1 January 2015
Our New Year's Eve was spent à deux. Cosy blaze in the Godin; we started with blinis and either foie gras or a tasty crevette paté - just enough to act as an appetiser. I felt like a dry white wine but didn't have one, so I tried a dry sherry instead - bit of a poofter drink but its dryness went with the shrimp if not the foie gras. Then a capon boned and stuffed with morilles, plus asparagus and flat beans served with sauce au jus. Ice cream and raspberries to finish. The meat was washed down with a lovely gamay. No potatoes - so a simple, relatively light but quality meal, with the table graced by the lovely Christine.
I looked at the TV programmes but as usual they were all rubbish so I tinkered with the computer…
1 January 2015
A
beautiful, sunny day in the Lot & Garonne - a crisp frost painted
the grass with bluey-white givre which stayed all day in shadowed
areas.
It was good to work in the open, too. My current project is
to cut down a string of 22 cherry-laurel trees. These were formed
from selected plants in the laurel hedge which were allowed to grow;
they've now got thigh-size trunks and are 5 - 6m high. I was
reluctant to remove them as they form an effective screen, but a) the
hedge in the shade of them tends to die, b) they need trimming every
year where they overhang the road, c) they are interfering with an
overhead telephone wire, d) they make trimming the top of the hedge
difficult and e) they are illegally close to the boundary.
They're
relatively easy to fell, but since laurel is evergreen there's a lot
of leafage to get rid of, necessitating frequent trips with the
auto-portée and trailer.
It's quite hard work, so I've rationed
myself to two or three trees a day to avoid over-taxing my back. So
far I've managed five trees in two days. There was a hiatus this
afternoon when I launched my spectacles into the leaf rubbish pile as
a twig grabbed them! I found the errant specs eventually!
19 January 2015
My Laurel Tree Cull took me three weeks of fine days but it's finished!
The actual felling of the little trees didn't take long, but the evergreen laurel makes a great deal of rubbish, and each tree had to be limbed and bucked for its wood.
I was really glad I bought a small Stihl chainsaw last year - for prolonged use on small stuff it's much less tiring than my big chainsaw.
Most of the trees were tangled up with the telephone wires and had to be dismantled, so the small saw was good to use up a ladder. Some had branches between cables, for this situation I used a notch plus a sloping felling cut that dropped the trunk of the tree a couple of metres before the tree itself fell, thus clearing the cables. It sounds dodgy, but it worked and I didn't have any excommmunicated neighbours berating me!
Several trees could only be felled into the road - I stationed Christine to warn traffic - but since it's an impasse there wasn't any!
One tree was a poor little nisgul - I found it had a chain wrapped around it to close an erstwhile gap in the hedge; the chain had effectively ring-barked it - there's a pic in the photo album.
Each tree gave a few useful, thigh-sized logs plus some kindling - in total there's quite a bit and I'm about halfway through stacking it. I've found laurel wood to be quite dense and it burns well.I feel well satisfied with my efforts; there's a more open and less claustrophobic feel about my park and I managed to survive quite a lot of work without too much back pain.
So what am I going to do now…?
28 January 2015
Please
spend a quiet reflective moment in memory of my Compaq Presario
computer that I laid to rest in the Tip today. I bought it almost
eleven years ago today from Auchan for the princely sum of €950.
Sadly it failed to live up to expectations; it was badly constructed
and full of buggy Windows XP software.
It finally got so slow
that it was unusable and was replaced by a Mac Mini in 2010 which
continues to function admirably.
I removed the Compaq's hard
drive so that the identity thieves wouldn't be too inconvenienced in
trying to get it to work, and surrounded it on its death bed by the
plethora of diagnostic, anti-virus and back-up CDs that inevitably
accompanies a Microsnot product.
I wish I could say that I
wept a little tear with its passing, but all I felt was a feeling of
relief at having rid myself of Bill Gates's best.
No wonder
Apple make record profits.
2 February 2015
I
get a kick out of the times when old and new technology meet in happy
harmony. I've got a rack full of several hundred music CDs which just
gathers dust; all the contents have long since been uploaded to
iTunes on my Mac and hence to my iPod and now my iPhone.
Usually
I play the iPod through either my big Sony amp and home-brew bass
reflex speakers (which I made in the seventies), or through a small
speaker dock.
However last Christmas I bought Xine a "Pure
Flow" internet radio for the kitchen so she could listen to
Radio 4 independently of the television's satellite channels. This
also has Caskeid connectivity which allows hifi audio connection via
wi-fi (not Bluetooth) by music via an app on smartphone or
tablet.
So last Saturday, my duty cook day, I was using my
iPhone to stream a "playlist to cook by" to Xine's radio;
this time I'd chosen an old CD of remastered 60's stuff.
We
don't normally have any music or TV accompaniment to our meals, but
when we sat down to dinner, I used the iPhone to turn the volume low
so it was just a background - but inevitably we talked about some of
the music which we both remembered; Xine as a teenager and me as a
new dad.
So Xine asked me who had recorded a particular song
she remembered - and I found it mind-boggling that without leaving my
seat I could search for it on the iPhone and play it and read the
name of the group.
That song was recorded in December 1959 as
a single; I find it incredible that it has survived all the
transitions of technology from analogue to digital and from vinyl to
CD to hard disk and wireless streaming.
In case you're
wondering, that song was "What do you want to make those eyes at
me for" - it was by Emile Ford and the Checkmates;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM-39KU7ZXc
9 Feb 2015
A
lovely, warm sunny afternoon - ideal for playing outside!
I
decided to take down some very tall evergreen privet-ty trees which
were too close to the house, leaving leaves and berries on the roof,
taking the light from the guest bedroom and being a risk in high
winds.
In view of the proximity to the house, I had to put a
security rope on - to avoid climbing a ladder I put a slip knot in a
rope and pushed it up the tree with a long bamboo pole, pulling it
tight when the rope was high enough.
I took three trunks down,
each about 40cm diameter - fortunately they all fell where intended.
1 March 2015
I’ve
just updated my mid-2010 Mac Mini- from Mountain Lion OSX 8.1.3 to
Yosemite 10.10.2 (and skipping over Mavericks). I’d been waiting
for a stable issue - and procrastinating because I was somewhat
nervous about making a mess of it.
1) Boot Install Drive
I
got myself a 16GB thumb drive with the intent of making a bootable
installer as in
http://osxdaily.com/2014/10/16/make-os-x-yosemite-boot-install-drive/
However
I had second thoughts after reading the process, particularly the
arguments on the syntax of the command line to install Yosemite on
the boot drive. Why was I doing this? I did it when I installed
Mountain Lion - and the thumb drive has just cluttered up my desk
ever since. I have no other Macs to update - if I made a mess of the
install I could restore from Time Machine and start again.
2)
The download
This was an overnight process - it forecast 6.5 hours
to download the 5GB+ - but it was waiting for me at breakfast.
3)
The installation
The installation was forecast as 22 minutes - it
took 50 minutes. Several times I thought it had hung, but close
examination showed that the thermometer was moving, very slowly.
4)
The post-installation boot
This got to about 30 minutes and
half-way, when I decided the process had hung. I consulted the
internet with my iPad - sure enough lots of people had experienced
the same thing. The advice was to leave it as it might finish. At an
elapsed time of 1h10m I gave up.
Several people had found that a
manual reboot by switching off worked. I tried it and the thermometer
display moved rapidly to its previously “hung” point, then
carried on from there - success!
5) Initial Niggles
iMovie
is a program I lose quite a lot; I had to update it to the latest
version. It’s a big program - over a GB and took a long time to
download. When downloaded the icon was still greyed out and it
started a new download - which installed and opened OK.
My old
iPhoto was not compatible and its icon was greyed out - I don’t use
iPhoto much but decided to download the new version despite the new
Photos for OSX being on the horizon. No problems.
A new printer
driver for my Canon printer came with Software Update.
I checked
the apps and third-party apps - all worked except for my free
Cyberduck (an FTP utility). Either I paid for a new app from the app
store or I downloaded a legacy copy of Java SE6 for OSX 2014-001. I
did the latter and the free Cyberduck now works.
6) First
Impressions
The icons are flatter but functional and more grown-up
- who needs a stitched leather cover on an address book? The typeface
is different but more compact and maybe clearer?
The GUI is slower
than Mountain Lion - launching apps sometimes brings up the
beachball. I went through the tips in
http://osxdaily.com/2014/10/24/speed-up-os-x-yosemite-mac/
which made a small improvement.
The layout and appearance of
iMovie is quite different, but it seems to incorporate all the old
gizmos plus some new. It’ll be a good thing with which to test my
75-year-old resistance to change!
I’m chuffed with being able to
drag PDFs into “Books” and for them to appear on my iPhone
without having to use iTunes - useful for holiday documentation!
7)
Conclusion
I’m glad that I plucked up courage to upgrade my Mac
Mini before it’s overtaken by better hardware and more-demanding
software - it wasn’t as hard as I thought it might be.
30 April 2015
Oops!
There should be a word for the feeling you get when you realise that you’ve done something really stupid with potentially highly-expensive consequences. I got the feeling when I checked my wallet, halfway into a 150km drive between Colombo Airport and the hotel near Sigirya; I found that I’d left my bank card in an ATM at the airport! Oops!
My excuse was that we’d had a long flight with a six-hour stop at Istanbul and after over 24 hours of travelling I wasn’t thinking too clearly; OK, so maybe I’m getting a bit doddery too. Ça se passe à mon âge! And the ATM didn’t ask you to remove the card to get the money, like in European machines. And I had drawn 1,000 Rupees - which seemed a great deal of money - until a bit of mental arithmetic told me that it was a miserable €7!
Thankfully we were the only ones to be picked up from the Toulouse flight, most of our group had arrived earlier, so we had our driver to ourselves. He rang the bank at the airport; they checked the ATM, which had swallowed the card before it could be purloined. Nevertheless I blocked the card by phone as soon as I got to the hotel - fortunately we had other cards to use.
Likes
So our trip
didn’t get off to a very good start, but from there on it was all
good. Our tour group consisted of only 15 people and they were all
very kind, friendly people, without much knowledge of English but a
friendly tolerance of our attempts to converse - and since English
was widely spoken in Sri Lanka we were able to help, on occasions,
with a little translation. Ten days of immersion did wonders for our
French fluency too!
The trip was organised by FRAM, a company
known more for cheapo beach holidays than high-end long-haul
destinations, but we were agreeably surprised by the local tour firm
they used, “Authenticities”.
Our group spent 10 nights at
five hotels, all the hotels were of a genuine four-star standard with
excellent, large rooms, with good food to suit both western and
eastern tastes.
The main transport was a modern
air-conditioned coach, supplemented by 4WD, train, boat and even
tuk-tuk where appropriate!
The scenery was magnificent and
varied, from sandy beach through mangrove swamp and coastal plain, to
cool hills and tea plantations.
We did lots of different
things; temple tours, climbing Sigirya rock, visiting markets, spice
farms, watching tribal dancing, artisanal shops, tea production, a
train ride, two 4WD safaris, a turtle farm, mangrove swamp and even
an hour or two on a poolside chair!
All the Sri Lankans we
met, from tour guide to man-in-the-street, were friendly and helpful;
if you had a problem they were all keen to help.
In conclusion
we enjoyed the trip more than a similar tour of Thailand; Sri Lanka
is just as beautiful and interesting but smaller and more friendly.
Dislikes
Is there anything we didn’t like?
Not much, the long connection delay in Istanbul was a pain to wait out - and it meant that we arrived late on the first day of the tour, thus missing a day; but it was our choice to avoid flying via Paris.
And you have to like lots of temples; in Thailand I invented the French word “surtempler” - to visit too many temples. It came in useful in Sri Lanka too!
The 4WD safaris had few photogenic animals other than elephants; I wished I’d brought a camera with a long lens for the bird life which included toucans and the like. We also did two safaris on the same day which was long, tiring and bumpy!
Oh,
and there was my bank card foul-up; my phone stopped working as I’d
blocked the card which tops it up. I was going to retrieve the card
at the airport on the homeward journey but it was a full moon and the
Sri Lankans have an alcohol-free bank holiday on every full moon…
But when I arrived home there was a new card from my French bank
waiting for me.
So I won’t bother you with more text; you
may find the 12-minute video easier to assimilate; see
http://youtu.be/uUJhMbzjZi4.
Viewers of a sensitive sartorial disposition are warned that this
video contains scenes of men wearing socks with sandals - this
unfortunate practice was necessary to protect otherwise bare feet
from the very hot ground on temple tours.
Postscript
Finally, this
is what one of our group, named Serge, had to say about the trip. I
couldn’t agree more!
“Nous avons passé un très agréable
séjour, bien sur nous avons eu un bon guide, une restauration
correcte, de très beaux hotels, vu de magnifiques paysages, respiré
des parfums et aussi des odeurs surprenantes, nous avons découvert
une foule de choses … mais la richesse de ce voyage, ce sont aussi
les gens qui composent un groupe, en l’occurence c’est pour nous
l’occasion de vous remercier pour la cohesion et la bonne entente
tout au long de notre circuit.”
1 July 2015
It’s
difficult to forget World War II in St Nazaire; the submarine pens
are a massive and almost perpetual monument to the town’s important
rôle in support of the German Navy. The pens support a machine-gun
nest that probably had a decisive impact in March 1942 on “Operation
Chariot”, when a combined allied Army/Navy force rammed an old
destroyer crammed with explosives into the dry dock gates, in order
to deny the use of the dock as an Atlantic support facility for the
battleship Tirpitz.
A large proportion of St Nazaire was
destroyed during the war; it has been replaced by 1950’s buildings
but there are large open areas which give the town an airy feel and
there is a pleasant little beach.
Our group of 26 engineers
and partners gathered in a hôtel in one of these open areas near the
sub pens, intent on an engineering visit to the shipyards and to the
Airbus fuselage facility.
As an electronic engineer I found
the sheer scale of the shipyard overpowering; vast areas full of
welded-steel deck modules waiting to be welded together to make
leviathan ships. We saw the “Harmony of The Seas” - an enormous
liner under construction for Royal Caribbean - and a new, record size
- which can take over 6,000 passengers. The two Mistral-class
helicopter carriers intended for Russia were patiently waiting for a
new owner following the unilateral cancellation by the French
government in protest at the Russian actions in the Ukraine.
Having
visited the Airbus factory at Toulouse, it was fascinating to see the
fuselage facility which produces the pre-fitted fuselage sections
which are sent to Toulouse, either by air in the “Beluga”
aircraft or by barge through Bordeaux and road from Langon. The
impressive scale here was not only in the size of the sections such
as those for the A380, but also in the rate of delivery; the
production rate of the A320 is being raised from 44 to 50 of these
big passenger aircraft per MONTH!
Jackets and posh frocks were
brought out for the gala dinner on Friday. Next morning we toured the
area, taking in La Baule, the Le Croisic peninsula and the Guérande
salt pans, with a tour of the salt workings. I found this nostalgic;
I had visited the area with my French pen-pal and parents some 60
years ago, when I was 16 years old!
Saturday afternoon was
devoted to a tour of the charming mediaeval town of Guérande and its
impressive porticos and battlements.
All in all an interesting
weekend; many thanks are due to Peter Morgan of the IET for
organising it! As I left the area I couldn’t help thinking of the
215 commandos of Operation Chariot who were left with no way home as
their craft were destroyed by enemy fire - and of the 169 allied
souls who were killed in the operation. It would be unfair not to
mention the 360 German lives lost, mostly by the delayed detonation
of 4.5 tons of high explosive hidden on the ramming vessel.
6 August 2015
Would-be
migrants to the South of France probably imagine long, hot summer
days sipping gin & tonic around the pool. In reality, although
the long, hot summer days do happen, the owners of crumbly French
cottages are quite likely to be found working hard on property
maintenance.
The central wall of my barn supports the apex of
the rafters and is a tall and massive structure made in the
traditional way, two outer skins of large stones with an armature of
rubble and clay, and any holes pointed in hard-packed clay. What
else? - in the era when this barn was built, the builders used the
materials available to them on site.
Inevitably rodents,
particularly loirs (dormice), live in spaces within the walls. I’d
noticed that they’d dislodged some of the stones, making holes that
needed blocking. In addition the first metre or so on one side is
virgin bedrock - some of this had crumbled and the lower stones were
developing an overhang. Some maintenance with some new stones and
mortar was required.
I devoted one afternoon to a stone-collecting expedition in the cliff below our house - the limestone here is hard and dense and collecting it is hard work. I took the trailer down to the brico and got ¼ m³ of sand and mixed a mortier bâtard of 1/2/9 ciment blanc/chaux/sable. I chose suitable stone “jigsaw pieces” to fit the holes, bedding them down on mortar and holding them snugly in place with pieces of earthenware tile tapped into any spaces, then pointing the gaps. I didn’t replace the clay pointing where it was still working - in the barn function is more important than appearance.
One
big boulder which would probably weigh a couple of tonnes was
apparently hovering over a gap in the bedrock stratum - held in place
by the side pressure, no doubt. I built a layer underneath this where
each stone was keyed into the bedrock and held in place with mortar.
I left a “letter box” to be filled in with supporting stones
after the mortar in the first layer was set.
Next day I closed up
the “letterbox” with carefully-selected stones, having
replenished the rubble within the wall.
Although this work is hard, it’s pleasurable because it brings one into contact with the long-dead artisans who first erected the barn. It must have been a communal effort - there’s so much hard work involved. And how did they lift and place those big stones? Even a football-sized stone is a good lift for one man - how about that stone I supported today that must be a couple of tonnes? Oh for a retrospective video camera!
6 September 2015
Tegel airport is only a short bus ride from Peter’s Pad - now renamed “Ibis Gillis” - in Moabit, Berlin. Staying with Peter enabled us to get the flavour of Berlin from a resident’s point of view. It is a compact city with a very good transport infrastructure - we bought “Berlin Cards” apiece which enabled unlimited travel on the under- and over-ground railways and the buses, together with substantial discounts on tourist attractions - and we took not a single taxi, even though they weren’t expensive. Inexpensiveness prevailed throughout - we did some supermarket shopping which was noticeably cheaper than France.
The short (7 minutes) video http://youtu.be/t5I-DfgvUm8 gives my own, particular view on the city.
Lasting impressions are those of “space” (I suppose we can thank the allied airforces for some of the clearance!) - “greenery”; there are lots of urban trees and the big Tiergarten central park - and “enormous food servings” (we never did manage to eat a three-course meal - the main course was always too much!) Almost everyone spoke enough English to avoid me having to use my 1950s scientific German - and they were all very friendly!
But I missed the tranquillity of SW France - and the “Bonjour” when you meet a stranger walking the opposite way.
But we left lots of things undone - so we’ll need to return - if our host will have us…
16 October 2015
I went to Agen to see this gig – it was my third, the others being Lonnie Donegan and Barbara Dixon! Unfortunately Christine was hors de combat with a bug picked up on the flight from Portugal…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJlcSOltyQM is a track from his new album “In Extremis”.
5 November 2015
NB please also see a short (4 minute) video here.
River cruising is the essential low-stress holiday. We’d sampled it on the Nile from Aswan to Luxor, and drifting along with a gin & tonic at hand while photographing photogenic feluccas is hard to beat for relaxation.
The River Douro stabs a west-east channel of commerce over 900km into Iberia, of which the first 200 km is in Portugal. What was once a hazardous port wine route via dangerous rapids, using flat-bottomed “barcos rabelos”, has been tamed into wide and gentle waters by a series of impressive locks-cum-hydroelectric power stations - one has a lift of 36m!
We flew from Toulouse to Porto via Lisbon and joined our boat, the CroisiEurope Fernão de Magalhães (Magellan) at its mooring in Vila Nova de Gaia, on the opposite bank to Porto.
The ship has 71 cabins on three decks taking up to 142 passengers, so it is a refreshing change from the “floating cities” of the sea-going cruise ship. The river boats are built to squeeze under low bridges and fit in narrow locks just 12m wide. Each cabin is adequately sized at 129 sq.ft. and includes all facilities.
The ship remained anchored for the first day - we had a walk along the river, which flows through a channel with high and precipitous banks encrusted with buildings. That afternoon we hitched a lift into Porto on one of the barcos rabelos - Porto is an attractive and impressive city with a lively atmosphere.
For the rest of the holiday we took in the wonderful scenery, enjoyed the evening entertainment and went on an excursion through a port-wine producing area, ending in a quinta belonging to Sandemans.
The ship was comfortable and well appointed.
The staff were attentive and the customer service was second to none. We arrived at the boat too early to enter our cabin or be fed while the cleaning was in progress; we dropped off our suitcases and one of the crew used his own car to give us a lift to a local restaurant.
The breakfast menu was somewhat limited but all other meals were of a very high standard.
All drinks - wine, beer, spirits were complementary. Hic!
The scenery of the Douro valley is exceptionally attractive.
Vintage port!
Our flights were Toulouse to Porto with a change at Lisbon. Our outward journey meant we had to get up at 01:30, there were delays at Lisbon as the flight crew were late and we still arrived at the boat far too early. On the return journey the flight from Porto was late so it was a mad scramble to catch the connecting flight to Toulouse at Lisbon - and our suitcases didn’t make it. They were delivered to our home some days later - one was damaged (since repaired by TAP!).
On previous cruises we have found that excursions were pricey and busy; far better to “do your own thing” in (say) Palermo or Civitavecchia. On this cruise the “ports of call” were often little more than a jetty on the river bank, so those not going on the excursions were left on the boat.
The boat was full of old people. Yes, I know - but at least we both have our own hips. No wonder the three-deck ship had a lift!
An enjoyable holiday - but were I to do it again I’d try hard to get a direct flight.
9 December 2015
We took a three-day trip to Chelmsford so that I could join MOGS Christmas lunch before all the old geezers drop off the perch. It proved to be quite a painless trip, thanks to Ryanair, First buses and the Premier Inn – we even managed to catch up with Simon and family in the evening!
11 December 2015
Took the unreliable Audi A6 to town and swapped it and a fat cheque for a brand new, shining Honda CR-V in a bright “Rouge Passion” colour.
Oh the lovely smell of a new car!
We're planning to drive it to Berlin for Christmas to see Peter who is otherwise on his own as Karen will be in Spain.
25 December 2015
Our
trip to the yUK gave us time to reflect on the task of driving the
3200 km to Berlin and return for Christmas. It's the sort of
challenge that I would relish, but perhaps when we're both in perfect
health and preferably during the months of better weather.
So we
resorted to KLM and the flight from Toulouse via Amsterdam.
We had a pleasant and relaxed time with Peter, even if the meals were somewhat chaotic, with Berlin shops closing for three days running.
And we managed to get to the top of the TV tower with a magical view of Berlin by night!