This and that!

So what's new? Not a lot really as I seem to be just treading water at the moment - which is annoying because the weather is glorious and I really wanted to be out there enjoying it - but I just don't seem to have the oomph right now. Oh well, it'll come back I suppose! That being said I got my 1,000 miles in sometime in September, which is pretty pathetic really because it doesn't entail an awful lot of walking on a consistant daily basis but I suppose taking into account bad weather (and the constant rain this year), it's not too bad, even if it could be a lot better!

The figures on the left are km, and
the miles are on the right!

My friend suggested we go out walking the other week so I took him to the Lac Bleu (where the three lakes are) and I'm pretty sure he's now found his new favourite spot to walk, so much so that a couple of days later he came over again and we went to the small lake at La Tour. This lake is just five minutes from André's place so we stopped in there for a coffee too. It wasn't much in the way of km walked but I guess every little helps!

Lac de la Tour

On a different note, I got a shock the other day because I received a monthly bill for my mobile, one for my wifi and another one for my landline which hasn't worked in six weeks! Well that put a bee in my bonnet and I got straight on to SFR (my phone carrier) intending to read the riot act to someone - anyone - because while I didn't care about the phone not working, I was damned if I was going to pay €40 a month for the privilege! Now I hate making these calls because they must outsource them to Africa (just like the calls in the UK seem to go to India) and I have a hard time with their accents, especially when they usually have their microphone stuck in their left ear half the time! (That being said, I'll take the African accents over the French-Canadian accents any day)! Oh don't get me wrong, they are always very helpful but I hate having to tell the first person (North African) what the problem is, and then she puts me through to the next person (French-speaking African - that is if the line doesn't cut off) and I have to go through it all again. Anyway, while the second guy was, indeed, hard to understand, after I asked him to speak up we managed to figure out what the problem was. And it turned out it was me!!! Good job I never gave anyone a bollocking then isn't it!! When he asked me how I'd ended up with that particular wifi box I told him I'd been online and that was the one recommended after I'd put in my post code, but, turns out it wasn't compatible with my landline, unlike my last one, so it was never going to work! Anyway, long story short, he sorted me out with a new box against the return of the old one and guess what, the damn thing works now! What's more, since the telemarketers started up immediately, I've had the bloody thing unplugged ever since! Still, at least it's sorted and I did apologize to the young man for him getting the "little old lady call who doesn't understand anything" and he just laughed and said "no problem"! So I'm sorted, although André still isn't, but I think that might have more to do with his place being brand new and him being one of the first tenants!

Moving swiftly on, the other day I was on FB and I'm starting to realize that if it wasn't for being able to keep in touch with family and friends dotted all over the place I'd probably just get rid of it because I don't like being "advertised at" constantly. I actually have two FB accounts because when I was leaving work I realized that I'd used my work's email as my log-in email and when I tried to switch it to my private email it wouldn't go through. So today I finally went in and deleted that account and may get rid of the main one too - but I'll have to think about that for a while! Anyhoo, a couple of days ago I got a message from Sharon, a Scottish lady I'd met in St. Lucia about six years ago, just sending a short message to ask how I was doing. A few of us did exchange contact details and very occasionally would shoot off a quick message to each other so this didn't surprise me too much. BUT, after a couple of messages "Sharon" asked if I wanted her to tell me about the government windfall that she'd just received and I should be interested in it because she'd "seen my name on the list too" - which frankly would be a bloody miracle because the U.K. population is pushing up to near 70 million and I was using my married name when we met! And then I remembered when my Words With Friends buddy in New York sent me the same message. Now this was a pretty generous offer considering I haven't lived in the U.S. for over 30 years and it's been over 40 years since I left the U.K! So I told "Sharon" where to shove it and now "Sharon" is threatening to kill me! Oh dear, some people don't take rejection at all well do they! I did get in touch with the real Sharon to let her know her page had been hacked and we ended up having a chat but gosh, these scammers/creeps are everywhere aren't they!

While I was online my niece in England sent me a message to thank me for her son's birthday card and the money I sent for both her kids. She also mentioned that her 11 year old daughter had covid as she had tested positive on Sunday night. Now I'm not sure if weekly testing is mandatory for schoolkids in England or if it was just something they did for themselves, but her daughter tested positive a second time when they had a pcr test done through a testing centre! She said she'd complained of a headache a couple of days earlier and then lost her sense of smell, but other than that she was fit as a fiddle (thank God) and really annoyed that she couldn't see her friends for 10 days, while her younger brother was equally annoyed that he consistently tested negative and didn't get to take the week off school!

In other news, flamboyant French businessman, Bernard Tapie, died last week and there was seemingly a great outpouring of sympathy - although not from round here I reckon. At one time he had owned Adidas, the Marseille football team and La Vie Claire (a large organic store) - had I known he was the owner I wouldn't have shopped there! I remember my colleague telling me years ago that Tapie was after buying a large factory in a nearby town and did the showman thing of landing in their parking lot in a helicopter and swearing to the workforce that their jobs were safe - and of course as soon as the sale went through he laid them all off! So nah, I don't think too many older men round here will care too much about that one!

But talking of showmen, Boris (the Clown) Johnson makes me want to scream anytime I see him on TV - you know, he of the walking bloody comedy act! Oh the comedy act might - just might - have been funny before he became PM but every time I hear that buffoon crack another joke when asked a serious question I want to reach through the TV and strangle him. That's how little he cares about the country and working people. He and his cronies pushed through a hardline Brexit and even though the country's quickly going to hell in a handbasket he just doesn't care! They have already started culling thousands of pigs because they don't have the skilled workers to butcher them, nor the truck drivers to deliver them to market. So they are being culled - and Johnson's joke on TV was "well they were going to die anyway, I mean, you eat bacon sandwiches don't you"! Ha, ha very funny, but nope they are being "culled" which means the farmers will get little, if anything, for their hard work. Whichever way you go on meat-eating, surely if the animal is going to die it shouldn't be like that! Oh and then there is the truck driver shortage, which admittedly is a shortage throughout Europe and not just the U.K. But Johnson's hard Brexit meant they kicked most of those "bloody foreigners" out of the country and now they're short approximately 100,000 truck drivers! Then when the haulage companies finally got through to the eejit that this was serious he offered up 5,000 short-term work visas for drivers. Have a guess how many "bloody foreigners wanted to come over here and steal those jobs"! Can't guess? They had 27 applications for tanker drivers (of which 20 were suitable) and 100 applications for HGV drivers! If it wasn't so pathetic it would be funny! And I swear this is true, people who had obtained their driving licences pre-1999 (so that would be me then) started receiving letters from the government asking if they would like a job driving trucks because (apparently) those licences were automatically valid for someone to drive a 7.5 ton truck! Ha, I wonder if the Queen got one because not only did she get her licence pre-1999 (obviously) but she also drove a truck during WWII! Well it turns out that those letters were addressed to German citizens living in the U.K. because it was only their licences that gave them the truck-driving licence, not the U.K. licences. Still, the Queen has German blood in her doesn't she? And then there was the issue of just one cabotage stop allowed. Cabotage is, say, when you get a Polish driver comes over with a load to drop in Glasgow and previously he would have been able to pick up another load for Manchester, and then another for London, for instance, before heading back to Poland. Well they put a stop to that and were only allowing one cabotage stop so tell me where the interest would be for any haulier to be driving round Britain with an empty truck and a line 100 trucks long to process the new customs formalities and not a pot for them to piss in? I think he's had to back down on that too and allow extra cabotage stops, but can you just see the madness - and why I just want to reach through the TV screen and wring this clown's neck - and I don't even live in the U.K.? Or how about the "wonderful deal" they've agreed with the U.S. where they will be exporting Welsh lamb to the States? Great huh? But then why the hell would they be importing Australian lamb into the U.K. at the same time? Now I know I'm no economist but can anybody else see a simpler solution to this here? How about have Australia export their lamb direct to the U.S. instead and let folks in the U.K. eat the lamb that's being raised just a few miles down the road? I don't know, maybe that's why I'll never be rich, because that one has me completely befuddled!

The U.K.'s Clown-in-Chief!

Still, there is a bit of good news in this hard Brexit because I hear Tim Martin, the rampant xenophobic boss of the Wetherspoon's pub chain, has posted a loss of around £195 million for the 12 months leading up to July 2021. I'd read a different figure but either way it was a lot, because Mr. Hardline Brexit now can't get the slaves low-paid workers to staff his establishments! Couldn't happen to a nicer fella, I reckon - the cheek of those "damn foreigners"!