124. Guilty as charged

2nd March 2011. My French failed me this morning - by that I mean my ability to instantly understand what someone has said to me and then to come out with the right reply (grammatically as well as socially).

Here's what happened.. I was walking with the dog in town when a woman d'un certain age passed close by going in the opposite direction and she said to me, "Les chiens sont pour les sentimentaux.." (Dogs are for sentimental people) and then she was gone.

It took me a couple of seconds to a. realise that she'd been talking to me and b. understand exactly what she'd said. I then spent the next ten minutes mulling over what I could/should/should not have said in English, let alone French. Curious thing to say though - was it a spur-of-the-moment thing or had she just been waiting for the right moment to come out with it? I mentioned it to Madame and she described her exactly to me - apparently she's well-known around town for being two or three prawns short of a paella. In the end, it was just as well I said nothing.

There are several people around town who are "down on their luck" - another way of saying their life choices were bad - and they sit on the ground outside places like the Post Office, the cathedral after the Sunday morning service or Monoprix and they all seem to have large dogs. There's normally an influx of them when there are public holidays or when it's the tourist season. Some are quite aggressive, some have little signs made up with their life stories, some demand you return their "Bonjour" - I do give to charities but I think the first thing they need to do is to stand up. And when I see them smoking then I'm afraid my sympathy is in short supply. There are jobs out there - but they won't find one sat on their backsides. I've very little sympathy - as in none at all - with young people sat on their backsides begging as well.  

Sad scene at the bottom of the avenue this morning - a large skip was parked outside a house where an old gentleman had lived. He always looked like he had a haircut every two years - whether he needed one or not. A few months ago I realised we hadn't seen him for a while and this morning his house was being cleared. I saw his old furniture thick with the dust of years being thrown unceremoniously into the skip by 3 men in the kind of white overalls that police wear at crime scenes.

But - back to the lady's comment - yes, I probably am sentimental as far as the dog is concerned. Why have one if you're not?

Now here's a 13 year old I could listen to all day:

Gypsy jazz guitarist Dorado Schmitt (in the centre above) is no mean violinist himself.. But here he is with his guitar:

123. High speed trains in the UK

28th February 2011. Whilst firing up my PC this morning I couldn't help but notice a BBC headline on the Google page that made my heart sink. It said: "Views sought on high-speed rail.." Aaaaagghh!

In case you're in any doubt, that little phrase marks the end of any hopes we might have had for a high speed rail service in the UK similar to the ones that have been built and are still being built across Europe. I've mentioned this project/aspiration/dead duck (select the one you want) before here and this latest pronouncement by the British government just confirms my worst fears. And here was I thinking that the purpose of government was to govern. They've been elected so get on with it! And coalition governments have exactly the same powers as the rest.

It's interesting to see how the idea of high speed rail travel is being sold to the British electorate. Instead of declaring that they wish to build a high speed rail network that would serve the needs of the major UK population centres and would link up with the European high speed rail network, we are told that the government wishes to spend £17bn to save "around half an hour" from the journey time from London to Birmingham the implication being it's all to enable faster access to Birmingham. You couldn't make it up. Now you would think that this new track would link up with the high speed rail link from London to the Channel Tunnel - but of course, the Birmingham to London high speed link will finish at London Euston - whereas the rail link to the Channel Tunnel and beyond, starts at London St Pancras.. So if one day, you are travelling from the north of England to anywhere on the continent, you will have to change not only trains - but also stations - in London.

The real message should have been: Birmingham to say, Paris by high speed train in 3 hours, Manchester to Paris in 3½ hours or Glasgow to Paris in 4½ hours. Now doesn't that sound a lot more interesting? The problem is that the Home Counties-based civil servants (Sir Humphrey Applebys to a man) already have their high speed rail link to the Continent - and therefore they have absolutely no intention of spending millions to afford the same convenience to the proles who live north of Watford.. (Here be dragons etc)  

If you really wish to kill a project stone dead, then you start (or, you could argue, continue) an endless round of consultations with pressure groups, NIMBYs, those with bees in their bonnets and all the rest of the Luddite tree-huggers. This inaction posing as activity enables the Minister concerned to stand up in Parliament and drone on and on that progress is being made when, in reality, it's only the legions of transport advisers who are getting fat on the consultancy contracts - at our expense. Meanwhile, nothing will happen. And that's good news to those parsimonious skinflints at HM Treasury.   

And for all you lovers of compromise, the BBC link in the first para above provides the solution that will soon be staring at you all in the face: "Opponents argue that the £17bn scheme will be a waste of money and that updating the existing West Coast mainline would be a better investment."* (cue howls of derisive laughter!) Ah yes, the good old British compromise rides to the rescue. And don't, for one minute, believe that shortage of money is the real reason for the lack of action - only this weekend I read that we've been providing aid to Russia, China (yes, China!) and India among others. Apparently, the British government gave £170m in aid to China since 2005. Madness. 

Now breathe deeply and r e l a x.. (Nurse will be along shortly)

* Fans of "Yes Minister" will recognise these two tactics as worthy of Sir Humphrey Appleby at his best. I love this quote: the unflappable symbol of a machine that has no gears, only brakes. Sound familiar?

This is something I found on YouTube.. reminded me of dawns I'd seen at airfields the world over:

And to finish up with, another nice sequence:

I'm reminded of the old story of the pretty girl being shown around the flight deck of an RAF transport aircraft during a long haul flight..

The four man flight deck crew perk up when she comes in..

She looks in awe at all the switches and dials for a few moments before asking innocently, "And what do all these knobs do?"

Quick as a flash, her escort replies, "Drink coffee mainly.."

122. England step up a gear

27th February 2011. What a cracking game last night..! ("What game..?") (Wake up at the back there!) The 'crunch' game between England v France in the RBS 6 Nations rugby tournament)

England came out 17-9 winners in a closely fought match, full-back Ben Foden having scored the only try that was allowed. Mike Tindall had a try disallowed which I still think was a good 'un but that's how it goes. Chris Ashton also had one disallowed for a forward pass which was impossible to judge from the TV picture. There were some mighty tackles being made all over the pitch and some very tired bodies out there at the end of the game last night but by keeping a clean sheet as far as conceding tries are concerned, England proved that they can shut out a strong attacking side like France- even if on occasion they needed a helpful bounce of the ball to do so. At the end of the match we were all exhausted from the nervous strain of watching! 

We watched it with A & V at their house in Biarritz. A made me laugh - he brought out two enormous bars of Nestle Crunch!! He took the loss very well considering and I managed to stay on my best behaviour!

After V's delicious post-match dinner, we settled down to watch a film that I doubt many Brits are aware of - "La Grande Vadrouille" - with French comedy greats Bourvil and Louis de Funès plus one of my all-time favourite English comedy actors - Terry-Thomas.. An RAF bomber piloted by T-T is shot down over Paris - & what follows is pure French farce! For over forty years, until the release of Bienvenue chez les Ch'tis in 2008, La Grande Vadrouille was the most successful French film in France, topping the box office with over 17,200,000 cinema admissions. We watched it in French but I found the humour and the French dialogue easy to follow.

I've been meaning to mention this for a while but the French have a habit of taking English words and using them in a different way. The one that always catches my eye when I go for a haircut is shampoing. (And yes, that's how they spell it) It's pronounced "shom-pwang". Another one I hear all the time on the car radio are the non-stop ads for hypermarkets where they describe shops like Lidl as 'Ard Deescoont' (that's Hard Discount to you & I!).