I love Italy

Wow, that was a bit of a journey. A three hour drive down to Girona, a two hour lunch at Can Xiguet Restaurant about ten minutes from the airport (we couldn't find our restaurant of choice, La Roca Petita, so stopped looking and chose this place by chance). We seem to have a knack at choosing good restos and found one that we'll definitely go back to. Over the meal we came to a montentous decision. We agreed that we prefer eating in Spanish restaurants and prefer Spanish food to French food. A bit of a problem when you live in France, not Spain. There's a simplicity to the Spanish food we've tried, which is similar to Italian, good ingredients cooked simply, with lots of taste and with no messing about.
A two hour wait at the airport then a 1.5 hour flight to the south of Italy. A ten minutes drive to our hotel Villa Immaculata, a plate of pasta and a bottle of wine and here we are at 22.50, twelve hours later. We are both so pleased to be here. The hotel was one of the few that was open in Pescara at this time of the year, so there wasn't a lot of choice, and we were the last to eat. Not that there had been many before us. The young jaunty waiter said no problem and didn't give us a menu but told us what was available. A choice from three starters and three mains. We chose carefully and with anticipation. He came back three minutes later to tell us that he was sorry but everything was off. We could have tagliatelle with either a tomato or pesto sauce. We guessed that the chef was already packing up and told the waiter to tell us to bugger off. When you're happy you see the funny side of things like this.

La Bella Italia

Last November the partner of a very good friend called to enquire if we would like to spend a couple of days with them in the south of Italy. In Ostuni to be precise. Life was good in November and we still enjoyed a decent exchange rate, so it only took a second to think about it and say yes.
That's where we're going today. We're driving down to Girona to take a late afternoon Ryanair flight to Pescara, on Italy's Adriatic coast, before travelling down to Bari for a rendezvous the next day. The chance to blog might be limited, what with all the travelling, but I'll try my best.
I'll also try my best to get my weight up even further and really piss the good doctor off.

My summer hols

I went into Nimes today to meet Denis, and pay him for the wine that he let us have cheap at Christmas, and to get beaten up by my diabetes consultant because my sugar (and weight) were up and then over to Boulanger to buy a new dishwasher.
Dr J even suggested that I go to a clinic for three weeks where they would get my weight down by a few kilos. Bloody hell, I aint that fat! Anyway, I'll try my damnest first and then consider the other. I asked him if it was free, he said yes, and if Jan could go with me for free as well, and if I understood him correctly, he said yes to that as well. Think about it, a three week break all expenses paid at a health clinic. No wonder this is the best health service in the world. I'll wait until the weather gets warmer before I think about it. I wonder if they've got wi-fi? I couldn't live without my 'puter. (You're not taking this seriously - Ed)

The maze

This simplistic flow chart has been designed to help the woman on the right respond to the question 'would you like to go for a beer?'
The more complicated chart, not shown here, includes items like jewelry, hairdo and lippy.

Thanks to Ric for passing this on.

I've seen the cheese

It's not easy writing a blog unless of course you are totally barmy (and there are plenty of those around) and I have always tried hard not to take the piss out of other blogs. But.
I don't really have 'the muse' at the moment and I'm finding writing anything interesting difficult (but then you always have! - Ed). Looking around for inspiration I came across this site. It's a blog from a woman that is obsessed with cheese. Yes, bloody cheese. She takes a picture of some bloody cheese or turnips and somehow thinks that it makes an interesting post. Get a load of the second one down. It's fog for christsake. And, just in case you are tempted to copy any of it she has a bloody copyright notice on the site. As if, lady!! As if!
If you stop laughing for a second and refocus you'll see that she has applied for French citizenship. If the police find her blog they'll take one look at it and fire her arse out of the country. There are already enough nutters in France without adding anymore.

And then the fight started

My wife and I were watching Who Wants To Be A Millionaire while we were in bed. I turned to her and said,
"Do you want to have sex?"
"No," she answered.
I then said, "Is that your final answer?"
She didn't even look at me this time, simply saying "Yes."
So I said, "Can I phone a friend?"
And then the fight started....

****

After retiring, I went to the Social Security office to apply for Social Security. The woman behind the counter asked me for my driver's license to verify my age. I looked in my pockets and realized I had left my wallet at home. I told the woman that I was very sorry, but I would have to go home and come back later.
The woman said, 'Unbutton your shirt'.
So I opened my shirt revealing my curly silver hair.
She said, 'That silver hair on your chest is proof enough for me' And she processed my Social Security application. When I got home, I excitedly told my wife about my experience at the Social Security office.
She said, 'You should have dropped your pants. You might have gotten Disability, too'
And then the fight started.....

****

Saturday morning I got up early, quietly dressed, made my lunch, grabbed the dog, and slipped quietly into the garage. I hooked up the boat up to the truck, and proceeded to back out into a torrential downpour. The wind was blowing 50 mph, so I pulled back into the garage, turned on the radio, and discovered that the weather would be bad all day.
I went back into the house, quietly undressed, and slipped back into bed. I cuddled up to my wife's back, now with a different anticipation, and whispered, 'The weather out there is terrible.' My loving wife of 10 years replied, 'Can you believe my stupid husband is out fishing in that?' And that's how the fight started ...

****

I rear-ended a car this morning. So, there we were alongside the road and slowly the other driver got out of his car. You know how sometimes you just get soooo stressed and little things just seem funny? Yeah, well I couldn't believe it.... He was a DWARF!!! He stormed over to my car, looked up at me, and shouted, 'I AM NOT HAPPY! !!' So, I looked down at him and said, 'Well, which one are you then?'
And then the fight started.....

****

A woman is standing nude, looking in the bedroom mirror. She is not happy with what she sees and says to her husband, 'I feel horrible; I look old, fat and ugly. I really need you to pay me a compliment.' The husband replies, 'Your eyesight's darn near perfect.'
And then the fight started..........


Thanks to Chris for these.

Pasta al Vongole

I love pasta al vongole. And, after several months of pleading, Jan finally cooked it for me again tonight. In the past she has used palourdes but they're a bit too big and this time she used coques, which are actually cockles but close enough to clams to make no difference. Excellent. If you need a recipe look here but ignore the bit about making your own pasta, that's rubbish. Buy a good quality dry Italian pasta.
I have fond memories of Italian food. I ate a lot of it when I was young. It's my comfort food. When I'm ill and cooking for myself, or more to the point, when Jan's not well and I have to bloody well cook for myself, then I resort to something simple like pasta or rice with butter and cheese. If you live in the Arctic and don't have butter then use garlic, olive oil and a few chili flakes. Simple, tasty and filling. Bloody excellent.
Anyway, we're sitting chatting about the food when the conversation got round to zabaglione. We chatted about our early lives and in particular how, after the war, our mothers used to build us up with the odd egg or two. At one point Jan looked me up and down and in a sarcastic tone said, "your mother obviously did a good job of feeding you up!" See what I've got to put up with!

Funny Brookes cartoon from The Times

How cruel can you be?

So we're in the car driving to the hairdresser when, out of the blue, Jan blurts out that she has investigated taking me for a trip round the Ferrari factory for my birthday. Within a nano second I'd figured that this was going to be a nice trip, by car to Italy and that we'd have to stop off somewhere else, like Bologna, a city I'd like to visit again. I nearly burst into tears at such a lovely thought.
However, no sooner had my hopes been built up when she said, but given the state of our money at the moment, (lack of and exchange rates) we can't afford it.
Bloody hell, within the space of a few seconds I'd had something really nice given and immediately taken away. Why would she do that? I was devastated.
Before I could raise a protest she said, "We could always do a trip around the Haribo museum."
This is one cruel, cruel woman, but I have to say that I thought that it was very funny. I wonder what she'll get me?

***

Hot off the press: Ryanair are going to start charging for emotional baggage.

In with the new

I've had it with Palm! Historically, I have never tried to remember anything. Why clog up your brain with useless bits of information? I'm a list man, I like lists, so for years I have run my life from a combination of a Palm PDA and, more recently, the Palm Desktop where I recorded everything. If I was ever asked a question about availability then I would have to look at the computer first. The Palm Desktop was the first thing that I turned to every morning. It told me what to do and what to think. It reminded me to start breathing every morning, it was my life blood. I relied on it totally. But therein lay the problem, because from time to time I opened the bloody programme and there was nothing there. Zilch, nada, niente. My life had disappeared. I didn't know what to do or what to think.
OK, whilst it wasn't a major problem because I'd got into the habit of backing up at critical times, after I'd imported the backup copy, the bloody original data reappeared. Then I had two of everything to do. Bugger.
Being an anal kind of person (also known as an asshole - Ed), this offended my precise, ordered life, so I would spend hours deleting the extraneous information.
Well not any more, that's it, we're divorced. I've switched to Google Calender. She's much younger, just as good looking, works away from home, but she's there when I need her and does exactly what I tell her to do. (That's enough - Ed) We've had one good month together, with lots of free time to tell her everything she needs to know and she's now my lifelong companion. At least until something younger and better looking comes along!

Confusing times

We were driving to Carrefour yesterday morning and, out of the blue, Jan mentioned that she liked the toilet paper that we are using at the moment. Trying not to drive into the ditch in surprise and being a bit of a toilet paper aficionado myself I agreed and said no more.
Well, what else is there to say?
So there I was wandering around the aisles looking for some goodies when Jan walks up, plonks a big package in the trolley, and informs me that we are going to try Carrefour's own brand of toilet roll. To put it mildly, I was a bit surprised, but I said nothing whilst trying to avoid destroying a huge display of kitchen rolls.
Later in the afternoon, over a cup of tea, I tried to strike up a conversation with my beloved about her volte face, after pledging her allegiance to our favourite brand of bog roll. She seemed to take it as a personal affront that I should question her buying motives. She still doesn't see me as just an inquisitive chap trying to fathom the female brain. (That's your first mistake - Ed)
Anyway, she eventually satisfied my curiosity but not without leaving me with the feeling that this was a 'discussion' that she'll bring up in twenty years time during an argument.
The moral of the story is, my brave male friends, that if your beloved tells you that she loves you as you pass the baked beans, she could easily change her mind by the time she passes the frozen peas. But then you knew that didn't you? You have been warned.

Mamma Mia! the movie

The DVD of the film Mamma Mia is the biggest selling video ever in the UK and, getting swept up in all the hype, Jan got it as one of her Christmas presents.
Well, we watched it yesterday and your trusty film reviewer here was not impressed. I thought that it was pretty poor, mainly because they chose a bunch of stars, presumably to increase its trans Atlantic appeal, who can't sing and can't dance. Maybe when they were younger they could sing and dance, but now they are all too old and fat to dance appealingly (something you would understand - Ed) and fairly dire singers. Watching Meryl Streep writhing about on a roof top was not nice.
The plot was woven around the songs, which was pretty clever, and needless to say the songs are good, assuming that you like Abba. But there were one or two irritating facets about the film which irritated throughout.
First was the poor singing performance of the big name stars and second was the frantic pace of the action. Generally, the action mimicked an exaggerated live performance, something you would expect at the theatre, but that was so unnecessary in a film.
Jan, who admits to liking 'chick flicks' and who has a much higher pain threshold than me, was also disappointed. Which says a lot really.
And finally, exactly who was her father? That's something you will only understand by watching it.
If you have to see it, borrow it, don't buy it. Or, if you want to buy one cheap?

A nuclear accident?

I suppose like most villages around here, we have just received our "Bulletin Municipal D'Informations Locale," which is called L'Echo de Cantarel. Very nice it is too. It's a four page local news sheet packed with details affecting villagers, inviting us all to free drinks and cake (Gallettes des Roi) on 11th January, and other bits of useful information. Information about who is responsible for handing out flu vaccines in case of an epidemic (I guess you then get someone to inject you) and who is responsible for handing out iodine pills (comprimés d'iode) in the case of a nuclear accident. Now call me a dumb ass (you're a dumb ass - Ed) but what's this about nuclear accidents, what exactly do they know that we don't know? Will the pills stop me growing another head, or ass like Miss Chernobyl above? We need to be told!

Happy New Year

That's another year gone and no knighthood. What's a man got to do to get recognised around here? (Get out of bed for a start - Ed) I'm beginning to lose patience with this process!

At the very least, I hope that you have a Happy New Year.