It all started with stains on the ceiling & it finished with…
…well, ask me again in 20 years.
The damp stains on the landing ceiling, just after an exceptional downpour, obviously implied a leaking roof, so I climbed up into the loft space above & saw the leak where a chimney goes through the tiles, but couldn't work out why there was a leak.
Even a little roof leak makes you feel terribly weak & vulnerable these days, so I called out the nearest roof specialist, who quickly diagnosed & fixed some badly-fitting cut-away tiles round the chimney & some zinc flashing which needed re-shaping.
Seems to be OK so far, but it had seemed OK for 20 years before the big downpour too…
While they were looking, they also persuaded me I should have all the moss & lichen removed, which had just looked picturesque before, but apparently was a grave danger for my tiles and a potential cause of leaks.
Who knows?
Good salesmen anyway…
They even noticed I had a decent bit of roof just crying out for photovoltaic panels.
Which they also install.
Dubious at first, I dug a lot deeper into that one, found that current tax rules are very favourable & eventually did decide to go for a 3 kW installation.
But after consulting 20 specialists, I gave the job to somebody else, not the ones who first suggested it.
Officially kicked off last week, there are still a lot of hurdles to clear, or hoops to jump through, before the project is accepted.
Particularly the Historic Monuments Authority.
If all goes well, it could be installed early next year & in production late spring.
And paying back the initial outlay after 8 years.
And continuing to feed the grid & provide income for 20 years total.
I will cover this in separate posts.
While I was up in the loft looking at the initial leaks, I was reminded of something I already knew, but didn't want to think about.
The roof insulation was a disaster.
The original owner had insulated all the roof space with rolls of fibreglass on tarred-paper backing sheets, stapled up under the 45° rafters.
In the part of the loft above the landing & bedrooms, quite a lot of that insulation was either torn, or hanging uselessly, or already fallen onto the joists & plasterboard ceilings below.
Moving about up there was very hazardous, with fibreglass hanging down and with no floor to walk on – just hidden joists with plasterboard ceiling between, waiting for unwary feet to pass through.
We also have 3 huge walk-in storage areas, beside the first-floor bedrooms, under the lower half of the rafters, and these areas were also insulated with the same fibreglass stapled to the rafters.
Although that insulation had not fallen off, it was extremely delicate & meant that any activity in the storage spaces had to avoid tearing the paper.
So we got several quotes for removing the old insulation & putting in something more effective & less fragile.
To cut a long story short, we now have thick insulation above the bedrooms & landing ceilings, under walkable boarding on the joists.
And robust boarding supporting & protecting the insulation under the rafters in the walk-in storage areas.
It is probably more effective & certainly a lot more convenient than before.
It did involve emptying all the storage areas though.
20 years of accumulated junk…
A perfect illustration of a variant of Parkinson's law: "Stuff expands to fill the space available".
As we pulled all that stuff out & stacked it to the ceiling in nearby fortunately-now-little-used bedrooms, we resolved to not, under any circumstances, put it all back afterwards!
So we have spent the last several weeks sifting through a mountain of old stuff and separating it into 3 fairly equal lots – keep, give, scrap.
"Keep" was supposed to be only what we thought we really were likely to want to use some time, but we soon realized there were useless things of sentimental value we definitely did want to keep.
But not too many…
"Give" included everything which could be of any value to anybody.
After our previous disappointing experience with Emmaus Strasbourg, we found another Emmaus at Mundolsheim, who took our Espace-full of bric-a-brac quite happily, without ostensibly throwing any of it away, not while we were there anyway.
"Scrap" was not as simple as that.
It involved dismantling as much as possible, to separate all the various categories of recyclable material, then a couple of runs with Espace & trailer to the dechetterie.
The results of that tidying-up are so satisfactory, that we are now attacking all the other, numerous, stacks of "might come in useful one day" stuff we have everywhere.
This will take some time.
And partly explains the paucity of recent posts here.
Parting thot: "Junk is something you throw away three weeks before you need it." - Anon
Another little gem in French which makes you wonder how other languages can manage without an equivalent.
Literally, bilan translates as "balance" or "balance sheet" or "end of year statement" or just "result".
It derives from the Latin for balance or scales.
But it is in very common use, and invaluable, as meaning "the end result, having weighed up all the positives & negatives".
Such a fundamental & frequent concept…
English needs a single word for that.
Parting thot: "Language shapes the way we think, and determines what we can think about." - Benjamin Lee Whorf
I have been thinking about getting a garden shredder.
Not to shred DS's floral borders or ravage next-door's gnomes, but to deal with all our loppings & prunings.
With a big collection of trees & bushes, this is not a negligible item.
At the moment, everything above compostable size has to be trailered to the dechetterie, where I am a frequent flyer.
Shredder fanciers reckon that not only do shredders make your piles (of branches) disappear, but that the result can then be used to make good compost, especially mixed with grass cuttings which should not otherwise be added over-enthusiastically to the compost heap (particularly not when DS is looking).
Beyond that, the shreddies can be spread on flower beds, where they look tidy, keep down weeds & retain moisture, reducing the need for watering.
Sounds too good to be true.
Which it is.
They forget to mention the noise, the painful slowness, the need to wear all sorts of protection, the doubtful ecological "bilan" (no good translation for that), the frequent jammings, the need for resharpening, the fact that stringy stuff stops the cutter by wrapping round it & hard wood stops the cutter dead, or that the output can be anywhere between mush & chunks.
I learned all that several years ago when I first got interested & borrowed one.
I learned it again last year when my neighbour bought one, then a second, and now passes his loppings through both in succession...
So logically, I should just forget the whole thing & keep on trucking, or trailering.
But logic is boring.
I have let myself be persuaded that the latest & greatest new Bosch AXT 25TC shredder has reached an acceptable level of performance.
It even won a Glee prize (Look it up), for what that is worth.
Unfortunately, there is the price.
Bosch mention 499.99€ & our local DIY store has it for just over 500€.
No way.
Surprisingly, I couldn't find it significantly cheaper on Internet in France, Germany or Belgium.
Then I looked in UK & it is all over the place at less than £300, which is not much more than 330€ at today's rate.
Plus post & packing, of course, for a 30 kg packet.
And that is the point of this post, following on from the previous one about the growing significance of shipping costs for Internet shopping.
I sorted out the half-dozen sites with the lowest take-away prices, around £280, then started digging for shipping costs.
Even within UK, shipping varied between free & impossible (to outlying places).
Not surprisingly, several UK sites do not ship to France.
For the others, the charge varied between £46 & £17.
£17 has to sound reasonable for 30 kg from UK to France, especially compared with 17€ for 48 gm from Germany to France (see previous post).
So I ordered a shredder from Garden Centre On Line, for £279.99 + £17.99 = £297.98
Actually, I ordered it on a Saturday by internet & paid by debit card from a UK account.
I have their confirmation of the amounts.
But the transaction failed because (& that took a long time to trace) our UK bank has been slightly mis-spelling our address for the last 20 years.
Just doubling an "L" which, coming from Lloyds, might have been a natural mistake or an in-joke.
In all that time, nobody had ever noticed & it had never mattered, but for on-line transactions, it matters.
So, after straightening out Lloyds, I had to order it again by phone, still at the same price, and the £297.98 was debited on Monday.
Imagine my surprise, as they say, to get an e-mail on Friday, saying: "Hi, Thank you for your order unfortunately the shipping cost for this item to France is 117.99GBP leaving a balance of £100GBP to pay please advise if you wish to ahead with this purchase and pay the additional shipping. Regards, Customer Service"
Having imagined my surprise, you can now easily imagine my reply, which certainly did not include paying another £100.
I would be interested to find out just what happened there, but I never will.
Next on my shredder-shop list was Lawson-HIS, so I checked their site again & it really did say £281.75 + £17 shipping (up to 30 kg, whereas Bosch says it weighs 30.5 kg).
I e-mailed for confirmation & they confirmed £281.75 + £17.08 = £298.83
Dubious, I asked them to please recheck the weight & shipping charges, which they did, so I ordered it from them.
My conclusions are that shipping charges can vary wildly.
That some sellers (the ones who ship free & publicise that clearly on every page) have understood the significance.
That others still have a lot of catching-up to do.
That there is a big potential for a very efficient distribution system, which has not been invented yet.
Parting thot: "The meeting of preparation with opportunity generates the offspring we call luck." - Tony Robbins
One of several reasons for not updating this blog much recently, is that my PC has a temperature.
In the beginning, I thought I was hearing the fan more often, then I was sure I was hearing it more often & faster, then it seemed to be running fast most of the time, then I started to get spontaneous shut-downs.
Hard to ignore it any longer.
I opened the PC & hoovered all the fluff out, especially round the CPU, but it didn't make much difference.
I downloaded a free thing called SpeedFan which lets me monitor various fan speeds & associated temperatures.
It soon became obvious that the CPU fan was not starting up correctly, but I found that I could trick it into starting by rebooting after getting to a certain critical temperature.
That kept me happy for a while.
Running with the PC case open, I could see what the fan was doing & also found I could kick-start it by poking it with a sharp stick after again getting to the critical temperature.
That's how I am running today, with the case open, one eye on the temperature gauge & a sharp stick close at hand…
All of which is just a lead-in.
Without being able to diagnose things further, I felt the best move might be to replace the CPU fan.
Surcouf in Strasbourg, who supplied the PC originally, failed to answer several requests about it.
I managed to find the reference (thanks to a helpful forum) and even located an exact replacement on internet, at GNLA in Germany.
Amazingly, once you can find one, a new fan costs only 6.99€ but when I tried to buy one, the shipping charge was an additional 17€.
For a 46gm item.
Digging deeper, I found another one (new) on eBay France, sold from Germany again, at only 3.90€ plus 10€ shipping.
Hopefully that may fix my problem, if & when it ever arrives, that is…
The point of this post is to highlight the disproportionate influence of shipping in "modern" internet shopping.
When is hardware delivery going to catch up with the rest of the "free & immediate" search & buy process which is suddenly available to us & already seems so natural?
In speed & especially in cost?
I suppose it is a bit of a "chicken & egg" problem, in that there is potentially a huge market volume, waiting for a radically more efficient delivery system, waiting for a volume market to be really there.
Surely letter delivery must be shrivelling up these days, just as hardware delivery is pent up to explode?
Sounds like the sort of challenge Google might take on…
Heaven help the post offices & parcel carriers if they ever do!
Parting thot: "Nowadays the rage for possession has got to such a pitch that there is nothing in the realm of nature, whether sacred or profane, out of which profit cannot be squeezed." - Erasmus
The Brompton (folding bike) has come into its own this week.
We had a bit of anticyclonic Indian Summer, with no wind, lots of sun, blue skies, colourful trees & pleasant (12°C) temperatures.
Actually, I find even 12°C too cold for "normal" cycling as I sweat going uphill then freeze going back down again.
No doubt there are high-tech clothes which can deal with that, but I don't have them.
On the other hand, I find it simple to wear enough to keep warm on the flat.
Especially wearing my rucksack on the front as a wind-break.
Of course, wearing a rucksack backwards while riding a black banana with tiny wheels does cause some mirth among the natives, notably adolescent ones…
Anyway, that's why I look for flattish places to ride, especially when it's cold.Which rules out starting & finishing at home, but leaves lots of possible trips along canals & disused railways, cheating by taking the bike there & back by car.
A good ride on Thursday started in Saverne, leaving the car in the free car park opposite the (now out of season, but still picturesque) marina.When walking, we usually have to leave the car in isolated lay-bys or clearings, which always seems like asking for trouble, but with the bike it is easier to find a near-enough busy car-park.
From there, you can hardly fail to follow the Marne-Rhine canal up to the surprisingly-deep & usually-busy lock in the town centre & westwards to Lutzelbourg (if you come to Strasbourg, you went the wrong way).
There are good views if you climb to Lutzelbourg Castle, which is in ruins but is being extensively tidied up.
I gave them a miss this time on my flat ride.
There were plenty of good views at ground level.
Particularly brightly-coloured boats & trees reflected in calm canal water.
Next stop after Lutzelbourg, on our usual car-tourist-visitor trip, is the famous "Inclined Plane" boat lift at Arzviller.
This is the short-&-sharp method for boats to deal with the Col de Saverne.
But on a bike, you get the option of following the previous (now derelict) canal as it winds gently up through 17 now-gateless locks with 17 mostly-deserted lock-keeper's cottages.
Only 45 metres climb on 4 km of well-surfaced track (important with little Brompton wheels) brings you up to the level of the top of the inclined plane.
Apparently, before the inclined plane was opened in 1969, that used to take all day in a barge.
If you ride along the top canal to the inclined plane, you can look down it, but not walk or ride down beside it, unless you ignore the very large notice telling you not to use the nice little road there…
At the bottom, you are on the canal-side cycle-track back to Saverne again.
And home for tea.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint-Louis-Arzviller_inclined_plane
http://pistes-cyclables-alsace.chez-alice.fr/marne/marne.html
Parting thot: "It may be true that the law cannot make a man love me, but it can keep him from lynching me, and I think that's pretty important." – Martin Luther King
I managed a 25 km ride on my new Brompton, without scalping my ankles.
But the concentration required, to keep my ankles out all the time & to pre-select then execute all those compound gear-shifts, meant I didn't really see much of the scenery.
OK – I was watching for gravel, pebbles, pot-holes & gullies too.
Honestly, it went much better than you could reasonably expect for a little folder on 16" wheels.
Soon noticed the saddle position was not quite high enough or far enough back, but there was sufficient adjustment available to fix that by inverting the saddle-clamp & sliding the saddle back.
Should be OK now.
While I was under there, I noticed the saddle has real old-fashioned saddle-bag fixing holes.
I think I will try filling-in or padding the little wheels so they are more ankle-friendly.
If that is not enough, then it may be a hacksaw job…
Reading the handbook a bit more, I notice they recommend new handlebars every 5000 miles because of potential metal fatigue in the aluminium.
Hope they are just protecting their *** (U.S.) / **** (U.K.).
Bought & fitted a "Zefal Spin" mirror.
I have a Zefal Cyclop on my normal bike & it has been very satisfactory where lots of other mirrors vibrate too much due to flimsy stems or fittings.
The Spin uses the same solid pivot system but with a smaller head.
That suits the smaller everything else of a Brompton (see illustration) but may prove too small in use.
Time will tell.
The Brompton will be a severe test for anti-vibration qualities!
One curiosity I have noticed is that if I back-pedal even slightly, then I can wheel the bike backwards without the pedals rotating any more…
Is this a cunning piece of design or a pending freewheel disaster?
Certainly it is very convenient to be able to manoeuvre the bike without the pedals moving.
If it had been a deliberate feature, I would have expected it to be mentioned somewhere.
Googling draws a blank.
I would like to know how this works (it sounds impossible) & why they do it without mentioning it.
Parting thot: "When it comes to sports I am not particularly interested. Generally speaking, I look upon them as dangerous and tiring activities performed by people with whom I share nothing except the right to trial by jury." - Fran Lebowitz
Lots of my posts have concerned old or very old cars, and I now consider their maintenance requirements to be laughably symptomatic of gone-forever "good-old-days".
Who can imagine having to crawl under the car every Saturday morning to attend to 15 grease nipples, or removing the cylinder head for a "de-coke" every six months?
When new cars now only get to see a mechanic every 2 years (surely that's too far in the other direction?).
So it has come as a bit of a shock to read the owner's manual for my new Brompton bike.
Nearly everything needs checking & readjusting "at least once, if not two or three times, during the first few hundred miles of use, when parts are bedding in…"
Especially (heavily underlined) Hub-gear adjustment, pedals & spokes.
Spokes?
Yes, on this new bike, you need to "run in" the spokes & recheck/reset the tension after the first few hours of use, and continue checking, less often, thereafter!
They must be joking!
I actually do have spoke spanners & in my dim & distant past have managed to re-tension several wheels (of old British bikes, naturally) and even sometimes got them running straight again & remembered to file off the now-protruding ends to avoid punctures.
But I can't imagine having to do all that to an expensive new commuter bike.
Two or three times in the first few hundred miles.
I feel like I have gone to sleep & woken up in 1950.
I shall be finding pools of oil on the garage floor soon!
Parting thot: "Life expectancy would grow by leaps and bounds if green vegetables smelled as good as bacon." - Doug Larson
Way back in June (18th) I mentioned I had ordered a Brompton folding bike.
It was in Brussels by the end of August, but I only managed to get it to Strasbourg last week.
First impressions are positive, as you might have hoped, considering the price!
It folds very neatly & that should be a good party piece after a bit more practice.
The way it parks itself with the back wheel tucked underneath is handy, if not exactly elegant, but who can walk away from a casually-parked 760€ bike these days?
I have not investigated, but I suppose one collateral benefit is that you can lock up the frame & both wheels with one small lock, if you fold everything completely first.
It doesn't feel as wobbly as other folders I have tried, though the stability is not enough to encourage any "no-hands" stuff yet.
A good surprise is the easy, efficient way it rolls on smooth surfaces – no doubt a direct result of the 90psi in the tyres.
Wobbliness & inefficiency were my main fears, so it's off to a good start.
The down side of the tyre pressures, and of the small wheels, is the "high-fidelity" ride quality – no detail of the road surface is lost in transmission!
Already, I am paying a lot more attention to even smallish pebbles & absolute attention to transverse gullies, the consequences of which are only too easy to imagine.
Obviously, mud, sand & gravel are out of the question.
The strange gears (very wide ratio Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub & close-ratio 2-speed derailleur) have an adequate range of 3.0:1 & acceptable (for me) spacing, but I would certainly prefer a decent 7/8/9-speed hub gear.
Or even a cheaper 5 or 6-speed hub with 3.0:1 range if such a thing existed (hint!).
I am getting the hang of compound changes – simultaneously up on the hub & down on the derailleur - but it all requires constant attention & detracts from the idle pleasure of just riding.
What I notice most often, is how vulnerable I feel with no mirror.
That's not a criticism of the bike, but a reminder to myself to get a vibration-free mirror (which won't interfere with folding…) asap.
What I notice most acutely, is the severe pain & bleeding in both ankles!
Caused by inevitable & predictable collisions with the stupid little parking wheels, cunningly positioned to be exactly where your ankles pass on every turn of the cranks.
I find this absolutely incredible.
How can you produce, for over 20 years, an expensive device which unfailingly, painfully, injures its owner?
It's not just me – try Googling "brompton ankles"…
Parting thot: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." – Winston Churchill
I am old enough to remember when "rechargeable batteries" meant big square things full of lead & acid that you could just pick up with 2 hands.
Imagine what mobile phones would have been like…
So I was initially impressed with the first Ni-Cad rechargeable cells which were the same size & weight as ordinary torch batteries, but cost a lot less to recharge than the ordinary cells cost to re-buy.
With 4 daughters in the early days of cassette-tape Walkmen (Walkmans?) the economics were striking.
But it gradually became obvious that the Ni-Cads did not age well.
We started to hear about "memory effect" & realized we couldn't recharge then until they were run down.
But if you run them down too much they never recover…
And the number of recharge cycles is limited, so you don't want to recharge if you don't need to.
Then the "leak-down" effect which meant the emergency torch was always useless when you needed it, even though it hadn't been used since recharging.
With further ageing, some of them developed very short lives & of course having one flat battery in a Walkman is like having all flat batteries in a Walkman.
So we got good at sorting & marking the weaker ones, which were OK at home but no good on the bus.
But oh, the arguments when certain daughters cornered all the best batteries!
After that the arrival of the more expensive, but less troublesome, Ni-MH cells came as a great relief.
Of course that meant new chargers as well as new batteries, and being careful not to mix them up.
But, in general, they are pretty satisfactory.
Little or no memory effect, so you can recharge without needing to run them down.
Still some "leak-down" though.
And supposedly a limited number of recharge cycles (but I haven't worn any out yet).
So they would be OK in Walkmen, but that need has long since fizzled out.
My main usage of small rechargeables these days is for my camera, which is old enough to need 4 x L6s.
A freshly-charged set of 2300mAh Ni-MHs (if you see what I mean) will take about 200 shots.
I have a little pouch with 4 spare unused batteries to take over, which I carry on day-trips, and a small charger, which I carry on longer trips.
So that should be OK, right?
Well, no, it isn't.
As often as not, when the set in the camera runs out, I put in the set from the pouch, and – leak-down effect – they are flat too.
So I suppose I need to develop some special strategy for topping up the pouch batteries more often (how often?).
Or make a point of swapping the batteries over more frequently?
Apart from the camera, my other battery bugbear has been cordless drills.
My first one was a Black & Decker.
A puny device, but it worked OK for several years.
Except that when the battery ran down you had to stop work until it was recharged.
It was still in as-new condition when the Ni-Cad battery gave up the ghost.
At that point I discovered that the battery was non-removable & non-replaceable, so the as-new drill was junk!
I replaced it by a bigger Wagner drill with 2 removable Ni-Cads.
So I could recharge one while using the other.
And replace either when it expired.
Except, of course, for the "leak-down" effect, so that the spare battery was usually flat when you needed it.
And that one replacement battery cost more than a new drill with 2 new batteries.
So when both batteries were too far gone for reasonable use, I decided I did not want to go down that path again.
I spent a lot of money on a new Bosch drill with 2 Li-Ion batteries, which are very small & light for their capacity.
And supposedly have little or no memory effect.
And little or no leak-down effect.
So far, the absence of leak-down is astonishing & I am delighted with these batteries.
The spare is always ready & willing when the worker expires, even after several months.
Of course, they might explode, but then, nothing is perfect!
Parting thot: "In the beginning there was nothing. God said, "Let there be light!" And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better." - Ellen DeGeneres
In 1970, after a year & a half with the Sunbeam Tiger, I knew I really wanted a Lotus Elan.
But I also knew that finding an Elan I could afford was not going to be easy, or quick.
Also, I couldn't afford to buy an Elan before selling the Tiger.
And Tiger buyers were not too thick on the ground.
And I couldn't manage without a car in the meantime.
So I decided to get a little, cheap, car as a bridging strategy, to cover the period of selling the Tiger & finding an Elan.
It would have been most sensible to go for some "commodity" like a Morris Minor, but, even then, sensible was not at the top of my priority list for cars.
So I bought a 1967 Fiat 500.
Only 3 metres long, with a tiny 2-cylinder air-cooled engine at the back, scooter wheels & swing-axle suspension, it is hard to get much smaller or simpler than this.
But Fiat managed to make it look very attractive. (They are now enjoying enormous success with the similar-looking new 500 as a Mini rival.)
Of course, it didn't need power steering or a brake servo.
And the performance was better than you would expect from looking at it.
And it came with a throw-open roof.
Generally & in retrospect, I found it a likable car & an admirable design exercise.
I remember it as doing most things better than expected, which is not saying too much, of course.
Certainly, I had to re-adjust my driving style & overtaking manoeuvres drastically when switching between the Tiger & the Fiat.
The worst thing was the low top of the windscreen, so that even I (not particularly tall) had the choice between crouching to look through the screen, or stretching to look through the roof!
http://www.fiat500america.com/fiat500-history/
The Tata Nano is a very logical development of all the basic ideas & layout of the Fiat 500 & it looks set for well-deserved international success, thanks to that simplicity.
Parting thot: "Weeds are flowers too, once you get to know them." - Eeyore from Winnie the Pooh
The less-than-obvious French expression "poser un lapin", literally "to put a rabbit", actually means to fail to turn up for an appointment, without any notice.
Usually employed in an ex-romantic context, when it translates as "to stand somebody up".
Parting thot: "Communication is Talking Listening Acting. Your actions will back you up or undermine everything you say." – DuPont Management
One of my favourite quotes, in French, is:
"Ce n'est pas en tappant plus fort à coté d'un clou qu'on l'enfonce."
I keep scratching my head for an equally efficient & punchy translation in English, but keep failing.
The best I can manage is:
"If you are not hitting the nail on the head, there is no point in striking harder".
It's not as good as the original.
The quote is by Yves Dubreuil, then head of the first Twingo project at Renault.
During my time at GM, I could have sent that message back up the communication channels every day.
The Twingo (original version) was produced from 1992 to 2007 and has been consistently & deservedly popular, at least in France & its selected marketing regions.
It was a smart attempt at a low-cost vehicle, being small, light, & simple, but also drastically avoiding options & variants.
All were 2-door (+ hatchback) 1.2-litre models.
There were never even any right-hand-drive versions, which explains the sad absence from the UK market, for which it would otherwise have been well suited.
Aimed primarily at young females (I suppose) it was overwhelmingly cute.
Sometimes insulted as a "jelly-bean", the styling was anti-macho un-aggressive, with a one-box layout, steeply sloping screen & baby-animal-eyes headlamps.
Practically, this resulted in really remarkable space efficiency (ratio of size inside to size outside) and feeling of spaciousness, together with huge glass area, low belt-line & outstanding all-round visibility.
Helped by sensibly small wheels.
As far as I know, it was the originator of sliding rear seats, so that the deliberately little space there could at least be optimised for the prevailing passenger/luggage ratio.
On the down-side, from my point of view (but I am not young or female) they completely failed with their interior & exterior colour schemes and wheel trims.
Especially at first.
The early non-metallic paints were ugly flattish yellow, red, blue & green & looked like cheap polythene toys.
Fortunately, they gradually added better paints over the years.
The interior was deliberately "Fisher-Price" with big coloured plastic knobs & controls.
Well – I see the point, but would much prefer something less cheap-looking, at least the colours.
I think that, if they had added models with good metallic paint, better trim & smart wheels, right at the start, they could have captured what became the (new) Mini / Fiat 500 market.
Later on, with the Initiale model in 1998, they did all of that, but too little, too late – the cheap image had stuck for good.
No doubt the new 2007 model is a better car, especially in safety & durability, but it has completely lost the special charm of the original.
Parting thot: "Ce n'est pas en tappant plus fort à coté d'un clou qu'on l'enfonce." - Yves Dubreuil
Our "friends" in Lorraine are very proud of their Mirabelles.
Small round yellow plums with not a lot of flavour.
Good enough for schnapps, certainly.
But, well – bof!
We have a couple of Mirabelle trees & make a few tarts & jars of jam every year, but with no great enthusiasm.
The main charm of the Mirabelle is that you can easily pick all the ripe fruit just by shaking the tree, when all the good ones rain down obligingly, leaving the not-yet-ripe ones for another day.
Should be compulsory for all fruit trees.
Here in Alsace, we have Quetsches.
These are proper-size plums with firm flesh & a sharp strong flavour.
Delicious!
We use them on all possible occasions – tarts, jam, crumbles, chutney, or just straight off the tree.
The basement is full of jars of jam & chutney, while the freezer has many bags ready for tarts & crumbles.
We have a couple of old quetsche trees, but it is often easier to just wander along the (disused) road & pick them at a more convenient height from the hedges. (Not orchards, just apparently self-set hedges).
I can't imagine how many tons of perfectly good quetsches go completely ungathered in Alsace, but it is a big number.
What a waste!
Parting thot: "I have always found that mercy bears richer fruits than strict justice." - Abraham Lincoln
How come some seemingly brilliant ideas go un-copied?
I regularly read car magazines & regularly look in disgust at the rear-seat folding arrangements of popular small cars.
Often, they involve tipping up the seat base, usually unveiling some extremely cost-reduced bits of sheet metal, wire & sponge.
Then, after probably struggling to remove & not lose the various headrests, the seat back can be lowered to form a sloping 'floor', probably a lot higher than the neighbouring boot surface.
Or sometimes the seat base stays put & the back just folds on to it, leaving an even higher & more sloping floor.
Hopeless, every one.
Yet Suzuki produced a really neat solution over a decade ago, on their extremely cheap, tiny, light & popular (in Japan) Wagon R model.
OK – they didn't address the headrest bit, but that would be easy to fix.
Their stroke of genius was to link the seat base to the back, so that, as you single-handedly flip the seat-back forwards, the seat base descends out of the way.
The back folds perfectly flat & perfectly in line with the existing flat boot floor.
Putting it all back is the same single-handed motion, in reverse.
Why does anybody do anything else?
Parting thot: "To invent, you need a good imagination and a pile of junk." - Thomas A. Edison
We like birds.
DS puts out seeds for them on winter mornings before she feeds herself, let alone anybody else…
She puts out shallow bowls of water, summer & winter, changing them as soon as they freeze over.
Recycling frozen bowls in a sunny veranda.
We have put up half a dozen nest boxes and had lots of success with redstarts.
And 2 hand-made ¼-spherical plaster igloos for swallows.
With no takers yet.
We even like pigeons, within reason.
But more & more pigeons have taken to nesting on the convenient horizontal beam ends under our wide eaves.
We can put up with the noise, the incessant cooing, and the surprisingly noisy wing beats.
But the mess is getting past a joke.
Especially on the once-translucent veranda roof.
Of course pigeons need to relieve themselves, but do they need to do it at home?
And be so prolific?
And couldn't they try to learn how to build a nest which stays together for a while?
My impression is that they just carry a bunch of stuff up there (noisily) then kick it around in the hope it might make a nest.
Whereas mostly it just falls on my veranda.
Which rapidly looks like a thatched cottage.
So, taking advantage of some roofers, here for another job, with ladders of aluminium & nerves of steel, we have put up "Eco-Pics".
Sounds like a green-washing term for what are very nasty-looking spikes which hopefully will dissuade, rather than impale, our pigeony ex-friends.
It seems to work, so far.
I have been able to wash the veranda roof & it stays clean, which is wonderful.
But we are having big pangs of conscience as we see & hear the pigeons making aborted approaches.
And stomping about gloomily in the garden.
I can see I am going to have to build a giant set of pigeon apartments somewhere where the mess won't matter.
Parting thot: "Whatever is begun in anger, ends in shame." - Benjamin Franklin
There is a lot to be said for universal conventions.
Faced with the door handle above, nobody would hesitate before pushing the handle down to open the door (Would they? Anywhere?).
If there had been a roundish knob, rather than a handle, few people would hesitate before turning it anti-clockwise to open the door.
Similarly for the lock below the handle.
Most people would expect to turn it clockwise to lock the door & anti-clockwise to unlock it.
If it had been an inserted key, rather than a fitted knob, I think most people would still expect to use the same rotational senses.
For the second illustration, where the door handle is near the left edge of the door, most people would, I think, expect all the above directions to be reversed.
There is no logical reason for this, but society seems to have automatically & universally configured door furniture as though it had a sliding bolt, operated by the top edge of the handle, knob, key, etc.
This saves a lot of people a large number of tiny fractions of a second, and tiny wastes of mental & physical effort, every day.
It makes life just a little bit easier & more pleasant, at almost no cost.
Why, oh why, oh why, then, have cars adopted the exact opposite convention?
Why do I still have to hesitate, try to remember, then usually still get it wrong & have to try again, every time I lock or unlock my car doors?
Which crazy idiot started this trend & why did anybody at all follow it?
How can we fix it?
Apart from remote opening devices, that is.
Parting thot: "The conventional view serves to protect us from the painful job of thinking." - John Kenneth Galbraith
We seem to have quite a lot of ladybirds this year, which I thought was a good thing.
A couple of weeks ago, one of our plum trees had a lot of big juicy greengages split while still on the tree.
I was surprised to see all the split plums thronged by ladybirds.
First thought, "Good!"
Second thought, "I have never seen ladybirds eating fruit before…"
Then a neighbour said they were probably the newly-invasive Asian ladybirds.
A quick Google confirmed that they are, in fact, what are known as Asians here & Harlequins in UK.
http://www.harlequin-survey.org/recognition_and_distinction.htm
I had vaguely heard of them, but not realized they were here in force.
Now I know.
Sounds like bad news for aphids, but also for native ladybirds & other stuff.
How am I supposed to react to them?
Up till now I have regarded all ladybirds as particularly good things.
Carefully helping them out of swimming pools, verandas etc & back to aphid-infested bushes, of which we have only too many.
I suppose I just have to welcome them as part of life's rich pattern.
Parting thot: "Non-violence means avoiding not only external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit. You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him." - Martin Luther King Jr
Found this charming monument in Bar-le-Duc.
From "the Grateful Cyclists of France" to Pierre & Ernest Michaux "Inventors of the Velocipede with Pedals".
Modern historians could probably find prior art somewhere, but the Michaux do seem to have been at least early users of the pedal & crank for propelling what then amounts to a bike in the 1860s.
One of their employees has a US patent for a pedal-powered boneshaker in 1866.
http://inventors.about.com/library/inventors/blbicycle.htm
http://bicycling.about.com/od/thebikelife/ss/History_3.htm
Presumably early cyclists, even in France, were better equipped than the chubby chappie on the monument.
In an unusual reversal of history, a modern bicycle maker has just removed the pedals from a beginner kid's bike to recreate the boneshaker, but with soft tyres & saddle.
The idea is that kids can learn steering & balance without all the hassle & injury potential of pedals.
Safer & more comfortable than a scooter.
Sounds plausible.
See Ridgeback Scoot.
Parting thot: "The secret to creativity is knowing how to hide your sources." – Albert Einstein
Roundabouts have become a major feature of French roads in the last decade or so.
This is an excellent thing for safety, compared with any cross-roads junction, with or without traffic lights.
Personally, I find it a good thing for my nerves too, as any hold-up is obviously due to the amount of traffic & not to some absent idiot having screwed up the timing schedules for the lights.
I don't have any proof, but I suspect the overall waste of time & energy is lower for roundabouts than for traffic lights or Stop signs as well.
Having belatedly adopted roundabouts, the French are doing a nice job in decorating them.
Very few are left as vulgar pieces of traffic chicanery.
Most are lovingly adorned with ordinary or extraordinary floral stuff, which is very pleasing.
Sometimes with real or simulated historical remains or icons of local industry or folklore.
I think I shall have to start a collection of photographs on this topic…
Leaving Commercy (in the Meuse, which never sounds like a good thing to be in) recently, we were surprised to see a very original roundabout.
Not decorated, as might have been expected, with giant Madeleines (Commercy is the home of the madeleines referred to by Marcel Proust in "A la Recherche du Temps Perdu".) but with big blue cows.
And inexplicable wavy red lines.
And cascades.
And canon balls.
Back home, I have discovered that it is the 1999 creation of eccentric-looking artist/sculptor Patrick Hervelin.
http://radeau.ivre.free.fr/artistesdos/CV-hervelin.html
And that it is called "Les Trois Godelles" (Godelle apparently being local dialect for cow).
But I still have no idea of the significance of any or all of it.
Definitely not boring, anyway.
Parting thot: "Art is making something out of nothing and selling it." - Frank Zappa
As you probably know, French Autoroutes use toll-booths, so payment is more or less per kilometre.
The predictable result is that far too many potential users, particularly lorries, avoid the autoroutes & prefer the old Routes Nationales.
So we have an excellent autoroute network which is relatively empty (Parisian lemmings might not agree on some July/August weekends) while single & dual-carriageway roads, towns & villages are clogged up by unnecessary traffic.
So the autoroute companies don't recover their investment fast enough.
So they keep putting up the prices.
And so on.
This is all a big nonsense.
Any considerations of safety, efficiency, pollution, global warming, balance of payments, health, noise, stress, etc, would say that you should shift as much traffic as possible off ordinary roads & on to autoroutes. (or railways…)
So any payment system should encourage, not discourage, every possible decision to go via autoroute.
Even if it means getting that payment from taxpayers, rather than from users only.
Or from duty on fuel.
Nobody seems to be even suggesting such a move yet, in France.
So, after an initial resentment, I find myself thoroughly in agreement with the various European countries (Switzerland, Austria etc) which have introduced per-time rather than per-kilometre payment, at least for visitors.
They handle this via windscreen stickers called vignettes.
The Swiss one is valid per calendar year, while Austria is more flexible, with a choice of 1 year, 2 months, or 10 days.
Having paid for your vignette, you are surely going to get the most out of it by using autoroutes wherever possible!
I have some minor quibbles with the Swiss vignette though.
It is not meant to be transferred from vehicle to vehicle, for whatever reason.
It is deliberately designed to stick ferociously to the screen and, when you try to remove it, to tear into dozens of tiny shreds which have to be scraped off one by one, using a thin blade, then alcohol to remove the vestiges of glue.
20 minutes of misery every year.
Like a lot of other people (I suppose) I have tried to overcome both these problems by sticking the vignette first to a thin transparent sheet & then getting that to stick to the screen.
It seems to work fairly well, depending on the intermediate sheet, but you know it is illegal & you know how silly you would feel if the hawk-eyed Swiss border guards noticed.
So when I had my broken screen replaced last week, I was intrigued to find that my Swiss vignette (not on any intermediate material this year) had been transferred in apparently perfect condition to my new screen.
I didn't think to ask them how they did it, but I probably will, next time I am in the vicinity.
Trawling through Google, I found various suggestions using solvents, but the most interesting solution seemed to be by heating with a hair-dryer.
Now I just have to wait till January to try it.
Parting thot: "Rules are written for the obedience of fools and the guidance of wise men." - Douglas Bader
But don't blame me if that does not go down well in court.
A collateral benefit of the broken windscreen was that the repairers hand out free Smart half-cars while they replace your screen.
I had read enough reports on Smarts to know that it was going to be slow, noisy, bouncy, unstable & cursed with a slow & jerky automated manual gearbox.
Judged by the average new car, it was all of that, but not as much as I expected.
Note that this is not the current model.
For its intended urban/suburban usage, the performance is perfectly adequate & would never be an embarrassment.
It sounds too much like an old lawn mower when starting up or idling, but once on the move it is not particularly noisy & when pressed the engine noise is reminiscent of a Porsche 911.
This one had a few creaks & rattles, probably due to it not having one careful owner.
With such a short wheelbase, it unavoidably pitches sharply over speed humps taken slowly, but otherwise the ride is better than you would reasonably expect from its size & shape.
I would need to drive much further, faster & in different conditions before commenting on stability.
In normal circumstances it doesn't feel at all odd, but I would have serious doubts about coping with emergency avoidance manoeuvres or patches of ice & snow or standing water.
Certainly this is one vehicle which needs all the ESP it can get.
Then the gearbox.
I expected it to shift automatically, but this one only downshifted automatically to first gear after a stop or near stop and also shifted from 5th to 4th below about 40km/h.
Other shifts were manually triggered by the push-pull gear lever, against rather heavy spring loading.
The clutch is automated & the throttle is regulated during gearshifts.
The shifts on this example were not too rough but rather slow.
Clutch operation on starting was reasonable, but manoeuvring on slopes requires left-foot braking or use of the handbrake, to avoid sudden roll-back or sudden lurch forward.
This gearbox would be an irritation in long-term use, as it isn't automatic & doesn't do as good a job as the average user can manage with a manual gearbox.
Newer models are apparently better, and have an automatic mode.
Would I buy one?
No, I don't think so.
I think they have pursued shortness beyond the point of diminishing returns.
I like very small, light, efficient, economical cars, such as the Japanese Kei cars, but for me there is a best compromise somewhere around 3.5m length and I would not get any benefit from the extra compactness of a Smart.
Maybe if we lived in a city?
Which is not going to happen.
Being strictly a 2-seater would often be a nuisance & I would always have doubts about stability in an emergency.
If the question is "How to make the best car in 2.5m?" then they have done a very good job.
But I don't think that is the question for many people.
Parting thot: "Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius -- and a lot of courage -- to move in the opposite direction." - Albert Einstein
Word-association these days has "French viaduct" = Millau.
I have to admit I haven't been there or done that yet.
Maybe I should, before terrorists, tempests or tremors affect it too badly.
Or rusting cables, more probably…
On the way back from Troyes, we paused at Chaumont, where they are very proud of their 152-year-old 3-level viaduct.
I don't know where it stands in the viaduct pecking order, but it is big enough to be impressive, solid enough to be reassuring & harmonious enough to be pleasing.
And open to the public, free.
Trains take the top level, maintenance workers the middle and anybody else can walk across the lowest level.
With very light guard rails which would not dissuade anybody who wanted to walk off the side, for whatever reason.
See it (& other bridges) on coordinated postcards & stamps:
http://bridge-maximumcard.blogspot.com/2008/09/france-chaumont-viaduct.html
Parting thot: "If you resolve to give up smoking, drinking and loving, you don't actually live longer; it just seems longer." - Clement Freud
First of probably a long series on this topic…
We have been attracted by solar energy for some years, but each time we have investigated in any depth it has turned out not to make any economic sense.
Ecologically satisfying to do, but financially daft.
Last time, in 2006, the best estimates were that we might just recover our investment in about 17 years, if all went well, and that afterwards we might start to generate a little benefit.
But never as much as leaving the money in the bank.
Reluctantly, we decided, again, that saving the planet was beyond our means.
Disappointing, when we see so many solar panels as soon as we cross into Germany.
Now, however, things seem to have changed in France.
The government will give you a tax allowance of 8000€ (+200€ per dependent child) for an installation up to 3kWpeak.
That helps to offset the initial cost of about 20 000€.
Then EDF is contractually obliged to buy your production at a very advantageous (to you) rate, for the first 20 years.
They have to pay you 0.60€ per kWh (indexed) whereas they sell their kWh to you for about 0.10€ at the moment.
And there is no income tax on that gain.
The obvious & intended result is that nobody, except in isolated areas, will try to store & reuse their solar energy via expensive batteries, but a lot of people will sell all their solar power to EDF & continue to buy what they use.
And a lot of people will find it reasonable to install panels.
And a lot of people will find it profitable to set up making (well, maybe…) importing, distributing & installing solar stuff.
Of which an unpredictable proportion will be unprincipled sharks of course.
Optimistic estimates suggest getting your money back in maybe 7/8 years and that, over 20 years the overall performance could beat investing at 5% compound interest.
Assuming nothing goes wrong…goes wrong…goes wrong…
And we know how likely that is.
Credible sources say all current panels will almost certainly still have years of useful life left after 20 years.
That the inverter/controller will probably need replacing after 10-15 years, but that prices should have fallen a lot by then.
That it is possible to protect against lightning & power surges.
That there is nothing much else to give trouble.
Except the new idea of stealing solar panels.
But who can bet on an investment that depends on everything staying pretty for 20 years?
Are we still going to be around?
And the house?
And EDF?
France?
Civilisation?
The Planet?
Who knows?
But it really does begin to look as though we could get the satisfaction of doing our bit for global warming without obviously shooting ourselves in the financial foot.
Too much…
To be continued.
Parting thot: "Next to being shot at and missed, nothing is really quite as satisfying as an income tax refund." - F. J. Raymond
How did we ever manage without "bof!"?
I just spent a long time searching dictionaries for a good definition & possible translation.
Definitions say something like "expression denoting apathy or lack of interest".
I didn't find anything like a convincing translation.
This little gem is one of the French expressions which we now use (very frequently) in its original form even when speaking English.
Basically it is a response to the question "What do you think about XXX?"
And it implies that your opinion is perhaps slightly below neutral or that really you couldn't care less.
If it is something you have just done, you are not going to bother to do it again.
If it is a proposition for a night out, well, you could go along with it, but it might be better to think of something else.
English could do with an equivalent.
Or maybe it has, these days - probably in Texto.
It surely must be one of the most frequently used expressions for an indolent generation.
Parting thot: "Broadly speaking, the short words are the best, and the old words best of all." – Winston Churchill
We just spent a very pleasant couple of days wandering to & from Troyes.
Taking in the oddly-named Lac du Der & several places from the Michelin guide "Les 100 Plus Beaux Détours de France" which I mentioned previously.
We were very impressed by Troyes, particularly to see so many typical & well-preserved half-timbered buildings.
The above picture is from the Wikipedia page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troyes which says I can use it.
I have several similar views of my own, but all with the usual white vans in front.
Lac du Der is actually an artificial reservoir which helps to even out the level of the Marne & the Seine, at the cost of having flooded a lot of land & several villages in the '70s.
I don't want to get into any political arguments between Parisians & Ecologists, but for the vulgar tourist, the result is a very large (10 km long) & attractive piece of water with beaches, birds & boats and plenty of flat cycling opportunities.
From the "Detours" guide, we managed to fit in Toul, Commercy, Bar-le-Duc and Langres, so we shall soon need the guide to the 100 next-best detours.
The only black mark on the trip was a broken windscreen.
A direct result of irresponsible French road repair methods.
All summer, they fix the previous winter's damage by pouring tar on the holes & cracks, then throwing big stone chippings on top.
A large repair will get rolled flat, but they don't bother for small patches.
Then they go away & leave the traffic to flatten it down & to remove the excess chips.
Usually there will be a warning sign & often a 50 km/h speed limit, but not always.
The signs work fairly well for careful owner-drivers, but hardly at all for vans, lorries & commercial travellers.
This time, they had fixed about 10 km of quiet back-road with little patches every few yards & no signs as far as I remember.
I slowed right down every time we met traffic & mostly other people did too.
I was just congratulating myself on having carefully avoided meeting a rather fast lorry on a gritty patch when – bang - the next car threw up just one big chip & the screen had a 20 cm crack.
Back home I was relieved to find that my insurance now covers screen replacement at no cost to me, but of course there is a significant cost to the community.
I don't keep records, but I should think I need screens replaced or resin-repaired about every 4 years.
And always for exactly the same reason.
And I go out of my way to avoid freshly gravelled roads when I can.
And every new car model seems to have a bigger, more sophisticated & more expensive screen than the previous one.
If the road-menders were held responsible for screens broken immediately after their jobs, I think they would soon find a cheap-enough way to set the chips & to remove the excess before leaving their patch to the traffic.
But there is no incentive.
The motorist thinks he has a nice new screen for nothing.
The insurance companies pass on the cost spread over all their customers, so nobody notices.
The government probably thinks it's good for the GDP.
Do other countries handle this better?
Parting thot: "Accidents, and particularly street and highway accidents, do not happen - they are caused." - Ernest Greenwood
I have, or have had, countless key-holders.
But never a really satisfactory one.
Yet it's a pretty universal device, with years of development time accumulated.
And wasted, apparently.
All the various spring-clip variants seem like over-kill & are inherently bulkier, heavier & more complicated than necessary.
They usually have the potential of suddenly opening completely if they snag on something, which can result in disaster.
Keys are often delivered with simple round-wire rings, usually spiral-wound with just over one complete turn & with rough chopped ends.
OK for temporary use & easy to open, for adding & removing keys, they are unsatisfactory in general use as the wire is usually too weak & deforms when pulled.
The sharp, unprotected ends are unpleasant to handle & often catch threads in pockets etc.
The most common device is a ring with just under 2 complete turns of wire.
Instead of a steady spiral winding, it is normal to find a sudden kink at the midpoint, which allows the ends of the wire to be sunken & not catch threads.
Often the wire ends are rounded & smoothed or polished so they feel pleasant.
But then they all go wrong with the choice of wire section.
Almost invariably, the section is such that you would break a finger-nail if you tried to add or remove a key without a tool (knife or screwdriver).
Occasionally, you find a 2-turn keyring with thin-enough wire that it can be opened with bare hands, but usually it is then too weak for general use & ends up distorted.
Yet there is no need for significant force holding the coils together; keys will not come off anyway.
The obvious answer is flat wire, which would allow separation of the ends by finger-nails, but still be strong & rigid enough to maintain the ring shape.
Still with nearly 2 turns, kink in the middle and nicely smoothed ends, of course.
The example at bottom right in my illustration is nearly there, but still too stiff for bare hands.
I suppose somebody, somewhere is making keyrings like that, but I have not found one.
Parting thot: "If you drink and drive, you might as well smoke." - Anon
The standard pool brush, which I mentioned & illustrated in a previous post, does not quite clean into the edges & corners of the pool.
So you get a nice blue pool with less-nice dark lines in all the corners.
I haven't seen any devices on sale to handle this problem, except some brushes have bristles which wrap round more or less at the ends.
Mostly less than the one I use.
In the early days, we tried a hand-held sponge to clean the corners of the steps & even, by diving, some of the bottom corners.
This was more amusing than practical.
Next, we found a (new) loo brush was more convenient than the sponge, but still not ideal for the deeper bits.
It was fairly logical to see that the loo brush, attached to the telescopic pole used for the other brush & net etc, would be a good answer.
Some, but not all, loo brushes will insert into the pole OK, but will of course drop out if not retained.
All sorts of solutions can be imagined for retaining, including screws, clips, wedges, string, tape, velcro etc.
My junk box yielded a couple of bits of rubber, which allow the brush to be inserted & removed easily but provide enough resistance to stop it dropping out.
It's not terribly elegant, but it works very well.
The pool was supplied with a floating thermometer.
Which could usually be found under the cover when you wanted to know whether the pool was warm enough to take the cover off or not.
Or floating insolently in the middle of the pool so you needed to fish it out with the net to see the temperature.
Or getting in the way when swimming.
I tried attaching it with a cord, which was better, but it still got in the way.
The best solution so far has been to attach the thermometer to the skimmer surround with adhesive-backed Velcro.
Using a decent-sized patch of Velcro, the thermometer is not dislodged by normal pool agitation.
You always know where it is & it is easy to remove & replace, from in or out of the pool, cover on or off.
You have to know to peel the velcro open – if you pull the thermometer horizontally, you can unclip the skimmer surround (not a big problem – it clips back on OK).
The Velcro needs replacing every 2 or 3 years.
In parallel, I use an old digital thermometer to read the temperature of the water where it comes into the house to be filtered & pumped.
I actually used the inlet from the bottom drain rather than the skimmers, so it is usable summer & winter.
I didn't want to create a potential leak by drilling into the plastic pipes, and in any case the sensor is a thick disc shape which would need a big hole, so I just stuck the sensor to the outside of the pipe, then wrapped a lot of insulation all round it & several inches up & down the pipe.
That way, I think I am near enough to reading the temperature of the water inside the pipe.
OK, it's not the "exact" pool temperature (whatever that is – top? bottom? sunny? shady?) but it is very stable, reaches its stabilized reading (to 1/10 degree) within about 5 minutes after turning the pump on, and is generally 1-2°C cooler than the floating thermometer, presumably showing the true temperature at the bottom of the pool.
This device is extremely convenient for surveying pool temperature all year round & in all weathers, even when the winter cover & lowered water level make the floating thermometer inaccessible.
Parting thot: "The folly of mistaking a paradox for a discovery, a metaphor for a proof, a torrent of verbiage for a spring of capital truths, and oneself for an oracle, is inborn in us." – Paul Valery
For years, we have been aware that our pool has an uphill & a downhill.
It is noticeably more difficult swimming west-east than east-west & takes about one extra stroke.
This is surprising, as the circulating water enters on the west side & exits on the east side.
Compared with the pool cross-section, the water flow must be about negligible anyway.
A test confirmed that the anomaly is only present with the circulating pump on.
A further test showed that sizeable objects (full plastic jerrycan) floating just flush with the surface to avoid wind influence, move quite clearly east-west, wherever they start.
I concluded that there must be a relatively rapid circulating current, west-east at the bottom & east-west at the top, due to the jet effect of the water from the pump, which comes via 2 orientable nozzles in the west wall, both pointing moderately downwards.
So I thought I would see what happened if I set the nozzles more horizontal.
While fiddling about, I played with pointing them up, which gives a noisy fountain effect.
Less steeply up, gives a visible swirly current on the surface.
Angling that swirly surface towards the side wall of the pool, produces a significant current along the edge of the pool.
That immediately washes all floating insects, leaves etc rapidly along the pool & into the skimmers at the east end.
The difference in cleanliness of the pool surface is radical & stays that way as anything floating on the surface drifts towards either the north or south wall then gets swept to the skimmers.
Pity it took me 10 years to discover that.
The uphill/downhill effect is reduced too.
Parting thot: "Crystallizing my feelings about the game, I find that squash is less frustrating than golf, less fickle than tennis. It is easier than badminton, cheaper than polo. It is better exercise than bowls, quicker than cricket, less boring than jogging, drier than swimming, safer than hang gliding." - John Hopkins
I cannot raise the slightest glimmer of interest in, or enthusiasm for, the Tour de France.
Sorry about that.
Sad really, as it often comes quite close to us here.
In 1992, it passed 500 metres from our house, so we could hardly not watch it then.
I remember a long wait, several helicopters, lots of motorbikes, some noisy advertising vans & a quick whoosh as all the cyclists went past, followed by lots of cars with bikes on the roof.
Then lots of rubbish all along the road.
Even if they come right past the front door, I won't bother to look again.
Without wishing to be "pisse-vinaigre" (topic for future post?) I would be quite happy if it did not come too close again.
What you don't see on TV is all the road closures that go with it.
For half a day, or more, you can be pretty much isolated from nearby towns, or need to take enormous detours via underpasses to cross the official route.
Not the end of the world, but a significant nuisance for a lot of people.
One collateral benefit for a region can be the attractive aerial pictures transmitted worldwide.
Alsace did not even do very well there this time, as the weather was so execrably cold & wet.
Confirming the unjustified prejudices of Frenchmen everywhere.
The day before, we had been basking in 30°C sunshine.
Parting thot: "Oh God, if there be cricket in heaven, let there also be rain." - Alec Douglas Home
I was just looking through l'Auto-Journal for 16 July.
They have a 10 000 km test of a Peugeot 3008 (not to be confused with the 308).
One novelty caught my eye.
There is a head-up-display, which basically shows the vehicle speed digitally on a little transparent screen near the bottom of the windscreen.
Copied from military aircraft practice, if done properly this can keep the speed information in or near the driver's line of sight, without blocking out other vital stuff.
I think the above image is from a Peugeot Press release (it is all over the net) but other reviews include photographs showing that the screen is really better situated, below normal line of sight.
L'Auto-Journal seemed to like it, so I suppose Peugeot have done a decent job.
Previously, I thought of HUD as restricted to the BMW/Cadillac zone, so it is good to see it coming down market.
Something like this will surely become normal practice soon.
What was absolutely new for me though, was that they also display your distance behind the preceding vehicle, expressed simply in seconds.
L'Auto-Journal said of that (my translation) "We didn't find this function to be any use – it seems to be just a gadget".
I couldn't disagree more.
In my view, this function could be of enormous value in preventing accidents & incidents.
Most people (I suppose) know that leaving at least a 2-second gap is essential if you hope to avoid being involved in nose-to-tail pile-ups, yet almost nobody actually leaves that much gap.
The brilliant new Peugeot function should be made universal & compulsory.
With bright flashing lights & unbearably loud buzzers whenever the gap is held below 2 seconds!
And something even more dissuasive for lorry drivers.
Electric shocks?
Automatic licence shredding?
Parting thot: "There are no new accidents, just new victims." - Anon
The strange-sounding French expression "ne pas être dans son assiette" – literally "not being in one's plate" - actually means feeling out of sorts or out of place.
The explanation seems to be that the word "assiette", which now means plate, previously referred to where or how you sat to eat, before plates were used at all.
Parting thot: "To avoid sickness eat less; to prolong life worry less." - Chu Hui Weng
If you live in an apartment block (which I don't), you must be only too familiar with corridors & stairways which are illuminated by lights on timer switches.
Basically a sound idea; when you enter an unlit hall or stairway, you push on the obvious, illuminated, light switch & the lights stay on long enough for you to get comfortably through that zone, then turn off to save electricity & global warming.
Except for some snags.
If the light is already on when you enter, you cannot usually reset for a new time period, but have to take your chance on sudden darkness at some mid point.
Not much of a problem in a corridor with frequent & obvious light switches, it can be a nuisance when light switches are too similar to door bell pushes, and dangerous for old people in stairways with switches only at top & bottom of stairs.
Can it be so difficult to provide a full reset with each switch activation?
Even that would not answer the infrequent but very inconvenient problem encountered when struggling to move bulky furniture slowly up staircases.
If you need light for a long time, you need a spare helper just for the light switch.
The apartment block we used for skiing this year had motion detectors in the corridors, so that lights came on automatically as soon as anybody entered the corridor & presumably could go off that much quicker afterwards.
First time I had seen them used like that & very satisfactory.
They didn't use the system in the stairways though.
Maybe it is too complicated to set up sensors with all the corners?
Or maybe nobody except us uses stairs when there is a lift?
Probably a reasonable compromise in that case.
I award a special prize to the public toilet in Poitou-Charente, which was absolutely pitch dark apart from one light on a too-short timer.
With the switch outside!
Parting thot: "You can't have a light without a dark to stick it in." - Arlo Guthrie
How on earth do you answer that common but ambiguous question?
When "better" can mean either completely recovered or just less ill than before.
Yes – I'm better, but I'm not better yet.
How can major, developed, international languages allow such ambiguities to continue for decades or centuries?
Like the American "can" & "can't" which sound almost identical yet mean exact opposites.
Especially silly when the original English pronunciation "carnt" avoided the problem.
Like the French "dessus" & "dessous" which look similar, are only one key-stroke apart, sound too similar, especially to foreigners, yet one means above & the other means below.
And they reappear in no end of compound expressions, creating confusion every time.
Or the French "plus" which can mean either "more" or "no more" depending on the context & an often unpronounced "ne".
Presumably all these foolish things survive because it is nobody's job to improve languages?
Well - maybe languages should have people paid to improve them?
Actually, French does have l'Académie française (http://www.academie-francaise.fr/role/index.html) to look after it.
Consisting of 40 eminent & generally aged members (you might recognize Valerie Giscard d'Estaing & Simone Veil), the Academie's task is to follow evolutions in the language & decide which ones to admit to official status, to define a dictionary, and to provide members for related commissions.
As far as I know, they don't actually propose novel changes to overcome possible difficulties, or even encourage adoption of "improvements" from other French-speaking countries. (I may be wrong there).
If they did, it is hard to imagine how 99 in French could still be "quatre-vingt-dix-neuf" when French-speaking Belgians & Swiss have been using the more obvious & convenient "nonante-neuf" for so long.
Then again, the conservative uprising, when somebody recently suggested dropping circumflex accents, was so strong that maybe no imposed-from-above change is possible.
The only changes which succeed are additions of new technical terms & new youth slang, which can seep in below conservative radar.
So languages never get the intelligent improvements they so badly need.
How odd – for our main means of communication.
Surely it's time for a change.
Parting thot: "In language, the ignorant have prescribed laws to the learned." - Richard Duppa
After a year with the Triumph Vitesse, I was ready for a change, so in 1969 I bought a beautiful, as-new, 1965 Sunbeam Tiger 260.
A couple of years earlier, Carol Shelby had transformed the AC Ace into the instantly-desirable & still-iconic Cobra, by swapping the little 4-cylinder engine for a 4.2 litre V8.
Dozens of little companies all over the word are building Cobra replicas even today.
Sunbeam were persuaded to try something similar on their pretty little 1.6 litre Sunbeam Alpine Tourer.
They ended up installing the same Ford 4.2 V8 engine and had the skill & surprising good taste to leave everything else visibly unchanged.
So instead of looking like some hacked-about racer, the Tiger looked just like any other Alpine, except for a thin chrome strip each side.
But had altogether different performance.
In no way a sports car, the Tiger was a very pleasant, fully civilised, 2-seater convertible, well built & finished, with decent windows, hood, removable hard-top, carpets, walnut dashboard, heater, radio, boot etc.
The performance was effortless in any gear & the typical V8 noise was well silenced, so performance could be used without ostentation.
One of the best Q-cars ever.
A long way from perfect though.
The big engine made it very nose-heavy, with serious understeer.
I improved mine a lot with bigger front tyres, and fitted the normal-sized rear tyres on wider Lotus Cortina wheels to reduce lateral sway.
Hard acceleration from rest often produced very bad axle tramp.
That is the one thing I think they should really have fixed before selling it.
Then there was the gearbox.
Pleasant to use, in a ponderous sort of way, and with a nice "T-handle" to lift for reverse, it had a very much too high first gear.
Presumably to protect the rear axle & suspension from too much torque?
The unfortunate result was that, even with the big, lazy, flexible engine, it was impossible to inch along in slow traffic without slipping the heavy clutch all the time.
Pity.
Famously, the engine was such a tight fit that the rear spark plugs had to be removed from inside the car via a rubber plug in the foot well area, but that was not a problem.
In spite of these significant design errors, the Tiger was a real pleasure to drive, to look at, to listen to & just to be with.
Full of "Feel-Good Factor".
I don't recall anything needing unscheduled attention.
I kept it 2 years, which was a long time in those days, and was very sorry to sell it.
Petrol was cheap enough that I didn't even check the consumption & nobody had yet heard of ecology or global warming.
Happy Days!
Googling for good links on Tigers, I was surprised not to find a single video of a smart, quiet, original-looking car.
They all seemed to have been chopped around with power bulges & air scoops, and to make loud rough noises, which is exactly the opposite of what gave the original car its particular understated charm.
Even the show cars below are often fitted with "sporty" bits which detract greatly in my opinion.
http://www.sportscarmarket.com/Profiles/2001/June/American/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sunbeam_Tiger
http://auto.howstuffworks.com/sunbeam-sports-cars2.htm
http://www.ritzsite.net/Tiger/01_tiger.htm
http://classiccars.about.com/od/classiccarphotogallery/ig/Coys-Auction-at-Brands-Hatch/Sunbeam.htm
http://www.britishv8.org/Other/JeffEakin2.htm
http://www.britishv8.org/Other/ChrisPlakorus.htm
http://www.britishv8.org/Other/KenTisdale.htm
http://www.rootes1.com/
Parting thot: "If you have to measure an advantage, you don't have it." - ??
Recently I got new sunglasses.
Of course it was not that simple.
As I now need progressive lenses in any glasses & as clip-on sunglasses are inconvenient in too many ways, I had to get sunglasses with progressive lenses.
No problem as, in France, sunglasses come "free" (Ha, ha – that will be the subject of another post) whenever you get new prescription glasses.
I got my glasses & sunglasses in "Grand Optical".
Because the sunglasses were "free", I didn't quibble too much when told I could choose the colour of the tint, but that the darkness was category 3 with no choice.
After several weeks of use, I found, as I had expected, that category 3 was much darker than I want.
OK in continuous strong sunlight but a nuisance if you need to go from sun to shade, when cycling or driving for instance.
I decided to bite the bullet & buy a category 2 pair for variable conditions.
The true price of "free" then becomes about 200€ in most shops, of course.
But when I asked about buying some category 2 glasses or maybe just lenses in Grand Optical, they spontaneously offered to try to "fade" my new category 3 lenses back to category 2.
By some mysterious overnight soak.
Free.
And it worked.
So I am a happy customer.
But I wonder why they don't offer an initial option, instead of a presumably more expensive rework.
Parting thot: "In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king." – Erasmus
Icon from iconspedia.com
Photoshop, and all the free clone photo-management softwares, include a "Red-Eye Removal Tool".
Mainly, I use free Picasa for simple fiddling with my snaps, and their red-eye removal tool works adequately now.
Before the latest updates, it only worked on un-zoomed images and tended to replace red pupils with square black blocks, which I rated less than adequate.
Actually, the camera also has red-eye prevention & red-eye removal tools, but these have more snags than advantages, so I don't use them.
The prevention method is to flash briefly then pause before flashing properly.
This slows things down too much.
The red-eye removal tool presumably works like the one in Picasa, but I prefer to make my own judgments.
Anyway, what I really need now is a similar "White Van Removal Tool".I find that nearly every cathedral, ancient monument or scenic view has a white van parked in front of it.
It is not beyond the skills of Google/Picasa to devise something which will recognize a white van & replace it with extensions of the surrounding scenery.
I await the announcement with interest…
Parting thot: "It is more fun to talk with someone who doesn't use long, difficult words but rather short, easy words like "What about lunch?" - Winnie the Pooh
The other day, I had to close the tailgate (upward-opening rear door) of a Ford Galaxy people-mover, for its tiny Japanese lady driver, who could not reach the open door by about a foot.
This did not particularly surprise me, after 20 years of using a Renault Espace with a smallish wife & 4 growing children.
I was used to seeing various child antics, like jumping, swinging jeans, standing inside & hand-over-handing along the edge of the door until it collapses onto still-clinging child, etc.
On the other hand, I have seen tall men inflict painful & potentially serious damage on themselves, bumping into door edges which were too low for them.
And I have to be very careful to help our Toyota Yaris tailgate to open fully every time, as the gas struts are inadequate – an astonishing error by Toyota, not cured by replacements under guarantee.
Then there are lots of underground car parks which are so low that a freely-opened tailgate will be scratched on the roof or damage the wiper system.Not to mention temporary conflicts with long things being carried on roof racks.
Obviously something is wrong.
Manufacturers are probably trying to set opening heights to some sort of best compromise where not too many tall people will scalp or blind themselves & not too many small people will be stuck with an unclosable door.
But that is ridiculous.
Tallest heads are above shortest outstretched hands, so disaster is inevitable.
Would they try to fix driving seat position to some best compromise between tall & short drivers?
Of course not, they have to face up to a little design work & cost, and provide an adjustment mechanism.
In my opinion, tailgates, of which millions are sold every year, all need 2 design improvements:
1. Simple & convenient adjustment for opening height, both long-term for owner size & short-term for car parks etc. I imagine this could be some kind of cord & cleat arrangement like you find all over sailing boats or even anoraks & might cost 1€.
2. A hanging, but non-damaging, handle so children & vertically-challenged users can also close the door. With a bit of imagination, this could be an extension of the cord from item 1 & should cost 10 cents. It should be stowable so families without short members are not unnecessarily irritated by it.
I wonder why this has not happened.
Parting thot: "It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change." - Darwin
As a mini-holiday, we just drove across France, mainly to see CC near Poitiers but also to look briefly at bits of France we had not seen yet.
Equipped with Michelin maps & Michelin Green Guide books, as usual.
Plus, unfortunately, a Campsite guide, as no campsites are shown on road maps.
This time, we also had a new-to-us Michelin guide "Les 100 Plus Beaux Détours de France" which we were given free in a local Tourist Office.
Covering picturesque & interesting smallish towns, we have so far found the places in this guide particularly well worth looking at.
Related website:
http://www.plusbeauxdetours.com/
We took our trusty Vango tent & camped several nights, but chickened out whenever the forecast heavy storms & floods started to look too imminent.
In Britain, I suppose the obvious alternative to camping would be Bed & Breakfast, but in France the more available alternative is the wide range of Motels.
Generally found in unattractive, non-touristy, Commercial Zones of big towns, frequently next to Hypermarkets & MacDonalds, you are not going to choose them for their charming situations.
But they are cheap & effective overnight stops.
Best-known & cheapest is "Formule 1" which usually provides rooms with a double bed plus bunk bed, TV & wash basin.
Showers & toilets are communal, which I find perfectly acceptable in a campsite, but irritating in a motel.
Breakfast is a basic but adequate buffet, as much as you want for about 5€ each.
Next up the scale would be "Première Classe" which includes private toilet & shower for each room, with all rooms accessed from external stairways rather than internal corridors.
Typical customers at this level are white-van market-stall operators rather than tourists.
We have not tried "B&B" but they sound about like "Première Classe".
Significantly better again, but still inexpensive, are "Etap" with air conditioning & all rooms off internal corridors.
Here can be found regular business men & tidy-looking tourists of all ages & nationalities.
Moving upscale brings you to Ibis & Campanile which are hotels rather than motels.
This trip, we used one Première Classe & two Etaps.
The Première Classe was a bit scruffy, but better than a tiny ridge tent in a storm.
Both Etaps were impeccable.
Spotlessly clean & everything worked as intended.
The air conditioning was very welcome with outside temperatures touching 40°C.
Back home, I found an Etap e-mail inviting me to complete a customer satisfaction survey, including unlimited space for comments & suggestions.
Almost a guarantee of a good product, in my opinion.
Parting thot: "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread." - Anatole France
We just visited CC near Poitiers.
As I noted previously, she has 2 Masters Degrees in Biology, with various "mentions", which might be imagined as an advantage when applying for relevant biology-type jobs.
But seemingly not.
There are suggestions she is over-qualified &/or lacking experience, so she can't get a job, to get the experience, to get a job…
Since it is difficult to unaward a Masters Degree, even in France, maybe the only answer will be to lie on her CV.
Invent a couple of years idle or in prison to account for the time lost at University.
In the meantime, she is looking after state-owned goats & her career plans include grape harvesting.
Maybe that will count as experience?
At least it opens the door to unemployment pay.
Things were much simpler in my day.
Parting thot: "Education. That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding." - Ambrose Bierce
Yesterday (21st June) was one of the annual high spots of French folklore.
Not because it was the longest day.
Nor because it was the official beginning of summer, which always confuses UK friends who think that should be the middle of summer.
But, every year, 21st June is "Fête de la Musique".
When anybody & everybody turns out in the streets & plays music of any sort.
In all towns & most villages.All evening.
Free.
With huge, wandering audiences.
Who often join in.
Personally, I could do without the talent-less efforts such as the occasional hi-fi at full blast on a balcony, and we do tend to avoid the very, very, noisy stuff which attracts "les jeunes".
But what surprise & delight to find so many soloists, vocal groups, pipe bands, massed drums & ad-hoc minstrel bands on every street corner.
Hard to imagine there is so much talent & enthusiasm lying unseen the rest of the year.And gratifying to see such a huge, happy, family turn-out to watch, listen, applaud & join in.
In spite of the rain.
Ah, that seems to be another tradition on 21st June.
All this seems so firmly entrenched that it is hard to imagine that it only started in 1982.
A rare stroke of genius by then Culture Minister Jack Lang.
Thanks very much, Jack!
Parting thot: "Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream things that never were and say why not?" – Bobby Kennedy (G B Shaw?)
We are still in the pre-GPS era for navigation.
Nothing Luddite, you understand, we just keep putting off the great leap forward.
That means we still use those cute folding paper maps, of which we have a sizeable collection.
They can last quite a long time with careful use & Scottish ancestors, so we often come across whole sections of Motorway which were just fields on our map.
And discover quite a lot of new houses in the hamlet of Milton Keynes.
Our French-based maps include a 3 000 000:1 Michelin of Europe for the broad-brush stuff, a 1 000 000:1 Michelin of France for route-planning, a lot of old-format 200 000:1 Michelin area maps for actual in-car navigation & many 25 000:1 IGN local maps for walking & cycling.
For "abroad" we have a mix of Michelins & whatever we find locally.
Over the last 30-odd years, we have done quite a lot of casual, car-based camping.
Usually finding convenient campsites on the map wherever we chose to stop or whenever it was getting late-ish.
In Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, Slovenia, Croatia, Czech Republic, Poland, Spain, Luxembourg & a few others.
Recently, we decided to wander over towards Poitou-Charente, which we had not visited before, so we bought some new Michelin area maps.
The new format is 150 000:1 instead of 200 000:1 & the maps are really too big to handle in a car.
But the real surprise was that no campsites are marked.
So we went to Georama, the wonderful Strasbourg Map Shop, only to find it appears to have shut down.
Presumably a collateral victim of GPS.
Very sad news.
We eventually found IGN area maps in several other book shops.
No campsites on them either.
Nobody could suggest any area maps with campsites, even in "Au Vieux Campeur" where they seemed surprised by the question.
In the end, we had to buy a complete, 738-page camping guide which includes 15 maps at 1 000 000:1 with campsites indicated, but with neither addresses nor directions.
Trying to find anything with a 1 000 000:1 map is not going to be easy.
This solution is not satisfactory.
We need something better.
Presumably other people do too?
Out of curiosity, I checked a selection of old maps on our shelf, and all the following maps indicate campsites perfectly well:
Ordnance Survey Travel Map of Western Scotland – 250 000:1
Ordnance Survey Touring Map of Devon & Cornwall – 270 070:1 (no comment)
Ordnance Survey Landranger Map of Luton & Hertford – 50 000:1
Michelin National Map of Switzerland – 400 000:1
Michelin Regional Map of South Germany – 400 000:1
Michelin National Map of Belgium & Luxembourg – 350 000:1
Swiss Touring Club National Map of Switzerland – 301 000:1
Ravenstein Map of South Germany – 500 000:1
Kummerly & Frey Map of Baden-Wurttemberg – 250 000:1
Freytag & Berndt National Map of Croatia – 250 000:1
Studio F.M.B. Regional Map of Emilia Romagna – 300 000:1
IGN Local Map of Wasselonne – 25 000:1
And all the many others in the same editions.
None of those were selected for having campsites, we just assumed road maps had campsites, and they did.
Now the major French ones of France don't, unless you get down to IGN Local 25 000:1 maps.
You would need a very large number of those for touring.
This seems crazy.
Why do they omit campsites when they include everything else from nuclear power stations to mountain huts (see illustration)?
Do I have to start buying non-French maps of France to get campsites?
Parting thot: "When you come to a fork in the road - take it." – Yogi Bear?
The trouble with Internet browsing is that one thing leads to another.
When looking for a bike rack for my car, I got side-tracked into folding bikes.
Folding bikes took me to Brompton in UK.
Brompton led to Schlumpf in Switzerland.
http://www.schlumpf.ch/schlumpf_engl.htm
There, I was intrigued, but not tempted, by the many 2-speed epicyclic bottom-bracket gearsets on display.
Including one for belt-drive bikes with Shimano 8-speed hubs.
Wonder how big that market is?
Even more intriguing was the section on Unicycle Hubs.
Had you ever imagined a multi-speed unicycle?
Me neither.
But they look real, Swiss & beautifully made.
Is somebody making a living from this ultra-niche market?
There is hope for the world yet.
And the KH version, for heavy-duty off-road use, including jumps up to 1.5 meters?
Oh sure, it does include a warning of possible death if you don't get your high-speed monocycling gearshift quite right…
Well, I must have led a pretty sheltered existence for the last 65 years.
Nowhere in my universe have I seen, read about, or even imagined, heavy-duty, off-road, 2-speed unicycles.
In fact, I have been back to the site several times, to make sure it is still there & to check it is not some kind of joke.
But no, it's quite serious though that is maybe not the best word.
With links to, for instance, the International Unicycling Federation:
http://www.unicycling.org/
And forums:
http://www.unicyclist.com/forums/local_links.php
Where you can feel gripped by the plight of one unicyclist asking for help because his unike keeps turning right & he has to get 4 miles to work every day.
The real trouble is that I am beginning to feel a familiar itch.
Not for a heavy-duty off-road 2-speed unicycle, of course.
That would be pretty silly.
But maybe just a little flat, smooth, 1-speed job?
I hope it wears off soon.
Parting thot: "When you're finished changing, you're finished." - Benjamin Franklin
From my frequent but unadventurous bike rides, I am beginning to feel I know every inch of the local back-roads & cycle tracks.
And I usually regret, at the end of each ride, that our village is at the top of lots of more-or-less-steep hills.
So, for some time, I have been thinking of using the car to move my biking start/finish points to other places.
Partly for variety & partly to avoid the last uphill grind.
I see most people manage to hang a bike or two on the back of their car easily enough.
The simplest racks strap on to the boot or hatch door & support bikes under a horizontal(ish) cross-bar.
My bike has a very sloping cross-bar but no rack of this type is recommended for my (1999 Suzuki) car anyway.
Probably the hatch door & plastic bumper are too flimsy.
More elaborate racks support bikes under the wheels but then become too big & heavy to strap on & usually end up needing a tow-bar & ball-hitch to stand on.
Suzuki didn't recommend tow-bars when the car was new, so now it is a rusty 10-year-old…
Another approach to this problem is via folding bikes.
We have had a couple of cheap second-hand folders but they have been shaky, creaky, inefficient devices, not attractive for more than very short, flat, smooth trips.
And not that small when folded either.
Of course, there has been progress since those old bikes & you can now find all manner of folders from pocket-size to 28" wheeled, from single-speed to 27-speed, with advanced suspension, disc brakes & even recumbent 3-wheelers.
http://www.faltraeder.com/
One manufacturer alone – Dahon – makes a bigger range of folders than you would think possible, including a couple of very neat jobs with 8-speed Shimano hub gears (Dahon Mu XL Sport & Curve XL).
http://www.dahon.com/index.htm
I have not seen any locally & they don't fold that small.
They do look good on the websites though.
In the end, I let myself be influenced by numerous articles, forums & blogs suggesting that Brompton folders are a class above the others.
I have heard them described as the Rolls-Royce of folders, but the ones I have seen have looked more like the Morgan of folders.
I would never have considered one based on a visual inspection.
The first thing you notice is the front forks are just pinched together at the wheel spindle, like a very cheap kid's bike.
And all the brakes & fittings look anything but Rolls Royce.
OK, they do fold very neatly.
Stupidly, I have ordered one, without even a test-drive.
Brompton only do one model, though with some minor variations.
The biggest option is a £420 Titanium frame, but even I am reasonable enough to avoid that one.
And you can specify mudguards, carriers, bags & lights, which I don't want.
And lots of bright expensive colours, but I am having cheap black.
Then there is a choice of 1/2/3/6/12 gears, but none of those choices is any good really.
Even the 1-gear has a derailleur-like chain tensioner, because the folding mechanism alters the chain-wheel spacing..
The 2-speed uses this tensioner like a normal derailleur but with only 2 cogs.
The 3-speed has a hub gear, like an old Sturmey-Archer, but by SRAM.
The 6-speed uses a special very wide ratio Sturmey-Archer 3-speed hub as well as the 2-speed derailleur, with one shifter for each hand.
The 12-speed is the 6-speed plus an expensive Swiss 2-speed hub gear in the bottom bracket, operated by kicking the pedal spindle with one foot for up & the other foot for down.
http://www.schlumpf.ch/schlumpf_engl.htm
Not sure how you pedal & steer while using both hands & both feet to change gear - should be interesting to watch.
I am getting the 6-speed, against my better judgement.
It does offer a reasonable 3:1 ratio range, like an 8-speed hub, but sounds anything but convenient to use.
I wrote to Brompton & asked why they don't just fit an 8-speed hub, which is the obvious answer & which lots of forums & even the Wikipedia article suggest.
They say the Shimano hub is too wide for their frame & sent me the address of somebody in Scotland
http://www.kinetics.org.uk/html/8-speed.shtml
who installs 8-speed Sturmey Archer hubs for £200 or sends kits for £300.
I gave up a ordered the 6-speed.
Actually I have ordered it from Brussels as they sell at about UK prices, whereas French & German dealers have more than 200€ extra mark-up.
Fortunately we have kind friends who work in Brussels & have a house in Strasbourg & are willing to do the delivery.
Otherwise it would still have been worth collecting it ourselves from Brussels.
Need to wait a couple of months for delivery, so no comments until then.
Some Brompton-ish sites:
http://www.brompton.co.uk/index.asp
http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brompton_Bicycle
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brompton_Bicycle
http://www.lamaisonduvelo.be/fr/index.html
http://www.foldsoc.co.uk/
http://www.kinetics.org.uk/html/brompton.shtml
http://www.kinetics-online.co.uk/blog/
http://cyclinginfo.co.uk/blog/bikes/brompton-world-championships-photos/
http://weefoldingbike.blogspot.com/
Parting thot: "A bicycle for the mind (Apple computer)" – Steve Jobs
Just bought a new shirt.
And, as usual, had to spend 10 minutes unpicking the name label which was apparently specially designed to be as irritating to the skin as possible.
And had to carefully cut off the size tab, which is not only irritatingly rough, but is cunningly placed to rub your neck & cannot be unpicked.
Do the people who design, make & sell these things ever try them, or at least talk to anybody who tries them?
Or is it some kind of joke?
Parting thot: "Friends may come and go, but enemies accumulate." - Thomas Jones
Something I see quite often continues to puzzle me.
When the moon is half-way between "new" & "full" then it is D-shaped.
If you can see the half-moon like that, then logically the sun should be somewhere along the line of symmetry of the half moon.
In other words, the half-round part must be pointing towards the sun.
Particularly, before sunrise & after sunset, the half-round part must point down, since the moon is above my horizon & the sun is below it.
But I often notice both before sunrise & after sunset, the half-round part definitely pointing a little upwards.
Attached is an example from after sunset this evening.
There is no horizon on this cropped image, but the black line is a vertical door-frame.
I haven't managed to explain this yet.
Parting thot: "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt." - Mark Twain
There are some French customs I will never understand.
Among those that come round once a year, one comes round today.
French income tax is a self-assessment affair.
Everybody has to submit their declaration of income for each calendar year (Jan-Dec) by some deadline the following May.
Actually, if you do it on-line you get several more weeks, but that's for wimps like me.
For real hard-line paper-format submitters, the deadline is today.
In fact it's midnight tonight, to be exact.
As judged by the postmark on the envelope.
Now my reaction to that, in the days before internet, was to make sure I posted mine weeks before the deadline.
To avoid any trouble, like having to pay a penalty for lateness.
In fact, as the tax office was on my route to work, I decided to deliver it by hand, avoiding both the risk & the cost of the postal service.
But thousands of full-strength Frenchmen see it as a matter of honour, to post their tax declaration at the last possible minute, or even second.
Tonight, they will be driving specially to main post offices & milling around on the pavement to post their envelope at 23:59:59 or as near as possible.
Funnily enough, we never hear of anybody being penalized for getting 00:00:01 on their postmark, or even 00:10:00, so the tax authorities must have decided not to be as stupid as their brinkmanship-addicted customers.
Of all the ways I can imagine of showing disapproval of government, this is about the silliest.
Parting thot: "A fine is a tax for doing something wrong. A tax is a fine for doing something right." - Anon
All six of us now have dual nationality – British & French.
Not counting subdivisions like English & Scottish, of course.
Looking back on it, it wasn't difficult or too expensive; it just took a long time.
Contrary to popular belief both in France & in UK, the kids, born in France to British parents, were automatically & only British with no option of French nationality for many years.
It was only when AA got to age 16 that she could first apply for French Nationality, which she wanted because she felt French & we wanted because it could be necessary for some career options, such as Civil Servant (no longer true).
In fact, for somebody born in France, it was very simple & almost automatic.
There was no problem keeping British Nationality as well, which made the whole deal less traumatic.
Similarly for the other kids, the procedures were simple & rapid.
But the rules & procedures changed each time, the last 2 kids being able to agree to parents requesting their naturalisation at 13.
Currently, for kids born in France of foreign parents, subject to minimum residence conditions, French Nationality is acquired automatically at 18, can be requested by the child at 16 or by the parents, with child's agreement, at 13.
This continual changing of the conditions, and the scare when the National Front candidate got to the last round of the Presidential elections, made us think more seriously about applying for French Nationality ourselves.
Maybe we should do it before it became very difficult or impossible?
Although UK citizenship seemed to give us just as much of everything as being French would, apart from voting in national elections, who could say if that would always be true?
Who could say that Britain would stay in Europe?
What were the chances of the National Front acquiring significant clout?
In any case, after 25 years here, we didn't look like leaving and were feeling more & more French in many ways.
So the idea of actually becoming French, without needing to stop being British, started to appeal sub-consciously, as well as being maybe a logical strategy.
We had already looked at it once, and given up after seeing the list of everything we needed to provide.
But in 2002 we decided to take the plunge.
At that stage, AA, BB & CC were already French but DD was only 12 so only British.
Our application, if successful, would cover DD too.
Pretty obviously, we needed to provide copies of UK passports & French cartes de séjour.
And original birth & marriage certificates.
Less obviously, we also needed originals of parents' birth & marriage ("where applicable") certificates.
Everything not in French had to have a French translation.
But not our own translation; it had to be from a certified (expensive) translator.
Kids' birth certificates & naturalisation certificates.
Deeds of the house.
Proof of kids' scholarisation.
Certificates of employment for previous 3 years.
Employment contract with occupation, dates & salaries.
Last 3 months' pay-slips.
Last 3 years income tax notices.
Some P.237 fiscal document that the local tax office had never heard of, but very obligingly invented, printed, stamped with several posh ink-stamps & signed for me.
I suppose I needed an electricity bill too, as you need that for most things when passport, carte de séjour & driving license are inadequate.
Presumably there must be a big market for forged electricity bills in France.
All that took some organising, and some expense for the new UK certificates & official translations, but it was not the horror story I had expected.
The horror story I had not expected was how long it was going to take from there on.
The Government brochure did warn that it could possibly take over a year, but we optimistically assumed we would be quicker because of our non-complicated position.
In fact the next thing that happened was that DD reached age 13; we applied for Naturalisation for her via the simpler children's procedure; she had to stand up in front of the Magistrates Tribunal & confirm she wanted to be French; and she was French.
At about that time, we heard that the only person dealing with "regular" Naturalisation in Strasbourg had been away on maternity leave, but was now back & had opened our file & found it was now out of date.
Could we please send up-to-date copies of all the incidental stuff we had managed to gather & send correctly last year?
Many months later, we were "invited" to the main Police Headquarters in Strasbourg, with all our original documents, to be interviewed by somebody from the DRRG (Renseignements Généraux, which is basically the Interior Ministry's Anti-Terrorist Intelligence Unit).
In fact there were no spotlights or waterboarding (at least, not for us) and we had a pleasant & very short chat about nothing in particular.
To such an extent that we wondered what information anybody could possibly have gathered from the interview.
Intelligence must be subtle.
The information seemed to have been positive, because shortly (by our recalibrated time-scale) later, we had a communication from the Ministry of Labour saying "Yes – maybe".
In fact what they said was, "Il m'est agréable de vous informer que j'envisage de réserver une suite favorable à votre demande", which means roughly "I am pleased to tell you that I am considering pigeon-holing your request in the happy-ending box."
And that only 18 months after we first applied.
But we weren't out of the woods yet.
A heavy-bold paragraph said we had just 2 months to return yet another form, basically saying we were not joking & still really wanted to be French, honestly.
If we did that OK, then we should see our Naturalisation published in the "Journal Officiel" within 6 months.
Well, the Journal Officiel is a gigantic document published 6 days per week listing all that is new in French Government Laws & Decrees.
Fortunately you can consult it by internet (http://textes.droit.org/) until you get suspicious after finding nothing for ages & eventually find out that they don't include details of Naturalisation on the internet version.
So you find that all Mairies get a paper copy of the Journal that you can consult.
Except our Mairie opted out – probably being too small to hold all that paper.
Strasbourg Mairie gets it OK & kindly let me browse the cardboard boxes of their archives, reading all the Journals since the above letter.
I was surprised to see there were over 2000 naturalisations every week, but we were not amongst them yet.
Once I was up to date, I checked the latest J.O.s at the Mairie every couple of weeks, but still nothing.
The six-month deadline came & went.
After 8 months, I wrote to ask if there was a problem & the next day, crossing in the post, received a letter confirming that we were now French & that the notice had just been published in the Journal Officiel, which I was able to check & photocopy for our archives.
Strangely, DD's name was next to mine, although she had been French for ages, so we don't know whether she is now double-French or whether 2 naturalisations cancel each other, or…
But DS's name wasn't.
Until I thought to look under her maiden name – phew!
After that, in what seemed like no time, we received certificates signed by Chirac & Raffarin, genuine French birth certificates & marriage certificates, even a "Livret de Famille" which all real French families have.
The Livret de Famille is a very official-looking thing, like a double-sized passport, started normally at a marriage & with spaces for recording, with lots of official stamps, the deaths of each of the happy couple & the births & deaths of the first 13 children.
They could have saved some paper if they had asked.
Anyway, all's well that ends well, even after 26 months, and we are genuinely pleased & even proud to be French.
Though relieved not to have had to choose to drop being British.
When can we start to apply to be European?
Parting thot: "It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." - Albert Einstein
A couple of weeks ago, we were wandering, not for the first time, around the Robertsau Forest, more or less in Strasbourg.
This is a surprising find, a very large "natural" area tucked in between the European Parliament & the Rhine.
No doubt of great interest to botanists & well-documented nature-lovers (which we are not really, but there are lots of informative notices) it includes a wide variety of different habitats, notably landlocked bits of old Rhine, huge areas of wild garlic, a few wild horses, and even interesting statues.
One detail which caught our eye this time, was a little bee (see my poor illustration).
Something about its behaviour did not seem quite "bee".
Instead of going from flower to flower, it followed us at ankle-level then started hovering just above the dirt path, just touching the ground with its abdomen every few inches, without settling, as though depositing eggs or something in the dusty earth.
We couldn't see any sign of eggs or anything.
And it seemed to have a long, fixed proboscis & longer, thinner legs than bees.
Having noticed one, we then saw dozens during the day, usually with the same behaviour.
It's the only time we have seen, or at least the only time we have noticed, these insects.
Back home, it did not take long (thanks to Google) to find that they are not bees, but bee-flies (Bombylius major).
According to these 2 helpful sites (scroll down for illustrations & descriptions) the bee-fly uses its proboscis to get nectar from flowers, and the ones we saw were indeed laying eggs.
The eggs are covered in dust as camouflage, then left where the larvae can eat real-bee larvae.
Not so charming after all.
http://naturenet.net/blogs/index.php/2009/04/05/all_bee_myself_solitary_bees
http://www.sei.se/opal/photo-science.html
Some high quality photographs here:
http://www.galerie-insecte.org/galerie/bombylius_major.html
Parting thot: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe then man would only have four years of life left." – Falsely attributed to Einstein?
Where Anglo-Saxons just go Window-Shopping, the more expressive, more sensuous/sensual French do "Lèche-Vitrines", literally "Lick-Windows".
Parting thot: "When women are depressed, they eat or go shopping. Men invade another country. It's a whole different way of thinking." - Elayne Boosler
The chap who built, single handed, our swimming pool in 1999, supplied us with a cleaning set.
A telescopic pole and several tools which clip on the end.
An ordinary brush, a net (called a leaf rake) and a special brush with an adapter for a suction tube.
The ordinary brush, marked "Bayrol", worked fine and throughout the season was used several times per day & spent the rest of the time exposed to the elements next to the pool, as you would expect.
After about 6 years, the plastic stem, where it clips into the telescopic pole, broke when it was dropped, which seemed fair enough.
I bought another brush, without paying much attention, and was disappointed to notice that the little springy 'A' piece which fixes all these tools to the pole, needed to be carefully inserted into the pole every time, otherwise it could end up pointing down & possibly rip the pool liner – an expensive disaster for a small piece of bad design.
So I had to glue in a retainer to stop that happening.
Also the brush would occasionally drop out of the pole, so you had to fish it out with the net if you were lucky.
If you were unlucky, you might poke the sharp end of the pole through the expensive liner.
So I had to replace the springy 'A' piece by the bigger & better one from the Bayrol brush, which I had kept for no good reason.
But after about a year, the pool surface started to get covered with floating white bristles.
Sure enough, all the plastic bristles in the "new" brush had become brittle & broke off at the slightest touch.
I looked around for a better new brush, but they all looked pretty similar except cheaper ones were all plastic & more expensive ones had metal stems & supports for the arms.
I bought a more expensive metal one.
Again, this needed modification to avoid dropping out.
Again, after one season, all the bristles were breaking off and floating nastily on the pool.
I took it back to the (exclusively pool) shop & complained.
They gave me another one as a goodwill gesture, but said it was unreasonable to leave a pool brush outside in the sun & rain…
That new one lasted a year, just like the previous one (left outside, of course – what else?).
So now, I have screwed the still-perfectly-good Bayrol plastic head & blue bristles to the metal stem of the last replacement brush & that combination works OK, but for how long?
The Bayrol leaf rake worked perfectly, as you would expect, for about 7 years before it started to develop holes in the net, due to rubbing.
So I bought a new rake from the same pool shop, choosing an expensive one that looked well made, from a respected name (Mareva Prestige).
Unbelievably, this just does not work well.
If you try to scoop leaves or insects from the surface, they largely get pushed away & flow round the frame instead of into the net.
If you try to scoop leaves or worms off the bottom, quite often the rake just rides over the top & leaves the rubbish behind.
So now, I have patched the holes in the old Bayrol rake & that is working well again, but for how long?
I have searched everywhere I can imagine, but there is no mention of Bayrol cleaning tools; they just seem to do chemicals now.
I wrote to Bayrol, saying how good their tools had been & asking if they still sold any or if the old ones were still available.
I got a rapid & polite reply from a Herr Doctor something, but he did not actually answer my questions.
I have given up on Bayrol & am still looking for decent quality, functional & durable cleaning tools.
Parting thot: "The more I see the less I know for sure." – John Lennon
