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Michelin Green Guide Game

One of the little pleasures of being on holiday in France, aside from the food and the wine, is playing the Michelin Green Guide game. This was made up by my parents when my sister and I were teenagers and we went on family holidays in France. I suspect their ulterior motive was so that my father could get to see as many “worth a detour” sites as possible in his guide book to the area without us girls rebelling! But it was a good way of passing the time around major tourist sites, and Christopher and I kept up the tradition when we holidayed in France.

The rules are quite simple. Points are awarded for every Michelin Green Guide that you spot. For two (or more) players, the first person to spot the guide gets the associated points. If playing on your own, tot up the score per day or per major tourist site. Points are available as follows:

For every Green Guide being carried, or visible within an open bag, score one point;
For every Green Guide being carried with a finger inside it marking the page, score two points;
If someone is consulting the Guide silently, score five points;
If they are reading it aloud to a companion, score ten points.

Only Michelin Green Guides count, not any other guide books – fortunately they’re a distinctive shape and colour which makes them easy to spot. There is an unfortunate side effect that, when playing competitively, there is somewhat of a tendency to “stalk” likely candidates who have their finger marking the page, in the hope that they will decide to read the description aloud so that you can claim the extra eight points! That has got me some funny looks over the years. As has the triumphant loud claiming of “10 o’clock, red shirt, five points!”

For the record, Albi was the surprising winner over the much more touristy Carcassonne. Mostly I think because it was too windy in Carcassonne on Tuesday for many people to read the guide books.

26 05 2014 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Michelin Green Guide Game Permalink

A mediaeval theme park

Carcassonne from the motorway service station

Carcassonne itself was a bit of a disappointment when we went there on the last day of the holiday. For a start, it was almost impossible to photograph. It’s a walled citadel, up on a small hill, but it was very difficult to find a spot from which to take a picture of the whole city. I kept hearing Christopher’s voice in my head, saying in exasperation “The sun’s in the wrong place!”  This snap was taken from the motorway service station on the way back and gives a hazy (literally!) impression of the scale of the site.

The city gates of Carcassonne

Up close, you can see the scale of the fortress, but also some of the problems I had with it. It’s essentially a Victorian fake! Well, that may be a bit harsh. The citadel had fallen into disrepair at the end of the nineteenth century, and there was a plan to demolish it completely. A campaign was started to save it, and it was then very heavily restored, not to say completely re-interpreted, to fit in with late nineteenth century views of what the middle ages should have been like. The pointed roofs are completely wrong – the chief architect came from the Loire Valley, where the chateaux typically have slate roofs like that, so he rebuilt the towers to look like a Loire chateau – despite the fact that it was historically completely wrong for this area!

What you can’t see, because I refused to photograph it, is the completely tacky set of shops lining the main street inside the citadel. It was a total tourist trap! If you wanted to buy a plastic sword and shield, some over-priced foie gras, or some expensive but tatty lace – this was your chance! It was pretty busy when I was there, right at the beginning of the season. According to our guide, by mid-August, there’s a solid mass of humanity trying to fight its way up and down the main street!

I’m really glad I went to Carcassonne, but I will be in no hurry to go back. I’m not keen on blatant tourist traps.

25 05 2014 Gillian Day out
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Scattering the Ashes in Albi

The Cathedral and Bishops' Palace at Albi

The holiday was based in the city (well, largish town) of Albi, about an hour north of Toulouse. It has a UNESCO world-heritage listed historic centre, with the biggest brick-built cathedral in the world. It was an absolute monster of a building, and dominated the countryside for miles around. That was rather the point – it was built as a statement as much of temporal power as of spiritual power, after the end of a particularly unpleasant episode known as the Albigensian Crusade. That was essentially a sectarian war between the Catholics and the Cathars in the south-west of France, which the Catholics comprehensively won. The large brick building right in the centre of the picture, directly in front of the cathedral, is the Bishops’ Palace. Bishops’ Fortress would be closer to the mark – it’s the only bishops’ palace I’ve ever seen that comes complete with arrow-slits!

A view of Albi from the river Tarn in front of the Cathedral

Despite its violent history, the centre of Albi today is a very peaceful place. I found a lovely tranquil spot, directly below the cathedral, from which to scatter some of Christopher’s ashes in the river Tarn. The picture above was taken from the spot – I think he would have approved.

23 05 2014 Gillian Day out
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Carcassonne

When my sister and brother-in-law came to stay a few months ago, they brought with them the card game Carcassonne which they thought I’d enjoy playing. They were right – it was fairly easy to get the hang of, but with subtleties that made it very interesting. I had some beginner’s luck too, which is always a bonus! And, as a completely unexpected side-effect, it reminded me that the town of Carcassonne was on my list of places I wanted to visit, so I started looking into holidays there.

The town is in the far south-west of France, in the foot-hills of the Pyrenees, and is rather difficult to get to, particularly if (like me) one refuses to drive on the “wrong” side of the road. So visiting there as a do-it-myself fly-drive was completely out of the question. A coach tour was the obvious answer, but the first few that I looked at really stung single travellers with a steep supplement. I’m getting rather fed up with being effectively fined for travelling on my own! Then I came across a company called “Just You” which runs coach tours exclusively for singletons. That sounded promising, so I investigated further.

It turns out that they are a new-ish venture for the company that used to be called Page & Moy, who had a solid reputation for mid-price, mid-range, somewhat staid coach tours. I reckoned that they would be unlikely to have metamorphosed into Club 18-30 style hi-jinks, and guessed (correctly) that the clientele would most likely be retired widows and widowers. I didn’t really relish the thought of swapping stories with a whole coach-load of widows, but it had to be said that the itinerary looked interesting and the price was very attractive, with absolutely no single supplement. So with some trepidation I booked the holiday for immediately after my latest bid was due to be submitted, when I knew I’d be badly in need of a holiday.

I’ve just got back today from spending five nights near Toulouse. Photos and a more detailed account will follow in due course. My immediate thoughts are that, as a holiday it was very interesting, but I’m really not sure that I would travel with that company again. I was right to be wary of a coach full of single people of a certain age! I was one of the youngest; most of my fellow passengers retired years ago, and there was at least one great-grandmother. The tour guide was very personable and knowledgeable, and many of the other guests (there were 23 of us in total) were pleasant enough company. But there were a couple of really ghastly, strident women who loved the sound of their own voices and broadcast every tiny thought they had at the top of their voices. I tried very hard to keep away from them, and spent hours on the coach wishing I was better at tongue-binding curses, to shut them up!

Fortunately, the holiday was structured with lots of free time, which suited me well. We met each morning after breakfast for an excursion by coach to somewhere of interest, and then were free to do our own thing once we got there, provided that we met up at the coach at the departure time. So most meals and all visits were independent, and I was able to escape the group for much of the time.

21 05 2014 icyjumbo Day out Comments (1) Permalink

Yet more trouble with Orange

A few months ago, I had a run in with Orange who sent Christopher a letter saying that his price plan was changing. I spent ages on the phone to “Customer Services” who assured me that they would take the necessary action to delete his account.

So I was surprised and very annoyed when I recently received another letter, addressed to him, saying that his price plan was changing! In fact, I saw red! I scrawled over the letter, in big, angry letters:

“Christopher Booth is dead. You were sent his death certificate in September 2010. I spoke to your customer services in February this year and instructed them to delete his account. Delete it forthwith and stop hassling a dead man!”

I then signed it as the executor and returned it to sender. I hope that stops the letters coming at source. I will be very cross indeed if they have to be told a fourth time!

16 05 2014 icyjumbo invective Comments (1) Permalink

Dodgy Electrics

The problem with calling out workmen to fix something in the house, is that they regularly seem to find something else wrong, which is usually more serious and more expensive than the original problem I had them in to fix! The electrician is a case in point. I called him out a few weeks ago when the electric shower in my en-suite failed, which turned out to be fairly simple to fix. But while he was tracing the fault he pointed out that:
1. There was a fuse protecting the circuit, but no RCD trip-switch, unlike the rest of the circuits in the house.
2. The water pipe to the shower was above the main electric isolator switch, with a coupler/joint in the pipe immediately above the switch.
Any leaks (and they are hardly unknown in this house!) would enter the electrics, and without a trip-switch I could have unpleasant complications……..I’ve been in a shower before that went live on me – in a cheap hotel in the south of France – and don’t want to repeat the experience!

Now that I know about the faults, I shall have to get them fixed. But I have to say that I was rather annoyed with the original installers of the shower, the MEB, i.e. Midland Electricity Board, who really should have known better! I had my suspicions at the time that they were taking shortcuts, when they drilled a holed in the wall from the meter box, and went straight through the side of our fridge! We got a new fridge out of them, which massively subsidised the cost of the shower installation.

Work is busy again at the moment, with yet another bid due imminently. However, once that’s submitted I can foresee taking several days off on leave to get work done around the house….l

10 05 2014 icyjumbo house Comments Off on Dodgy Electrics Permalink

A Mysterious Weekend

I met my college friends, Katie and Tom, in Stratford on Saturday afternoon for a Murder Mystery Weekend. This was through a company we’ve not used before, The Killing Game, and the main attraction was that it offered single-night packages. Previously, we’ve been away for a two night murder-mystery break, which was a lot of fun. However, work is so busy at the moment that it would be tricky to find the time or energy for a full weekend. One night, in a comfy hotel within reasonable travelling distance of both of us, seemed a good compromise.

The hotel turned out to be a very interesting 17th century timber-framed building right in the middle of Stratford. I got there early afternoon, and since the others hadn’t arrived yet I went for a stroll around the town. Big mistake – it was absolutely heaving! The weather was glorious, and it felt like every tourist in the Midlands had descended on Stratford. I escaped from the crowds by going into Lakeland, and managed to “accidentally” spend rather a lot of money on kitchenware, which just happened to be on offer. Which would have been fine, except that I’d travelled by train, and now would have to carry home a roasting tin, two heavy baking sheets and some pot-holders……

I thought I’d better go back to my room in the hotel and wait for the others there, before I bought anything else that would need carrying home. Usually on these sort of things I find that the single rooms, despite attracting a supplement, are small, dingy and usually overlooking either the kitchens or the car-park. So I was pleasantly surprised to find that I’d been upgraded to a very pleasant double “Prestige” room, overlooking the gardens, with a complimentary Nespresso machine so I could make myself a decent coffee.

The entertainment kicked off with a cream tea in the hotel ballroom, to introduce us to each other and the characters. The scones, jam and cream were very pleasant, but I was glad that I’d stuck to tea rather than anything harder, as the gin’n’tonic was clearly poisoned! One of the characters collapsed and died in front of us – but Whodunnit? Unfortunately, my main suspect only made it as far as coffee after dinner, before being found stabbed in the hallway!

There were probably about 50 or so guests attending the event, and we’d all been given part of the back-story with our joining instructions, but had to talk to each other to find out the missing pieces. The cast was very good at moving from table to table between courses, so that everyone got a chance to quiz them informally. On top of that, they kept staging arguments / conversations with each other at various times through the evening during which vital clues were revealed. However, the plot was very convoluted, and of course everyone had a motive for murder!

A further murder happened after breakfast on Sunday, and then we had to write down our best guess as to who did it, including motive, means and opportunity. There was then the big reveal, when the (remaining!) cast members explained what had actually been going on, who did what, and why. I got about a third of it right, Tom and Katie did rather better, getting two-thirds right. But the other couple on our table won the prize (a bottle of fizz) for getting the closest answer.

All in all it was a lot of fun – a very enjoyable way of spending a weekend.

05 05 2014 Gillian Day out Comments Off on A Mysterious Weekend Permalink

A Week of Workmen

It’s been a busy week, with more than its fair share of workmen – and it’s only Wednesday!

My regular, non-emergency, and reasonably-priced plumber is back. He came round on Monday morning to try to fix a dripping cistern in the bathroom. The toilet has been getting tricky to flush, and the cistern doesn’t seem to re-fill properly, meaning that there’s an annoying constant trickling sound. I have to take the lid off the cistern and fiddle around with the ball-cock to get it to stop dripping, which is clearly sub-optimal. I wasn’t prepared to pay the extortionate hourly rate of the emergency plumber to fix it, but it was getting really annoying, so I asked my regular guy to have a look. He’s replaced some parts, and it’s definitely better than it was. But I’m not convinced it’s completely fixed.

This morning my gardener was here doing his regular stint of weeding and pruning. He’d blocked my car in with his van, so I needed him to move it so that I could get out to go to work. But I couldn’t see him. Eventually, I found him half way up one of the terraces, standing on a narrow ledge, weeding the one remaining area of concrete blocks behind the extension. I politely asked him to move his van for a minute so that I could get off the drive, at which point he confessed that there was a problem. He was stuck up there! He’d climbed up using some handy footholds in the Malvern stone wall, but wasn’t at all confident about getting down again! Would I mind awfully fetching a ladder so that he could climb down?!

I had every sympathy, as that happened to me years ago. I’d climbed up there in a fit of enthusiasm to do some weeding, got stuck, and had to shout loudly for Christopher to move the ladder and help me down. I seem to remember that he was inside watching the TV at the time, so I was stuck up there for quite a while! In fact, that episode was a determining factor in us deciding to get a gardener in, rather than trying to do it all ourselves. So I fetched the step ladder for the gardener and made sure he got down safely…..

This evening I had a visit from what I hope is the last workman of the week. I’ve got yet another leak in the roof – only a few weeks after getting the last one fixed. I can understand and even accept it when I get a leak in the part of the roof that’s well over 100 years old. That’s really only to be expected, despite my attempts at ongoing maintenance. But this leak is in the extension, which is less than six years old and really shouldn’t be causing me problems. And yet there is a rather nasty stain which has recently appeared, corresponding to one of the valleys to the side of the big dormer window. The builder came around to have a good look, and decided the roof was largely sound, with the leak being due to an unfortunate combination of wind direction and driving rain forcing the water up into a narrow gap under one of the tiles. It should only be an hour’s job for his roofer to extend the lead work and re-set the offending tile. But then I’ll have to get the inside repainted to cover up the stain.

I can sometimes see the attraction of renting, when all the household maintenance is the landlord’s problem! As it is, it’s down to me to keep on top of it all – and that feels like quite a challenge on occasions.

30 04 2014 icyjumbo garden
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The Play That Goes Wrong

On Saturday afternoon I went to the matinée of the current play that’s on at Malvern Theatres. It was on at the Edinburgh Festival, then in the West End, and now seems to be on tour. It’s called The Play That Goes Wrong and is effectively a farce, so I really should have known better.

The plot, such as it is, involves the Cornley Polytechnic Drama Society putting on an over-ambitious staging of a 1920s murder mystery, Murder at Haversham Manor. Everything that could possibly go wrong does so – actors forget their lines, props are mislaid, the set collapses around them, several of the cast members are knocked unconscious, the dog runs away, stage hands are roped in to play leading roles – you name it, it happens. And of course, being a farce, several people end up hiding in a wardrobe – or rather, within the case of a Grandfather Clock.

It was yet another example of the genre where fairly good actors pretend to be really crap amateur actors – except in this case the plot was so thin that none of them actually got to show off any genuine acting skills. In fact, the most genuine dramatic moment of the afternoon was when I was queuing for an ice cream in the interval, and they ran out of my favourite Honey & Ginger flavour, so I had to choose Devon Toffee instead!

It was total and utter crap – with the saving grace that it was actually laugh-out-loud funny. I very nearly walked out at the interval, but decided to stay to see if my predictions about which bit of the set would collapse next were accurate. They were.

Thank goodness I only went to the matinée, and only bought a cheap seat to boot. I’d have been really fed up if I’d paid top price and given up an evening for such rubbish. As it was it was quite a cheerful, and extremely undemanding, way of spending an afternoon. And the ice-cream was nice!

26 04 2014 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on The Play That Goes Wrong Permalink

Vikings: Live

The British Museum has one of its so-called “Blockbuster” exhibitions on at the moment, about the Vikings. It’s had some pretty good write-ups in the press, all concentrating on the central exhibit, the remains of a full-sized Viking longship. My parents have both visited the exhibition, but were somewhat underwhelmed – they said that the longship is mostly a metal skeleton housing just a few surviving planks; some of the gold is exquisite but quite poorly displayed; and the exhibition is so crowded that it’s very difficult to see things properly.

I had intended to make a trip down to London to see it for myself, but their reports put me off and I decided to give it a miss. However, my mother then told me that she’d read that the museum was doing a special viewing of the exhibition that would be broadcast live in HD to theatres and cinemas all over the country. One of the selected locations was Malvern, so I bought myself a ticket for a virtual private viewing at the theatre. At only £12 it was far cheaper than a train ticket to London, plus one was guaranteed a good view of the exhibits, with no need to queue, barge or use one’s elbows!

The screening was this evening, and was hosted by Michael Wood and Bettany Hughes, both professional broadcasters and historians, supported by a host of curators, academics and re-enactors. I used to have a real crush on Michael Wood when I was a teenager, but unfortunately age has overtaken him and he is no longer anywhere near as dishy as he used to be! I remember that one newspaper review back in the 1980’s described him as “callipygean”, but unfortunately his “beautiful buttocks” have become distinctly saggy over the intervening decades! The sex appeal mantle though was enthusiastically taken up by Bettany Hughes, all heaving décolletage, fluttering eyelashes, and knee-high boots.

I found the content of the broadcast to be disappointingly superficial. It was very professionally done, and I suppose they had to cater to a mass audience, but they spent far too much time re-enacting a Viking ship burial in the grounds of the museum, and not enough time actually showing us the objects in the exhibition. The Vikings aren’t really my period – I lose interest in history pretty much with the Fall of Rome – but even so I don’t think I actually learnt anything. Some of the gold and silver was absolutely beautiful, and it was really good to see it projected in HD, but I would have liked to have seen more of the artefacts and heard a bit more about their provenance and what they tell us about the Viking era.

All in all it was a good way to spend an evening, if only to confirm my view that it’s not worth making a special trip to London to see the exhibition for myself. I think it’s a very good idea for the British Museum to do outreach to the provinces, so that more people can get to appreciate the big exhibitions. It’s just a pity that the high-powered academics they had on-tap had to dumb their messages down so much for a mass audience.

24 04 2014 icyjumbo Day out Comments Off on Vikings: Live Permalink