- Planes
- Masts
- Web Surfing
PLANES
I forgot to mention the delights of St Dizier, a place I passed through
a few days ago. Lovers of aeroplanes, especially lovers of low flying,
will especially like fast-jet planes of the Mirage variety. There
is a French Air Force base just beside the canal at St Dizier - the camouflaged
air field buildings standing out nicely against a backdrop of low hills
and forest.
The planes whack past on their own, or in pairs (either very close together,
or separated by a few hundred metres) or in fours in which case they are
in tight diamond formation. They also fly at night, though in what
formation it's a bit tricky to tell. Certainly, in daylight, it
was done at either low level (underneath the rain clouds) or at very low
level (just above the electricity pylons). And with no compunction
about doing this over St Dizier. I suspect that the French Government
encourages this so that the French citizens can hear how their money is
being spent in the defence of the realm - until, that is, the noise turns
them all deaf.
MASTS
It's funny the things one ends up doing. I just caught myself washing
the mast this afternoon. It's painted white, and was, originally,
loose-footed and guyed up front. This was unsatisfactory, as when
it had to be lowered (in a 'low bridge' situation, for example) I had
to desert the tiller, and go over the roof to the bows, undo four shackles
and try not to let the mast fall in the water. It is now freestanding
in its own tabernacle, behind the pigeon box, and I can easily lower and
raise it. Unfortunately, the said pigeon box is aft of the funnel,
so all the soot that the diesel spits out tends to land on the mast, and
it was getting quite dirty.
The mast IS used to fly the French courtesy flag, can be used to rig an
all round white light should we take to navigating at night (NOT part
of the plan), and could be used to get a Sky satellite dish at a reasonable
height (more later). Plus everyone else has one, so why shouldn't
Rosy?
WEB-SURFING
Whilst I e-mail via mobile phone and laptop, this set up is too slow for
web-surfing. Hence I'm always on the lookout for internet Caffs.
In France, La Poste provides internet access through 1000 post offices
- £2 to register, then £3 per hour for access.
A few days ago I went to register.
(It's important to remember that the entire French nation is anally retentive.)
I told the Madame on the desk what I wanted to do, and she called a Monsieur.
He knew not very much about the system, and a little less about computers,
but had a sheaf of handwritten instructions. We sat down at the
computer. You HAVE to have firstname.surname@TwatFrenchISP.net.
So I put in Billy.Bubbles. It then told me that already was one (!!!!),
so I'm now Billy.Bubbles-2.
Then it wanted an address, and was OK about a non-French country.
So I put in my UK address - but it wouldn't allow letters in a post
code. ALL post codes, world wide, have to conform to the French
standard! I was going to ask Monsieur for the La Poste post code,
but I reckoned he would go apoplectic, so I put in some random numbers
which it was happy to accept.
Naturally, 'the system' now believes that my surname is Bubbles.
At this point Monsieur and I started falling out. He could do, and
understand, line scrolling, but not page scrolling. So when I scrolled
down a page, he assumed I'd scrolled down a line, and, hence had to do
what was on the bottom line (Validate, as it happens). But I wanted
to complete the rest of the form that was now displayed above the bottom
line. He got VERY agitated, and tried to wrench the mouse from me.
Anyway, I got logged on, in the end. The computer is against the
wall, I sit facing it, with the general post office queue behind me, peering
at MY screen, as I go through my standard set of sites (TopsOff4u, babes.2u.com,
cum.my.way.com, WetOnes etc. etc.)
Heigh ho!!
Toodle pip!!
Bill
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