Road Trip to Portugal

My dear family & friends

Pics are in the usual place here ...

(Link to all photo albums here.)

What can I say: We took the dogs to the beach ... in Portugal. This may seem a bit extreme, but the dogs are getting old – and we wanted to do it at least once while they could take full advantage of the experience. Edgar is ten-and-a-half and getting very grey in the muzzle. Hazel is about eleven and she is slowing down on our walks in the summer.

This was all a month ago, but I was waiting for some artistic inspiration to describe our road trip to Portugal in terms that would impress and confound all travel writers. I’m still waiting.

In the meantime, let me point you to our pictures in the usual place  and give you a [relatively] brief taste of our vacation.

The first thing to say is that driving to Portugal isn’t exactly the cheap option: travelling petrol was £650; tolls in France were £121 and in Spain £68; the Eurotunnel with two dogs cost £206. But it was worth it, if only too short.

I did all the driving – all 4005 miles (6445km) of it, 1) because I enjoy driving and 2) because I’m a shit passenger. The experience was enhanced by our new car (after I drowned the last one), and the technology which I used to get us around (except when it failed – and when it failed, it failed spectacularly.) The new (second hand) Honda CRV is really comfortable with cruise control which makes driving long distance so much easier. We were ably assisted by my mobile phone, which provided satnav navigation (Waze) and “safety” camera alerts (Waze and Radardroid.) I also bought a CD slot holder for my tablet, which provided offline mapping and music [plugged in to the auxiliary port of the car's sound system]. (The offline mapping app I use is OsmAnd which serves up the open source maps from Openstreetmap.org.)

The first leg of our journey was from London to Bordeaux via the Channel Tunnel. I religiously obeyed the French speed limits (130km/h) on the autoroutes until I became frustrated by the French-registered cars which came flying past me like I was standing still. No sooner had I decided to speed  it up a bit (135km/h to 140km/h), than a kindly electronic notice board on a gantry over the motorway informed me that I was going too fast.  I know the notice board was talking to me because it displayed my registration in big bold letters, along with the admonition “Trop Vite.” Fortunately these warnings are only advisory, rather than being an actual camera trap. The French – and the Spanish – are also sweet enough to warn you when you are approaching an actual speed trap via big notice boards on the side of the road. [If you get caught after that, it’s your own damn fault.]

While Lucia & I were quite relaxed with the journey, we can’t say the same for Edgar & Hazel who appeared to be quite stressed by the travel.  When we checked in to the Ibis Budget Le Lac (on the outskirts of Bordeaux), Edgar refused to eat, or drink any water without being bribed to do so. The bribes included bread [his favourite], steak, croissants, doughnuts, salami, Parma ham, scrambled eggs and assorted toasted sandwiches – much to the amazement [disbelief] of the serving staff and any onlookers. (Pics here.)

The second leg of the journey was from Bordeaux to Madrid via a slight deviation to Bilbao. We went to Bilbao because I was in the right-hand lane, and Lucia couldn’t make up her mind where she wanted to go.  I also wanted to stop somewhere to buy a Spanish simcard for my mobile broadband wifi device. If you ever go to Spain, don’t even bother with Movistar (the mobile operator owned by Telefónica) – they don’t want you. The staff are uninterested and unhelpful. Orange, on the other hand, seems to have got the message through to its staff that every little bit counts.

The first major technological failure occurred when we were trying to find Monica’s apartment in the eastern suburbs of Madrid. Monica used to work with Lucia in Leamington Spa years ago on a one-year secondment from Spain. Waze (which is owned by Google) swore blind that it knew where Monica lived. The truth is that Waze and Google do not have Spanish addresses properly mapped out. We ended up going round in circles – and through one toll booth at least twice. Given that the outside temperature was 36C, and that I had been driving for eight hours, my temper was in short supply. Osmand – the offline mapping app – eventually got us where we wanted to go, but only after a lot of swearing from the driver's seat.

We stayed in Madrid with Monica and her daughter, Cecelia, for three nights. We were grandly entertained by the two of them, and Monica’s former partner Sayuri. Although Monica and Sayuri are no longer together, they maintain an amazing relationship [apart] for the benefit of their daughter. (Pics on Google+ here.)

Madrid was, err, hot. Very hot. Edgar gave us a huge scare when his back legs seemed to conk out [he hadn’t been drinking water] in the middle of the city. We sat on the sidewalk pouring bottles of water over him, trying to cool him down.  When we got him walking again, I ordered both him & Hazel into a fountain outside the Prado Museum. We seemed to get equal measures of annoyance and hilarity from passing Spaniards. I didn’t give a shit.

The third leg of our journey was from Madrid to The Algarve via Seville. By this stage, I had figured out (by watching the locals) that the speed limits only applied where there was a fixed speed trap. Much like South Africa, the autoroutes across Spain are dead straight, crossing vast arid plains under huge open skies. The difference is that the scenery is interspersed with ancient villages and stone castles telling long-forgotten stories.

In the Algarve, we stayed in one of the cottages owned by my sister and brother-in-law’s neighbour, Idalecio at the Quinta da Amoreira. If you’re ever looking for an “out-of-the-way” place to stay in The Algarve, I can’t recommend it highly enough. (See pics.) In this hidden corner of The Algarve, you are about 15 – 20 mins from all the major shops in Loulé, and about 30 mins from the nearest beaches while still staying in the middle of a rural idyll.

We spent our time in Portugal doing much the same thing that we have done for a number of years. Go to the beach, go to a cafe & chill out with Barbara and Terry. The difference this time is that we had the dogs with us. I can’t even begin to tell you how many times in Portugal we have said: “I wish we had the dogs with us.” Well, we did – and we loved it. It was special. (Pics on Google+ here.)

Our most challenging moment was when I lost my phone in Loulé. The phone fell into the road when I was getting out of the car. I heard something fall, but I couldn’t see anything. Sitting at a cafe 15mins later, I wanted my phone. Here’s a tip – if you have “location” apps on your phone, make sure all the options are activated and operational. While I had made sure that all this tech wizardry worked on Lucia’s phone – I hadn’t quite done the same on my own phone ... with the result that I wasn’t able to send SMS text messages to my phone to tell me where it was. In this case my only option was to attack-dial the phone until it was answered by some toothless fucking fisherman who had picked it up in the road. He explained to my sister later that he would have answered the phone sooner, but he couldn’t figure out how to achieve that task. (Note to all mobile phone manufacturers: just make a big green button that answers the phone when you press it – just piss off with all this geeky swiping left and right. This isn't Tinder - I just want to answer the phone.) So, with a huge sigh of relief – and a €20 reward to the toothless fisherman – I got my phone back.

Lucia flew home a week-and-a-bit later while I stayed on a day to get the dogs de-wormed and have their passports stamped by a vet as per UK requirements. My journey home took me via Madrid and the Millau bridge in southern France with a very short excursion to Barcelona en route. I’d been wanting to see this bridge (for myself) ever since we came to the UK. The bridge is both engineering and art rolled into one by architect Norman Foster.

The overnight stop was well worth the deviation --- not to mention the entertainment I provided for various locals. Wandering around Millau in the evening, I eventually found a sidewalk cafe/restaurant that met both my culinary requirements and budget. I explained to the patron (with the help of Google Translate) that I wanted two steak-and-chips baguettes – one for me ... and one for the dogs. There weren’t that many places open in the evening in the middle of the week, so I assumed that the crowd which gathered as Edgar, Hazel & I waited for our food was normal.  It was only when the food arrived that I realised that we were  – in fact – the entertainment as the crowd waited to watch me feed my dogs prime beef and fries. The pictures of me and the dogs do not do justice to the crowd behind the photographer arguing – in French – how he should best take the photograph. When I asked for the bill, I noticed that there was a beer missing from the total – and pointed this out to the proprietor. “Commission,” he said, without missing a beat.

The final leg of the journey, from Millau to London – 1200km (720 miles) – was coloured by both logic and technology failures. The logical failure was hanging around for breakfast at 9AM at the Gîte des Grands Causses in Millau where I stayed overnight. That left me precious little time for navigational errors in order to make my train from Calais to Folkestone. The technological failures included being routed through the middle of Paris at rush hour on a Thursday afternoon (courtesy of Google and Waze), as well as the complete failure of the “roaming” broadband feature on my phone ... in the middle of Paris.

It’s a little unnerving when you find yourself stopped on the side of the road in the middle of Paris with NO maps, little idea of where you are, and a train to catch 300km away. The phrase “completely fucked” comes to mind. So, ignoring all the panic of my predicament, I eventually got broadband connection for long enough to get a route to Calais – but I was running seriously late for my train. Once I got out of Paris, I put my foot down, travelling in a group of five cars (all French-registered except mine) travelling at 150 – 160km/h (95mph) on the autoroute all the way to Calais.

I made the train.

Love, light & peace

Llewellyn

Link to all photo albums here.

Letter from London: 2 of 2015 --- A Tale of Woe ...

I have a tale of woe.

I am waiting for the insurance company to tell us how much they will pay us for our car.

The story is this this:-

Friday is my cleaning day. Lucia usually works at home on Fridays - so I make sure I get going early. But, two Fridays ago Lucia had to go into the office. The result is that I got going quite late. When I finished cleaning (and because Lucia wan't at home), I decided to take the dogs for a long walk in Richmond to the far side of Richmond Park and back. As usual, I parked in Ranelagh Drive (in Richmond), next to the Richmond Lock & Weir, and walked through Richmond to the far side of Richmond Park.

But, owing to certain astro-physical phenomena, the moon was was the closest it has been to earth for several years. The result is that there was an exceptionally high tide: specifically, the tide at Richmond Lock & Weir was 5,5m above its mean level. I finally got back to the car about 30 minutes after high tide. At that point, the water was still was about a halfway up the passenger side of the car.

This from The London Evening Standard.

I had to wait about 15 minutes chatting away to an older couple in a similar predicament - waiting for the tide to recede - before I could approach my car. I took my boots off, rolled up my trousers, asked the older couple to hold onto the dogs, and waded along Ranelagh Drive (which was now essentially part of the River Thames) in my socks to get to the car. The water was fucking cold. When I opened the driver's door, the first thing I noticed was my iPad (with its keyboard cover) floating in the footwell. As a good South African, I had had it well hidden under the driver's seat in order not to tempt some nefarious bastard to break my window (not that that has ever happened to us here, or anybody else we know in the UK).

So, I drove home in my wet socks, with water sloshing around my feet - and started baling The Thames out of my vehicle. But then I had the great idea to call my insurance company - Honda "Happiness" - to see if I was covered for the loss of my iPad. Let me put it to you this way:- Honda insurance needs to reconsider the use of the word "happiness" in the name of their insurance company/brokerage/whatever ...

- First, I was put on hold for about 35 minutes to get hold of the underwriter

- Then I was put through to the wrong underwriter/insurer (because Honda UnHappiness had changed their underwriters)

- Then, somebody, somewhere put the phone down on me because I had become - shall we say - a bit excitable.

- Some two, maybe two-and-a-half hours later - I actually spoke to my real insurers: or should I say, that I spoke to someone who was only really interested in following the call centre script. (Do you want to make a claim, do you want to make a claim, do you want to make a claim .....)

- To cut a very long story short, I wasn't really covered for the iPad because because it wasn't really worth once we had paid the insurance excess.

On Saturday, Lucia and I continued baling out the car. I took it to valet service run by Serbians just up Uxbridge Road, near Ealing Hospital, so they could suck the carpets with their high-power vacuum cleaner. As I drove home, I noticed that the "SRS" light (the thing that does the airbags) had turned on. By the time I got home, other dashboard lights were flashing on and off. On Sunday, we couldn't get into the car because the remote wouldn't work - so I unlocked the car with the key. But then the alarm went off and wouldn't stop - so we called the RAC. The RAC man struggled to get to the siren in the boot area so that he could just unplug it. Removing panels in the boot area (where the siren is hidden) just revealed --- more water.

 So, on Monday morning, I called the insurance company again - a much easier experience because I didn't have to go through Honda "Happiness". On Wednesday, the "salvage agents" came to fetch the car. I also received a letter from Zenith - our actual insurers - which started: Dear Mr Jones, We write to advise you that from the description of the damage when reporting your claim, we believe that your vehicle will be deemed a total loss ... etc

It's a week later, and I haven't heard from them yet. All our neighbours have heard the story (from each other) and they all say: NEVER accept the first offer from the insurance company. You HAVE to negotiate. I think I'll leave that to Lucia ...

L

Letter from London: 1 of 2015

My dear family & friends

We’re in 2015 already – whatever happened to 1989? I am reminded of a T-shirt slogan from many years ago: “Stop the world – I want to get off.” Although my favourite T-shirt humour is still: “Fuck Google. Ask me.”

But that’s not why I started writing this. My point was rather to say that you can find the pictures of our short stay in France over xmas in the usual place here.

This is the link to the top directory to all my web albums, if you’re interested.

We had a really interesting few days. It was the first time we had taken the dogs with us on vacation in Europe, and we enjoyed their company. They haven’t expressed any opinion one way or the other as to their French sojourn, so far.

It also wasn’t really one of those “sit back and laze around holidays” because I am genetically pre-programmed to do and see as much as possible when going somewhere new. So we drove around quite a lot. Among my pictures you can see maps of where we went each day. I’ve got Google Location Reporting set to “On” on my mobile phone, so I can always see exactly where I’ve been. The maps in the album are essentially screenshots of that location history.

We had a bit of a disconcerting start to our time in France. Within five minutes of driving off the Eurotunnel train at Calais, we were considerably  surprised to see someone on the roof of a truck travelling at around 80km/h. My first thoughts were: “What is that dickhead doing on the roof of that truck?” He then proceeded to swing himself over the side of the trailer, and kick and slash his way through the tarpaulin on the side of the trailer. We did the most logical thing under such circumstances – slow down and take pictures (which you can find in the album.) The truck driver was desperately begging passing motorists to call the police. Which I dutifully did. Except the Emergency Services operator didn’t speak English, and I don’t speak French. We never did see how the episode ended.  Perhaps more importantly, I sent the pictures to the Daily Mail – but they didn’t seem terribly interested either (or maybe they weren’t interested in my suggestion that they pay me for the pictures.)

Instead of annotating our days, let me pick out a few experiences.

We really enjoyed the xmas market in Amiens (despite the persistent rain.) The stalls sported a wide range of interesting handicrafts and goods. The whole ambience was really festive. We bought saucisson and a cured ham, and I found an xmas present for Lucia – a sort of a pendant thingy used to secure a scarf around her neck.  I was struck by how different the Amiens market was compared to any of the xmas markets we’ve experienced in England which I find to be quite boring and over-commercialised. My neighbour David explained it to me like this: There is no real tradition of xmas markets in the UK and councils simply use them as a revenue earner, charging very high rents. The result is that the ambience is quite soulless, and goods on sale are just the usual over-priced tat.  It’s such a pity.

On xmas day we did some serious driving from our apartment in Le Tréport to Sword Beach near Ouistreham, where British and Canadian soldiers landed on D-Day 1944 – a round trip of 500km. I got to see the Pont de Normandie over the River Seine near Le Havre.  I’m a bit of a bridge nut, and this one falls into my all-time must-see bridges. It’s a cable-stayed, humpbacked bridge – a true feat of engineering, a marvel to behold and beautiful.I still want to go and gawp at the Millau Bridge.

Just over the bridge, one comes to the town of Hornfleur. If ever we get to do something like this again, this is where we’re staying (on the assumption that we’ll be able to afford it, of course.) It’s ancient, quaint and beautiful, set on a hill around a small fishing harbour. There are plenty of sandy beaches for long walks with the dogs, and the drive along the corniche to Trouville-sur-Mer is quite beautiful. I noticed that there were quite a few gîtes and other accommodation advertised along the road which all looked magically alluring (although, I suppose, that magic rather depends on price – it may turn out to be more like witchcraft.)

At the far end of our drive, we walked the dogs along Sword Beach which stretches five miles from Ouistreham in the east to Saint-Aubin-sur-Mer in the west. I found it quite hard to get my head around the fact that people had fought to the death over this lovely strip of sand 70 years ago. It really is just a fantastic beach – albeit one dotted with concrete machine gun bunkers.

Continuing on the theme of war, we also spent half a day exploring Dieppe which is just 28km from Le Tréport.  The history buffs among you will know that the Dieppe Raid in August 1942 was an unmitigated disaster – and it’s not difficult to see why. The town is surrounded by high chalk cliffs on either side of the Arques river – and those cliffs are dotted with the remains of concrete machine gun bunkers that made it easy for the Germans to defend the town. But on the flipside of that disaster, it taught the Allies that any invasion of France would require overwhelming force on ground that could not be easily defended. And so it was that the Allies landed 156 000 soldiers on the beaches of Normandy on 6 June 1944.

But my abiding memory of Dieppe is a little more prosaic. It was freezing on the morning we visited the town, with an icy wind blowing in off the Channel that hunted down any gaps in your clothing with malice. The first port of call was a cafe/bar/tabac on the waterfront for a warming cappuccino – dogs allowed. While my back was turned ordering our drinks at the bar, Lucia was busy wrapping her scarf around Edgar (alias: soft dog), and then she topped the look off with her knitted woollen cap. (See pictures.) Shortly afterwards a table of locals came and sat down next to us, happily taking note of Edgar’s jaunty look. But they really fell apart laughing when Lucia removed the hat and scarf – and dressed herself with them once again.  Now ... given their reaction, it struck me that they appeared to think that such a nattily dressed dog was normal. Umm ....

My final point of interest comes from our drive back to Calais on our way home. We chose a route which would take us up the coast to the mouth of the River Somme, before cutting back to the motorway – just for the hell of it. What we discovered was the town of Saint-Valéry-sur-Somme. It too is just lovely. It has a medieval town with a church and walls dating back over a thousand years, surrounded by a more modern (18th century) town running along the river at the mouth of the Somme.  It also looks like a place where I could spend a lot more time – a beautiful town, sandy beaches around the corner, and lots of interesting places relatively nearby. My point is – this is definitely something to consider if you’re looking for a place for a short stay break just across the channel.

And that was our xmas.

Happy New Year to you all
Love, light & peace
L

Letter from London: 3 of 2014

My dear family & friends

Of all the things I miss the most, I miss my motivation. Second most - is hair.

I’ve been meaning to write for yonks, or, at least, put pictures up on the web for you to see what we’ve been up to (assuming you’re interested) - but there has always been something that comes up – like a snooze, or daydreaming, or shopping, or walking the dogs, or cleaning, or ironing, or doing the household accounts, or mowing the lawn, or building stuff, or fixing stuff, or battling with technology. The truth be told, I can spend days battling with technology – which usually means that I’m trying to get something for free.

I’ve been adding pictures to a web album for most of this year – I just haven’t got around to sharing them. Here they are. 

The result is an album of nearly 200 pictures. Please believe me, you are in no way expected to through them at all. They are up on the web for your interest – if you’re interested.

You can find all my pictures in the usual place here.

I think the easiest thing to do, having not written for so long, is put the standout events down in bullet-form instead of wracking my brain to weave a story.

Shall I start with the things that annoyed me?

I’ll start with today. I’ve got the flu for the second time this winter. Very annoying.

More annoying were the useless garbage collectors who split a refuse bag in the street this morning, strewing  food, rubbish and dog pooh bags across the road ... and then fucked off.  Why does this annoy me so badly? We pay Ealing Council £150 per month for council “services” – including garbage collection. For my South African friends, that’s around R2,775 per month, or R33,300 per year. For that kind of money, I expect a little more attentiveness to the task at hand. What I don’t expect is to sweep this shit up myself (see last three pics in web album), especially when it’s not my garbage bag adorning the street.

I really hate British Summer Time (BST). The sun sets at around 15h30 and it’s dark by 16h00, especially if it’s cloudy. Apart from anything else, this completely upsets my beer schedule. While my internal clock says that it’s time for a beer – because it’s dark – propriety says that I still have to wait for a couple of hours. Very annoying.  The early darkness is also just depressing – thank goodness we are only five days away from the solstice when the days will start getting longer again. I yearn for 29 March next year when the clocks go forward an hour, heralding the arrival of late sunny, summer afternoons.

I’d also like to hit the bastard who drove over my hat a couple of weeks ago. I was up in Ealing doing some shopping. It was a windy day, and my hat blew off as I crossed the road at a traffic light. I turned around to chase after it, but the traffic lights turned against me. Now, as a driver, I would have allowed the hapless, hatless fellow to retrieve his hat – but not the dick who was first in line. He accelerated away hard, almost running me down – and driving over my hat. Why? It’s an expensive hat, and I spent hours cleaning it with spray-on dry-cleaning fluid trying to remove the oil and rubber.

iOS8 has annoyed me badly. Tech nut that I am, I updated Lucia’s and my iPad minis immediately. By the time I realised that our iPads had become slow and moribund, Apple had stopped “signing” iOS7 – so I couldn’t go back. Apple has released two “updates” since then – but only for stuff that stops earning them money. I can’t compare our iPads to Android tablets, because I don’t own an Android tablet. What I can say is that my two-year-old mobile phone – a Samsung Galaxy S3 – is significantly faster than my iPad in virtually everything. From being completely enthralled by my iPad, what it could do, and how neat it was – I now feel a sort of wary “deflatedness”. I’m still waiting for the fix that will sort out the wifi problems from Apple. The iPad is such a neat device – why is Apple so intent on pissing its’ customers off?

Still on things tech, our Hewlett-Packard “home theatre” computer gave up the ghost. This is the computer that sits in my home-made entertainment cabinet under our television. It does our music, films, radio, and everything else to keep us entertained. The power supply unit gave up for the fourth time – and took the graphics card with it, again. It’s difficult to say whether the computer was struggling with the demands I heaped on it, or whether there was something inherently wrong with the design. Given how much it had already cost to keep it going over the years, it seemed like a much better idea to buy a new computer.

So, we bought a new computer – an Acer, and I went through the motion of updating all the Microsoft software, and setting it up to work how I wanted it to. To cut a long story short, the computer failed two days later – either a BIOS or motherboard failure. No problem, call the helpdesk. Or should I call that the roadblock desk. The Indian gentleman at the roadblock desk was only intent on declaring the failure to be entirely my fault, and that I would have to pay for the repair, notwithstanding any warranties. 

After a bunch of Googling I eventually found the address for Acer’s head office in the UK, which is around the corner from one of my favourite Portuguese coffee shops near Heathrow Airport. So I wrote a 2000 word letter of complaint, took it to the head office, and demanded to see the managing director. I never did get to see the managing director, but I did get a promise that a customer sales representative would call me that day. The phone rang as I walked in the front door. Angela, with a beautiful Welsh lilt to her voice, scored lots of brownie points for giving my name the correct Welsh pronunciation. She also expressed her “horror” and deep regret at my experiences at the hands of Acer’s Indian call centre. She noted that Acer has a five-day “dead on arrival” policy, and that my computer should have been replaced with no questions asked. She offered me a refund or to replace the unit immediately.

I took the replacement – the only problem being that they would only send out the replacement unit once they had received the faulty unit. That’s standard practice. So, I got back in the car, and took the computer to the head office near Heathrow. That was a Friday afternoon. The replacement unit arrived at 08h15 the following Monday morning – and it’s working like a dream.

But that leads in to the next annoyance – the car. As I was driving home from Heathrow, the engine management light came on in our car, a Honda CRV. The problem turned out to be a failed “Lamda sensor”, which sits around the catalytic converter - £380 to repair. A couple of weeks later, one of the brake callipers seized - £500 for everything. Then this past week I had to MOT the car – the yearly health check required to licence your car in the UK. I won’t list all that was wrong, but the bill came to nearly £1000. On top of that you still have to pay the yearly registration/licence fee - £288. Bloody hell!

Talking of money and finance, my next gripe is with lazy journalism. We have recently seen a raft of scare stories in the tabloids and on television about the threat of rising interest rates, and that homeowners mortgage payments could double in the next two to three years. Bullshit! Doubling mortgage payments would bankrupt about a third of the population – which would, in turn, bankrupt the mortgage lenders, that is, the banks (and the funders of the banks – your pension fund.) Consumption expenditure would also virtually cease – because all our disposable income would be spent on servicing debt. I don’t know how we are going wean the world off the cocaine of low interest rates – but nobody has come up with an idea that I believe would have any reasonable chance of success. 

I remain fundamentally convinced that we haven’t yet seen the “real” financial/economic crash. There is a cesspool of debt out there that will NEVER be repaid without debasing the currency. Take the UK. Current sovereign debt – that is, the physical amount of money that the government has borrowed (from your pension fund) – is fast approaching £1,5 trillion (£1 500 000 000 000). Unfunded liabilities (the amount that must just be paid out of tax) – government and social pensions, healthcare, benefits, etc, etc – are actuarially valued at around £4,5 trillion. That’s a total current debt of around £6 trillion. To pay that off, the UK economy would have to grow at 20-30% a year for the next 50 years, or so. That’s not going to happen. Like the age-old Chinese curse – we are living in interesting times.

VPN (Virtual Private Network): Earlier this year I emailed all my South African acquaintances about the joys and benefits of using a VPN when connecting to the Internet. Precisely ONE of you took me up on my offer. Let me restate my rationale:- above and beyond all, if you connect to the Internet on any device (computer, tablet or mobile phone) using a wifi hotspot without using a VPN, you are asking for trouble.  You risk having your digital persona stolen, and your bank accounts cleaned out. On the plus side, using a VPN allows you to log on to the Internet as if you’re in another country – in other words, instead of being stuck with DsTV you could enjoy the full benefits of all UK television (or any other country) via the internet. Your internet service provider also can’t “shape” your connection – that is, slow you down. And if you (or your children) are an “illegal” downloader, your ISP can’t see what you’re doing. (All they see is encrypted data.)  I use HMA (HideMyAss). 

Finally, I've been somewhat exercised by the Sydney hostage drama over the past two days. As the drama unfolded, the Sydney police chief was quoted on all the news channels as saying that they were prepared to wait for as long as it took to resolve the situation – or words to that effect. Now, maybe it’s just because I’m a South African, but the same news footage also showed several occasions where the hostage-taker was plainly visible with no hostages in the way – why didn’t they just shoot him? If the cameras had such a clear view of the hostage-taker, surely the police snipers had much the same view. Without any facts to corroborate my musings, I wonder if the police hierarchy was being just a little bit too politically correct. In my view, you pull a gun, you die ... at the earliest opportunity.

I am reminded of the St James Church Massacre in Kenilworth, Cape Town, in the early 1990’s. Some dimwits from the armed wing of the Pan Africanist Congress stormed the church one Sunday evening and opened up on the congregation with AK47s and grenades because they’d heard that it was a “conservative” church. They didn’t understand the difference between political conservatism and religious conservatism (particularly of the Calvinist brand.) St James Church was probably one of the most politically liberal churches in Cape Town with a completely racially integrated congregation. My point is, the killers only turned around and ran away when one of the members of the congregation pulled his own gun and started shooting back at them. Now, who takes a gun to church???

I have another reason to remember that event so well.  I had ridden past the church on my motorbike just minutes or seconds before the carnage started. I heard nothing; saw nothing. My girlfriend at the time, Cor-Lené, and I had had dinner with my mother at her home just down the road. It was a dark and stormy night, and we had kitted ourselves up in our rain gear before leaving my mom. We decided to stop off for a warming coffee before I dropped her at home. But, Cor-Lené’s mother was a journalist at Die Burger, and was on shift that night. She heard of the events at the church within minutes, and immediately called my mother. Remember, these were the days before cellphones. Oh, dear. While Cor-Lené and I were leisurely sipping away on Irish Coffees, our mothers were panic dialling everyone we knew.

Okay, that’s enough ranting. What of the good stuff?

We had the most fantastic summer, and the winter, so far, has been mild - to say the least.

Lucia was thrilled to have her mother stay with us for six weeks in July and August. I won’t even try to list all the outings – there are more than enough pictures in the web album to cover our adventures with Ann.

We also had Lucia’s first-cousin-once- removed (that is, her cousin’s son) stay with us for a couple of days on several occasions. Marc (Moir) was on his gap year, working at a private school in Devon, and we provided him with a London base, usually when he was travelling to or from somewhere around Europe. He was a most delightful guest. Marc, you’re welcome any time.

We had a barbecue at every opportunity – I keep a stock of charcoal and fire-lighters easily to hand. One of the great joys of summer is standing over a fire with a beer in one hand and a book (on my Kindle or iPad) in the other. I usually barbecue chicken or lamb chops, mielies (sweetcorn, for everyone in the UK) and onions. I’ve learned to use our Weber Grill as it was intended – with the lid on.  Just before I put the lid on to start cooking, I heap handfuls of herbs and woodchips directly onto the coals which gives the meat the most deliciously aromatic flavour.

We’ve had a good few picnics. Hyde Park is lovely for that, especially in spring when the trees and flowers are bursting with colour.  The typical picnic comprises gourmet sandwiches, crisps, olives and a beer, or two. Getting to Hyde Park with the dogs is relatively easy – we either catch the train to Paddington Station, or the tube to Queensway or Lancaster Gate.  The dogs get a lot of attention on the train, especially from tourists who can’t whip out their cameras and start taking photographs fast enough. I get quite a kick out of it. Poseur!

I actually love walking around the busy parts of London with the dogs (not that I do it very often) --- because everyone gets the hell out of my way. Walking in London without the dogs is an obstacle course of dodging people every step of the way. I stay away from central London for special events and at busy times if I possibly can.

At the weekend, our days usually start with walking the dogs down on the river. Most frequently we walk at Kew or Richmond. If we go to Kew, I park the car on the Chiswick side of Kew Bridge, and then we cross the bridge and walk along the Thames before cutting through Kew to Kew Village, ending at Cafe Torrelli for cappuccinos. There are a number of rowing clubs in the area and there are always plenty of people sculling up and down. 

If we go to Richmond, I park at Richmond Lock and Weir. We walk along the river before cutting through Richmond Palace and across Richmond Green, and then up Mount Ararat Road to the Richmond Hill Bakery for – you guessed it – cappuccinos. Sufficiently revived, we circle back to the river and along the Thames Path to the car.

I’ve also been making batches of biltong with Tony, one of our South African neighbours. He’s got power in his shed, so the biltong box I made several years ago is now stored there. Our all-in cost is usually about £23/kg, compared to about £45/kg at the various South African shops dotted around. Waitrose charges around £66/kg, when they have it available. Our biltong is actually really good, made to a very secret, age-old recipe ... I found on the Internet.

My Portuguese friend from Leamington Spa, Helder, helped me acquire a Portuguese satellite box which I wanted to help improve my Portuguese. I can read the language quite well, but I still struggle to understand the spoken word. Helder also helped me reposition our second satellite dish (the one I used with the satellite card in our old home entertainment computer), while Lucia, Sandra (Helder’s wife) and Catarina (their daughter) went off to the Science Museum. The only problem was that it started drizzling while they were away and we were up on the roof. The rain made the roof tiles quite slippery, leaving us stranded up there in the rain. We eventually worked out how to get down without killing ourselves, but it was a hairy experience. (I suppose we could have called the fire brigade, but I’m dead on certain that we would never have lived that one down.)

If we ever win the lottery, we’re moving to Portugal. Hopefully this will come before we reach retirement age. My sister, Barbara, and brother-in-law, Terry, live in the hills on The Algarve, and I envy them their life tremendously. If there is anything that I miss from SA, it is the bright, sharp sunshine and blue sky. Portugal has got plenty of that.

As you may recall from a previous letter, we had lovely holiday with Barbara and Terry in April. In terms of other travel, I’ve had three daytrips to France, taking advantage of cheap ferry or Eurotunnel deals. The first was with Lucia for my birthday, then with an old army friend, Julian, and, fairly recently, by myself to go shopping. (This link is a clever Google thingy as explained in a previous mail.) The trick is to load up with cheap booze and French specialities which more than pay for the expedition.  It really saves on grocery bills – which seem to rise ever higher. I put all our expenditure into a spreadsheet and graph it all to see where we’re spending our money and to keep control of our budgets. Our grocery expenditure for the first 11 months of this year is already 5-10% higher than our grocery bill for the whole of 2013. Scary stuff.

We had planned on going to Portugal for xmas again, but we couldn’t find house-sitters and kennelling is just too expensive for three animals. Instead, we’re going to France for five days and taking the dogs with us (which adds another £30 each way on the Eurotunnel shuttle). The neighbours’ children, Gina and Louis, are going to take care of Tigger while we’re gone. The length of stay in France is limited to five days due to one of the pet passport requirements. There is a particular de-worming tablet the dogs must take no more than 120 hours before they return to the UK. So, our neighbour, David, the vet (Gina and Louis’ dad), will give the dogs their pills and stamp their passports in the evening before we leave. French vets charge a lot of money for this service – because they can.

Lucia found a delightful looking house in the seaside village of Le Tréport, just north of Dieppe, which is in easy driving distance of Abbeville, Amiens, Rouen, Le Havre and the beaches of Normandy. It should be fun – I’m looking forward to it.

Now for some matters of interest.

I watched some of the Pistorius trial with interest. My personal opinion was that he knew exactly what he was doing. At the same time, without any corroborating evidence (you really need an eye witness in these cases), it was always going to be difficult to convict him of murder. I thought the sentence was inadequate.

I was perhaps more intrigued by the Shrien Dewani case. Right from the word go, I thought the taxi driver was lying through his teeth. Perhaps it’s just prejudice as a result the brutal murder of my Aunt Eugene in 2006 (which was probably one of the biggest factors in our decision to leave SA). But still, I find it extremely unlikely that someone would walk into a foreign country and – within 30 minutes –  ask the first black person he came across to find him a hitman. It seems that most my correspondents in SA disagree with me.

We had our own crime drama at the bottom of our garden for several weeks. Many of you will have heard of the disappearance and murder of the 14-year-old Alice Gross. She disappeared while walking along the Grand Union Canal, which is a just a few hundred metres down the Brent River from our house.  The river is the boundary to our property. We watched the police floating up and down the river in rubberducks, stripping away every piece of spare foliage and ground cover, and doing a fingertip search in the water (see pics).  Yellow ribbons adorned every tree, lamppost and railing for miles around until they found her body buried in the river right where she disappeared. What I couldn’t understand was why the police focussed the search here – until I read in the newspaper that it was the biggest police CCTV operation since the 7/7 bombings. Quite simply it is impossible to get off the canal towpath in this area without being captured on CCTV somewhere. They were even able to identify their prime suspect from the same footage. 

Such is our life in London. We love living here. We love the parks, and the streets, and the galleries, and the concerts, and the myriads of things to do. We have some really lovely neighbours – in fact, I have never felt such community among neighbours before. We never walk around looking over our shoulders. We have electricity all the time. Our broadband download speed is around 75Mb/sec and there is no data cap (we regularly do 100-150Gb/month). We had a bit of a problem with a drug dealer down the road, but community action got the police to take such an interest in him that he took his business elsewhere.

Let me leave it there.

Have a very merry xmas everyone

Love, light & peace to you all

Llewellyn

Pics on Google+

Letter from London: 2 of 2014 --- A Daytrip to France

You can find the pictures in the usual place here,
If you prefer Google+, you can find them here.


I went on a day-trip to France with my friend Julian Curtin. I met Julian many years ago in the army when I was working as a waiter/chef at the Castle in Cape Town. Julian and I went to the same school in Johannesburg, KES, although he only joined the school after I left for Cape Town and Rondebosch Boys High School - so I never met him at school.

This was my second such trip to France in as many weeks. The first was on my birthday a couple of weeks ago. I had been wanting to do this for a long time. So, as my birthday approached, I searched the Internet for the best ferry deals from Dover to Calais. I discovered that you really can get a return from Dover to Calais for as little as £19 on MyferryLink.com (the remains of SeaFrance.) This compares to about £70 or £80 on the channel tunnel from Ashford in Kent. The journey is 90 minutes by ferry, and about 25 minutes on the channel tunnel, according to Julian.

The first trip, on my birthday, was more of an exploratory experience – just to check things out, so to speak. But, it gave me the desire to do it again soon - and Julian was free and up for it.

I chose a Wednesday, because Wednesday is Market Day in Boulogne-sur-mer – some 35km from Calais. My idea was to buy lots of cheese and charcuterie from small independent sellers at the market. This is what it's like at Portuguese town markets - but it wasn't really like that.The French markets are far more focused on fresh produce. The market had the most dizzying array of colourful fruits and vegetables - five different types of plum, the most fragrant lemons, and more variations of peppers and tomatoes than I care to count.

It was fun. The first stop was at a restaurant on Place Dalton coincidentally called “Chez Jules” for a reviving coffee on the market square. As for shopping at the market, we only bought some melons and plums – we did the real shopping much later at the huge Carrefour hypermarket in Calais.

You can mostly follow the rest of our day in pictures.

First, we strolled around the old city and the ramparts of the ancient walls, followed by lunch in the Old Town Square.

Then we drove back towards Calais along the Coast Road, stopping at anything that grabbed our attention.

Our first stop was at the immaculately manicured Terlincthun British War Cemetery just outside Boulogne-sur-mer. Too many of the graves were dedicated to soldiers only “Known Unto God”.

Next was a fortified artillery position that formed part of the “Atlantic Wall” built by the Germans during WW2 to defend against the anticipated invasion from England. Now it's covered in graffiti and used for raves and musical concerts. That really appeals to my sense of cosmic justice.

Next stop was Cap Gris Nez – or, in English, Cape Grey Nose. It's the closest point to England on the French coast and is littered with old machine gun bunkers, now tipping forward under their own weight in the soft sand.

Our final destination was the huge shopping centre next to the channel tunnel terminal at Sangatte, just outside Calais. The Carrefour Hypermarket there has a dizzying array of goods and produce. Without a written shopping, list it was difficult to decide what to buy and what not to buy. We ended up buying plenty of chacuterie and  cheese …. and lots, and lots, and lots of beer and spirits. Alcohol is a vastly cheaper in France. Let me put it this way – Gordon’s Gin, Lucia's favourite tipple, costs about £20 per litre in England. But, in France it's more like £14 per litre. By four of those and you’ve just paid for your ferry fare.. It's even cheaper in Belgium.

Anyway, shopping done, we headed back to the ferry port at Calais for our journey home. We joined the ferry as the sun was setting on the most beautifully calm and peaceful evening. We didn't have any asylum seekers riding in the boot of my car, so far as I know.

This link link is a short visual story of Lucia’s and my day-trip to France and Belgium on my birthday.

The link directs you to something that Google does without specifically being asked to. Specifically, I use Google auto backup for my pictures - which are also all geo-tagged. But, I also use Google location tracking on my mobile phone – a great idea if your phone is ever stolen. Google then somehow uses your pictures and your location history to create a visual story. I suppose it is quite freaky, but I do find the technology absolutely mind blowing. Besides, my mobile service provider, my credit card supplier, my bank, GCHQ, the NSA and, probably, the KGB, know where I am anyway – at least Google offers me some real value in return.

It's been over six months since I put any pictures up on the web. They are there – I just haven't shared them yet. I wanted to share the link with some commentary of our life in London which I haven't done for so long. I will get around to it.

I hope you enjoy these links to my pictures.

Love, light & peace
Llewellyn


Link to photo albums
Link to albums on Google+