My life in France

A few days ago, I wrote about gadgets & how to break them. Well this afternoon as many will know, Google search stopped working. At the time I was messing about with my other blogs settings & needed to search for the correct spelling of a word, (please excuse any spelling mistakes on this blog) & you know the rest. "This site may harm your computer" was the only result anyone got. My wife said it should say "My husband may harm your computer". But it was nothing to do with me(well not this time). Google have stated on their blog that it was due to a "human error". They receive a list of harmful sites from stopbadware.org to ascertain which sites install malicious software on people's computers and merit a warning. These are then blocked by Google. Unfortunately some "human" at Google told the main program to block everything. The result was that many many blogs all over the world will have spelling mistakes. A spokesperson from Google has stated that "We will carefully investigate this incident and put more robust file checks in place to prevent it from happening again," in layman's terms I think this means the "human" responsible is now another so called victim of the economic downturn.

Cold weather to sweep the UK. That's the headline on the BBC weather website. I'm sure it's going to be, & the wind will sting your ears & cheeks until they feel as if they are going to fall off. It's called a Siberian wind. & surprise surprise it coming from Denmark & Norway & Sweden. It's low pressure arriving via Spain then France and plonking it self right on top of the UK and dragging the cold air in from the east of Europe. So the Daily Mail can spend Saturday complaining about the Spanish, Sunday the French & Monday the Polish.

I take back every thing I said regarding working with my son. He was very willing all day. I won't tell what he was willing to do, but rest assured tomorrow I will take a different approach, & maybe I will still have some tress left in the garden.

OK my internet connection is now back on. My service provider said they received 73593 calls saying they had a problem connecting to the internet, and the problem seems to have come from the exchange just near me. Must have been a problem there end.

I have finally agreed with my wife that I am addicted to gadgets. Before I used to adjust the satellite dish until I had the best signal strength, then I would scan all possible channels to find the most obscure things that we would never watch.

Is it going to be Tuesday morning blues for Barack Obama tomorrow or just another day at the office. I wouldn't look forward to taking over the job of running a country at the moment, given the financial & terror problems.

Toothache? What toothache? Ah yes,the painkillers have numbed the pain and the antib's have finally kicked in....BLISS? Maybe not! So the toothache went, and the headache came. I don't know what my wife puts in the kids dinner, but they descended upon us like a tornado this morning! I am not a morning person and, clearly, neither are they. The eldest first, creating over his school bag he doesn't like, books he's forgotten to prepare, papers he's forgotten to get us to sign, homework he forgot he had and underwear he refuses to change!! And it's all my fault. But he did actually manage to have a little breakfast cereal WITH HIS SUGAR this morning!! Then the twins, (yes I said twins, one of each), were exchanging not so nice words before they even lifted their heads from their pillows and continued all the way to the bus-stop, what happened after that I guess i'll find out at the next parent/teacher meeting. One won't stop talking and the other won't stop trying to stop the other talking, thus begins sibbling war 3. Arguments and tantrums which involve well rehearsed tears and moves such as kicking, pushing, pinching and the odd projectile object! This prompts the dog, convinced it's playtime, to run in circles at 100mph barking mad. All this at 6.30 am, no wonder I've got a headache! It makes a hard days graft seem very appealing....Seriously though, they do make you laugh sometimes. Like the time when there was the tsunami a few years back and whilst watching a news report on the tradegy my daughter piped up: " you don't think we'll get a SALAMI round here , do you?" Or the time when my wife was ironing and my no. 2 son said, sliding his hand accross the ironing board in admiration: "mmmmmm....nice ironing board, mummy!" Or even the time,(winces), we had friends round for drinks....there we were soaking up the evening sun, beer and wine in hand, chatting to our french friends, or rather my wife was, I was struggling, (with my limited french at the time), and answered either "oui", "non" or "une bierre s'il vous plait" to any question they asked! When suddenly, out of the corner of my eye, I noticed no. 1 son approaching, walking like a funky chicken wearing his sisters high heeled boots and tights!! Fortunately our guests had their backs to him, so I slowly edged out of the picture, chased him indoors and ordered him to put on more appropriate clothing, preferably his own! But you know, it's not just kids. My wifes grandma, god rest her soul, was cock sure that she and her husband, god rest his soul too, had been on holiday to EUTHANSIA in their youth! And my mother-in-law who decided to play cat-and-mouse with a car full of young gentlemen on the motorway. All good fun, that is , of course, until they pulled her over for dangerous driving! Yes, you guessed it, they were french gendarmes, (police).....she later remarked that she had wondered why they were all dressed in blue!!I tell you, it's a mad, mad, mad world.

Hi i'm back. I had toothache for three days and being a man this was of course not any normal toothache this was the worst pain any human being had ever experienced. By Sunday morning the left hand side of my head was ready to explode. So first thing Monday morning I was off to the dentist to get it sorted. I was ready for the dentist to remove all the teeth on the left of my mouth if it meant the end to the pain. But unfortunately the French dentist do not believe in anesthetic so therefore the pain she induced was increased to more than just aaaaahhhhhh. And i'm sure she was smiling.

OK OK so they got it right on the meteo (weather) about how cold it would be this morning. -6 degrees here in the Vendee. My day started at 7am when I went out to the boiler room to check on the boiler (no surprises there).

OK today it's cold, & tomorrow it's going to be even colder (the papers say -5) but what can you do.

I was going to say that my car didn't start but in the end it did, without the need to hit it with a branch. But at four o'clock this afternoon my wife was going to get the kids from school and guess what the car would not start. She called me at work and told me. I said "if you go around the back of the house, you will see some old branches" this didn't go down too well. I suggested the AA. This was also a bad move. I think if she could of reach down the phone she would of pulled my balls out via my mouth. As it turned out the kids were already on their way home on the bus because of the snow. I know in the UK a little bit of snow and everything stops, but in France every school and government dept. decide it's time to go home & hit the Bordeaux the moment the first flake hits the ground. This isn't very good for the parents, who then need to rearrange the afternoon to be at home for the kids. But it does then give the French another reason to hate the government and discuss it over breakfast........& lunch.....& dinner the next day. By the way the TV viewing tonight is easy as the kids are tired out, so am I, and I don't give a s**t as I will be outside fixing my wife's car in the snow with a big branch.

Well here we are again. Back to work tomorrow, after almost two weeks off.

Today I think has been the coldest day of the winter. I have shivered all day.

Happy new year to anyone that reads this. I'm not going to write to much as my head still hurts after getting the words to Auld Lang Syne wrong. Also happy new year to all those across the pond who watched the ball drop in Times Square.