Birthday and UK Visit

 

Birthday And UK Visit

I spent my birthday in Scotland with Natalie and family and had a great time there. Natalie had bought some good bitter and it was good to have a glass of that hat soon after my arrival on the Friday and a curry in the evening. Curries, fish and chips and sausages and mash (and bacon sandwiches in the morning and pints of bitter to drink) are now my staple diet when I’m in the UK, food that is difficult to find and which I don’t normally want in France; it’s a function of climate. I’m a foodie of a different sort when I’m in the UK .

On the Saturday I got the full birthday treatment: cards and presents in the morning, lunch at a good restaurant and fizz and cake with candles in the evening (photos below). I didn’t want to do anything special for the rest of my stay, just be with the family, do a little shopping and a little gardening and be around the house. It was a very pleasant few days.

 

I

 

 I left Glasgow to go to see Steve and Jo in the house they are renting temporarily in Sywell while awaiting their eventual move to Scotland. It is a lovely, small old house in a quiet close and of course I got to see Tiloup, the dog, and have a love-in with him. Jo gave me a short tour around the area which has attractive countryside, a couple of good pubs and an aerodrome for antique plane enthusiasts. Their initial foray into Scotland to scout the possibilities there was rather a washout, hindered by floods and torrential rain, but they will be back again in the spring. I also met Carl while I was there, who looked much fitter than I have seen him for a while. Four days a week at the gym have put a lot of muscle on him and he seems content with his life in Birmingham.

From Steve and Jo I went to Reading, as my friend Margaret couldn’t put me up in London, and met up with former girlfriend Mairwen. We went for a pub lunch together aand reminisced a bit about old times and friends there. Reading had changed so much in the past 15 years that I found it quite a shock. The old station that I knew so well from frequent commutes to London had become something of a railway palace with two new entrances, six new platforms and a third-storey concourse with shops and cafes. It’s high all-glass frontage now dominates the road infront of it. The centre of the town had changed quite dramatically too with a lot of new building and quite different shops. Department stores it seem are now “out”, nobody wants them or the space is uneconomic and now empty. The smaller shops seemed predominantly food stores, cafes, restaurants or take-aways with a wide variety of food with different national flavours. I found that quite attractive but not so much the method of payment. After my arrival in the UK I had withdrawn a couple of hundred pounds in Sterling but in the event had difficulty spending it. Many of the shops and pubs insisted on payment by card or phone only. Mairwen said that had started in the pandemic, presumably for hygienic reasons, and subsequently continued and intensified. But it came as a shock to me, used to life in a small rural French village.

I found my visit to the UK tiring but very enjoyable; lugging suitcases around is bound to be for someone at my age but I had numerous unsolicited offers of help with them. Whatever is happening politically in the UK the people are still very much OK.

Rémuzat Etc

Rémuzat

It didn’t take me long to lose my «crown» at the Rémuzat boules tournament. I lost my first game and to win the tournament you have to win every game and by a larger margin than anybody else. In retrospect I’m slightly amazed that I managed it last year. But the few days there were enjoyable nonetheless. On a free day friends Michel and Chantal took me up to a point 2500 metres in the hills where we could see the eagles and vultures at close hand (photo below). Vultures really are huge birds and I hadn’t realised that they can’t get airborne without some assistance from warm updrafts of air. So they don’t appear in the sky until around midday in the autumn. I’ve no idea what they do in winter; presumably they just scramble around.

Gardening

The autumn weather has been very good so far, sunshine for most of the day and cool but not cold evenings. We’ve had no rain so I’ve had to continue watering although the daytime heat is not enough for the ground to lose much water. The pots front and back still have some colour, a bit more than usual as I’ve favoured plants this year that don’t require too much water and continue blooming later. So I still have oleanders, sages and the ageranthemum by my front door that the postmistress has to peer through to see my letter box in bloom (photo).

The allotment has been a bit disappointing in terms of volume as the other gardeners have found so at least I know it’s not just me. However I have had sweet corn, onions, aubergines, chillies and beetroot and the tomatoes and French beans have been prolific and still are. I’ve sown some turnip seed and planted cabbages and leeks so there will be something to come through the winter.

Scotland

At the end of the week I’m off to spend my birthday in Scotland with Natalie and family. Friends Claudine and Jacques have kindly offered to take me to and from Marseilles airport. I’ll take olives, olive oil and a donkey or boar sausage for Natalie and “langues de chat” biscuits for Eilidh, which she loves, plus some lavender essence for presents for whoever. On leaving Scotland I’ll go down to see lifelong friends Steve and Jo who have now moved back to the UK permanently. And then I shall go further down to Reading to see friend Mairwen and do some shopping to bring back. My friend Margaret can’t put me up in London this year and London hotel prices require a bank loan so I’ll skip London. It’s a trip that I am very much looking forward to. All the logistics along the way are pre-booked but “man proposes and….”.

 

Immigration

A little while ago I did a post on immigration. The result was hundreds of hits on this blog. The hits were obviously bots looking for mentions off immigration. Why? The most obvious reason would be to gather evidence to refine messages on the subject. But who was issuing the bots? Since Google stats no longer gives the geographical region from which hits come it’s impossible for me to say. But I wouldn’t be surprised if it was the UK government.