In Sapa, Vietnam

In Sapa, Vietnam

About Me

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Sharing time between Southampton and Noyal-Muzillac in southern Brittany. Sports coach, gardener, hockey player, cyclist and traveller. I studied an MA in Management and Organisational Dynamics at Essex University in 2016-17. Formerly an Operations Manager with NEC Technologies (UK) Ltd.

Sunday 11 September 2016

A good year for ...... the Butterflies

.The Spring this year was mainly cool and damp, it wasn't until June that we really got any warm Summer weather. Not good weather for Butterflies to hatch, grow as caterpillars, pupate and hatch.

Since mid June we've had hardly any rain and it's been warm and frequently hot, the garden flowers have been spectacular (at least where we have managed to irrigate with water from the well). Perfect weather and conditions for Butterflies. And we've been rewarded with a spectacular show beautifully recorded in Barbara's photographs.

Not usually found in the British Isles this is a Map, second brood. An interesting insect as the first brood has completely different colours and markings. (On Dahlia)




A perfect Red Admiral (on Dahlia)


The Peacock has been seen frequently but is a difficult subject to capture (On Aster)


My favourite, the Comma. I love the beautifully sculpted wings. (On Lavender)


A stunning picture of a newly hatched second brood Swallowtail. (On Verbena)


A slightly damaged Swallowtail was around the garden for a week and a half - missing an eye! (on Verbena)


New sighting this year - a Painted Lady. This remarkable butterfly migrates to Africa in the Autumn covering 150km a day and overwinters in Morocco and Mali. (On Lavender)


A Holly Blue (on Aster)

Friday 10 June 2016

The car knows better ....

There are, I once read somewhere, 89 (or maybe it was 106, I forget now) computers on our eight year old Honda. One of them runs a piece of software called TSA and for eight years and 112,000 miles it's done ...... absolutely nothing at all apart from monitor and check and keep an electronic eye on things.

Then, as I gingerly pulled the caravan past a lorry on the A10 Autoroute heading towards Bordeaux a combination of crosswinds and an unstable air flow around the front of the truck caused the caravan to begin to snake alarmingly behind us. It was the most extreme snaking I'd ever experienced and as I reacted in the standard way (foot off the accelerator, damp out the swings with gentle steering) TSA checked whether the car or the caravan was causing the swaying, analysed if it was getting worse, decided it was dangerous, concluded my driving wasn't up to it and something much more significant needed to be done. It engaged the four-wheel drive and began dramatically applying the brakes individually to counteract the snaking, in a couple of seconds things were back to normal. The truck driver spotted the problem and slowed down to let me back across and onto the safety of the hard shoulder (at the noise of the brakes coming on and off we said "Tyre's blown out" to each other at exactly the same time). It hadn't and so after 30 seconds to collect ourselves we headed on again.


TSA has gone back to monitoring, watching and doing nothing until it's needed (hopefully it won't ever get to that again). 

It's a rather strange feeling when your car decides it's a better driver than you are and takes control away from you. In fact distinctly unsettling in hindsight but maybe another reason to buy Honda again ..... 

Aiming to get the CRV past 200,000 miles first before that time comes though.

Wednesday 13 April 2016

View From the Trees

I reported last summer when a fully leafed big bough came down from our big oak right on an area we had been working in the previous week. "Sudden Oak Drop" is the British name for this, in French it's "Une Rupture Estivale" - which sounds both painful and threatening. The fall left a big jagged tear where the branch broke and highlighted the amount of dead wood in the tree canopy so we added this to our mental list of winter tree work. At Claudette's fête last year we had met Aymeric who had recently qualified and set up his own business as a élagueur - a tree surgeon.

There are lots of trees, mostly oaks, on the field boundaries here and late December and January are the times that the farmers maintain them. Tree maintenance French style is rather brutal, the farmers work from a platform mounted on the forks of their tractor and the trees are, if they are lucky, pollarded or, if unlucky, shaved back to a single stem with a comical small bunch of leaf growth left at the top (colloquially known as a sap puller). As with many things in France it makes sense if you know the background to how wood rights worked 200 years ago. The land owner had the rights to the trees and the major branches, the tenants to the forest of thin epicormic growth that the trees sent out in desperation believing that their last days had come (these were cut, bundled together into faggots (fagots in French)).

Real tree surgeons who climb in France are rather rare and often prohibitively expensive - both times previously we had used ex-pats working over here - and so we jumped at the chance to engage someone who lived 500m away from us. I had undertaken to handle the wood once it was cut down so Aymeric could concentrate on the aerial work but, as always, underestimated the mass of timber that comes out of a tree that is being pruned, repaired and crown-lifted. We soon found our élagueur  was a fast worker and quick climber - here he is working in the tall oak that had suffered its rupture estivale: 




And, in this picture, the size and scale of the tree are apparent as Aymeric works at the top.


Our tree surgeon also took some pictures of our property from his lofty perch:



Photo credit Aymeric MARTIN, EURL Les Jardins Suspendus

Back on the ground we took eight days to process the timber that came down in a day and a half of our fast working élagueur.


Thursday 24 March 2016

Not another Sunset

No, it's not.

This time it's a sunrise taken over the Potager:


One of the great things about walking or cycling at the same time every day as we do is that the seasons unfold around you. So in December and January it's dark when we go out and still dark when we get back; February means dark out, light by the time we get back (and a spectacular sunrise over the ridge if we are lucky) but by March it's light when we go out and by the end of the month the sun is up before we go out.

Took this picture on Wednesday as we were leaving.

Tuesday 8 March 2016

A fitting tribute after 80 years



On the end wall of our barn hang three watercolour impressions of French scenes, two are of Caen in Normandy and the other is the Place d'Armes in Calais. They are accurate, well-rendered and warm pictures. Not outstanding art perhaps but very competently painted.

The 1931 painting of Caen Cathedral (which was entirely destroyed during Operation Overlord after the D-Day landings) was bought by a young Barbara at a jumble sale for 2s 6d, the other two I purchased at auction in 2008 for Barbara's birthday.

They were painted by a British artist from North Shields near Newcastle called Victor Noble Rainbird and I've been interested in his life and work since I first came across his pictures. He was a prolific artist and lots of people in his local area seem to have a "Rainbird" on the wall.


Impression Caen 1931 - Victor Noble Rainbird
Hanging at La Basse Cour



Rainbird was talented artist before the Great War and joined up and served in the Northumberland Fusiliers, there's an excellent article about his war service produced by Tyne and Wear Museums at this link.

After the war Rainbird picked up his artistic career and his pictures were exhibited at the Laing Museum in Newcastle, the Walker in Liverpool and the RA in London. He visited Holland and, several times, France and our trio are from his French trips.

It appears that Rainbird used his paintings to pay his way through life and often seems to have produced paintings to settle bar bills or pay for his supper. He died in 1936 at the age of 49 and was buried in an unmarked grave, his estate having insufficient money for a memorial. And there his story rested for 77 years.



Impression of Caen Normandy undated - Victor Noble Rainbird
Hanging at La Basse Cour


Inspired by Rainbird's work a small group led by Dave Young set up the Friends of Victor Noble Rainbird to attempt to provide a permanent memorial to the artist at his burial place in Preston Cemetery. I made a small donation early on to this group but the breakthrough came in 2015 with a popular and successful exhibition of Rainbird's paintings at the Old Low Light Heritage centre in North Shields, donations and profits from sales of prints took the fund past the £5000 target. So, on a cold but sunny day on 8th March, 2016 - eighty years to the day after his death - the permanent memorial to Victor Noble Rainbird was unveiled with appropriate military pomp including the playing of The Last Post.






The Last Post






Chapeau Mr Young! - A good job well done.

All photos credited to Linda M. Kay



Read more here:

The Friends of Victor Noble Rainbird: http://www.victornoblerainbird.com/ 
Victor Noble Rainbird Wiki page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Victor_Noble_Rainbird
From Dark to Light, VNR exhibition at the Old Low Light: http://oldlowlight.co.uk/from-dark-to-light-victor-noble-rainbird/
More about the production of the memorial on Alison Spedding Photography's page: https://speddinga.wordpress.com/

Friday 4 March 2016

New York - 15 of the best

..... pictures from our visit:

Ground Zero - The base of one of the Twin Towers is now a perpetual waterfall

Snow on the walkway by the Hudson River

Hot pretzels in the snow in Central Park

The entrance hall at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

View from the Empire State Building - Hudson River and the West Midtown area of Manhattan

Night view from the Empire State Building looking south to Manhattan


Cable tracery on the Brooklyn Bridge

Central Park and North Manhattan from the Rockefellar Plaza Building

Adam and Charlotte at the top of the Rockefeller Plaza

Walking the HighLine path in Greenwich Village


No caption needed!

The Manhattan skyline from the water

Brooklyn and Manhattan Bridges on the East River

The atrium at Grand Central Station

Central Park Zoo


Sunday 28 February 2016

In a New York State of Mind







I'm not really one for in-flight films, the poor sound quality, small screen and uncomfortable environment don't add to the enjoyment for me. I do like to read the paper, preferably it's a weekend flight as the volume of readable print is much bigger. The Saturday Daily Telegraph used to be good for about 6 hours on the flight to Tokyo (now with it's advertising pull-outs and shrinking news content I doubt it would get past a trip to Athens .....).

So newspapers and music work best for me.

On a recent trip to New York - on a Sunday - I thought it would be a good idea to put together a New York playlist of songs and so as the BA 747-400 rolled down the runway on takeoff I had the opening jazz chords of Billy Joel's New York State of Mind for company.



Other songs on the playlist included:

An Englishman in New York - Sting
First we take Manhattan - Leonard Cohen
Bleeker Street - Simon and Garfunkel
New York, New York - Gerard Kenney
Fairytale of New York - Pogues/ Kirsty McColl
Downtown - Petula Clark
Ellis Island - Mary Black
Honky Tonk Women - Rolling Stones
Leaving New York -REM


Now, here's the strange thing. During the week I repeatedly found myself somewhere in a song title or lyric from my youth. Plenty of Simon and Garfunkel of course (they came from Queens - just over the Brooklyn River) but other stuff as well. In no particular order:

Bleecker Street (Passing through Bleecker Street on the subway)
59th Street Bridge Song (walking along 59th Street at the bottom of Central Park)
At the Zoo (taking the subway to the Zoo in Central Park)
The Boxer (walking up 7th Avenue - listen to the Lyrics)

Image result for simon and garfunkel


It was also a pleasure to mentally re-acquaint myself with the music of Steve Forbert whilst standing in the amazing architectural space of Grand Central Station: Steve Forbert - "Grand Central Station, March 18, 1977


Image result for steve forbert grand central station


I could go on and on; during the week songs from Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Bernstein, The Ramones, Suzanne Vega, Lou Reid, George Gershwin all crossed my path.

Remarkable how one city has inspired so much creative energy.

Saturday 6 February 2016

Linguistic Labours

I'm not sure that some of the guys at the hockey club would agree but my French language has improved in the six years we've been here. I'm past the "what did they say in French; what's that in English; what do I want to say in reply; what's that in French; how do I say that without using the word in French I can't remember?"

One thing that wasn't taught on my language course was how to argue in French. I'm not proficient yet but sometimes I get a good run-up at a row.

After the voltage surge damage we had a company out to assess if the expensive items were repairable. Things didn't look good when it took the repairman 20 minutes to work out how to get into the fridge electronics. He then disappeared with a scrap of paper with part and serial numbers written down. And then nothing .....

So I called his boss who told me he couldn't get the part because the fridge had been bought in the UK: 

"Have you tried Electrolux France, they have the same product with a different part number?"
"I don't get my parts from Electrolux"
"Perhaps that's why you can't find the part then. Britain is in Europe you know, it's not Australia"

I did of course find the part from Electrolux and fitted it myself, the fridge works fine now.

And, of course, Britain is still in Europe as I write this ......

Wednesday 3 February 2016

In between the rain .....

January has been pretty horrible here, dark cloudy skies and several rain days have battered the garden. Blessed with our really free draining soil means that we can get onto the soil pretty quickly after the rain stops.

And in between the rain the daffodils have burst into flower:

 

Thursday 28 January 2016

Lightning doesn't strike twice ...... or does it ..?

When I'm travelling I have two mobiles with me, the U.K. Vodafone one and one on the French Orange Network. Ironically the Vodafone one costs less than the Orange one to send texts in France ......

The French phone is only used to give a contact number to delivery companies, artisans and so on. So messages to it are comparatively rare. The one the weekend before Christmas from Orange was ominous as well as rare - "Due to storms in your area we recommend that you disconnect your Livebox modem". After our experience last summer, when a lightning strike fried our Livebox, our one had been disconnected before we left - so all OK there then. The email I received the next day from Nicole was a bit more worrying: "Did you leave the lights on in your house? They weren't on last night and I seem to remember they were on before." 

Kindly Nicole went in and reset the EDF breaker to restore power, checked our freezers were working and locked up again (in France one subscribes to the supply of a maximum number of kilowatts and there is a main electricity switch in the EDF supply board which trips out if too much power is drawn or there's a major fault somewhere - like a lightning strike).

When we got home ten days later the fridge was a disgusting shade of green and we soon found a number of inoperative electrical devices - fridge, hob extractor, one of the underfloor thermostats, a printer - nine in all. None of the neighbours recall a thunderstorm but some sort of voltage surge had trashed nearly fifteen hundred euros of our electrical equipment.

The insurance company were remarkably sanguine about things, after the June event we knew the drill and had all the purchase receipts ready for sending on to them. As unfortunately one of the damaged items was our printer we had to call in some favours from neighbours to get invoices scanned. As it was the second claim in six months AXA sent in an expert electrical assessor to view the items, and here's where things started to get very - shall we say - French. 

M. Zug the assessor arrived from Lorient 45 minutes early for the appointment, we had all the faulty items laid out ready for inspection with the invoices and receipts. He first spent 20 minutes reading our policy documents and trying to tell me we weren't covered for voltage surge damage; in exasperation I called Karine at the insurance agency. "Pwthhhh - what does he know? Put him on the phone and I'll put him right." was her response. Five minutes of rapid fire French later and M. Zug turned to the matter at hand and consulted our claim list - "Ah yes, a built-in fridge, that's why it's so expensive" was the sum total of his assessment of our claim. He then proceeded to type out the information on our list on his computerised assessment software (with help from me when he couldn't work out euro/pound exchange rates), asked me to agree the final total, told me what I already knew that we had a policy excess and asked me to agree the amount we would receive. No assessment of any kind of the damage, no request to assess if the items were repairable, no questioning of the value of our six year old obsolete printer and no consideration of finding out if the cheap power supply or the actual equipment had failed. Good for us but not sure what value our insurers got from this exercise, 250 kilometres travel and half a day of an electrical expert can't be cheap.

I've more to say about the repair process in a future post or two but, for now and for anyone who doesn't know what a voltage surge can do, here are a couple of pictures of blown components and burnt tracks on the circuit board from the extractor hood:






Wednesday 13 January 2016

Getting a bit fitter with a Fit Bit

Walking Monday 28 December: 3.2 km (Tynemouth Long Sands)
Walking Tuesday: 11.9km
Swimming Wednesday: 1.1km
Walking Wednesday:  9.0km
Swimming Thursday: 1.30km
Walking Thursday (New Year's Eve) 13.1km

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~. 

This is the first post since New Year, during 2015 I recorded manually all the walking, swimming and cycling activities I performed. Unfortunately, being a manual process, I'm a bit backlogged at present so the 2015 cumulative totals will have to wait a little longer.

At Christmas I was given a Fitbit - it's a wearable bracelet like this in case you haven't seen one: 



It's basically an electronic pedometer - a stepcounter - and it uses some data about you to calculate the distance walked and calories consumed throughout the day. It also - rather spookily - measures how long you have slept for and assesses the quality of that sleep. Of course the whole thing operates through an App which enables recording and analysis over time.

So, in the future I'll be relaying FitBit data in the blog. Not sure yet exactly what info I'll track. Here's my  weekly calorie analysis for example: 


I'm also monitoring weight and blood pressure weekly - not a hypochondriac yet but I do believe in getting as sensible amounts of information about the state of my health.