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STILL HANGING OUT IN THE PETITE CAMARGUE!
http://www.premiermarinas.com Looking for U.K. South Coast marina's? These people may be o.k.! 13th January 2009 Hot News! Snow in Aigues-Mortes! Unbelievable but true! I looked away from the day's TV screening of “Aerobics Oz Style”…life’s simple pleasures…and blow me it was precipitating outside. It only lasted 48 hours, and hopefully that is it for the winter. We continue to have freezing nights and pleasant days.
Today's Barbie is cancelled! I continue to watch in horror as our political pygmies strut the world stage, and the UK economy goes to hell in a handcart. Fortunately Andy Murray is standing up to the plate. His latest makeover has him looking uncannily like a young Charlton Heston. His new managing agents are allegedly aiming at earnings of 100 million for him. Unless you are named Kaka, not bad if you can get it! But the lad does have talent! 
"Prince William in a helicopter? I am going to catch the sucker! Stage left Bobo "No way Hosaay!"  
Espiguette again! 14th February 2009 After inches of rain, and howling winds that swung around the compass, the waters of Aigues-Mortes finally burst their banks. Only by a few inches on our mooring, but enough to inconvenience the cats. It was lapping around the base of our electrics, but never to the point of shorting out the supply! Flooding rarely happens in Aigues-Mortes these days, but like crashing stock markets, statistically possible! I felt that it had more to do with VNF knob twiddling at the St Gilles Ecluse combined with a spring tide rather than local water run-off. 
Within hours the water was over the edge!
Our Belgian Barge fenders are ideal in these curcumstances. However if your are anal about your paintwork, they are not for you!
...The trouble with balloon fenders is that just when it matters they tend to pop out! The locals were hanging discarded tyres over the edge, although as I recall from somewher they are actually illegal in France...where they can finsish up jamming lock gates. My Yokoham fenders are the answer, (Top right) but they do need craning into the water. They are good for about a foot over the edge, but after that it is drop anchors' time!
All the rain allowed me to finally track down a mystery leak source to where the base of the wheelhouse rests on it’s supporting steelwork. Despite a wooden overhang and a space of only a millimetre, water was finding it’s way in by capillary action. We did not seal this gap originally because the plan was that the wheelhouse could be easily craned off to provide complete access to the engine room. This is something that statistically we are unlikely to do. Since I applied a bead of bathroom silicone sealant into the gap, water ingress is over! So no more water splattering over the engine room’s main fuse box! I passed the time during the week watching the British Treasury Committee grilling the former executives of The Royal Bank of Scotland and HBOS (Halifax Building Society and Bank of Scotland..for those who are not familiar with the UK, the Halifax is by far and away the largest British Building Society and even now a net worth greater than the whole of the GDP of the United Kingdom!). The CEO’s were wearing their finest hair shirts. When it comes to hypocrisy the British are in class of their own! These chief executives, who have pointedly crashed and burned, have all been earning less than several Premier League Footballers. The fact is that, when the music stopped, they were the poor sods left holding the parcel. Naturally all the disastrous decisions that they made were cheered on by the Bank’s greedy shareholders, and if they had not of made the disastrous moves, there would have been a different set of faces getting hammered today! Being criticised by featherbedded politicians with tax free expense accounts larger than their salaries and final salary pensions setup at tax payers’ expense does seem a bit rich. I really should not get going on Obama again. If a new Republican President’s first three appointments had not paid their taxes, you would never have heard the end of it. Despite their huge majority in the upper houses, the Democrats have already starting fighting amongst themselves. It is a traditional pork barrel..sorry “earmark”..shambles! I still cannot forget the Presidential Candidates’ separate appearances on the US TV program “The View”. Question to McCain, “Are you too old to be President?”. Question to Obama, “Is it true that you are related to Brad Pitt?”. By the six degrees of separation, I hereby announce that I am related to Mother Theresa! 
I awoke this morning to catch the local fisherman netting off the waters around us. He caught only three foot long mullet, and looked fairly depressed. I could not help thinking that those mullet will soon have to feed the ship's crew rather nicely. I was pleased to note that following this winters bunny Killing Field's, there are signs of life around the warrens. God know's how? So much lead was expended in the vicinity of Saul Nomad, I am amazed any survived. I must dust off my scoped air-rifle!
26th February 2009 There has been lots of letter writing going on in Aigues-Mortes these last few weeks. The sender is someone called Jean Spalma who calls himself “Le President du Conseil d’Exploitation des Portes”. So a very big knob indeed! Not only have I been on the receiving end, but copies have gone not only to Monsieur le President de la CCTC, but Madame la DGS! First of all there was a letter announcing a 20% increase in mooring fees plus an additional 25% for livaboards. As someone who is wondering what to do once my last five euro note is spent, this is bad news. Fortunately the French batelliers have risen as one, and the 25% has been temporarily kicked into the bullrushes. 20% is still not particularly welcome.
Letter number two is that there should be no more than one electrical connection to the shore per boat. This one is a bit rich, as you will be well aware, I have had my reservations about the Port’s electrical supply for some time. Saul Nomad requires 2 x 16 amp feeds. This should not be two much of a difficulty, as even the most basic modern caravan is fitted with a 16 amp input, and most of the thousands of European caravan sites offer a sixteen amp supply. Not only has our quay had their sixteen amp breakers substituted with ten amp breakers between me signing the contract and my arrival. Unfortunately after rereading my contract I noticed that any reference to amperage had been conveniently left out! This is not pie in the sky, as subsequently the Harbourmaster freely admitted that sadly it had happened! If one takes into account that we rarely get even 230 Volts, you will not be surprised to here that the shore breaker tends to trip out around 7 amps….ie not very much. Best to switch the lights off if you wish to boil a kettle. Low Voltage produces “Brownouts”…an example is when you switch on your washing machine, your ceiling lights dim! Brownouts are lethal for computers. Worse than the voltage spikes that we buy surge protectors for. Like most bits of modern equipment with 100,000 Euros worth of electrics, Saul Nomad is filled with computers. If you always switched your computer off by pulling the plug out of the wall, you would not be surprised if your PC tossed in it’s keyboard sooner rather than later and took the fast track to that skip in the sky. Letter number three was about anything lying on the quay next to the boat. Got to hold my hands up to that one! Under l‘article 33 “Depot de materiel ou de materiaux de quelque nature que ce soit” is verboten! It does not mention that if the material happens to be a Flymo that I keep the grassed part of the quay trimmed with, it’s ok. In three years I have yet to witness any attempt by the Port to cut the grass. I put the problem down to democracy. A new political team has recently arrived at the town hall, and like all politicians, they have hit the ground running. Local gossip says that there has also been a previous mysterious disappearance of somewhere between 400,000 and 1,400,00 euros from the city’s accounts, and it looks like the batelliers are in the frame to make up the deficit! According to local mythology it is the Brits and the Dutch who are at fault. However there are less than ten British boats in the port , and the Dutch only winter here. The vast bulk of the residents are French, so we can soon expect to watch the sparks fly! Qtyuippppppppppppppp xx. Ginger has just signed off this piece by walking across the keyboard. “Fifteen Dinners” is his official pedigree name, but it is a tricky one to call out at dead of night. Regular use of it might occasion yet another shipboard visit from the people in white coats! It also makes it sound like he is some sort of native American, whereas we all know that it was the Dijon woods that did not cut the mustard for him! I spotted this rather interesting article, that you wish to pass the time reading! Why Beans Make You Fart by Adam Hart-Davis
The 16th-century theologian Martin Luther boasted that he could drive away the evil spirit with a single fart. Just imagine what he could have done after a whole plate of beans. But where does this bean-power come from?
Farts have been called belches lost to posterity, but belches or burps are sometimes caused by swallowed air, while farts are bubbles of gas produced by bacteria in the large intestine, or colon. Kids classify them—noisy smelly, silent deadly, and so on. There is a real medical term for farts, however: "flatus" (rhymes with "hate us"), and flatulent describes both a person who farts a lot and food such as beans that tends to produce farts.
Everyone farts. Most people fart gently every now and then, producing between 10 and 40 ml of gas per hour, but some people fart much more than this, and farts are enormously increased by particular foods, including onions, cabbage, and especially beans.
Fart production
Much of the food we can digest is made of proteins and carbohydrates, especially complex sugars, or polysaccharides. The polysaccharides are broken down by enzymes in the gut into oligosaccharides and then into simple sugar molecules, which are absorbed into the bloodstream and provide energy for the muscles.
However, beans contain three rogue oligosaccharides—raffinose, stachyose and verbascose—which humans cannot digest, because we lack the necessary enzyme, a-D-galactopyranosidase. These three rogues therefore go right through into the colon, where they are chewed up by bacteria, producing the gases hydrogen, nitrogen and carbon dioxide. Some people—about one in four—also produce methane, but most of us don't.
Smell
The smell of farts is partly due to traces of indole and scatole, but mainly the result of various sulphur compounds produced as by-products alongside the hydrogen and carbon dioxide. When you hold a fart in, the gases are absorbed into the bloodstream, and the hydrogen can be detected in your breath, but luckily the smell does not get through.
Research
At a New York farting conference, a doctor described how volunteers had sat for hours with perforated rubber tubing inserted into their rectums to collect the farts, which were then analysed for quantity and composition. On a base diet they produced an average of 15 ml of gases per hour, mainly nitrogen and hydrogen, but a few hours after a meal of pork and beans the rate went up by a factor of 12 to an average of 176 ml an hour, and the farts contained masses of carbon dioxide as well.
There is great variation between people; some produce up to 500 ml per hour after eating beans.
The doctor also found that farting was greatly increased by stress. The volunteers farted much more when they sat with their rubber tubes in a passage in an open lab than when they were in a comfortable room with armchairs and a TV set.
Other foods
Some people fart a lot after consuming dairy products; one flatulent man went to his doctor and eventually discovered he could not digest lactose, the main sugar in milk. When he eliminated dairy foods from his diet his farting returned to normal. For other people, sweet biscuits produce an immediate effect. If your farting bothers you, try varying what you eat and see what happens.
Prevention
You can prevent farting when you eat beans by consuming with them some of that missing enzyme, which is marketed in the UK as Ido-air, and in the US as Beano. Eat a Beano tablet first, or sprinkle a drop or two on your food, and (so they claim) the farts will not come. "Now you can have peas and quiet" says their advertisement—and for a promotion they once produced a lightweight nylon jacket—a Beano windbreaker.
In her excellent Bean Book, cookery writer Rose Elliott suggests par-boiling the beans, thoroughly rinsing with cold water, and then simmering until done, but it's hard to see how this will remove those rogue oligosaccharides. Collect Your Own If you really want to find out how much you fart after a meal of beans, take a bath a few hours later, and take into the bath a small empty plastic bottle. Fill the bottle with water, hold it upside down, keeping the open end under the surface so that it stays full of water, and pull it up between your legs so that when you fart, the gases bubble up into the bottle. Can you beat 250 ml?
If you don’t want to stop eating beans, but find all this flatulence rather embarrassing, then just remember that you’re not alone—everyone does it. Edward de Vere, Earl of Oxford farted loudly as he bowed to Queen Elizabeth I, and was so ashamed that he travelled abroad for seven years. When he returned to her majesty's presence, however, the first thing she said was "My Lord, I had forgot the fart."
In conclusion, it is not all hot air on this website!
...Water quality is what matters! 6th March 2009 Another week bites the dust. The dogs had been starting to pant continuously, and although there have been a few signs that things are beginning to warm up…although the frosts have appear to have ended…I thought it time for their first “coup Camarguese” of the season. I am pleased to advise you that the haircut has cured the panting, and put the spring back into their step! Meanwhile there is a black fur Sargasso floating in the harbour. Hopefully it will be utilised by the waterfowl to line their nests. I have very little to report. Aigues-Mortes is still asleep. Even after “Les Bleus” had crushed the all conquering Welsh Rugby Team last Friday Night there was silence. With France as my second team, I had rushed up on deck, ready to fire a rocket and lean on the ship’s siren. However it was clear that I might wake the dead, and I returned to my solitary celebrations. Most of the Brits say they are financially embarrassed. Things are so bad, that many say they are cutting back on their drinking! It is depressing to think they have so little to interest them! Our monocular Scottish leader has addressed Congress in a Political Love-in. He offered a Knighthood to the aging Senatorial life-guard from Martha’s Vineyard. Some Labour Government’s spin doctors tell us that there were as many as twenty one standing ovations…perhaps representing Mary Kopeckny’s age at the time of her drowning! Naturally our dear leader was too luvvy to repeat his regular mantra that the global credit crunch is down to the Americans! OOOH! I am a Bitch! We are taking a few bookings for our Bed and Breakfast service, but a very long way from a living wage just yet! Encouraging none the less, but it is tough being a capitalist at the moment. (Should insert "trying to be.." somewhere in there!) 12th March 2009 Yesterday we have had the pleasure of old friends Jean and Claudette Brancion dropping by, sporting their new Campervan. We had a pleasant evening washing local Oysters down with Champagne. Life is a struggle! As an unrequited camper, it was a real treat to get shown round a state of the art bit of kit. I know that Jeremy Clarkson is probably harrumphing in the back ground, but nowadays campervans are no slouches. They are not cheap either. We are talking 60,000 euros for this particular model. I have always maintained that whereas the Brit’s buy boats, the French love their luxury campervans. In September the Brancions are going to tour the UK right up to Scotland, which should be a piece of cake for retired HGV driver Jean. 
The weather continues to be mild, and I have started to strip the old varnish of the main hatch…as the finish has disintegrated over the winter. The wheel house has survived the freeze pretty well, but that is what sixteen coats of properly applied varnish does for you. 18th March 2009 I am sad to report that since my last report, Lulu (the 8 3/4 year old Newfie) has died following a short illness. The post mortem says that her Kidneys were very small, and were finally wiped out by two tumors. It is some consolation that there was nothing we could have done, but I will miss her loving slobber! Quite a blow! Erin continues to stagger on, and is the equivalent of 120 human years old! 31st March 2009 This maybe the last diary entry for the immediate future, as I am afraid that I cannot afford to pay for this free site. I have had great fun keeping it up to-date with all our nonsense. I always thought it was a kind of Blog, but I now realise that it was probably early twit! The weather has sharply improved over the last week, apart from this weekend, when we had continuous rain. Nothing to do with announcing that Sunday would be our first ASUPAM BBQ of the season! Quelle surprise, I was reduced to watching sport. Yo Gloster, who hammered Wales (The Ospreys with eleven welsh internationals), and the Dark Blues who rowed over Cambridge. In fairness it appears that apart from the necessary A-levels, another way to get on the revered Cowley Awareness course is to be the holder of an Olympic or equivalent medal! ...and Andy Murray marches on! Politically the word is hard! We now know that Hard times require Hard Porn! It is no secret that I hold Jackie “Spliff” Smith in disregard. Included in our bumbling Home Secretary’s various briefs is Crime…which last time I looked included pornography, fraud and obtaining money by false pretences! I have always thought that our honourable member’s frazzled appearances in front of the TV camera’s was down to the fact that she had spent the night in her sister’s luxury broom cupboard. We now know that she may have been suffering from the secondary outcomes of “Eviscerate the Electorate” and “Piss on the People”. It may be somewhat hypocritical for me to complain about anyone abusing themselves, but charging it up to the public purse is off the scale. I can also imagine that Labour’s spin masters are already conducting yet another forensic examination of the opposition parties’ expenses…no bad thing either. 17th April. For some unknown reason I was delighted to see that www.saulnomad.com is still operational. Normally I would have some little gem prepared to upload, but in this instance I have been caught short. However in the event that mein webhost remains asleep at the wheel, I will endeavour to come up with some inconsequential pearls of wisdom! 20th April 2009 … the news according to Saul Nomad! Sporting wise it has been footy, footy and footy…oh and Formula 1 Motor Sport and of course Andy Murray marching on to the Monte Carlo semi-final where he was Nadal’d. The Chelsea v’s Liverpool semi-final took attacking football to a new level, and brought me as close to an heart attack as anything in recent times. Formula 1 goes from disciplinary to appeal and back…quelle surprise. Poor old Ron Dennis has taken gardening leave from Mclaren F1 motor racing before his old adversary “Nazi Whiplash” Mosley drives him out for Corporate fibbing. It is better than any TV Soap! The new mooring contracts have been drawn up by Aigues-Mortes, and offered on a “take it or you leave us” basis. After the ineffectual revolt of the French Bateliers, the Port Authorities have declared Aigues-Mortes a “port maritime” and employed lawyers. The legal ramifications are several and in a few instances could be construed as legally unfair….like absolving the Port from any financial or legal responsibility for damaging our boats! That should be an interesting one for my “learned friends” representing Lloyd’s of London. Quite legally there is the banning of boats without black water holding tanks for anyone wishing to spend more than twenty days aboard annually. We all know that this has been European law for years, but as far as I can ascertain it has been largely ignored in France. It requires a pump out facility in the port..which they admit is not likely to arrive until next year! On my travels through France, I have come across barely a handful of Pump Outs anywhere. Clearly the millions of Euros that Brussels annually pays to VNF has not been spent on Pump Out stations. The law does not affect Saul Nomad, because we have excessive black and grey capacity thanks to Lee Sanitation. In the short term at dead of night, we can still send “petites cadeaux” floating down on the ebb tide for the benefit of the shellfish industry of Grau du Roi. In the future, it will affect the older boats, who were built pre-holding tank. If only I had had the foresight to have more fresh water capacity than 2350 litres, which for our four showers and on board laundry and dishwasher has proved inadequate. The Indesit dishwasher is currently hors-de-combat with what it’s onboard computer insists is a faulty thermostat. This is where a British five year manufacturer’s warranty has not proved good value. Indesit have been generally unhelpful, and last time I looked they have gone bust anyway. After several hours I had the whole machine apart and stared at it unsuccessfully. This was no mean feat, as the setup was complexly and beautifully built under the galley worktop by Nielsen’s. As a warning to fellow Mr Fixits, the machine’s capacitor was still holding a charge after it had been disconnected from the mains for several hours. I had a washing machine capacitor shock about fifteen years ago, and once experienced...and if you are lucky to survive, never forgotten! The Port’s insistence of the year’s rental upfront is pretty tricky in these straightened times. Not for the first time, the global credit crunch appears to have gone over these Public Servant’s heads. On the gossip front, The Capitainerie are asking for the money in cash or cheques (made out to the Tresor Public) but given directly to them…and not to the Tresor. I am given to understand that in the last few years, a serious amount of money from the Port has gone missing within the Town’s treasury. In my case I was still on the Tresor’s defaulters list in April 2009, when my Tresor payment receipt was dated end February! Last year the Tresor forbade the Capitainerie from collecting any payments. Of course it could have all been an accounting error, but it is all food for conjecture! The varnishing of the glazed timber hatch over the saloon proceeds apace. It is not perfect but ten coats of saturator and hard coat glossy varnish is showing results. Just as I was beginning to get the surrounding grassed areas looking good, the four year old Flymo has crashed and burned literally. It looks like it is the carbon brushes, and they seem fairly tricky to replace. A new motor package is around £35. I have always reckoned that Flymos are priced on a disposable basis, and sadly I may have no alternative but to flash the cash. Watch this space! The cats have discovered that the spring crop of baby bunnies and young snakes are an easy catch and are more fun than a tin of Kit-e-Kat. You cannot chase, catch and torment a tin. In the last week I have saved four of the rabbits and two of the snakes. The prospect of finding an angry and frightened Montpellier Serpent on my pillow is not a my first choice. Despite a winter of shotgun murder and mayhem in Bunny world, I have never seen so many rabbits bouncing around the fields. The chasseurs were either very bad shots, or these French bucks are particularly virile! I have had to accept the real politique of the animal world, and take a more relaxed view. For every victim I have saved, the felines have just gone out and caught another! You can always tell who has breakfasted sumptuously, as they are unable to curl up and have to lie down in a straight line for several hours! Erin continues to stagger on. Her life has steadied since Lulu’s departure, and if anything she has put on a little weight. This is probably because she can return to her food bowl during the day, and not find it hoovered by her late younger cousin. I see that the family in the Whitehouse has been given a Portuguese Waterdog/Water Spaniel by Senator Edward Kennedy. The Portuguese is allegedly a close relative of the Newfoundland…both having webbed feet and that distinct stepped forehead. How apt that the sole survivor of Chappaquiddick now breeds waterdogs! Regrettably I may have to eat my beret over Hilary Clinton, who is giving indications of turning into a class act! Whitewater and the Foster suicide are but distant memories. Obama is still walking on the water. Long may he keep floating! Plenty of time to go yet for it to turn out that he has been banging one of the interns or some such! Easter has come and gone, and the weather was unpredictable as ever. Bedraggled campervanners hung on grimly, but by Sunday afternoon many had folded up their parapluies and headed north. I do feel sorry for them all, because after so much eager anticipation, the yearly retreat back to the office next week must be depressing. Thanks goodness May 1st is not too far away! I was watching yet another documentary on the Titanic over the weekend. It was made last year, and concentrated on the amount of human error involved...and there was plenty. One statistic that came out which passed without comment, was the fact that in 2008 the number of icebergs in that part of the North Atlantic was excessively high at 300 positively identified. “Global warning”, I hear some cry! Interestingly the last time the iceberg count was this high was 1912, the year that the Titanic sank. It is possible that without the benefit of modern weather satellites, there were even more out there in 1912. Without wishing to offend even more people, I make no further comment! 5th May 2009 Another week has slid by. The weather remains unsettled, and one begins to wonder if summer is ever going to kick off. Having got to the hard varnishing stage on the glazed hatch, things have gone quiet since we had applied the ninth coat. I am sure that all this varnishing news is tedious, but unless you are own a “plastic fantastic”, preserving external wood work is a fact of life. In the meantime, the new Flymo is transforming the grass. Not quite Wentworth, but “pitch and putt” quality at the very least! The Fridge freezer began acting up, and looked like it was losing the will to chill. I have been there before, and hauling the unit out of its snug space, confirmed that the 4” extraction fan which ventilates the space behind the fridge and which was replaced only last year had given up the ghost. Can I find the receipt? Like hell! Then my trusty Kef Home Theatre System crashed and burned literally. An internal inspection found that one of the four capacitors had exploded and taken one of the main PCB’s with it. This one is definitely beyond my budget, and the system has been disconnected and put into storage. You may wonder “so what”, but with over 1000 DVD’s in my collection it is a bit inconvenient! Erin has giving me cause for concern, as she seems to get more doddery by the week. As anyone who has a much loved pet on their hands, what to do about it is a tricky question. I have always taken the view that whilst your pet still asks for dinner, and her digestive system passes the food through her body in the normal way, then we keep going. A visit to the vet last week elicited the advice that there was little he could do which would not do more harm than good! She has got arthritis. Not surprising as she has passed 120 in human years. Her back legs alternate between stiff and wobbly, but she when she tips over, her expression is merely “Oh! Bother!”. I had the long awaited visit from the Port electrician today. I could tell from the eye popping raised voice that he was not impressed with my jury rigged shore connection! However as I could not understand a word of it, I was hardly able to take offence. If I had had more than my normal mangled franglais, I would have politely asked him what he would have done if the electrics at his own home had been “off” since last September. Part of my week was spent wondering what the media would have reported if George “Dubya” had asked the pilot of “Airforce One” to give him just one more view of the Statue of Liberty. The other part was being awestruck by the astonishing ineptitude of our British or more accurately “Scottish” government. “Just bring on the swine fever”, I say. Note to editor: Bets are being taken as to whether Mike Waspe will be the first person in Ipswich to be struck down by H1N1! We checked yesterday, and found him in bed with a hangover, so he is still functioning normally! I must confess every time I wake up with an headache, I wonder whether this is it…until I recall the number of Gin and Italians that I had consumed the previous evening! “Blackie” picked a bad time yesterday for one of his periodical “man overboards”. It coincided with a large spill of what appeared to be an hydraulic oil spill. It has been a bugger to get off. Much harder than diesel. I have had to give up on the normal pet shampoos, as he still looked like the brylcreem kid. I eventually resorted to eco-detergent whilst holding him down in the kitchen sink. Gratitude was there none, and he has legged it off into the marette. He has not returned at the time of writing, which is some cause for concern. I hope that once hunger pangs kick in, he will forgive me! It is a funny thing about oil spills, as one’s first reaction is make sure it is not yours...and if it is to prepare your cover story as quickly as possible. It was'nt us! On Saturday I joined Davide on Kara for a seafood lunch. Charles from Nixa-Palma came too. I ate far too many oysters, and was later reminded of it later that day! Davide is a generous host and a former professional photographer...specialising in the music industry, with a number of books to his credit. He told this funny story about when he was photographing Kiki Dee. Sporting three Leica's around his neck, he began jumping around getting the best angles. Sporting three Leicas is always definitely "Cool". Kiki was clearly getting very amused, and in the end she could contain herself no longer. "It would help if you removed the lens cap!" she helpfully suggested! Collapse of stout party! 
Sitting on kara's flybridge, and feeling like master's of the universe! Well almost!
11th May 2009 Some of you will be sorry to hear that I have managed to get the resources in place to continue with this website…i.e. cash! I can now continue in my role as “the” Captain Pugwash of Aigues-Mortes. Not that there are not already several worthy candidates for my position in “Dead Waters”, Brits as usual….but we are an island nation where even the most dedicated landlubber feels that seawater runs through his veins! On the whole the Dutch do not go down this road, and always seem uber realistic to me. Probably as most of the roads in the Netherlands are technically already under water. The Hollandaise Bateliers are notorious for finding moorings where the facilities are “very good value“, and occupying them en masse. A Dutch friend recently told me that the Dutch are just like the Scots, but with the generosity bred out of them! What can I say? The Royal Bank of Scotland certainly may have some unprintable thoughts along these lines after their unfortunate purchase of ABN Amro. Aigues-Mortes has always been the preferred wintering hole for a flotilla of Netherlanders. This week the powers that be in Aigues-Mortes, have announced that 2009/2010 winter rates are immediately doubled…which brings them up to the summer rate. That makes sense to me, as although the Capitainerie opens only four and a half days a week, the electricity usage shoots up…and that is a serious overhead for the Port. Saul Nomad is too big to rely totally on electrical heating based on the ten amp supply, but all the fifteen meter boats get along fine on it. I supplement the heat with two oil heaters…the larger chucks out 4.5 kilowatts which can cope with freezing weather. The snag is that heating oil is a minimum of one euro a litre, and we go through twenty litres a week in cold weather. I have been on an “Electricity extra” regime, and that can seriously blow a live-aboard budget. At St Jean-de-Losne, our electricity account was higher than the mooring fee! However this local price increase will no doubt cause alarm and consternation! It underlines the problem for any boat live-aboard that one is beholden to Port decisions. I am told that some boat people are consulting “M’Learned friends”. I cannot see how they are going to get satisfaction, even though I am rather hazy on French law. If my life experience is anything to go by, it will no doubt turn out cheaper to just pay up in the first place. When my cat “Blackie” had been missing for four days I feared the worst, but on Thursday he appeared none the worse for wear. His coat was pretty clear of the hydraulic oil. He has let it be known that if he gets taken on any further visits to the shower cubicle, it will be at my own risk. Talking of battles, I am pleased to note that AbFab Joanna Lumley has been taking it to the Government over retired Ghurkha soldiers being given leave to live in the UK. Being your average cynic, I can see the Labour Party’s problem. Facing elimination in the south of England and already in difficulties in Scotland, they are desperate to hang on to the Midlands and the North of England. The downer is that in many seats of the North, the Muslim vote holds the electoral balance. The Ghurkhas are hardly the Jihadiist’s best friend, since the Kukri (dagger) waving Hindu warriors are usually sent in against the Taliban when the British Army wishes to scare the hell out of the enemy! A difficult one for the Shipley brothers to get their turbans around! In the meantime the BBC has appointed a Muslim as the head of UK religious programmes. I hope that he gets an well with the Sikh who produces "Songs of Praise" on sundays. As a lapsed christian, there is not much I can say apart from "It's a funny old world!" Politicians expenses? Flipping unbelievable! The Dis-Honourable Members are all at it! Of course it is not what it seems, as the reason for padded expenses is the subterfuge exercised by past Governments in exchange for not awarding themselves salary increases…proclaiming to the electorate “we are feeling your pain!” (..ergo feeling your wallets!) I am pleased to note that the Tory expenses are more classy! You have to admit that the Tax Payer meeting the cost of tuning a Grand Piano strikes the right note! When can we get back to the traditional values of British politics? Financial scandals for Labour, and sexual scandals for the Tories. Things are quietish on the Quay. Mike and Josie from Procyon are back in the UK, at least for the summer. josie advised me during the week that Mike was in bed with Wine Flu! Nothing changes! Pete and Prudence from “Scaramouche” are boat sitting whilst “Scaramouche” is being refurbished. At least my hangover count is down! Erin misses Prince and Agathe. It is some solace that that all the cats join her for her daily walks…short as the promenades are. The co-ordination of her back legs continues to deteriorate, but they do loosen up after ten minutes or so. Me? My varnish brush is in hand! 16th May I see that the Government is ordering a third tranche of Euro fighters. After first placing an order for new Trident Nuclear Submarines, they are clearly taking Osama Bin Alden’s capacity to fight quite seriously!
I was delighted to see that Blackpool are advertising that classic Gallic favourite “Lancashire ‘Otpot”. Having spent many years in the region, I note they are promoting the beaches, but are careful not to mention the vagaries of the Irish Sea! I have been recently expanding to the natives on my thoughts about the relationship between the English and French language. When told off about my lack of spoken French, I point out the English is only French spoken badly. It is because of William the Conqueror, I insist. The Saxons were made to speak this Norman dialect that became English. Of course this ignores the Germans, the Norse, and the Romans. French only became the national language of France in the 1880’s, as every region was dominated by dialects. Before that it was up there with Esperanto. If you need confirmation, just open the French/English Larousse Dictionary. Most words are similar or the same. Personally it is the connective tissue that I have difficulty with. Early signs of my new argument are encouraging, and when I get back from accident and emergency, I will let you know if it is receiving a more fulsome understanding! I am beginning to get the feeling that the parliamentary expenses scandal is revenge from our much maligned bankers. I cannot help but ponder that every time the fees office wrote a cheque, the banks would know to whom and how much. Revenge is best taken cold they say! Checking out Google, I found this fairly innocent looking photo of the steps down from Camden Street NW1 to the Grand Union Canal, and looking towards Camden Market. There was a time that I was planning to moor Saul Nomad here. The developer who built those white flats under the bridge also installed bollards. I did approach them cash in hand, but was told the facilities were purely cosmetic. As I lived just around the corner, four times a day first “Laura”, and the subsequently “Erin” and “Lulu” were exercised down here. After a lengthy crime wave of assaults, muggings and even a couple of murders, I put the whole idea on the back burner. I would never dream of coming down here without the dogs, especially at night, as it was inhabited by some pretty unsavoury characters. It is a shame, as it is potentially a wonderful oasis. Unfortunately the drug dealers tend to hide from the Police helicopters by standing under the Bridges. Also many kids from the local estates enjoy themselves vandalising passing narrow boats. So not the best mooring!
 ...and back to Aigues-mortes! 
The varnishing of the hatch cover is nearly finished. This is it after “lucky for some” thirteen coats of Deks Olie D1 and D2.
 taken today...16th May...for those of you in Manchester please note colour of sky! p.s. Well done United! 6th June 2009 0900 hours. As I sat on deck basking in the morning sun, I sipped my bitter French coffee and sucked a Gauloise roll up. Johnny Cash’s “San Quentin” is wafting from the wheelhouse. My esteemed paying guests are still abed, but no worries. Just after 0700 I had collected freshly baked pastries from the Boulangerie. A lone fisherman is chancing his arm from the river bank. Peace reigns as the round the clock intermittent explosions have temporarily ceased. Allegedly designed to frighten the rice seedling thieves away from the paddies! Since the Flamingos are protected, they cannot actually be shot! A flock of starlings is swirling over the ramparts. They are feeding on flying ants, I am told. The health police may be agitating, but my philosophy is that I may die young, but I will die happy! 
Before my guests Frederic and Sophie left, they offered to serenade Bobo. They sang some of Frederic's own compositions...definitely talented stuff!
Bobo was transfixed. She always thought that that particular birdcall had come from the Hifi speakers!
Overnight I watched the UK’s council election results, and rejoiced as the Tories trounced the enemy. My joy was tempered after BBC’s “Newsnight” team of Wark, Crick and a bevy of Liberals explained how the Tories has in fact lost. How their obscure formula translated the Tories plus 300 seats, and everyone else’s minus 300 seats into a failure defeats me! I do not pay my licence fee anymore, and am currently expecting a BBC enforcement van to cart me off in chains! (Guys my postcode is 30220...bonne chance mes amies!) …then the England Cricket Team lost to 500-1 outsiders, the Netherlands. The Dutch needed just two runs off the last ball to win the match. With only a single on the cards, our star young fielder managed a short range overthrow which handed them the match! Call me an old cynic, but someone must have made a killing! The main excuse for my (welcome for some silence) over the last two weeks, has been the captivating tennis from Roland Garros. However some jobs just had to be done. With paying guests due to arrive at any moment, sod’s law dictated that the “Chonka Chonka” pump on the forward blackwater tank became blocked! The tank holds several hundred litres. Always a delightful (Merde) job for the Skipper! I have found that inserting a garden hose with three bar of mains water…suitably protected…on the blocked inwards side whilst the pump is “Chonkaring” usually works…and it did. Cautionary note…watch for the back splash! The tank was duly flushed clean. …then the Drive belt on the Bowthruster snapped under my weekly test. The manual describes replacing the belt as “a simple job for competent mechanic”…or was that for a “simple mechanic”! Although not on the spares manifest, a spare drive belt was sitting in the tool box. A real British thing, but lucky none the less. Who ever wrote the manual has not seen my anchor locker/fo'c'sle. Shipwrights definitely need to be as supple as Orang-utans, and with the strength of the Terminator. There was nowhere to include my legs in the space provided. Fortunately the more sylph like Lothar “the German” agreed to do the job, in return for my mowing the knee high grass on his mooring! Everything is now running perfectly. The maintenance manual also said to check the belt tension weekly. The metal belt guard was stamped “April 2002” which was probably the date of the last inspection! Clearly a tribute to the Kort KT45 thruster's original build quality! 15th June 2009 Let joy be unconfined! At last after seventy one long years of Mike Sangster, Roger Taylor, Bobby Wilson, Mark Cox, Buster Mottram, Greg Rusedski and Henmania et al, we have a British winner at Queens. Wimbledon is getting ready to build him up and knock him down. Another week gone by, and another immersion heater bites the dust. Even the local Chandleries are out of stock. Anyone planning to spend time in France must get fitted with an anti-calcaire system of some sort. At around twenty immersion heaters in four years, one would have thought that the euro would have dropped on Saul Nomad by now! The fault is always the same. The immersion gets heavily coated in a Calcium deposit, and od’s due to overheating. I am always been told by assorted persons that they have no problem with their immersions. I don’t like to enquire too closely whether it is because they clearly do not use them. The new plan is that once a month I will remove the element and stick it in a vinegar bath overnight..and might even purchase a water filter. Watch this space. Whilst I am dispensing advice, I came up with a lightening solution to chilling the contents of a wine box in around thirty minutes. Slice open the fastening flaps at one end. Float the wine bag into a bucket with ice cubes/cold water in it. When cooled to your satisfaction, return the bag to the box and reseal the box flaps with sticky tape. It keeps the cardboard dry, and only the wine remains wet. We have esteemed guests Mr and Mrs Roger Jessop staying aboard Tuesday, through Thursday. Friday night we are having a petit soiree to celebrate my 64th year. Lothar is providing the live music….he is a former professional keyboard player. His wife Bridget has promised me a cornucopia of snacks. With a supporting cast of a twenty or so, I will no doubt be feeling my age by Saturday. 22nd June 2009 Those of you that wished that you could have been the winner of Friday’s £25 million Euro lottery by that dedicated allotment owner, Mr Carswell, should spare a thought for another allotment owner Hilaire Purbrick, 45. He was so enamoured by his pride and joy, that he dug a seven foot cave in the middle of his plot and moved in. All went well for sixteen years, as our eco-warrior lived his dream. But after the cave was checked by the fire brigade, Brighton and Hove City Council decided that it did not have enough exits and sought an injunction banning him from entering it. Hilaire continued to live in the cave, but was ordered to court on Tuesday where the judge granted the council a possession order which will allow him to be formally evicted and banned indefinitely from the site. “I know lots of people in this town who live in houses with only one door with no fire exit,” Hilaire said. I also know of picnics that are only one sandwich short. My Learned Friends at the European Court of Human Rights are rubbing their hands with glee. If I was Hilaire, I would have dug the bloody fire exit…even if it meant moving the Plasma TV. Taxpayers better keep a close watch on their wallets! Then there was “Redaction” on our politician’s expenses records! The wife of journalist Dominic Lawson has recently recalled her school days at an Ursuline Convent in Belgium. The nuns used redaction to censor all incoming and outgoing mail to protect their “gels” from being corrupted. The nubile young pupils countered with redacted lyrics of that famous song from “My Fair Lady”. It went thus: “I could have XXXXed all night! / I could have XXXXed all night! / And still have begged for more. / I could have spread my XXXs / and done a thousand things I’ve never done before.” We always knew those convent girls were the hottest! ….and perhaps a perfect lesson for our politicians about unintended consequences. 
My charming guests, Roger and Margaret Jessop, have moved on to the next stage of their holiday. They did the Listel cave with some success and made the four canal cruise on the “St Louis”. The same cannot be said for the salt works, as a tour of the museum can only be made via the town bus service. So it is no good turning up on the doorstep! The reception was less than welcoming. My Birthday party went with a considerable swing, and as predicted it took two days to recover. It’s an age thing I think!
30th June 2009 We are now into the second week of Wimbledon, and our Scottish version of Charlton Heston is still on his chariot. The BBC team is in place, with the welcome addition of Tim Henman and Cumberland tennis coach Chris Bradnam, but I am having trouble with Greg Rusedski. His commentary fluctuates between the banal and bleeding obvious…and to how he would be currently playing it. Greg, you would either have aced your opponent or lost. You won many matches through tie breaks due to your inability to return serve! Ginny Wade gushingly describes the new intake on the ladies circuit as “Pinups”. The thought of her blue tacking photos on her bedroom wall is a vision too far! Shame about the state of the wimmen’s game tho’. Some of it is embarrassingly bad. No wonder they have had to reduce ticket prices on the ladies days. It is one thing to sit through three set matches, and another to endure brainless strategies accompanied by regular choking when plan “A” is not working, and finishing up with Federer-like sobbing. Not counting the Williams sisters, where are the Navratilova’s, Henin’s and Hingis’s in the athletic diaspora? Now don’t get me going on prize money, or the relative standards between men and women! All right then! I recall when Bjorn Borg was training at Cumberland in the 1970’s, Lennart Bergelin, his coach, asked if there was anyone around who could give Marianna Simoneuscu (sic) a hit. Marianna was ranked around number ten in the world at the time. My some time doubles partner Steven Joseph, who played County Tennis for South Wales..and was therefore world ranked in the thousands, volunteered his services. He proceeded to dispatch her in two straight sets. For those who are wondering, I was never able to take a set off him in singles either! On the subject of great matches, Bjorg v Gerulitis springs to mind. Like Murray v Wawrinka, they practised almost daily together before Wimbledon. Familiarity does breed great matches! This week I was sad to find that the multi-lingual and very capable capitaine Pascal Jurado has thrown in the towel at the Aigues-Mortes Capitainerie. After weeks of receiving treatment that in any other country would be deemed as constructive dismissal, he has quietly accepted another post within the Council. I will not name the intended replacement, but if you are confronted by someone who only speaks French, and that singular fluency only lasts as long as his eye poppingly short fuse, you will know who I mean. Spaces are starting to appear on the moorings, and that takes some doing in this day and age. This maybe helped by management demand that all annual moorings have to be paid one year in advance! Global credit crunch? Not here mes amies! All this does not include the ten French batelliers who have already taken Aigues-Mortes to court. It is clear that Capitainerie’s masters/mistresses have no idea how to run a port for an international clientele. Probably not helped by the fact that not one of them have ever run as much as a chip shop, coming from the “You pay, we spend as we like!” fraternity. For the record the electricity supply adjacent to Saul Nomad remains out of order since September 2008! One of my shore connections is seventy meters away….not good if the ten amp breaker repeatedly trips when it is pissing with rain. This contrast’s badly with Port Camargue, where my two a.m. phone call got an electrician on site in ten minutes! PC maybe twice the price, but they also have a five year waiting list! My moaning yet again is tiresome? Actually I love the place! 
No problem with the new electricity supply to Aigues-Mortes. It only has a carbon footprint if it hits you on the way in!
Monday the sixth of July, and the Tour de France passes us in Aigues-Mortes after midday. At 15.56 hrs the peloton travels up the dual carriageway which is on the other side of the Marette. Saul Nomad may appear on the helicopter shots. Hopefully I will not have fallen off the wheelhouse roof before it flies over! 
Some Italian froends from Sardinia, stayed for a couple of nights as they completed their purchase from Constance Boats.
An invitation to dinner at Michel's (71) is not to be passed up. After a lifetime of running five restaurants in this region, he is definitely one the best cooks in the Port! This particular meal was underpinned by a quite sensational fish stew. He purchased his "bateau vert" in November, and is fitting it out from scratch! As a result I have been lucky to accommodate many of his family and friends who come to stay...and eat!
July 5th 2009 Today is men’s final day. Like most Brits I was saddened by Andy Murray’s departure. However since Andy Roddick is a great favourite of mine, it is somewhat tempered. I know that by the time you read this, we will all know the final result. It could be the Swiss, garbed in his gold trimmed outfits that look as though Nike dug their designer out of a shopping mall in Abu Dhabi! I do not doubt his tennis genius, but I do have reservations about calling him the greatest player of all time. Statistics can mislead! At the peak of his powers, Rod Laver was unable to play the slams because he had turned professional. Winning all four of the slams in one season before he turned pro, and winning all four when he returned five years later with the open era, suggests that his ten slams would have been greatly exceeded. When Laver first turned pro, he was regularly beaten by the likes of Ken Rosewall and Pancho Gonzales. I would add Lew Hoad, but I have an idea that Lew’s back had already been broken by Pancho’s strategic serial lobbing. In the end the Rockhampton Rocket got the measure of the old pro’s and headed the pro rankings for the duration. July 7th 2009 Now we know the result, I have to credit Federer for not bursting into tears. All those great players standing in a row saying the Swiss was the greatest. Being deeply cynical, I wonder how much that cost Nike? Andy Roddick was superb, and in my opinion knows that he should have had him. However for those of us who have missed one or more high backhand volleys on a set or any point, he deserves understanding! An old South African Davis Cup player, Abe Segal, who had played on centre court, once told me that the court was characterised by the swirling gusty wind conditions and the long runbacks. So any volley attempted on a swinging dipping ball is particularly tricky. Baseliner Borg won his five Wimbledons when serve and volley was the order of the day, and the grass courts were faster. However his top spun balls were just too difficult to handle even in those days. Monday was Tour day in Aigues-Mortes. Unfortunately the ITV 4 highlights, showed none of the surrounding Countryside. There were around ten helicopters hovering over us, and several dawdled over the Port, so I think somewhere someone saw the ship! However for those of unparalleled observational powers, I can be seen crouching down to photograph the passing peloton.
The unmistakable Flamingo sign means turn right for Aigues-Mortes.
...by sheer fluke, number 22...the seven times winner...Lance Armstrong is second as he passes me! One waits for several hours, and the actual race passes in a few seconds. However great fun is had as the preceding "Caravane" had deluged us with petites cadeaux. Just as I was about to expire, I was struck by a half litre bottle of chilled "Vittel" water flung from the sponsor's camion as it raced by. 
Getting the brakes adjusted whilst on the move! 17th July 2009 In the last few days I have brushed a coat of black tar on to the hull. International "Intertuf" as usual. Only 2.5 litres for the whole ship, although I had thinned it with around thirty percent white spirit. The incentive was the Cardiff Cricket Test against the dreaded Australians. Having watched most of the match from behind the Sofa, I decided that I should do something more productive! It seemed to have worked...we stole a draw and are well placed at Lords in the second match! 27th July 2009 The cats got the moorhen last night. They had been stalking it for weeks, and I had begun the think that it had got the measure of them. Clearly not! Somehow they had got to its nest which had previously appeared impregnable amongst the reeds. The corpse was lying on it’s back next to “Saul Nomad” this morning. Very much toes up! This fatality has happened within a week of the Coypu’s demise. I had presumed that the latter had become the victim of some particularly sullen all night fisherman who may have amused them selves by killing him, but the jury is still out on that crime. Last year Lulu cornered him by the fence, but at around a foot long including tail and gnashing teeth he won that particular stand off. I will miss the Coypu, because he used to chunter harmlessly around the marina every night, munching the weed off the hulls. Every evening just before dusk, we witness the Seagulls returning from their daytime jobs on the streets of Montpellier to their roosts down at Espiguette. It is a distance of 30 kilometres, and a fair old commute. Normally they carry it out in elegant vee formations that stretch across the sky as far as the eye can see. However it is all change when the South Easterlies blow. “Rain wind” I call it. Flying into the teeth of a gale, the Gulls fly low in broken formation…tacking left and right. Some of the younger ones spot the cluster of white Little Egrets camped out next to the horses that are loose in the Marette. Swooping down to inspect them, like small kids calling out from the back of the car “Are we there yet, Mum?”, then realising that they are joining the wrong mob and that there are still several kilometres to slog! Homing instinct is an amazing thing. After ten nights of friends and family, we have had two weeks of quiet. The weather has been glorious, and so dry that I have had to water the mooring to keep it green and not from it reverting to a dust bowl. “Procyon” is back and tucked up next to us following a survey at La Grande Motte. It reminds me that “Saul Nomad” is overdue to have her bottom cleaned and painted. It is the one time when a decent tide would come in handy, as we could beach her and power spray the growth off. We are too heavy for Port Camargue, and the cowboys at Grau du Roi want 1500 euros to slip her! Have to keep it on my list of “urgent” things to do. 31st July Sadly the end has come for my dear “Erin”. She would have been fifteen years old next Friday, but it was not destined to be. She was just completely exhausted. Losing both my Newfoundlands in the space of four months has been quite a shock to the system. We are now down to three cats and a parrot, so no respite for the local wildlife just yet! The cats, Ginger in particular, were very fond of Erin, and have joined me in mourning her departure. When Erin was going walkies, she always had feline company. The last few days the cats have been wandering around the ship looking for her. One cannot ignore Bobo either. Having presided over twenty years of Newfoundland rugs, she has clearly noticed the empty floors. Talking wildlife, last year it was flies but this year we are currently inundated with wasps. These are gangly things that fly with their undercarriage hanging down at the back. Francoise assured me they do not sting. Wrong! As I have already found out the effects of the sting hang around several days, and was wondering whether they might be related to hornets. These insects seem to have a predilection for setting up home in the BBQ’s. Not really a sensible long term arrangement! I have bought a can of “Kapo Choc (impact) for volants rampants“, and it is proving terminal for our black and yellow friends. Blue skies abound, all the more satisfying when one notices the July UK Meteo. I have been abortively looking around for the Australians to discuss the Cricket with. You can never find an Antipodean when you need one! It was the same during the Rugby World Cup. One minute they were strutting around the Port, and the next they all just evaporated…probably on the same flight home since both their countries are in the same general direction! The worry about our dear friends is that like some Hammer Dracula film, you presume that you have driven the stake in far enough, but it never is! Up they pop as bolshie as ever. The problem is that they presume that they are going to win, and they are not usually wrong! Tuesday 4th August Things have been very lively on the Gendarme front this morning. I have not seen so many Police vehicles and Helicopters around here since the Tour de France. A blue flashing light always makes my heart flutter, but fortunately les flics were showing no interest in my Landrover at all! It now turns out they were looking for the new Socialist Mayor of Aigues-Mortes. Yet another bad day in Office on Monday may have finally tipped him over the edge. On Tuesday morning he did a Captain Oates, leaving a suicide note on his desk! Fortunately after an extensive Mayor hunt, he was found by the Pompiers alive and well in the Port at Carnon. There is a rumour going around that there has been communal singing at the Conservative run “Terre de Commune” and also at VNF. They have all been at loggerheads with him since he was elected. As you already know, I do not rate the Terre de Commune management very highly, but I am assured by Charles of “Nixa-Palma” that the Mayor is a good guy! I know that there is currently much talk in the United Kingdom regarding the wonders of local democracy. It always used to be the Liberal Democrats, searching for some way to bring meaning to their lives! Regrettably the Tories are at it as well now, probably because they have gradually swept the board in the National Council Elections. They have long forgotten the Socialist London Boroughs in the 1970‘s, that had debts in excess of the national debts of countries like Rumania. The downside Local Politics is that, as we are experiencing in Aigues-Mortes, it either brings the farce of national politics down to a local level or allows serious nutters to strut their stuff. At the national level it does not really matter, but locally it brings paralysis at the point of delivery. As soon as a different party gains power, all the Civil Servants change as well…competent or not. My solution to politicians is to have less of them! Alas it is never going to happen! Turkeys voting for Christmas…fat chance! 12th August The stories on the Mayor front are getting ever more lurid. The latest which I do not believe, is that the mayor's wife has run off with the lover of the bi-sexual mayor. It started with the news that the mayor's wife had left him broken hearted, but the port's system of chinese whispers just improved it. I had not given it a proper tidy since 2005, and it took three hours to achieve the transformation. Now it really does look tidier than this photograph! 
27th August 2009 I have to make an announcement…I am coming out! Louder! I am Coming Out!! After five tortuous weeks behind the sofa, I have emerged blinking with amazement! England have beaten Australia in the final Cricket Test. Oh Joy..and not an Aussie in Aigues-Mortes prepared to identify themselves. O.K. Andy Murray lost to top seed Roger Federer in straight sets, 2 and 6, in the Cincinnati Semi’s. I still have not picked up on why the new world number two was in the top half of the draw, as the normal second seed position would be at the bottom. He certainly came close as the tie break set point in his favour missed by millimetres. Then there was Lewis Hamilton’s disastrous wheel change whilst leading in Valencia Grand Prix! Who cares anyway, the Ashes are back in the long room with our name on them! It has been medieval festival week in Aigues-Mortes this week. I cannot say that this staged fakery appeals to me, but would connect with anyone who lives for the “Sealed Knot” moment. Lots of swords and armour and middle aged men prancing around with bells on their ankles and waving lace hankies! However and most importantly the French love it. The whole thing was finished with the ubiquitous firework display, and within 48 hours the cavalcade of tourists had drifted on their way. I have had a whole series of very pleasant guests, and was sorry to have to bid them farewell!
 It is an interesting time on the naturalistic front. Birds that are migrating from northern Europe to Africa, stop off to refuel. The local canards are feeding up their last broods of the season, to survive the winter. Unusually for the Mediterranean the local Flamingos do not head south, but stick it out here. 
Blackie spends his siesta under the inflatable!
My Capsicum bush is churning out peppers. Extremely mild but they stir-fry brilliantly.
All bark and definitely no bite! I see that Gerry “RyanAir” has been fishing around for profit, and his £1 flights have so many extras that it can only be a question of time until rows three to the back will have to pedal hard on take off. As far as I am aware the first two rows will continue to be reserved for nursing mothers. There is a company that regularly advertises compact pedal machines in Saga Magazine. I am sure that these could be adapted. 
On reflection, my own siesta beckons!
15th September 2009 It has been a pleasant two weeks. First my sister Lorna visited, and then we had four days of her Daughter Caroline along with her friend Kerry. I arranged a visit to Maguelone Cathedral. Although I have a history of religious failure…thirteen percent in the Common Entrance Divinity examination cannot lie, I always find Maguelone a very spiritual experience. A perfect place to visit after a bad day at the office. Although there is no internal furniture to speak off apart from the alters, it is still consecrated. Funny to think that in Medieval times it held sway over Montpellier, and in the 12th and 13th centuries several Montpellier Bishops were buried there….plus several of the Avignon Popes stayed awhile.
 
Messaging old and new! A candle or a text message, you choose!
There had to be a fair degree of tongue biting accorded to Lorna, because she is a great fan of the Swiss Miss Mr Federer. I have always felt that recent US Open’s were more suited to bangers like Roddick, Cilic, and del Potro, and fortunately in the end it proved to be the case. If Andy is going to win a slam he is going to have to attack more. For what it’s worth the great Australian Davis Cup manager, Harry Hopman always emphasised that his young players (Rosewall, Hoad, Emmerson, Stolle, Laver, Newcombe and Roche to name a few). start with perfecting their defence and then progress to attack. So there is hope for our young Scot yet! I have since received a unsubstantiated report from Tom the American, that the Mayor of Aigues-Mortes has stopped his wife getting the house, may get soon access to his son, and now has a new girl friend, so it looks like all the previous theories are out the window. We still have the problem regarding the hand gun, but I am sure it will be sorted out! Talking to the Bronx Italian Tom is always entertaining. Like being on the set of “Good Fellas”, just waiting for DeNiro and Joe Pesci to drop by! Forgeddaboutit! The weather has been quite glorious, but it dropped to 12 degrees centigrade in the early hours of this morning. I know it was that temperature because I awoke shivering and found that the parrot’s roost was dropping below a self imposed threshold of 17 degrees. I switched on the electric fire and retired to my bunk. I am clearly out of practise because the combination of the immersion water heater and the fire soon tripped the shore 10 amp breaker out. Struggling along the cold concrete quai in my underpants in the dim light, the one hundred and forty meter round trip to the supply box gave me plenty of time to reflect on my error. There is no sign that any attempt is being made to repair the dedicated shore supply next to my wheelhouse…still it is only just over a year now! I have recently discovered a grass seed that is designed for very dry conditions next to seawater. Watch this space, and hopefully our gaps will soon be covered over! I have booked Saul Nomad for a week on the Grau du Roi slipway on the 28th September. The sharp angle on the slipway requires a change of lifestyle, as the ship needs to be prepared as though we are putting to sea. I am drawing up a long list of things that have to be placed on the floor. I also have to decide what to do with the cats. Whatever the choice, I know that they will be pretty unhappy about the whole operation. I was given a lesson in female multi-tasking this evening. Standing in the Lidle check out, I witnessed “Emilie” stop stacking shelves, checkout two chariots with credit card payments, check some prices with the supervisor, do all the normal “bonjours”, “mercies” and “au-revoirs”, all whilst discussing a new boyfriend with her best mate who was standing nearby! If she really was a super Sharon, she would have been chewing gum as well! Look on and admire grumpy old men! 17th September This morning I raked the seed bed. My god I am unfit! Too many Gauloise roll ups! No wonder they are nicknamed “gaspers”! Then the seeding. Returning an hour later to admire my handiwork, I discovered that an army of ants were systematically removing the seed to their home…which seems to occupy most of the bank behind my Jardin. Watching 34 euros of grass seed being so blatantly stolen prompted a hands and knees search of the kitchen sink cupboard to find last years unused bottle of Ant spray. A bad day for the ants who had neatly stacked several handfuls of seed next to their entrance. Very convenient for their assassin! I am definitely going to need a few early nights before I scrape and repaint our bottom! 18th September The ants appear to have staged a major recovery. They really love this grass seed. So much for France being the world's third ranked pesticide user! 
We are now in that season of mellow fruitfulness.
The searing heat has gone!
A reminder that Saul Nomad needs her bottom doing!
Another tree for Lorna to paint!
The grapes are picked. Stand by your bunks for drinking!
The Schools have gone back along with the families. It is more the elderly and dogs right now! ....that is until the Aigues-Mortes feste when all hell breaks loose!
2nd October 2009 I have been a bit too quiet on the Political front, but as usual there has been plenty of hot air. I regret to confess that I still find Obama extremely irritating. However to complain can lead to accusations of racism, which is very far from the case. Meanwhile back on the UK political ranch, we are enduring Calamity Clegg, Foxtrot the Pseudo-Chancellor and Trouserpressman Hoon turning policy cartwheels for the Lib Dems. When Foxtrot went cha-cha over mansion house tax, I realised that the Lib-Dems had gone ga-ga. Clearly they had forgotten about Liberal leaning West Hampstead, where an average terrace still costs over the one million pounds. Mean while One Eye (Brown), Popeye (Balls), Marmite (Harman…you either love her or hate her), and the Wicked Witch (Mandleson) for Labour are calling the Tories the “do nothing” party. Doing something to bail out the mostly Scottish Banks has given us (The English) debts that are unlikely to be paid off until 2030. What we need right now are less Politics and fewer Politicians. I think it’s a vote winner! British Politicians should stick to Soap opera like Boris, our esteemed London Mayor. The previous Mayor, Socialist Ken Livingston applied three times to appear on “EastEnders“, but was rejected for speaking as though his pet Newt was blocking his nasal passage! Understandably red Ken is very hurt. In the Davis Cup the inevitable happened. How and earth British pundits could claim that the Poles were the underdogs, when we were only certain of winning the two Murray singles, escapes me. Apart from our brilliant number one, British Men’s Tennis is currently barely above County standard. Staggering when you consider the millions that have been invested in it! We were scheduled to go to the shipyard on the 28th September, but I have moved the date on a couple of weeks so than we can take advantage of the Aigues-Mortes festival. It is going to be rather daunting since I intend doing most of the work myself. I must remember to wear Eye protection, as after a previous accident with Xynol based paint in 2006 I can still recall the pain that felt like scotch bonnet peppers had been inserted behind my eyeballs! It is also painful to recall that as I lay sedated with Wine and Paracetemol, thieves chose to steal my vastly underinsured Quad Bike. Funny how some things stay with you! 
I looked out from behind my shower screen to observe that "Polaris" the 78 Meter salt boat was close! Unnervingly the Helmsman seemed to be ignoring all of Madame's instructions. 
However he executed the turn with plenty of room! Not so lucky this week as he was not third time lucky, as I had to quickly get Saul Nomad off our mooring so that he could bury his bows in the concrete. It was the first time I had moved in well over six months, so my weekly tests of all systems proved to have been a good idea! 9th October 2009 The Dynamite boys have finally gone mad! Awarding Obama, after only two weeks in office, a Nobel Prize for not being George Dubya! Now what does our brother do in Afghanistan never mind Iran, apart from his current prevarication. How the Mullahs must be giggling! Bearing in mind that AKNobel have bought International Paints from ICI, and I will applying it to my bottom next week, the international branch of the Liberal Democrats have taken over yet another institution and turned it into a laughing stock! Meanwhile this week the English speaking “Russia Today” satellite programme has been swanking about a new ballistic missile that can zig zag in flight, which makes it impossible to be shot down by Star Wars or whatever it is called now. Nice! Then we have President Putin saying that the State now wishes to sell 250 companies which they had previously seized from Private hands. Sounds a good deal to me! On a more serious note, I will give you a full report on our Slipping, Power Clean, and repaint in two weeks time. It is a first time for Slipping and using the Xynol based “Intertuf 203”. “203” replaces the Tar based “16”, which for fairly obvious reasons is now banned from waterways. Hopefully there will be no disasters! 
Whilst preparing for leaving, I discovered the Clamboat had gone missing. Having carried out a fairly thorough search and presuming it had been stolen, I visited a very disinterested Grau-du-Roi Gendermerie. It was sunday after all! Needless to say, I had turned up without enough paperwork and returned to S.N. for a paper hunt. No bloody sign! On impulse I took the bike out for another search and lo and behold there was the ClamBoat down the canal with it's bows jammed under the bridge arch at the Saltworks. So no insurance claim, and had to retract my accusations about dishonest romany horsmen...blah...blah. I think the loss had more to do with the Captain's dodgy ropework! The 12th was slippage day, and we sailed for Grau du Roi just after 7.15 am. A bit tight for a 7.45 Pont Levant, but the fifteen minutes I had built into the system soon evaporated. As I went to settle the cats in their temporary home on “Procyon”, it’s door came of it’s runners and landed on my ankle. More haste less speed as the air was painted blue! After weeks of comparative calm, a mistral had blown up, and negotiating Saul Nomad onto the Spano slipway runners was tricky with a howling gale on our port beam. As usual the thrusters did their stuff. The notorious Mr Spano was in fine voice as he directed us up the slope. Definitely not to be taken personally, as Mr Spano’s bellows are equally delivered to all the professional skippers who also slipped over the twelve days. 
It may look warm, but there was a chilly Mistral howling. After three days, even I got rid of the shorts for jeans, and dug out some socks! 
Saul Nomad was long overdue for the job, and the encrustation on her hull was a serious fruits de mer! All ten of the hull anodes had long disappeared, and after three days of scraping and nine and half hours of karcher (particularly unpleasant with an air temperature of 8 degrees Celsius first thing in the morning), pitting was clearly evidenced along the starboard shore side from water level down 12 inches. The hard chine was not bad and all credit to R.W Davis…their two pack black epoxy paint was almost as good as the day they sprayed it on the bottom back in 2002! Not a speck of rust. In fact credit to Craig Glassonbury as he clearly built one hell of a hull. I have had my moments with R.W. Davis, but credit where it is due! 
She's done! Greyhound of the sea?
My next jobs were the application of the International “Intertuf 203” primer and anti corrosion, followed by antifouling and ten new anodes. I did it all on my todd and I reckon it took around ninety hours! At least most of the time I felt ninety! A combination of Ibuprofen and Beer got me through it! The beer was for the parts that the anti-inflammatories could not reach! On a brighter note it was a considerable saving as the yard labour would have been charged at 50 euros an hour plus TVA ! 
Through the pain and suffering, I took a shine to Grau du Roi. It has been on my doorstep for three years, and I have always looked at it as a traffic jam interspersed with tiny little streets. However looking at it from my airborne state on the slipway next to the Port du Peche, it changed into a bustling little fishing port with a good deal of charm! Everynight at around three the fishing fleet sailed, returning twelve hours later. What Fishing Quotas?!
We were due to leave at midday on Wednesday 22nd, but as soon as the mistral’s icy winds had finally blown themselves out, a monumental storm blew in from the south. Consequentially we were still stuck on the slipway at the end of the day. Having survived a mistral on the Rhone and a number of serious spates on the Saone, I am not really fussed by inclement conditions on inland waters. However I am sure Mr Spano did not want to risk getting his gear trashed, so here we waited! Not quite high and dry, but high anyway! 
Looking a bit more cheerfull now. There had been a heartstopping moment at the Pont Levant, which broke down. Sometimes it has been out for months. Fortunately after twenty minutes it's pulse returned!
On Thursday the return up the canal to Aigues-Mortes was a simple exercise, and the ship’s handling was noticeably lighter with several tons of seafood removed from our bottom. Ably assisted by David Cosset of Kara, who being a retired photographer kindly fired off a few snaps with my Nikon D2x. 
The Red Duster is for Captain Colin Stone (R.N. Retired) who has previously told me off for flying a Euro Flag! Quite right too! Colin was the star who beat the Inland Revenue into submission on the matter of zero VAT on Dutch Barge type houseboats. Unbelievable but true! See HMRC site for official capitulation!
The cats were overjoyed at our return and even after four days back, I am still shrouded in feline scarves and blankets as soon as soon as I sit down! In my absence, Blackie has even taken to sitting on top of Bobo’s cage. This has not gone down particularly well with the Parrot! 6th November Our joy was short lived. The cats are all down with various forms of La Grippe and secondary infections. They are now slightly digruntled, after the vet had inserted thermometers and needles into their bottoms. Bang goes this month's budget! Time to antifoul the clamboat! 
 That looks better! The wheel mechanism is jammed down with rust, which affects the top speed...but she moves better after the bottom scrape! Getting technical support is virtually impossible, as the Clamboat company has long since disapearued! Their unlucky suppliers never got paid either. Shame because the concept is a good one, and my clamboat has never let me down. 20th November I wrote the following before the Prince of Darkness got his sticky mitts all over the story, giving the Sun a bloody nose! : 14th November I witnessed this weeks British political car crash with some incredulity as Gordon managed his 4 x Him drive into yet another ditch. When I sold my twenty hand written letters from Winston Churchill to Sam Smethurst, my Great Grandfather, to the Churchill Archives in 2007, one thing you couldn’t find in any of the letters was a spelling mistake. In the P.M.’s letter to bereaved mother Mrs James (sic), one of his twenty three spelling mistakes was to spell “Country” in the slang for the female genitalia…fortunately for him on page 2, which has not been shown on TV before the 9’oclock watershed! In a subsequent phone call to Mrs Janes, he has denied that he had made 23 errors. No change there, and it just about sums our excuse for a government up! I wrote this first paragraph before the BBC orchestrated a campaign to persuade us that Gordon was only doing his best and is 75% blind anyway. OK Winston was not blind, but allegedly usually blind drunk! This is the same BBC who cancelled the Curtis play “The Falklands” because by showing Margaret Thatcher writing letters to the bereaved, they felt that she was being depicted too favourably! I am fairly certain that should the Tories win the next election, the BBC are shafted…aka the Miners! Not that I am sure anyone wants to win the next election, because it will be a poisoned chalice for whoever. As Labour’s solution to save the world has been to print money, I constantly envision the International Monetary Fund hovering on our doorstep…just like 1976. Trying to be suitably green, I have recently been looking into fitting solar panels onto Saul Nomad. Looking at the specs, I discovered that the best efficiency I could find was a twelve percent conversion of the Suns rays to electricity. Hey, it’s free electricity! More ominously the 88% balance comes out as radiated heat from the black panels. Makes you wonder about those huge solar panel energy farms in Central Spain, and proposed desert installations. Will the Law of Unintended consequences produce yet more Global warming? For the wavering sceptics amongst you, I suggest buying a copy of “Super Freconomics” for Christmas. In the meantime our solar panel installation is on hold. As a postscript the French have it right as usual. Eighty-one percent of their electricity is Nuclear Powered…and the nearest Nuclear power station to London is in France! Yah! Boo! Les Pommes! Then there was the unfortunately named Professor Nutt, unpaid drugs adviser to our esteemed governors. In the 1980’s one of my Camden tenants was a New Zealand Doctor Karl Jenson, who speciality was research into Ecstasy. He was studying 2000 thousand regular users. His findings were that Ecstasy was doing more good than harm…the football hooligans went clubbing, and far less of a problem than alcohol. Lets face it the German Army kept going on it through WW1. Then came Policeman’s daughter Leah Betts, with the attendant Fleet Street outcry. However Karl was not a mug, as he headed the Glastonbury Festival drugs team for many years. When I was at Canadian Uni, we lost one of our fellow students who necked a bottle of Vodka, and then had a few more drinks. Normal practice for any student, but alcoholic poisoning non the less. With in the region of 80% all convictions as drugs related, it does make you wonder whether there is a better way of dealing with things. Why not outbid the Taliban for the heroin crop, use as much as we want for medicine…I understand that there is a world shortage of opiates for Medical use…and licence and tax the rest for recreational use. A lot cheaper than sending our boys to their deaths in Helmand! Our politico’s are in a real mess on this one. They spend hundreds of millions every year persuading us to “Say No to Drugs“, and billions prosecuting and punishing the offenders. (Clinton…I did not inhale...however my dahling Monika, you may swallow!). Then this week a self confessed druggy mum, turned up on all the channels promoting her book about her nutty son’s druggy death. Boo Hoo! Eliminate “Druggy” and you are left with “Nutty”. Dr. Karl always pointed out to me that statistically 1 to 2% of our population are Psycho’s. So that for those Psycho’s who do not become our Political or Business leaders, there is always a spectacular druggy topping out ceremony available. Is anyone still with me! November 27th 2009 The BBC has banned playing the Pope’s new album, because none of the tracks on the album are in the English language...you know Gregorian Chants and a spot of Latin, etc.. Makes you wonder why they continue to broadcast the Eurovision Song Contest. Hopefully it will have the same effect as when they banned the Sex Pistols! Almost in the same breath I note that Sunderland’s favourite daughter, Lauren Laverne, is now presenting the mid-morning slot on the BBC Radio’s “6 Music”. Ms Laverne’s cred at the Beeb was greatly enhanced by previously calling the Spice Girls “Tory Scum”! 
…..Meanwhile I am pleased to report that all the cats have returned to full health, and are in fine feline voice. At one stage they all had sore front left paws, walking with matching limps. A strange coincidence, which reminded me of a conversation I once had with Siobhan Davis, the internationally esteemed dance director of the ballet group that bears her name. Siobhan was a regular customer at my Camden Boutique, and lived over the road. She mentioned that within a relatively short period all the female members…even recently joined girls… of her troupe menstruated at the same time! Not sure whether this is too much information, but I thought quite interesting! As Socrates always used to say, “The only true wisdom is knowing that you know nothing!” The fact that I picked this little gem out of the film “Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure” does not make it any the less valid! It has been so warm and still these last ten days, I have got the varnish brush out. The summer varnishing on the hatch covers in front of the wheelhouse had started to break-up around small scratches on their surfaces. Seeing that winter is almost upon us, I sanded it smooth, rather than go back to bare wood, and applied eight coats of saturator and finishing varnish. (D1 and D2). Let’s hope that it will see out the winter. Saul Nomad has a lot of wood on board, and one always has to watch for water damage. Ever since we left the shipyard in 2005, I have been aware of a small leak from the bottom of the shower doors in the Midship shower. My half hearted attempt to repair the stained floorboard with plastic wood in 2008 had proved totally inadequate, and close examination showed that now an area of 3cm x 6cm had rotted through. Whilst every section of our flooring can be lifted, this particular bit is part of a section that also supports the vacuum toilet, and would be a fairly major excavation! The modus operandi was to stop the leak, dry out the whole area, and fix a thin knotless pine board over it. By good fortune I spotted an almost exact match in the skirting board section at the local Bricolage. As the Midship shower room was used as a secondary bedroom for four years by the Newfoundlands, the whole floor needed a sanding and a few coats of floor varnish. 
Ready to go now!
This week’s real shock was that without warning and without human hand, our electrical supply has started working normally again! This is following three inspections by the local "electrician" who had pronounced it dead! It’s recovery could not have better timing, because it has suddenly turned chilly…all of 10 degrees C last night. Looks like I will have to put my shorts and sandals away, certainly in the evenings! All in all it is a mystery, a bit like the French economy!
10th December 2009 I have been going bankers for the last few weeks. I have previous with banks and my relationship is historically chequered. However the string up a banker campaign does worry me. It is common currency that the investment bankers have dropped us British in it…to the tune of 850 billion sterling last time I looked. I wonder how many Bank CEO’s would have survived shareholder revolts if they were not as go-go as their competition. Now the “divvies” have dried up, and the shares worthless, these same shareholders are screaming for blood! With the financial sector representing 10 percent of UK GDP, it should not be forgotten that it also has been providing 27% of the total UK Income Tax take. Bonuses are taxed at 50%. If bonuses are not paid, the bottom line improves, but Corporation Tax and Capital Gains Tax are far less. Guess who the suckers are who are going to have to makeup the difference? To the “let them resign” lobby, do not forget that there is aggressive poaching of good staff going on throughout the industry. RBS has already had over 1000 key staff leave. I believe one of their top financial advisors, Fiona Paulus, has signed a gold plated up front multi-million pound deal with Societe Generale. I see what you mean when you say the Anglo-Saxon financial model is finished, Mr Sarkozy! How on earth the French think that they can become the world centre for Finance with a thirty-five hour week, two hour lunches and who nationally shut up shop for the whole of August, escapes me! Stick to things that can be state subsidised, mes amies! In the mean time with the British Taxpayer up the British Bank’s arses…Dubai’s also I see…the last thing we want is for them all to go down the tubes in the immediate future. One of the problems of spouting off on most things, there are occasions when I have to eat humble pie. Last weekend the electricity supply to our pontoon crashed and burned.. Almost literally, as the three phase breaker burnt out. As is normal in these matters, it waited until everyone had packed up for the weekend at lunchtime on Friday…we are in France after all. Even EDF had left the phone off the hook! I was preparing to fire broadsides this week. However from reporting the problem on Monday morning, the electrician came on Monday afternoon, and returned with the new parts on Tuesday. We were up an running by ten am. Un-bloody believable! Not only that but we had a proper electrician…not eye popping man, who I gather normally does plumbing! Caps off to the new Capitainerie regime! Yesterday the salt boat Polaris came by, executing it’s turn correctly unlike the previous time when he grounded on the rocks. I think that this time he had listened to his wife, because for once he obeyed her hand signals! I imagine that after the farce of a fortnight ago, madam have been bending his ear! I had started to become rather negative about moving Saul Nomad out of the way on each visit, but rather than test our mechanicals regularly once a month, I do it all when he comes…so no real increase in cost for us. Plus the manoeuvre involves reversing out and keeping parallel for 100 meters with my neighbours. It is an easy task for our thrusters, and as long as I follow the maxim of slowly does it, no embarrassments...and it keeps my hand in! 18th December 2009 I spotted recently a barge website that used my comments about fuel consumption on Saul Nomad, to support it’s negative theories about hydraulic power. My figures were based on the bench test figures issued by Cummins and Beta for my particular engines, and in a worst case scenario they suggest 400 litres of diesel for eight hours cruising. However the gentleman failed to take account that the Cummins CT6 has a displacement of 8.26 litres and the Beta 32 kV generator is 3.3 litres, and thrashing them is always going to give some alarming…for river craft…figures. However it is not just a question on how much power you wish to have in reserve for the Rhine, the Rhone and the tidal Thames. The main engine has plenty of torque, and at your average canal speed limits it can tick over. Saul Nomad was built to Small Commercial Vessel category 3 standard and apart from being VAT free from the onset, can still legally burn red diesel all over Europe. Yes, we were expensive to build, but in the end the whole power installation was less than ten percent of the total build cost. The one useful bit of kit that I omitted was a comprehensive fuel gauge including fuel flow usage. Of course ten years ago, red diesel was so cheap, an accurate fuel gauge was not high on my agenda. I still rely on getting my figures from starting with full tanks, and filling up at the end of a journey. However it is a nuisance when costing fuel use for short charters. I emphasise that I am still very much in favour of hydraulic power, and it has many advantages over traditional systems. If it were not, then it would not be the system of choice for most commercial applications. Incidentally there is no reason for noisy hydraulics, because any system can be silenced with inline noise dampers and/or a silenced engine room. As I have said before, I have yet to meet a proud boat owner that does not assume that their way is the best way! Naturally you have to cut your cloth to suit your budget. We all have our prejudices. I for one cannot bear smelly sea toilets, and open plan shower and toilet areas…fine for first user, but not so good for those who follow! In this day and age I think that considerable thought and investment should be given to black water tract…and not just because waste storage and disposal is a legal requirement…even if through most of France the pump out equipment is always on next year’s budget! …and don’t get me going on ATIS VHF radios on inland waters! Quite the most useless boy’s toy for a river pleasure craft ever conceived! As the French VNF already know where any vignette carrying craft is anywhere on their system at anytime and have done for years, giving them another excuse to bust you is just plain irritating! The temperatures have finally nosedived, and although we are hovering just above zero at night, the pets outdoor drinking bucket has been freezing over. I am probably not the only one who is transfixed by the farcical events in Copenhagen. Alas it has not stopped our dear leader offering further bundles of tax payers dosh to these charlatans. Roll on our national two star credit rating! Now the weather is forcing me to put more hours in front of the TV, and tuning into the documentaries on "Movies for Men", it did occur to me that if there had been global warming seventy years ago, there would have been no Russian winter, and the Panzers may well have been parked around the Kremlin for Christmas. On that seasonal note, may I wish all my dear readers a very Happy Xmas, and if the internet cafe stays closed until 2010, I hope you get there in a fit state!
It only seems like yesterday that Saul Nomad looked like this! March 2002.
...and the next thing you know it is like this! The difference...your wallet feels lighter!
December 2009 - a Christmas Diary Winter behaves like an unfaithful lover in the Mediterranean. It comes and goes. The Dogs drinking bucket has two inches of ice on it one morning. It does not deter a flock of seagulls who came up from Grau du Roi to see what was what on the skim of ice which covers the turning basin. Our tame hedgehog has long since curled up in some cosy corner. Around one hundred and fifty White Egrets have settled into their winter quarters over the road, waiting for the fish fry to hatch in the Ronbine and the parasites to breed on the horses. There have been a few disconsolate inspections of the horses backs, with no joy for either party. Then overnight the wind suddenly changes to the south, and it is 15 degrees Celsius with rain…the Marin wind. A field mouse comes out looking for food, and ends up as Blackie’s breakfast. I have given up on trying to save them. I just wish that domestic cats did not insist on having a bit of a play before dispatching their prey. 48hrs later the wind drops and things start to frost up again, and so on! 
Two sentries and a magpie sitting on the post in the middle!
The Battle of St Louis Place. It is a winter’s Sunday morning just like many others. The Tourists, like tumbleweed, have long since been blown out of town by the chill wind . The Statue of King Louis stands still with one hand on his chest, and the other on his hilt, as if acknowledging their departure. Clues that it is Xmas hang from the lamp posts, saloon doors, shops and the portals to the Bank. Organ music groans from the Church. The doors to the Mayor’s office cum Casino stand open, and voices of his choristers drift across the empty square. “Oh come all ye faithful”, “Hark the Herald Angel”, “Black Twenty Nine”…that sort of stuff. I approach on Bicycle from the western gate, my cap pulled tight down to my upturned collar. I head carefully in the half light across the greasy cobblestones to the tabac for my Sunday paper. A perceived tension is in the air. Suddenly, from the east, six people stroll over to the Casino. From their capes and black wide brimmed hats they look like Wyatt Earp and his brothers have teamed up with Zorro. I keep my head down behind the Tabac Xmas Card display. The intruders halt in a semi-circle. Oh my God, this looks nasty! For a few moments life stands still. A solitary figure adds to the tension by trudging into the square from the north, a sack casually thrown over his shoulder. Dressed all in red, and with what is clearly a false white beard. Is this the swag man? The hackles on the back of my neck start to rise. As one, the capes are swept aside and, instead of Colt ‘45’s, drums, flutes and an old fiddle are produced. Loudly beaten drums…almost like gunfire…enfold the square. It is cacophony, punctuated by the sound of flutes and bow. “Diddly Doo, Diddly Dah”. Sweet Jesus, it is almost unbearable! After what seemed an interminable time, just like the fifth cavalry arriving from the nick, two peace officers in the garb of the Police Municipale head for the conflict. A few strong words, and the caped crusaders are marched up to the main gates of the town. A few Gallic shrugs, eyes screwed up with a couple of deep draws on the gauloises. Then from the blue haze comes “Diddly Doo, Diddly Dah, Diddly Day”! The spirit of Christmas rules once again! No candidates for Boot Hill this time, but there is always next year for grudges to be settled! There will never be enough room in the St Louis Square for the two of them…it will live on in legend as the “Drumfight at the Old Casino Chorale”. Not many westerns on at Xmas? Even my French friends are complaining! But you cannot have too much of Bing, Danny, Frank, Gene, and Fred and Ginger! I was pleased to note that the dreaded Sir Liam Donaldson is leaving his post as Britain’s Chief Medical Officer in May 2010. Smart move, as I can hardly see him surviving for long under the Tories! Dr Doomsayer has been one of the many highly paid disasters of this Labour Administration, and I for one will not be sorry to see him limp away, even though he will have the crutch of more honorary degrees than Bono! He was the 2005 Avian flu man who predicted 50,000 to 750,000 dead. Actual deaths from Avian flu in the U.K. were Zero…Nada! His most recent success has been the Swine Flu epidemic. Initially 65,000 predicted dead on that one. Now he has been forced to revise his estimate down to 19,000. Actual deaths to date are still only 299.…that is not necessarily death by swine flu, but dying from various causes whilst having swine flu. Now what to do with a zillion doses of Tamiflu vaccine? He has a fondness for the sort of abstract statistics which in the real world are meaningless. For example last summer he demanded that the government increase the unit price of alcohol to a minimum of 50p, thereby making us pay more for our booze as we die from swine flu. This would, he said, save the lives of 3,393 people every year - an incredibly precise statistic for something based on so much guesswork and what-ifs. He got smoking totally banned in public places by similar exaggerated jiggery pokery. I am sure that our suicide figures are not up to the Japanese rate of around 32,000 a year, but by making the U.K. an increasingly joyless place we can have a go! Of course none of it compares to the estimated 72,000 Iatrogenic deaths in Britain each year. (Figures supplied by the Royal College of Physicians). This is a clever term for deaths caused by Doctors and their mistakes! Dr Doomsayer has not said much about that one! Sadly his new position will be high up in the World Health Organisation…God Help us! Cutbacks due at the NHS? That’s a hot one! Most of the British electorate has now realised that Gordon is an oscillating wrist rather than a clunking fist. No amount off class warfare is going to change that one. The repeal of the Anti-Hunting Bill seems to be in the frame now. Having spent something like 200 Parliamentary hours getting this ineffective piece of legislation into Law, even the foxes know that it aint working. It took more hours than Westminster debated the invading of Iraq! Now the Government accuses the Tories of Toffness by planning to scrap the Law by putting it to a free vote…almost like they were tearing up the Magna Carta. If there was a national referendum, the electorate would probably bring back hanging…starting with a few politicians! In the meantime we have been distracted by Delta “Thunderpants”. I imagine there were sighs of relief from Baker Street, when there was no sign of “St Michael” stitched into the waistband. However a Muslim airborne suicide bomber having his particulars supported by Zionist Y-Fronts might be a departure gate too far from the occupied territories. The seasonal viewing continues with the crew of Saul Nomad prostrate in front of the box, munching on the last of the Scottish shortbread and sipping a twelve year old Malt. We watched singer Lily Allen laying into the appalling X-factor…good! The actor’s daughter has never looked back since confessing on the irreverent pop quiz “Never mind the Buzzcocks”, that she liked …and I use her own words…“it up the bum bum!”. Ho Hum, possibly too much informashun! Irresistible for the BBC Tristrams, who promptly gave her her own show. Allegedly she likes fat older men! Could she include bald, boring and broke on that CV? Dream on…and lay off the malt! Christmas remains the season of lightfingerness! First it was my fence mounted TV aerial…a high gain aerial to feed the Hi-Def reception for the guests in the master cabin, along with it’s post, clamps and cable. It was only one of four aerials that I employ, but so what? Yesterday half the old tires that mark the border of my freshly seeded border outside the fence disappeared. What is it with people? I got the tires from the “Poubelle” waste dump anyway? Today the new retaining bolts on the new aerial went missing, although fortunately the aerial remains! Am I twitchy after getting turned over more than once? Time for Sikoflex on the bolts and a loaded Captain on patrol!
....furthermore a reminder in the boatyard to turn the gas off after the turkey is cooked!
HAPPY NEW YEAR ONE AND ALL! Harold Wilson once claimed that a week was a long time in politics…so after the last three weeks it has seemed like a lifetime! In brief…the G20 has been superseded by accusations that the Police were too heavy handed with the G20 protesters. Unsurprisingly these anti-capitalists are very hot on making their damages claims, but most of them have previous practice from collecting the social. I do wonder about the accuracy of evidence provided by those short film clips with no sound tracks. The overhead cameras do show the vastly outnumbered Police being repeatedly attacked and/or abused by goons in the crowd. In the same scenario, I would have certainly felt inclined to give someone a tap, but it’s very unlikely that I will ever get that particular gig! It is now official that most of our politicians have been spending excessive time in the expenses tuck shop! Who’d have thought that? Then there has been the notorious Labour Oik, Derek Draper, getting the party into trouble with the “SmEar-Mail” scandal. In my view Mr Draper, who learnt his trade at Peter Mandelson’s knee, and Mr Brown’s Charlie Whelan have been an accident waiting to happen. How ironic that Draper should also bring down one of Gordon Brown’s smear doctors, the infamous “McBride of Dracula”. Previous victims Tony and Cherie Blair must be laughing! Then there was the Crown Prosecution Service deciding that the Home Office “Leaks Scandal” of immigration mismanagement was not a threat to national security. As usual the world’s worst liar, Home Secretary Jacqui Spliff, came out in front of the camera’s swearing that she knew nothing about anything! So nothing new about that! Stick to claiming for 88 pence bath plugs, Jacqui! ( I have finally picked up that Jackie uses the French spelling of her name!) 
"It should be absolutely clear that I have been ill, and it warrants me occupying the Captain's favourite chair!" Please note only one fang, the result of trying to headbutt a car in 2008!
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2010 and all that! January 2010 The new decade has opened with a mini catastrophe for those aboard Saul Nomad. January first heralds a reopening of the hunting season locally, and each dawn has resounded to gunfire. The local method is traditional. A man, his shotgun and one or two gundogs. I presume the target is rabbits. The chasseurs shoot at anything that moves…apart from the horses. Obviously if you keep a horses in a field, you do not want them injuring themselves stepping into rabbit warrens. Although having despatched the rabbits, it might be an idea to fill in the entrances! As a general rule once the gunfire kicks off, the cats leg it back to the ship. I tend to get up to feed the cats before dawn at 7 am. My reasoning is that it goes someway to protect local wildlife. Sadly Blackie did not make it back from his morning patrol, and his body was found with dog puncture wounds in his neck and hind quarters. Live by the sword and die by the sword! Blackie was one of the nicest cats that I have ever come across, but as they used to say about WW1 fighter pilots…there are old pilots and bold pilots, but no old bold pilots! I cannot blame the dogs because they were only doing what comes naturally…alas I cannot say the same for the chasseur, who for want of a better description, is an arsehole…with previous on other local cats. Blackie has been laid to rest on his favourite spot on a grassy bank overlooking Aigues-Mortes. Hardly a mark on him. No blood…it was probably shock, which is merciful. The flag is at half-mast. Tears before bedtime!
The Assassins!
 Finally the snow has reached Aigues-Mortes. Pretty piffling by your lot’s standards, but we are suffering with pride! Ginger and Whiskey are not impressed, but life goes on!
 Being confined to ship has produced some dividends. Plenty of television viewing has concentrated the mind on the fact that a number of our many remote controls are performing rather erratically. Several seasons of spilling alcoholic beverages and soft drinks into them has taken it’s toll! Opening them up has revealed not only sugar residue under the buttons, but corrosion on the printed circuit boards. First I removed the batteries. Using Q-tips soaked in vinegar, I have gently wiped down all the electrical surfaces. N.B. It is a simple procedure to open them, but pre-programmed ones, like Sky, should not have their batteries removed for more than ten minutes…and you should ensure that all the surfaces have dried before returning them! All the remotes are now working normally, and the mild acid wipedown has been a lot cheaper than wipe-out. My next project are my two dead laptops! Watch this space. Today I heard that some Australian Scientists have discovered that watching as little as one hour of TV per day can knock 20 percent off your life. I do not know whether their test material was “Home and Away” and “Neighbours”, or even the Ashes series. Whatever it is, the Antipodeans will soon be dropping like flies…and there are plenty of the latter. By these standards I could go anytime! Better light up a couple of Gauloises to get over it.
The Generator start battery has given up the ghost after four years. It should not be too much of a problem…if you are a vertically challenged shipwright who is as supple as an Orang-utan! Why a start battery is concealed in the deepest recesses of the engine room escapes me. Why did I eat so many mince pies? The Salt works dispatch department has been busy this week. On Monday thirty trucks turned up. Later a twenty seven wagon train lumbered up the track, followed by “Polaris”. That should fill a few salt shakers and possibly treat a few roads as well! No salt mines needed when you have mountains of the stuff made by evaporation!
...any more granules might break a ship's back? 31st January 2010 Cadbury’s may or may not have been sold to Kraft for a shed load of borrowed money. The Europeans are laughing because the two worst chocolate making nations may finally be united. The trouble is, as every Brit knows, our vegetable oil confection may be rubbish to the cognoscenti, but it does taste wonderful. It brings back memories from the Dragon School. We went on annual school trips to Bourneville during the rationed 1950‘s, where you could eat as much chocolate as you liked. It took days to recover from that treat! Sixpence invested on a bar of “fruit and nut” from the School tuck-shop, could elicit all sorts of favours from our young lady Dragons. I am not accusing them of being venal...I did not catch that for another thirty years! However navy blue knickers have consequently always elicited a frisson of excitement for the writer. Some of the recipients of our bribes have gravitated to the highest offices in the land, so my lips will remain sealed. Of course Cadbury’s also own American Icons Wrigley’s chewing gum and Dr Pepper. Naturally if Cadbury’s was France’s Danone Yoghurt, it would have long since been declared off limits! Of course with the sabot was on the other foot, Danone who owned HP sauce but sold it to Heinz, who as we all know, now makes our beloved national institution in the Netherlands. Globalisation is clearly another rotten Anglo-Saxon plot. Now for a period of reflection on the subject of Iran. If they choose to blast Israel from the face of the earth, it must be bad news for the West Bank and the denizens of Gaza. Unless I am sadly misinformed, it will be a first for a surgical strike using Nuclear weapons. Is it beyond belief that the Mullahs will not care? Watch for this mushroom cloud! Sorry to inflict this on you, dear friends. The product of bugger all to do during the winter! I become eligible for my state pension on the 19th June. Shock, Horror! The prospect of receiving a regular income is most welcome…having foolishly blown my savings on my beloved bateau. Having spent the last two weeks on Melbourne time, I have finally come back to reality. Unfortunately the Swiss Miss didn’t. I have only just started to munch the brim of my hat. Remember that Roger did not win a final until his seventeenth time of trying, and our Scot has been in nearly as many slam finals by the same number. Keep up the good work Andy! No worries, time is on your side! Am I biased. You bet! The other morning I awoke to a cacophony of screeching. A flock of some two hundred Cormorants were fishing beside the ship. I have never seen so many at one time. The noise was being made by a similar number of Little Gulls, who were dive bombing the fishermen. A half dozen Egrets were perched on our rails, as if in the Grand Stand. I wish I could have photographed this Hitchcockian scene, but chose not to disturb them by watching them on my CCTV. A Cormorant takes around twenty seconds to catch a fish, so over a period of twenty minutes a lot of breakfast got consumed by all! There has been some ornithological bad news for our flocks of starlings, the odd buzzard and a few iridescent Bee Eaters et al. They have always hung out on the disused power lines that run across the marette. The “powers that be” appear to have decided that the huge copper cables were worth more at the smelters. I never thought that I would be sad to see the concrete posts bite the dust. There have been some confused flypasts since, but I am sure that nature will solve that little local difficulty. 
8th February 2010 I have answered the clarion call from Cambridge...my sister needs my help decorating her new house in Hoddesdon, whilst still living in her original palace. Having departed A-M on the 8th Feb..and leaving behind a basking 18C, the UK's circa zero degrees has come as a rude shock. On the plus side it has provided an excuse to go to Marks and Spencer for extra layers, it has reminded me I should not moan about being marooned in the Sarf of France. I have done what every returning Brit must do...a curry, a chinese and some fish and chips! Whoops I appear to have gone up a size at Marks and Sparks! For what it is worth, the flights have reconfirmed my opinion of Ryanair. The EasyJet return was £ 100 pounds cheaper without the hassle of having one's intelligence questioned. Infact TGV rail would have been cheaper by few pounds than Jerry's cans...and roughly the same time with the security and all that. 
They did it again on the 22nd!
"Sometimes I feel just like Tippi Hedren!"
3rd March 2010 What an Olympic Ice Hockey final it was, and it reminded me that Hockey continues as a five star spectator sport. Back in 1960, I supported our city’s team, the Hull-Ottawa Canadians. They were the farm team for the renowned Montreal Canadians, and provided many of their future stars. My father and I went to most of their home games and, along with rest of the supporters, we hurled our galoshes on the ice in celebration as Bobby Rousseau and Guy Lafleur et al dismantled the opposition. The Vancouver Olympic cameras suddenly picked out the great Gordie Howe in the stands. Although he now looks like Clint Eastwood in “Gran Torino”, I was surprised that he is still drawing breath. In 1961, he was already the “veteran” Captain of the NHL’s Detroit Redwings. Hull-Ottawa beat them 5 -2 in a sold out pre-season friendly at the old Ottawa Auditorium…the 1930’s wooden one that has since burnt down. The Auditorium was also where my school, Ashbury College played all of it’s matches. Although only good enough to appear in inter-house competition, the thought that I had been smashed…perhaps with less vigour…into the same boards as the great Gordie, added to my ecstasy! Ashbury was situated in Rockliffe Park, which was the Canadian capitol’s main Diplomatic Quarter. My recreational hockey was mostly of the non-violent gloves, shin and elbow pads type and played outdoors. I remember that one of my fellow pupils was the son of the German Ambassador, and was able to book the Governor General’s floodlit rink at night. Half a dozen of us would spend many an hour there, with the Governor’s residence surrounded by snow capped woods. A couple of uniformed Mounties were usually the sole spectators and politely feigned interest in our contests. A pretty unique sports arena!
The main gate for Rideau Hall. In 1960 the French Canadian Governor General Vanier was considered a traitor by the Quebec Seperatists, and they were out to "get" him. Our jolly hockey party must have passed the security checks...and Ashbury Cadet Corps were affiliated to the Governor General's Footguards as depicted here! 
Rideau Hall as it is now.
It is funny how things can go full circle. By 1968 I was a member of the Cumberland Lawn Tennis Club, Hampstead, whose Chairman was the avuncular Ernest J. Ramus. Ernie was a very modest man, and it took me another twenty years to find out that he was a part…but not first choice…of the unique G.B. team that won Gold at the 1936 Winter Olympics. At the 1948 championships, he actually captained G.B.. The team was made up mostly of Ex-Canadian ex-professional Hockey players…a hard drinking, hard nosed bunch of rough necks. What was it like to handle them! “A nightmare”, responded the gentle Ernie. “I tried to get some discipline going in the team, which was totally ignored!” How did you do? “We managed eighth and a few monumental hangovers!” Where had he learnt to play Ice Hockey? None other than at Ashbury College, Ottawa in the early 1930’s! Alas dear Ernie has since gone to that great Ice Rink in the sky!
 The guest of honour at the Garmisch Olympics. They were the last he would ever attend! Not sure that Rudolph Hess attended any either, but at least he watch them on the box in the comfort of Spandau! Tempting fate, I caught the second half of today’s “Monster Moves” on Channel 5. The subject was the towing of a semi-derelict 1960’s Canadian “O” class Navy Submarine 700 miles across open Atlantic water. Dragging it up a slipway to be displayed on dry land at Rimouski, Quebec. Rimouski is a major town on the South shore of the St Lawrence, and is surrounded by around thirteen one horse towns with names that are all prefixed with “Saint”. The religious theme is occasionally broken with other Gallic names like “Trois Pistoles”, “Pointe-au-Pere”, “Luceville” and “Le Bic”.
General Wolf, why did you bother scaling the Heights of Abraham? On the night of the 23rd December 1963...only one month after Kennedy's assassination...I was a passenger in John Booth’s ‘63 Chevy Impala Convertible that drove for eighteen hours from Mount Allison University, Sackville, New Brunswick to Ottawa, Ontario. Our girl friends had sensibly made other arrangements! There was violent blizzard blowing over the Trans-Canada Highway. We wanted to get home to Ottawa for Xmas, and all flights from Monkton had been snowed in. As I sat shivering in the back of the car nursing a quart of Rye whiskey, the frozen landscape flashed by in our headlights. I cannot recall seeing any signs saying, “This way to “Rimouski””. But I digress! The slipping of the sub was filled with many mini embarrassments, that were invariably the result of foreseeable man made difficulties. In 1962 the Canadians had ordered three British built “Oberon” class diesel/electric submarines, and they were all built at H.M. Dockyard Chatham. They were named “Ojibwa, Okanagan, and Onondaga”, after Canadian Indian tribes which was standard RCN practice after the war. But this sub was now named “Rimouski”! I had visited the “Ojibwa” (Who started life intending to be HMS “Onyx”) in her fitting out shed at Chatham in the Summer of 1963, in my official capacity as crew of “Charlie” Cruise. I was a bit choked because “Bravo” cruise had gone to the Caribbean, whilst we were back home being gassed on the Marine Commando assault course at HMCS Cornwallis. By then the Brits were moving into Nuclear power and Polaris, and could not afford the “O”’s as well. The “O” class was a pretty advanced machine…17 knots under water…faster than their 12 knots surface speed…at the time this was restricted information…certainly to a dim midshipman. The Oberons were groundbreaking in that they incorporated a lot of plastic in their build, and the superstructure incorporated antimagnetic aluminium alloy. At nearly three hundred feet long, two thousand two hundred tons, a distinctive passive sonar bulge on their bows and painted matt black, they looked the business. By the end of WW2 the RCN was the third largest navy in the world, and specialised in anti-submarine warfare. The “Oberons” were meant to quietly sneak up on noisy Warsaw pact nuclear subs and nail them. As arguably the quietest submarines ever built, their main duties during the Cold war were to insert special forces on enemy shorelines, and an Oberon was in use in the Falklands. It was sad to see the “Rimouski’s” rusting hulk being dragged ashore, but nice to know that she was due to be polished up and put on display. Was she once the “Ojibwa”? I do not know, but there is a 33 percent chance that she might have been!
This is actually H.M.S. Otus, but you get my drift. In 2008 the RCN were offering "Ojibwa" for scrap at 50 to 60,000 dollars. Fancy one of these at your mooring along with bragging rights to the biggest fishfinder in the marina?
We have finished our Winter Olympics in Aigues-Mortes, and there is a Spring in our step! Lidle are doing Grow bags for one euro, so we have planted tomatoes, mint and basil, on the basis that the sky is the limit for salads on Saul Nomad! The varnish brush is out on the control panel, and I have been fighting a losing battle with the cats...who insist on signing that particular work of art. Courtesy of the Sunday Times, I noted that the state sector still does not do sacking. At 14, over half of white boys on free school meals have a reading age of a seven year old or less. You might think that somewhere in in England’s 450,000 teaching staff lurks the odd incompetent teacher. Well you would be wrong - or very nearly. In the last nine years only 78 teachers have appeared before the general teaching council for England for alleged incompetence. Only 12 were actually suspended, so clearly no problems there then! 19th March 2010 
My optimism regarding spring has turned out a bit previous! We have had a weeklong Mistral which was probably sent to us by mischievous Scandinavians! Still I managed to get six coats of varnish on the “dashboard” and the junk shelf, which tends to build up with things that I intend to use soon (but actually hardly ever do!). As the weather picked up over the weekend, the corrosion on the steel plating around the forward anchor winch and capstan clearly had to be addressed. It was too much for the sander, so the 4.5 inch grinder was dusted off. A couple of coats of International “Intertuf” anti corrosion and Dulux “Valentine” black gloss anti-rust paint has put a shine on things. 
My first visitor of the season. Vanook rewarded me with three bottles of good wine, and a slap up meal at "Minos". The downside was that he trashed my new seedbed! His owner's generously replaced it with a row of tomato seedlings, which are now growing like triffids! Ginger was completely enamoured with Vanook , and patiently endured a couple of 360 degree'er Newfie washes!
Great excitement, not only am I dog sitting Newfoundland “Vanook” for a week, but one of my friends has asked if it is ok for her daughters…in their twenties…to sunbathe topless during their week's stay. I know that many of you think that I am an old prude, but after careful consideration, I am granting permission. It means preparing for afternoons filled with unannounced visits from the local old boys rubbernecking over my shoulders, as they politely request if they could borrow my set of spanners for an hour! I do not know why more of my fellow Bateliers don’t spend time on the beaches of nearby Espiguette, where completely starkers is the order of the day! Obviously it means getting your kit off as well, so it is not for the faint hearted who might wish to patrol the dunes dangerously pretending to be ornithologists rather than native naturists. “Courage Mon Brave!”
Vanook’s owner is a retired French public servant who has strong views about the iniquities of “Public” service in France. Firstly it is definitely not “Public Service”. Secondly that one out of every two of people employed in France are public servants. Only ten percent do any effective work. Eighty percent just show up and go through the motions, and the final ten percent specialise in screwing up the system! Not my words, but his! In the year of the Harriet Dromey, I was pleased to note that the only cast iron defence against a murder charge remains post-natal depression and sleepwalking! Males tend to use the latter! In this election period I have tried writing a few vaguely political pieces, but they are so bloody tedious they have all finished in the recycle bin! What is clear is that the politicos have even more control on the news services than normal. Even Sky News who I always considered to be fairly up the middle, regularly issue instant rebuttals of any Tory line. They have announced so many “Tory Poll Lead slips” stories that technically the Conservatives must be already be behind in the polls. When the simpering Kate Burley first interviewed Gordon Brown , it was unclear whether she was asking questions or offering to give him a blow job. Ooh er! Go and cut the grass beside the mooring or sit in a darkened room thinking about Sandra Bullock! OK so I cut the grass! 1st April 2010 This day of traditional tomfoolery started with me believing a news story that fried breakfasts are good for you! Any truck driver could have told you that. We have always known that a major constituent of testosterone is cholesterol, so it has only been a question of time when young fatties will stop playing with their dollies after a few fry ups…and then the date penny starting dropping…no, it’s true! Next for Global warming! David Cosset wanted to transfer his car registration from Paris to Gard as he is now listed as resident of Aigues-Mortes. It means a trip to the Nimes Prefecture. I tagged along because it would be an opportunity to visit “Le Grand Frais” which in my humble opinion has the best selection of fresh vegetables in France, and their meat, fish and cheese are not bad either. (Take Avenue Francois Mitterrand to Garon Airport from Nimes Costieres Stadium, 500m on left from first roundabout…up the Rue Maurice Schuman. For St Jean de Losne there is also one in Dole). Nimes Prefecture is very smart. Seven bored receptionists wait to greet you at the entrance. The Motoring section is up a flight of stairs to the right. Six more receptionists await clients, who queue on a ticket basis…except that being France it is chaotic. Having got past the form filling, you then all queue for the one cashier who will take your money. This bottleneck is even more chaotic. The final charge for the registration change was 2.5 euros. Wow! The wait was so long, that I had to consult reception as to where the Public Toilets were! Incidentally they do not appeared to have been cleaned for some time. Not much Public Service going in the bog. Was it really worth a two hour round trip from Aigues-Mortes? No choice there my friends. No trains, and the buses were on strike. Surely it would save a fortune if this sort of registration change was carried out by a letter and a stamp! 
Spring is for lovers! The Arena is for terrified Christians.
The Arena, is unavoidable in Nimes!
The poet Mistral's house.
The French insist "My tailor is rich", but this one is clearly short of paint!
The Bus Drivers were on some sort of despute, and dozens of them were driving around empty, displaying "Sans Voyager" signs! Very green!
In the Spring Sunshine, some of the clearing up is left to amateurs!
...naturally public works is best left to professionals! Any difficulty, and you can spit your dummy out!
15th April 2010 We were used for a fashion shoot on Sunday. “Club at cost” or www.clubatcost.fr as it is correctly known. Men’s Fashion at wholesale prices. They turned up out of the blue, and asked to use us as a back drop. “Your welcome to use the whole ship!” Kitted out with the latest digital Hasselblad plus all the bits…roughly the price of a new Landrover last time I looked…they were a very professional bunch. The pictures should be on the internet next month.
Camera and lighting crew are prepared to shoot! The UK election seems to be following two courses. The election which most people are ignoring, and the election in which political anoraks like moi are observing every nuance. If you can afford very little time to watch or read anything, I do recommend catching anything that Andrew Neil is doing. He puts awkward questions to all the parties, and has been the only interviewer so far who has exposed the Liberal Democrat manifesto as a work of fiction, but there’s a surprise! Even “Paxo” failed to lay a glove on Mr Clegg. How anyone can think that a hung parliament is good for the country in it’s present predicament escapes me. The rewriters of history seem to have already forgotten the disastrous Lib-Lab pact of the nineteen seventies hung parliament which ended up with a visit from the IMF in 1976. So Nick Clegg won the first debate? Well yes and no. He certainly had more time on microphone. The moderator constantly let both David Cameron's opponents interrupt him as he spoke. If you had stayed up until after midnight, you would have seen Andrew Neil prove to a previously bouncy Sarah Tether that there was a £30 billion hole in her widely trumpeted full frank and honest election manifesto figures. As he had previously done the same thing that morning to Douglas Alexander, who wrote the manifesto, you would have thought that she could have come with an answer by nighfall. Next week's debate on the economy should be interesting! The fact is that some of the two million extra public servants that Labour have employed since 1997 are going to have to leave their sinecures to help pay off our national fourteen trillion pounds of debt. It would be much cheaper to have our friends on the dole, possibly doing some community service which might come as a shock for a few of them! Is it politically possible? Sadly I am not optimistic, and certainly not before another visit from the people from the International Monetary Fund! Gordon may have to add his name to the list of shame that already contains that of Dennis Healey…another socialist bruiser with an inflated ego to match…a superb photographer though! I was pleased to discover this evening from the TV show QI that no part of the human body is older than ten years old! This is because the human body is constantly replacing it’s self. Heart, Liver, Kidneys, Blood, Skin…the lot. Sadly it also factors in the aging process. This may explain why “Dolly” the cloned sheep did not live to a great age. It may also account for my occasional infantile behaviour! 22nd April 2010 ....and whilst we are not on the subject of politics here is a copy of a letter sent to the Editors of Fleet Street by a friend of mine: From: Lester May [mailto:lester.may@blueyonder.co.uk]
Sent: 16 April 2010 15:51
To: The Guardian - Letters Editor (letters@guardian.co.uk)
Subject: Letter to the Editor - Nick Clegg + the Royal Navy
Sir, The buzz is that Nick Clegg did well in the television debate on Thursday night. However, on defence, the leader of the Liberal Democrats made a glib claim that there are two admirals for every ship in the Royal Navy, hinting strongly at there being an opportunity for savings. He is way off track with his figures. Slurring the navy like this is both unwise and unfair, for the Royal Navy is unable to respond during election purdah. The facts are very different to those claimed. There are some 36 two-star officers in the Naval Service, of whom thirty are admirals and six are Royal Marines major-generals. Of this number, twenty admirals and two generals are in dedicated naval or marine posts, and only two hold the four-star rank of a full admiral. Ten admirals and generals are in tri-service defence posts, most of which are open to army generals and air marshals by competition, and another four are in NATO posts. Of the eight vice-admirals on the active list, half are in NATO or tri-service appointments, such as Surgeon Vice-Admiral Philip Raffaelli who succeeded an army officer as Surgeon-General in December. As well as the Fleet Air Arm, there are some eighty ships and submarines all told, some of which are in refit or reserve. So, nothing like the 150 or so admirals that Nick Clegg claims; I hope he was steering a safer course with his other figures and claims. These statistics matter, for we have seen how even the prime minister can trip up with his armed forces 'statistics'. Indeed, the real question to be asked is not about the number of admirals but why the Royal Navy is now some 77% of its size in 1997. The world's seas are no smaller, some 92% of our trade still goes by sea and the UK still has the same fourteen overseas territories, yet there are many fewer sailors and ships, each of which can only be in one place at one time. That ten admirals and four Royal Marines generals are in tri-service or NATO appointments says a lot about the high calibre of these officers and, indeed, it is patently clear that the Royal Marines, in particular, punch way above their weight. Nick Clegg should take more care and more interest in the Royal Navy and the Royal Marines. Yours faithfully, Lester May (Lieutenant-Commander RN - retired) 24 Reachview Close Camden Town London NW1 0TY Tel: 020-7916 1994 Mobile: 07831 858105
....and whilst I am in the mood here is a piece that I have put together to add provenance to a signed copy of "Ian Hamilton's March" which I hope to sell at Sotheby's in July!
“ Who was Samuel Smethurst?”
Borne in humble circumstances in Failsworth, Manchester in 1854, he became part of the Victorian miracle. His father was a prize fighter, and had abandoned his wife and five children to pursue his career in America. The family were destitute. Samuel and his siblings received little schooling and in consequence they could neither read nor write. He grew up quickly and probably aided by his father’s genes grew to a tall six foot three inches. Having married a local mill girl in his teens, Sam joined his Uncle James’s Oldham building company as an apprentice. From the self taught bright lad in the office, he worked his way up to management. The company was getting into difficulties building their first mill. The mill owner stipulated that for the work to carry on, it would have to be under the sole control of Samuel. This caused quite a furore within the family, but it did not prevent Samuel from completing the job successfully. It enabled Samuel to buy his uncle out. These were tough times for tough men! Sam created a vertical operation. From his own brickworks situated over seams of local clay, to the design and build of the finished article. At one time he operated three brickworks. Not making the classic shiny Red Accrington type brick which washed itself clean from rainfall, but a cheaper quality that rapidly became black from smoke…as in “black satanic mills”! He retained shares in most of the sixty plus mills that he built and became very wealthy on paper. After the Great War, he built “Fort Dunlop” on the outskirts of Birmingham, so any likeness of the “Fort” to a Lancashire cotton mill is not coincidental. The contract price had been agreed before the War, and despite post war inflation he was able to successfully provide local employment and finish it in 1928 in Accrington Brick without going bust! Although well off, he was not ostentatious. He lived simply and he kept his son John Wesley’s family on a tight financial rein. An example would be that when he purchased the family home “Rydal Mount“, Turf Lane, Royton, as a wedding present for his son, the house was freehold and it’s garden was leased. Garden ownership was clearly one luxury too far! Nor did he become grandiose, and he is rumoured to have politely turned down a knighthood which Winston later offered him. My Dad’s playmates were the foreman’s son and the son of the “Oldham Athletic Football Club” manager. In those days Football managers were not the well paid stars they are today. Perhaps as a result of his upbringing, Samuel kept his wife and his family at arms length. Later he was to live with “a close female friend” in a two up two down house in the next street! However the difference from his own father is that Samuel did provide for everyone. My father George had had a sickly childhood and fell several years behind in his schooling. His grandfather got him into Manchester Grammar School with a phone call, and he was later accepted by Manchester University. His grandfather’s patronage proved well founded because father graduated with a first class degree in Engineering. After a career as a International Consulting Engineer specialising in the supply of drinking water, George’s book “Basic Water Treatment” became and remains, after several updates from working colleagues, the textbook on the subject for the Open University. My late father recalled that despite many acts of kindness to others, he never saw Sam smile. Samuel Smethurst became President of the National Federation of Building Trades Employers. He was also a lay preacher for the Wesleyan Methodist Church. A slight anomaly bearing in mind his private arrangements! John Wesley continued to run S & J Smethurst after Samuel’s death, but without the vigour of the old man, the company eventually withered and died. Samuel was always interested in Politics, and was an active member of the Oldham Conservative Party eventually becoming it’s Vice-Chairman. In his article “Churchill and Oldham”, Allen Packwood, Director of the Churchill Archives at Churchill College, Cambridge, explains at some length on how the Grandson of a Duke came to represent an industrial neighbour of Manchester. A bi-election fell due in Oldham, and Churchill’s candidature was very much a marriage of convenience. Both the sitting Tory MP’s had retired. One due to death and one due to ill health. The election did not go well for the infighting Conservative Party, and Churchill and his Tory partner James Mawdsley were beaten by the Liberals into third and fourth place. After his failure to get elected in the by-election of 1899, Winston went off on his South African adventures, out of which came his book “Ian Hamilton’s March” amongst others. He returned with his newfound fame, and fought the seat again in the October 1900 general election. His running mate was no longer the unfortunate and heavy Mawdsley, who had seriously injured himself whilst taking a bath in a china vessel which broke under his weight. Winston managed to scrape home as the second MP for Oldham. The Liberals had retained their overall majority, but enough Liberal voters had given Churchill their second vote to get him elected. As is well known it was at this time that the Conservatives began to tear them selves apart over Free Trade. Churchill and the Liberals were for, and the Tories were against. The matter came to a head in October when the Oldham Conservative Association had reacted angrily to a letter from Churchill in which he described Joseph Chamberlain as a “quack”. Samuel Smethurst was one of Churchill’s few supporters within the party, and wrote that Winston’s letter “seems to have had the effect of a spark laid to gunpowder” and added, “Frankly I think your chance now at the next election seems small, and if you are to find your platform it will have to be on the Liberal side”. Early in 1904 Winston handwrote the following letter to Sam. (In 2005 I deposited the original in the Churchill Archives.) It gives a very interesting insight into the prescience of the great man, and his close relationship with Samuel Smethurst. Martin Gilbert studied the letter in 1975, and refers to it in his book “Churchill”. He described it to me as “Alpha Plus Churchilliana”.
“ 105 Mount Street,
W. Private Your P.S. : I am very much interested in your survey of the political situation which agrees closely with my own view. I think Lord Rosebury realises more clearly than anyone else in public life my ideals of Tory Democracy: and personally I know him well and admire him much. But until he is at the head of a definite party and organisation with an enlarged and detailed policy, the question of supporting him is premature and it’s discussion very dangerous. Should that question become ripe for decision at some future time, I should have a difficult and perilous choice to make and my feelings would be divided on every aspect of the problem, personally because of my friendship with Mr Chamberlain and Mr Balfour, politically because of my attachment to the Unionist Party with the making of which my poor father was so intimately concerned. But I think you know pretty well the views I take on all political questions. Broad tolerant moderate views - a longing for compromise and agreement - a disdain for cant of all kinds - a hatred of extremists whether they be Jingo’s or Pro-Boers; and I confess that the idea of a central party, fresher, freer, more efficient yet above loyal and patriotic, is very pleasing to my heart. And there is this also to remember - no such coalition would permanently destroy the Conservative Party; for sooner or later - I fear sooner - the rest of the Liberals will have to fight with us against a great cosmopolitan labour movement, anti-national, irreligious and perhaps communistic. I believe a central party might postpone that day. I fear that present mismanagement and reckless expenditure may precipitate it, and Lord Salisbury’s death, like Lord Liverpool’s maybe the signal for stormy weather at home. It frightens me to see how often thoughtless politicians are about the future and what short views even the best of them take. You are a thinking man and I set great store by your judgement. I will take no important step without consulting you, for I know I can write frankly to you in absolute confidence. The present is an excellent opportunity for doing nothing. Yours very sincerely, Winston S. Churchill” On 28th December 1903, the General Purposes Committee of the Oldham Conservative Party had formally passed a motion of no-confidence in Winston Churchill. This was ratified by the Executive Committee in January 1904 and Churchill ceased to be the official Conservative candidate. He could have resigned, forcing an immediate by-election, but after considerable negotiation behind the scenes it was decided that this was in nobody’s interest. Thus Churchill remained MP for the Borough until the general election of 1906. But his interests were now increasingly elsewhere. On 31st May 1904 he completed his break with the Conservative Party, dramatically crossing the floor of the House of Commons to take up a seat on the Liberal opposition benches next to the radical Lloyd George. Just days before he had been selected to stand at the general election as the Liberal candidate for North-West Manchester. The Liberals won that election with the largest majority in British Political History. Politically and geographically Winston had moved down the road. In later life Churchill looked back fondly on his time at Oldham, remembering “the warm hearts and bright eyes of it’s people”, and writing that “No one can come in close contact with the working folk of Lancashire without wishing them well.” It is certain that Oldham has come to regard Churchill in similar nostalgic terms. The records reveal a less rosy but far more lively and interesting reality. John R. Smethurst and Lorna M. Norman (Nee Smethurst) April 2010 
..and now for something different!
18th May 2010 I have crawled out from the electoral sofa to find that we are in coalition with the Lib-Dems. (Liber-Tory not Con-Dem!) Brilliant shafting of the centre left! That will teach them to tactical vote! Going on previous correspondence, I think WSC would have approved! 
For those of you that think that we never bloody move, we move regularly to make way for the Salt Boat "Polaris". She is out of the picture on the right! Photo by David Cosset. Incidentally we are not only on Google "Streetview" circa March 2009, but the accompanying photos on Streetview were taken only three weeks ago. Who is that working topless on deck? Arnie of course!
T'Pau came by for his annual clipping! He left looking more like a National Service recruit, than a product of Aigues-Mortes Teasy Weezy Tonsorial School. His owners are very good natured, and know that after a couple of weeks they will be able to show him to the neighbours again! T'Pau took it all in his good natured Newfie way...but I had not held the mirror behind his head, murmering "Anything for the weekend, Sir?"
22nd May 2010 I cadged a lift to Sete with Davide from "Kara". Whilst he had three falls and a submission with his insurance broker, I was able to bang off a few snaps. I love Sete which is a vibrant, colourfull place! 
Nothing like having the beach to your self!
Double width hammocks...hope they can take the weight!
A bit of French "Gangoozeling".
Yet another weathered door. I love 'em.
Nice ...car!
Sete...
Sete...
...and a slightly more panoramic view of Sete.
First a snifter!
...then a walk around these old fishermen's cottages.
Many are to let, or have rooms to let. Fancy somewhere to write that book?
A bit of nautical junk...
...always
..gets me snapping!
more places to rent!
and laundry is for the birds!
31st May 2010
Although the weather has been considerably better here than in Northern Europe, we are living under a cloud on the Route du Mole, Aigues-Mortes. Despite always moving out of the way for the salt boats on request, we have been told that we have to get off this quay permanently by June 13th! Over the last year I have perfected a departure time from notice given to less than three minutes. As a rule I can do it in 90 seconds if I already have my clothes on! Apparently the Captain of “Polaris” has lodged a complaint with the Salt Works, who have asked for the Quay back. This must have come as a shock to the Terre de Camargue, as they have invested around one million euros electrifying and supplying water to the freshly concreted wharf. It defies logic really, because as soon as we depart the rental boats will surely move in, and I wish the authorities luck in locating and dragging the owners from the local hostelries! My theory is that the unwieldy salt peniches are struggling with the water depth…particularly on the left side of the waterway. You can see their props churning the silt as push themselves around. As is usual in most inland waterways and ports, the turning basin has not been dredged in living memory. Perhaps it should now be considered. Anyway there seems little hope in persuading the dead hand of officialdom otherways, and I am resigned to moving to the new mooring that I have been offered…sadly vacated by the previous incumbent who fell in and drowned earlier this year! Happy days! 4th June. It now turns out that rather than being moored on dead man's reach, we are in fact being offered a "mooring" which is even more unsalubrious! Consisting of 17 meters of grass bank next to the Campervan site, which falls away to the sloping stone side of the waterway. The balance for our 24 meters will be attached to a raised timber platform. My neighbour has already made his feelings clear by attaching the sole water supply to his boat, and disabled the tap. The electricity supply can be found under an upturned plastic bucket, a bin liner and a meter or so of insulating tape. Note to self...must remember to wear my marigolds! No poles, cleats or bollards. Tieing up with a few stakes driven into sandy soil is never a good way to protect 88 tons of steel. Around here a decent storm is force ten. "They" have to be joking...but of course they are not! If Aigues-Mortes was a cheepo place it might be bearable, but 4500 euros annual mooring fees have been paid. What is my problem? The annual VNF Vignette is 450 euros, and I could have tied up on a river bank. The change would have bought a lot of diesel. Watch this space dear friends! I now hear that they do not have the money to dredge the turning basin. It beggars belief that the Terre de Camargue would spend the best part of one million euros on a quay that they do not have title to, and then sell annual contracts which are not binding! (See it all on Google Street view.) Hey, but the weather is glorious, and it all may sort itself out in that charming way of the South of France! 13th June 2010 Lucky for some? We will see. Today is the official “vacate the mooring” day. The port has still not offered us a new mooring which I consider safe. It concerns me that they are operating a take it or leave us attitude as far as Saul Nomad is concerned. There are examples of double standards all over the port, so I am not particularly optimistic. I suppose we will have to be philosophical. Nothing is forever. We can take some pride in that we will leave our quay and environs in a far better condition than we found it! 16th June I have my good friends the Jessops staying for four days at the end of the week. There have been some jobs that have been queuing up through this very unpredictable spring. The black gloss on the gunwale has been waiting since last October. I had had this whizzo idea that I would create the matt black hull using anti-fouling paint…which is cheaper than usual paint, and has the practical property of eliminating weed growing on the waterline. The anti-fouling is initially glossy, and during it’s application there had been a number of accidental incursions onto the black gloss gunwale. After the winter weathering, it is now not very pretty. Applying the new black gloss took three days, including the silver paint on our three anchors, and getting rid of the paint splatters from the ship’s tender! Then there is the teak deck. I have never been a fan of either leaving it untreated or oiling it. Leaving it results in a seasonal sludge of expensive teak washing over the side. Oiling does not last very long and never seems to pass the white jean test. The last two years I have used a water-based acrylic matt varnish. It is not perfect, but it does stop the teak disappearing. I power sprayed the deck for two hours and then a further two hours applying a coat of varnish. As you probably know it is quick drying, but less than two hours later we had torrential rain which lasted most of the night. Not a lot of varnish around this morning, but shouldn’t complain too much as we did not have the reported ten drowned as on the Côte d’Azure! Must pay more attention to the weather forecast. Then there was the Wednesday supermarket. All very quick and successful, until I discovered that the new pack of pine scented cat litter deodorant had emptied into the fruit and veg. Five-a-day with woody notes? An acquired taste that I am not quite ready to acquire! The afternoon was made up with watching Salt Peniche “Polaris” hamming up his turn in the basin. At least I had the Capitain and the assistant Capitain on board to witness the charade. Whether it will persuade the illustrious Mr Spalma…who has more titles than the late Peter Mandelson…to come out of his bunker and change his mind about clearing the quay remains to be seen. Is there skulduggery afoot! When things become so illogical, I always think it is worth raising my nose to the wind! 
Spic and span again!
Vanook's tomatoes are going well and are delicious!
The Saul Nomad garden is finally looking good!
All the coriander in the seed bed came through, despite it being used by the cats to relieve themselves!
Thinking of falling in or nicking my spot anyone? Certainly think that someone is eyeing up our mooring, which was junk before we set to work!
"Something for the weekend sir?" "Just trim my parasites, thanks!"
22nd June 2010 It’s official. I have made it to sixty five…and I do not feel a day over twenty seven…that is as long as I do not look in the mirror! Margaret and Roger Jessop have been busy doing the tourist thing. The Salt Works and the Listel Cave tours have been given the thumbs up. There was a boules competition in Aigues-Mortes on Sunday, with forty regional teams. All taking it very seriously. A moules dinner at a waterside restaurant in Grau du Roi, and a night at Madam Coco’s have all been enjoyed…sadly the legendry Madam Coco was on holiday, but the food was up to standard.
Gutted about the non-appearance of Madam Coco, but a good evening none the less! 
Line dancing in A-M? You would need a line to enjoy this! Whether this could correct the wandering tune of the vocals, and line dancing by aged munchkins is open to debate!
We still have the threat of eviction hanging over us, but we are in wait and see mode. Our stance is that we all go or we all stay. I cannot recall things looking so green at this time of year. In the meantime the tomatoes are still a week from ripening…lack of sun basically. Politically I am OD’d, and the World Cup as we know is in “hide behind the sofa” mode. Ah well there is always Wimbledon! I personally think it is Rafa’s time again, but it is a long hard competition…and of course there is always Andy Murray! The Swiss Miss I hear you cry! I am not convinced! I have had to review my opinion about the 16 year old Laura Robson. She lost in the first round to the third seed, but she has definitely got it! I note that she is having a run in the girl’s singles. All this diversion is making it hard for anything to get done. The varnish on the wheelhouse is sending out distress signals. It is two years and holding since it last felt the brush. 7th July. I have just remembered that my great-great-great-great grandfather was German! Good enough for me! 
VNF came to survey the depth of water in the turning basin. Sans Drageur, Sans l'eau as they say. Problem is I hear that the Port is sans monnaie!
Polaris came and did her stuff without difficulty. The story is now that they want us to move, so they can off load the car over our fence, enabling mrs polaris to pop up the the supermarket! This has a ring of truth because the rest of it appears to have a whiff of bollocks about it!
8th July. What is it about my declarations of support? I am a Dutchman now...sorry boys. I have my delightful Belgian girls staying with me for two weeks. They are Walloons, so no support for the Hollandaises!
20th July 2010 Great news…for us! It appears that our mooring is safe for the rest of the year. We will be the sole survivor. Sadly all the fifteen meter and less boys are being chucked off. Finally our twenty four meters has come to our aid. There is not a spare twenty four meter mooring inside the port. Thankfully I will not have to dig up our flourishing tomato plants. 
Bastille day and night passed by in a drunken haze. No surprise there! 
Jean-Louis is concentrating!
Boney M? You must be joking!
Special Reserve!
Anne and Danni have finished their 12 day holiday, and returned to Waterloo. We miss them, as things suddenly seem very quiet and less scenic. On Thursday we got a call from Sotheby’s. Winston Churchill’s “Ian Hamilton’s March” had sold for seven thousand pounds! Crikey, seven grand for a signature! Sotheby’s had suggested two, and that it might get up to four. The sale should oil the wheels for a short while. It makes you wonder how much the twenty handwritten letters to Sam Smethurst…now the property of the Churchill Archives…are currently worth! I continue to follow the BP saga with interest. I keep wondering whether if BP's “No Claim Bonus” will be affected in 2011? Exxcon (of the Valdiz) and Halliburton (of just about anywhere, but Iraq will do!) being touted by the Americans as paragons of excellence. Do me a favour! Obama? A single term President, methinks. Racist? C’mon, no amount of political spin will persuade me that he is the right person to lead the free world! Sorry you “Guardian” readers! The World Cup? Harrumph! All my predictions were a direct opposite to those of the British born German Cephalopod! I blame that bloody German ball! Roll on the Autumn season! We are inundated with Ducklings of various ages at the moment. The word is out in “Quacker” land that Saul Nomad is the place for breakfast, lunch and tea! As a consequence they are all growing incredibly quickly! July 2010 My friends from "Charming Molly" have stopped off in Port Camargue. What a pleasure it was to visit Gerd, Karen, and "Teddy" in my favourite watering hole. Now that the weekly rate there is less than Aigues-Mortes, it is a subject for consideration. ...if it was not for my tomatoes! 
Our original mooring in September 2005.
I cannot recall previously foisting this one on you. I recently recovered a damaged polaroid from 1984, which records the first meeting between Robert, my blue and gold macaw, and bobo. It did not go particularly well, and it is hard to say who was shrieking loudest! I stopped clipping Robert's flight feathers, because he kept falling off his perch. One day he was happily sitting in the garden at 96 Agar Grove, Camden, when he was startled into flight. He settled in the trees on the Maiden Lane Estate, and finally flew off in the direction of Islington...never to be seen again. I am sure he finished up safe somewhere, because people do not tend to put tame parrots in the pot! Against my better judgement I had taught him to swear, and he could deliver a perfect "Fuck Off"...which I hope subsequently endeared him to his new owners?
July 29th 
Ian and Carol Sellars paid a most welcome and fleeting visit.
The traffic is so busy at the moment, that the more enterprising are finding novel ways to beat the blockages!
Talented Parisian Artists...painting and sculpture, Jean-Louis and Sandrine stopped by. His painting signature is "Magarasse" and has shown in Paris, New York and London. Think Balthus.
We spent all of wednesday afternoon running around with the Capitainerie re-arranging the moorings to accommodate a peniche that is even bigger than "Polaris". It turns out that most of the staff do not have the qualifications to move boats under power! They kept asking me to do it! I politely declined In the end "Vaillant" arrived twelve hours late, and reversed all the way through the port...so no turning in the basin! Possibly no evictions are required at all! You must be joking, even Capitaine Cretin is not for turning! July 15th This week Neil Jessop...sculpture, painter and photographer, and his partner Jessica Beeston...Viola with the English Chamber Orchestra came to stay. Jessica was unwinding after performing in Aix-en-Provence. Check out his website on www.neiljessop.net to see his talent.
The skipper turning up to take pictures during breakfast can test the most genial character! Even the recently conceived "saul nomad coffee headbanger" barely impregnated in this situation! Only joking! 
left to right: Michel's friends, Jean-Louis,Tongai, Tristan, Sandrine....all came to stay this week! They arrived from Paris as "Les Blancs" and departed "Les Marrons"!
The weekend was enlivened by these two dutch barges behind us. Fritz of "Rosa" and Roelof Fransbergen and their families were charming. Roelof who has a fleet of thirty two barges and passenger boats was bemused by our local gossip. The last time we offered rafting to one of our friends, the capitainerie set the gendermes on us, guns...the full works...without warning or conversation. Nothing outlawing "Rafting" in the rules and regulations. Capitaine Vincent, who was promoted from cutting the grass verges in the port, has some firm ideas though...even though it is unclear what they are! The Dutch said they clinched it with some "beer money". I will have to remember that one, the next time the boys in blue turn up. You can see how the A-M Capitainerie is getting an unrivalled reputation in this region.
Friday 27th August. Midday. "Polaris" executes his turn by touching up the wharf. Knocking out a chunk of concrete, as is his wont. Jean-Louis is giving instructions with plenty of belly! There was so much room behind him that two location boats passed around his stern...that's "Polaris "of course!
7th September 2010 It has been looming for some time. Les Aigues Navales is a great local favourite, that brings together a little fleet of local classic boats from river and sea. We had entered the Saturday parade through the port a few years ago. It had been an unnerving experience, with little boats arriving from left and right, and with my guests leaping around on deck obscuring my view, we were lucky to finish the display unscathed. Never again…that is until we were invited again this year! Ho! Hum!….a chance to show off! Fortunately I had the writer Sharon Hubbard visiting from Nantucket, Mass. Her best selling book “Wakeboards” is based on Nantucket Classic Sailing Boats. An ideal crew member to have aboard in a potentially dicey situation. Sharon kindly agreed to keep bow watch for me, and was using our closed circuit radio channel to give me a spare set of eyes. It all went very smoothly, my only mistake was to give Jean-Louis Duval the ship’s hand pumped air-horn. If only it had had a gas cylinder, it would have ran out eventually. Next year I am hiding the bloody thing, and vavazoolahs are officially banned! 
Nervously holding station in a cross wind, we are informed that the flotilla is on it's way up the Grau.
Here they come!
This is about as respectful as my ASUPAM passengers got!
"Rescator" passes by.
Not bad, now lets join the parade!
Eyes wide open, Sharon on watch!
"Potential hazard up ahead!"
"Say again Sharon!" (the captain has given some **** the ship's airhorn!)
Lothar gives a cheery wave, I think! He did the live music on Saturday Night...it was great as usual. Tony Vincent of "Poom Pui" has already retired below deck, on both occasions!
Boats of all shapes and sizes!
"Rescator's" bathroom. You don't get one of these on a plastic fantastic!
A sunday morning "digestif" hosted by the "Rescator's" crew. In the white shirt on the right is one of the champion "Gardians" (cowboys) of the region. Firm jawline required!
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