and moule is mould but "goujon"? The dictionary gives me "stud" with the explanation "A round, headless, bolt-like fastener with threads on both ends. One of its ends at least is intended for a nut." Exactly.

In the field of plumbing I come across "soupape" often. The dictionary defines it as a valve and gives an illustration of a tap and all its parts. I've also learned the the English for "bride" is "flange".

So, forget Google's language tools. before you go down to BricoDepot, or BatiLeClerc, or Brico Marché or whatever, find out the right technical term for what your looking for in Le Grand Dictionnaire

On a technical note, I leave you with the Two Ronnies classic - Fork Handles

Good weather coming

2008-04-19T17:52:00.002+02:00

Look at that outlook. 26 degrees and days of sunshine on the way.
That's the preview for our postcode.
Try yours at La Chaine Meteo

La douche de merde

2008-04-19T13:23:00.003+02:00

Yesterday morning I was looking into a tank of stinky water.
Some neighbours had returned to their holiday home to find that their fosse septique was misbehaving.
To be precise, the fosse itself wasn't the problem, it was the overflow tank next to it. This tank has a submersed pump that pushes the excess water over the road and into a sand filter in the garden. The pump wasn't working and the tank was full of water. It seems that one of the pipes was leaking and needed repairing, as well as having the pump sorted out.
But before any repairs could be undertaken the tank would have to be pumped out. It had been pumped out a couple of days ago using a neighbour's petrol driven pump.
We got the pump out of his barn, attached the hoses, dropped the suction hose into the tank and fired up the pump. It ran noisily for a while but didn't pump anything.
I checked the hoses were connected the right way round, and read the instructions on the side of the pump.
"Ensure the pump casing is full of water before starting the pump"
Ah! It need priming. I took the cap off the top of the pump cover and disconnected the outlet hose. No point walking backwards and forwards to the end of the pipe to see if water is coming out. I carefully pointed the pump away from my direction, and fired up the pump.
Still lots of noise and exhaust, but no water coming out.
Now this tank is full of the overflow water from the fosse septique. No solids, but it's pretty manky water all the same. Quite ripe. That rich smell you get from sewers on a hot day. Clears the sinuses.
The problem with the pump, (it seems obvious to me) is that the suction pipe has air in it and it needs to be full of water before the pump will start to pull. So I pick up the little pump (while it's running)and lower it into the tank so that the suction pipe can get filled with water.
Unfortunately, I had not reconnected the priming cap, nor the outlet hose.
My premise was correct. As soon as the suction hose was full, the pump started to work. And pumped a pile of nasty water over my head.
I was speechless for a few seconds as the enormity of the event sank in. Luckily most of the mess was on the 2 sweatshirts I was wearing, the shirt underneath them was dry.
It's one of the risks involved in plumbing, I suppose, I've been knee deep in the stuff before, but never showered in it.

La Vallée des Singes -

2008-04-17T22:41:00.003+02:00

Totally worth it. (Even tho it is a bit pricey - €13.50 for Adults and €8.50 for under 12s). It is well signposted from Civray.

Most of the monkeys are free and running about, and in the trees around you. The bigger nasty brutes like chimps, gorillas, mandrills are on their own islands.

The guides/keepers fed the animals at displayed times and gave a little schpiel, describing the troops, who were the dominant males and females, describing their behaviour etc. I learned a bunch of stuff I didn't know before.

The park has been running for 10 years and many of the monkeys and apes have been bred there. There were spider monkeys and capucins, chimps, gorillas, howler monkeys, lemurs, gibbons, tamarins, marmosets and colobus.

When the sun came out, the lemurs all trooped off to a sunny bit of lawn and sat facing the sun with their arms open and eyses closed. Very Zen. They were right amongst us and you could have reached out and touched them.

Blogger won't let me upload pictures for some reason. I just get error codes.
Zen-like lemures and cute as pie squirrel monkeys will be on display when Blogger gets its act together.
update: Lemur pic uploaded, More later

La Vallée des Singes

2008-04-15T10:41:00.002+02:00

The weather forecast shows 1 afternoon of sunshine today in amongst all this rain.

So today we're off to La Vallée des Singes. The eggs are hard-boiled, the sausages cooked, the sandwiches packed. I just have to download directions (I've never been, but Fi says they got lost last time they went) and we'll be off for a trip to the Vienne in about half and hour.

I hope the weather comes right. I was up at 7:00 this morning to go to town for a blood test at the Cabinet des Infirmières (Hypertension, cholesterol - full MOT) and it was thick fog and cold. It's still chilly outside now at 10:45

Not too far from La Vallée des Singes is this place. Go on, check it out. These tree houses look like the most romantic place to stay. I want to go.

French Stand-up Comedy . . .

2008-04-14T23:06:00.002+02:00

. . . is surprisingly good.

I give you as a sampler -
Gad Elmeleh

Anthony Kavanah

Florence Foresti

Come on you blues!

2008-04-13T23:20:00.002+02:00

Bordeaux's win tonight against Caen brings them back to 4 points from league leaders Lyon.

French Love Phrases

2008-04-12T15:31:00.002+02:00

Looking at traffic to this site, I find that lots of people get here via a google search on "French Love Phrases".
So far they will have been disappointed, but I like to provide a service, so, for all those cheesy casanovas who have been searching the net for romantic things to say to make the poor girl think you're a suave, sophisticated man of the world, here are some French Love Phrases.

Je t'aime
I love you
Je t'adore
I love you
Je suis fou de toi
I'm mad about you
Je suis morgane de toi
I'm crazy about you
Tu est belle comme un coeur
You're as pretty as a picture
Tu as de beaux yeux
You have beautiful eyes
C'est le coup de foudre
It's love at first sight
(Do not confuse or mispronounce "foudre" with "foutre")

Il faut que je t'embrasse
I have to kiss you
Embrasse-moi
Kiss me
Je te veux
I want you
J'aime ça
I like that
N'arrête pas
Don't stop
Baise-moi plus fort
Fuck me harder
Ca Alors!
Oh yeah!
Je viens
I'm coming
C'etait super
That was great
Je ne veux plus te revoir
I don't want to see you again

Oops sorry, I got a bit personal there.

It's no longer "global warming"

2008-04-11T18:06:00.002+02:00

It's been a while since the pundits & the media have used the term "global warming". They cunningly switched to the term "climate change" a while ago.
And a good thing too, because with last year's miserable summer, and all the rain we're having right now anyone mentioning global warming will get lynched.
In today's Telegraph "Climate experts predict temperature drop"

He said it was likely that the La Nina phenomenon would continue into the summer. If his forecast is right it would mean temperatures have not risen globally since 1998 when El Nino warmed the world.

Sort it out guys, is it El Nino causing the warming, or us?

And the phrase "temperatures have not risen globally since 1998" kind of gives the idea that temperatures haven't dropped either.
However, it seems temperatures peaked in 1998 and have been dropping ever since.

Data taken from RSS

The laptop fiasco

2008-04-11T13:36:00.002+02:00

My wife's internet business is slowly picking up. She is a reseller of murals and DIY mural kits for kids rooms.
Magic Mural Factory
She also has some of her own work on the site.
It means that the internet, and the PC are crucial for her work, and she saved up her profits to buy herself a laptop. No more fighting for for the PC, no more fears that the kids will download some virus and wipe out all her work.

We researched on the net, and in the shops, to figure out which would be the best laptop to get, and via a french site CDiscount.com chose a Toshiba Satellite.
CDiscount also offered payment over 3 monts, interest free, so she chose a spec more expensive than she could afford, reasoning that she will earn the difference during the 3 months of payment.

CDiscount, being a french site, is all in French. No problem, for us, we're fluent aren't we?

Laptop chosen, along with keyboard and mouse, because those touchpad things are fiddly, we get past the payment stage and onto the delivery page. they offered a range of delivery options from rapid, to your door, expensive down to 1 week cheap.
On the cheap option it said "for our customers in the Bordelais, you can choose to have your goods delivered to our store in Bordeaux". Didn't bother me, because I'm not Borderlais, I'm Charentais, so I won't choose that.
When the order was finalised the screen said "Thank you for your order. Your goods will be delivered to our store in Bordeaux"
SHIT!
So I phoned their customer support. (This was about 7:00pm on a Friday) Amazingly I get a reply, although at 30 centimes per hour I should hope so. I wanted to get them to change the delivery details and debit my card accordingly. The ever so friendly lady told me that that couldn't be done.
I was so stunned that I said thanks and hung up.
This is madness! So I called them back. Same nice lady. Could I cancel the order and redo it? Certainly she said, she will cancel the order, but could I please wait until I get an e-mail confirming the cancellation before I re-order? Otherwise I might get debited twice.
No problem. A bit annoying because it means we'll only get the laptop in a couple of weeks, but hey, it's better than driving into Bordeaux.
So, I waited for the email, and sure enough, a few days later a mail arrived from CDiscount.
"We are pleased to inform you that your goods have arrived for collection at our Bordeaux store"
SHIT!
SHIT!
So, I had no choice but to drive the two and a half hours to Bordeaux. To avoid cock-ups I checked the CDiscount website for the requirements when collecting. I was armed with driver's license, passport and a letter from Fiona authorising me to collect on her behalf. I printed out an itenerary from PagesJaunes (Yellow Pages). I follwed CDiscounts advice and checked my order online to make sure everything had arrived.
I managed to find their store (after getting lost on the motorway and backwardsing and forwadsing on various exits) and presented my paperwork. The nice man went off and came back with a big boxed laptop. Super.
And the mouse and keyboard? He went off for another look.
They haven't arrived yet.
SHIT!
Was I in Bordeaux for they day, he asked, could I wait? No I couldn't.
Could they forward them to me when they arrive I asked? No they couldn't.
How long will the mouse & keyboard stay in their store before they get returned to wherever the came from?
1 year!
Great. So I left without them, bought a mouse & keyboard at a hypermarket on the way home, and sometime, in the next year, if ever I'm in Bordeaux, I'll collect my mouse and keyboard.
All the money saved by buying on line burned up out of the exhuast pipe of my Peugeot 106

An appeal for help - Stroke victim support.

2008-04-08T13:33:00.002+02:00

Two weeks ago, a friend and neighbour suffered a stroke at home. He is 68 and has retired here in France, and lives with his wife.

Neither he or his wife speak any French (despite having been in the country for 4 years). So when he had his stroke, he was collapsed on the woodpile in the barn, his wife couldn't phone 18 for les pompiers or 15 for SAMU because she didn't know of those numbers, and wouldn't have been able to describe the problem, or give directions if she had known them.

So she called round her English friends, most of whome were out, because this happened on Easter Sunday.

Fiona & I have been helping when required with translations and stuff.

I've been trying to find out if there are support groups for English stroke victims in France because, for example, a French speech therapist would not be of great help to an English speaker. So far, no luck. I've located the French equivalents and had a few discussions on their forums, but I havn't found anything yet.

I can't believe that he is the first English immigrant to have suffered a stroke and be treated in France. I want to contact others so I can put them in contact with each other so they can share their experiences and make the best choices.

If no such support group exists, then I reckon I'll have to form one.

So what I'm asking for is: do you know of any English people, living in France who have suffered a stroke or an aneurism?

The following are just a bunch of keywords to help anyone searching for the same thing to find this page and contact me.

Stroke, aneurism, apoplexie, AVC, accident vasculaire cérébral

Friday's Favorite French Things

2008-04-06T13:12:00.004+02:00

Ok, it's not Friday, but when you're late, you're late.

Pollarded Trees.

A big kiss for whoever can tell me what kind of trees these are. You see them in avenues, town squares, in front of the hôtel de ville. In summer they are full of leaves, but in winter and spring they get pollarded and at this time of year you can see their fantastic gnarled shapes.

We call them "Titeuf trees" after the catroon character Titeuf

Weddings in France

2008-04-05T17:54:00.002+02:00

A new little girl appeared in our daughter's class, and Briony was put in charge of her while she learns French and settles in.
Her mother organises weddings and wedding receptions here in France, and my wife, Fiona, has created the website for them.
It is called 'L'Orangerie at La Tuiliere'.
It's a superb venue and Tamsin is great at getting things sorted out.
So, even if you aren't looking to have a wedding in France, or a wedding reception in France, have a look at 'L'Orangerie at La Tuiliere' to see how good Fiona's web skills are!

Don't just read the headlines

2008-04-05T16:28:00.005+02:00

I saw this in today's Telegraph and thought that homosexuality had become a crime in the UK:

My apologies for the long delay with no posts. Life has been getting in the way. I hope normal service will resume. At least I have a pile of stuff to write about.

Callan does a wall flip

2008-03-02T20:07:00.003+01:00

Callan gave up karate a while ago, and has taken up gymnastics. He taught himself how to somersault and backflip on the trampoline. He has been watching freerunning videos and wanted to learn to do a wall flip.
I told him I was sure he could do it, since he could already backflip on the trampoline.
A mattress on the lawn and me spotting for him and he was away. He should be doing it unaided soon, and then without the mattress. We've made him solomnly swear not to try it without me. I don't need a paraplegic son.
Here's a clip of today's first efforts.
Ignore the uncut lawn

Pilgrimage to India founders in France

2008-03-02T14:20:00.004+01:00

Times OnlineMark Boyle, 28, and two companions had the noble idea of making a pilgrimage to India. By not taking or spending any money they hoped to show that it is possible to achieve goals without depending on cash.
Armed only with his backpack, 3 tins of soup, a bag of trail mix and a chocolate bar, the plan was that human kindness and generosity would provide their food and shelter.
Unfortunately, the first country on the itenerary was France.

It seems the French thought they were a bunch of freeloading backpackers and gave them no help at all.

Writing on his blog, Mr Boyle said that the optimistic philosophy behind his project had somehow got lost in translation: "Not only did no one...speak the language, they also see us as just a bunch of freeloading backpackers, which is the complete opposite of what the pilgrimage is really about."
"That really scared us, and given that we now were pretty much out of food, hadn’t slept in days and were really cold, we had to reassess the whole situation."

They were advised to head for Belgium where people might be more inclined to speak English, but baulked at the three-day trip to hike to Bruges, and so turned tail and went home.

The story is less an indictment of French lack of charity or accomodation of foreigners as it is an indication of Mr Boyle's lack of preparation for the trip and absence of intestinal fortitude.

La Honte

2008-02-24T22:55:00.001+01:00

I don't judge the contestant too harshly, it must be easy to blow it under pressure, but more than half of the studio audience thought the sun went around the earth.

Spelling and Pronunciation

2008-02-16T13:36:00.004+01:00

Thanks to TBNIL for a heads up to a series of SNCF adverts. He said:

I loved those SNCF adverts last year .... they used traditional french village signs to advertise flights ot far off places - so for example, there was:

St Gapour - Singapore
Losse-en-Gellaisse - Los Angeles
Quancoune - Cancun

...and many more. Fabulous, and combined with great photography.

So I found some of the ads on DailyMotion. DailyMotion is used by the guys at the factory and seems much more well known here than YouTube

Pequint
Uploaded by serialkisskiller

Nioudelie - sncf
Uploaded by ulfablabla

Loucsorre - sncf
Uploaded by ulfablabla

Nouillorc
Uploaded by serialkisskiller

More info and pics from the guy who uploaded those vids Ulfalabla

Friday's Favorite French Things

2008-02-15T13:26:00.004+01:00

Back on the booze theme again.
Picon.
Classed as a bitters, and containing extracts of gentiane (see my entry on Suze) quinine and orange bark, Picon was invented in 1873 by Gaétan Picon.
According to the French Wiki entry:
Born in 1809, he was apprenticed in distileries in Aix-en-Provence, Toulon et Marseille. In 1837, While serving in Algeria with the French army, he invented Picon.
Gaétan Picon created his first distillery to produce the African bitters in an Algerian village, he then followed with a number of others: Constantine, Bône and Algiers. In 1872, he returned to France, he created his first factory at Marseille. From this time on, the bitters were named Picon.
Since 1995, Picon has diversified and there are now 2 different types: The original, called Picon bière and Picon club, for mixing with white wine.
Originally at 21°, since 1989 it has been produced at 18° provoking the ire of its devoted fans.
In 2003, 70% of sales were in the North and East of France. Total production for that year was 4 million bottles.

I was introduced to Picon beer at our café when, getting bored of lager I asked Michel for something different. He served me a Picon beer, and the caramel flavours reminded me of English winter ales. It immediately made the blond lager more complex and refreshing.

Friday's Favorite French Things

2008-02-08T17:32:00.000+01:00

This issue of Friday's Favorite French Things is something very simple: the end of town/end of village road signs.
It's all well and good to have a sign alerting you to the name of a town or village when you enter it, but when the village is very small, you may not have noticed the sign as you drive in.
Then you find the village is very pretty and you say "Hey, nice place, where are we again?"
Well in France they tell you as you leave.
A nice little touch and one I appreciate.
Here is the sign you see when leaving the village of Y in the Somme department. Y is the shortest named commune.

For the sake of pointless symmetry there are 3 communes that have the longest names - 38 letters each:
Saint-Germain-de-Tallevende-la-Lande-Vaumont
Saint-Remy-en-Bouzemont-Saint-Genest-et-Isson
Beaujeu-Saint-Vallier-Pierrejux-et-Quitteur

Characters at the Factory #2 - Didier

2008-02-07T12:23:00.000+01:00

I've just finished another shift cycle. - Six days of 2 morning shifts, 2 day shifts and 2 night shifts. The night shifts run from 8:00 at night till 4:00 in the morning. Which means I've just got out of bed, my eyes are like piss-holes in snow, and my head is thick and confused like I'm hungover. But now I'm off till the next morning shift - 4:00am on Monday.

But I must tell you about Didier.

Didier drives the Transbordeur. Transbo for short. This is a huge beast on rails that runs up and down the factory taking the tiles we've just made into one of the 28drying chambers and then delivering a stack of dry tiles so that they can be sent to the kiln and their chassis re-used for the tiles we're currently making. See?
Anyway, how the transbo works isn't important, but since, while driving it Didier delivers dry tiles to the press and takes away fresh tiles, it means he visits the press over 60 times during the shift.

And each time he comes there is some sort of weird interaction between us, that's become like a ritual.

He's fifty-something, small, a little chubby and shaves every 3-4 days, so most times he's stubbly. He's a kind man, and friendly. He normally wears two or three t-shirts or sweatshirts and only in the hottest summer wiill he get down to a single shirt. This is only amazing because when he drives his transbo into a drying chamber, hot air is pumped in there (diverted from the kiln) and the room can be over 50 degrees centigrade. You can't stay in there too long. He talks with his mouth full, smacks his lips while eating and never brushes his teeth, so the plaque on his teeth is of Guinness record book quality. He also never washes the armoured bassball cap we all have to wear. Sweat and clay dust has turned the band of his cap into bands of rainbow hue. When he's in a hurry, he doesn't run, he scuttles. As he drives his tansbo he thinks of things that have amused him and will then let out very loud laughter, which causes everyone to look at ech other and shake their heads and say things like "sacré Didier" or "completement cinglé"

So, I'll be at the press, catching tiles. See this post for a vid I took of our press in action. It will help explain why Didier's antics are so exasperating. Didier will come by on his transbo and call me. He's behind me so I have to turn around to see him. But I have to catch a tile and put it on a chassis every 4 seconds so that only leaves me about a second to see what he wants and have some kind of dialog. Shouted conversations conducted in 1 second bursts like a strobe effect in a disco is very difficult. So Didier does most of his side via gesture, and I do most of mine by smiling and nodding or shaking my head since my hands are full.

I'll hear a shouted "Hê!" It's like "Hey!" but different!) I turn around and there's Didier doing a gesture that imitates a cyclist pouring his water bidon over his head to cool down. (Because I sometimes cycle to work and I'm keen on cycle sport - the Spring classics, TdF, Giro Italia, Vuelto Espana etc) Didier has taken it on himself to be my personal cycling coach, giving me advice on diet, trainiing and abstinence from sex before racing. I don't race.
Also included in his cycling collection of gestures is the gear change gesture, since modified after I pointed out that my bike has the gear levers on the handle bars, not the frame, and so it's a subtle finger-thumb thing, not the hand wobble of the old style he has. There is also a two-hand circular hand crank thing to imitate pedals turning.
With these cycling gestures he is usually giving an indication of how hot it is and how hard he, or I, or both of us are working.
The valid response is a nod of the head, and, if he persists, repeat the gesture back to him. Then he can bugger off.

Five minutes later he's back.
"Hê!"
I ignore him, I might be a second out of synch with the press because of a problem and will need to catch the next 4 tiles super quick to get back into an easy rythmn again.
"Hê!"
"Hê!"
Shit! I'll turn around and there he is, this time maybe holding up three fingers and pointing to himself.
It's an indication of how many times he shagged his wife between shifts. I nod.
"Hê!"
I turn around. I know what's coming because it's a ritual that's been done over and over again. I can't ignore him because he'll just sit there going "Hê!".
"Hê!"
I turn around. He does an exhausted forehead wipe to show how much hard work it is to shag your wife three times. I nod.
"Hê!"
I turn around. He does a trembly hand gesture, acompanied by a wobbly leg mime to show how shagging his wife three times is killing him. I nod.
With one of his insane laughs he drives away on his transbo.

Nine times out of ten this little charade has me cackling in the same way that you laugh at the Little Britain sketches or the Fast Show even tho you know what the gag is going to be. "This week I have been mostly eating acorns" "Only meee!" "I'm the only gay in this village" etc.

One time out of ten I just wish he'd fuck off.

Sacré Didier

Cultural Differences

2008-02-05T12:43:00.000+01:00

This is an advert on French telly at the moment. When we saw it we just sat there with our mouths hanging open in disbelief.

Here is the transcript:
No! That's for mummy.
Ah! You want to play?
One, two, scissors!
One, two, paper!
One, two, rock!
Ha ha, you're really a loser, like you're father.
(voice over) No point fighting against it. Daunat sandwiches, so generous that just one is enough

First the baby's hand morphing out of the stomach is horrible. Like a scene out of alien. Why isn't the woman screaming in terror? She should be grabbing the kitchen knife to cut the damn thing out. Nasty. Reminds me of a strap-on dildo, but that's probably down to the videos I've been watching.

And then ... the baby flips the mum the bird!! The middle finger! And she just laughs. She's got Damien inside her and she thinks it's funny. Comes time for childbirth a thing like that may well decide not to come out. She won't be laughing then.

And finally she calls the kid a loser.

I must question my french friends on their response to this ad, because if they think the ad is OK, or funny in a comedic sense rather than in the weird sense, then there must be more separating us than just the Channel.

And does the advert work? ie: will it sell Daunat sandwiches or will people associate Daunat with mutating, insolent, loser babies, and their mothers who pick losers for lovers?

Come to France and get divorced

2008-02-02T16:07:00.000+01:00

A strange phenomnenon.
I know of 5 couples that have emigrated to France only to have their marriage break down.
Two close friends of my wife have hqd their husbands leave them, and we have another aquaintance for whom this disaster has just struck last month. All 3 women now find themselves alone in France with young children.
Another couple in the next village had the reverse, the wife took the kids back to England leaving the husband behind in France.
Some other good friends had a split, the wife carrying on with someone else and the husband took the whole family back to Wales and they are still together, tho it's not happy.

I know of many, many UK men here who spend all their time in the "English" bars while their wives wait at home.

I think in many cases the "French Dream" is not shared by both partners. One or the other leaves their friends, family and job to follow their partner into rural France. There, they find themselves isolated, unable to speak the language, spending time watching Eastenders and Corrie on Sky.

There are many couples who have moved here and one partner has to commute weekly to the UK to keep earning. It's very hard on a family when dad is only seen 2 days in every 14. And when he gets back to the family he can't rest because there is a pile of repairs and DIY to be done.

Often, the project of renovating the ruin they have bought keeps them occupied. Once the last radiator is plumbed in, and the last window double-glazed, they find they have nothing in common and nothing more to do together.

There is a big difference between the France we know from holidays and the France we have to live in. The house renovation shields people from that difference.

I'd love to see figures for divorce rates for UK immigrants, to compare with the averages.

I'm a cheery chappie aren't I?

la Chandeleur

2008-02-01T18:48:00.000+01:00

In England, Pancake Day içs Shrove Tuesday. (also known as Mardi Gras - Fat Tuesday)

Here in France, tho, the 2nd of February is the big crepes day.
The feast is called la Chandeleur, from the word for Candle, symbolising light. It is nominally 40 days after Christmas and commemorates the presentation of Jesus at the temple.

Historically, it is a melding of Roman fertility and Celtic purification ceremonies before the onset of Spring.

In the church there is a procession of candles and a benediction, but the most common method of celebrating, and the method that seems to be the most enduring, is the cooking and eating of crêpes, their golden round shapes symbolising the sun that is starting to return after Winter.

If you make crêpes yourself on Chqndeleur, make sure you hold a coin in your free hand to invoke properity for the rest of the year

See http://www.chandeleur.net/

tout en vrac

2008-01-28T20:13:00.000+01:00

Spring seems to be coming early this year. The weather has been sunny and mild. The nights clear and frosty. The pigeons have been breeding, and they shouldn't be until well into spring.
Here are two pics of a pigeon just out of its egg. In fact its arse is still stuck in the half-shell. (sounds like something the French would eat actually - "arse of young pigeon in the half-shell")

Pigeons lay 2 eggs. The other egg in this nest hatched the next day and as of today (3 days later) they are still doing well. Still ugly. Only their mother could love something like that.

I took advantage of the good weather and the end of my shift cycle to walk the dogs down by the lake. There is a little spillway and the river goes under a bridge....

It was all very tranquil and peaceful, accompanied by the gentle music of distant chainsaws...

This week sees the 35th Annual Comic Book Festival at Angouleme. The guest of homour is José Muñoz. I have had an Alack Sinner book of his for years. We had to go to Angouleme to get some stuff done so I thought I'd track him down and get it autographed. This was Saturday - 2 days ago. I was surprised that traffic was ok and there was still quite a bit of parking in the underground car parks. The streets were crowded and there was a good atmosphere. Here's a pic of some stilted creatures that were walking the streets.

When we found where Muñoz was, it was too crowded, the kids were niggling and you had to pay to get in so, merde.
Alors, a mixed bag of stuff all in one post or, tout en vrac, as they say.

Normal Service will now resume

2008-01-27T12:16:00.000+01:00

Thanks to very poor co-ordination between France Telecom and Tele2 we were without telephone or internet for 4 days.
Our main phone supply was France Telecom. France is slowly coming around to competition to its major services: phones, gas, electricity water etc. Internet supply was through Wanadoo, who were bought out by Orange and both are linked to France Telecom.
When the nice man from Tele2 made me an offer I couldn't refuse I agreed to sign with them for internet access and unlimited telephone calls.
I had presumed that the unlimited calls were through the box, in the same way that with my Orange Livebox I had a second phone line that was thru the net and thus unlimited and free. Except that that phone line hadn't worked for nearly a year, since the last time the Livebox was "en panne". But I was so relieved when Orange restored my internet connection I didn't dare disturb them for the second phone line.
So . . . weeks had gone by since the phone call from the Tele2 man. A letter had arrived confirming that we had agreed a contract, but still no hardware, when one afternoon the internet stopped, and half an hour later the phone was no longer working either. "le numero que vous avez demande n'est plus accesible" Great.
When I got home from the factory I tried the various France Telecom service numbers from the cafe but got messages saying they were busy please call back later.
Why were we cut off? I couldn't understand it. Everone joked that it was because we hadn't paid our bills, but the next bill was only due in a few weeks. And they hadn't sent a warning letter as they do when the bills are late.
When I finally got through to France Telecom the next day I was told that we were no longer clients because we had signed a contract with a new supplier.
"But I haven't received anything from the new supplier!"
"Ah, but that is not our problem"
"Will I lose my phone number and email address? I've used them for 4 years now, I can't inform all my friends and computer programs won't recognise me"
"I can't tell you that sir, perhaps you should call our customer service number tomorrow."

The next day, telling my tales of frustration in the cafe, Michel tells me there is a package for me. (The cafe doubles as a post office)
It's the box from tele2. But I don't have time to install it, the factory beckons.
When I finally got around to installing the box I decided to first remove all the Orange/Wanadoo stuff, then trawl the registry for stray entries.
I followed the Tele2 instructions for setting up there box, plugged the phone in and Hey Presto! the phone had a dialling tone. We could call out again. Calling in still gave the same "le numero que vous avez demande n'est plus accesible" message.
My computer couldn't connect WiFi (not capable) The ethernet connection said I didn't have an ethernet port and they hadn't supplied a USB cable. Bastard!
Playing around with the PC settings I find my Ethernet port is disabled. Enable the bugger and Whoosh! I have internet access again.
I filled in the new client online form and Whoosh! my phone is now working with the same phone number.
When I downloaded emails there were about 60 messages backlogged, among them a mail from Tele2 telling me that i was about to lose the functionality on my phone line, but this was normal and was the indication that I can now connect my Tele2 box.

So everything would have been OK:
IF the box had arraived at the same time, or before the email, and
IF France telecom hadn't cut me off before the email arrived.

Is it because it's France or are all telecomms services this flakey?

Calins Gratuits (Free Hugs)

2008-01-20T23:15:00.000+01:00

On September 22nd, 2006 a video on YouTube showed a man walking through a mall with a big sign "FREE HUGS". People's reactions change from suspicious to eventually accepting a free hug, and then helping out and getting others to join in.
By January 4, 2008, the video had been viewed over 22 million times and the phenomenon has spread to many countries.

Free hugs was used by the French ministry of health to raise awarenss of AIDS.
There are Free Hugs campaigns all over France. Visit their website at Calins Gratuits
or ContreDiscrimination or visit the Wikipedia entry for Free Hugs to find out where there is one near you.
Source: News.com.au

Great Tits

2008-01-16T14:54:00.000+01:00

No, it's not a cheap shot to get traffic.
Feeling sorry for the garden birds during winter, we put up some bird food outside the kitchen window. It's really great to see the birds. The most common visitors are the mésange bleue (blue tit) and mésange charbonnière (great tit).

The cats are perplexed. The window is now their wide-screen hi-definition television and "Birdlife" is their favourite channel. They spend hours sitting and watching the birds. There are 2 feeders, and they sit there, swivelling their heads like spectators at a tennis match:

Hairy Bar Snacks

2008-01-13T12:41:00.000+01:00

How to make save mony on supermarket pork promos and make Pork Scratchings along the way.
It's this time of year that the supermarkets start having their pork promos. You can pick up a whole, or half a pig for about 1.20Euro a kilo. And the supermarket will cut it up for you free of charge.
We didn't have tons of dosh last week, thanks to all the end of year fetes so we bought a shoulder (again).

If you zoom in on the label you'll see that this baby was 1.40 per kg and cost 11.21 so it was 8 kilos of shoulder.
Step one is to drink the beer, and step two is to sharpen the knives. My attitude to all this is that I'm not a trained butcher so I don't expect the results to be pretty. I'm sure the more I do it, the better I'll get.
I took the wrist end (do pigs have wrists? I'll bet there's a butcher's term for the joint) off and will use that as a little roast. Kept the skin and fat on it. I then removed te one from the shoulder and gave it to the dogs. Who were well pleased.
I then trimmed off the skin (to be used for the pork scratchings later) and cut out the biggest, neatest, least scraggy bit of meat which rolled up nicely for another roast.
the rest of the meat I cutt into stewing sized cubes and packed in freezer bags at about 1lb 500g each. I got five bags out. So that should make five meals for 11 euros. A bargain. Here are the finished portions.

Now, the Pork Scratchings. The last time I did this with a promo shoulder I threw the skin and fat away. This time I wanted no waste so I did a bit of research on the net and found that Pork Scratchings are very popular, but recipes are few and far between. I cut the skin into big chunks and put it into the heavy cast-irone cocotte, with a bit of olive oil.

I put this, with its lid on, into the wood burning stove which was alight anyway, as it heats the kitchen. I left it for about an hour, in a hot oven, and I could hear it banging, popping and hissing.
I took it out when it was golden, threw in a handfull of coarse salt and lit it cook a bit more. The skin was crispy, the fat crunchy and there was about 500ml of fat.
The scratchings drained overnight and were a success.

Credit for the title of this post goes to the Pork Scratchings web site. We used to call them "turkey scabs" or "Pommy biltong"

Friday's Favorite French Things

2008-01-11T15:09:00.000+01:00

Galette des Rois
January 6 was Epiphany, the day the catholic & orthodox churches celebrate the "shining forth" or revelation of God in human form, to the Gentiles, in the person of Jesus.
Whatever.
Two things take place in France during Epiphany:
1. All the Christmas decorations come down
2. Galettes de Rois make an appearance. These either look like the photo below:

and are filled with an almond paste and a "fève", or are in a ring or crown shape and made of brioche. The fève is a little ceramic thingy that used to have a religious theme, but these days can be anything from a Smurf to a St Mary to Jack Sparrow from Pirates of the Caribbean.
When the galette is cut up, the person who gets the piece with the fève is king (or queen) and gets to wear the crown. In bars/cafes or work, the person with the fève gets to buy the next round. Children have been known to get violent over the fève and will resort to prodding the entire galette with their grubby little fingers until they locate the fève.
For lunch today Fi & I made a savoury galette, and it was bloody delicious.

Easy to make - here is the recipe
Galette Nicoise
Pre-heat oven at 200C
2 tins of Croissante pastry. Get these in the refigerated section at your supermarche. It comes in little tins and there are 4 croissants each tin.
2 chicken breasts
1 onion
handful of lardons
feta cheese
emmental cheese (optional)
black olives
red pepper
Cook the onion and lardons with a bit of garlic and herbes de provence. Set aside.
Cut the chicken into small pieces and fry, with some salt, black pepper & a squeeze of lemon juice.
chop half the red pepper & cook in the empty pan
In a bowl, mix the chicken, onion/lardons pepper, black olives and cheese. The emmental will make the mixture more melty and moist.
In a buttered baking tray, place the triangles of croissante pastry, pointy sides outwards so that the bases overlap. To get them even try starting with the 4 poles like in a compass and then put in 4 more overlapping pieces in between.
spoon the chicken mixture onto the widest parts of the triangles and then fold the points over the mixture towards the middle. Zoom in on the photo above and you'll get the idea.
Place it in the oven and cook for about 10-15 mins until the pastry is golden. Careful to not burn the underneath.

Easy peasy - spectacular looking and tasty. We called it "Galette Nicoise" or "Couronne Nicoise" to fool our chauvanistic french guests who wn't eat anything that isn't french. They fell for it.

Reveillon nouvel an

2008-01-06T12:32:00.000+01:00

The New Year's Eve celebrations caused agonies of decision making because of the price. Every year the owners of the cafe over the road do a New year's Eve bash in the Salle des Fetes. And this year they were charging 45 Euros a head.
Now in actual fact 45 Euros is not a lot when you consider the menu (later) and the wine included and the music. But with 4 adults (my in-laws are currently staying with us) and 2 kids it meant stumping up a bill of over 200 Euros, and after all the money spent on Chrimbo, that was quite an amount.
The Salles des Fetes is also over the road from us and last year we stayed at home and I could hear the noise of the people partying while we were Johnny-no-mates. I determined then that I was going to party New Year there come hell or high water.
After showing everyobody that other reveillons were costing up to 90 Euros each and after itemising the menu, everybody decided it was good value for money after all.
Kick off was 8:30, on a very cold and foggy night. Michel (cafe proprieter) had been teasing me that we would be seated next the village drunk and his companion. She plucks out all her eyebrows and then draws in new ones that make her look like a very suprised wasp (and paints her eyelids bright shiny blue).
I was relieved to find we were nowhere near them, and surrounded by french folk. the hall was undecorated but the tables nicely laid. The room smelled of delicious food and the band were already playing.
The menu:
Soup de Poisson
Fruits de mer (Oysters, prawns, bulots and half a langouste)
Melon & Foie Gras
Queues de Langoustinea a l'ail & cepes
Civet de ChevreuilPause Charentaise
Ostrich steak
Salade a Noix
Buche de Noel & Glace
Champagne
Cafe

The Band

First - whatever I may say to the contrary, the band was excellent. They were called Pha Si La Danser. Typical french play on words. The "Pha Si La" part is to do with french musical notation. They don't do ABCDEF like us they do Do Ray Me So like in Sound of Music. The whole name sounds like "Facile a Danser" or easy to dance.
Look at those splendid shiny shirts and pants with a stripe. They boy on sax was also the singer. he had heavily accnted french and a warbly voice that couldn't hold a note. He was brilliant. They played between every course of the meal and everybody danced. Waltzes and polkas and stuff. It was the only way to get through a meal of those proportions.
The fish soup was superb, and there was a nice Alcase white to go with it. (Did I mention that all the wine was included in the price?), and the next course, the fruits de mer was very generous. There were oysters and prawns, and big whelk-like things called bulots and a langouste cut in half. This had a tail bigger than a prawn, but smaller than a crayfish, and a claw about 10cm long. The claw was already cracked and contained delicious salmon-red meat. Many of my neighbours didn't like their whelks which were a bit rubbery, but had a peppery kick to them. They all ended up on my plate and I must have had more than 20 of the things.
Below is my father-in-law Byron and my son Callan busy with oysters.

I won't detail every dish, but they were all great and I would have been happy with any one of them alone for a normal meal.
At midnight balloons and streamers, hats, horns, poppers and pea-shooters were issued, and there was much kissing and good-wishing going on. Us men got to do the manly gallic kissing, the only time off the football field men are allowed to kiss each other. Briony took advantage of the red noses for a photo op.

and this is me fairly pissed, reloading a pea-shooter

We staggered home at about 3:00 am and we were in the first wave of leavers. Speaking to some of the guests afterwards, they were there dancing till after 4:00.

Tony Blair & God

2007-12-19T17:29:00.000+01:00

There is an interesting article on the online Spectator by Rod Liddle entitled "God's role in politics - God’s role in politics is not to underwrite bad ideas"
The crux of the article is in these paragraphs:

The longer Blair remained in office, the more pronounced became the shift away from that first and crucial god — public opinion — and towards some other higher being. As that BBC documentary cleverly evinced, towards the end of his tenure Blair rarely expanded upon his reasons for doing some deeply questionable act beyond the look-I’m-an-honest-sorta-bloke shrug of the shoulders and the repeated mantra: ‘Well, I did it cos I thought it was the right thing to do.’ Over and over again Blair cited this as his sole reason for embarking upon one or another catastrophic course of action; he never said, ‘I thought it was the right thing to do, but sadly I was mistaken,’ and still less, ‘Look, I did it cos it was politically expedient and seemed attractive at the time.’

This seems to have been the gift which God bestowed upon his mate Tony Blair: not humility, an intimation of human frailty, an understanding that human knowledge and human abilities are most definitely finite, that given free will we are at liberty to make the wrong decisions as well as the right decisions, but instead a suffocating and deluding certitude. Blair’s favourite phrase — ‘I did it cos I thought it was the right thing to do’ — is an absolutist’s argument: it cannot be gainsaid. And of course the implication is that he thought it was the right thing to do because he was a man of faith and conviction — and so even if everything turned out badly, as in Iraq, his motive or judgment could not possibly be questioned. So it is a statement that requires no evidence, no explanation and still less anything in the way of an apology.

I always knew Blair was flakey, because of his mud rebirth ceremony with his harridan wife and her new-agey Kaballah bullshit, but I had no idea that he actually believed he had a one-on-one link with God, and felt that that justified his decisions. I always thought his support for America was historical and political rather than because of a shared fundamentalism with George Bush.
At least he had the good sense to be embarrased about it and keep it quiet while he was in office.

Get Voting

2007-12-16T10:03:00.000+01:00

A note for non-French citizens living in France:

Only French citizens have the right to vote in the French national elections - ie: the ones they had this year to elect the President and representatives.

But, us foreigners can vote in Municipal elections and (if you are British) European elections.

The next municipal elections will take place on the 9th and 16th March 2008. If you want a say in how your commune is run, if you want to get more involved in the community then you should vote, or, even, satnd for the municipal council.

But. and it's a big but, you have to REGISTER yourself on the voter's roll. It is not automatic. You have to personally go to your Mairie, with your passport and fill in a form. AND . . . you only have until the 31st December to get it done.

So, get on your bikes, and get registered. I asked at the Mairie if there were many "English" people registered and it seems I am the only one. (In this part of France everyone from the British Isles, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa etc is "English")

French Atheists

2007-12-11T22:41:00.000+01:00

I'm going to start collecting and research French Atheist sites and must explore the French Atheist and Humanist organisations.

My first stop is Athéisme - L'homme debout which on their English pages they translate as "Atheism - The capital man" but "debout" means "standing" and I think it translates much better as "Atheism - mankind standing tall"

They have a great page on the Scale of beliefs which I can't show because it's done in html tables, but I recommend you follow the link. They try and show the gradations from animism to atheism through religions as a progressions. It's quite thought provoking to see it laid out in this way.

It's an interesting site, with quotes and jokes (sometimes the humour gets lost in the translation!)

The fertility chair

2007-12-10T12:40:00.000+01:00

In saturday's edition of Charente Libre, our local paper was a story about a magic fertility chair in Naples.
For anglophones, this magnificent journal also has an English version. I can't link to the story itself as it is a subscription site. I found this one though, and here is the story at Reuters.
Now this post may ramble a bit because I'm posting immediately after haveing 3 demi pressions at the cafe with the old boys - pre lunch aperatifs.
First, lets get the Charente Libre out of the way. The newspaper's name translates as "Free Charente", but if you should decide to quip to the newsagent that the paper shouldn't cost 85 centimes since it is free, you will be rewarded with a blank look. Because in French there are a few words for "free", and "libre" has the sense of "freedom" or "liberty" as in free from oppression or slavery, and my guess is that the paper took its name shortly after liberation from the Nazis in 1945. "Free" as in "costs no money" is the word "gratuit" and "free" as in "available" is "disponible.

Getting back to the story at hand. I read the article in the Charente Libre while on a night shift, Saturday. "That's blogworthy" I thought and tore it out and put it in my jacket pocket.
Today, Monday, in the cafe, one of the old boys sarts telling the story of this miraculous fertility chair, whereapon I reach into my pocket and bring out said article. Much to everyone's amazement at how switched on to current affairs the English are. We aren't, of course. The remark is an example of confirmation bias. And confirmation bias is the explaination behind the miracle fertility chair.
Either it's the alcohol, or my own confirmation bias but I'm delighted the way these threads are coming together.

Right. The story at hand. The magic fertility chair. At the end of the 18th Century, Anna Maria Rosa Nicoletta Gallo spent her life in a small flat "in chastity and mystical suffering until her death in 1791 at the age of 76." She was given the saint name of "Mary Frances of the Five Wounds of Jesus" which suggests she may have carried stigmata, but, given that at the shrine you can also see her hair shirts and whips, it's not beyond the bounds of possibility that the stigmata were self-inflicted.
What's involved is that women who are struggling to fall pregnant sit themselves in an armchair in the shrine. Then Sister Maria Giuliana, or Sister Elisa who belong to the order of nuns that guard the shrine will touch the supplicant's breast and belly with a box containing a vertebra and lock of hair of the saint. The efficacy of the treatment is proved by the birth announcements stuck to the walls and the testimonies in weblogs.
This is where the confirmation bias comes in.

Confirmation bias refers to a type of selective thinking whereby one tends to notice and to look for what confirms one's beliefs, and to ignore, not look for, or undervalue the relevance of what contradicts one's beliefs. For example, if you believe that during a full moon there is an increase in admissions to the emergency room where you work, you will take notice of admissions during a full moon, but be inattentive to the moon when admissions occur during other nights of the month. A tendency to do this over time unjustifiably strengthens your belief in the relationship between the full moon and accidents and other lunar effects.
This tendency to give more attention and weight to data that support our beliefs than we do to contrary data is especially pernicious when our beliefs are little more than prejudices. If our beliefs are firmly established on solid evidence and valid confirmatory experiments, the tendency to give more attention and weight to data that fit with our beliefs should not lead us astray as a rule. Of course, if we become blinded to evidence truly refuting a favored hypothesis, we have crossed the line from reasonableness to closed-mindedness.
Numerous studies have demonstrated that people generally give an excessive amount of value to confirmatory information, that is, to positive or supportive data

All the hundreds and thousands of people who have sat in the chair and had no benefit do not get reported. All the hundreds and thousands of people who would have fallen pregnant regardless of whether they sat in the chair or not, cannot be assertained, as there is no double blind testing. Likewise, it is impossible to judge the effects on mood, moral, and mental attitude of the women who have sat in the chair and then attacked their conjugal efforts with renewed vigour.
(That last sentence is DEFINITELY the efffect of French beer)

In closing, I'd like to add how much I love catholicism for being the loony fringe of christianity. European and South American catholics are so into the voodoo zombie side of stuff, with saints and bones and weeping statues. It is such good value for money. That's your "old time religeon" right there.

Here we have a picture of a woman getting the saintly boner (sorry, "bones") applied to her: and below is a url for a video. Courtesy Reuters

video: Fertility Chair