holiday in france
Jul. 23rd, 2003 12:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
aumentouIf you're looking at this and theres a bit missing, dont worry, I'll have been interrupted by lunch.
I've just come back from holiday, and I thought I'd write it all down to help me remember it. Also, this way you can read about it if you have too much time on your hands, and possibly learn something useful - especially if you are going to paris and/or are likely to be an american tourist.
The night before, it turned out GB's passport had gone out of date. This led to a couple of hours of frantic net searches, regarding passport control within the EU. IT turns out you dont need a passport to go to another EU country - you just need a valid, recognised photo ID. List of recognised photo ID's from the UK: passport.
So she wasnt coming with me.
At roughly half past ten, still dazed and confused from the evening nap, I was driven by GB's mum to the most minging bus station in the world (or at least a contender for the title - Nottinghams broad marsh station). One relatively (for a coach) comfortable ride later, and I was at Luton airport (a masterpiece of shed architecture) wandering around looking for something to read, somewhere to sit, something to eat and a loo. The fact that there was nowhere to sit except the little cafe that charged me 2.50 for a coffee and a danish pastry which turned out not to be what I asked for, and that the two toilets alternated being shut, so that I ended up going to both each time is a minor whinge. The truth is I came away with everything I needed and a new Ben Elton book (high society - like most of his books its fairly entertaining).
The next coach ride was rather more crowded. The sad truth is that a coach ride when you have two seats is alright, but a coach ride sat next to a stranger is distinctly uncomfortable. Maybe this should suggest a redesign of coaches. Alternatively since then the more popular routes would become more expensive I could do what everyone else does and get a car.
Feh, anyway, I then had my first experience of solo flying (in the single passenger sense, obviously) and airport navigation, starting with Stansted. Having now been through Charles de Gaulle, I think that stansted is fairly well laid out, well signposted, and that those little train things are ace.
Ryanair have one distinction on seat access - check in numbers before 100 ish
get to go first. Take GB's advice and grab a seat next to one of the emergency exits - you have to put your bag in the locker on takeoff instead of under the seat in front of you, but you have so much leg room even freakishly tall people with stretched legs and a medical condition requiring them to straighten their knees will be okay.
Carcassone airport on the other hand is teeny - theres about three gates, two staff, one runway that will accomadate a landing 737 if it brakes until theres a squeeling sound, and a cafe that will do you bacon, eggs and chips at absurd times in the morning. Well, technically it was 7 something, so it was a perfectly sensible time to be working in the south of france, but it seemed absurd to me at the time
Eric is like an old version of Gonzo, if he were interested in totally different things and was more arrogant.
Physically, he's a short, flabby old man. Slow and tired and picking up nasty age diseases.
Mentally he's reasonably intelligent (though less than he believes), arrogant, well informed in certain subjects (and arrogant with it) but a little behind the times (and uncaring), very stuck in his ways, and he believes that the world is going to pot. Which it might be.
To deal with he is almost as exasperating as its possible to imagine a person being. The only way I can think of a more exasperating being is to start with him and exaggerate - no other base personality has so much annoyance potential. He is completely crap with technology, and worse, he has that 'idiot stuck in traffic' mentality where he thinks going on about how crap whatever thing he is dealing with will actually help matters.
He is also quite manipulative. He has managed to drive all his children away, and now when he needs support he has acquired the people he needs as they came passing through. Its a peculiar thing how people end up helping him without any reward.
That said, he is fairly interesting company most of the time. He can almost always find something to say, and its usually interesting. Even with two mitigating qualifiers in there he still says something interesting more than half the time, although sometimes it will be a repeat of last weeks conversation.
Tony is a big bluff yorkshireman. He's retired, so he must be 60+, but he still seems to have vast amounts of energy (like my granny Proctor), although apparently his knees arent what they were. {why did I bother writing that?}
He's also ex army - ex regimental sergeant major (thats a bloke who shouts a lot and organises people) and ex para (2 para, who were dissolved after that unfortunate gunning down of Irish kids incident)
He is overall a very good man and a useful man - good because he believes in looking after other people and helping them out and basically, he's collectivist. Useful because he knows and can do useful things. However, being ex RSM of 2 para has left him some prejudices - he dosnt like northern Irish catholics, he doesnt like disorder, he doesnt like gobby young people, and so on. Ruths bloke Dave did not therefore go down too well (gobby, young and irish).
Still, what can you do?
Eric designed his boat. Or at least some of it. It was then made by a man who, while being fairly talented with solid metalwork didnt really know much about boats.
This explains a lot about the boat, which is a rather poor design and keeps having things go wrong.
The boat is 12 or 13 tons. Its about 30-40 feet long (quite short for a boat on a canal) and its 12 feet wide (which is rather fat - too fat for many english canals and very fat for its length). For comparison, Tony's boat is more like 60' by 9'6".
Erics boat is constructed of 5mm steel, and has a hull cross section like half an octagon (two vertical sides down to two inclined sides down to a flat bottom. This means it is both very stable and quite hard to damage. Crashing into solid rock at full speed will make a loud 'Donk' noise and chip some paint.
There is some problem with the way the engine is mounted and the weed hatch which according to tony directs a large proportion of the engines power into making noise. That, and the fact that its a very old design of engine, and that its a diesel (which is fine, cos most boats are) combines with the shape of the boat (short and fat, remember) to give a maximum speed only marginally faster than a rubber duck.
Seriously, you can walk faster than this boat at full power.
Saying that though, full power is not perceptibly faster than 3/4 power. Its a very slow hull. In fact, its a set of skips welded together - or at least thats what it seems like.
That diesel and that its got no insulation except the 1" wooden deck above it, also make it fiendishly noisy.
Also, because it was put together by someone with no boating knowledge, things keep going wrong. The water pump was the latest problem. Normally they are put somewhere accessible and visible, so the first warning if the seals give is a puddle, and it can be sorted out quickly. Erics was under the deck, when it went three months ago, it left a foot deep puddle in his hull. This meant on my trip I had to bail out in excess of a ton of water.
Finally, the most critical aspect of poor design - crew. The boat needs two crew if it is to go anywhere with locks (i.e. everywhere). It can sleep one person. Instant problem Eric never though of.
Eric decided he wanted a computer. So one afternoon we had a happy expedition down to the computer buying shop. Well, I say happy - actually I'd rather have my nads smeared with honey and be tied down naked in a desert near a nest of flesh eating ants than do that again.
Well, maybe thats an exagerration. Still, it shouldve taken about 15 mins tops to do what we did - go into shop, look at pooters, pick the cheapest, ask if it came with a screen or would the one we had work, buy it.
What with Eric not understanding the fairly basic concept that a character was saved as a character and not as a keystroke (and so changing his keyboard would not result in all his saved word files changing Q's into A's or whatever), and directing us to the wrong part of the shopping arcade (in fairness, Tony did tell us the right bit, but I didnt hear him) it was an hour. Then we had more fun getting an amplifier.
Then when we got home I navigated windows setup in french. Yay. Told it to be in english, and it didnt switch. So now Eric has a french pooter that can play DVD's and write CD's and store the text of every book he owns (about half a ton weight) and every record (100-150 records) all on one small part of its hard drive. It can read entire compact disks of 'precious' family history faster than you can feed them in.
Did you ever think that what we all need is a computer shaped like a book, that feels like a book, stores all the text of all our books and that we can just read like a book?
It would certainly eliminate all our gratuitous book clutter. Although it would be 50 years before we got out of the habit I suppose.
You do any work you need to do in the morning. You lunch at midday or one. You have a long relaxed lunch followed by a nap because working in the heat from lunch until about 4 is unimaginable. Then if you are feeling particularly nuts you can try working after 4 when the heat has technically peaked, but since it wont be cool enough to acheive anything until 6 anyway, you may as well just go down the cafe and have water with ice and maybe a half of lager. After about 8 you could probably get something useful done, but frankly there never seems to be any point and you are too busy having dinner and another drink or two. Then it gets dark around 9-10, but its still mild because the ground is still radiating heat.
Its a lazy place by virtue of the weather.
actually, this goes for everyone, not just fools from the USA, but since most of the people talking really loudly have USA accents and most of the people present do not it really is mostly your fault.
READ THE SIGNS
I do appreciate that technically "Silence (with an accent) Priere" is not in English. However if you imagine the first word without the accent, and then try saying the second out loud, and in the context of a cathedral setting, you might work out what it means. Especially when two of the signs said under that "Please be silent, people are praying".
What it does not mean is "talk really loudly and uninformedly about rose windows and completely destroy the atmosphere of the place"
Similarly, the sign of a camera with a big red cross through it means "No flash photography". This is because the priceless and irreplaceable work of art in front of you is damaged by flash photography. Now you are taking this photo, and by doing so you are destroying the work for everyone else YOU SELFISH BASTARDS.
It wouldnt be so annoying if it wasnt so pointless! There are posters, and postcards, and copies and so forth, and they will all be of better quality than what your poxy little camera will do. You would be better off buying a picture, and everyone else would too, yet you go ahead and take a flash photo, damaging the picture while your at it. They should take your camera and smash it, and they should give you a good kicking while they are at it.
Finally, that sign saying "For aeroplane crew only" means exactly what it says. You cannot use crew passport control, even if you're from the USA, even if you're in a hurry, even if you really dont like the normal queue and would far rather not use it, and especially if you dont actually want to get to the plane you just want to cut 150 yards off your walk to somewhere else in the airport when you are an able bodied young man carrying a very small bag.
I've just come back from holiday, and I thought I'd write it all down to help me remember it. Also, this way you can read about it if you have too much time on your hands, and possibly learn something useful - especially if you are going to paris and/or are likely to be an american tourist.
The night before, it turned out GB's passport had gone out of date. This led to a couple of hours of frantic net searches, regarding passport control within the EU. IT turns out you dont need a passport to go to another EU country - you just need a valid, recognised photo ID. List of recognised photo ID's from the UK: passport.
So she wasnt coming with me.
At roughly half past ten, still dazed and confused from the evening nap, I was driven by GB's mum to the most minging bus station in the world (or at least a contender for the title - Nottinghams broad marsh station). One relatively (for a coach) comfortable ride later, and I was at Luton airport (a masterpiece of shed architecture) wandering around looking for something to read, somewhere to sit, something to eat and a loo. The fact that there was nowhere to sit except the little cafe that charged me 2.50 for a coffee and a danish pastry which turned out not to be what I asked for, and that the two toilets alternated being shut, so that I ended up going to both each time is a minor whinge. The truth is I came away with everything I needed and a new Ben Elton book (high society - like most of his books its fairly entertaining).
The next coach ride was rather more crowded. The sad truth is that a coach ride when you have two seats is alright, but a coach ride sat next to a stranger is distinctly uncomfortable. Maybe this should suggest a redesign of coaches. Alternatively since then the more popular routes would become more expensive I could do what everyone else does and get a car.
Feh, anyway, I then had my first experience of solo flying (in the single passenger sense, obviously) and airport navigation, starting with Stansted. Having now been through Charles de Gaulle, I think that stansted is fairly well laid out, well signposted, and that those little train things are ace.
Ryanair have one distinction on seat access - check in numbers before 100 ish
get to go first. Take GB's advice and grab a seat next to one of the emergency exits - you have to put your bag in the locker on takeoff instead of under the seat in front of you, but you have so much leg room even freakishly tall people with stretched legs and a medical condition requiring them to straighten their knees will be okay.
Carcassone airport on the other hand is teeny - theres about three gates, two staff, one runway that will accomadate a landing 737 if it brakes until theres a squeeling sound, and a cafe that will do you bacon, eggs and chips at absurd times in the morning. Well, technically it was 7 something, so it was a perfectly sensible time to be working in the south of france, but it seemed absurd to me at the time
Eric is like an old version of Gonzo, if he were interested in totally different things and was more arrogant.
Physically, he's a short, flabby old man. Slow and tired and picking up nasty age diseases.
Mentally he's reasonably intelligent (though less than he believes), arrogant, well informed in certain subjects (and arrogant with it) but a little behind the times (and uncaring), very stuck in his ways, and he believes that the world is going to pot. Which it might be.
To deal with he is almost as exasperating as its possible to imagine a person being. The only way I can think of a more exasperating being is to start with him and exaggerate - no other base personality has so much annoyance potential. He is completely crap with technology, and worse, he has that 'idiot stuck in traffic' mentality where he thinks going on about how crap whatever thing he is dealing with will actually help matters.
He is also quite manipulative. He has managed to drive all his children away, and now when he needs support he has acquired the people he needs as they came passing through. Its a peculiar thing how people end up helping him without any reward.
That said, he is fairly interesting company most of the time. He can almost always find something to say, and its usually interesting. Even with two mitigating qualifiers in there he still says something interesting more than half the time, although sometimes it will be a repeat of last weeks conversation.
Tony is a big bluff yorkshireman. He's retired, so he must be 60+, but he still seems to have vast amounts of energy (like my granny Proctor), although apparently his knees arent what they were. {why did I bother writing that?}
He's also ex army - ex regimental sergeant major (thats a bloke who shouts a lot and organises people) and ex para (2 para, who were dissolved after that unfortunate gunning down of Irish kids incident)
He is overall a very good man and a useful man - good because he believes in looking after other people and helping them out and basically, he's collectivist. Useful because he knows and can do useful things. However, being ex RSM of 2 para has left him some prejudices - he dosnt like northern Irish catholics, he doesnt like disorder, he doesnt like gobby young people, and so on. Ruths bloke Dave did not therefore go down too well (gobby, young and irish).
Still, what can you do?
Eric designed his boat. Or at least some of it. It was then made by a man who, while being fairly talented with solid metalwork didnt really know much about boats.
This explains a lot about the boat, which is a rather poor design and keeps having things go wrong.
The boat is 12 or 13 tons. Its about 30-40 feet long (quite short for a boat on a canal) and its 12 feet wide (which is rather fat - too fat for many english canals and very fat for its length). For comparison, Tony's boat is more like 60' by 9'6".
Erics boat is constructed of 5mm steel, and has a hull cross section like half an octagon (two vertical sides down to two inclined sides down to a flat bottom. This means it is both very stable and quite hard to damage. Crashing into solid rock at full speed will make a loud 'Donk' noise and chip some paint.
There is some problem with the way the engine is mounted and the weed hatch which according to tony directs a large proportion of the engines power into making noise. That, and the fact that its a very old design of engine, and that its a diesel (which is fine, cos most boats are) combines with the shape of the boat (short and fat, remember) to give a maximum speed only marginally faster than a rubber duck.
Seriously, you can walk faster than this boat at full power.
Saying that though, full power is not perceptibly faster than 3/4 power. Its a very slow hull. In fact, its a set of skips welded together - or at least thats what it seems like.
That diesel and that its got no insulation except the 1" wooden deck above it, also make it fiendishly noisy.
Also, because it was put together by someone with no boating knowledge, things keep going wrong. The water pump was the latest problem. Normally they are put somewhere accessible and visible, so the first warning if the seals give is a puddle, and it can be sorted out quickly. Erics was under the deck, when it went three months ago, it left a foot deep puddle in his hull. This meant on my trip I had to bail out in excess of a ton of water.
Finally, the most critical aspect of poor design - crew. The boat needs two crew if it is to go anywhere with locks (i.e. everywhere). It can sleep one person. Instant problem Eric never though of.
Eric decided he wanted a computer. So one afternoon we had a happy expedition down to the computer buying shop. Well, I say happy - actually I'd rather have my nads smeared with honey and be tied down naked in a desert near a nest of flesh eating ants than do that again.
Well, maybe thats an exagerration. Still, it shouldve taken about 15 mins tops to do what we did - go into shop, look at pooters, pick the cheapest, ask if it came with a screen or would the one we had work, buy it.
What with Eric not understanding the fairly basic concept that a character was saved as a character and not as a keystroke (and so changing his keyboard would not result in all his saved word files changing Q's into A's or whatever), and directing us to the wrong part of the shopping arcade (in fairness, Tony did tell us the right bit, but I didnt hear him) it was an hour. Then we had more fun getting an amplifier.
Then when we got home I navigated windows setup in french. Yay. Told it to be in english, and it didnt switch. So now Eric has a french pooter that can play DVD's and write CD's and store the text of every book he owns (about half a ton weight) and every record (100-150 records) all on one small part of its hard drive. It can read entire compact disks of 'precious' family history faster than you can feed them in.
Did you ever think that what we all need is a computer shaped like a book, that feels like a book, stores all the text of all our books and that we can just read like a book?
It would certainly eliminate all our gratuitous book clutter. Although it would be 50 years before we got out of the habit I suppose.
You do any work you need to do in the morning. You lunch at midday or one. You have a long relaxed lunch followed by a nap because working in the heat from lunch until about 4 is unimaginable. Then if you are feeling particularly nuts you can try working after 4 when the heat has technically peaked, but since it wont be cool enough to acheive anything until 6 anyway, you may as well just go down the cafe and have water with ice and maybe a half of lager. After about 8 you could probably get something useful done, but frankly there never seems to be any point and you are too busy having dinner and another drink or two. Then it gets dark around 9-10, but its still mild because the ground is still radiating heat.
Its a lazy place by virtue of the weather.
actually, this goes for everyone, not just fools from the USA, but since most of the people talking really loudly have USA accents and most of the people present do not it really is mostly your fault.
READ THE SIGNS
I do appreciate that technically "Silence (with an accent) Priere" is not in English. However if you imagine the first word without the accent, and then try saying the second out loud, and in the context of a cathedral setting, you might work out what it means. Especially when two of the signs said under that "Please be silent, people are praying".
What it does not mean is "talk really loudly and uninformedly about rose windows and completely destroy the atmosphere of the place"
Similarly, the sign of a camera with a big red cross through it means "No flash photography". This is because the priceless and irreplaceable work of art in front of you is damaged by flash photography. Now you are taking this photo, and by doing so you are destroying the work for everyone else YOU SELFISH BASTARDS.
It wouldnt be so annoying if it wasnt so pointless! There are posters, and postcards, and copies and so forth, and they will all be of better quality than what your poxy little camera will do. You would be better off buying a picture, and everyone else would too, yet you go ahead and take a flash photo, damaging the picture while your at it. They should take your camera and smash it, and they should give you a good kicking while they are at it.
Finally, that sign saying "For aeroplane crew only" means exactly what it says. You cannot use crew passport control, even if you're from the USA, even if you're in a hurry, even if you really dont like the normal queue and would far rather not use it, and especially if you dont actually want to get to the plane you just want to cut 150 yards off your walk to somewhere else in the airport when you are an able bodied young man carrying a very small bag.
