Left queue, right queue; left hand, right hand

Much to my surprise, having put in my passport application a week past Saturday, the cancelled one came back in Friday morning's post, and the replacement that evening by courier.  Good service, if hardly cheap these days.  I think it may have helped that the application form was one I'd filled in on line and had posted to me by the passport office.  The first time I travelled abroad, back in 1966, I did so on a group passport.  The trip was a schools exchange, supervised by a few teachers, so I only needed a little green identity card.  The following year, I got the first of a number of those rather elegant old blue passports.  In due course, that design was replaced by the uniform burgundy-coloured EU passport which, I have to admit, is rather handier, being more compact.  That in turn has evolved into a version the photo on which can be compared with the face that presents itself at a camera at the port of entry.  When we came through Gatwick a couple of months back, I was through the traditional queue-at-the-desk process rather faster than Martyn, who used the whizzo new scheme.

Another phenomenon of modern times is energy liberalisation.  Forgive me if I assess the overall results as confusion, inefficiency and vastly increased consumer prices.  It has also abolished a state-owned system that actually worked with a foreign-owned distribution operation that is at the mercy of an Arab cartel and Russian oligarchs.  Our gas meter stopped providing readings other than intermittently a year or so ago.  I reported the fact, and of course nothing happened.  Our supplier asked us for readings a few weeks ago so I reported the elec reading and a string of zeroes for gas, receiving an automated thank-you as though all was in order.  It was tempting to leave the ball in the court of our German supplier, but I called again to report the fault, and arranged for someone to come later today to replace the battery.  So what happens this morning?  Bing-bong: 'I've come to read your gas and electric meters'.  [Anyone else noticed how 'electricity' has become an archaism?] 

With all the rain of recent weeks, travelling has been somewhat entertaining.  (A nod, of course, to the flooded residents of these parts, who I'm sure found the experience no more entertaining than I did in another place in 1999.)  A lot of the country lanes on my usual route to the 'clubhouse' tend to flood in the winter, so I didn't even attempt it last week, using the fast and furious main road instead.  Having become a rather timid driver in my declining years, I'm happier on quieter roads, and was glad to be able to use the lanes again yesterday morning, only having to slow once or twice to ford standing water.  It was a pretty long day at the hobby, however, so it was dark when I left, and the lanes were full of Mummies driving their vast vehicles in the middle of the road.  No right answer, obviously.

The day dawns fine, so I plan to do some hacking down of shrubs.  Our fence man has put in a tolerable estimate, and will grub out such shrubs as we designate (hideous laurels and viburnums, bird-sown cotoneasters and the like), but some we'll cut back hard and aim to keep in check with annual pruning.  It won't be long before we have bulbs in flower, and there are a few timid sparks of colour on the primroses.  It's still far too soggy to do any gardening except for subjects that can be reached from the paths, but that still leaves a fair bit of work.  Onward and upward.

'ere we go again

So what awaits us?  Nothing too dramatic, we hope.  Our fence man has been to have a look at the job, and we await a doubtless eye-watering estimate.  It'll be good to present a less shabby look to the posh people as they drive up the hill, but the main concern is to see to our crumbling infrastructure before it injures someone.  Similar concerns remain in Another Place, and I should rattle gallic cages ere long.

The passport expires on 4 Feb, so I've been having fun organising a renewal.  The photo I took of Martyn when he renewed his a few years ago went through without difficulty.  Since time is short, I took my application to the Post Office, which turned up its newly-privatised nose at the homespun photos.  Another £8 later, the application is in, and we'll see what happens.  One just hopes that the gravely accurate photo of a fat, bald, slightly overhung bloke in his sixties doesn't bring the system to its knees.

Meanwhile, I'm doing a bit of research on things to see and do in Madeira.  The photographs at the 580m Cabo Girão cause me some discomfort in sensitive areas, and I look forward to it with some trepidation.

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.