Rheinfall

Amazing. Rheinfalls in northern Switzerland is spectacular. And average discharge of 700 cubic meters (tons) to you and me cascade over the falls every second. And there are good restaurants all around.

Cars

Mini It's remarkable how small the original Mini was. The new BMW Mini looks like it's been put on an aggressive dose of steroids...

Cat's back

Almost three months to the day, the cat has been found.

She seems to have been 'transported' from our house to a small village on the other side of town - about 5km.

A kindly lady saw the cat in her garden and tried to feed her for two months - but with little success.

Then, a couple of weeks ago, the cat went into her house and a few days later she was able to feed her. Once she had gained the cat's trust, the woman took her to the vet because the cat was in poor condition and he de-wormed her and gave her a check-up. He also checked to see if she had been 'chipped' and that's how we got the cat back.

The woman rang us on Friday and we picked up the poor, skinny cat on Saturday morning.

Several sessions of brushing resulted in a carrier bag full of fur, which seems to indicate that the cat had been living outside for some considerable while.
So, she's back - nervous, but seems happy and is eating like a horse.

Missing Cat

Cat (pictured) went missing on Monday night - well, to be precise, she didn't come home Tuesday morning.

Strange - she usually hangs around within 50 meters of the house. No amount of whistling and calling yesterday evening would get her to come back. Nippers are a bit distressed, P very distressed.

Let's see what today will bring. If you do see a grey 'tiger' cat around in Wil, Sankt Gallen, Switzerland - give me a ring 079 702 3393. Thanks

On a lighter note, I see that too much / too many television/s is / are being implicated in a double murder in the UK....

This is the interesting para: "Detectives investigating the murder of an elderly couple found dead in their home on Good Friday have found two televisions they were hunting for as part of the inquiry."

Murdering bastards - I bet it was the Panasonic and the Sony was an accomplice...

Christmas cards

I owe so many people Christmas cards - so apologies - I am not going to do them this year.

I am sure that will be a relief all round for some of my friends and acquaintances. And if not - sorry.

I considered placing an ad in the Daily Telegraph in the UK to tell all my mates and family that I would not be doing cards. But the cost was slightly more than buying a goat for a family in Ethiopia, so I went for the goat (not literally - I mean I went for my Amex and paid for the goat online - complete with milk and other non-tangible assets).

So what has this year brought?

Well - some freedom, some aggro (actually 64% freedom and 36% aggro) - but then I guess that's most people's normal year anyway. So what do I have to report?

A fab visit to Paris in January - only marred by the hotel room being encrusted in other previous guests' bodily fluid on every horizontal and vertical surface (and all sides of every towel, sheet and curtain (what DO these people get up to? I am just trying to sneak a quick fag (cigarette variety) in a non-smoking room.

And the hotel was fine, except for the fact it was an unseasonable minus 16 degrees and the heating was f*cked. Breakfast in this hotel could have been a remake of the minutes before Titus Oates decided to take a long one-way walk early in the 20th century.

But the move to a more central and cosy hotel worked well.

And then in the middle of the year, there was the traditional Pimps Tour - a very tame affair of a few old and tired blokes with varying degrees of functionality in their personal lives getting together to mash the roads of Europe with their mean two-wheeled steads...

I treat you to this:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamroscoe/sets/72157619067314057/

And this

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamroscoe/sets/72157618993300710/

...and this?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adamroscoe/sets/72157618905532165/

Or for the full spectacle, this...

http://www.pimps-mc.com/

And then the rest of the year was downhill from there - or so it seemed.

Best Christmas wishes to all, especially all those running to their post boxes for my card :-)

The Gunshop

The gunshop was full of smoke.

Smoke from the five middle-aged Frenchmen who were dragging occasionally on Gitanes, speaking in low tones, sharing local intrigue.

The young Brit, Mark, had walked into the shop to hire a gun for a shoot at the weekend, but he realized he had interrupted a tradition. Saturday in the gunshop was not about selling or hiring guns or ammunition. Saturday afternoon in the gun shop was about gossip, catching up on the news of the week and of avoiding shopping with the wife.

One, the proprietor, Andre – was older than the rest, maybe in his sixties, and was clearly the chairman. He pressed his rotund belly against the counter and his ruddy face looked satisfied and relaxed. A local liqueur – Marc - was offered to all, with small coffees, or straight.

The shop fell silent when Mark walked in, his arrival announced by the bell on the door. He instantly felt uncomfortable and decided that he should hurry up and buy what he needed for his shooting trip the following the day. But all of a sudden, it seemed that there was a new agenda – Andre and his mates drank-up, eyed him warily, stubbed out their cigarettes and left the shop. In the abandoned shop, Mark looked over the guns in the glass cases and at the ammunition and wooden and horn-handed knives under the counter, where Andre’s amble belly had rested.

Mark had found himself in this small French town, near the Vercors mountains and a few kilometers south of Grenoble, because he was working in a factory as a way of ‘seeing the real world’. As an 18-year-old between school and college, for him, seeing the real world in the late 1970s was working shifts in a factory.

There was a noise in the back of the gun shop – way back. He wondered whether the shop would begin to function again as a shop – willing to sell guns - or whether there would be more drinking and smoking and chatting.

A woman appeared.

She slid behind the counter, hitched her skirt as she sat on a high stool behind the counter and, ignoring him, looked down at a magazine she was reading. All was quiet.

Mark carried on looking at the guns and wondered what the French expression was for ‘May I hire a gun”.

He then looked at the woman, who was in her thirties with dark bobbed hair. She was slim and wore a loose dress. And he decided this was the time to try out his very basic French. He tried to ask if he could rent a gun and she smiled and asked him what he wanted to shoot.

The shop was quiet – they looked at each other and although he knew it was his turn to speak, his French was so poor he could not even exchange small talk. She tried to speak to him in English. But they found that his French and her English were on about the same level: ‘work in progress’. He decided that he should leave and come back when he could make more sense. It was when he strolled out of the shop that Mark remembered why his French was so rudimentary.

His school French teacher had a fine moustache and this fascinated Mark - much more than learning the language. As a 15-year-old, Mark had been jealous of this generous display of facial hair and wished that his regular shaving, followed by periods of waiting, would produce something worth calling a moustache. But he never did produce as good a moustache as his French teacher, Marie, whose husband was the economics teacher.

***

A week before his visit to the gunshop, Mark had arrived by train from England. Jean, who had an Olympic-qualifying bushy moustache – and a diesel Peugeot, met Mark at the station. Jean was a shift manager at the factory where Mark was to spend the coming six months and Jean told Mark that he had a standing invitation to an evening meal at Jean’s home for dinner – subject to shifts. Shifts? Apparently the factory did not work nine to five, but some workers started at five in the morning and finished at lunchtime; some started at lunchtime and finished at nine and some started at six in the evening and finished at six in the morning. Great, thought Mark – this is going to be a complete nightmare.

Jean’s car drew up outside a Sport Bar in the central square of a very French village where Jean introduced Mark to the bar owner and made sure he was installed in his room which overlooked the square, with its fountain, some pavement restaurants, a bus stop and a long wall dividing the town from the garden of the chateau. A long wall. It was dark, but Mark thought that there were worse views for the coming few months. Above the village the mountains loomed dark.

Jean told Mark that the following day was morning shift and that he would be there at four thirty so they could get to the factory in time to start at five.

*

It is dark at five in the morning - even in summer, in France. And Mark wasn’t ready to get up, let alone face a working day in a strange factory, with new colleagues. But they pulled away from the village in the noisy, smelly Peugeot. Jean smoked Gitanes in the car, with the windows closed. And Mark pulled out his packet of Number 6 and found there was only one left. He smoked it, even though it made him feel light-headed and slightly sick.

Once at the factory he was given a set of blue overalls and a Stanley knife. Seemed like it was going to be a tough and violent working regime – was the knife for self-defense? But deep down, he just wanted to get stuck in and learn some French.


Under the bright yellow lights on the factory floor, with the din of machinery ringing in his ears, Mark was introduced to Pelas his colleague on the paper-cutting machine. Pelas was a charming, big man with a bald, bullet head and no neck and he wanted to make sure Mark felt welcome. Pelas smiled all the time and life was good. So when Mark tried his French on Pelas it was the start of an interesting relationship. Pelas had moved to France six months previously from Portugal and his French was much better than Mark’s, but with a heavy Portuguese accent. So in the coming weeks, above the noise of the paper cutters, Mark learned more French words, but with a certain immigrant ‘twang’. He learnt the language of the paper factory and of the canteen.

The machine he and Pelas worked on, made the resealable seals for babies’ nappies. And the machine, which sliced a thousand meters of paper an hour, gave him severe static electric shocks when he touched it to change the bobbins on which the rolls of paper accumulated. He endured these shocks for a week or so, until his workmates told him to use his Stanley knife to discharge the current before touching the bobbins. They called him ‘le jeune Anglais’ and they did watch him and look after him.

Back at the sports bar, his room was sparse, but clean and comfortable with a shared bathroom on his floor. The separate WC was something of a shock for him. It was a hole in the floor with a ceramic tray which took some getting used to and some balance, especially after a beer or two in the bar in the evening. Once through the door behind the bar and into the accommodation, there was a push-button light on a timer, which for thirty seconds illuminated the floor of the stairs and landing to the bedrooms, which was covered in old green lino, faded down the middle where decades of guests had trudged in and out of high-ceiling bedrooms.

When he was not working he strolled the streets and lanes of the village, which was a dense pattern of old town houses with washing hanging on lines over the alleyways. Just outside the old village were some more modern low-rise flats and then further out into the countryside, the energetic or ambitious were building their own modest bungalows on plots reclaimed from farms surrounding the village. Beyond the fields were hills and in the distance, mountains reflecting ever-changing colors as the sun hit different sheer surfaces in the morning, midday and evening.


***


So a month or so after his first visit, he made another trip to the gun shop again on a Tuesday afternoon, after his morning shift. Fat Andre was absent, but the woman was there – reading a magazine. And they could talk – her English had not improved, but his French was coming on.

She showed him some guns for hire and sold him some ammunition and the deal was done. And then she asked him why he was here and for how long. He was clearly a novelty. An English boy in a deeply French village that was well off the tourist track and with the summer tailing off into the quiet autumn, when the area was left to the people who lived there.

And he asked her why she was working in a gun shop.


Michelle told him her story.

Her father had been best friends with Andre, the owner of the shop – they were shooting companions. And Andre and her father had made a deal. When Michelle’s father contracted terminal cancer when she was 16, her father asked Andre to look after her when he was gone. And this Andre promised to do.

Michelle’s father died two years after the promise was made and Michelle was not yet 18 and needed a guardian. The lawyer read the will, assigned Michelle to Andre and then went on to assign the remainder of her father’s estate and assets to her. But instead of gaining some security and independence through inheritance, she learned quickly how harsh the life could be.

Her father’s house and farm became hers – for a month. His entire estate was sold and the proceeds just about paid his gambling debts. Michelle was left with a few thousand francs – not enough even to buy a second-hand car. Michelle went to live with Andre and grieved for her father.

Andre was a widower and he needed someone to support him running the shop, so instead of going to college, Michelle was brought in to help run the shop. First on a Saturday, she was put in charge of the shop when Andre and his cronies went to drink and chat in the afternoon. And then more and more during the week when Andre had engagements elsewhere.

When Michelle was 21, the 62-year-old Andre proposed. He was horribly drunk after a weekend shooting with friends. And Michelle realised that this was less of an invitation, than an ultimatum. Did she want a roof over her head, or not? Andre had discharged his promise to her father and she was now an adult and not even a paying guest in his house. She had no choice but to agree, and within a few weeks she was married and sharing a bed with a man she regarded as a guardian and an uncle, but not a lover.


Andre found a new lease of life. Michelle looked into the abyss.

And for ten years she served in the shop, cooked, cleaned and made a home of the shabby house behind the gun shop. Andre continued to work – sitting in the shop, repairing guns and taking deliveries from suppliers. Some of whom he paid within the year. He was bald, overweight and shaved only on a Saturday. She was allowed to shop for food - on a tight budget and Andre insisted that she only bought supplies at his friends’ shops; she only shopped on credit, which he would settle in due course.

Andre’s friends were sour, small men with bad hats and worse jeans - who only wanted to escape their homes and families. They lured each other to bars in the afternoons “just for a soupçon” of Marc liqueur and a coffee. They undressed Michelle with their eyes, but deferred to Andre who always had a plan for the day, which usually involved activity outside the shop. He was the focus and the initiator. And his life was outside the shop.

[Dark wood-paneled shop, glass, racks of guns, deer heads around the upper part of the shop]

So Michelle ran the shop, paid the suppliers, managed the cash flow, made sure the house was clean and that there was a meal on the table when Andre came home.

She had learnt early on that a meal on the table was essential. Andre could return from sessions with his friends at any time of the evening – or even in the early hours of the morning. And Michelle would have to be there, to greet him with a hot meal. She became expert in slow cooking – food that would be cooked within an hour, but that would keep on a low heat for hours. Gratin Dauphinoise was one of these. She remembered when she was very young, that her mother made this dish of potatoes, cream and garlic – cooked slowly in an earthenware dish - would last forever if the oven heat was controlled.

But after food, he would want her. Even if the drink had made him tired and irritable, he would still want her. And it made her freeze – it always had. He had sour alcohol-infused, wheezy breath, a heavy reeking body, his rasping unshaved cheeks rubbing on her face, neck and breasts. Andre - the guardian, turned predator.

*


So her life was defined and was on its course. All of the customers were friends of Andre. All interested in guns and interested in what Andre must see and feel, once he had finished his evening meal.

So the young English boy who came into the shop – who made no sense - was a diversion. It made her smile that she could not understand him and she could not make him understand her. He was something different, lifting a dull afternoon. A diversion.


A few days later he returned and his French had improved. He had an open cut above his eye and she asked what he had done. He explained that one evening in the bar below where he lived, they had asked him to play rugby for the village team against a neighboring village. He had agreed and told her that he had never seen a match where the ball was so incidental and the referee so powerless. Apparently, seconds after the starting whistle, the two teams started a huge fight – settling scores that went back generations. Mark had suffered collateral damage – he got in the way of a flailing fist that was intended for someone else.

She asked him into the back of the shop and put surgical spirit on the cut. As she did this he looked into her eyes and saw how deep brown they were – and how clear and how almond-shaped. Her mouth was always a natural smile; her lips were full and her teeth white and regular. But he tried to concentrate on being ‘a patient’.

After the treatment she offered him a coffee and he sat on a stool in the back of the shop. It grew dark outside and he said he should be going. Michelle said he did not have to leave on her account. Mark said that he thought she should be closing the shop. She agreed that she probably should and started to let down the shutters on the front of the shop. He realized he was still inside the shop – and the shop was closed and lit by the bulbs in the gun cabinets.

Michelle locked the front door and went into the back of the shop and put the keys in a box on the wall. Mark waited and watched.

In a few minutes she asked if he would like a drink. And that he should come through to the back. He was hot, confused and at the same time relaxed.

He walked to the back of the shop and into the workshop, which smelled of oil – gun parts scattered in various states of repair - or - because of Andre’s level of interest – lack of repair.

He stood looking at the workshop, when she appeared at the door between the house and the workshop. She had a glass of wine in each hand. He followed her into the kitchen. The aroma of cooking was wonderful. She held her glass up and handed a glass to him. They gently touched glasses and sipped the wine.

He had not been in this situation before, but Mark knew enough about Andre to realize that hanging around in the shop after closing time was not his smartest move. He knew Andre was unpredictable and bad-tempered. Mark told her he thought he should go home and leave her, in case Andre came home. “Andre is away overnight in the mountains with his friends, Mark’ she whispered ‘and I don’t want to eat alone.”

“Please go through to the house,” she said pointing to a door with a thick velvet curtain drawn across it.

He went into a room furnished with stiff, upright furniture covered in dark, maroon velvet that matched the door curtain. He sat on the edge of one of the chairs, leaving the other and sofa vacant.



Michelle brought her glass and a bottle of wine from the kitchen. Mark’s head was spinning – partly due to the situation and partly due to the wonderful taste of a good French wine. Michelle refilled his glass and left the room. Nothing was said. She returned a few minutes later and placed two plates of steaming meat, gratin and green beans on the dining room table. They sat opposite each other and ate, still barely exchanging a word.

After the meal they sat in the parlor on separate chairs and she asked him about his life and family. And he asked her about hers. For more than an hour, she told him about her father, the deal between him and Andre and about her father’s concern that she was looked after; her father’s debts and the resulting trap she found herself in with Andre. She told him about how she had been expected to serve him – in every way, for years.

It took him a while to digest all of this information – he felt that during the conversation, he might have missed some of the French words or misinterpreted them. So he checked with her occasionally, clarifying some phrases. He realized he did indeed have an accurate picture of the life of the woman he was sharing this gentle red wine with. And it disturbed him. It was so far removed from his nuclear family back home.

Mark got up and thanked her for the meal and the wine and she fetched the keys and went to the back door of the house. He said he needed to be up in a few hours for his early shift and she let him out of the door and into the yard at the back of the shop.

His ten-minute walk through the sleeping village gave him time to think. He could not rationalize how this bright and intelligent woman found herself trapped in a loveless, brutal existence. He let himself into the side door of the sports bar and pushed the light. He did not sleep at first, and knew he had not slept well when his alarm went off at four and he had to leave the warmth of his bed and wrestle with the scalding hot or icy cold shower in the bathroom.

Thoughts of Michelle still played on his mind.

He finished work at lunchtime and once back in the village he walked to the gun shop. He saw Andre through the window, plucking pigeons with a cigarette clamped between his mean lips. He turned, walked on and called into the tabac. Michelle was buying a newspaper and chatting to the shop assistant. When she turned to leave the shop she spotted Marc and stopped, smiled and wished him a good day and left the shop. He watched her make her way up the road and into the gunshop.











Later that evening he was walking past the gunshop again and saw Michelle winding in the awning which kept the midday sun out of the shop. She asked him how he was and they chatted for a few minutes. She kept glancing into the shop, and eventually told Mark she had to get back to work, otherwise there would be trouble. As she was making for the door of the shop, she turned and asked how the cut on his eye was. He said it was fine and she asked him if he was planning to play rugby again at the weekend. He said he had no plans to. She asked him if he would like to come around for a glass of wine towards closing time on Saturday. He said he would.

***


She came over to Mark and offered her glass to him and he lifted his to meet hers. She put her glass on the table and walked behind Mark’s chair and put her arms around his neck. He smelt her hair and felt her cheek against his. He could hear his heartbeat in his ears and he could feel her breath on his neck.

He turned and looked into her eyes.

“I want my life back,’ she said softly ‘I want to live…’

He stood up, turned around and knelt on the chair so he was facing her. She kissed him gently on the lips, with her hands cupped around the back of his head. She held him close.

Mark was trembling – Michelle spoke softly, calming him.

They held each other for a long time and then she pulled away so she had room to unbutton his shirt. Then they were pulling at each others clothes as they fell to the floor. Her kisses showered his face and she searched for her mouth with his tongue, she pushed down on his chest and his shoulders pressed him against the floor. She looked at him and smiled; her eyes fiery and inquiring.

She stood up, offered him her hand and gently pulled him from the floor.

Not a word was said.

She led him from the parlor and up a narrow, dark flight of stairs and into a dark room on the first floor. Once in the room, she turned around and stood still facing him, lit only by the streetlamp outside the window. He unclasped her bra, let it drop in front of her and put his arms around her, cupping her breasts. She turned and undressed him quickly, feeling his body against hers, wanting him. He pulled her down onto the bed, felt her hair brushing against his face and felt her hand guiding him into her. She slowly and powerfully moved down on him and he gasped. She bit her lip and closed her eyes and they felt each other close – he gently held her hips and let his hands wander over her taught body. Exploring.

It did not last long – the experience was too new and too unexpected and too intense. They lay together, listening to each others breathing and feeling the sweat trapped between their bodies.

Thoughts rushed through Mark’s mind and he could feel that Michelle alone with hers.

He woke at four – time to get up and join the shift – but there was no work this morning. She slept beside him and her eyes were closed in a contented way; not giving any hint of the life she was leading – the hurt and the betrayal of trust, the abuse and the being taken for granted – nothing more than a concubine, cook and a hired help.

He sat on the edge of the bed in the chill of the room. At 18 he should be having a bit of fun, instead he was deep into a relationship and it scared him. He knew what she wanted from life, but he did not know what she wanted from him, or whether he could give it. Was he her escape? Was he being primed to help her make her escape? And if so, was that so bad? Who does not want to free a trapped animal?

The next few weeks repeated a pattern of assignations, love-making and drinking wine while Andre was out and about. Mark only stayed in the bedroom above the gun shop when Andre was hunting in the mountains.

But one day as autumn drew in, when Mark and Michelle were enjoying an early evening together, in bed, they both heard noises downstairs. Andre’s was back. The front door bell clinked, and he was angry, cursing and shouting in the shop downstairs. Mark dressed and Michelle told him to go – out of the window but not to climb down the sloping roof over the kitchen at the back of the shop in case he was seen by Andre, but to wait until she told him it was safe to go. He lay there and through the slightly open window, witnessed a huge argument. Andre had returned home because his gun had jammed and he needed a new one for the coming day. So he returned and found Michelle in bed, uncharacteristically early. He was incandescent with rage and demanded she tell him who her lover was. She tried to calm him and offered him food and drink, but it was no good. He searched the house from the basement to the attic and all rooms in between. Mark heard Andre raving and angry and Michelle was saying less and protesting less.

Andre finally threw the windows of the bedroom open and found Mark lying on the sloping roof. All hell broke loose – Andre headed for the gun shop and Mark headed for the gate at the back of the yard. Mark made the gate and turned, just in time to see Andre loading shells into a pump-action shotgun at the kitchen door. Even for the relatively relaxed Mark, he realized this was not such a good situation… He ran – just catching a glimpse of Michelle restraining Andre at the gate at the back of the shop.

****

A week later there was a knock at his bedroom door. Unusual – he thought, but opened the door to find Michelle there. He had kept a low profile since the shotgun incident, and although he tried to see her during the previous week, whenever he passed the shop, there was only Andre and his cronies there and she was nowhere to be seen. He asked her in. She was very nervous and looked like a hunted animal, eyes darting here and there.

She told him that Andre was mad as hell – that he beat her senseless on that morning and had forbidden her ever to leave the shop. But she could not stand being there with him and as he had gone to Grenoble with a friend, she decided that she must come round to see him. One last time.

She told him she so wanted life to be different, but that she realized it was not going to be and not meant to be. She told Mark that she loved him dearly and that he was her perfect man, but that she could not expect him to be there for her. She said she was going to do her duty and that he should move on too. And she asked him not to come to the shop any more. For his own good.

He could feel a deep sadness in her and she felt it in him too.

They kissed gently and she left.

A few weeks later he headed back home for Christmas and to go to college and to start the rest of his life.

****


Twenty-eight years later, Mark who was divorced, with three teenage children, was on a motorbike tour of France with his mates. And he found himself in the same village where he had spent six months working shifts, learning about life and love. Little had changed as far as he could see.

As his mates parked up for a coffee at the sports bar in the square during the hot July afternoon, he excused himself and walked the few hundred meters to the gun shop.

It was still there.

Mark looked through the window into the shop and saw a woman and a man behind the counter. She was in her sixties, grey haired, but handsome, vibrant and smiling at her companion. He was some years younger than her. And he was smiling at her.

The man held the woman and they kissed.

Garage doors UK style

I don't condone this - but it is gentle comedy. The guy will be divorced in 5 years and will have to store his bike in a lock-up, miles from the former marital home. But let him have his 1.43 mins of fame

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1C-Bxifv2Pk

Arizona

Arizona

Bike Tour 2009

Pimps 2009

Bike Tour 2008

Pimps Tour 2008

I “survived” Paris. Just…. Saturday and Sunday saw a plunge in temperature and a dump of snow, so the place was just about recovering by Tuesday evening when I arrived.

I went there to work with students on a sustainability case study at 'L'Ecole Centrale de Paris' . "Centrale" = 1 hour by taxi from Gare de l'Est and where the buggers who run the place thought it was ok NOT to turn the heating on at the weekend (when it was minus 9 outside) and when the my students arrived to start work - and it only crept up to 15 degrees by the Tuesday when I arrived.

My hotel (where the University apparently sends their VIPs) was odd...

Actually, no... The hotel was criminal.

It offered guests an array of beautifully-appointed grime in every corner of the bathroom, hair (head and other) in the bath, sink and lavatory; bodily fluid on the reeking extra blanket, rips in the chair. The carpet had the extra interest of “ingrained something” - which could have been chewing gum, the business-end of a chocci croissant or something else resembling chocolate, but which is not edible. There was ice on the inside of the window (good for keeping the wine cool) and everyone was wearing coats in the restaurant for breakfast. The temperature in the breakfast room kept the cheese hard and the milk fresh, at least, but you had to drink the cafe au lait FAST, otherwise it would turn into a coffee ice cream, but without the stick, unless you had the foresight to put your spoon in it 28 seconds before it froze :-)...

I booked out and moved closer to Paris and things settled down. These are the views from hotel #2. Great food there and a lovely boulanger round the corner so I could take my lunch to L'Ecole (non) Centrale de Paris'.

Access to electricity

Raju Singh is 70-years-old and on November 24, for the first time in his life, he switched on an electric light in his home in a village in the desert in Rajasthan.

He had tears in his eyes as the ABB India team connected the low-energy light to the battery which had been charged during the day from a photo voltaic panel (SVP) on the thatched roof of his home.

For many here, ABB’s Access to Electricity program has transformed their lives. Since 2006 more than 6,000 people living in 1,112 homes in the seven remote villages in the region have benefited from the program.

The model is a simple one: the home lighting system comprises an SVP, low-maintenance battery and charge controller and three energy-efficient lights. The $375 cost of the system is split three ways: the Rajasthan Renewable Energy Corporation, ABB and the householder. In other access to electricity models around the world, systems provided free were not maintained, whereas ABB’s model gives the householders real ownership and their investment in the equipment gives them an interest in maintaining it.

But ABB’s drive to install these systems in areas where the grid will take a long time to connect is not simple corporate philanthropy; this program makes a huge difference to the health, welfare, education and earning power of these communities. Their earnings come from tailoring and making durris – patterned rugs - for buyers in Jodhpur, a three hour overland journey, part of which is over the desert sand.

Before electric lighting, the tailors and weavers were forced to work during daylight hours which in the summer meant sewing or weaving in searing 40+ degree heat. Now they can work flexible hours and can begin before dawn and continue after sunset in the relatively cooler temperatures. The lighting, which replaced open kerosene lamps, has enabled the weavers to double their output and tailors have achieved a 30-40 percent increase in productivity. The good lighting also enables the tailors and weavers to maintain a crucial level of accuracy in their work. In some cases, one flaw in a durri would make it worth considerably less than an accurate one.

And now the villagers are even more keen for their children to get a good education which can lead to good jobs elsewhere or more skilled workers in the family business. Some weavers are now receiving orders showing patterns required on computer print-outs which they have to work hard to understand. ABB and electric light has had a part to play in facilitating a doubling of numbers in the local school from 45 in 2006 to 103 in 2008. Again, flexible working hours in the schools, lit by their own solar-powered lighting systems and additional classrooms funded by ABB all contributed to making the schools popular. In addition, there is the continuing drive by parents for their children to be educated as an investment in a better family business where computer print-outs may not continue to be such a challenge.

From a health and safety perspective, the low-heat bulbs have replaced open kerosene lamps – effectively a flame from a rag wick, pushed into the neck of an ordinary bottle that is filled with the fuel. As a result, there has been a reduction in incidents of respiratory illnesses and eye problems caused by the fumes, while the risk of setting fire to the dry thatched houses was great and there were regular reports of death and injury caused by such fires.

There have been some unintended successes from to the access to electricity program. There is a large military communications infrastructure in the desert here and civilian mobile phones have been given access. Virtually every home has a mobile now and the daily three or four hour trek to a fixed phone to inform buyers when orders were ready for collection or to ask for further commissions has been eliminated and the cottage businesses can operate more like a ‘just in time’ logistics organization. Contact between relatives living in this sparsely populated area has also improved and become more convenient through the use of the phones.

A second benefit is the formation of a service organization which charges residents a nominal monthly fee for looking after and maintaining the lighting systems. At more than 1,000 units, there was enough revenue for the original technician to start a small business employing his neighbors. Now he has about 30 part-time employees who are trained to carry out the maintenance.

In addition to access to electricity – something most people take for granted - ABB’s involvement in the villages has also identified other areas where a partnership approach can bring huge benefits to the community. One is the provision of convenient, fresh water. ABB has paid for covered concrete reservoirs in several villages, the connecting pipeline to the mains water supply up to three kilometers away from the villages. This saves up to four hours a day for women who used to walk through the desert to the supply point with 15 litre pots on their heads – a daily, four hour task. Now they have much more time for other productive tasks and can generally be more flexible about cooking times, childcare and looking after their small flocks of goats. And using a variation on the access to electricity model, ABB paid for the materials for the project, while much of the laboring on the construction and simple pipe-laying was carried out by the villagers as their contribution to the scheme. In total, the latest reservoir and connection cost $4,000.

This partnership between communities and ABB is always developing and during a visit to the villages, ABB staff were asked to become involved in improving the facilities for mothers when they give birth. Presently, in the worst case, the local midwife must travel to the patient and delivers the child at the mother’s home, where the lighting is not sufficient for a safe delivery. Initially, the midwife asked ABB for two rechargeable battery-powered lamps that she could take with her on deliveries in village homes. Following that discussion, ABB is now investigating the feasibility of building and equipping a purpose-built delivery room at a convenient location.

Faridabad

Faridabad celebration

Dancing at Sunset

Appenzell

Took a trip out to Appenzell (where the cheese comes from) in Eastern Switzerland. The snow was deep in some parts, but the roads were dry and clear.

Thousands of other nutters had decided this was the first day of spring and had dusted off their bikes and decided which of the open passes to do. I went on a round trip to Appenzell via Wattwil and wondered at the beauty of Switzerland at the foot of Santis mountain and in Wil, a beautiful medieval town which looks like it was fortified in the 15th century.

Sun was shining and it was warm.

Great day.

Had a great pizza experience this eve in Montreux. Well, to be precice, the pizza was crap, but the experience was an experience.

The pizza first? Calzone - 46 square meters of crust, 20 cubic centimeters of filling, which consisted of cheese (a good start), ham, tomato and egg. Sadly the egg was scrambled and for some reason, the chef (I am being charitable with that description here) decided it was a good idea to include some anchovy fillets. WTF???? Repulsive and positively the worst Calzone I have had anywhere in the world.

I am sure I will be able to prod the errant pieces of vomit down the bidet plughole in the morning, once they have softened a bit.

So - the 'experience'....

I sat on my own in the middle of the restaurant and watched people. They watched me too, with more than a little suspicion.

There, on my left, was a French-Swiss guy of about my age, evidently with his son (15 or 16, public school - either Charterhouse (the 'buggers' school) or Stowe (the 'buggers' school), or Pangbourne (the Navy school. OK so that's another buggers' school too).

And it was clear the son's mum was no longer the dad's wife ... are you with me here? Because they were speaking English... but not just because they were speaking English. The old chap (my age) was telling the young lad that he would 'clear it' with his partner for the lad to come and stay occasionally. Apparently the new partner has a young nipper and expensive taste. The dad told the story about the Fust dishwasher he had before the new partner arrived ("Brand new old boy, with the instructions still in the machine, never used") . But dad came home one day and the partner had ordered a new one - a Miele - all stainless steel. Apparently she still does not know how to work the machine. I guess the disintegrated instructions have blocked the outflow :-)

And then on the other side of me was a male couple (camp as a row of tents). The dominant one was very stylishly dressed, had a shaved head and a liver-coloured labrador dog which he fed from his plate and had tiramasu for pudding (the guy, not the dog). The other half of the couple was watching his weight (raw meat and wasser mit gaz, no pasta, no pizza, no wine, no coffee).

And just next to them was a really strange couple. He was 70+, wearing a baseball cap, had tan-coloured, thinning brown hair (almost like he had combed it through with some brown boot polish) and a 'tantastic' complexion. His tee shirt said, and I quote, because i wrote it down on the napkin: 'Wild West Wealth Summit 2007" and the web link:

http://www.millionairemanifesto.com/

It's possible they were from the US.

He could hardly get around the place (pissed, or crippled - not sure) and She sat there serenely with highlighted blonde hair and a cerise pink suit, very tailored, very expensive with gold buttons and HUUUUGE cuffs. I reckon She was a runner-up in the Miss Texas 1974 contest. She had clearly had some work done on her face (bits of it were too smooth, gently tucked and looked 'pulled' in places) compared to her veiny, wrinkled hands.

I am not a very pleasant person, am I? Well. I just think that someone in Montreux may be writing a blog about a crap pizza and a strange, but observant guy in the restaurant, with big hair and big bags under his eyes. I had better be careful if I go back to the UK - apprently the government are going to tax supermarkets who give away shopping bags, 'willy-nilly' to cutomers. I have to hope that they don't catch up with me and see my sagging eyes as a revenue opportunity. Bugger that.

Engueta - or for viewers in the UK "Enjoy ur meaw".

It's that time of year... When a few friends feel it necessary to regale ALL the people they think are their friends about how wonderful and nuclear and solvent and academic their families are. All this festive syrup is contained on a cheap, thin piece of inkjet-printed A4 paper, stuffed into their Christmas card - with, of course, a second class stamp stuck on the envelope and 'posted in good time'. These are organized people...

You know the sort of thing. The letter follows a familiar form:

"Happy Christmas to one and all!!

Husband Bob has been terribly busy, which makes him very tired. But was promoted again this year and we are looking forward to his bonus :-)))))). I am keeping out of trouble with tennis lessons, the WI and a part time job at the local solicitors' office. Son Tarquin looks like he will get a double first from OXFORD. All he does is work, it seems, poor lad! Daughter Annabel is lovely and has such a wonderful social life."

When actually the letter should say something along the lines of:

"Bob farts incessantly, never shaves at the weekend, is a brief and inadequate lover and he's really getting on my tits. If it wasn't for the fat pay cheque - or for the fact that the tennis coach is married (and in love, would you believe???!!!) - I would leave the fat, farting bastard tomorrow.

Tarquin is a lazy little long-haired bugger. We had to fight like hell to stop him being thrown out of that third-rate shit-hole "Oxford Brooks" - a place that has the nerve to call itself a university. Ha ha. :-(. God knows - Tarquas hardly seems employable at the moment; smacked out of his tree, or drunk, or both - most of the time. And NEVER bothers to call home, even though we pay his extortionate mobile phone bill for him. Ungrateful waster.

Annabel is a slut and shags anything that moves. Men have stopped looking at me in the street and just drool at her. Little tart. And we suspect she is running the amphetamine and vice business in Croydon. At least she shows some evidence of a blossoming business acumen, bless her.

Happy Christmas? Probably not."

I am thinking of doing my own round-robin this year - so watch this space....

And sorry if you are someone who does write these letters, but hopefully you will now think twice about embarking on your odious annual holier-than-thou epistles to the unwashed no-hopers who you like to call friends. We could all do without them from now on. If you want to write something, write it - to each person - and ask them how they are, rather than be 100% on transmit. For me, this year. No cards, no cheap pieces of A4. Instead, I shall be buying some goats for families in Ethiopia via a dodgy website. Hopefully, the recipients will have some tasty recipes for cooking the pesky critters.

They can be tough when they get a little old.

And so can the goats.

Happy festiveness.

Pigging-out at swine Eat-a-thon

Wednesday was pig and sausage day - well some of it was...

The Neu Hausli (pronounced 'Noy Hoosley') Restaurant in Waedenswil offers a 'Metzger Menu' (butcher's menu) which consists entirely of pork dishes. And I do feel a bit guilty, having written at length about fat Americans, to now be writing in praise of an eating event that encourages excess.

There are 14 dishes to choose from - which, if nothing else - proves that you can eat every bit of a pig, except its squeak.

The six course 'menu' seemed to be a good idea and course one was a bean soup with leaks, followed by blood sausage, flavoured with cinnamon. Sounds odd, tastes great. Course three was a sausage (another one) containing mashed (pig) liver. It was a strange grey colour and looked like something you might 'rod' out of a blocked drain. However it tasted much better than it looked - flavoured with herbs and accompanied by sauerkraut.

A quick swig of ice-cold vodka followed - apparently as a 'digestif' - to you and me this means it is designed to cut through the fat you'd just jammed down your gullet.

Onwards and upwards - a plate of very thinly-sliced liver arrived - I think it was fried in butter, but I am told it was cooked in oil.

Then into the smoked pig - first 'speck', which is a thick slice of back bacon served with re-hydrated green string beans, followed by 'rippli' which is ham, served warm, with two slices of apple that seemed to have been sitting in some sort of liqueur.

And finally 'gnaggi' which apparently is the lower end of the pig's foreleg. Quite fatty, but the meat near the bone was so succulent it melted in your mouth.

By this point I was full. Strange, I know. So full that I refused the deep-fried, battered apple slices with vanilla sauce. And the numerate will have noticed that the six-course menu ended up being eight courses, even though I refused the last fence for fear of exploding.

All of this should be accompanied by beer, but we decided to polish-off a few bottles of Rioja - seemed to work as well as beer for me...

Then pfluemli - a plum-based liqueur served in hot water with sugar. Dangerous thing a 'pfluemli' because it doesn't really taste like it contains alcohol. And finally coffee.

Thanks to Markus and Eva Baumann, my fantastic neighbours, for inviting me - it was a great evening.

America is fascinating, flabtastic

Raleigh, North Carolina, USA


I have just finished breakfast of one omlette, two pieces of toast, some sort of flat-bread-pattie-thingy and two cups of repulsive coffee. In the process of scoffing this lot, I was fascinated that I had amassed 16 separate pieces of packaging waste.

This is bad - not least because I hate eating anything out of plastic.

And then I looked around the restaurant and saw the mass of flabby humanity tucking into huge plates, piled high with: bacon (3x thickness of Swiss bacon), sausages, grits, eggs, toast, muffins, ketchup, cheese, bagels brimming with cream cheese, sugar-sprinkled waffles the size of truck tyres, pancakes swimming in maple syrup and cubes of roasted potatoes. Some of these good folk were so fat, they got their backsides wedged into their chairs. You could have got two of me sitting side-by-side in one chair - and my arse is not so small.

Some of the men's bellies were so large and round that they had to belt their jeans up under their armpits - any lower and the belt would have been on the downward slope and their trousers would have fallen down. And one woman's flab started just below her ears and gently sloped out and down for several feet before coming back up and in just above the top of her legs, which were clad in a fetching pair of bright pink trackie bottoms.

And after breakfast I wanted to take a stroll, but was warned not to by the friendly receptionist. She told me: [1] There are no sidewalks, [2] the traffic is heavy and dangerous so i should not walk along the pavement (road to you and me) and [3] - don't go into the woods without a dayglow orange baseball cap because it's huntin' season and there will be guys out there blasting away at anything that looks like a deer... Apparently my salt and pepper grey hair is the same colour as the species of deer around here and some of the guys only need a hint of movement in the undergrowth before they unleash several rounds of rifled shotgun slugs into a bush. Holy crap.

So, lots of fatty food and no chance of a spot of light exercise for fear of being run-over or shot. Not healthy. Surely there should be a law against shooting people who are not morbidly obese - or at least a defined season for hunting the overweight. A 'Fat Hunt', of sorts...

This phenomenon - of fatness and the aggressively anti-exercise environment I found myself in, so fascinated me that I looked up the Center for Disease Control website, the US medical authority, to see if they had any pearls of wisdom. But apart from stats and maps of obesity in the country and learned papers on fatness in the US, they failed to mention in plain English that the reason people here are fat is because they eat too much of the wrong foods and don't exercise. The nearest the CDC gets to this is, and I quote:

"Whether you want to lose weight or maintain a healthy weight, it’s important to understand the connection between the calories your body takes in (through the foods you eat and the beverages you drink) and the calories your body uses (through normal body functions, daily activities, and physical activity)".

Still awake? Normal bodily functions - does this mean we should all consciously remember to go for a dump; set it up as a daily reminder on our mobiles? Daily activities - can you lose more weight watching baseball or American football on TV? We should be told.

I fear for this country - and not just because of its all-pervading, rabid religious extremism and neo-conservatism. Nor because of its interesting foreign policy. Obesity will do this nation in...it is the threat within.

Its been a funny old day. The weather is crap and clouds obscure the sun I know is there... But there was brilliant sunshine today - beautiful, pure, Swiss sunshine. And I hope those shafts of light continue to illuminate my life.

That's all for today...no pictures, no wit. But this is today.