125. Thoughts of spring

5th March 2011. This cartoon pretty much sums up my view of January, February and March. It's been a loong ol' winter down here and we were counting the days only yesterday until I can finally drag the plancha and the table & chairs out of the garage to set out on the terrace so we can have lunch outside again.. Warmer weather to me means living outside in shorts and T-shirt. When did I last wear a tie..? I remember putting one around my neck about 2 years ago and there was an embarrassingly long pause while rusty gears somewhere at the back of my head creaked and groaned until slowly the solution to the tie knotting question popped out. And that was after wearing a tie every day for the best part of forty years..

Did 12km today (Running total: 460km) in a coxed quad sculler on a cold morning (4°C according to the car). An interesting sortie that included ramming the bank once and getting stuck, and grazing the bank a couple of times. The river is narrow and has lots of bends and I think it was the cox's first attempt at coxing. We normally have an "apero" after the outing on the first Saturday of the month but Bayonne are playing Stade Toulouse who are the current leaders of the French Top 14.. and a lot of the people from the club are going to the match. Because of the demand for tickets, the game is being played at San Sebastian - which is only 45 minutes from here - at a stadium that I was told holds 30,000. The town there should be lively tonight!! 

6th March 2011. I've been wondering whether or not to share this link - a bottomless pit of hits and music stretching back a long ways.. here's one from it that I'd forgotten.. that must have scarred for life a whole generation of young lads in the early 80s!

  

7th March 2011. Looking outside at burning blue cloudless sky, I think we might just have turned the corner in spring at last. The local forecast is for 18°C today as well.. Think I'll pull my shorts out of the winter storage and shake the moths off them!

Forget Bananarama.. this is Gordon Lightfoot's classic track - "If You Could Read My Mind": 

Here's a personal favourite - Gordon Lightfoot's "Canadian Railroad Trilogy":

I once rode the "Rocky Mountaineer" from Vancouver to Banff and that trip should be on your "Top 50 things to do before I die" list..
  

There was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run

When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun

Long before the white man, and long before the wheel

When the green dark forest was too silent to be real

But time has no beginnings and history has no bounds

As to this verdant country they came from all around

They sailed upon her waterways and they walked her forests tall

Built the mines, the mills and the factories for the good of us all

And when the young man's fancy had turned into his brain

The railroad men grew restless for to hear their hammers ring

Their minds were overflowing with the visions of their day

With many a fortune won and lost and many a debt to pay

For they looked in the future and what did they see?

They saw an iron road running from the sea to the sea

Bringing the goods to a young growing land

All up on the seaboards and into their hands

Look away, said they

Across this mighty land

From the eastern shore

To the western strand

Bring in the workers and bring up the rails

We've gotta lay down the tracks and tear up the trails

Open her heart, let the lifeblood flow

Gotta get on our way 'cause we're moving too slow

Bring in the workers and bring up the rails

We've gotta lay down the tracks and tear up the trails

Open her heart, let the lifeblood flow

Gotta get on our way 'cause we're moving too slow

Get on our way 'cause we're moving too slow

Behind the blue Rockies the sun is declining

The stars they come stealing like the blows of the day

Across the wide prairie our loved ones lie sleeping

Beyond the dark oceans in a place far away

We are the navvies who work on the railway

Swinging our hammers in the bright blazing sun

Living on stew and drinkin' bad whiskey

Bending our backs 'til the long days are done

We are the navvies who work upon the railway

Swinging our hammers in the bright blazing sun

Laying down track, and building the bridges

Bending our backs 'til the railroad is done

So over the mountains and over the plains

Into the muskeg and into the rain

Up the St Lawrence all the way to Gaspé

Swinging our hammers and drawin' our pay

Driving 'em in and tying 'em down

Away to the bunkhouse and into the town

A dollar a day and a place for my head

A drink to the living, a toast to the dead

Oh the song, ah the future has been sung

All the battles have been won

On the mountain tops we stand

All the world at our command

We have opened up the soil

With our teardrops and our toil

Oh there was a time in this fair land when the railroad did not run

When the wild majestic mountains stood alone against the sun

Long before the white man, and long before the wheel

When the green dark forest was too silent to be real

When the green dark forest was too silent to be real

And many are the dead men... too silent to be real

Here's a promo film for the Vancouver-Banff train ride:

Finally, for all those who think that stacking logs is just a chore and a fairly mindless activity, take a look at what this Canadian artist does with them:

Now - farewell Canada and back to the Pays Basque! I forgot to mention the result of the Bayonne v Stade Toulouse match last Saturday - shame on me! Here's what happened (Bayonne are in the blue and white):

It's looks like it was an open running passing game - the way they like to play it here - and see how many current internationals you can spot in the Toulouse squad. In contrast, Bayonne boast just the one international - Huget, the wing who scored the breakaway try.

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!).