Morning Mugs,
Paris. The city of lights. Or something. We went there over Valentines weekend and I did so with trepidation. I've been through Paris, round Paris, under Paris and over Paris. But I've never stayed in Paris and spent time there. Whenever I mentioned this to friends I would always get the usual 'ruined by the French' comment along with others as below.....
'It's expensive' - yes it is but no more than London or Rome or Venice or many other great European cities. Take a bit of time to go off the beaten track and prices fall quite a bit.
'It's got dog shit everywhere' - no...no it hasn't. I'd argue Buchjarest was the worst I've seen for this, but Paris is clean, very clean. They passed a law on dog shit in the streets, and although no city is completely free of idiots leaving it behind, paris was s clean, if not cleaner than London.
'It's ruined by the French' - oh how I laughed at this..NEVER. Get the fuck over yourselves you gammon faced xenophobes. The french are fine, as are most of us, or the Romans, or Berliners....it's a shit lazy stereotype propagated by brexit twats. We found Parisians to be friendly, welcoming and polite.
'It's full of pickpockets, scammers and con-men' - Now this is the closest to being true. But again it's no worse than any other major Eurpoean city, where chancers see oportunities to mug off ostentatious or gullible tourists. We did see a pickpocket team by the Trocadero, and plenty of street sellers and 'cup and ball' con men. We also got partially done by the 'wedding ring' scam whereby a stranger walking acrfoss the road next to you claims to find a ring in the road, then says they can't keep it for religious reasons and gives it to you. Then tries charging you €50 for it being your 'lucky day'. However, we only had €2 in cash on us, and said we would hand it in to the police as we would want that if we had lost our ring. She accepted the €2....we see that as a €48 gain!
'The queues for the Eiffel Tower and other sights are horrendous' - yes they are, even in February. But..get the fuck over yourselves. Paris is the MOST visited city in the world, more than London, more than Rome, more than New York, so don't be surprised it's busy. Here's a thing though...a GJ tip if you like.....book your tickets and tours online before you go. There are plenty of 'skip the line' tours with TripAdvisor and Viator, both of which have never let us down. The price difference is small and the guarantees are worth a few extra quid, as is the lack of waiting around in endless queues. The Eiffel tower, Arc de Triomphe, Louvre, Place de Concorde, Champs-Elysees, Musee D'Orsay, Montmarte, Sacre Coeur and all the other stuff are terriifc places to visit. Notre Dame is behind a fence, and covered in scaffold so ...very limited stuff to see there.
'Public transport is shit' - no it isn't, well the metro isn't. It's clean and punctual. Is it as good as the London Underground...no, but it's pretty close.
'The food is shit' - au contraire mon amis, au contraire. The food we ate was amongst the best I've eaten, anywhere at any time. And I'm talking from the baguettes we bought on the street and in the Eiffel Tower cafe, to the food on the river boat meal and to the excellent food in the restaurant we ate in on Valentines night (Signature)
So, my advice is simple, go there. Take your cunty Union Jack/Cross of St George goggles off and see how the other side of the channel lives. Paris is a beautiful, clean , stunning , interesting and wonderful city that now vies with Berlin and Rome as amongst my favorites.
Later Mugs, GJ
Morning Mugs,
I'm fresh back from my first ever weekend in Paris........more about that in the next post.
My question is this......as we get older do we become more detached from the shit the world throws at us? Right now, it seems to me the news is an incessant stream of bad news. Coronavirus, floods, storms, brexit, facism, anti-semitism and an ignorant Uk government seemingly being driven by Dominic Cummings and not the PM. In sport it's all doping allegations or VAR controversy or racist or homophobic sports people.
The list of negativity is endless.
And I look at this and the The Wall is erected. I just think, well fuck the world. My life continues as it does every day. My influence on anything or anyone is zero. I ignore health fads. I ignore conspiracy stories. I ignore scare stories. I read articles, watch and listen to the news and base everything on the simplest balance of probabilities. That's almost ironic as probability was one of my weaker mathematical subjects.
I can't help wondering if this attitude of 'keep calm and carry on' is a peculiarly British thing or whether it's just a result of getting older and a by-product of life experience. Looking at the rising panic and gloom in the country as a whole, especially from the more fearful and hysterical people, I have come to the conclusion it's not nationality based calmness, but more a result of becoming older, and therefore more cynical and world weary.
And with this comes a rather comfortable feeling of detachment. VAR can fuck football up and it bothers me less because my emotional investment levels drop accordingly. Anti-semitism is a sad fact of life that can nver be eliminated by the facts on the Holocaust. The UK voted for Brexit, despite the harm it might cause. The UK voted for Boris and his gang of fuckwits, despite the hypocrisy and lies of every one of them. Nothing I or any other reasonable person can say will change that. We are disarmed, powerless and nothing we can say or do changes anything.
The perfect 'subjects'.
And this means I don't care. I can leave The Wall in place and ignore the crap going on. I can walk my dogs. I can play walking football. I can have a few pints on a Friday and talk shit with friends. I can go to football and quell the emotions using the inevitable fuckwittery of VAR. And this couldn't care less attitude just strengthens The Wall.
Have I found and advantage to getting older?
Later Mugs, GJ
Morning Mugs
This fine young chap on the left below, Ossie, who we picked up in early November from the wonderful Cyprus Rescue and Rehome charity after several months of being dumped, living in the pound and then a foster home before coming to us....is ONE YEAR OLD today.
OSSIE BERTIE
He is a part time garden reconstruction engineer, part time furniture taster, part time cat tormentor, part time bird chaser, voluminous food inhaler, constant farter and of course full time loving dog. He has made good friends with our first rescue dog Bertie (the one who's ear is floppy on the right picture) who is a month older. Every day they take me for a walk for an hour, sometimes we go at lunchtime, sometimes in the evening , sometimes all 3! For this my life is filled with a daft bit of joy every day when waking him up for his walk. Now if I could just stop him nipping everyone with excitement at seeing them!
Later Mugs, GJ
Morning Mugs,
I want to retire. No honestly I do. IO k now it's trendy to spout on about how much you love work, but after 41 years I've had enough. I want to wake up, walk the dogs, go to the bowls club, play walking football, take in a pub lunch, do the garden (yes..me...do the garden) , do another degree, decorate, vacuum, spring clean....anything but bloody work.
But will I be allowed to?
Well, I am in the fortunate position of having been in company pension schemes since the age of 18. 40 years I've been paying into them, a mix of Defined Benefit (final salary) or more recently (as is the trend) a Defined Contribution scheme. I've worked for 3 different companies in all that time which admitted has simplified things as the previous pensions have all been consolidated into the current (now closed) company scheme. I've been with this company 26 years and will be 59 years old this year...I have no desire to leave and find another role. My only desire is to carry on a while longer and then leave when the time is (almost) right with no role other than that of happy retiree.
I am currently looking at all the options on my DB pension, including transferring out to take the 25% tax free lump sum and clear the mortgage and some debts off. The CETV was very generous so I am seriously considering this. The house is then secured and owned, I'm still employed and working from home with minimal travel expenses. With a substantial lump left to fund the rest of my life when. am finally shown the door.
My bigger question is it now seems my state pension age is 67, having previously moved from 65 to 66. I now hear that this bunch of fuckwit wankers called the Tory Government wants to raise that to 75. Seventy-fucking-five! This sounds to me like part of a long term plan to move 'pensioners' from deserving retirees in the twilight years of life, to 'benefits scroungers' if they dare retire.
'Why shouldn't you work until you drop?' - yes I have heard people say that. I can foresee a time when people who declare themselves retired are sneered at and told they are sponging off of the state. Now, if you want to work until you drop, then fine, fucking get on with it. If you don't though, and you want to retire then that should always be a right, and the state should pay you a pension. And you should never fall foul of being called a benefit scrounger. And society should never reach the point where it frowns upon those who retire and seek a quieter life.
If I had my way, the retirement age would be 60. Then the older people could stroll off into the sunset and that would/should create vacancies for the young as they enter the jobs market. This system worked for decades. There is no reason for it to change.
As society moves on, the burden of work should be lessened not increased.
Later Mugs, GJ
Morning Mugs,
With 2 dogs to walk every day I notice the weather much more acutely than I did before. I also notice just how much fucking litter and other crap (such as dog shit) is left lying around. I live in a village where it's probably no more than 200 metres between dual purpose bins, and yet there are lazy and pig ignorant wankers of both genders who willingly lob litter on the floor or can't be arsed to pick up their dogs shit.
If I could I'd taser the lazy morons.
Then there's the weather. Now be honest, because I'm told London has apparently been mostly dry since October, whereas here...in the so-called sunny south, I'm pretty sure that since then we've barely seen more than 10 or 11 rain free days. Everywhere you go around here the ground underfoot is slippery, squelchy and full of puddles. It hasn't dried out, and subsequently you have damp and slippery leaves everywhere. The whole area seems to be in a state of perma-gloom.
Now, I acknowledge that climate change is a thing, although I would dispute the impact that man has had is as high as made out...the planet is an enormous eco-system and man has rarely ever been able to live comfortably in the worst weather excesses. Hurricanes destroy pretty much everything in their path, as do floods....extreme heat exaggerates the impact of forest fires ...razing everything in their path. That does not make me a denier, but it does represent a healthy challenge to the level of our impact on this enormous geo/eco-system.
Having said that, I'm now sick and bloody tired of the constant gloom and the rain and the wind. Right now I would take a cold snap, with frost and maybe a dusting of snow, with crisp blue skies. And then maybe a nice early spring with sunshine and some heat to dry the ground out. It won't happen, but it's a nice thought.
Later Mugs , GJ
Afternoon Mugs,
What a miserable fucking country this has become. We're passing laws preventing child refugees being reunited with their families. We're withdrawing from the EU and the Erasmus program allowing UK students to study abroad. We have radio stations allowing people to call in and tell 'retainers' to clear off and live in the EU (if only we could do that easily). We have a US president ordering assassinations in foreign lands and then warning said lands not to retaliate. We have airliners being shot down by missiles due to the assassination. We have a member of the Royal Family and his new wife vilified by the Great British Public for choosing to try a different and less pressurised way of life, rather than be driven down the same path that killed his mother. We have moronic, racist, jingoistic useless fuckwit MPs demanding a 'Big Ben peal of bells on Brexit night. Because , you know, there's fuck all wrong with rubbing peoples noses in your fatuous victory.
And herein lies the problem -= the Great British Public (GBP) . They have a voice now through Facebook, Twitter and the Daily Mail/Express/Sun comments sections. And of course this gives the impressions that the GBP are a bunch of mewling , gullible, racist, homophobic little Englander (yes the English are the main culprits) pillocks. Now no doubt some of them are. Some are ill educated, some choose to be ignorant, some think it's a laugh and some are trolls. What everyone, and I include me in this, is to remember that Social media is NOT the world. Social media is a new phenomenon....it's a spoilt kid that allows other split kids to sit behind the shelter of a keyboard and spout hatred, untruths, lies, defamation and bullying. It pains me to say it, but maybe regulation is needed. But then we value 'freedom of speech' don't we? The harsh fact is our freedom of speech has always had boundaries, but maybe more are needed. This goes for the web page comments sections as well.
Perhaps it's time to look at 'licensing' internet and social media access, making base criteria like a valid debit card/credit card/ID/passport a user requirement. Validated email addresses must be linked for all accounts. Phone numbers? Postal addresses? Electoral register entires for over 18s? Parental authorisation for under 18s? I don't know the answers, but I do know it's harder and harder to turn off the bile and hatred being legitimately piped over the airwaves, into our TVs and onto our laptops, tablets and phones, and then to differentiate good from bad and right from wrong and truth or lie.
if something doesn't change, then I fear society is being dragged down into a race to the the very bottom, a free for all where moderation, reason, fact and debate is drowned out by the crowd-think hatred of the GBP.
Depressing huh?
Later Mugs, GJ
Afternoon Mugs
Happy new year.
I suppose.
It starts with scenes even the most creative Hollywood producer couldn't add to, in the form of red skies and fire created lightning via the Australian Bushfires. I am actually a climate change believer, but I do think the hysterical extremist mobs are a bit much when they cry 'climate change' for every single weather event that happens. Yes, Australia is suffering 40 degree heat, but from what I see that ISN'T especially exceptional in some areas, but more so in the percentage of the country impacted. Maybe climate change is a factor, but no-one can specifically show this wouldn't have happened anyway or has never happened before. The cruel fact is bushfires aren't caused by spontaneous combustion via heat. No, they're caused by arson. Human actions of stupidity or malice, or both. A dry tree just doesn't catch fire due to the sun, neither does a patch of dry grass. Someone just chucks a lit cigarette out of window, or has a small bonfire caught of a gust of wind and .....well off it goes. The speed is what takes the culprit by surprise if it's unwittingly started....before they can get the hosepipe out the fire has spread ebbing the boundaries of their control and is now spreading like...errr......wildfire. For the malicious...well fuck knows what goes through their mind when starting such. thing, but they need their jaws spinning around and a long stretch inside getting regularly...ahem...stretched.
I hope the authorities get the fires under control and I hope they find the fuckwits who started them. And then bang them up somewhere where the only heat they feel is the stifling heat of a packed cell.
Anyway, this has been the second driest Christmas on record for me. I had 4 pints on Christmas Eve. The days when that night was a raucous booze-up are long gone as I rather like to enjoy Christmas Dinner. This year I chose not to drink Christmas Day due to going to football on Boxing Day, and then hosting a Boxing Day evening with friends and my brother. I wanted to be match fit for that beer session. However Dragon Control was taken sick on Boxing Day with violent evacuations from both ends. The bedroom smelled like the Plague. Dog number 2 was also poorly with a dose of the trots caused by his cartoon demolition of a plate of Delia recipe sausage rolls. Boxing Day this year will be memorable for the amount of latex gloves I used in my role as nurse and vet, along with 5 full dishwasher loads to get rid of the washing up from Christmas Day. Football was binned, and the evening was canned as DC was unable to leave the bed. And so it went on, culminating in me copping a lighter version on Sunday, but a version which left me bedridden for the day. We both saw New year in alone together, in front of the TV with a small but potentially risky Baileys to toast the new decade.
Our first day outside the house was yesterday, New Years Day 2020, with a 2 hour walk along the beach in Southsea and a pub meal with hot food...the first since Christmas Day!
The one positive from this is I don't think I've gained any weight. And there is something to be said for not having a hangover on this precious days off with the family. But it wasn't exciting. next year I need something different for New year at least.
Later Mugs, GJ
