Not a lot to add really.  Lovely day with the three generations of the family.

Humbuggeration

All our trees are still standing, which is handy, since we've had to press one into service to rope back the fence.  One length got blown out yesterday, and the one to its south was threatening to take the eyes out of passers-by: we have no street lighting in these parts.  It has been living on borrowed time: when I first came to take a look at the house almost exactly 7 years ago, the fence had been blown down: the Previous Administration got it bodged back up with a concrete spur (which has held) but fence posts, alas, have a finite life, and ours have passed theirs.  We had to replace the fence between us and the neighbours to the east five years ago, and the work was excellent, and the fence posts came with a 25-year guarantee.  The firm is still in operation, and I've added our names to the waiting list.  With more storms forecast for the coming days, I wouldn't be surprised if a few more lengths of fencing went AWOL in the meantime.

Driving was hellish yesterday, more so for Martyn than for me, since I managed to get mine done in what passed for daylight.  I almost got broadsided by a dame in a Jazz emerging with more gusto than care from a side turning in the village, but recognise that I hadn't helped matters by forgetting to put the headlights on.  (Martyn's SEAT has automatic lighting; my meanly specced VW has few such toys - not that this is an excuse.)

The lid of one of our water butts was an early casualty of the storm.  I slapped it back on at one point yesterday, but this morning it was several yards away, stopped by the side gate.  Meanwhile, the wind had lifted one of the watering cans and parked it in the water butt.  How helpful.  I have rescued numerous flower pots from the side path and neighbouring gardens, and have righted the blown-over bay tree, and am at this point even more tempted to hibernate.

And another thing.

Scroll down to the entry for 3 December for the Annual Ramblings

Occurs to me that I haven't had a good grizzle for a while.  So here goes.

We have given in to the blackmail of my esteemed ex-employer and shelled out for a new 12-month broadband contract, since we were about to be made to pay through the nose for going over our meagre monthly download allowance.  I couldn't face the aggro of configuring someone else's router.  The web site provides a button with the legend 'upgrade now' or some such.  Needless to say it didn't work: it's evidently only for upgrades from a lesser package than we were then on, though that is not made clear.  I therefore had to phone them: and after the usual lengthy press 1 for broadband, 2 for tea, 1 for no sugar, this-call-is-being-recorded-for-obscure-and-irrelevant-purposes etc finally got connected to a brain-free zone that read the scripts in that depressingly familiar moronic sing-song fashion, generally asking each question three times.  Since it's a new contract, our call package suddenly doubled in price, and although we got a 'free' new router, we'd be billed £6.95 for postage and packing.  We decided not to install the new router until our visitor had gone, so it was Friday afternoon when the problems began.  The late mediaeval desktop upstairs gave us no trouble, and Martyn's computers, both kindles and my mobile phone similarly behaved.  But the laptop would offer nothing but facebook.  I tried doing a restore, failing on two occasions until I temporarily suppressed the virus catcher.  The third restore worked, but left me with no internet access at all.  Eventually a BT pop-up screen duly popped up, and after clicking on a random collection of buttons, I was back in business.  Phew.  On the positive side, the new router is compact, replaces both the old boxes, and is mercifully free from flashing lights.

Wet weather yesterday prompted Martyn to do some channel zapping on TV, and up popped a programme about a procession of Eddie Stobart lorries down through France for a photoshoot at the magnificent Viaduc de Millau.  Riveting content, eh?  Well, there were some nice views.  OK, if you don't know French, you can't know how to pronounce Millau correctly.  But why can a programme get on air with Millau repeatedly mispronounced as though it was somewhere in Germany?  Isn't there some kind of sub-editing process to eliminate such clangers?  We found ourselves yelling at the box: 'Me-yoh, you ignorant twat!'  Deep sigh.

Traffic hereabouts gets worse and worse.  We made the classic error of trying to get to North Farm one day last week and gave up when, an hour after leaving home, we hadn't got as far as the sewage farm.  Yesterday, the main road out to our place was clogged up with roadworks and the consequent alternating traffic, so we struck off into the village instead.  There, the High Street was clogged up by two 281 buses going in the same direction (it's a 12-minute service, which illustrates just how clogged up it was), and the side streets were gridlocked.  When someone finally gave in and reversed, we got moving only to meet a vast 4x4  whose (blonde) driver insisted on squeezing through with millimetres to spare.  One gets a feeling that it would be better to leave the car in the garage for the month of December.  Or better still, hibernate.  Snarl.

The shortest day

Scroll down to the entry for 3 December for the Annual Ramblings

 ...and the time of year when we start to look forward to more light from a sun that's a bit less uncomfortably low in the sky.  It has been a delight to have three fine, bright days in succession - so long as you don't need to drive anywhere.  The good weather coincided with a visit from Philip from Costa Rica, who plainly had a can or two of Central American sunshine in his suitcase.  We thus got to show him the town and a little of the countryside.  He is now in Suffolk for a family Christmas, but I fear he's had the best of the weather. 

It was fine enough yesterday afternoon for me to get out and hack down some of the dead top-hamper of perennials.  The brown stems and leaves of phlox, iris sibirica etc were starting to depress me.  It was most definitely a wellies job: the grass is waterlogged and very slippery.  (I sent the lawn treatment man away yesterday morning, telling him to put the office in touch again in April.)  The garden is hardly inspiring at this time of year, but there's a little colour left on penstemons and a couple of patio roses at the front door.  We bought a few trays of pansies the other day, so we have a colourful and welcoming basket on the wall by the front door, with the remaining few plants added to pots out on the terrace.  Some of the pots are full of bulbs, which are now very active, and will appreciate the top dressing of decent compost.  Out in the borders, the daffodils are starting to poke through.  We presume that they're floating to the surface.

Phil is a stamp collector, and was pleased to fill some gaps in his collection at a stamp shop, the existence of which was news to me, here in town.  I went with him, and was impressed.  They have a very good stock of stamps, and may be interested in some of the stamps that lurk in my cupboard.  I worked a couple of Universal Postal Union Congresses, translating turgid documents about the international postal service from French to English.  The occasional bit of light relief came along in the form of minutes of plenary meetings at which international political spats were slugged out: if I remember right, both Congresses spent a lot of time debating proposals to expel South Africa from  UPU membership (this was back in 1974 and 1979, I hasten to add). 

Though the work was sporadic and rewarding only in that it allowed me to practise a skill, the fringe benefits were good: generous expenses, vast amounts of junketing, jolly jaunts on Sundays, attractive gifts from the host administration and of course the stamps.  Many delegations dished out albums of all the stamps issued in the preceding five years.  I hope mine haven't been damaged too much by the time they spent on bookshelves in the sitting room back in my smoking days, and by the years they have spent in cardboard boxes.  Stanley Gibbons used to send a buyer to each Congress for a week or so, but I decided at the time to hang on to my stamps.  Time to ship them out now, I think.  I'll have a look through them later and decide whether there are any I still want to keep.

The sitting room is a mass of colourful cards, festooned round the double doorway between the rooms, and hanging from light fittings and the ends of the curtain rail.  They tell me that this approach makes something called 'dusting' much easier.... I love the greetings from friends at this time of year, and when it comes to the controversial topic of round-robins, you'd gather that I'm in favour.  One brought sad news this year: Mum's cousin Jean died in January.  She and her first husband Jack followed her parents' pattern of lengthy trips to the UK, and stayed with the parents in Broughty Ferry.  On one trip, Jack had a mild heart attack while they were staying with the parents, and on the next visit, he had a worse one while they were in Stratford-upon-Avon.  He was the next in the queue at the crem after J B Priestley: a somewhat ironic claim to fame.  Jean had rather lost the place in recent years, though it was a cancer that finished her off.  We shall raise a glass in her memory on Christmas Eve, which would have been her 95th birthday.

Day out

Scroll down to the entry for 3 December for the Annual Ramblings

A pleasant drive down to Rye yesterday for Sue's birthday party.  We were among the last to arrive, so plonked ourselves down in the only pair of remaining seats.  I found myself sitting next to the business partner of a chap I serve on a committee with.  Her husband, sitting in the next seat along, is a friend and customer of a friend of mine with whom I work on another.  Small world, eh?  Lunch was good, but then the music started.  It was very good - pop songs suitable for a 60th birthday party - but I just can't converse against that kind of background, and become increasingly frustrated when others feel they can.  The drive home was beautiful: there was a fine sunset yesterday, and the skeletal trees looked wonderful against the spectacular colours.

The tree is up, the lights have been persuaded back into working order and the Christmas shopping is largely complete.  Our approach has been anything but systematic, though: we went to get a present for Sue's birthday, and came away with a duplicate to serve as someone else's Christmas present.  We've done another couple of buys on line, and think there are only a couple to go.  Greetings cards are beginning to trickle in, with the snippets of news of friends that I'm always so pleased to receive.  Ours went last week, in their  lurid yellow envelopes (must shop more carefully next year).

I had expected to spend Christmas Eve practising the hobby, but that has been cancelled.  I may pick up a cancellation in the meantime, but am not too short of sittings at this point, provided I don't lose too many from January to March.

The garden is looking a bit sad at the moment: a couple of roses by the front door are doing very well, as they generally do at this time of year - they obviously like the dry conditions and northern exposure!  They are partly sheltered by the overhang where the roof line follows the projection of the bay window and the garages.  A few pansies and primulas are showing colour, as are the old faithful penstemons.  Of the herbs, the rosemary and sage don't look too bad, but the thyme is getting rather bedraggled, the mint and chives are dormant, and the oregano and tarragon are now indoors - not that the latter has come to much.  One day in the week it was just dry enough for me to slither round the policies behind the motor mower, so the grass isn't looking too dreadful.  If the ground dries later, I'll get out and do a bit more dead-heading and cutting back of dead foliage.  We'll look for some flowering plants for the basket at the front door at some point.  Then I think that'll be it for gardening in 2013.

Annual ramblings

2013…

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he year I met a cousin I didn’t know I had: more of that anon.  Otherwise, a mercifully uneventful year, with the usual pattern of trips south, though with some subtle variations.

The house here has needed the usual attention, expected and unexpected.  The rubbishy doors between the dining room and the conservatory broke again early in the year, so we gritted our teeth and replaced them with a three-leaved set that we think comply with building regulations, unlike the original set.  More to the point, they are double-glazed and securely lockable, so they should save us a bit of gas this winter - and spare us quibbles from the insurers should the worst come to the worst.  The central heating and the burglar alarm have cost us quite a bit during the year.  We don’t mind shelling out to keep warm, but when certain bits don’t last three years, we feel entitled to be hacked off.  And we didn’t want a bloody burglar alarm anyway.

We were happier to spend a bit on decorating: Jonathan did a fantastic job repainting the hall, stairs, landing and the nine doors leading from them.  We had a lot of fun sourcing carpets – it seemed that every time we found one we liked, it turned out to be discontinued.  At one point we found a compromise candidate, and might have gone ahead with it had I not suddenly thought, on checking the colour, ‘dog food’.  Radical reappraisal ensued:  the walls having turned out a little bluer than expected, we settled on an air force grey-blue, and we love the overall effect. 

I’m not allowed to express political views in a publicly accessible blog, so will keep my counsel on the cost of Police & Crime Commissioner elections, aircraft carriers, the results of budget constraints on the CPS, the outsourcing of probation services, etc, etc. 

After some 45 years, we have sacked the Royal Bank of Scotland: the Bank’s appalling record of mismanagement, incompetence and uncontrolled remuneration of the undeserving finally moved us to move on.  Impressed with the ethical stance of the Co-op, we moved accounts thither.  Poor sad fools, it transpires, that we are.  Now toying with where to go next.  I’m coming to the conclusion that there are no right answers.  But foreign-based hedge funds are definitely the wrong ones.

Looking forward to 2014, though it promises more property maintenance costs: some of the repairs are finished in Lagrasse, but others await.  The fence between us and the street to our right here in the UK is starting to look very tired, and in any case we want rid of some of the shrubs that are leaning on it.  At least the threatening ash tree to our south has now gone, though not without our putting our hands in our pockets.

But the strongest theme of the year, as so often, has been the joy of being together (over twelve years now, and seven since we did the legal stuff), and the chance to have time and fun with family and our lovely friends, old, new and renewed.

Martyn & David

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he pots and sinks on the terrace cropped well: Martyn treated us to a solar powered irrigation system which largely kept stuff going during our summer absence.  The charlotte spuds were good again, and tomatoes similarly did well.  The herbs we planted in the spring are a mix of success and failure, and a fresh bag or two of compost worked wonders for the old ones.  For some reason rudbeckias were a dismal failure.  The roses have done quite well, and at last the cornus seem to be getting their roots down, one of them helped by my taking a sudden scunner one morning to a golden lonicera (aka ‘that thing in the middle that needs a trim') that had been overshadowing it and taking any remaining goodness out of the already dreadful soil.  The Bramley apple tree did better this year than ever, and we’ve had ample makings of bruschette.  The magnolia goes from strength to strength, after years of being overshadowed by leylandii.  We’re hoping the garden will benefit from the extra light now that the huge ash tree has gone from the garden next door.

Wheels

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o unpleasant surprises from the cars this year, though Manuel, the little man under the bonnet of the Egg who changes gears for us, did get a bit sleepy at one point.  The Tiguan has needed three new tyres, the last two costing £40 each less after shopping around than we’d paid when we got a puncture on the way to Brighton in December.  Martyn bought us a GPS navigator last Christmas.  We’ve named it Dotty (a) after someone bossy I once knew, and (b) because she gets a bit confused from time to time.  Dotty she may be, but she found us a new tyre shop when we needed one.

A mixed batch of rental cars.  We opted to fly and rent in September.  The Focus we were given at Toulouse was dynamically excellent, and it didn’t take long to work out how to switch off the gizmo that shoogled the steering wheel whenever we moved out of lane.  I couldn’t suppress the annoying prompts to change up a gear, and at one point I found myself shouting at it, ‘If you’re so clever, why don’t you do it yourself?’.  More serious was the fact that, after over 36000 km, the front tyres were very worn.  Enterprise were rude and grudging about replacing the car, and we finished up with a most unpleasant little Peugeot 207SW, but at least it had tread on its tyres.  Alamo did us a nice little Mégane out of Montpellier in November.  The handling was a touch vague, but at least it had a good twin-clutch gearbox that did its own shifting.  But it was good to get home to our familiar tall vehicles, which make one feel more in control.

Arrivals

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or a couple of months in the summer we were having nightly visits from as many as three badgers at a time.  They can hoover up a tray of peanuts before you can say ‘knife’.  Quite often there’d be a couple of foxes lurking in the distance, but the badgers would see them off if they got too close.  The mallards were much in evidence in the spring, but one day the female stopped appearing, so I imagine she was caught napping by a fox at some point.

More conventional visitors were Annie around New Year, and we again had the pleasure of Celia and Andy’s company in Lagrasse in the summer.

I

 splashed out on a new bread machine earlier in the year.  The Kenwood machines we’ve had in the past just haven’t lasted.  I’m hoping that the Panasonic will keep going a bit longer.  I think it makes better dough.  As I write, we’ve just had ham sandwiches made with chouriço knot rolls for lunch. 

We haven’t done huge amounts of entertaining this year, but are trying to extend our repertoire a little.  Delia Smith’s recipe for barbecued belly pork strips is excellent, as is a recipe for cauliflower shaken with oil, breadcrumbs and parmesan, and baked.  I might have a go some time at Jamie Oliver’s version, which uses cumin, coriander and almonds.  We’re a bit short of interesting vegetable recipes, but do some pretty hearty soups, and the occasional tray of roast veggies. 

We’ve turned to a career in poaching – of fish caught lawfully by other people, I hasten to add.  The first couple of exercises were rather successful, we thought, and they offer a good way to use up those left-over veggies in the bottom of the fridge.  We have an excellent fishmonger in town – but get your mortgage arranged before you enter the shop.

Eating out has been a mixed pleasure this year.  Our regular pizza joint in Limoux has been disappointing, and even the place by the canal at Le Somail was not quite up to snuff last time we visited.  

 Clan

Chris, Martyn, David, John, Margaret, Philippa, Gill

An exciting year.  Cousin Philippa discovered the birth certificate of a son born to our grandmother some years before the grand- parents were married, and ten years before Charles, who we’d thought was their first-born.  When we saw photographs of Frank, it became amply clear that he was our grandfather’s son: the resemblance to Charles was breathtaking.  Alas, he died suddenly in his mid-70s.  I’d love to have met him and heard the stories of  his career in aeronautical engineering.  Well, we’ve at last met his only child, our cousin Gill, and the family got together here for lunch one day in June.

Arts  I have to admit that I didn’t finish the Booker shortlist this year.  Goes without saying that the one that stumped me won the prize.  My dodgy sleep pattern tends to mean that I read a lot between 4 and 8 in the morning, and a glance at the archive on my kindle would suggest a very twisted mind.  Ed McBain, Lee Child, David Hume, Proust, and pretty much anything in between.  I’m currently on my friend and former colleague Linda Porter’s excellent history of the Tudor-Stewart interaction in the late middle ages and into Elizabeth and Mary’s times.  Recommended.

Our local theatre/concert hall does a good programme.  Our first visit of the year tends to be the Mayor’s charity quiz in late January.  We and six friends form a team that tends to finish around the middle of the field, but it’s good fun.  In the same hall this year we’ve been to an orchestral concert of Britten (excellent) and Berlioz (under-rehearsed and ragged); Fascinating Aïda (you need a broad mind if you go to see them...) and a good touring performance of Cabaret. 

The daubing has been pretty poor this year: I have a growing number of works in progress, but just don’t seem to get it right.  The longer I spend on a piece, the worse it gets.  This one was a quickie.

Departures 

Familiar and unfamiliar surroundings this year.  We spent a fair bit of time in Lagrasse, achieving rather less on the building work front than we had hoped.  The most difficult of the repairs to the rendering are over, but the biggest part is yet to come.  Builders have been dithering about whether to point the stones, strip the wall and re-render or just patch where necessary and lime wash it.  I’ve opted for the last-mentioned on cost grounds, but the weather is now too cold and wet.  They can in the meantime get on and replace the leaky window on the roof terrace. 

In the summer, Martyn suggested that we return by ferry from northern Spain for a change.  So when we dropped Celia and Andy at Toulouse airport in July, we carried on westwards, spending a few nights in Bilbao, where we rented a little flat.  The road to Bilbao from the border is pretty spectacular: almost Switzerland-like.  The motorway is just a bit too sportif  for my liking, but we got there safely, thanks more to a bit of pre-travel research on Google Earth than to anything Dotty had to offer.  Quite an attractive city now, Bilbao was the cradle of the civil war, and was until recently a model of post-industrial depression.  It has more recently pulled itself up by the bootstraps (odd  expression, if you’re literally-minded...) and is home now to one of the world’s most striking pieces of architecture, the Guggenheim.  The gallery itself is well enough known for me not to need to include a photograph, but a little less famous is the Jeff Koons puppy outside, seen here with yr. obed. servt.  We bopped around on trams and buses for a couple of days, and felt that that was about long enough to get a basic feel for the place.  The pintxus (Basque tapas) didn’t really appeal to us – they seemed to involve a lot of bread – and we aren’t keen on noisy bars.  Fortunately, the flat had a big communal roof terrace where we could spend a couple of quiet evenings watching the sun go down.

The day we left, our sailing was in the evening, so we headed south from Bilbao into the mountains before looping back north to Santander to catch the boat.  Beautiful country: we shall be back.  I hadn’t done much research into the area: the coastal mountain range is essentially a continuation of the Pyrenees, rising to giddying heights in places.  The air was not too clear the day we were there, but we still got some pretty impressive views.

Santander looks to be worth a bit of exploring some time.  The grid-pattern commercial centre near the port is rather functional and stark, but as you head towards the mouth of the estuary you find yourself passing the huge wedding-cake that is headquarters to the Banco de Santander, then on to the posh resort quarter which has a sort of Nice-meets-Torquay feel.

As for the ferry itself, our cabin was quiet and comfortable enough, but the loading process was utter chaos and took ages.  We found ourselves being guided down into the bilges, beneath a huge trapdoor.  We were on the smaller of the two vessels that ply the route, and  in the calm conditions we had, it was very comfortable.  The catering was somewhere between fair and  middling.  Definitely worth taking a cabin, though – it was nice to be able to go and read, snooze and drink tea when we felt like it.

Closer to home, we took a day trip in March by steam train to Worcester, enjoying the Cotswold scenery on the way.  We had time for a prowl through the city and a good look round the cathedral before returning, and enjoyed the cheerful welcome of all the West Midlanders we met as we went round.  It’s a long day, however, and the 1960s rolling stock is not a comfortable place to be for so long, so if we do it again we’ll go for the more expensive seats we had on the Bath trip last year. 

One day in September, we took a ride over the mountains toward Perpignan, planning to have lunch in the airport restaurant.  It was closed.  We went up to the memorial to the soldiers of the First Republic who fought the Kingdom of Spain at Peyrestortes in 1793, where we had an indifferent sandwich each.   Nearby is the perimeter fence of the airport, whence we watched a flight coming in from Orly on the taxi way about 50 yards from where we stood.  As he taxied in, the first officer gave us a cheerful wave.  Suddenly I was 5 again, delighted at getting a wave from the engine driver!  Funny how things make an impression.