Weird behaviour

It's really weird, but regular as clockwork, whenever I suggest that we eat out, it is always at about 6.00 pm on a Monday. I promise that when I make the suggestion I never think about the time or the day, but as soon as Jan giggles, I realise what I've done. So, last night, (now that the village restaurant has closed) off we go to our new local, Mas de Roux, in nearby Bragassargues. The restaurant is a very large, very airy room, that despite its size always feels comfortable. There's only one, four course, 20 euros menu. There is a reasonable choice of starters, and the main course is a selection of meats, beef, lamb, veal or pork, which are cooked to order over a wood burning fire. This is then followed by cheese and a selection of gateaux style puddings. The wine list features local wines and is reasonably priced. One thing that I really appreciate is the linen tablecloth and napkins (you can see that we don't get this at home!), so overall, a pleasant and relatively inexpensive evening out.

Where did all the water go?

You just can't tell a man about his pool. For some time now I have been putting what seemed like an inordinate amount of water in the pool. I finally decided that it was leaking, and so stopped filling it, and let it settle to its natural level. The level stopped falling just below the skimmers, so in my mind the leak had to be above that level. Seemed simple enough to me. So I call in my 2 experts, both called Manu. One a Portuguese builder and the other a French plumber. What do they think? They both give me conflicting advice and neither agrees with me that the problem is at the skimmers. I'll need some convincing on this one.

With endless patience I insisted that we remove the covers to the skimmers, and, well blow me down, there's enough evidence to show the truth. So who's a clever boy? It will be fixed tomorrow, when I'll clean the pool and start the heating, and then Jan can start her lengths. Hopefully, she'll do enough for the two of us!

Sleep, books and Happy Birthday

I have always slept very well, however of late, I have a tendency to wake at least once in the night to take a leak. I know that you didn't really want to know that (or as my daughter once said "that's just a bit too much information"), but bear with me. Generally I think that it's an age thing. Sometimes I can get straight back to sleep, sometimes I read until I feel sleepy, and now, for the first time ever, I'm sitting at the computer.

Not earth shattering, and certainly not an unusual event in the great scheme of things, but very different for me. It's 3.34 am and I'm typing.

The book I've just finished, The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon, was a good read, and highly recommended. It was slightly more enjoyable for me because it's set in Barcelona, and we recognised many of the places and names. At one point, I did get lost with some of the characters, but that was probably just one of my senior moments. My current read, Boris Becker's autobiography, couldn't send me to sleep (but I bet it has for a few people), so here I am.

I can't even go and watch television because the satellite box has just packed up. Despite appealing, man to man, that it would mean I'd have to talk to my wife all weekend or worse still, watch French television, I still couldn't get a quick fix out of Mr TV Repair Man. I definitely need to improve my pleading skills!

Ouch, my typing finger is starting to get sore and I'm starting to feel sleepy. At least this worked, I'm going back to bed!

Is it any wonder I get up late? This afternoon I set off to borrow a satellite box, that Chris has kindly offered, so that I can start to eliminate some of the possible causes of my TV problems. Bum, still no signal. It's starting to look like the problem may be with the antenna. We shall see.

It's my number 1 son's birthday today. Happy birthday.

RIP

The Pope died this evening. Now I'm not at all a religious person, (despite having being brought up as a good Catholic boy) but whatever ones religious beliefs, I think that that he was a good man, doing what he tried to do, in a humble way. I certainly do not agree with everything he said or did and of course he could have done more, but he followed his beliefs, presumably to the best of his ability, and I feel a sense of sadness.

It's not fair being a man

Today I upset Jan. In the great scheme of things it was a small event but boy how it blossomed. What was my sin? - I complained about lunch! I suppose that's what they mean by in vino veritas, a couple of glasses and you tell the truth.

I conservatively estimate that the number of times I have complimented Jan on her prowess as a cook will be approximately (gets his calculator out because the need for balance here is important) 8760. Jan is a great cook and I love eating her food!! Now maybe I was under the weather, being absent minded, or foolishly, just speaking my mind, but I happened to mention that lunch was substandard.

I knew she was upset. There were lots of little clues, like kitchen knives being sharpened, the sudden appearance of weed killer in the kitchen, the odd attempted knee in the groin, and worst of all, she stopped talking to me.

I mentioned my problem to Floyd, who happened to call from the UK, and he found it all hilarious. He sided with Jan immediately, stating that she could serve dog shit and that it would still taste delicious. Nothing if not imaginative our Floyd!

He went on to remind me, (this is Floyd, who is still single at 42) that a woman will conveniently forget thousands of compliments, but will remember the one complaint, and refer to it in an argument 10 years later. It's not fair being a man!

Bye bye and must try harder

The Lloyds leave early this morning and we miss them already. They are such a nice family to have as neighbours. They have two wonderful children, Tom and Katie who are always good company. Tom is 13 and is Katie 10. Just before she left, Katie told me off for poking fun at Jan in this blog. I consider myself well and truly admonished, and will try harder.

Wine tasting

For a while now, we have been searching for a good, reasonably priced, white wine. Given all my ailments, the doctor once told me (sorry I can't remember why) to lay off the red and drink only white. Fat chance, I thought, but I suppose I should make some effort. Every piece of information I've ever read about wine states that a couple of glasses a day of red wine are good for you. AH, THAT'S IT - it's 2 glasses not 2 bottles, now I understand!

Any way, in the furtherance of more market research, we nip over, with the LLoyds and their guests, to a very good winemaker in the village. We haven't been to see him for ages, don't ask me why, for not only is he a very good vigneron, he is also a very nice man. He shows us all around his cave which, as Jan says, makes shopping for wine far more interesting than going to Sainsburys, and then we sit in the sunshine under a Neflier tree (look it up yourself) sampling his whites, roses and reds. Seven bottles later we make the sober decision to buy several boxes and then make our very happy way back home.

What a clever boy

I'm not too sure why, but some time ago we decided to determine Max's breed standard. We know we bought a pure bred Beauceron, in fact each of his grandparents are the highest possible standard, and as Jan has pleasure in pointing out, they have a far higher pedigree than me. By virtue of the fact that she talks more affectionately and more often to the dog than she does to me, I'd sort of figured that out already.

Anyway we decide to determine his Cotation which means that, on Easter Sunday, a day that in the good old days meant a lie in, and fun and games, we leave the house at 6.00 am and drive for 3 hours to a meeting of Club des Amis des Beauceron where he can be judged. This idiotic behaviour proves that we have now become "doggy", if not dodgy, people.

I'm not sure what the collective for a large group of Beaucerons is, but whatever it is, it was there. There you are sitting at home thinking that you have a unique and handsome specimen, only to find that there are lots of them around. Having said that, there are an awful lot of ugly ones as well. Pretty much like life really. In fact some of the owners would have great difficulty passing these tests, but that's another story.

He is tested on two counts, morphology and character. The judge for morphology (OK, I'll put you out of you misery, morphology is the form and structure of the dog) is none other than the President of the club. He passes with an excellent which we sort of guessed anyway.

Now if he is going to fail, it will be on character. He is still only 14 months old and still acts at times like a big daft dog. He is very effusive when he first meets people, and can be a bit of a handful at times. When you look at him you would think big, mature, scary dog but at 40 kilos he is nothing more than a big, heavy, very strong scatter brain who wants to sit on your lap or your head. Whichever is the most fun!

The test involves his general friendliness, his ability not to overeact when he hears a pistol shot (yes that's what they do) and how he reacts when attacked with a weapon. With regards the pistol shot, I suspect that we might be in trouble. I say this because one time when sitting in the car, in the footwell next to me, he jumped clean out and straight onto my lap, just because I opened his window for a bit of fresh air. Cool he is not!

Well blow me down, but he passes all this with flying colours. They had to redo the pistol shot bit because I jumped out of my skin and spooked the dog but notwithstanding that, he passed.

We now have a dog rated at Cotation 2, so if you want to buy a highly rated Beauceron, there is one I can recommend.

Rain at last

After spending most of yesterday setting up another automatic watering system, for a different part of the garden, it's ironic that it's been raining overnight and still raining when we get up. We have been going to training classes with Max for over 8 months now and this the first Saturday that we have missed because of the weather. Whilst it's not heavy rain it's persistent and will help a little.

We leave for Sommieres market, later that morning, for the usual goodies and for a bite to eat with Bob and Lynne. We also meet H & E at Bar Partropi and quickly down a bottle of Pic Poul before heading off to L'Evasion for pizzas. Bob and Lynne are, as ever, good company and then we head home to watch England beat Northern Ireland, 4-0, in a World Cup qualifier. All in all a good day!

Neighbours

Our next door but one English neighbours, the Lloyds, arrive en masse for a short vacation today.

We live in a village of about 300 people and when we first arrived we were worried whether we would be accepted in such a small village. As it transpired we were the fourth permanent English family and there were two other vacation homes. A crazy statistic for such a small village.

Understanding French

When Jan and I first arrived in France we could both converse in our school French, but little more. Notwithstanding this problem, we have survived and prospered and without doubt our French has improved. What is a little scary however, is that we sometimes nod and smile sweetly when in conversation with the locals, but don't always fully understand what they are saying. I regularly hope that I haven't agreed to anything like an unnecessary use of cash or a kind offer to go to bed with some toothless old hag (I suppose I will now get hate mail from the Society for the Protection of Toothless Old Hags, who are probably called, the Society for the Protection of Dentally Challenged Elderly but Beauteously Challenged Women).

Anyway in order to survive I have adopted certain rules:

Rule 1. When you talk about spending money, adopt a negative, lost soul, I'm a foreigner and don't understand anything stance, even if you fully understand everything.

Rule 2. In conversation with a male of the opposite sexual persuasion adopt a negative, but very butch stance and make sure that you fully understand everything.

Rule 3. If stopped by the police adopt a negative, lost soul, I'm a foreigner and don't understand anything stance, but then pay the fine because you could end up in jail and have to adopt Rule 2.

Rule 4. In conversation with a beautiful woman, say yes to everything and worry about the consequences later.

There are lots of other rules but that just about covers the most important ones.

Google - so powerful and so scary

In an inspired moment, I decided to try and find a friend who I hadn't seen for 20 years. I knew his name and was fairly certain that he lived in France and might be connected to the wine trade.

Step 1 Put his name into Google
Step 2 Read carefully the many references to him
Step 3 Write to any site that might be remotely connected asking for his email address
Step 4 Found and noted the town were he is based
Step 5 Used pages blancs (online phone directory) to search, using his name and town
Step 6 Spoke to his wife

Pretty scary really. It took me 40 minutes to find a long lost friend without any hard information other than his name. He has just emailed me.

Carte Vitale

I knew I'd be ill! Off to the doctor this morning to use my carte vitale. As ever, there is a tendency for doctors to err on the side of caution and dish out lots of medicine.

Because you pay before you leave the surgery, you feel better if you walk out with a prescription. At least you feel that you are getting some value for your money. However, being sensible for a minute, it's not efficient, because over prescribing puts a financial strain on the system.

Things need to change but as ever with these things, if you were designing a good health service, "you wouldn't want to start from here"!

Now's the time to get ill

It has finally arrived! My "Carte Vitale", which gives me automatic access to the French health system, arrived today. Feeling neglected, and none too well, I first applied for admission in June last year. Everything I have read, confirmed by The World Health Organisation, states that the French health system is the best in Europe and amongst the best in the world. It occurred to us, when we moved here, that this might be a very good place to be unwell. As a good example, just before we moved to France, Jan had started a six month wait to see to see a consultant in the UK, but when we got here, she saw one immediately, and her condition improved dramatically long before she would have seen the consultant in England.

The major problem, however, with the French Health System is that it is basically bankrupt, and provides a level of service that is unsustainable in the long term. Hence my desire to join, before somebody got the smart idea of stopping further admissions. Now watch me get ill!

Being half Italian, I tend to support Italy when it comes to ball sports. Rugby, because they always get their arses kicked, so I end up supporting the underdog, and football because they are the ones doing the kicking and I like being on the winning side. Watching rugby, this afternoon, it makes me laugh when they mention individuals in the Italian side. Take, for example, the very Italian sounding name, Kaine Robertson. Obviously the Italian coach, a New Zealander himself, has to scour the world for any rugby player with the remotest Italian connection. He has such a small pool to pick from in Italy, so that emigrants to the Southern Hemisphere are an obvious breeding ground. If he only got smart and started picking Italian Americans (the cosy nostrils), whether they could play rugby or not, who would then "put the word out" and win every game to the end of time! I must offer my services.