Head Rambles

Grandad September 27th, 2009

I never thought I would say this, but Roger the SatNav is being a right pain in the hole.

I think it all started that last day we went to Domme.

When we were leaving, I decided his tortuous route through the town was a bit much, so I followed the signposts instead.  Now I grant you I did follow the wrong signposts, but at least I got us out of the lace legally, which is more than Roger would have done.

He went into a bit of a hissy fit as soon as we left the town and insisted on bringing us on a crazy tour of the local hills.  Next thing I knew he had brought us to a top secret military installation.  Why he wanted to go there, I will never know.

I found it on Google Earth, but they have deliberately fuzzed it up.

You can see the road Roger brought us on, at the top left.  What the picture doesn’t show is that every ten feet there was a sign warning of the direst consequences if we even thought about stopping, let alone taking a photograph.

Here is a photograph.

I think that was Roger’s final downfall.

A few hundred yards further down the road I realised that Roger had locked up.  I think the radiation must have fried his brain.  Leastwise I had to give him a severe thump before he politely and contritely brought us home.

He has been acting up ever since.  This morning we wanted to drive from Poitiers to Tours, but not on the motorway.  You would think that would be a simple enough instruction, but Roger threw a fine strop.  He refused to start altogether.  I threw him across the car park and he decided to show us where we were.  Or rather he showed us where he thought we were, but we weren’t there at all.  I belted him off the car roof and he finally and reluctantly told us where we were, and he got it right, so we hit the road.

We had a fine journey, and stopped off in Chatellerault from a couple of lovely coffees in the sun.

It was when we were approaching Tours that things started to go wrong again.

According to Roger we were driving along a nice straight stretch of the road, even though we were driving through a small town at the time.  Also a very irritating local radio station was blasting out of the speakers, even though I had told Roger to play silent music.  I stopped the car and had to give him a belt of the wheel brace.  He went and had a sex change and became a very irritating American woman, and then finally told us where our hotel was.

I just asked him where the local good eateries are.  He suggested the hotel next door to us.  I don’t trust him any more.  It’s probably an abattoir.

God knows where we’ll end up tomorrow?

• Holidays
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Grandad September 25th, 2009

And so the time has arrived.

We depart from here tomorrow morning.

As a little tribute to the house we have been staying in, I would like to stick up  a few final photographs.

They were all taken from the confines of the small garden.  But who needs a big garden with views like these?

The garden looking across the valley, as the sun goes down.

Evening on the Dordogne, with Château des Milandes in the distance.

 
This lad happened to float past as I had the camera out.

Beynac glowing softly in the evening light.

Au revoir.

• Holidays
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Grandad September 25th, 2009

Is it man’s natural inclination to drive on the right hand side of the road?

I have given this subject intensive thought for the last five minutes and have come to the conclusion that it is.

Let’s look at the facts.

First of all, it is a well known fact that when a bloke has a skinfull of drink on him, that he tends to revert to a baser version of himself.  While I don’t believe that applies to me personally, I must confess that after eight or ten pints of stout, I do tend to drive on the right hand side of the road.  Now, they don’t serve Guinness in France [well – actually they do, but I am not going to drink any of that export muck] so I have abstained from the Black Nectar and have been confining myself to wine.  All I can say is that after a bottle of wine, I still drive on the right hand side so this counteracts any theory that I am just being bloody minded and driving on the opposite side for the hell of it.  This would tend to lead me to the conclusion that the right side, is indeed the right side to drive on.

Then there is the historical context.

Where I am in France, there is evidence of the earliest attempts of Home Sapiens to crawl out of the swamp pit.  Being Home Sapiens, the first thing he did was scrawl graffiti everywhere.  Presumably there weren’t many motorway flyovers in those days, so he tended to confine his graffiti to caves, being [I presume] the next best thing.  There are many caves in this area with examples of their vandalism, and one thing forcibly struck me – all the car parks there are laid out for right hand driving.  Surely this would tend to support my theory that driving on the right dates back in the region of 20,000 years?

Of course most civilised countries drive on the right.  And America.  They are the exception that proves the rule.

There is only one answer.

I am going to have to lead by example.

When I drive off that ferry, I am going to continue driving on the right.

You’ll see that I am right.

Right?

• Holidays , On the road
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Grandad September 24th, 2009

I received an email from Superquinn yesterday.

They are offering specials on French wines.  Hah!

We did a little shopping today, but I decided to forgo Superquinn’s offer, as I doubt they deliver here.

I bought some Royal Gala apples.

Superquinn are charging €0.49 each.  To be fair, I looked at Tescos – €0.43 each.  Here in France?  €0.21, and they are lovely, crisp sweet, juicy, big ones too.

I thought about some wine.

A nice bottle of Rose d’Anjou will set you back €9.55 in Superquinn.   Tescos charge €7.79, which doesn’t say much for Superquinn’s sale?  French price?  Wait for it……  €1.89.  Hah!

Ah, but be fair, says you.  Isn’t France a wine producer?  That’s true, but it is still one hell of a mark-up, at four to five times the price.  And Ireland is quite capable of growing its own apples so there should be little or no difference there?

OK, so.  Ireland is a dairy farming country.  How about milk?

Tecos – €1.14 a litre.  Superquinn – €1.15 a litre.  France?  €0.78 a litre.

In fairness there were one or two items that were slightly more expensive here.

Tescos and Superquinn both charge €0.85 for their cheapest sugars, whereas in France I paid €1.42.  But then the French tend to buy in bulk and I probably could have come nearer the Irish price if I had bought one of their more usual sacks that look like they should be delivered to a building site.

On average prices varied from equal to around a half of Irish prices.  Some [like sugar] are higher but they are a rarity.

One price difference I find quite horrifying is pipe tobacco.

I will be honest and say I don’t know how much a pouch is in Ireland, because I tend to buy in bulk, and anyway they keep fucking around with the price [always upwards, of course].  It is somewhere around €6 to €7, if not more.  The price here?  €6.20.  And before any of you say ‘so what?’ – the pouches here are twice the size of the Irish ones.  And the tobacco is imported, so you can’t use that excuse.

The only thing that used to be expensive here was petrol.  Last year it was around 50% higher.  Irish petrol prices have been up and down like a whore’s knickers recently, but petrol here is around €0.10 a litre dearer which isn’t too bad.

And I dare say our forthcoming budget will sort that! 

• Holidays
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Grandad September 24th, 2009

I just love my good friend Luke Clancy.

For those of you who don’t know him, he is one of the leading lights in Ireland’s very own Third Reich – ASH.

Now why should I be so happy about someone whose stated aim is to ban all tobacco products?

The answer is simple.

By studying his methodology and the way that he obtains statistics, it makes our job in WANK [Warning Against Natural Killers] so much easier.

For example, his is vomiting forth yet again on the subject of smoking in Ireland and amongst his claims is the one that smoking kills 6,000 people a year.  What he actually claims is that “tobacco is linked with about 6,000 deaths in Ireland each year”, but in his own inimitable cute fashion, he conjures up visions of smokers coughing their lungs up until they expire.

Of course the truth is significantly different.  What he is referring to is the number of people who die each year of illnesses that are associated with smoking.  This means that a non-smoker who unfortunately dies of cancer is lumped in with those figures.  Also, he fails to mention what age they are when they die?

So, you see that makes WANK’s work so much easier.

Lately we have been carrying out some more research [using Clancy’s methodology, of course] and have come up with an incredibly startling result -

At considerable expense, we have studied over ten thousand people who lived between 1900 and 2000, and the result of our study shocked even us.  Every single person in the study walked at some stage, and now they are all dead.  There can be only one horrific conclusion to be drawn.

Walking is fatal.

Of course we are going to put considerable pressure on the government to curtail this horrific blight on society.

• Footpaths must be torn up immediately.
• A massive tax must be placed immediately on walking boots to dissuade the young from starting.
• All posters, photographs and films of people walking must be eradicated.
• Pedestrians must be treated with the utmost contempt and must be shunned by society.
• Young people must be educated and taught that walking is only for the weak willed.
• All footwear must contain a graphic image of a bunion.

So there you have it.

ASH can’t be wrong, so nor can we.

You have been warned.

• The Nanny State , WANK
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