Proud parents

We took several photos yesterday and, as proud parents, we can't help but show you a nice shot of Minnie sitting in the sun (click on the photo to enlarge it). Look at the size of her feet!

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I feel a big rant coming on! And so I find it difficult not to comment on the recent unrest in France. I have never been impressed by Chirac and unfortunately I also take objection to his unelected sidekick de Villepin. I get very twitchy when they talk about 'the French Social Model', whatever the hell that is. Well, whatever it is boys, it doesn't work and, in my humble opinion it doesn't stand a cat in hell's chance of ever working. This article, that quotes the Interior Minister Sarkosy, seems to ring true and despite his political stance, I'm beginning to think that France needs a 'mover and shaker' on a grand scale to sort the country out. I apologise to those that are uncomfortable with a right wing politician, but I genuinely believe that France has some huge problems to solve and it will not solve them without some big changes. Going back to the present problems for a minute, Jan and I have just read a funny book, that we both recommend, called 'A Year in the Merde' by Stephen Clarke. This book was published in 2004 so was probably written 2002/2003. If you look at page 167, you can see that the present problems were very much in evidence then, and identified by a comedic writer with no particular axe to grind. If he can describe the problem in 2003, then what were Chirac and Co doing to prevent it escalating? The answer, mes amis, is nothing! Think back to this article that I mentioned on 10th November and the inference is clear. They have had all the information for a long time but have done nothing. They talk about a 'good day' when only 240 cars were torched and the chief of police stated that on a 'normal day' before the riots, 100 per day were burnt. The problems here have been simmering for years! What's going on?

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The news from the architect son of William, about the chimney, is not good. He believes that the opening between the fireplace and the chimney stack is way too small. It has been constricted by a trap door which can be used to shut off the chimney. The chimney thereafter gets bigger but to 'unblock' it means demolishing the chimney stack. He made some suggestions to try first, like improving the airflow to the fireplace, which we will now proceed with.

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Jill and Harry came for dinner last night and Jan prepared baby squid in a sweet chilli sauce, duck with plums and star anise, (really nice and now a favourite) and an individual banofee pie. What was even more interesting, was that we completed a blind tasting of three different wines. The background being, that with so many people at Christmas, we had to decide what would we serve as our 'everyday' red. Jan and I put our heads together and came up with a choice of three. In no particular order, an oak aged Merlot from Hospitalier, a Merlot from the cave cooperative at Carnas, and an oak aged Grand Reserve from our local cave at Crespian. For a bit of fun, I opened the bottles, took off the neck decoration and wrapped silver foil around the label. We started the meal with a local bubbly and then, at the appropriate time, we all tasted the red. We genuinely had no idea which wine was which, and after a lot of slurping and drinking, we all agreed that no.2 was our wine of choice. No.2, it turned out, was the cheapest, medal winning Merlot from Carnas. It costs about 3.90 euros a bottle as opposed to the others at around 5 euros.
OK, so I had a drink tonight, but as I'm sure you will agree, it was very important research!