The centre of Europe (and the middle of nowhere?)

February 14, 2009 - Reflecting on New York

2009-02-16T23:10:00.003+01:00

With a jetlagged body and a dilapidated mind, I picked up the dog lead and headed towards the forest for an early morning walk to clear my head. Five seconds later, I returned to the house, attached the lead to a rather bemused-but-patient dog, and set off again.

I inhaled the fresh air greedily, and exhaled slowly and purposefully; it tasted so good compared to my previous week’s diet of carbon monoxide and freon. I listened – nothing; nothing except the crunch of my boots against the layer of snow. No wait! A woodpecker; two woodpeckers. No sirens, no engines, no ringtones, no annoying nasal voices. Just woodpeckers and the satisfying metronomic crunch of snow.

I reached the apex in the path that marks the beginning of the bottom of the valley. Here the snow, never seeing the winter sunlight, was deeper, and the crunch more muted and soft. Ahead I could see Oonagh relieving herself in sparse thicket of leafless brush. An image came flashing back into my head, an image of a large contorted dog on Madison Avenue, its back arched as it expelled its processed meals in a semi-liquid form on the busy sidewalk, its owner acting oblivious to the disgusted stares of the passers-by.

The rocks and cliffs forming the sides of the valley rose higher either side of me, less dramatic but more impressive than anything I’d seen the previous week. Another noise entered the forest’s vocabulary, that of a babbling stream. I heard no-one, saw no-one, paid nothing, felt nothing and yet felt everything as I bounded up the steep incline leading back to my house. I was going to spend the rest of the morning making a vegetable curry, I had decided, with organic vegetables. Samuel would help me. Flush out the chemicals of a week of the fast food of another continent. Boy, was I glad to be home.

February 8, 2009 - From the Dolomites to our future

2009-02-11T02:34:00.002+01:00

The snow that had kept us indoors for all of Friday was relentless even on Saturday morning. I decided that there was no point trying to go north over the mountain passes, so we said our goodbyes to Jean, Sandra, Jose and Martine and headed south, towards Venice. (For the record, they got stuck, Jean got sick, and we arrived home in Luxembourg three hours before they did).

At first, things did not go well. The roads were in abysmal shape and Joelle - frustrated at having spent most of her holiday indoors watching snow and changing nappies - was in an equally abysmal mood, matched only by my own. But, little by little, the snow turned to rain, the roads cleared and the storm clouds inside our car also began to disperse. We began to talk, not just shout. We started to listen to each other. We had a rather nice snack lunch in a quiet café. We drove and drove, and the kids were, generally, good. Hit the motorway near Trento, laughed at the tailback of cars trying to exit for the high Dolomite passes that we had avoided, up over the Brenner Pass into Austria without any problems, floated along the broad Inn valley in the fading winter sunshine, and around Munich we sped. We had a half-baked plan to try to get home, but the kids became grizzly and I a little tired, so we took the exit into Augsburg and looked for a place to stay.

Well, I was delighted – a youth hostel! There is definitely something more satisfying about sleeping in a bed that you have to make yourself, and for Samuel the bunks were a major highlight. A walk into the nearby city centre and – bingo again! – we stumbled across the gem of the trip: a bustling “brauerai” serving generous portions of hearty, lip-smackingly good German food and dark malty beer.

Thinking about it, we must have looked a little odd. A young English-speaking couple (one of which was wearing hiking boots and a running shirt because his wife had packed everything else away) in a busy city pub after 8pm in the evening with two tiny children. But the food was wonderful, and the atmosphere electric. After a long and difficult day, Joelle and I discovered that we really were on the same page after all. We made our decision. It’s not always going to be easy, but it is the right thing to do for our future together and for the future of our children. I’m sure of that.

Back at the hostel, I got nervous about Samuel being on the top bunk and spent the night up there with him. I love that kid.

February 8, 2009 - Skiing holidays are not for me

2009-02-11T02:30:00.002+01:00

Let's list a few things that I really love:

1) My family
2) Mountains
3) Snow

Aha! You’d think by looking at that list that a family skiing holiday would therefore be my idea of heaven. Alas, as I have now discovered, it isn’t. One can love things individually that, together, just make no sense at all. Like coffee and gravy, for example. Little Britain and my grandmothers.

Mountains are wonderful up until the point that they get snowy, icy and wet, when they become dangerous and thoroughly impractical. Snow is magnificent for building snowmen in my garden and generally for making the world look a more beautiful place, but is of very little use in the mountains unless you like downhill skiing. But a three-year old (with balance problems) and a seven-month old baby cannot ski and I would rather be with my kids than attempting to descend snowy mountainsides whilst they’re stuck in a crèche somewhere.

Although I admit that I’ve never actually tried it, there seems something inherently wrong with downhill skiing. For me, the thrill of mountains comes from the feeling of being in nature and from the satisfaction in hiking up to a peak or viewpoint. Coming down is just a side-effect; a precursor to a nice warm shower. And sharing the mountainside with hundreds of expensively kitted-out upper-middle class yobos isn’t exactly my idea of getting in tune with mother nature either. Quite simply, I’m just not interested in skiing, and I positively loathe the whole skiing “scene” (just try parking a Citroen C4 Picasso between the snowdrifts, tossers and BMWs of Cortina D’Ampezzo and you’ll soon agree with me).

OK, I admit – I probably haven’t been as motivated this holiday to try winter sports as I perhaps ought to have been, and this led to friction between Joelle and myself. Reflecting on it, it’s easy to see where this tension came from.

Joelle spends all day every day at home with the kids; holidays are an opportunity to get out and do something different.
I spend all day every day away from my family, working myself to exhaustion for the noble cause of ensuring that a certain large corporation doesn’t pay too much tax; holidays are an opportunity to relax and spend time with my loved ones.

As long as our children are still young, a skiing break simply doesn’t allow Joelle and I to both achieve what we want from a holiday. I’d love to come back with the family to the Dolomites in summer, but visiting the mountains in wintertime is not for us right now.

February 1, 2009 - Big in Japan

2009-02-11T02:23:00.004+01:00

Hohenschwangau consists of two castles, one street, several hotels and half a billion Japanese tourists. I have been amused to observe (on two occasions now) that the latter wander around the tiny village and never actually up to Neuschwanstein Castle itself, bizarrely preferring to wait half an hour and pay a small fortune for a freezing horse’n’cart ride instead of just setting out on the 20-minute hike like ordinary people. Ah! Different cultures!

To pass the time before their date with certain hypothermia, the Japanese tourists take photos. LOTS of photos. Our brief walk around the village on Sunday morning has ensured that we are now the unwitting stars of at least five thousand digital images. Especially Samuel – the Japanese ladies in particular found his “monster” hat rather amusing. He’s probably already a cult hero in Tokyo as I write this.

Another very odd thing about the Japanese in Hohenschwangau is their choice of photos. Castles, fake reconstructions of “brauerai” and little boys with funny hats are first-choice photo material, yet the beautiful “Alpsee” lake, barely 100 metres from the main car park, was oddly deserted. Perhaps (and I don’t think I’m being patronising here), perhaps they didn’t actually realise that it was a lake. After all, it was completely frozen and covered in snow, so perhaps they mistook it for a rather inane field or something. However, by dismissing this white expanse as uninteresting, the Japanese were actually missing out on the most fascinating thing in the entire region - the frozen lake was making a noise. (No, seriously, it was!) Not just any old noise either, but a very spooky, almost sinister, noise that I can only liken to a giant but placid beast squealing in hopeless sorrow as it tried to find a way out of the freezing water through the thick sheet of ice towards its lady love. Actually, come to think of it, substitute the beast bit with “air bubble”, lose the needless romantic interest and that’s probably exactly what it was. Now THAT would have been big in Japan!

February 1, 2009 - A jog in Hohenschwangau

2009-02-11T02:18:00.002+01:00

It was shortly after 7am in a hotel in Hohenschwangau and Orr family life was already in full swing. Emily lay on a rug on the floor, turning herself over again and again, fully enjoying her newly-developed strength. Samuel was getting ready for a bath, Joelle was hungry, and as for me, I was putting on my hat and my running shoes. You see, there is a bridge high up above Neuschwanstein Castle and I – despite it being early, snowy and at least -7C – decided that I was going to run to it and take some photos.

I set off. In the wrong direction. Once orientated, I found myself on a vertiginous trail of snow and ice. Running became jogging and then, in a rather all-too-short period of time, walking. When the gradient flattened out I occasionally broke into a jog again until finally, short of breath and longing for breakfast, I reached the bridge. It was closed - due to the ice. Never mind – I set off down the hill again, finding an even more treacherous path (“LEBENSGEFAHR!!” said the sign on this one. “LIFE ENDANGERING!” Why didn’t they close that one??). Frost was forming inside my nostrils and – get this – I didn’t even get a glimpse of the famous castle once. Once at the bottom, I ran a little more along the side of the Alpsee and watched the nascent sun magically light up the southern sides of the soaring peaks.

I returned to my family cold, tired, hungry and in a state of pure, innocent ecstasy. I really don’t need much in life – mother nature, a bit of time, a silly challenge and my family to return to at the end. That’s what makes me really happy. I’m going to enjoy these holidays.

January 30, 2009 - The meaningless warmth of McDonalds' coffee

2009-01-30T22:54:00.002+01:00

It had been a horrendously busy few weeks (and weekends) at work and I wasn’t looking forward to my “performance management training” one little bit. A day in a five-star hotel in Germany learning how to be a better manager may sound not too bad at all, but for me it just meant one thing – a lost day’s work, and therefore another weekend in front of my computer. Another weekend not devoted my family.

The alarm went off at 6.30am; I slunk downstairs and logged in. The intention? – do my day’s work before my 9.00am training. Before long, family life was going on around me: Emily was fed and her nappy changed; Samuel ate heartily and was readied for school; the dog was taken out for a wee and the shutters were opened; I pressed “send” and hardly even looked up.

I was late, and the car was frozen. Shit! I admit – I took a few unnecessary chances on the icy back roads, but I got lucky and was soon driving along the Moselle valley in the winter mist. A silhouette appeared from the fog – it was a man flagging me down with jump leads in his hand. I wanted to stop, I really did, but I was late and it really was VERY cold. Somebody less important than I would have to help him and his flat battery instead.

I arrived at the hotel, stressed out with my morning and the thought that I was fifteen minutes late. In fact, I was 23 hours and 45 minutes EARLY – the training was the following day.

Returning to my car, I drove off in no particular direction. I passed a McDonalds and decided to stop. Once inside the safe neutrality of the restaurant, I got myself a coffee in a paper cup. Holding it, feeling its meaningless warmth, I stared blankly out of the window and realised that this – quite simply – is not the sort of life that I want to live.

January 18, 2009 - How to offend your hosts

2009-01-18T23:07:00.003+01:00

We went for lunch at Sophie and Francois’ house today. As we ate, Emily played merrily on the carpet in the adjacent living room. As usual, Joelle was doing the talking:

“And the builders said they’d put a wall there but they never did and – oh frek! – Emily has just puked on your carpet!”

She jumped up quickly to investigate before soon stating:

“Ah no, it’s OK – it’s just the pattern."

January 12, 2009 - Moral turpitude

2009-01-18T22:56:00.004+01:00

Our paranoid friends in the US have just made it even more difficult to enter that free and safe country of theirs. From today onwards, all visitors from countries covered under the Visa Waiver Program are required to apply for the honour (note correct spelling dear American friends) of entering the US via their “Electronic System for Travel Authorization” system.

This is a real pity, as it brings an end to one of the few genuine highlights of visiting the US – filling out the Visa Waiver and Customs Declaration forms whilst on the aeroplane (note correct spelling dear American friends). For those of you unfamiliar with these forms, they were hilarious – a fine way of killing time on the transatlantic flight.

On my last visit to the US in December, I chuckled so hard at the questions being asked on these forms that I wrote some of them down. So, please believe me that the below are REAL QUESTIONS. Ok, ok so I have changed some of the wording for some (OK, most) of them, but the intent behind the question remains intact in all cases.

Are you seeking entry into the US to engage in criminal activities? (Well, duh)
Have you ever been, or are you now, a spy? (DAMN – there’s my cover blown!)
Have you ever kidnapped an American child? (No, but I made quite a good living out of Romanian ones in the ‘80s)
Are you bringing snails into the US (Why the hell would I want to do this???)
Were you a Nazi between 1933 and 1945?
Have you ever touched a cow, a sheep or any other animal that ends up in our burgers?
In fact, have you ever been on a farm at all?
Are you a drug abuser or addict?
Are you a “controlled substance trafficker” (No – I’m a crazy, out of control drug dealer!!!!!)

The forms ended by stating “If you have answered “yes” to any of the above… you may be refused admission to the United States” which frankly isn’t very comforting when you are a caffeine addict just about to land at Newark Liberty International.

But my favourite (note correct spelling dear American friends) question of all was the following:

Have you ever been arrested or convicted for a crime involving moral turpitude?

Now, I am thankfully fortunate enough to never have been arrested or convicted of anything, but if I had, do you really think I would have had any clue if it involved “moral turpitude” or not? And what sort of stupid word is “turpitude” anyway? I’ll tell you what sort of stupid word it is: it’s a word made up by US immigration legal folk to neatly convey a whole host of crimes that they can’t be bothered explaining otherwise. Come on guys - how is anyone meant to understand the question when it contains a totally fabricated word? That’s like me asking “Do you like quabish?”

The definition of “crimes involving moral turpitude” is admittedly rather hard to grasp, but diligently documented by those nice folks in US immigration if you care to ask. Adultery, for example, is one such crime, meaning that most of the civilised world (and all of France) technically shouldn’t be allowed to enter the US. (Note to Joelle – I’m still eligible. Honest.) Mayhem(?), too, is considered a crime so heinous that it shows a lack of good old-fashioned moral turpitude, thus, strictly speaking, banning any toddlers from the land of the free.

Unsurprisingly, those convicted of firearm offences are on the moral (turpitude) high ground and have no problem entering their spiritual homeland. My favourite (note correct spelling dear American friends) of all is “escaping from prison” – despite the fact that you are evidently a cunning and steadfast criminal with a severe lack of respect for the judicial system, this – unbelievably – is NOT a crime involving “moral turpitude”. (“Welcome to the US!! – you want to try Alcatraz next?”) Unless of course you were in prison for adultery in the first place, that is. Then you’re screwed. Pun intended.

January 8, 2009 - Joshua in the toilet

2009-01-18T22:51:00.001+01:00

It had been a tough day at work and I was glad to get home and have a chat with my favourite three-year old before bedtime.

“So Samuel, what did you do at school today?”
“I put Joshua in the toilet.”

Joshua and Samuel have a bit of a history, albeit a rather short one. Standing a good head higher than my boy, Joshua is the playschool bruiser, and Samuel his favourite punchbag. It’s awful that 3 year olds are capable of bullying, but it appears – sadly – to be happening, and the teachers don’t seem to be doing a lot about it.

“What do you mean you ‘put Joshua in the toilet’??”
“Joshua was in the toilet and – BOUM! – I closed the door and Joshua was stuck there. Joshua cried.”

Oh dear. What could I say? I was SO PROUD! Well done Samuel for standing up for yourself and giving Joshua some of his own medicine! A tear welled up inside me.

“Now Samuel, it’s not very nice to close someone in the toilet, is it?”
“No”
“You won’t do it again, will you?”
“No”

My boy! Good lad! Stand up for yourself! God, I feel so paternally proud!

January 7, 2009 - The British Isles are, indeed, crap

2009-01-18T22:42:00.005+01:00

I’ve just spent three weeks back in the British Isles over Christmas (all five countries, by the way) and it all came flooding back to me. Really, it must be the laughably crappiest place on earth. With the exception of

Northern Ireland

and its people, which I love dearly. Obviously.

1) Pointless signs and announcements

“You can now purchase a wide range of cigarettes and cigars at Strikes Sports bar at the front end of the craft” went the announcement on the boat from Dublin to Holyhead, Wales. “However passengers are reminded that the Stena Discoverer is a non-smoking craft.” I laughed so hard that I was gagging for a cigarette to calm me down…

2) Shopping centres and High Streets

“What shall we do today?” I asked Richard.

“What about shopping?”

“Oooooh yes!” squeaked Joelle excitedly, “Where shall we go?”

“Well, we could go to the Trafford Centre. Or we could go to the Arndale in Manchester City Centre. Or Bolton perhaps?”

I didn’t say anything of course, but inside me was screaming“IT DOESN’T BLOODY MATTER WHERE WE GO!!!!” The shops in the Trafford Centre are exactly the same soulless profit-grabbing made-in-Vietnam chain stores than in the Arndale Centre, which are exactly the same chain stores in Bolton, Wigan, Preston, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield and every single other large town in the whole bloody country.

We went to the Trafford Centre. They had a Boots, a Next and several hundred other amorphous stores. Whoop de do.

3) Paninis

When I was a young, innocent lad, Panini made football stickers that you could buy by the counter in the hardware store in Omagh High Street (nowadays an Adams clothes shop and a Thomas Cook travel agent). Apart from being the reason for the erosion of my pocket money and having the sticker of the obscure (and utterly useless) Tony Gale of West Ham United in every packet, they generally brought joy and happiness into my life.

Then they diversified into tasteless super-heated sandwiches made of cardboard, processed ham and something that I assume to be cheese, and now I really hate them…

WHY OH WHY does the UK have a love affair with panini sandwiches? You pay GBP4.50 to get the roof of your month surgically scorched and receive something approximately as tasty as a speeding ticket and as nutritionally beneficial as a tub of “I can’t believe it’s not butter!?!? Which is crap as well, by the way.

4) Overcooked vegetables and pasta

Whilst on the subject of food, I have some useful advice to all restaurant chefs in Britain: Pasta does not take one hour to cook. Neither do carrots, broccoli or any other vegetable for that matter. When I bite into a carrot, I want it to crunch ever so slightly and actually Taste Of Carrot. I want to be able to distinguish between eating a carrot and eating a bit of broccoli without having to look at them. They really are quite different. Also, herbs and spices do not need to be used uniquely in Indian food – it is perfectly OK to use a bit of oregano and basil from time to time. And garlic is not only for that wet, mushy thing that you call “garlic bread”.

Honestly…

(Exception: the pasta I ate in the Marriott Hotel somewhere near the M25 was not bad at all)

5) Weather

I’m writing this in wintertime in Luxembourg. It’s -10C outside, with a layer of snow insulating our frozen garden and frost glistening on the bare trees. It is – for want of a better word – wintry. In spring, the garden springs to life and in autumn, the forest is a beautiful hue of autumnal colours. In summer, it’s warm and pleasant. In, er, summary, things are exactly as they should be – and I like that. Controlled variety – that’s what really makes me happy.

Winter in the UK means 7C overcast and drizzly. Spring and autumn mean 12C overcast and drizzly. In summer, it’s a positively balmy 17C, overcast and drizzly. Any deviation from these norms creates havoc and chaos on a scale completely disproportional to the “natural disaster” in hand. A couple of years ago, there was a light dusting of snow in Kent leading to the cancellation of our crossing on the Channel Tunnel. IT’S A BLOODY TUNNEL UNDER THE SEA!

“-12C!” stated a typically sensationalist headline on the Daily Mail (don’t even get me started on that), possibly the same year: “Britain freezes!”. But then when you read the article, any intelligent reader (ha ha) would have noted that it was in fact -12C on top of a mountain in the Lake District or somewhere, including wind chill factor. The rest of the country was 7C, overcast and drizzly.

December 10, 2008 – I’m an important executive; I don’t have time to be sick!

2008-12-10T22:35:00.002+01:00

[Note to my Mum: Don’t read this. Thanks.]

I approached the reception of Dr Engel at Kirchberg hospital. It was 10.20am. I was – as always – 10 minutes early.

“Yes, hello, I have an appointment for a scan at 10.30am please.”
“You have an appointment? Well, go straight to the radiology department then.”
“Oh. I can do that, can I? Go straight to radiology without seeing the doctor first?”
“Of course! Please come back here afterwards; then the doctor will see you.”

So off trotted this important tax executive to the radiology department, where, predictably, they told me that I needed a prescription from the doctor. A brief flurry of swearing. Back along the corridors and up the stairs of the Kirchberg hospital. A tutting receptionist, a bit of paper, no apology, and the return journey back downstairs.

20 minutes later and I was semi-naked. I imagine that CT scans are quite scary at the best of times, but as I went to lie down under the scanner I noticed that the paper covering of the machine bed was splattered with blood. Yes, blood! The nurse (who spotted this at the exact instant that I did) seemed quite alarmed and briskly removed the offending material, but didn’t say a word. She then muttered something incomprehensible-but-gallic and left the room. The machine started whirring and speaking to me in robotic French, which I could understand only marginally better than the nurse. I got the impression that it was telling me to breathe in and out deeply, which I duly did out of the fear of what it did to the previous patient. Suitably dosed up with radioactivity, I put my clothes back on and went to see Dr Engel.

Now, if I were a lung specialist, I would like to think I would realise that my patients, being generally a short of breath and tight-chested bunch of people, might like somewhere to sit down as they waited. Not Dr Engel, who provides a measly three chairs in the vast hall outside his office. As there were at least – what? – ten people in front of me, I was requested to sit in a neighbouring waiting area.

A cursory twenty-minute glance through a “What’s on?” guide to Luxembourg (I read it twice) and the queue still hadn’t moved much. Quite bored, I began to partake in my favourite hobby: I studied the other patients. They invariably fell into one of two categories:
1) Very very old and unable to breathe.
2) 60 a-day smokers who were unable to breathe.

Maybe I’m just nasty, but this pissed me off immensely. Retired people have nothing to do except visit the doctor. I, on the other hand, am desperately trying to juggle being a great father and husband with holding down a good job and adding to the world’s prosperity. Surely, knowing that I have to go back to work, my young family and the general state of human advancement, surely I should get a priority appointment over these old folk, much like the priority boarding on Ryanair flights, but without the rugby scrum?

And as for the smokers, well (and excuse the pun), I was positively fuming! I had come to see the doctor as a precaution against a recurrence of a collapsed lung that I had nine years ago. That collapsed lung wasn’t my fault in the slightest, unless you can call being skinny and athletic “my fault”. But the smokers! These people were cluttering up the hospital and keeping me away from my family and my job just because they insist on filling themselves with toxic lead-ridden fumes every fecking ten minutes. Why on earth should I sit around and waste my day waiting for a doctor to treat patients hell-bent on killing themselves? And what the fuck can the doctor do about it anyway?

PATIENT: “Doctor, doctor! I can’t breathe anymore”
DOCTOR: “Do you smoke?”
PATIENT: “Only a few packets a day”
DOCTOR: “Well, stop fucking smoking then!! Goodbye. NEXT!”

Given the fact that I am entirely blameless for my condition and these smokers are entirely to blame for theirs, I conclude – once again – that I should have received a priority appointment.

But no. Hospitals just do not appreciate the wisdom of Jonny logic. I waited. And waited. I missed my lunch appointment with some friends at midday. I waited and waited and waited…

Then, at 12.30, more than two hours after my official appointment time, I was finally seen by Dr Engel. Again, no apology. He tutted and hummed and looked at me disapprovingly over the top of his half-moon glasses before speaking:

“Generally,” he began, slowly, “generally, there is no sign of any problem, and certainly no recurrence of the pneumothorax” (doctor-speak for a collapsed lung). “But,” he continued, eventually, “but I think I know what’s been causing your pain. Look here.” He pointed to some indistinguishable feature of the scan printout. “This is a little bit unusual. It could be a trapped air bubble, or perhaps the scar left over from a prior infection you once had. Whatever it is, it’s probably minor but…”

“Dr Engel,” I interrupted.
“Yes?”
“That’s my right lung.”
“Yes. And?”
“Well, my ‘pneumothorax’ was on my left lung, you see.”
“Oh. Are you sure?”
“Yes, quite sure.”
“But your left lung is fine.”
“Thank you Dr Engel. Goodbye.”
“I suggest that you have another scan in six months time to check that…”
“No thank you Dr Engel. Goodbye.”

What a fucking waste of time.

October 28, 2008 - The great Echternach kebab conundrum

2008-10-28T20:47:00.005+01:00

Did you ever wonder why you buy kebabs in a kebab "shop" ? Is the food they serve not good enough to merit classification as a "take-away" or "restaurant"? Is it not even up to "cafe" standards? Frankly, if McDonalds can classify itself as a "restaurant", then I feel that kebab shops are being very hard done by indeed.

Anyway, getting on with the story, the credit crunch claimed its first notable victim in Echternach recently - the kebab shop on the Rue de Luxembourg has served its last dodgy meat snack and gone to the great revolving skewer in the sky. Still, kebab fans in Echternach need not worry because there are still four other restau... I mean shops to get their favourite turkish grease sandwiches from. This may sound pretty normal, but when you consider that Echternach has a population of about 4,500, the kebab per capita ratio looks rather, em, skewed indeed.

Let's make some assumptions here: Let's assume that the four remaining kebab shops in Echternach each need an income of 100,000EUR per year in order to survive. For those of you that don't know Luxembourg, that may seem rather high, so you'll have to trust me when I say that enormous rent and salary expenses will severely eat into a 100,000EUR budget. And just imagine all the gas needed to fire up those revolving skewers!

Now let's assume that half of the good people of Echternach don't like kebabs. Again, realistic - the under 10's, the over 60's, the vegetarians, the tee-totallers (for you only really eat a kebab when you are drunk, right?) - all of these can safely be considered to be non-fans of kebabs. We also need to assume that customers are indifferent as to which kebab shop they visit, i.e. that the kebab is a commodity that can equally be obtained from all four remaining shops. Finally, let's assume that a kebab costs €3.75, which, bizarrely, it does in all four kebab shops (suspicions of a kebab cartel, methinks...).

All of this means that the average kebab eater in Echternach - of which there appear to be many - needs to eat 46 kebabs per year in order for the four shops merely to break even. A kebab a week! Even assuming that you always need a (€1.25) drink with which to wash down the kebab, this means that every Echternacher visits a kebab shop at least once every 10 days.

The economics doesn't lie - Echternach really is the kebab capital of Luxembourg, if not the world!

October 13, 2008 - How to waste words

2008-10-14T20:42:00.009+02:00

Do you remember back to your GCSE French lessons? One of the things I always associated with GSCE French was writing a formal letter: Instead of just writing simply "Yours faithfully" at the end, there was always some long-winded and flowery expression that I somehow failed to blindly regurgitate, like "Nous vous prions, Monsieur, Madame, de croire a l'assurance de notre consideration distinguee" or something equally meaningless in literal terms. Well, one thing I've learned since moving to the continent is that basically all formal French is equally as long-winded, flowery and pointless, and I think I've just found the perfect case study to demonstrate this:

The below is a copy of a notice I spotted in a hotel room recently in, em, The Hague (not a good start to a lesson in French, I admit). The English is directly copied; the French is a literal word-for-word translation.

ENGLISH: "Can you imagine how many tons of towels are washed unnecessarily every day in hotels all over the world and the enormous amount of detergent needed which pollutes our water?"
FRENCH: "You can easily imagine to yourself the enormous number of bathroom towels that one is obliged to wash every day in every hotel in the world. This necessitates equally enormous quantities of detergents, which, by the way, are very harmful to our environment."

ENGLISH: "Please decide for yourself:"
FRENCH: "It is however easy for us to diminish this heavy burden on the environment by observing the following rules:"

ENGLISH: "Towels on the floor means: Please change them!"
FRENCH: "If you leave your towels on the floor in the bathroom or in the shower, this says to us: Please change them!"

ENGLISH: "Towels on the towel rail means: I will use them again!"
FRENCH: "If you hang them up, this says to us: Leave them. We will be able to serve ourselves with these on another occasion."

THINK OF THE ENVIRONMENT!

I request from you, dear Sir, dear Madam, to believe my steadfast assurances of my distinguished research into this matter. (I.e. it's true - I swear!)

October 10, 2008 - Baarle Nassau / Baarle Hertog

2008-10-10T22:53:00.006+02:00

I had heard of its legend, but was unconvinced that it really existed: a village in the Netherlands which was – due to complex historical reasons – officially in Belgium??? How could such a thing survive the trials of time? We had searched the map on our Monday morning drive to The Hague and, finding nothing, wrote the story off as an urban myth.

But then on the way back, Iain triumphantly proclaimed “I found it!” from the passenger seat. And there on our map, not very far south-east of Breda was indeed a tiny national border creating a circle with a village inside it. And it was practically on the way home!

It is entirely fair to say that Baarle Nassau / Baarle Hertog is a rather odd place. Contrary to the legend I had heard (and the Michelin map of the Netherlands), it isn’t exactly all Belgian, rather a complex hotch-potch of pockets of bits of Belgium (Baarle Hertog) and the Netherlands (Baarle Nassau). Practically speaking, this means that one street can be Belgian and the next Dutch without any particular explanation why. Its initial reason for coming into existence is also not entirely clear, but it seems as though neither the Lords of Breda (NL) nor the Dukes of Brabant (B) were all that bothered about the place, even as far back as the 12th century. As a result, neither really exerted any influence and the whole politics of the region became very blurry indeed.

More remarkable still is how, over the course of the next eight centuries, it has used a mixture of indifference and confusion in order to survive treaties, annexations and – worst of all – municipal restructurings to remain the exception that it still is today. Towards the end of the 19th century, Belgium got a bit fed up with the admin burden being posed by the enclave and tried to give it to the Netherlands. They didn’t want it. In 1995, an accurate remeasurement of the ancient borders caused a meadow to be reclassified from the Netherlands back into Belgium, much to the annoyance of the single cow grazing there.

Living in such a strange place must have its annoyances and opportunities. As each house is deemed to pay taxes in the country where its front door is located, it is an old tradition in Baarle to move the front door some metres if that proves to be profitable from a tax point of view, especially for shops. Technically speaking, if you were to post a letter from Baarle Hertog to Baarle Nassau, it would go first of all to Brussels, then via airmail to Amsterdam before coming back via Tilburg to Nassau. Self-delivery is probably the most efficient option.

Before the Euro came along, going shopping in Baarle must have been a very confusing event indeed. Also, the place simply isn’t big enough to support its own local services, so do bin lorries travel all the way from (the real) Belgium just to empty the trash every week or so? Do the Belgian houses get their water and electricity from a different source than the Dutch? Even worse, is there a complex network of sewer pipes efficiently whisking the Flemish excrement back to mainland Belgium and the Dutch poo back into the Netherlands? (Judging by the smell there, apparently not). Did kids going to high school in Belgium need to pass border controls every day? What country were we in whenever we ate our pizza? And did the Dutch ever get their cow back?

Five borders (and many, many unresolved questions) after leaving The Hague, we arrived back in Luxembourg. Who says business travel is boring?

September 20, 2008 - Cute girls on mopeds

2008-09-20T21:32:00.008+02:00

Rome's central station - through which almost all subway, trains and buses pass - is called "Termini". And these guys were meant to have invented our language???

Perhaps I'm being unfair. I had a few hours to spare in central Rome, so for me (at least) the name was quite fitting. The left luggage office was in the basement, so I entered the lift and pressed for -1. I waited.

The doors opened to what - at first glance - looked like a hospital. Nevertheless, I got out of the lift and went off in search of somewhere to deposit my suitcase. Doctors and nurses scurried by, fuelling my earlier suspicions. Confused, I went back to the reception desk by the lift and opened my mouth. Before any sound could come out, a steely-eyed receptionist said (in English), "This is a hospital." I explained to her that I, too, had come to that conclusion and wished to know how to get to the left luggage office, if you please.

Eventually liberated from my baggage, I headed off to explore Rome. I had a simple plan, which involved walking to the Pantheon whilst avoiding as many American tourists as possible. Believe me, this is not easy in Rome, but by skirting down practically any innocuous side street that appeared to lead me in a Pantheonish direction, I managed it quite well. On one of these, I was amused to find a shop selling mannequin dummies which - get this - didn't have any mannequin dummies in the window! Come on - that's miles more valuable as a life experience than the Colosseum, no?

Tour groups aside, Rome is simply overwhelming and intoxicating; superb! Any place with an abundance of cute girls on mopeds scores highly in my books, but Rome really is something else. Although it wasn't in my original plans, I couldn't help but brave the throngs of tourists and take a peek at the Roman Forum and - wow! - is that amazing! What I liked most about it was that absolutely no effort appears to have made to reconstruct or renovate anything at all. It's just a mass of ancient crumbling walls, spookily lonely pillars, bits of statue and the occasional triumphal arch (tip to anyone thinking of building a house: make it arch-shaped. It'll keep its value longer), all scattered randomly over a surprisingly vast area. If that was in the UK or the US, it would have been guarded by high-school rejects in centurion outfits, ancient temples would have been magically "reconstructed" and there would have been at least one "interactive experience" for bored punters to throw their money at. But, no - the Roman Forum doesn't have any of these. It's just majestically crumbling away to the sound of vespas and camera shutters, and is all the more wonderful for it.

In case you are wondering, I actually wasn't in Rome for sightseeing at all, rather to attend the preeminent conference in my particular field of international taxation at the immensely prestigious Waldorf=Astoria hotel. Naturally, my company were willing to foot the bill, which is just as well since a single room at the hotel (special conference rates) were almost 400EUR per night, and the hotel boasts a 3-star Michelin restaurant on its rooftop. Faced with the possibility of such luxury, do you know what I did? I slept on someone's sofa bed.

http://www.couchsurfing.com/

Most people might initially think that I am crazy, but I am absolutely sure that the correct decision was made. Sabrina (yes, it was a woman and yes, I did get advance clearance from my wife that this was acceptable as she does not have a moped) was an amazing host who showed me what Rome was really like. We got caught in the rain; we drove around in her boyfriend's Fiat Panda; we sat outside an unmarked restaurant and ate the best pizza I have ever tasted; she took me to the Vatican by night and showed me - somewhat bizarrely - where to find a real Egyptian pyramid in Rome.

When I told all these things to the other delegates on the second day of the conference, they were jealous. Really jealous. The hotel was miles outside the city centre and some of them had taken an expensive taxi merely to get a glimpse of the Colosseum. Others had stayed in the hotel the previous evenings, swapping business cards over outrageously expensive cocktails and canapes. Not one had enjoyed their time in Rome a tenth as much as I did. I have just accepted a request from another Couchsurfer who wants to stay with us next week in Luxembourg. On his profile, he makes the following statement which sums up beautifully my Roman conference experience:

"The less money you spend in a country, the more fulfilling you can experience that country and its people." - A. Feldt

Exactly.

September 15, 2008 - Fruit for the teachers

2008-09-19T21:27:00.004+02:00

Joelle tends to get stressed over even the smallest things, but this one really was ridiculous. Samuel's painting jacket for school, you see, didn't have a tag with which to hang it up. We couldn't POSSIBLY send our first child off for his first day at school with a tag-less painting jacket! Imagine what the teachers will think of us?!? Out came the sewing needle.

Needless to say, I just didn't get it. Neither did I quite understand the necessity of the mountain of stuff that Samuel required at the Condorf Playschool. Waterproof slippers(!?!). A cup for holding a toothbrush. Wellington boots (what's this obsession with keeping feet dry?). I don't remember having any of those things at school; I don't remember missing them either.

Being a Luxembourg playschool teacher herself, Joelle thought that the lengthy list of pointless requirements and procedures was perfectly normal.

"When you go into the school," she told me, "You'll have to make sure that blah blah blah blah blah........ blah blah. Did you get all that?" I nodded in a dutiful husbandly manner. "Oh! And don't forget to give the fruit to the teacher. It's in his rucksack."

Of course, by the time I was walking up the path to the school hand-in-tiny-hand with my eldest child for the very first time, I had forgotten everything. I nervously introduced myself to the teacher and told Samuel to stay still and stop trying to open his rucksack. Horrible Luxembourgish turned first to awful French and then, mercifully, English within the space of 10 seconds. I told Samuel to stay still and stop trying to open his rucksack. She explained to me that Samuel had to choose a symbol by which he would hang his coat and keep his other belongings. I told Samuel to stay still and STOP TRYING TO OPEN HIS RUCKSACK, but it was too late. The apple and kiwi fruit were already being offered to the teacher. He hadn't forgotten.

The symbol was chosen (socks, bizarrely). The waterproof slippers were donned and the toothbruth accessories were placed by the sink. The teacher, having seen this type of painting jacket before, gave a look of exasperation which quickly turned to jubiliation. "Ah! You've sewn a tag on it! Wonderful!". I gave my little boy a kiss on his cheek and watched him contently run off to play his way into a new chapter in his - and my - life.

July 3, 2008 - Emily creates a new country

2008-07-04T14:50:00.000+02:00

“Are you from Ireland or Great Britain?” asked the woman at the Luxembourg baby registration office. Here we go again…

“Well, neither. I’m from Northern Ireland.”
“Sorry, but that’s not on our database.”
“OK then, what about the United Kingdom?”
“That’s not on our database either. That’s the same as Great Britain, no?”

Cue a 5 minute discussion on the geographical and political peculiarities of the country of my birth. Wikipedia was consulted and the currency situation was discussed at length. (Sometimes I’m glad I’m not from the Isle of Man – can you imagine?). I was so tired after the birth of Samuel that I had, unforgivably, allowed my country of birth to be registered as Great Britain. I was not going to repeat my mistake this time around.

Eventually, a compromise was reached. Northern Ireland was not accepted as a stand-alone country, but the United Kingdom was added to the official database of countries held by the Luxembourg baby registry office. Emily Nuala Orr became the first baby to be born in Luxembourg to have a father from the “Royaume Uni”. In years to come, I hope she holds a certain pride over that fact.

July 2, 2008 - Nuala Lucy Ann Emily Nuala Orr

2008-07-04T14:45:00.002+02:00

I told a bit of a lie in my previous diary entry, for Emily Nuala did not enter the world at 10.33am on a roasting hot July morning – Nuala Lucy Ann did. Let me explain…

We had no idea of a name before the birth. All we had was a short, no long, list of potential names. Nuala (pronounced “Noo-lah” by the way) was on this list, meaning “with beautiful shoulders; exceptionally lovely”. It was the only name on our list which had the word “beautiful” in its meaning and we both agreed almost instantly that this was the name for her. I know it sounds bizarre, but she just looked like a Nuala.

The middle names, Lucy Ann, came just as easily. Joelle’s mother is called Luciana, my mother is called Ann; it was obvious. The grannies were delighted that the new arrival had been named after them. Even the more traditional protestant members of my family didn’t find any real objection to the catholicism implied in “Nuala” and begrudgingly accepted that it was rather sweet. Samuel liked the name too and started repeating it over and over to himself. Everybody seemed happy.

Except Joelle’s Dad.

You see, in Luxembourgish slang, “eng Nul” means “an idiot”. “Du bass eng Nul!” would be a common playground derision. It derives of course from the word for zero, nothing, and similar-sounding meanings can also be found in French, German and Portuguese. Just think about it – “Norvege: Nul points”. I confess, this had crossed my mind prior to the naming process, but I thought it was stretching reality a bit. I mean, you can find fault with just about any name if you think about it. Samuel, for example, was all set to be “Toby” until my Granny pointed out that “Toby Orr” sounded a bit Shakepearish. “Toby Orr not to be”. Get it? He then progressed to be a “Rory” until I heard a French-speaking guy at work trying to pronounce “Rory Orr”. What a disastrous mélange of gallic rollings of the r’s… Begrudgingly we accepted that Joelle’s Dad had a point. We obviously don’t want poor little Nuala, I mean Emily, being ridiculed at school, so we had to have a re-think.

One thing was decided straight away – Nuala had to stay as a middle name. That was what we had called her; that was who she was. We just didn’t fancy “Lucy Ann” or any variant thereon as a first name, so we had to drop it completely and risk the disappointment of the grandmothers. (They took the news better than expected). Which only left the first name…

Joelle had always wanted an Emily. If Samuel had been a girl, he would have been Emily. When we initially plumped for Nuala this time around, we acknowledged that if we were ever to have another baby girl, she would almost certainly be Emily. In fact, we had only two reasons NOT to call our wee girl “Emily” in the first place.
1) We thought (and still think, but accept) that having only two kids, Samuel and Emily, sounds a little bit boring. A bit middle class. Of course, we can fix this by having more kids and calling them “Blueberry” or “Bed pan” or something.
2) As stated before, Nuala suits her better.

And so that’s the story behind her name. The little girl sleeping peacefully on the other side of this room is officially Emily. Joelle will probably, in time, call her Emmy. Me, I quite fancy “Milly”. Deep down, she’s always be our wee Nuala.

July 1, 2008 - On the periphery

2008-07-04T14:41:00.002+02:00

On the periphery.

That’s probably the best way to describe a father on the day of his daughter’s birth by caesarian. The worst part is the waiting. And waiting. Waiting together in our ‘premier class’ room for the call to the operating theatre. Then alone – excruciatingly alone – in the corridor waiting for the time that I could “assist” with the birth.

My instructions for this final wait were vague, if truth be told;

“Go sit somewhere near (not in) the cafeteria and wait for a nurse with unusual glasses.”

What was this – a bloomin’ treasure hunt??? Nevertheless I kissed goodbye to my nervous wife, told her I’d be back later, and took up my position.

I had a couple of coins in my pocket. I like tea. I couldn’t resist. I inevitably then spent the next half hour absolutely sure that I’d missed Nurse Funny Glasses and, boy, was Joelle going to kill me.

She turned up eventually, much to my intense relief. Her glasses were, indeed, bizarre. A spider web mesh which didn’t go anywhere near the back of her ears gripped the temples adequately enough to hold neat, frameless lenses. They were rather attractive. Her name was “Myrtille”, which by my feeble translation skills means “Blueberry”. She was rather attractive.

“No no no, not now…” I thought to myself, “it is not OK to be attracted to somebody called Blueberry with freaked out glasses just as I’m about to attend the birth of my daughter. Stop it right now!”
Blueberry took me into a small room and told me to take my clothes off, which didn’t help matters much. Luckily, the attire that I had to change into – mask, hat, pyjama-type things – were so unattractive that from that moment on I paid no further attention to Blueberry’s charms and was able to concentrate on what I was there for – to help Joelle.

I have to admit – I was intimidated. The lights, the equipment, the masks, the smell, the muffled chatter. But most of all, the people. There seemed to be dozens of doctors and nurses in the operating room, even though there were probably no more than six or seven. After the initial impression had faded away, I was able to focus my attention on a terribly nervous Joelle. And do you know what? I did rather well.

“Keep her talking” was my strategy before going into the operating theatre, even though I concede that I had no strategy at all for the topic of our conversation. In the event, the topic found itself. The caesarian had been delayed due to complications in the previous use of the theatre – an in-vitro fertilisation procedure. Genuinely, I knew nothing at all of this, but Joelle explained it all to me in gruesome detail (how does she know?) as, down below, two doctors silently brought Emily Nuala Orr into the world. Joelle was just trying to get a confirmatory second opinion of her view on the artificial fertilisation procedure from a surprised supervisory nurse when we heard Emily’s first cries. She was brought to us and we cried out in perfect unison –

“Oh – she’s beautiful!!”

June 30, 2008 - Interesting facts concerning the Maternite

2008-07-04T14:39:00.001+02:00

SOME INTERESTING FACTS CONCERNING THE MATERNITE GRANDE DUCHESSE CHARLOTTE

The Grande Duchesse Charlotte wasn’t born here. Neither were any of her children.
Of the hundred or so car park spaces outside, only four are reserved for pregnant women.
There is an attractive large oil painting of the building beside the cafeteria. Bizarrely, the painting shows the building with only two stories whereas the real one has three. How can the artist possibly have made this rather elementary error???
The food here is bloody awful (that’s not an interesting fact, just a fact). The vegetarian menu for today was “filet de poisson”. Huh?

June 30, 2008 - From the food court to the hospital reception

2008-07-04T14:31:00.003+02:00

Joelle went to pick up the fully-laden tray.

“No, let me take that for you,” said the bored-but-kindly cafeteria worker, “we wouldn’t want you having your baby tonight, would we?”
“That’s alright,” replied Joelle, “It’s coming tomorrow morning anyway.”

And thus we have been living in the bizarre world of the planned caesarian for several weeks now. With Samuel we had absolutely no idea of the time of birth, the sex of the baby, the name, nor even where we would be living upon leaving the hospital. With this one, we’ve known for ages that it is going to be a little girl born in the morning of the first day of July 2008. At home, the bed is set out and the nappies are attendant beside the changing mat. Only the name remains a mystery, but that will come soon. Very soon.

We left the 1970s magnolia concreteness of the Belle Etoile shopping centre, briefly re-entered the 21st Century and then plunged back into the 70s upon arrival at the hospital. A heavily pregnant woman sat on the steps of the building puffing furiously on a cigarette. It was hot and humid, and everything felt a little surreal.

*****

Dealing with Luxembourgish receptionists is always an ordeal, and the darling woman welcoming visitors and patients to the Maternite Grand Duchesse Charlotte was no exception.

The first – let us say bronze – rule of Luxembourgish receptionists is:
IGNORE THE CUSTOMER. No matter how idle you are at the time of the customer’s arrival, you must always pretend that you are doing something vitally important for as long as possible.
Filing nails is a commonly-used ploy. Or re-arranging random bits of paper. Sometimes even simply turning to face in the opposite direction is considered to be a better idea than providing customer service (in this particular case, please bear in mind that the “customer” is frequently a woman in a rather dire need to give birth. Worrying, no?)

The silver rule is:
GATHER LOTS OF USELESS INFORMATION. The more irrelevant, the better.
For example, I was rather amused to note that the registration form at the maternity hospital requires clarity on whether the patient is male or female. Tell me – is this really necessary???

And the final, golden, rule is:
NEVER TELL THE FULL STORY. Too much information makes the customer too efficient, thereby endangering your future career.
“You have a ‘premier-class’ room,” the receptionist informed us, “a single-occupancy room with a television and private telephone line.”

Needless to say, we were thrilled, but when we were installed in the room we found out that the phone didn’t work and the television remote control was missing. Since we couldn’t phone them, Columbo here walked back to reception to investigate.

“Did you pay your 50EUR deposit?”
“No.”
“You need to pay the deposit in order to open the telephone line and receive the remote control.”
“But… why didn’t you tell us this when we arrived?”
[Nonchalant shrug of shoulders]
“Ok then…” I went on, digging my hand in my pocket, “May I please pay this deposit?”
“No, the reception is now closed. Come back tomorrow.”

You gotta love living here…

June 17, 2008 - A thoroughly enjoyable evening

2008-06-21T20:04:00.003+02:00

It was half time and Russia were deservedly winning. As the commercials sprang to life on my television screen, a strange car drove down our lane. We had visitors! Oonagh barked furiously; Samuel was excited; Joelle was confused. Who could this be?

You see, this never happens in Luxembourg. In my six-and-a-bit years here, this was the first time EVER that somebody just "popped in" to see us. Social visits here require weeks of notice and a strict code of etiquette. Fine finger food has to be set out in little bowls and candles have to be lit. The bottle of cremant has to be chilled and the visitor has to bring a gift. A specific time must be set and this cannot be too late. I hate it. In Northern Ireland it is universally acknowledged that your friends are allowed to visit you at any time of day or night. They do not call in advance, they do not bring a gift and they do not even expect you to be at home. If you are not, they just shrug their shoulders and go visit someone else instead. This sort of genuine spontaneity and friendship is just lovely, the way it should be.

It was Romi, Chris and their little kids. "We were just passing," they explained, "and thought we'd pop in to see you". How unluxembourgish; how wonderful! We spent about half an hour outside in the warm June evening air (us all barefoot), comparing new cars ("theirs is bigger, but ours is more fuel efficient" was the verdict) whilst our kids played merrily with the neighbours'.

"Come in for a drink!" we invited, before realising that there was nothing to drink. But wait! What's this at the back of the fridge? A forgotten bottle of champagne left over from a party a long time ago! Let's celebrate the new cars / the first step towards Luxembourgers becoming more like the Irish!!! POP!

We found some packets of crisps and some biscuits, which were hastily devoured by the past-their-bedtimes toddlers. We chatted, laughed, and even managed to catch the end of the game, which Russia won. We devised a crazy plan to go to Northern Ireland and drive back my Granda's old tractor, giving it a loving home here instead of it rotting away in a shed near Omagh (and giving us a rather amusing adventure to boot). We had a great time. Oh! How I long for spontaneity like this every day...

June 8, 2008 - The car sellers of Bel Air

2008-06-15T17:09:00.003+02:00

If one has pretentions of reaching the upper echelons of Luxembourg society, one really must get a house in Bel Air, darling. This horrible testament to post-war central European town planning is THE place to be if you fancy yourself as a bit of a socialite. To me, it's just street after ugly street of large houses with small gardens, all seemingly with the sports coupés in the garage and the people carriers / SUVs blocking the pavements outside. It's really rather depressing.

One of Joelle's good friends lives there (she's nice, but has pretentions of being in high society and her huge Renault Espace blocks half of the street). She had borrowed our USB memory stick quite some time ago now, so Joelle just "popped in" to get it. Samuel and I stayed in the car, fully aware that we could be in for a long repose...

To pass the time, I began watching a scene behind me using the rear-view mirror. Two stuck-up wannabe socialites had taken their sports coupé out of the garage and were showing it to two young men. It soon became apparent that the socialites wanted to sell it, and one of the young men was interested in buying it. They showed off the cabriolet roof; I rolled my eyes and shook my head...

After a while, the body language of the sellers became much more tense. They looked at each other and eventually nodded their heads in approval. The two young men got into the car and drove off. The sellers had a short conversation and then began to watch down the street for the return of their car. Two minutes passed, then five. They talked amongst each other worriedly, wondering what to do. After ten minutes, they weren't talking at all anymore, just staring down the street in the hope that their beloved sports coupé would reappear.

A Skoda (a SKODA! in Bel Air! How terrible!) drove up and parked in front of them where their coupé used to be. You could see them wanting to tell the Skoda owners that the space was reserved for their car, an EXPENSIVE car, but they just couldn't find the words. The people in the Skoda walked away laughing, totally unaware that they had played a minor but mentionable role in the lives of three people that day.

After twenty-five minutes, the two Bel Air residents were approximately the colour of a snowman, but marginally less talkative. They continued to stare through my parked Peugeot towards an imaginary spot where the street curved out of sight. I know I'm horrible, but I was laughing by this stage. Joelle came out of her friend's house (only 30 minutes to get a USB stick - not bad!) and I cursed that I would never see the end of the saga.

But wait! What was this driving up the street?! The coupé! Colour flooded back into the faces of the Bel Air car sellers as their vehicle parked illegally behind the Skoda. As I drove off I could have sworn I saw a handshake being made behind the open bonnet. All was well in Bel Air.

May 30, 2008 - My (nominally) favoured left foot

2008-05-30T21:39:00.004+02:00

Philippe played the through-ball perfectly over and behind the last two defenders. I darted between them, controlled the ball exquisitely out of the air (à la Zidane) and found myself 50cm in front of an empty goal. Somehow, I managed to put it over the crossbar.

I am probably the strangest footballer you will ever see.

I'm not bad at football, I'm certainly not good, but I'm definitely not average either. I just can't explain it. With my first touch of the ball in today's game in the sports hall at work, I failed to make a simple pass to a teammate five metres away. With my second touch, I dropped the left shoulder, stepped over with my right foot and totally bamboozled Ashish, the best player on the opposite team. Leaving him in my slipstream, I stepped inside the remaining defender onto my (nominally) favoured left foot and clinically opened the scoring.

"Nice one," said Ashish as I trotted back to the centre circle, "I'm not falling for that trick again." And to be fair to him, he was absolutely right.

I have this annoying habit of trying to control the ball with the outside of the foot furthest away from the ball. It's the same with tackling, meaning that I prefer playing on the right-hand side even though I've never (consciously) made a successful tackle with my right foot. I know it's wrong, but I just can't help it. I also have an annoying habit of, whilst setting out on yet another optimistically mazy dribble, forgetting the ball completely. I have an excuse for this one: The Gordons. Most of my teenage years were spent attacking the goal in their enormous but not-so-gently sloping garden. As a result, my dribbling skills aren't bad at all, but I got kind of used to playing downhill and tend to forget about my friend gravity when playing on more regulation-standard pitches.

My fourth goal today was a beauty. Receiving a bouncing ball in midfield, I flicked it over the onrushing player and then repeated the trick to the next one as well before lashing the ball spectacularly into the net. Drunk with acclaim, I then failed to make a decent pass or tackle for the next five minutes, much to the frustration of my beleaguered teammates. I love football.

May 23rd 2008 - Dear Eurolines...

2008-05-23T21:59:00.008+02:00

Dear Eurolines,

I just wanted to thank you for an incredibly entertaining journey from London to Brussels on Saturday 17th May. You have changed my opinion of coach travel forever!

First of all, an apology: I’m sorry that I was the final passenger on the coach, 15 minutes after the due departure time. I’d had a long day and my psychic powers were fading as my fatigue levels rose, leaving me sadly incapable of finding an unmarked bus in a large bus station without the aid of any public announcement. In all fairness, I’m pretty sure that my tardiness did not hold up proceedings significantly as 10 minutes later the driver had still not found the bus either. It was merely impatience that got the better of one of my fellow passengers, who left the coach to see what was happening. Full marks, however, must go to the comedy timing of the arrival of your driver, who chose this particular moment to finally locate his bus, jump into his seat, close the doors and drive off, much to the ire of the stranded passenger. Luckily, your driver had actually driven off in the wrong direction, allowing the passenger to (somewhat out of breath) catch up with the coach, amusingly hurl abuse (in German) at the hapless driver and resume his seat. A sign of things to come?

London is an attractive city, so thank you for allowing your driver to give us an unscheduled tour before finally exiting the limits of the capital and traversing the Dartford Crossing. At this point, I must point out that it was rather fortunate that the aforementioned passenger knew how to swear in German, because your driver knew no other language. For example, he had no way of knowing that the toll booth marked “Cars only; no change given” wasn’t really for us until it was too late. A nifty reversing manoeuvre later and we were being asked for the toll for the bridge. Amusingly, your driver had no money whatsoever. It was a Romanian passenger on the front seat that coughed up the required amount and we were on our way once again! Oh! How I laughed!

Canterbury is an attractive city, an attractive city which wasn’t actually on the scheduled route. Nevertheless, thank you for the tour of the quaint little back streets of this ancient seat of religion and learning. By the way, you should ensure that your driver attends a training session on the quirks of British highway code such as stopping at red lights, recognition of the “no vehicles” sign and, most importantly of all, the difference between the signposts for the BUS station and the TRAIN station.

As another aside, you really ought to thank another of those handy Romanians on the front row, for it was him – despite speaking little English and hardly any German – who attempted to translate directions between the good people of Canterbury and your driver. He deserves a free voucher or something (although he’s unlikely to actually want to use it).

Your driver’s little joke of driving straight through French passport controls at Dover was much appreciated by me, but somewhat wasted on the uniformed officers, who appeared to be quite miffed if truth be told. Given the additional diligence with which then devoted to checking our passports, your driver should have had plenty of time to work out which ferry company we were travelling with. But, alas, no…

“Who are you sailing with?” asked the man from Sea France
“Eurolines” replied your driver.
“No, who are you SAILING with?”
“Eurolines”
“ OK then, what BOAT are you taking?“
“Sea France”
“So why does your ticket say “P&O” on it then?” Oh! How I laughed!!!!!

The resulting delay merely confirmed what I and all the passengers had feared ever since London – we missed the boat. Not to worry! The next boat was only 2 hours 15 minutes away and there is plenty to do at Dover docks at 12.30am! I struggled to get to sleep to be honest, although I’d prefer to think it was due to my jovial mood rather than your rock-hard seats. What fun!

By the way, have you ever heard of the Eurotunnel? Marvellous invention – might be useful for your line of business, potentially cutting several days off the time for your London – Barcelona route. Still, the boat has one advantage – a bar. Many of your passengers took advantage of this situation in an attempt to dull their senses in advance of the continuation of the trip.

Here’s another tip: After the passengers rejoin your coach after a break, your driver should perform a quick headcount to ensure everyone is present. This really is a rather common practice, believe me. If your driver had taken this simple step, he would have noticed that the girl who was sitting directly behind me had not yet returned to her seat by the time we left the boat. If he had understood English (or French, or anything else), he may have translated our cries of “There’s somebody missing! STOP!” into an inkling of comprehension. In my humble opinion, his response of “Nein! Ich muss fahren!” (“No! I have to drive on!”) wasn’t really an excuse. You really should thank the French port official who flagged us down soon after leaving the boat and forced him into waiting for our stricken passenger. Oh! How I laughed!

Ghent is an attractive city. Unfortunately, we never got to see it. Soon after leaving Calais ( and cognisant of the combined sedative effects of alcohol, the swaying of the sea and it being the middle of the night) your driver announced softly that, in the interests of time, he wasn’t going to stop in Ghent after all and if that would inconvenience anybody terribly. Being both (1) awake and (2) able to understand German, I was in a good position to understand this message, but for the remainder of the passengers (asleep and English / Belgian), the response was understandably muted.

Brussels is NOT an attractive city. The unscheduled tour (and lesson in how to perform u-turns of a large bus in small streets) was not welcome whatsoever. Due to this unwarranted diversion, I missed the express train to Luxembourg. This actually was not funny at all, but I had laughed so much during the journey that I just couldn’t help myself any longer!

Anyway, thanks for reading this and I look forward to my next adventure on Eurolines with great anticipation!

Best regards,

Jonathan Orr, Luxembourg

p.s. Liege is not an attractive city either. Please reimburse the poor sods from Ghent who woke up there and realised that they were on the other side of their country. Thanks!

May 19th, 2008 - Tears in my eyes and £845 in my pocket

2008-05-19T20:29:00.005+02:00

With tears in my eyes and £845 in my pocket, I have gone through with the once-unthinkable.

Selling my house would mean surprisingly little to me emotionally; the sale of my piano, furniture, pictures: practically nothing at all. Many of my diaries can be restored from back-up and my photos re-developed. But my Ka, my beloved Ka - what have I done????

My Ka pre-existed almost all the things that define my life as it is today. My wife, my son, my daughter-to-be, my home, my dog, my career, the country I live in - the Ka was there before I knew them all.

Even the initial purchase of the Ka was borne out of emotion. When my Grandfather became too ill to drive, he let me use his Vauxhall Corsa; when his stomach cancer finally claimed him, the car became mine. But the beneficial insurance that had derived from 50 years of careful motoring died with him, and without it, the Corsa became too expensive to insure. The Ka had one year's free insurance. I traded in my Grandfather's car and transferred his old picnic rug from its boot into the Ka, where it symbolically remained until just a few days ago. (It's now in the Peugeot).

My girlfriend at the time, Bahiyeh, was delighted to have a boyfriend with his own set of wheels. So smitten was she with the shiny new Ka that she even gave it a name, "Saphi", a name that hasn't been used since the last time I saw her, at a time that seems to me now to be a different age completely...

It was the Ka that took Julie around the prestigious universities of England and Scotland and the Ka that eventually took her and all her possessions to her tiny student accommodation at Homerton College, Cambridge. Fast forward six months and it was my turn to move, the Ka showing me the way on the single most important journey I will surely ever make.

Since then I have discovered that the top speed of a Ka is 100mph (at which point the steering wheel vibrates violently), that the wheels are small enough to get stuck in certain tram lines, that its single foglight is illegal in Luxembourg (but, bizarrely, not having at foglight at all is not), and that Luxembourgish traffic wardens are too stupid to realise that the steering wheel is on the "wrong" side, leading to multiple fines for not having displayed my parking permit correctly.

In this land of flashy Audis and brash BMWs, the tiny blue car with the steering wheel on the wrong side became a bit of a minor celebrity, certainly more famous here than I ever will be. Joelle always joked that I could never have an affair because everyone always recognised me whereever I may have been. Now friends joke that a whole new avenue of possibilities has finally opened up for me, but I don't know what they mean.

It was the Ka who took Joelle and I on our first holiday together and the Ka who took me to my legendary haircut in Liechtenstein. When Ryanair decided to cancel their December 23rd flight from Charleroi to Liverpool, it was the Ka who took me, a work colleague and two random strangers to England, the Ka who saved Christmas. When Joelle and I were in the Ford garage recently looking for a new family car, I pointed at the Galaxy and the S-Max and asked Samuel which was his favourite. Without any hesitation, he turned around and pointed instead to the small car in the corner. "Daddy's car!" he said, and I gave him a big hug.

But my favourite Ka memory? It's a recurring one - taking Oonagh for a drive. She would jump eagerly up on the passenger seat and off we'd go. I will never, ever forget the look on the faces of passing pedestrians for as long as I live. I will never, ever forget my beloved Ka.

*****

For those of you reading this who don't know me (and frankly, I can't imagine that that is very many of you at all...), you are probably wondering why I sold the bloody thing if I really loved it so much. Well, officially it's because of our expanding family: even I have to concede that a Ka is not the perfect automobile for a family of four and a sheepdog. But really, the Ka's demise was brought about by two factors:

1) Joelle bought a caravan one day when I was sick, and
2) We lent our Peugeot 307 estate to Joane one day.

A word of advice to all husbands laid low by food poisoning: don't let your wife near a caravan showroom when you are incapacitated. On that fateful day, Joelle came back 15,000EUR poorer and the proud owner of a new Dethleffs "family" caravan. It soon transpired that the caravan she bought was actually too large to be towed effectively by our Peugeot, so not only were we getting a new caravan, we now had to get a new car as well. I sighed deeply.

The original plan was simple - trade in the Peugeot, buy a new Citroen C4 Picasso / Seat Alhambra / Ford Galaxy / whatever. BUT... my darling sister-in-law introduced the Peugeot to a concrete bollard near Bourglinster chateau sometime last summer, leaving an unsightly but "it's not worth fixing it" dent near the rear left wheel.

The combination of this dent and a rather significant mileage left the Peugeot practically worthless from the point of view of the car dealers. Faced with the realisation that we had two worthless cars and no need for three cars, we were forced into asking ourselves the question: "Which the better car for our current needs?".

You see, the Ka didn't stand a chance.

May 5, 2008 - In praise of old aubergines

2008-05-05T21:01:00.005+02:00

You know, it's not often that I write about how great I am. But I am great, I really am. OK, so I forget birthdays and sometimes don't listen to my wife and occasionally (just occasionally) leave dirty clothes on the bedroom floor, but give me some vegetables on the verge of growing mould , an equipped kitchen and an hour or so, and I'll show you that I'm not so bad after all. Hot on the heels of yesterday's rather spectacular fennel and leek soup came this particular vegetarian masterpiece.

Aubergine and Riesling mushroom gratin
(Serves a hungry man, a very pregnant woman and a small child comfortably)

1 large old aubergine
1 very small onion, sprouting
6 medium sized potatoes
Mushrooms (as many as you like)
1 small glass of white wine, from a bottle open for over a week
1/2 small pot of natural yoghurt
Lashings of goats' cheese, preferably bought yesterday at a local farmers' market
The crumbs from underneath the bread cutter
Olive oil (the more the better)
Dried herbs of a Mediterranean variety

1) Wash and peel the potatoes. Cut into slices of approx. 1 cm thick and boil. Oh! and put the oven on when you're at it. 180°C will do.
2) Cut the manky bits off the aubergine. Cut what's left into 0.5cm thick slices and marinate in the olive oil. Season (very) generously in the pan with the dried herbs and chopped onion and fry gently on both sides. You may want to use two frying pans to ensure enough surface area for all the aubergine.
3) Transfer all the lightly fried aubergine into the base of an oven-proof dish
4) Remove the manky bits and stalks from the mushrooms. Chop up what's left and throw into one of the frying pans recently vacated by the aubergine. Pour in the small glass of white wine (or what's left of it by this stage) and simmer gently for a few minutes.
5) Chop up about half of the cheese into small cubes (an inaccurate description, I suppose, since I didn't quantify how much was actually needed in the first place).
6) Drain the mushrooms. If you like, you can keep the residual wine in a decanter for the next time the in-laws come to visit.
7) Throw the sautéed mushrooms and the diced cheese on top of the aubergines. Spread evenly.
8) Your potatoes are probably over-cooked by now. Hurriedly drain and spread on top of everything else.
9) Slice the remaining cheese and intersperse it with the natural yoghurt on top of the potatoes. Sprinkle with the breadcrumbs.
10) Place the whole lot in the oven for about 20 minutes. Finish it off with a quick blast under the grill.
11) Serve with a fresh salad of your choice and (in a perfect world) a 2006 Pinot Gris.

Sorry girls, but I'm already taken.

April 13, 2008 - Consultants With Problems

2008-04-13T20:58:00.005+02:00

One of the most difficult-to-swallow aspects of my job is dealing with "Big 4" consultants. I have a not inconsiderable annual budget to call upon when I feel that I need some external help - a budget that could easily keep a small charity up and running for a year or so; a budget that could be spread amongst a fair number of socially deprived families and give them a vastly better quality of life; a budget that I feel is being totally wasted in the pockets of Consulting Partners. It is, essentially, robbing from the rich and giving to the even richer.

So if it's not ethically correct, why do it? Well, I kind of have to. Put simply, I want to do a good job (that's what I'm paid for) but sometimes complexity and time pressure means that I need additional help - expert help. I don't mind (my company) paying for these experts if the outcome is better than I could have achieved on my own, but recently this hasn't been the case at all. Both of the following examples of daylight robbery involve the same consultancy firm. In the interests of maintaining my otherwise good relationship with said firm, I'm going keep their name totally anonymous. Let's call them... Consultants With Problems, or "CWP" for short.

CWP in the United States were requested to perform a complicated option valuation. They quoted us $20,000 for the work. Upon presentation of their completed valuation, it became clear - even to a non-expert like me - that they had negligently forgotten about one rather important element of the valuation. They conceded that I had a very good point, revised their analysis and returned to us with a vastly improved presentation. They also presented us with a bill for $55,000(!), citing that the additional analysis necessary due to my observation was a valid reason for raising the fee.

Now, sorry, but let's put this in context. If I had requested a builder to build me an extension to my house for $20,000 and he forgot to put the cement between the bricks, would I really be prepared to pay him almost three times the quoted fee just to go back and do it properly? Of course not! I requested CWP to do me a job for a price and just because they f€ck€d up big time the first time round is not my problem at all!!!

Similarly, but even worse, has been my recent experience with CWP Switzerland. Just as in the last case, I asked them to perform a rather specialised valuation analysis on a Corporate Finance-related subject, a subject in which neither myself nor anyone else in my department have any experience whatsoever. Again, they quoted us a (relatively) bearable fee and came back to us with an analysis that looked the part. However, upon trying to gain an understanding of what I had just paid for, it came to my attention that the work really wasn't very comprehensive at all. In essence, they had only done about one quarter of what they ought to have done. When I pointed this out to them, they said that they would gladly perform the additional analysis, but that this would take their entire team two to three days and would cost us an extra 18,000 Swiss Francs!!!

However, my detective work was not finished there. I took the original analysis to our Corporate Finance department (or rather, an attractive blonde girl in our Corporate Finance department. I'd been looking for that excuse for ages...). I explained her what had been done and what I still needed doing. I asked her how long it would take her to perform the work. She thought about it for a while and came back with the answer - two to three hours. HOURS!?!?!? That's ONE person taking two to three HOURS, not a TEAM of people taking two to three DAYS!!

So, just because they think I don't understand what they're doing (which, in a sense, is true), CWP are prepared to - with a clear conscience - take 18,000 Swiss Francs for an analysis which it would take one of their badly-paid juniors less than half a day to perform. Well, they're not getting the money. Upon presenting me with the analysis, the pretty girl from Corporate Finance will be promptly treated to an official tax department celebratory dinner (which I'm sure will be remarkably well attended). In addition, I'm going to campaign for some of the remainder of the savings to be given to a deserving charity. Hard cheese, CWP Switzerland.

April 10th, 2008 - The fur coat at the bakery

2008-04-10T21:34:00.003+02:00

There was a queue at the bakery this morning, caused by a woman purchasing six loaves of bread, deciding at the last minute to have them individually sliced, and then paying with a lifetime's collection of 10 and 20 cent pieces. The two women behind her (and in front of me) were getting impatient, when - jingle jingle - the door opened and another woman entered.

"Moien!" she announced cheerily, and her enthusiasm was met with a hearty response of "Moien!" from the other occupants of the bakery, myself included. This happy interlude then being over, we all stood in line and watched as the 10 cent pieces continued to be laboriously placed on the counter.

Another jingle, and the door was opening again. I was glad to see it was a man this time, for I was beginning to feel intimidatedly outnumbered.

"Bonjour!" he offered, a greeting that was met with a somewhat half-hearted "Bonjour" from the other customers. The woman at the counter dropped some of her coins. We collectively sighed and continued to stand in the queue.

Thirty seconds later, another customer entered (or tried at least, for the bakery was becoming rather full).

"Morgen!" she said.

Nothing. No response from anyone - myself included, I am ashamed to say. I'd like to think that this had nothing to do with the fact that she was speaking German. I'd like to think that the muted response to her greeting was simply due to the surprise that she was wearing a rather expensive fur coat - a sight not often seen in the village bakery. I'd like to think that Luxembourgers really hold no grudges at all against the nation whose principal twentieth century hobby was invading their little nation, but, you know, I'm really not so sure...

April 7, 2008 - The Shadow of the Wind

2008-04-07T22:04:00.003+02:00

I went to a bookshop yesterday armed with a toddler and piece of paper with the names of three books written on it, books that I had seen as being recommended on various websites. Unfortunately, in an act of extreme stupidity, I had failed to note the names of the authors of said books, thus making them practically impossible to find amongst the thousands of books for sale.

As I fruitlessly searched authors with surnames beginning with S and T in the vague hope that they may have written "Small Island", Samuel ran off and pulled a book off the very last shelf. I scolded him and took the book out of his hands - "The Shadow of the Wind", by Carlos Ruiz Zafón. It had a nice orange cover and, besides, I like Gabriel Garcia Márquez, so I reckoned that a book by another trinommial Spanish author might be OK after all. I gave up on the list, and took the book.

Back home, I started to read it. A father and son go into a secret library full of rare books. The son wanders off and has his attention caught by a strange book that neither he nor his father have ever heard of, "The Shadow of the Wind" by Julián Carax. He takes the book, and from that moment on, his own life and the storyline of the book are forever intertwined.

Now I'm scared...

March 24, 2008 - The Emaischen

2008-04-07T21:14:00.002+02:00

Luxembourg is full of quirky little festivals and traditions. On Easter Monday, for example, it is traditional to go to an obscure village named Nospelt and buy a ceramic bird which doubles up as a two-tone flute. How did these things ever start?

Joelle was suffering from pregnancy fatigue, so it was just her parents, Samuel and I who braved the snow flurries and road closures (another Luxembourgish tradition) to arrive at Nospelt. It must be said that I am alone at such village events, for everyone else is Luxembourgish. They don't even bother to tell the étrangers and frontalières about these little events; they are all snugly kept in the family.

Saying that, there's not really a lot for foreigners to get excited about anyway, for such festivals generally consist only of two things: 1) Various beer stands, and 2) Various sausage stands. It may seem like a bit of a stereotype, but (hear me out) about three years ago, there was a fair in my village. There was a Bofferding stand, a place selling Thuringers and Mettwurst - and nothing else. I swear, it's true. Everyone seemed very pleased indeed.

The Emaischen, of course, has got ceramic musical bird stands as well, but, curiously, it appeared to have lots of something else as well - political party stands. We were no sooner into the village when Samuel was handed a large helium balloon from the Christian Social People's Party, followed quickly by one from the Democrats. After that we avoided political party stands as much we could, for fear of my two-year old flying off into a snow cloud. Quite why there were there was beyond me, for there is no election this year at all.

We entered the "Archaeology tent" (for this was a sophisticated fair indeed). The Archaeology tent consisted of a few broken plates roughly strapped together with sellotape and safely housed in glass cases, and a man with lots of pieces of sellotape on his fingers, staring quite baffled at a pile of bits of old ceramics on his table. My father-in-law was quite delighted; we stayed there for quite some time.

We bought a bird. It plays two notes, has "Nospelt 2008" written on its underbelly, and it made Samuel happy beyond all rational explanation. As we sat in a crowded café, me clutching a warming coffee and hearing only Luxembourgish voices, I reflected on how lucky I was to live in such a weird, wonderful little place.

March 14, 2008 - Samuel's Penguin

2008-04-06T21:14:00.008+02:00

It was a rainy day, and I was trying to keep a certain two-year old entertained until Joelle came home.

"Would you like to draw Mama a picture?" My suggestion was met with enthusiastic nods, so out came the crayons and the letter-writing kit that I won in a work raffle (who needs a letter-writing kit these days???). Samuel sat, crayon poised, but seemed bereft of ideas.

"Why don't you draw her... a penguin?" I asked, and again the response was enthusiastic. A little hand got to work, and soon I was handed this (sorry for the quality of the photo).

Well, I was absolutely ecstatic. It almost looks like a penguin! The whole shape is pretty good, there's a definite beak there and the flipper/wing is absolutely superb! Ok, I'm not sure what the weird hairs at the top are, but he is only two, so I mustn't be over-critical. This was the very first time that Samuel had drawn something which vaguely resembles what it was meant to be; a proud moment for any father, and - given my own artistic talents (or lack or them) - one which my own father has yet to see.

I wrote "To Mama. A penguin. From Samuel. 14/03/08" above the masterpiece and waited for Joelle to come home.

Upon her arrival, Samuel and I jointly presented the artwork. "Look!" I babbled excitedly, "It actually looks like a penguin! There's a flipper! There's the head, there's a definite beak and..."

"NAY!" interrupted Samuel. "No head. There head!" He pointed at the penguin's feet. We turned the picture upside down, and...

It's even better!!!!!! They're not weird hair-things at all - they're feet! And there's a little penguin tail! And just look at that flipper! And the markings!

It just goes to know what Daddy knows about toddler art.

February 8, 2008 - Jérôme did nothing wrong

2008-02-08T20:34:00.001+01:00

There has been plenty of media space recently taken up by the actions of the "rogue trader" Jérôme Kerviel, who managed to lose Société Générale almost €5bn without anybody much noticing. He did this by means of "derivatives trading" which is a fancy term for "gambling with his employers' money".

But the funny thing about all of this is that nobody has actually lost out, other than the shareholders of SocGen of course, but who gives a monkeys about them? In "derivatives trading" the losers' losses are exactly matched by the winners' gains. In other words, all poor little misunderstood Jérôme did was redistribute wealth away from a fat French bank and into the hands of others, and for that I think he should be highly commended.

Reasons as to WHY he did this remain somewhat unclear, but I've found the best explanation of what went wrong in the article below (from www.thedailymash.co.uk):

FRENCH TRADER WAS FORCED TO WORK 30 HOURS A WEEK

FRIENDS of rogue trader Jerome Kerviel last night blamed his $7 billion losses on unbearable levels of stress brought on by a punishing 30 hour week.

Kerviel was known to start work as early as nine in the morning and still be at his desk at five or even five-thirty, often with just an hour and a half for lunch.

One colleague said: "He was, how you say, une workaholique. I have a family and a mistress so I would leave the office at around 2pm at the latest, if I wasn't on strike.

"But Jerome was tied to that desk. One day I came back to the office at 3pm because I had forgotten my stupid little hat, and there he was, fast asleep on the photocopier.

"At first I assumed he had been having sex with it, but then I remembered he'd been working for almost six hours."

As the losses mounted, Kerviel tried to conceal his bad trades by covering them with an intense red wine sauce, later switching to delicate pastry horns.

At one point he managed to dispose of dozens of transactions by hiding them inside vol-au-vent cases and staging a fake reception.

Last night a spokesman for Société Générale denied that Kerviel was overworked, insisting he lost the money after betting that the French were about to stop being rude, lazy, arrogant bastards.

February 4, 2008 - Liichtmessdag

2008-02-04T21:26:00.000+01:00

Saturday saw the annual celebration of the cutest of all Luxembourgish traditions - Liichtmessdag!

I don't know who thought this one up, but it really is rather nice. Kids spend the preceding days making "lampions" (lamps) in all sorts of colourful shapes and sizes. Then, as dusk approaches, they pick up their creations and go from house to house in the villages, singing songs in return for treats. In one of the songs, they ask for "bacon and fruit", but nowadays they are much more likely to receive sweets, chocolates or even just hard cash. Well, this is Luxembourg...

The symbolism of course is the bringing of light into the houses after a long, dark winter, which I think is a jolly worthwhile thing to do on a cold Saturday evening. Being the closest house to the church and village hall, we were the first to be visited by the singing schoolkids. Samuel really is still a bit small for this sort of thing, but he did make a "lampion" this year, so we asked the group if we could join them for a few houses to test it out.

Besides, I really wanted to get a closer look at the beautiful old farmhouse up the road.

It's a dream house in every sense of the word; a modestly enormous old farmhouse with rambling roses growing over the door, tantalising glimpses of exposed stones and soft lighting through the windows, and renovated outhouses that you just know contain swimming pools, saunas and billiard rooms with antique oak bars. It was purchased recently by a city banker for a sum that stretched well into 7, if not 8 figures.

The group of children gathered round the speakerphone by the (closed) main entrance and pressed the buzzer. Waited. It wasn't looking good - there were no lights on. Waited. There was nobody home. Eventually, a computerised voice spoke to them in German, informing them that they should go away and try later. The kids laughed at this silly voice and unfamiliar language - and sung their song anyway, which I thought was kind of sweet.

We continued on our quest, without much luck it must be said, for it is the half-term holidays in Luxembourg and almost every house appeared to be empty. We went all the way up the street and then, right at the end, one of the kids informed us that he had seen a car turning into the banker's house. Down the hill we went again and - sure enough - lights were on in the previously blackened windows. The flickering of a television could be seen distantly and a head walked briefly in and out of sight.

The kids gathered around the speakerphone again, rang, and sang their song without any further ado. But there was still no answer. The head appeared and disappeared again in a blink of the eye. The song finished and all we could now hear was BEEP BEEP BEEP - the person in the house had hung up on them.

Now, I don't know about you, but I think that's just mean, and the other adults in the group certainly agreed. "If you're going to move into a village then you should respect the village traditions!" one of the parents shouted angrily through the shiny iron railings. "We're going to come back at 6am and sing EXTRA LOUD for you then. How will you like that?!?" cried another.

Isn't it sad what money can do?

February 4, 2008 - Fun and games in M&S: Update

2008-02-04T21:10:00.000+01:00

Or, "My brother's quest to get a free umbrella". And quite right he is too...

*****

Manchester, 30th January 2008

"Dear Marks & Spencer,

I am writing to make a complaint about a recent visit to one of your stores.

I visited your Omagh Store in Northern Ireland on Monday 28th January and I saw an offer advertised that if I bought any item from the Stormwear range I would get a free Stormwear umbrella. As I needed two umbrellas, I decided that this was a great opportunity to get them. However, I was informed by the cashier that for some reason the offer was not applicable to the umbrellas. Your advertising in store (which I have taken photos of) clearly states the the only exclusion from this offer was 'hats' from the Stormwear range and everything else was included - therefore I should have received a free umbrella when I purchased one.

The manager was called and said the umbrellas were only in store due to the offer and were not normally sold separately, On this note I asked why they were on display with a £12 price tag. She had no answer to me and just refused to honour the advertised offer.

Nevertheless, I purchased the umbrella and have my receipt to prove it, as well as photos of all your advertising on this offer. I feel you have advertised something unclearly and as a result I was embarrassed by your staff in Omagh on Monday. Please let me know how I can go about getting my free umbrella.

Thank you in advance,

Richard Orr"

*****

Omagh, 4th February 2008

"Dear Mr Orr,

Thank you your email which has been forwarded to us by Retail Customer Services. I understand the Décor displayed instore caused some confusion for you while shopping with us recently. As this was the first day of the promotion we were informed the Umbrella was not part of the offer hence why it was not offered to you on the day. However if you would like to call into our store at your convenience we will give you your free Umbrella, just ask at our customer information desk in Menswear and a staff member will be happy to help.

If you need any further Assistance Please do not hesitate to contact myself on the number below.

Many Thanks
Catherine Connolly
028 82 251649 Ext, 3702"

*****

So there you go - all Richard has to do to obtain the umbrella (that he was entitled to all along) is to make a 600 mile round trip (excluding the ferry) to Northern Ireland.

By the way, I believe that it wasn't Richard who was "confused" by this offer. And since when has an advertising board been "Décor" (complete with accent and capital "D")? Ah! Fun and games, fun and games...

January 28, 2008 - Fun and games in Marks & Spencer

2008-01-31T21:03:00.000+01:00

The most exciting development in Omagh over the past six months has been the extension to the local Marks & Spencer, including - wait for it! - a café! Eagerly clutching her vouchers for free cups of coffee, Mum took her sons out for a rare family treat and allowed us to marvel at local economic progress at its best.

I've rarely chuckled so hard. Bizarrely, the café has been built on a mezzanine with a glass barrier allowing people to enjoy their cappuccinos whilst watching the female population of Western Tyrone purchase their lingerie directly beneath. Who designs these things?

Finishing up our coffees (and potentially traumatised at the sight of Mrs Betty Buchanan from Oak Grove purchasing bloomers capable of sailing a small ship), Richard decided that he wanted to buy an umbrella. A "Stormwear" umbrella at £12 soon caught his eye, as did a promotional offer stating, quite clearly:

"Buy any item from the Stormwear range* and receive a free Stormwear umbrella. (*Excludes hats)"

It didn't take Richard long to work out that an umbrella is not a hat, so he picked up TWO umbrellas and proceeded to the checkout.

"That'll be £24 please", he was informed by the checkout assistant.
"Ah, no," explained Richard, "You see, you get an umbrella free with the purchase of any Stormwear item, except hats, and so I wish to buy THIS Stormwear umbrella and get THIS one free, if you please."

The rather dim assistant didn't quite follow this logic and so called the rather dimmer Manager to give her expert opinion, which was to argue that the umbrellas were there for promotional reasons only.

"We don't actually sell the umbrellas," she stated, leaving me to wonder why they had a price tag on them, "we only have them in stock to give away free when you buy something from the Stormwear range."
"But... you do sell them. For £12." I attempted to use calm and sensible logic to win my brother's argument, which in retropect was a mistake, "and my brother has bought something from the Stormwear range - the other umbrella!"

It was no good. M&S employees (not to mention marketing department and architects) are officially thick. They will be getting a very nasty letter in the post from my brother very, very soon. Anyway, it wasn't raining.

January 25, 2008 - Cheese should be clearly distinguishable from plastic

2008-01-30T21:54:00.000+01:00

For someone who hasn't eaten for 48 hours, London City Airport (nor indeed England in general) at 8am on a Friday morning is not the ideal place to be...

The (assumed) food poisoning that gripped me on Wednesday afternoon and evening was the first time in my life where all I really wanted to do was curl up in a corner and die a quick, painless, if albeit miserable, death. Funnily enough, the second time this happened came whilst trying to eat my £4.25 "Breakfast Muffin" in the airport café. Seriously, what is it about food that this country doesn't understand?* Muffins should NOT be chewy; cheese should be clearly distinguishable from plastic; sausages really ought NOT to crunch.

But the worst thing about London City Airport is not the food at all, it's the Gucci suit-, Burberry scarf- wearing £o$$€rs who can consciously pay £4.25 for breakfast marginally less edible than a flowerpot and not think anything of it. As I was standing in the long line to check in at Luxembourg airport, a call was made for any remaining passengers for Heathrow. Such stragglers were (unfairly in my view, but that's besides the point) allowed to skip the queue, check in quickly and not hold up their flight. Two men with "nouveau Cockney" accents, pruned hair and glasses more valuable than my car volunteered themselves forward and were duly checked in.

Twenty minutes later, after I had diligently gone through check-in and security in the customary fashion, I found these two men casually sipping coffee in the departures café, whilst the flight to Heathrow was preparing for take-off. Heathrow, my arse!! They'd simply had the gall and the egos to consider themselves above queueing like everyone else! As I watched them board my plane to London City, I seriously considered giving each of them a swift kick up their Yves St Laurent-clad bottoms. But, alas, I was too tired and hungry. Next time...

*That all said, at least I've never been poisoned there. Ho hum...

January 22, 2008 - Long live financial turmoil!

2008-01-22T21:38:00.000+01:00

What's that awful noise? Oh, it's another stock market crash. WHO CARES???

If you were reading today's press, you would think that just about everyone in the world was about to plunge into previously unforeseen depths of poverty due to the ongoing crises on the financial markets. Such rubbish. In reality, the super-rich will be slightly less super-rich and the sensible ones amongst the rest of us will hardly feel any difference at all.

In fact, I for one will actually be better off as a result of all of this. Why?
1) Interest rates will be cut. Great, this means that I pay less on my mortgage*.
2) Oil prices will drop due to fears of future demand. Wonderful! Cheaper petrol and heating oil for my house, not to mention the knock-on effects this has on just about everything else that normal people buy.

So what's all the fuss about? Well, certain people might be affected, I admit:
1) People who own lots of shares. In other words, the super-rich. Or so it should be... If you are not super-rich and you own significant amounts of shares then you are an idiot and I hold no sympathy whatsoever for you losing your money. Investing in shares is gambling, pure and simple. Why give your money to someone whom you don't know and cannot control in the vague hope that you will make a profit? What's the difference - tell me - between doing this and going into a betting shop and putting your money on a horse?
2) People who invested in just about anything tracked to stock indices, but then they are idiots too, for the same reason as in (1)
3) People coming near retirement age who have not switched their pension plans into less risky investments. Again, idiots. No compassion from me.
4) Senior Management employees who are forced into linking a part of their salary to their company's share price. But these are rich guys already; does anyone feel sorry for them?
5) City traders, who will get lower bonuses. It's a real shame, but the Porsches, yachts and infeasibly expensive watches will have to wait until next year. Poor little poverty-stricken city boys. Actually, that brings me neatly to the final category...
6) People who invest in or work for companies that make luxury items that no-one really needs.

For the wonderful thing about a downturn in the economy is that people with far too much money to spend actually think twice about spending it. Less waste, more rationalisation. Surely that's a good thing for everyone? Long live financial turmoil!

*Assuming that EUR interest rates will be cut, which probably won't happen here, but it certainly will in the US and the UK. Anyway, you get the point...

January 21, 2008 - Support et pignon

2008-01-22T20:46:00.000+01:00

Our lovable workhorse of a car / family friend is in the garage in Grevenmacher for a bit of a check-up.

Usually, we take it to Echternach for its services, but as our bill keeps on rising with each visit, so does our suspicion that a rather significant amount of fictional problems (and therefore expenses) are being added by the sneaky mechanics. They can clearly see that neither of us know the first thing about cars, and so milk this for all they can.

Besides, I can't ever set foot in there again because any mechanical kudos that I may once have had has evaporated with the last service. Explaining to me in french about the latest seemingly fictional problem with the front wheels, I simply didn't believe them and so requested to see the damage for myself. The chief mechanic duly complied with my wishes and so, with the help of a jack and a torch, told me to look up underneath the wheels, where I should be able to clearly see the problem with the "support et pignon". I did this, saw absolutely nothing at all, but not wanting to lose face simply nodded sagely, made a gesture of disappointed realisation and conceded that indeed the "support et pignon" looked rather dodgy.

"And the back wheels?" I asked, "Are they still OK?"

The mechanic looked rather taken aback by my question, but finally answered that there was no similar problem with the back wheels. I gave him a look to express that I thought as much.

I then went home and looked up "support et pignon" in the dictionary.

Steering.

January 12, 2008 - How to melt a Daddy's heart

2008-01-12T20:06:00.000+01:00

Just like all two (and a half) year-old kids, Samuel loves music. Rock / indie music is a favourite for dancing to, whilst the relaxing classical stuff makes him all cuddly. He plays it too - often I see (and hear) that he has dragged a chair over to the electric piano and is busily trying out all the different voices and sounds. He then shouts for me to come join him and together we play and sing some of his favourites.

It may be mid-January, but current preferences still lie with the Christmas songs. Most of these are in Luxembourgish, so I can't sing along, but perhaps the current absolute-number-one-Samuel-greatest-hit is the carol "Away in a manger". I've (somewhat blasphemously) altered the lyrics slightly to make it more comprehensible to a two-year old, principally that "Lord Jesus" becomes "Baby Jesus". "The cattle are lowing" becomes "The cows, they are mooing" and the rather abstract third verse (the weird one about the children being fit for heaven) has been given the boot altogether. Samuel helps me sing along as well, and yesterday's performance went like this:

Me: "Away in a manger, no crib for a bed; The little..."
Samuel: "Baby Jesus"
Me: "... laid down his sweet head; The stars in the bright sky looked down where he lay; The little..."
Samuel: "Baby Jesus"
Me: "...Asleep on the hay. [Verse Two] The cows, they are mooing, the..."
Samuel: "Baby"
Me: "...Awakes; the little..."
Samuel: "Baby Jesus"
Me: "...no crying he makes; I love you..."

Samuel paused, looked at me, smiled, and said,

"Daddy!"

January 2, 2008 - Water, markets, chemicals, travelling: Yippee!!!

2008-01-02T22:08:00.000+01:00

FIVE New Year's resolutions??? I must be going potty...

1) Refrain from using the hot tap for small quantities of water
No, I'm serious. Think about it - how many times have you gone to wash your hands, ran the hot tap and then find yourself finished by the time any hot water actually made it out? Loads, I bet. Well, just because you didn't GET any hot water doesn't mean that you haven't USED any hot water. It comes out of the tank, gets trapped in the pipes, cools and is wasted. Meanwhile, your boiler is busy heating up a new dose of hot water, most of which gets wasted in the same way. I'm going to put a stop to it!!!

2) Regular Saturday morning market trips with Samuel
I think this is a great idea. We'll take the 8.00am bus into the city, wander around the Farmers' market for fresh vegetables, home-made jams and weird smelly cheeses, put them all in a bag and get the 9.28 bus back home again. He'll love it. Not sure about the other occupants of the bus on the way home, though...

3) Get rid of 90% of chemicals in our house
I had finished loading the dishwasher the other day and was opening the packet of one of those little dishwasher tablets with the what-the-heck's-that-for ball in the middle of it. The packet had all sorts of warnings on it - "irritant", "do not eat", "do not touch with a bargepole", etc, etc - and I thought to myself, "HANG ON! I'm washing my plates with this, the plates that I eat from!!!" If you think about it, the amount of chemicals that we must eat / rub on ourselves / inhale every day must be enormous. At least I can cut them down partially by trying to control them in my own home. This isn't going to be easy...

4) Travel less than last year
By contrast, this should be easy. It is almost too incredible to believe, but I visited 28 countries last year, being away from home almost one night out of four (80 nights by my counting, but I'm fairly sure I've missed a few). OK, so there was the "Baby Decides" trip with Dan, but this only accounted for about 30 of the above total, so it's still an impressive tally without this "one-off". This year, all will be different. I'm still going to have to unavoidably travel for work occasionally, but I sincerely hope to keep this to a minimum. Other recent developments have curtailed my itchy feet as well. ;o)

5) Write blogs that are more cheery, positive and paint my life in rosy colours
It's weird - I'm probably the most optimistic person in the world, yet I almost always choose to turn my blogs into rants about the sorry state of everything. Must do better...

December 31, 2007 - Foreword to 2008 (I'm just different)

2008-01-01T09:29:00.000+01:00

It's difficult to look back on a fairly recent occurrence and be able to identify it as an important moment in life, but it is quite possible that the second greatest self-defining event of 2007 happened just a few weeks ago in the unlikely location of the large multi-purpose hall at work. Looking back, that's when I really began to realise that I'm, well, different.

"SES & Me" is the company's new Human Resource Management system (whatever that means) and half a dozen Senior Executives and some HR managers had put together an introductory presentation for the staff. In truth, I wasn't all that interested, but had gone along because [DIFFERENCE ONE] I was appalled by the grammatical error in the name of the new system. Surely it should be "SES & I"?? I was kind of hoping for an apology, a healthy staff-management debate on the subject or at least a self-deprecating executive allusion to the poor standard of English, but, of course, none of these happened.

In truth, even I (me?) forgot about it ten minutes into the presentation, for one Senior Executive was saying something that appalled me even deeper. The new system, he was saying, would allow all aspects of employees' performance to be tracked. A series of simple yet powerful metrics would allow employees to compare themselves against the requirements of their position and allow management to compare them against their peers. Numbers. Metrics. Measurement. Evaluation. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

You see, I firmly believe that an employee's performance can never be reduced to a series of numbers. Numbers can never adequately measure the things most fundamental to the success that an individual brings to his employers, such as his interactions with other people, his willingness to work as part of a team (and not just for his own means), his role as an ambassador for his company, etc, etc ad infinitum.

But enough of my management theory: the presentation continued unabashed with the showing of a movie, the purpose of which was to show the benefits of the new system by means of a humorous spoof of the James Bond movies. We were all handed popcorn for the occasion (no, really, we were). The movie "starred" various members of staff. It was remarkably well produced, the acting was of a surprisingly high standard, it was sporadically funny and, of course, was bloody awful.

It told us absolutely nothing of the new system, instead being merely a platform for the usual suspects to see themselves on a big screen. Yet - I seemed to be the only one cringing; to my utter amazement, just about everyone else seemed to be really enjoying it, which led me to realise that [DIFFERENCE TWO] most other people have a more blurred perception of their working and private lives. I go to work to work. I don't need (nor want) to be entertained, to socially interact or to be culturally enlightened. To put it another way, if I want to see a funny movie, I'll go to the cinema; if I want to learn more about a human resource system, I'll attend a work presentation. Maybe I'm too serious, but I don't want the two to be combined.

Once the presentation was (mercifully) finished, it was announced that free DVDs of the movie would be available to all employees, distributed from a large table at the side of the hall. A stampede ensued, which left me [DIFFERENCE THREE] scratching my head in incomprehension. In the crowd leaving the hall, I overheard one employee telling his colleague that he wanted to "show it to his wife". WHY??? She won't care. It is, after all, a representation of a system that she'll never need to be interested in, starring people whom she doesn't know. I JUST DON'T GET IT! What's wrong with me?

But the number one evidential proof of why I am not a normal employee came just mere seconds before that overheard conversation. Jostling in the crowd to leave the hall / pick up a DVD, I found myself standing beside the very Senior Executive whose words had so irked me during the presentation. In polite conversation, he asked me what I thought of the event, to which I in return [DIFFERENCE FOUR] told him exactly what I thought about it.

Oh dear. You see, even I am capable of realising that this is not normal behaviour. I believe that I expressed my concerns to him in a tactful and objective manner, but I also believe that 99% of other employees would simply have uttered something polite and light-hearted, in keeping with the nature of the occasion. Yet I felt so strongly about the subject on which I was questioned that I couldn't possibly respond with anything other than the truth. The Executive seemed quite shocked at my indignance. After an initial period of eye contact, he soon started looking around for a means to escape, which he did after a sullen acceptance of my point once my tirade had abated.

So what does all this mean for me - as a person, an employee, a father and a husband - going forward? Well, I don't know. All I do know is that I appear to be going through a period of change and that 2008 will see an increase in the acceleration of this change. Let's just see what happens...

December 28, 2007 - The nice street in Brussels

2007-12-28T16:15:00.000+01:00

On my last working day before Christmas, I went to Brussels for a meeting. What a mess! (Brussels, that is, not the meeting.)

I've been to Brussels a few times now and yet I'm still as disorientated as the very first time. Step outside the admittedly beautiful but needlessly punctuated Grand'Place (why the apostrophe?) and the city just disintegrates into a sort of bland chaos. It's not hideously ugly like, say, Birmingham or some of the rebuilt German metropolis' (now I'm the one struggling for the apostrophe!) but it's just a faceless jumble; there's no real identifying landmark other than the Mannekin Pis and - let's face it - you know a city is having an identification crisis when its most famous emblem is a frankly rubbish statue of a small boy having a wee.

My disorientation was not helped by the ridiculously random railway network. Taking the train northwards from Luxembourg to Brussels Zuid (South) station, I was somewhat surprised to find that my train stopped first of all in Brussels North, and then at Central Station before backtracking on itself again to the south. To add to the confusion, the French name for Brussels Zuid is the "Gare du Midi", which literally translates as "Central Station", even though it's nowhere near the centre AND there is another perfectly good "Central Station" in Flemish. It's a mess, I'm telling you!!!

Anyway, the point of this rant is there is one nice street in Brussels (outside the Grand'Place). I've no idea where it is, nor what it is called, but my Taxi drove down it as I was returning to Brussels Zuid station after my meeting. It's a long, wide boulevard bordered by elegant mansions. It could probably be described as "leafy" except that it's December and leaves on trees are currently in short supply. The traffic was pretty bad, so I had lots of time to stare out of the taxi window and imagine a time when those beautiful houses would have been occupied by more worthy tenants than the Eurocrats now flitting busily over the pavements.

Then I saw an occupied police van parked on the pavement in a narrow gap between two serious looking installments of barbed wire, wire which invaded the pavement and lay waiting to burst the tyres of any vehicles driving slightly too close to the gutter. A further, scarier, roll of even barbier wire lay immediately behind them and they together skirted the entire front of an extremely large and grand mansion (should that be Grand'Mansion?). Another police van was stationed at the other end of the building, where normality was resumed and pedestrians were welcome to use their pavement once again.

The American Embassy.

Why are they allowed to do this? Seriously, if I was the Mayor of Brussels or the Prime Minister of Belgium (or whoever) and anybody asked me "Look, would you mind awfully if we ruin the only nice street your city has to offer by sticking a load of barbed wire and bunker installments everywhere outside our building? Oh! And you wouldn't mind guarding it 24/7 either, would you?", I would simply say "Bü&&er off!". If you're that flipping paranoid that you need to make your pied-à-terre look like an army camp, then move somewhere else. Preferably Iowa, but if that's not possible, buy a disowned factory in one of Brussels' ugly suburbs and make that into your Embassy instead. Sorry, but the US is getting ridiculously more like the school bully, and some of its classmates really need to start sticking up for themselves.

December 22, 2007 - What's there to like about Christmas markets?

2007-12-23T16:08:00.000+01:00

In my personal list of Most Overrated Things Ever, the Christmas markets of Alsace and Southern Germany would have to be right up there at the top.

In a way, they are a victim of their own idyllic qualities. After all, what could be nicer on a crisp, cold winter day than being in the narrow cobbled streets of a picturesque ancient town or city, buying traditional Christmas gifts from skilled craftsmen? There's not a McDonald's, H&M or Starbucks in sight. Carol singers provide the festive music whilst you occasionally take a break from the Christmas shopping by indulging yourself in a warming glass of mulled wine, some "artisanal" chocolates or even just a good old-fashioned sausage.

It sounds great, doesn't it? But here's the problem: Everyone else in the world thinks it sounds great as well.

As a result, the better Christmas markets are almost always horribly overcrowded. Look at this one in Freiburg last weekend (excuse the skewed picture - I haven't worked out how to straighten things on my new computer yet):

Due to the crowds, it's practically impossible to get to the front of each stand, and even whenever (if ever) you do, you generally find that they are not selling wonderful traditional hand-made Christmas gifts after all, but cheap plastic snowmen, Santa Clauses that sing "We wish you a merry Christmas" when you squeeze his left foot, and those stupid German decorations that look like windmills that are meant to do something wonderful with the heat of candles lit inside them (they don't; I've tried).

Mulled wine is €2 to €3 per (excrutiatingly small) glass. As if this wasn't expensive enough, you are generally then charged a few EUR for the stupid glass itself, saying "FREIBURG CHRISTMAS MARKET 2007. HAPPY CHRISTMAS!" or something equally tacky/obvious. Of course this is only a deposit; you get the money back when you take the glass back; but given the fact that you've queued for 10 minutes to get the drink in the first place, you're hardly going to repeat the process for the sake of a few EUR.

And then there's the weather. On a day like today (-2C, sunny, snow-like heavy frost, no wind) being outside whilst wrapped up warm can be very pleasant indeed. Unfortunately, the typical December weather is about 3C, windy, rainy, bloody miserable. Being outside is just not nice; being outside at an overcrowded glorified shopping mall is just horrible.

In short, the whole experience is just one let-down after another. My advice? Do your Christmas shopping online instead and visit Alsace and Germany on some other occasion...

December 19, 2007 - The Grand Duke's second job

2007-12-19T21:47:00.000+01:00

Always being one to look "outside the box" of my terms of employment [...], I did something this morning not usually associated with the role of a Tax Manager - I picked up the department post. In the inbox of a colleague, I found this:

OK, so you can't really see it so well, but you'll have to trust me when I say that this is a Christmas card addressed to the Grand Duke of Luxembourg from some fancypants or the other in Versailles. What it was doing in the inbox of Franz Duclos, Senior Tax Advisor is quite beyond my comprehension...

In fact, just think about it. Think about the chain of cock-ups that must have occurred in order for this to find its way to Franz.

First of all, the confusion probably arose because the Grand Duke used to live in the chateau that is presently our Corporate Headquarters (for the record, he was born in the room now occupied by the Head of Internal Audit) but he and his family moved out sometime during the 1960's. I can just imagine that some poor hapless Luxembourgish postal clerk now nearing retirement age will be getting a ticking off from his boss tomorrow whilst pleading "BUT NOBODY TOLD ME!!!"

And what of the postman delivering this card to our main reception? Did he not look at the satellite antennas, the "Welcome to SES" signs and the high definition televisions, and think to himself "Hmmmmmm. You know, this really doesn't look like the sort of place in which the Grand Duke might live"? I mean, we are talking about a rather famous Luxembourger and a rather well-known Luxembourgish company here; it is kind of tricky to mix the two up...

But most amazingly of all - how did the SES mail clerk, upon receiving this card, manage to come to the conclusion that the Grand Duke of Luxembourg worked in the tax department? Moreover, why did he single out Franz as being the Grand Duke when I am obviously more qualified for the job (well, I'm married to a Luxembourger at least...)? I guess we'll never know.

(p.s. although I was highly tempted to, I didn't open the card. I just scanned the envelope, popped it back in the post and am hoping that it makes it to Fra.., I mean his Majesty, in time for Christmas.)

December 10, 2007 - Christmas around the world

2007-12-10T20:56:00.000+01:00

There's an interesting discussion thread going on in one of the CouchSurfing groups at present: Christmas traditions. The idea is quite simple: Each rose-tinted CouchSurfer tells us how wonderful and perfect his/her (usually her) Christmas is, and the next one tries to top it. Here's a selection of some of the responses:

Slovakia: "The head of the household dips his thumb in honey and makes the sign of the cross on the foreheads of each member of the household so they will be reminded to keep together as a family and that harmony will sweeten their lives." How lovely. (By the way, I actually stayed with this family in Slovakia in June - they were just great.)

Croatia: "We are all together putting things on Christmas tree and singing all the time. I like that singing most of everything. And my brother and sisters are playing guitars...Some of us are going to the church in the midnight, and next day, the Christmas day we are visiting my grandmother and other close relatives." Ahhhhhhh. Sweet.

Poland: "We have a dinner with 12 traditional dishes (in some regions it's 11). The oldest member of the family reads a piece of the Bible (about the birth of Jesus Christ) and after it we start eating. Most of the dishes are made only for Christmas - special soup from mushrooms, uszka (kind of tortellini with mushrooms), fish (karp is very popular), some cakes etc. " Yummy! I want to go to Poland!

Malaysia: "On this day, everyone is so cheerful and smiling. It is normal in Malaysia to buy new clothes for a special day. Kids and youngsters love this so much, they can hardly wait to put on their new clothes and go to church with family and say praise to Lord Jesus Christ for yet another blessed year." Sounds just perfect.

And then... inevitably... someone posted from the US. After the idyllic, simple yet somehow fitting images of Christianity's greatest celebration in Eastern Europe and Asia, comes this description of Christmas in New York:

USA: "On Christmas Eve we go to NYC to my grandmother's house where it gets quite crowded, about 30 people between aunts and uncles and cousins. This is the only time of year when we are all together so it's a time for us to catch up. My Grandmother hires a caterer so no-one has to cook. We eat and socialize. Then we exchange gifts. My father's older brother was a NYC police officer. He would play Santa with a beer in one hand, a cigarette in the other, and his gun on him."

Sad, scary and downright wrong. What is Christmas coming to?

December 3, 2007 - CO2 emissions of a Ford Ka

2007-12-03T21:32:00.000+01:00

In a typical display of bureaucratical inefficiency, there were two letters from the Luxembourg Ministry of Transport in the post for me today, both saying exactly the same thing: Car tax is going up.

From now on, it will be based on the CO2 that our cars emit - the greater the emissions, the higher the tax. Frankly, I don't mind a bit. In fact, I'm quite delighted - I'll gladly pay an extra 50EUR a year for my Peugeot 307 and Ford Ka, safe in the knowledge that most other snooty Luxembourgers in their SUVs and Audi V8s will be forking out hundreds and hundreds extra.

I began to look more closely at the letters and soon was having revelation after revelation. For starters, the new tax for my little Ford Ka was considerably more expensive than for our big Peugeot 307 diesel estate. Apparently, the Ka emits 163 grams of carbon dioxide per kilometre, compared with only 143 for the Peugeot. "Surely this can't be right?" I thought, so I researched it on the internet. And do you know what? It's true, absolutely true.

Then something else struck me. 163 GRAMS PER KILOMETRE? For every single kilometre that I drive in my tiny little automobile, I pump one sixth of a kilogram of CO2 into the atmosphere? My (short) commute to work every day contributes 5 kilograms of carbon dioxide. In fact, in the relatively short life of my Ford Ka so far, it has added over 20 times its own body weight of carbon dioxide to the air in which we breathe. The Peugeot isn't all that much better; our annual trips to Portugal and Ireland create a massive tonne of CO2. Absolutely staggering.

Again, I did some research and again - in a startling break from tradition - the Luxembourg Ministry of Transport appear to have done their homework correctly.

But this can't be right, it just can't. [If you don't like numbers, stop reading this blog right now.]

My little Ka has a cute little 40 litre petrol tank. Since petrol weighs about 750g per litre, this means that a full tank of fuel weighs about 30 kilograms. However, I can drive about 600km on a full tank of fuel, releasing (according to the statistics) almost 100kg of carbon dioxide. How is this possible? How can I create 100kg of CO2 from only 30kg of fuel. Can someone please explain this to me???

*****

I heard this yesterday and it sounded so ridiculous that I just had to research it to see if it was true. It is.

The USA's "Green Car of the Year" was announced recently at the Los Angeles Motor Show. Here it is:

Yep, it's an SUV. It's called the Chevrolet Tahoe Hybrid and my Ka could fit inside it. It has a 6.0 litre V8 engine and is capable of towing a small tank. Ironically (and rather pointlessly), the battery for the electric (hybrid) part of the engine alone weighs about one third of the weight of my entire car, making it so heavy that fuel efficiency doesn't get any better than 20 miles per gallon. At a rough conversion, my environmentally unfriendly Ka does about 47 and the Peugeot 55 mpg.

Seriously, this thing winning the "Green Car of the Year" is an absolute joke. They say it gets "25% greater fuel efficiency" than similar models, but you consider that those vehicles are only getting 16mpg on the open road, this isn't really a great green step forward. In fact, it's probably the worst thing ever to happen to green motoring: uninitiated Americans with garages the size of Luxembourg will think "What can I do to save the planet today? I know! I'll buy an SUV!".

Not surprisingly, I can't even find a CO2 emissions rating for this beast. The Toyota Prius emits about 30% less CO2 than a typical family car, so based on this metric, I reckon the Tahoe emits about 300 grams per kilometre. If I was an average American and I drove to work in this thing every day, I'd emit my own body weight in CO2 in a fortnight. Given the weight of the average American, this is a scary thought indeed...

December 2, 2007 - Five parenting no-nos

2007-12-02T19:31:00.000+01:00

Five things that Samuel will not have / do before he is eighteen years old:

1) Branded clothing
I just don't get it. Why should I pay extra for my son to advertise somebody else's products? If the shareholders of Nike, Gap or anybody else want someone to promote their company, they should be the ones paying up, not the other way around. Samuel has to learn this as well. The rules will be clear - up until the age of ten or so, he shall wear as much second hand or pass-me-down clothing as possible. Once he starts to have a more developed sense of personal style, he shall have a fair say in the choice of his own new clothes, but under no circumstances shall he become a walking billboard. I don't care if all his friends are wearing Tommy Hilfiger; peer pressure won't work.

HYPOCRISY FACTOR: 1/5
I think I had a Manchester United football shirt advertising Sharp Viewcam when I was about sixteen. Other than that, my parents did a good job on me.

2) Watch television other than the BBC
Ok, this seems a bit draconian, but let me explain. I'm not necessarily pro-BBC, it's just that I'm strongly against advertising aimed at children. In Sweden, they have long since (and very sensibly) banned advertisements of toys and games aimed at the under-12s. Until other countries follow suit, then I'm going to have to act as the Governmental body on this one. In case you disagree with me, then just sit down and watch some of the commercial children's TV channels for an hour or so. There are generally more ads than content, glossy mind-warping ads promoting the latest all-exciting superhero toys, racing game or pretty-in-pink dolls, all being drooled over by happy, healthy looking kids. It's disgusting.

HYPOCRISY FACTOR 1/5
I hardly ever watched TV as a kid. I don't remember my parents expressly banning, switching off or removing the television, but I guess I just wasn't interested, so they never had to.

3) Have a television in the bedroom
No No No No NO NO NO NO NO NO!!!! And not only for the reasons outlined in (2) above. A bedroom is for sleeping. In later childhood years, it may also double as a place to find the quiet solitude required for homework (or just reflection), but under no circumstances is it a place for a television. This goes for adults as well, by the way.

HYPOCRISY FACTOR 0/5
I never wanted one for myself. Even at university, I never had a TV in my room and never seriously considered getting one. Long before that, I remember well my brother pressuring my Mum and Dad into buying him a tiny black and white TV. For a while, I used to sneak into his room at night and we'd watch "Spitting Image" with the sound turned down low. After a few episodes of flickering puppets that I couldn't see and politically incorrect jokes that I couldn't understand, the appeal of the television left me forever.

4) Have a toy gun
Guns are not toys. They kill people; kill animals; kill. I will never, ever understand how parents can just stand around and watch their horrible little 6-year old cowboy "shoot" at random strangers on the street or other children. A few weeks ago, our neighbours' kid was in our yard firing green pellets at his little sister from a pistol. Joelle marched out to him and told him to grow up, that guns aren't funny, that where I came from people really did kill each other with guns on a regular basis. Never mind the stereotypical exaggeration, I can't recall a time I've ever been more proud of her.

HYPOCRISY FACTOR 0/5
Growing up in Northern Ireland during the 70s and 80s, my parents felt exactly the same way as I feel now. Good on them.

5) Violent computer games
I was hypocritically watching evil commercial television last week when an advert came on for a computer game - "Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare". The idea of this game appears to be to kill as many random strangers as possible in an as realistic manner as possible. The concept of killing people in computer games is worrying, but nothing new; I had violent video games when I was young and I think I turned out to be OK. However, there is one huge difference between computer games of 1991 and computer games of 2007 - the realism. Honestly, watching the advert for "Call of Duty" I felt like I was watching a war documentary, not a game. If I have trouble drawing the boundary between reality and fiction, then what chance does a child have?

HYPOCRISY FACTOR 3/5
Yes, I used to enjoy violent computer games. I had this game called "Barbarian", which was really hopeless, but if you twiddled your joystick in just the right way, your Barbarian swung his sword in a highly pixelated elaborate fashion and cut his opponent's head off. Clunky red pixels emanated from the headless torso as he slumped firstly to his kness and then the floor. I laughed because it was so ridiculous, but then it was just a game. I knew that. Didn't I?

November 28, 2007 - Why can't IT guys speak English?

2007-11-28T20:49:00.000+01:00

Just like all other employees at my workplace, I arrived at work this morning to find the following message in my inbox:

"Due to failover of the cluster while the volume of chandler - common was resynchronizing, it is unavailable right now until completion of SAN synchro.
Sorry for that,
The IT Team."

Now, I may be completely wrong about this, but I reckon this guy was trying to tell us that something wasn't working correctly with the IT network. Actually, I haven't a clue, I'm just guessing, but it still begs the question:

Why can't IT guys speak English?

Or French? Or German? Or any other known language? Come to think of it, why can't they understand English either? Without exception, they have absolutely no practical method of communication with the IT-illiterate world. Maybe they think they don't have to; maybe they just assume that everybody know about clusters, failovers and completion of SAN synchronisations?

I don't.

Here's another example of a run-in that I have had with an IT guy recently (greatly simplified, but absolutely not exaggerated in any way).

DAY ONE:
ME: "Hi IT guy. How are you? If I press the button, the application doesn't work as it should. Please help me."
IT GUY: "That's because the cluster had a big failover and so obviously the SAN synchro isn't yet completed. I'll fix it." (Or something equally technical and irrelevant)

DAY TWO:
ME: "Hi IT guy. If I press the button, still nothing happens."
IT GUY: "The coding syntax isn't correct."
ME: "Well then... can you fix it please?"
IT GUY: "No problem."

DAY THREE
ME: "Look IT guy, I still have the same problem."
IT GUY: "I've checked the coding and it's OK now. It should work."

DAYS FOUR TO SEVENTEEN
ME: "Listen IT guy (for it is very,very simple). In the good old days before I became aware of your sorry existence, I pressed this button and the application worked. I still want to press this button and run the application. Is that clear?"
IT GUY: "I've checked the coding and it's OK. It should work."
ME: "It doesn't work. Instead of checking the bloody coding, just try pressing the bloody button. You will see that IT DOESN'T WORK!"
IT GUY: "I've checked the coding and everything appears to be correct. It should work."
ME: "AAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHH!"

DAY EIGHTEEN
IT GUY: "I've discovered a bug in the coding."
ME: *THUMP* * THUMP* *THUMP*

Honestly, I'm getting stressed again even just writing about it. Let's finish off on a lighter, more bizarre note which I believe proves once and for all that IT guys are from a different planet. The below is an exact transcript of an instant messaging conversation that I had with another member of our wonderful IT team. No, I don't understand it either, but the sheer surreality of it made me chuckle...

Azouz Benlaouir... hi, it's azouz from servicedesk
Jonathan Orr/BTZ Hi there!
Azouz Benlaouir... can I connect to your laptop
Jonathan Orr/BTZ I don't know. Can you?
Azouz Benlaouir... yes I can
Jonathan Orr/BTZ Well then. Er..... yes.
Azouz Benlaouir... i cannot connect to your laptop :-))
Azouz Benlaouir... I will pass by your office
Jonathan Orr/BTZ OK.

?????????

November 22, 2007 - Glorious failure; abject failure

2007-11-23T22:21:00.000+01:00

Northern Ireland and England both recently narrowly failed to qualify for the European Championships next summer. Northern Ireland's failure was so gallant, so glorious that it will be fondly remembered for a long time to come. England were just crap. Apart from the obvious huge chasm of expectations from the fans and media, what else caused these two failures to be so differently looked upon by the football community?

GOALKEEPER

Think of the great British club sides over the past twenty five years or so. The Everton team of the mid-eighties; the magnificent Manchester United team of the nineties; the "unbeatable" Arsenal team of 2002-2005; even the Mourinho Chelsea team of recent years. What do they all have in common? The answer - a dependable goalkeeper. Southall, Schmeichel, Seaman and Cech all weren't just good shot stoppers, but inspired confidence throughout the whole team.

It's not too often that Maik Taylor will be mentioned in the same breath as those legends listed above, but Northern Ireland know exactly what he's going to do - he's going to be alright. Consistently decent. England, on the other hand can't decide whether they want to choose between a goalkeeper that does this;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dmws59X1cNg

or this;
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vM_8kU1Tq2w

VERDICT: NORTHERN IRELAND

DEFENCE

It pains me a little to say it, but I actually really do feel sorry for England here. In Neville, Terry, Ferdinand and Ashley Cole, they have potentially one of the best back fours in international football. It's kind of a nice mix: Neville is dependable but unflashy; Terry is untalented but spirited; Ferdinand is ridiculously talented but lazy and Cole is an annoying twat. Pity, then, that they were all injured for the crucial game against Croatia and were bizarrely replaced by a nineteen year old centre-half at right back, a has-been and a left back at centre back and a confidence-tattered reserve team player at left back.

Still, England fans shouldn't complain. Northern Ireland's defence is just rubbish ALL of the time. When you are consistently fielding players who ply their trade with Burnley, Leicester City and Cardiff City against international class strikers, you know you're in trouble. Still, Aaron Hughes marshalls the troops surprisingly well for someone with no pace whatsoever and Jonny Evans will be a class player for years to come.

VERDICT: ENGLAND (their first team that is, not the reserves)

MIDFIELD

"The English midfield is so strong, one of the best!" harrumped Kaka in advance of the 2006 World Cup. Then he watched them play.

It must take a special sort of managerial talent to put the likes of Gerrard, Lampard, Beckham and Joe Cole all in the same team and then make them utterly, utterly oblivious to each other. Honestly, those guys just hate playing together. All of them want to be top dog, the maestro of the team, so much so that they forget about actually passing to one another and instead abuse the poor paying spectators in Row Z shielding themselves from the oncoming ball after yet another shanked 30-yard shot at goal.

Northern Ireland, by contrast, have a beautiful system. Steve Davis (our version of Cesc Fabregas) and Sammy Clingan (best player ever to play in League One?) are terriers in the centre of the park. Keith Gillespie doesn't have the concentration levels to impress consistently at club level, but his pure talent is unquestionable; put him in a green shirt for 90 minutes and you'd swear you were looking at a right-footed Ryan Giggs. On the other wing, Chris Brunt is infuriatingly talented but always a threat at set pieces. The result? A midfield that is rarely outclassed and always capable of creating something.

VERDICT: NORTHERN IRELAND

ATTACK

I love Wayne Rooney. The term is probably used too often, but there is no denying that Rooney is a footballing genius. He plays not with his feet, but his brain; he's a delight to watch. However, he has a flaw - he doesn't score often enough. Two goals from your best striker in a qualifying campaign is a sure sign of disaster, but who else is there? Against Croatia, England's strikeforce consisted of two Spurs reserve players and a Liverpool reserve. They were playing because England had played their injury-prone top goalscorer in a meaningless friendly where - surprise surprise - he got injured. The only other real choice they have is an (albeit talented) 18-year old Arsenal reserve who was lucky enough to get a free ticket to watch last year's World Cup. Do you see my point? If no-one is going to consistently score goals, a team is in severe trouble.

I love David Healy. 13 goals in 12 games have entered him into the record books as the highest-ever goalscorer in the European championship qualifiers. Not bad for a player in a team who - just a few years ago - went ten games without ANYONE scoring a goal. Alongside him, Northern Ireland have the luxury of playing the conventional Warren Feeney or the completely unconventional Kyle Lafferty. It just depends on the opposition. Like the rest of the team, they're just proud to play.

VERDICT: NORTHERN IRELAND

So there you go. So my wee country didn't qualify, but they did the very best they could. As a contrast, England couldn't have done any worse if they played all their left-backs in midfield and an inexperienced debutant in goal for their most crucial game. Oh. hang on...

November 16, 2007 - Coincidences

2007-11-23T22:11:00.000+01:00

1) The mysterious frequent flyer

A couple of months ago, I was on an early morning flight to London. The guy who came to sit next to me hadn't tried very hard to get dressed that morning, but I assumed from his scruffy suit that he was some sort of reluctant businessman. He had no hand luggage whatsoever. Nevertheless, his general demeanour was friendly enough, so I tried to strike up a conversation with him. 30 seconds later, after having ascertained that he didn't speak any of the major European languages (nor Luxembourgish for that matter), I gave up. He promptly fell asleep and the rest of the flight passed without incident.

Three days later, after a relatively successful time in both the Isle of Man and London, I was interrupted from my book by an air stewardess offering me a sandwich. I accepted, and as I munched I took a look to the seat across the aisle to the right of me. He was there again, sitting right beside me! He was already asleep.

PROBABILITY OF OCCURENCE: 1 in 2,400 (at least). Judging by the fact that he had no hand luggage, I'm assuming that this guy lives in Luxembourg but works in London, therefore takes the morning flight out and the evening flight back every day (also would explain why he is so tired). Oh! And he must be a mute as well.

*****

2) An uncanny premonition for phone numbers

Yesterday, I needed to phone two people in our American office: One I know very well; the other I had never spoken to before. I decided to phone the familiar guy first. Thinking that I knew his number by heart, I dialled.

"SES Americom" said an unfamiliar voice.
"Er... Hi. Is that Bill?"
"No."
"Sorry, I've got the wrong number."
"No problem, bye."

Having looked up Bill's number (it was nothing even remotely similar to what I dialled), we had the necessary conversation. Being time then to phone the other guy, I looked up his number which - guess what? - was the number I actually dialled in the first place!!

"SES Americom" said a familiar voice.
"Hi. Is that Michael?"
"Yes. Haven't you just called me five minutes ago?"
"Er..."

PROBABILITY OF OCCURENCE: 1 in 899

*****

3) The Dan coincidence

Samuel is making lots of new friends. Sometimes he sees a man on the street, points at him, and cries "Dan!". I don't know how he knows all these people, but he appears to have a very wide social circle of Dans for a two-year old kid. I would have thought that the only Dan that he knows is my English friend, but I am obviously mistaken.

The strange thing is that all these Dans - every single one of them - is bald. Isn't that amazing?

PROBABILITY OF OCCURENCE: Incalculable

November 7, 2007 - The purser, the tip and the lifejacket

2007-11-23T22:08:00.000+01:00

I'm one of those nervous flyers. I ALWAYS watch the safety demonstration. The red-headed stewardess was telling me that there was a lifejacket under my seat. A LIFEJACKET!?!? What the hell good will that do me on a flight from Luxembourg to Amsterdam?!?

*****

Familiar November drizzle welcomed me as I emerged from Central Station. It had been a long day, but I comforted myself with the thought of being able to relax in my hotel within a few minutes. People hurried purposefully about me as I looked down towards Dam Square, left towards the red light district and right towards the spot where I'd had my first (and only) ever burger from a vending machine. I saw nothing except still-fresh memories of my trip here with Dan in May. I checked the hotel address from my increasingly soggy bit of paper - Distelkade 21 - and cross-referenced this to a city map; again my search came to nothing. Getting uncomfortably damp, I conceded defeat and entered the tourist information office.

"Hi!" I said cheerily to the freckly girl behind the counter, "My hotel appears to have gone missing."
"Oh dear," she smiled, "Which hotel might that be, sir?"
"The NH Central Station hotel. I'm just guessing that it's around here somewhere?"
"It's behind the railway station, sir," she helpfully replied, before adding, "Well, a couple of kilometres behind the railway station, in fact. Lots of people make that mistake..."
"WHAT!?!"

How on earth can a hotel absolutely nowhere near Central Station call itself "Central Station"? Freckles then proceeded to give me instructions to find a place where a shuttle bus might pick me up and take me to my hotel. "Might"?

It did, although I was worried for a while. I found the minibus sure enough and boarded it, even though it was completely empty. Eventually two Americans (sporting rather unnecessary baseball caps) got on as well, followed quickly by the driver. We set off and I got chatting to the American sitting beside me. Imaginative as always, I asked him what he was doing in Amsterdam.

"Air crew. Northwest Airlines."
"Nice. Are you... a pilot?
"No, I'm the purser."
"Oh right. What's that?"
"The purser. You know, I'm the one in charge of the cabin."
"You mean you're an air hostess? Host."
"No! I'm responsible for the cabin crew. Purser. P-U-R-S-E-R. Comes from a French word."
"Which French word?"
"Heck, I don't know! I just know it comes from French." The other American nodded sagely in support of his friend.
"No it doesn't."

"No it doesn't!" interjected the driver, an Algerian who turned out to have an uncommon love of language. He then proceeded to phone a University linguist friend who indeed confirmed that "purser" is not a French word, nor is it German, Dutch or Arabic. Clearly getting into his stride, the Algerian then proceeded to give us a lengthy monologue on the roots of various other random words and the practical difficulties of verb conjugation in Dutch. The Americans sat silently bemused.

What happened next astonished me, although it really shouldn't have. We arrived (eventually) at NH [nowhere bloody near] Central Station where the Americans hopped off, reached into their pockets, pulled out two one-dollar bills each, and handed them to the driver. A TIP? What was that all about? They (like me) had been duped into staying at a crappy hotel absolutely nowhere near where it describes itself as being and then (unlike me) had had their intelligence insulted by the same man to whom they were now handing four dollars. Four DOLLARS? Come on guys, if you're going to unnecessarily tip someone, you might as well have the good grace to do it in the local currency.

*****

The plane from Amsterdam took off towards Luxembourg and briefly passed over a stretch of the North Sea. I nervously checked under my seat; I couldn't see the lifejacket anywhere...

November 4, 2007 - The astronomical clock

2007-11-23T22:06:00.000+01:00

Strasbourg just doesn’t do it for me at all. It has a mere fraction of the number of beautiful buildings that nearby Colmar has, spread out over a much larger area. There is a half-hearted concentration of Alsatian charm in la Petite France, but “petite” is the word and it has been inevitably greedily swallowed up by tourism. OK, so the cathedral is mightily impressive, but only from the outside; inside, it’s just like any other large provincial cathedral. Maybe I've been to too many, but it just doesn’t have the awe-inspiring loftiness or stained glass windows of Metz, the dizzying enormity of Cologne, the sense of importance of Notre-Dame in Paris nor the who-knows-what’s-round-the-next-corneriness of Lincoln. However, it DOES have a rather famous astronomical clock and our visit to Strasbourg was principally to see the renowned 12.30pm display.

My first impression of the astronomical clock was a good one, for I was strangely happy to see that it was certainly not positioned with tourism in mind; a whacking great pillar obscured the view of the clock from most of the rest of the cathedral. Arriving 20 minutes early for the “performance”, hundreds of tourists were already watching a horribly tacky video on the workings of the clock, with needlessly dramatic voice-over commentary in English, French and German. At 12.29, the video stopped and attention – not to mention several hundred cameras – shifted instead to the clock itself. A minute later, Death knolled a bell a few times as a cue for the 12 disciples to pass in an orderly fashion in front of the Lord Jesus, who acknowledged their presence and gave a final blessing at the end. A mechanical cockerel crowed a few times and then…

...nothing.

It was over.

That’s all it does.

Legions of tourists continued to gaze (photograph, film) the ancient timepiece for several minutes, not quite believing that that could be “it”. Perhaps they expected that a troup of killer alien teddy bears would appear and dance the Can Can or something, I just don’t know. Eventually, like me, they begrudgingly accepted that they had been pretty much diddled out of EUR 2 and began to filter out into the cavernous nave of the cathedral.

If I’d viewed the astronomical clock silently on my own in a little-known village church, it would have been an amazing experience. Viewing it as part of an exercise in mass tourism was totally unfulfilling. It was the only truly tourist experience that we’d had over the five days of our trip, and probably the least enjoyable. We’d had a good little holiday, but now it was time to go home.

October 24, 2007 - KPMG's vision of global strategy

2007-11-23T22:02:00.000+01:00

My boss - bless 'im - went on a three-day course recently entitled "DEVELOPING TOMORROW'S LEADERS TODAY!". This experience moved him so much that he organised a special lunch for his whole team so that we could all share in his corporate spiritual enlightenment. After filling us all with frightening images of senior executives huddling, cuddling and high-fiving each other, he asked us what we thought about having a department "mission": A set of values, a vision, which would inspire us into ever-improving tax management efficiency.

Was he being serious?

Unfortunately, he was. Fortunately, my boss is also an intelligent, rational person who - after about an hour's persuasion by myself and another colleague - realised that wishy washy mission statements only work in the US, visions are only for members of weird sects and values need to be spelled out only for those who don't have them in the first place.

It wasn't until after the lunch that I realised that I could have persuaded my boss to come to the same conclusion a LOT quicker - the KPMG anthem. I remember hearing this about two or three days into my auditing "career" at the accountancy firm and, in retrospect, I probably should have quit there and then. It really is shockingly, nauseatingly, sickeningly amusingly bad.

http://anthems.zdnet.co.uk/anthems/kpmg.mp3

Sit back, enjoy and smirkingly consider the socially inept senior partners (executives) who genuinely thought that this would inspire their overworked and underappreciated staff into achieving some sort of audit enlightenment. Oh! And have a bucket handy, just in case...

KPMG, we're strong as can be
A team of power and energy
We go for the gold
Together we hold onto our vision of global strategy.

KPMG, we're strong as can be
A dream of power and energy
We go for the gold
Together we hold onto our vision of global strategy.

verse one
We create, we innovate
We pass the ones that are la-a-ate.
A global team, this is our dream of success that we create.
We'll be number one, with effort and fun
Together each of us will run for gold that shines like the sun in our eyes

chorus
KPMG, we're strong as can be
A team of power and energy
We go for the gold
Together we hold onto our vision of global strategy.

KPMG, we're strong as can be
A dream of power and energy
We go for the gold
Together we hold onto our vision of global strategy.

verse two
The time is now to lead the way
We share the same idea that may win by the end of the day
Our strength is here to stay
Identity, one energy, one strategy, with sympathy
These are the words that will lead us into our new world.

chorus, repeat ad nauseam

September 25, 2007 - Best Man speech

2007-11-23T21:54:00.000+01:00

There are a few good reasons why I haven't found the time to contribute to my own blog recently: Work, travel, insomniac son, fed-up wife, nice weather, etc, etc, etc. But perhaps the overriding reason for my block was that all my creative energy was being funnelled into writing a half-decent Best Man speech for my friend Dan's wedding. Here's how - to the best of my memory - it came out on the night (doesn't even partially resemble what I had scribbled on the shaking bit of paper in front of me, but judging by the number of drinks I was bought afterwards, it seemed to go down OK).

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dan was right - he had the easy bit. It's up to me to do the hard bit, so here goes…

First of all, thank you. On behalf of the bridesmaids and everyone else here today, thanks for the lovely words and the generous gifts.

I´m going to try to keep this speech as short as I can, principally so that even if you don't laugh at the jokes, you can always complement me afterwards on its length. But secondly, Dan has made a few specific requests concerning this speech which have had a major impact on its length.

For starters, he has requested that I don't mention any of his past girlfriends. This has cut the length of my speech down by a good - ooooohh - fifteen to twenty seconds by my reckoning.

[Dan] You mean fifteen seconds per girlfriend?
[Jonny] That's right Dan, like I said, fifteen seconds in total.

Also, Dan has requested that I don't mention any – and how can I put this? – any of his past behavioural misdemeanours. This was a real blow to me, as I've been doing a lot of research into this matter. It has brutally cut my speech short by a good three to four hours and means that you, the paying public, will sadly never get to hear stories concerning Dan and his Grandad's whiskey cupboard, cardboard boxes, falling asleep on radiators, blocked sinks, etc, etc, etc.

Most of you here don´t know me at all, so perhaps it's better if I explain how Dan I first met. Having finished our A-levels but not quite being accepted into either Oxford or Cambridge, Dan and I were both accepted into that other great beacon of academic education, er… Preston. It was registration day and I'd never thought about it before, but never having watched Coronation Street almost ruined my life, for I couldn't communicate with anyone there. They couldn't understand me; I couldn't understand them; I was stuck. I didn´t know what to do to register for my course and I needed some help.

Then I spotted a dapper, well-dressed young man who exuded an air of self-confidence and intelligence. Unfortunately, that guy wasn't on my course, but Dan was and he helped me out instead.

A friendship soon blossomed, revolving mainly around sport, for Dan excelled at almost every sport he tried at University: Corridor cricket, sockball, table tennis across the kitchen table, ten-pin bowling (of course) and even marathons. Well, before they became Snickers anyways.

But, by his own admission, there was one sport at which Dan never excelled - football. He tried to join the University football team on one occasion, but they rejected him, stating that "he was useless in every position". I can only hope that Lisa has more luck with Dan in this respect at least…

[Dan's Mum, sitting just below me, goes "Ooooh Jon, No……". I tried to ignore her and got on with the important matter of delivering the rest of my speech.]

Of course, how I met Dan isn't nearly as interesting as how Dan met Lisa. As perhaps most of you know, they met at work. I wasn't there of course, but I have heard reports, and it went something like this…

Lisa was sitting at her desk, fluttering her eyelids at the well-built handsome stranger loitering idly by the coffee machine. Then Dan turned up.

[I love that joke. It's even better the second time around.]

It was the first time that he had ever set eyes on her and he thought she was drop dead gorgeous. And he told her so as well:

"You're gorgeous!" he said.
"Drop dead!!" replied Lisa.

Despite this inauspicious start, fast forward a few years and Dan was asking me to be his Best Man. I was - I am - honoured to be considered for this important role, but I must admit that I was somewhat confused as to my exact duties on the big day. My wife suggested that I look on the internet for a list of Best Man duties and - sure enough - I was soon inundated with useful information for the big day.

However, one of these duties baffled me somewhat. It's worth me quoting this directly, so hang on a second, bear with me… [looks at paper]. "The Best Man should ensure that the Groom's hair and face are in order."

[Repeats quote slowly over rising laughter, whilst looking at Dan]

Hair??????????? Well, there's one less thing for me to worry about! And as for the face, well, I reckon that if Mother Nature didn't do her best the first time around, then I have very little hope of correcting things today…

But seriously folks, all joking aside, just before I wrap things up, I'd like to say some nice things about Dan for a change. Perhaps more than anyone else present here today, I feel qualified to tell you what an absolutely top person Dan is. They say that if you wish to get to know someone, you should go travelling with them. Well, as many of you know, I've travelled lots with Dan and not only this year. Whether we've been unsuccessfully tracking down lost relatives in Ireland, learning Norwegian or trying to buy cheese from Bavarian farmers, Dan and I have had some great times together. After all of this, I can only confirm that he's a true friend; fun-loving and great to be around. He's always up for a challenge, enthusiastic and he's cautiously positive in that peculiar Dan way. (When he comes across something new, he stands back, looks at it, thinks a bit, but you know that deep down he wants - he really wants - to go ahead and do it. That's great.) Basically, Dan always wants to live life to the full, and I admire that greatly.

And so, Ladies and Gentlemen, I'd like to propose a toast. If you would all like to raise your glasses and join me in wishing Dan and Lisa…

Sadly, I can’t actually remember the exact toast that I mumbled. My brain had already switched off at the relief of having got the speech over with.

August 2, 2007 - Groove Armada, Roxette and the Business Weather Report

2007-11-23T21:52:00.000+01:00

I don't know why, but I'm obsessed with useless radio adverts at the minute. The one that really gets me upset isn't really an advert at all, rather a pointless feature sponsored by an obscure insurance company. Officially classified as the "Business Weather Report", it informs the general Luxembourgish population of the weather conditions in one random European city per day, sandwiched between jingles singing the praises of Reebou Insurance. Warsaw; Porto; Bratislava - if you just happen to be one of the three people in Luxembourg heading there on any particular day, then this feature might just be useful to you. Then again... no, it wouldn't. Quite possibly the worst excuse for radio airtime ever.

The advert for Robert Half Recruitment doesn't annoy me at all; in fact, it makes me laugh out loud every time I hear it, for it has surely the worst choice of musical backing track in history. According to their own website, this is a firm that "focuses on matching specialised professionals with business needs" and "matches [their] clients with the highest quality employees". And the song they chose to musically complement their policy of finding the right people for the right jobs?

"Everybody looks the same; we get tired of looking at each other" by Groove Armada. You just couldn't make it up, could you?

But even that only wins the second prize for "worst choice of music ever". Back in May, I was staying in a hotel in Germany. It was late on a Saturday night and a wedding party was in full swing in one of the function rooms. As I walked past it on the way up to my room, the DJ was playing a song that captured the essence of the happy event perfectly:

"It must have been love, but it's over now" by Roxette.

July 1, 2007 - The Americans in Terminal B

2007-11-23T21:48:00.000+01:00

TERMINAL B???????????????? I didn't even know it existed! Luxembourg airport barely has a need for a Terminal A, never mind a second one. Given that it's most people's first glimpse of the Grand Duchy, Terminal A in Luxembourg airport is probably the most depressing transit point on earth. It was designed and built in the 1970's in one of those styles that you really can't imagine having ever looked nice. Instead of being a grand entrance to the richest nation on earth, it reminds me of a setting for the "Carry On" movies.

The Luxair Business Lounge in particular makes me laugh: by sticking a few hundred EUR on the price of an airline ticket, Luxair allow you to access a room about the size of my kitchen and put a pile of mini pains aux chocolat and a bottle of whisky at your disposal. Oh! And you get a towel draped over the headrest to the seat on your plane as well. Bargain.

I was somewhat surprised, therefore, to find that Terminal B was nothing like this at all. It had slick marble floors, sturdy wooden doors that creaked agreeably, wireless internet availability and MP3 download "jukeboxes". It was, in other words, jolly pleasant. Except for one major failing - there was nowhere to buy a bottle of water.

I wasn't the only one to notice this shortcoming: An American businessman at the bar was thirsty as well.

"Water!" he requested to the lady behind the bar in that polite polyvalent manner that Americans are so good at.

"Without gas?" replied the barmaid in a thick french accent. The American looked totally perplexed by this request. I could see his limited brain cells struggling to cope with the complexity and idiocrisy of the question in hand. I mean, why the hell would ANYONE voluntarily want to drink water with petrol added to it?

"Water?" was all he could manage, head shaking, and he duly received a glass of Vittel. Unleaded, I hope.

*****

We continued to wait for our plane to Copenhagen and I continued to watch the people around me. Just like the guy at the bar, most of seemed to be American businessmen, which are always an amusing demographic group to observe. I recognised the guy sitting just opposite me from check-in, where he had created a terrible fuss due to his size.

"I'm telling you, I won't fit on your plane!" he was shouting, leaving me to ponder why he had bought a ticket on it in the first place. "I need an emergency exit seat."
"I'm sorry sir, but those seats are already taken."
"That can't be. I won't fit in any other seat!"

Now, I do have a certain sympathy for very large people who have to fly. Aeroplanes (note correct spelling Americans) are not exactly spacious vessels and sitting for hours on end with your knees touching your chin is probably not a pleasant experience. But this guy would probably never know what that felt like because he really wasn't very large at all. He was - at most - 2 or 3 cm taller than I am, and I (181cm, mostly legs) have never had a problem on a plane ever. Why did he think that he should have the divine right to an emergency exit seat just because he's slightly taller than usual? I really detest people whose egos are as inflated as their wallets.

Once on the plane (he fitted just fine) he created another fuss. He had two pieces of hand luggage, you see, and one of them was about the size of a polar bear. The flight attendants told him that he couldn't take it into the cabin, and he went beserk.

"But I HAVE to have..... I MUST have..... I CANNOT..... I am a big spoilt overprivileged American brat and I hope my Mom spanks me good'n'proper when I get back to the U.S of A."

Well, maybe he didn't say that last one.

May 31, 2007 - Shopping for snorkels

2007-11-23T21:46:00.000+01:00

My idea of shopping is to write out a list of the items that I really need, go to the shops, buy the items as quickly as is humanly possible and return home with a sense of purpose achieved.

My wife's idea of shopping is to write out a list of the items that she might possibly like, lose it, go to the shops anyway, wander around aimlessly, chat to anyone and everyone she meets, get stressed because she can't remember what it is she wanted to buy in the first place and return home - late - in a bad mood.

As you might imagine, going shopping together is not a pleasurable experience. There is an unwritten rule in our household that I am in charge of Samuel during family shopping trips, mainly because shopping is a stressful enough experience for Joelle without a super-inquisitive toddler hindering her. On my shopping list today were two pairs of sports shorts, a pot for the garden and, er, a snorkel. Joelle's list consisted of two lampshades and taking one item to the post office.

Needless to say, Samuel and I were finished in a matter of minutes (I was somewhat surprised to find that the sports shop stocked a wide variety of snorkels even though we're at least three hours from the sea!). Looking around, we couldn't see Joelle anywhere, so I decided to go to a café to pass the time. I had a craving for a "poche aux pommes", but it was getting late in the morning and they didn't appear to have any remaining. They had plenty of "pains au chocolat" though, so I ordered one of these and a coffee, and we took our seats by the window.

As we watched the inhabitants of Junglinster pass by outside, we saw Joelle come out of the supermarket with two cartons of baby milk (not on the list). Inevitably, she started talking to an old man and I couldn't help but notice that she still had the parcel with her for posting, so she hadn't even done that yet. I took another sip of my coffee and mentally prepared myself for a long wait.

At that precise moment, another customer came into the café. By an uncanny coincidence, he also ordered a coffee and a "pain au chocolat".

"Sorry, but pains au chocolat are finished" I overheard the grumpy lady behind the counter say to the new customer. This surprised me. After all, when I bought one not five minutes previously, there were at least three or four remaining, and this guy was the first customer to enter the café since I did.

"What do you mean with they're finished?" asked the customer, pointing at the display case, "I can see them right there."
"Oh, I'm just about to take those away," said sourpuss, "it's after 11.15; we're serving lunches now."

Incredibly, this guy wasn't allowed to buy a pain au chocolat! Instead of selling them to an interested customer, the internal regulations of that Luxembourgish café dictated that they should go into the bin. This country is crazy!!! By the time he received his second-choice snack (a horrible-looking pink gateau), Joelle had finished talking to the old man, but had disappeared out of sight once again. I finished my coffee, Samuel finished my pain au chocolat, and we trundled off to the post office to look for her.

May 18, 2007 - Old age has nothing to offer

2007-11-23T21:44:00.000+01:00

I fear I've just done something very, very bad...

Our old neighbour must be in his mid to late eighties. He isn't actually our neighbour for much of the year, preferring to spend the winter in the tropical climes of Southern Luxembourg, only coming up north when the weather gets better. When I arrived home from shopping today, I spotted him slowly, ever so slowly, taking the lawnmower out of his garden. I haven't seen him since last summer, so I went over for a chat and to see if he needed a hand.

" Moien! How are you?" I could see that he was breathing heavily and sweating profusely.
"Not bad, not bad, but I just can't get this lawnmower to start. I've given up on it."

This seemed a strange thing to say as a tiny bit of lawn had already been cut. He didn't do that with a pair of scissors, that's for sure. Ignoring this mystery, I decided that I would help him.

"Let me try to start it."
"No, no. It's broken. Nothing you can do about it. Thanks anyway."
"Honestly, just let me try once. It looks OK to me." I put the choke on the machine, pulled the cord, and the motor started up perfectly.

"There you go!" I looked at the old man, and could visibly see his heart sink. The deepening lines on his kind old forehead amplified the look of complete dejection on his face.

"Well, er, what do you know? Thanks." It was only then that I realised then that "It's broken" was really just a cover up for "I'm old and unable to cut my own lawn anymore". Feeling bad, I offered to cut his lawn for him, but his pride didn't allow him to accept my offer. He then spent the next ten minutes trying in vain to push his lawnmower over the assortment of weeds that he calls his garden. I did offer once again to help, making up some excuse about Samuel sleeping and me having nothing else to do anyway, but again he refused. I didn't offer again, in case I really damaged his pride irreparably.

After his second fruitless effort to maintain his garden, he gave up when he saw that I wasn't looking and went back into his house. As long as I can ever remember, my Granny McCutcheon has been telling me "old age has nothing to offer". She's right of course, and I don't think I've ever seen such a good example.

May 17, 2007 - 2+2 = 5.80 (and other such Belgian waffle)

2007-11-23T21:39:00.000+01:00

I'm not usually one for national stereotyping (...), but there are frequent murmurings amongst Luxembourgers that the French-speaking Belgians aren't exactly the sharpest tools in the box. Sadly, I do have to say that I have seen precious little evidence so far to dispel this nasty rumour, and each visit to Wallonia doesn't help either.

Take the architect of the motorway service station near Liege, for example - what was he (she?) thinking??? Not only is his creation one of the ugliest edifices on the surface of this green planet, but it also is completely impractical. To get to the buffet restaurant from my car, I had to climb up two flights of (graffiti-strewn) stairs, cross the motorway, climb up two more flights of stairs and then re-cross the motorway again in the direction from where I had just come. Why not put one staircase going all the way up without the need to traverse the A27 twice?

Needless to say, I couldn't be bothered wasting my energy, so I visited the shop on the first floor instead, where I picked up a bottle of water and a bag of Maltesers, and went to the checkout.

"That'll be €5.80 please," said the assistant.
"WHAT? €5.80?! How much is this bottle of water then?"
"2 EUR"
Bloody hell - 2 EUR for a bottle of water! Pricy. "And the Maltesers?"
"They're also 2EUR."

There then followed a few seconds of painful silence while I watched the assistant do some mental arithmetic.
"Oh hang on," she twigged, "that's not right, is it? It's... er... 4EUR." Genius.

Just before my visit to the shop, I had visited the bathroom, which was guarded diligently by two spritely old women. Bizarrely, a selection of all-purpose kitchen cloths of various cheery colours were set out neatly around the wash-hand basins. Initially, I thought that these must serve some purpose (leaky soap dispensers, for example). But no - these were there purely for aesthetic purposes. Belgian toilet decorations. As I was washing my hands, one of the old women came in, looked around, spotted a slightly misaligned bright red cloth, straightened it, stepped back to proudly admire her work and left again. Who cares if the toilet seats are missing or that your shoes are sticky for a week afterwards? The cloths are perfectly aligned under the mirrors, and that's all that matters. I'm glad that my 30c contribution is being used in such a useful fashion.

Coffee (1 EUR) was so bad that I returned to the machine twice just to ensure that I had actually pressed the "Espresso" button and not the "Super-heated dishwasher residue in flimsy plastic cup" button instead. I always press "Espresso" because this just gives me half a cup of crap coffee. Pressing "Café long" or "Café normal" fills the entire cup with boiling dishwater. Not only is this utterly undrinkable, but it is also untouchably hot. If you manage to take the cup from the machine without the need for a skin graft, then you are forced into setting it on the adajcent table and waiting for it to cool down, giving you plenty of time to re-admire the pretty kitchen cloths or maybe even visit the upstairs buffet after all. But I'm just waffling now, which, given the subject matter of this blog, is almost a pun.

May 1, 2007 - Geese are deaf

2007-11-23T21:33:00.000+01:00

I'm not exactly a bird expert, but detailed observations have led me to the conclusion that geese are deaf. Ok, so these "detailed observations" have consisted of me watching one goose as I ate my breakfast on the ferry from Finland to Sweden this morning, but the evidence is conclusive nonetheless.

I was sitting right at the very front of the ship, almost in a Kate-and-Leo type position, but without the annoying background music. The goose was swimming tranquilly in the waters directly in front of the vessel. Just like the other travellers having their breakfasts, it was evidently mesmerised by the Stockholm skyline looming up ahead of us. In case you don't know it already, ships can sail faster than geese can swim. I think you can guess what came next...

Dan and I reckon that if all the decks on board the Silja Europa Ferry were laid out side-by-side, the resulting surface area would be larger than the Vatican City. Or, to put it another way, this goose failed to hear that a country-sized motor-propelled object was about to ram it up the arse.

I conclude, therefore, that geese are deaf. (Or at least that one was. Poor thing.)

April 18, 2007 - What has my date of birth got to do with it?

2007-11-23T21:28:00.000+01:00

Even if I live in Luxembourg for the rest of my life I will never, ever understand the pointless effort that goes into creating the idiosyncratic bureaucracy of everyday life here.

Today, I took Samuel to the hospital for a routine check-up after his hernia operations. I thought it polite to check in at reception first of all, but the woman behind the desk just sighed, mumbled something rudely about the pediatric department and directed me to another reception area. This was the wrong one as well.

The omens at the third reception area in as many minutes were not good; the two people in the queue in front of me were also at the wrong place and were seemingly being directed back to where I had just come from. I was prepared for the worst, but our details thankfully appeared on the magic computer in front of the receptionist. It was the correct place; the stupid questions started.

"What is your date of birth?"

"MY date of birth? No, sorry, the appointment is for my son, not for me." It didn't matter; apparently the star sign of patient's fathers is required info at Luxembourgish clinics. The questions continued:

"What is your address?"

"You have our address already! I can see our details on your computer. Look! Right there! It hasn't changed since last month's appointment."

"Please give me your address." I reluctantly read it off her screen and she nodded sagely.

"Do you wish to receive a refund for the cost of this appointment or do you wish to pay it yourself?" Well, duh.

"Do you work for the Luxembourg State or a private company?" Er, a private company I suppose*.

Having (eventually) answered the questions in a way that satisfied the receptionist, I was handed six bits of papers and twenty - yes TWENTY (I counted) - stickers bearing Samuel's name, address and a big bar code. I was then directed back to reception #2, handed over the stationery and waited for the doctor.

The appointment lasted about three minutes. It was just a check-up after all (and Samuel is absolutely fine). To the best of my knowledge, absolutely none of the twenty stickers were used in any way whatsoever.

*I actually am on paternity leave from work at a publicly-listed company which is effectively controlled by the Luxembourg State. Try explaining that one in French to a pernickity receptionist. I chickened out and took the easy option.

March 26, 2007 - Northern Ireland vs Liechtenstein

2007-11-23T21:25:00.000+01:00

Our visit to Liechtenstein wasn't specifically to watch the football - we actually went there to have a haircut. Confused? Check out www.babydecides.com and all will be explained.]

The Northern Ireland football fans descending on Liechtenstein were soon all asking themselves the same question - "What the heck is there to see or do here?". Most other tourists to this tiny alpine nation quickly find a good solution to this dilemma - leave. But when you're a Northern Ireland football fan and you've travelled all that way to watch your team play Liechtenstein that evening, you simply don't have that luxury. Besides, the team might actually win for once, so you choose the only available option - alcohol.

By the time Dan, Lisa & I arrived outside the Rheinpark Stadion 90 minutes before kick-off, it was already a thronging mass of mayhem. Broken bottles lay everywhere on the previously pristine streets of Vaduz. Men from the Castlederg NI supporters' club were busy fertilising Liechtensteinish shrubbery at every turn. Others were stood on benches and tables, swaying uneasily with pint in hand as they sung out "Carnaval de Paris" into the freezing mountain air.

Despite the crowds, we were surprised to see that there was no-one at the sausage stand, so we skilfully avoided several thousand drunken elbows and ordered a few Bratwursten.

"Sorry, but you need to buy a ticket." I was informed.
"And... where do you buy that then?"
"At the beer stand."

I could now see why no-one was buying sausages, for I was being pointed towards a small caravan with two beleaguered barmaids inside and a great deal many more green shirts gathered outside, pushing, fruitlessly shouting their orders for beer and occasionally joining in with the latest rendition of "Carnaval de Paris". It was a bleak situation for anyone who wanted a sausage.

Inside the stadium proper, the situation was a little better. The sausages that we received were about a foot long and accompanied by one small slice of brown bread. Upon receiving it, we looked around to see if anyone else had worked out how to eat such a huge sausage with such a miniscule piece of bread, but everyone was as confused as we were. If you tried to wrap the bread horizontally around the sausage, it simply broke in two, leaving you with two even more miniscule and therefore even more useless slices of bread. Wrapping it longways meant that it didn't even reach around the girth of the giant Bratwurst. After pondering this for a while, I decided to eat the bit of bread first. This didn't make the situation any easier, but at least it ruled out the possibility of creating any sort of hot dog, leaving me able to enjoy my food with a clear mind. And greasy fingers.

The man to whom we were now chatting was eternally grateful to me simply because I know how to say "no mustard please" in German. I also know the German words for "donkey" and "hedgehog", but these didn't prove to be useful on this particular occasion.

"Did you know," he muffled whilst spraying us with bits of his Bratwurst, "that Liechtenstein's national anthem is sung to the same tune as 'God Save the Queen'?"

Rather incredibly, this is absolutely true, as was confirmed two minutes later. Being the visiting team, Northern Ireland's anthem was played first and the several thousand travelling fans sung it with such gusto that it could probably have been heard in another country (not difficult considering that Switzerland was only about 200m away). Liechtenstein were up next and - sure enough - the band cranked up "God Save the Queen" yet again. Whilst the paltry number of Liechtensteiners present diligently sang "Oben am jungen Rhein, Lehnet sich Liechtenstein" (try it - it works!), the Northern Irish simply started laughing or mouthing "what the f&§$?!?!" to each other. The more drunk amongst them started into "God Save the Queen" once more, but were thrown by the extra repeat of the chorus in the Liechtensteinish version, presumably added in a pathetic attempt to ward off a large royalty claim from the United Kingdom.

The match started, and the next 45 minutes fittingly mirrored our impression of everyday life in Liechtenstein - nothing of any note happened whatsoever. That all changed early in the second half when a loose ball found its way to the feet of David Healy, Northern Ireland's record goalscorer. With the goalkeeper stranded, he rolled it into the empty net and the stadium erupted. 1-0 to Northern Ireland! Healy followed this up with a second goal twenty minutes later and a third soon after. The men in green were coasting and their fans were ecstatic.

Then something weird happened - Liechtenstein scored. It was a beautiful goal, the Liechtenstein player collecting the ball at the edge of the penalty area and curling an unstoppable shot around the Northern Ireland goalkeeper. The NI fans - the previously bottle breaking, beer swilling, public pissing, sausage stuffing, profanity spewing fans - simultaneously stopped their chanting... and started politely applauding. They may have been drunk, tired and a long way from home, but they had come here first and foremost in the hope of seeing some good football. Ok, so they didn't expect to see it from the Liechtenstein left-back, but they appreciated it nonetheless. "Good goal!" came the cries as heads everywhere nodded in admiration.

One person who certainly wasn't expecting this was the stadium announcer. Liechtenstein simply aren't meant to score goals - what was he supposed to do now? About fifteen seconds of applause had went by before he decided to celebrate this momentously happy occasion by playing some music. Unwisely, he chose "Carnaval de Paris".

"NAA NAAAAAA! NAA-NAAAAAAA! NAA-NAA NAA-NAA NA... NA-NAAAAAA!!!!"

The stadium erupted once more into a dancing, bouncing, chanting, clapping sea of green and white. This was directly followed by the chant of "We're going to win 4-1! We're going to win 4-1!" As if commanded, Keith Gillespie galloped down the right wing and whipped over a perfect cross for Grant McCann to power the ball into the back of the net. 4-1! The final whistle went almost immediately. The night may have been over for the players, but it was probably only just beginning for the crazy, crazy, brilliant fans of Northern Ireland.

Oh, hang on - I forgot. They were in Liechtenstein. They probably just went back to their hotels or coaches and went to sleep. Like we did. When in Liechtenstein, etc, etc...

March 20, 2007 - Why I don't floss my teeth

2007-11-23T21:23:00.000+01:00

My dentist thinks that I am knowledgable about golf and likes to talk to me about it. I feel that it is unwise to disappoint a man with such a dazzling array of legally-owned torture instruments at his disposal, so I try to play along with the conversation as best I can.

"I'll be playing at the K Club in May", he remarked to me today whilst putting on his rubber gloves, "Any tips?"

"Er... Sorry, but I haven't played there" I replied, conveniently sidestepping the fact that I am incapable of hitting a golf ball more than about 20 metres, let alone playing a round at one of Ireland's most exclusive courses.

"Oh. Never mind. Open wide please."

I enjoy this bit of the dental appointment more than the golf conversation, for I surely have the healthiest teeth in Luxembourg, if not the world. The dentist goes through the same routine on each and every one of my semi-annual visits: he pokes around a bit with something sharp and then, trying to think of something to justify his fee, complains that I should drink less tea and floss more often.

"You should drink less tea," he muffled through his hygiene mask, "and you should floss more often."

Right. He then spends the next ten minutes doing something mildly unpleasant with the inside of my mouth. I have no idea what he actually does, for I have my eyes closed by this stage, relaxing, trying not to swallow and slowly drifting off into a world of female CBBC presenters past and present. Then, just as I'm nodding off to sleep, I hear:

"Rinse please" and I'm awake. "You really should floss more often" he reminds me.

But should I? Really really, should I? If you think logically about it, flossing makes absolutely no sense at all. For starters, I don't like flossing - it hurts my gums and the used bits of floss stick to my fingers afterwards. Nevertheless, let's assume that flossing for a mere thirty seconds each day would prevent the "mildly unpleasant" treatment that I received today. Thirty seconds each day means three hours of unpleasant flossing each year and yet would only save twenty minutes worth of dental treatment. What's the point in that then???

Besides, it's more difficult to think of Nina from "Nina and the Neurons" when I'm looking at myself in the bathroom mirror with bits of string hanging out of my mouth...

March 3, 2007 - Cologne (Tom Toms are rubbish)

2007-11-23T21:19:00.000+01:00

"Keep to the right and then, after 300 metres, turn right in the direction BONN."

But Bonn is towards the left! And anyway we passed it already 30km ago!! Aaaaarrrgggghhhhh!!! I HATE satellite navigation systems. I dread to think how much fuel is being wasted in this world by those fools who wish to trust a GPS system that wishes to take us, for example, through the centre of Bonn on our way to Cologne. It wasn't MY Tom Tom of course - I'd offered to give Joelle and her friend Laurence a lift to the Education Fair, with the sneaky intention of doing some sightseeing whilst they were "working". Despite the best efforts of Laurence's Tom Tom, we eventually managed to find the fourth biggest city in Germany and all bought day passes for the fair (even KelleyAnn, our latest CouchSurfer, who had no sooner arrived in Luxembourg when we told her that we were promptly leaving it for the day).

The day passes were my idea. My rationale was this: What with the weather being so unpredictable and me having charge of an insomniac 19-month old, I reckoned that having the option of returning to the spacious, dry, warm confines of the Kolnmesse was worth the admission price alone. Everyone agreed, we went in, promptly said our goodbyes, navigated countless vast halls and lifts that never, ever went where you wanted them to (recognise this Bill Bryson?) and found ourselves by the exit. We tried to go out; a lady stopped us.

"Are you sure you want to leave so early?" she asked "I assume you realise that you will have to buy another ticket to come back in again?" I smiled smugly and explained in pigeon German that I was cleverer than I look and that I had bought a day pass. "Oh, that's no good," she explained, "if you wish to go in and out as you please, you have to purchase a weekly pass."

Up until this point, I had always considered Germans to be logical and rational people, but this was just silly.

"So, a day pass doesn't actually give you a PASS for a DAY?", "Nein.", "That's stupid."

Somewhat surprisingly, she agreed with me. It is stupid. She looked at the skinny father with the hopeless grasp of the local language, the cute baby on the verge of falling asleep and the American girl who didn't know what was going on - and made us a deal. "Come back to me afterwards," she said, decently, "I'll let you back in." Danke!!!

We had finally done it! We were out of the huge Kolnmesse and could now see our true reason for coming to Cologne - the famous cathedral - just a few hundred metres away. Now our only problem was the Rhine - how to cross it? We asked somebody. "I don't know," he said, helpfully, "I'd take the train I suppose." THE TRAIN? It's only a few hundred metres! Nevertheless, not seeing any other possibility, we tried to buy tickets. We did this by attempting to put every single bank card in our joint possession into an automated ticket machine which continually told us "Card not accepted" in an impressive variety of languages. Just as I was thinking that we'd need to open a German bank account simply to visit Cologne Cathedral, somebody told us that there was a footpath across the rail bridge after all. Halle-flipping-lujah!

Twenty minutes later we were inside the vast, ominous Gothic cathedral. As Samuel slept and KelleyAnn climbed one of the towers, I watched midday mass from the back of the nave. This consisted of a speck in the distance (the priest or bishop, probably) chanting extraordinarily scary-sounding German words which echoed for eternity in the cavernous space, all accompanied by a morbid organist playing a selection of Dracula's favourite hits. At one point during the service, the speck in the distance spread his arms theatrically to symbolise the cross. At this precise instant, the sun appeared from behind a cloud, sending the whole cathedral into a, well, cathedral of magnificent stained-glass colour. It was a wonderful, wonderful sight but it only lasted a few seconds before the clouds won their battle once again and the sombre gloom was restored.

As the day went on, the sun's cameo appearances became longer and longer. Not that it really mattered as - to be fair - there's nothing really else to see in Cologne anyway. Like most large German cities, it was devastated during WWII and then rebuilt in the most offensively bland architectural style possible. Saying that, I would have loved to have been able to spend more time in the Ludwig Museum of Modern Art. By the time we got there, Samuel was fed up sightseeing and I feared that his constant cries of "Mama! Mama!" might be disturbing the other visitors. Besides, Joelle had also finished for the day, and by the time we crossed the Rhine, located our nice German lady, avoided the lifts and negotiated the thronging exhibition halls once again, we were all ready to go home.

"Keep right" said Tom Tom, directing us into a forested residential area when we really wanted to be on the motorway towards Frankfurt.

"Turn left towards Bruhl" said Tom Tom as we zoomed past the signpost for Bruhl on our right.

"Turn around as soon as possible" said Tom Tom, seconds before we switched the bloody thing off and used the setting sun as our reference point for our route back home instead.

February 27, 2007 - Organic bread

2007-11-23T21:15:00.000+01:00

I made a snap decision this morning to walk to the bakery to buy some organic bread. It just seemed like an organic bread type of morning - the dawn chorus was in full swing; the sun was trying to break though a faint layer of mist; everything was still and very, very wet; Mother Nature was everywhere.

It was 7.35am on the church clock when Oonagh and I walked down the steps at the bottom of our garden. The dogs that usually bark at us from the house at the entrance to the cycle path were nowhere to be seen - it must have been too early for them. The cycle path itself was criss-crossed with little streams of water flowing across the fields and down towards the forest. It must have rained a lot during the night, but there was no sign of it in the serene sky above us now.

We walked past the huge houses on the top of the hill. Each one had massive windows and a patio overlooking the forest and our village. "What's the point in that?" I thought, "They can see the forest, but it's a good 10 minutes walk away if they actually want to go there. They might as well just look at the forest on TV." It then struck me that people with a house that size probably didn't have time to walk in the forest anyway, so there was no point in having a house closer to it. I felt sorry for them. I don't know why, but I did.

As we passed the school, three cars arrived. Each had one parent driving and one small child inside; all three were SUVs. It looked ridiculous - these tiny kids getting out of these huge cars. Probably these kids lived in the village anyway and had driven only a few hundred metres to get to school. What a waste. Samuel will go to this school. It's only 20 minutes' walk away from us. Wouldn't it be nice if I could walk with him to school most mornings? Wouldn't it be nice if I could walk back with him at lunchtimes and hometime? Wouldn't this be impossible if I had to work full-time as well? Wouldn't it be sad if - in six years' time - I arrive at the school gates every morning in my own big fuel-guzzling SUV to deposit my child in the name of his education? I promised myself there and then that this would never happen.

We arrived at the bakery. It was closed. "Conge annuel".

I didn't mind a bit. On the walk back, the sun was that bit higher over the forest and the shroud of mist was that bit fainter. The dogs still didn't bark at us; I hope they're OK. The church bells struck for quarter past eight as we climbed the steps back up to the bottom of our garden.

February 11, 2007 - The Luxembourgish Social

2007-11-23T21:12:00.000+01:00

One of the most painful memories of my youth in Northern Ireland was attending "Socials" with Robin. I hated them; honestly, I don't think I've ever hated anything more vehemently in my entire life. For the uninitiated, Socials were (still are?) a way for Protestant farmers to find a mate. In a Social, men with checked shirts and smelling of a pungent combination of manure and aftershave would arrange themselves around the inside wall of a church hall. In the middle of the room, a group of teenage girls would be dancing, seemingly oblivious to the fact that they were being leered at by men three times their age. Usually one of these girls was the reason why we were attending, so for five minutes each night Robin left my side to try to do his stuff. During that time, I was inevitably approached by a coca-cola clutching agricultural expert who would nod his head at me in that peculiar diagonal way that only farmers can and say "It's a quer good oul nights craic, hi?". Usually, I just ignored him.

Well, now it seems that this bizarre concept of fun has finally made it to mainland Europe and that the hotspot for the Luxembourgish Social is... the village hall beside our house. Understandably, there are a few differences in the translation to the culture of the Grand Duchy. For example, alcohol is permitted at the Luxembourgish Social, which I personally see as a good development. In addition, if you want to stand out from the checked shirt crowd, you can come to a Luxembourgish Social in fancy dress: The one held last night was meant to have been a "pyjama party", but, peeking in through the windows, I didn't see anyone in pyjamas. I did however see a couple dressed as a monk and a nun, for which sincerely I hope they were given free admission and - as a bonus - a consultation with a psychiatrist as soon as possible.

Otherwise, the system remains fairly intact. 75% men, mostly old and fat; 25% female. Men lined up against the walls drinking and sharking; females chatting and occasionally dancing. The music was being provided by a godawful accordian and keyboard duo whom they must have flown directly over from the Gortin Young Farmers' Association and whom kept us (and Samuel) awake until well after 2am. I guess there is the saying that "if you can't beat them, join them" but there was no way that I was going to enter that cesspit last night. I had more than enough of that form of "entertainment" in my youth, thank you very much.

January 22, 2007 - Meeting Alastair in Paris

2007-11-23T21:09:00.000+01:00

The alarm clock said it was 5.18am. I got up, dressed myself as quietly as I could, whispered a soft goodbye into my sleeping wife's ear and carefully left the bedroom. "Don't forget your raincoat," came a somnolent voice from the bed I had just left, "you always need a raincoat in Paris". I laughed smugly to myself (for I had checked the weather forecast), had some breakfast, left the house, got into the car, paused, considered, got back out of the car, grabbed my raincoat and finally drove off in the direction of France.

*****

Several hours later, I found myself negotiating the seemingly endless suburbs of Paris. I had devised a plan - I would get inside the Peripherique and find a safe, cheapish place to park the car before continuing to the centre by Metro. Sure enough, no sooner was I inside the city limits when I saw a sign for "PARKING: 7 EUR". Bargain. A man collecting the tariff was stood outside a large underground parking. I gave him the correct change and he directed me into the abyss. "Just follow the grey car in front", he helpfully informed me before adding, "Once parked, just follow the signs for Philately and that'll take you directly into the main hall." This last sentence struck me as being rather odd. What hall? And what the heck had stamp collecting got to do with anything?

I parked my car and - sure enough - there were signs for Philately. There were however also some signs for Postcard collection, Old toys and, promisingly, EXIT. Since I'm not really a fan of stamps, postcards or antique toys, I chose the exit - to find it was blocked. Crossing that one off my list of possibilities, I then tried following the least evil sounding of the remaining alternatives - Old toys - and found myself at a kiosk for an exhibition. I tried to escape, but was caught by a security guard. "You want the exhibition?" he asked, to which I replied "Er... of course! But I need to meet someone outside first of all," and quickly made for daylight before he could question me further.

In the bright sunshine of a mild, cloudless January day in Paris, my error was now apparent - I had driven into the private parking of the massive Halle d'Omnisports. I decided to leave it there anyway and went looking for the nearest Metro station. After all, they were only stamp collectors.

*****

At this point, I should probably explain why I was in Paris. My crazy friend Alastair travels frequently between Derbyshire and Barcelona. Up until a few days ago, he believed that Luxembourg fell nicely en-route between the two, which I guess it does if you're a "let's go to Greece via Iceland" type of person. Since he's already been to see me twice here, I reckoned it was my turn to meet him somewhere which didn’t involve a 900km detour for a change.

In addition to his inability to read maps, another of Alastair's endearing characteristics is that he has never quite mastered the art of communication via mobile telephone. So by the time I was at our stated meeting point (the Louvre) at the stated meeting time (Midday), I still hadn't even received confirmation that he was in the country, let alone the immediate vicinity. At 12.15pm, however, I did receive an SMS. It read "Mareva will be at Metro exit now if you want to catch her now".

WHAT??? Typical Alastair... At least I knew of whom he was talking - Mareva was an ex-girlfriend of his now living in Paris - but I'd never met her. Besides, which Metro station? Come to think of it, which exit? Even assuming that he meant Metro stations for the Louvre alone, this still only narrowed it down to two stations and potentially a dozen or so exits. How on earth was I meant to meet up with someone whom I didn't know in an unspecified place???

Not quite knowing what to do, I strategically positioned myself in a location where I could see three separate Metro exits and started looking for girls that I reckoned my friend might have fancied a decade ago. Frankly, this didn't narrow the field down by much but at least it meant that I could rule out the tourists, tramps, businessmen and small children wandering around Rue du Rivoli. During my search, my eyes briefly met those of a particularly beautiful Parisian girl standing alone and she gave me a little smile. I considered smiling back but twangs of guilt reminded me that I was married. I simultaneously became aware that I was wearing the ugliest jumper ever created - a horrible oversized grey woolly thing that looks like it has been knitted by a clinically depressed Donegal grandmother from exceedingly dirty sheep. The probability of a pretty Parisian girl being instantly attracted to me is very small indeed; the probability of that same girl being attracted to me whilst I'm wearing that jumper would be practically nil. "That girl must recognise me" I reasoned, "That girl must be Mareva".

She was. Apparently we had previously met after all - briefly over a cup of coffee in Lille nine years ago. I asked her how on earth she recognised me after all that time. "Oh, I didn't," she replied, "I just guessed it was you because only an Irishman would wear a jumper like that."

*****

Now, whilst I was eyeing up and exchanging fashion tips with his beautiful ex-girlfriend, Alastair was, predictably, lost. He managed to exit his first train at the correct station and correctly identified the line taking him directly to the Louvre. He even successfully boarded a train on that line - but in the wrong direction. By the time he finally met up with us, we were all ready for a coffee and so staggered into a nearby cafe, where we pretty much stayed for the rest of the day. I imagine that most people, when faced with a few hours in which to see Paris, would take in a museum or two, do a lap of Notre Dame, climb the Eiffel Tower or do something equally touristy. They would be crazy. Paris is not something that can be rushed. We simply sat, drank coffee, ate overpriced but strangely satisfying food, chatted and watched Paris rush by. It was very pleasant indeed.

Once we had reached the point of caffeine intoxication, we decided that some fresh air was in order and headed off towards the Jardins du Palais. The clear blue skies had by now given way to ominous black clouds and it wasn't long until the first raindrops fell. I reached into my bag and took out my raincoat, not knowing whether to curse or thank my wife for her prophetic vision.

In my newly-dampened state, I began to begin to worry. What time did the stamp collectors' exhibition close? Guessing that they had to be home in good time for their mug of Ovaltine and evening pipe, I concluded that the answer was probably "early" and returned to my illegal car park. It was just after half past five. Almost all the stamp collectors had indeed already retired for the evening, but I was still able to access a little blue Luxembourgish Ka, say goodbye to Alastair and Mareva, and return home. A good day.

January 20, 2007 - My day has been poo

2007-11-23T21:06:00.000+01:00

(Warning for my Mother: I have used some "bad language" in this entry. For this I apologise and hope that you see that it was actually necessary under the circumstances. Best not let Granny read this one...)

Whilst whistling merrily in my yard this morning, I noticed a puddle outside the door to our wine cellar. Opening the door, I realised that the cellar actually WAS a puddle - our drain was blocked. I reflected on how lucky we were not to have any wine.

Donning old clothes and rubber gloves and collecting a series of items I considered as being useful in the art of drain unblocking, I got to work. At precisely this time, Joelle rather stupidly decided to switch on the washing machine, which soon left me ankle and elbow-deep in a mixture of excrement and dirty water. I briefly consoled myself with the thought that at least it was our own excrement that I was wading in, but, unlike the smell, the novelty soon wore off.

After more than an hour of futile attempts to clear the blockage, I conceded defeat and we called a company specialising in this type of thing. They said they would come at 2pm. Two and a half hours after that time, there was still no sign of them. Since Joelle was visiting a friend (more to use their toilet than anything else) it was left to me to phone them up.

"Guten tag. Luxemburger Rohreinigung"

"Yes hello. Do you speak English? Ou est-ce vous parlez francais?"

"Nein. Deutsch."

I hate it when conversations start like that.

"Is there ANYBODY there who can speak English? Est-ce qu'il y a quelqu'un parlant francais?"

"Nein. Monntag"

Since today is not Monday, I had no choice. I took a deep breath and tried to speak German.

"Mein name ist Herr ORR. Mein kellar is voll scheize!"

I have no clue what she said next, but I took it as being "Don't be so impatient, they'll be there soon" and sure enough they arrived ten minutes later.

Now, I guess you need to be a special kind of person to carve a career out of removing excessive human waste from pipes and the two German men standing outside my cellar were certainly in the "weird" bracket. The older man, the boss, would have been normal enough in appearance had he not decided to shave off the top half of his bushy moustache. Perhaps it was because he has particularly ticklish nostrils? Perhaps it is the latest fashion in Germany? Whatever the reason, it freaked me out. The younger man was unshaven, unmotivated, permanently slouched over with his hands in his pockets and was wearing a blue Puffa jacket that seemed remarkably clean for someone of his profession. His eyes never left his shoes and he never spoke to me throughout his brief and regrettable visit to my house.

They got to work. The boss asked the apprentice to wade into our cellar. The apprentice refused, pointing out that it was full of shit. Eventually he reluctantly capitulated and went to the van for a pair of rubber gloves. I found this a fairly reasonable thing to do under the circumstances, but the boss stopped him, called him lots of horrible-sounding German words that I didn't understand and marched him back to the cellar glove-less.

10 minutes later our drain was unblocked. Basically, they stuck a very long pole down it until the blockage was removed. The boss then spent the next 20 minutes explaining to his hapless and disinterested assistant the fine art of sticking a very long pole down a drain before coming into our house for coffee. During his second coffee, he presented me with the bill for his work. 401EUR!!! This consisted of 36EUR for a callout fee, 77EUR for the manual labour and 250 EUR for the use of his very long pole (10EUR per metre), all with VAT slapped on top. Furthermore, he requested that we pay immediately. I refused. I tried to explain that they had only spent 10 minutes clearing up some crap, an unskilled craft that is not worth paying 2,400EUR per hour for. I tried to explain that they didn't even need special equipment. I tried to explain that they were almost three hours late and that my bladder was ready to explode. Most of all, I tried to explain that they were total bastards.

But whenever you are sitting alone in your house in the middle of nowhere with two extraordinarily scary German men who don't understand English around your dining table, there's not a lot you can do. Eventually I just wanted rid of them, so wrote them a cheque for 401EUR (they didn't even round it down) and told them to get out.

I don't know why I did it, but I went to shake the boss's hand as he went to leave. "You have a very nicely paid job" I said to him dryly. He shrugged his shoulders. "I have my hands in other people's shit every day" he replied. It was already too late to pull back.

January 19, 2007 - Bill Bryson lies

2007-11-23T21:02:00.000+01:00

Let's get one thing clear from the offset - I like Bill Bryson. He writes with an uncanny clarity and a remarkable sense of humour. When I'm reading one of his books, I am liable to laugh out loud suddenly and embarrassingly; not many authors can make me do that. However, there is something about him that annoys me immensely - he lies.

When you are writing about an actual experience in the past (e.g. travel around Lost Continents), what you write can essentially be classified as one of three things:
1) The truth
2) An exaggerated truth
3) Blatant lies

A small portion of Bill Bryson's writing falls under Category 1; most of it comes under Category 2 (nothing wrong with this - it's called humour); far too much is Category 3.

As an example (of which there are many), I have included below an actual excerpt from "Neither here nor there - Travels in Europe", which I am currently reading. He is describing the elevators at the Hotel Sax in Brussels, at which he claims to have stayed a few times previously. My apologies for this being lengthy, but there is good reason for this. Bear with me:

"You go in intending to go downstairs for breakfast, but find that the lift descends without instructions past the lobby, past the underground garage and basement down to an unmarked sub-basement where the doors open briefly to reveal a hall full of steam and toiling coolies. As you fiddle uselessly with the buttons (which are obviously not connected to anything), the doors clang shut and, with a sudden burst of vigour, the elevator shoots upwards to the eleventh floor at a speed that makes your face feel as if it is melting, pauses for a tantalizing half-second, drops ten feet, pauses again and then freefalls to the lobby. You emerge, blood trickling from your ears, and walk with as much dignity as you can muster into the dining room.

So you can perhaps conceive my relief at finding now that the lift conveyed me to my destination without incident."

This can roughly be translated as "I went to Brussels. There's bugger all to see and do there. Even the hotel elevators, which I remember as being slightly unpredictable on previous occasions, worked properly. Writing boring crap like this doesn't sell any books, so let's make something up, eh?"

Whilst Bill Bryson's version of events is admittedly more amusing than mine, it is just a fabrication to add length and humour to his book. This is all fair and good, but surely the purpose of a travel book is to write about what actually happened on your travels? The odd exaggeration here and there adds zest to the proceedings; lying is a different thing completely. Cut it out Bill.

January 3, 2007 - Shopping in Northern Ireland vs shopping in Luxembourg

2007-11-23T21:00:00.000+01:00

SHOPPING IN NORTHERN IRELAND

Customer: "Hi. Do you have any blue trousers for 18-month old boys?"

Shop Assistant: " Let me see now... you know, I think we're out of that size. [Checks stocks for a few minutes.] No, I'm sorry. I have beige trousers for that age, or blue trousers for 12 months. No good? You should try Adams just up the road, they usually have a good selection. Alternatively, Russell's might have something, but they might be a bit pricier. Dunnes Stores will definitely have some. All the best now."

SHOPPING IN LUXEMBOURG

Customer: "Hi. Do you have any blue trousers for 18-month old boys?"

Shop Assistant: "No. Bye."

December 10, 2006 - Toothbrushes and hair perming

2007-11-23T20:57:00.000+01:00

A word of travel advice - if it's a guide book that you're after, stay well clear of the Dorling Kindersley guides. They may look pretty with all their nice colourful pictures, but they are obviously created by a bunch of nerds sitting by their computers Googling places they've seen on TV. Call me old fashioned, but I reckon that in order to write a travel guide, it is imperative to actually have visited the places in question.

The DK guide to Germany is particularly hopeless. Dan and I wish to visit the Black Forest during our

babydecides trip in May and June, so how many pages in their 550-page ramble do you think DK devote to this supposedly beautiful area? A measly two-page spread. Of this, about half is taken up by an incomprehensible map, with the remainder being split between boring photos and irrelevant text. For the popular tourist base of Todtnau, they give the following enticing information:

"It is a major centre of toothbrush production and the birthplace of Karl Ludvig Nessler (1872-1951, pictured above) who invented the process of hair-perming."

WHAT? Are they being serious? Unfortunately, they are; the book is about as funny as it is useful. Why on earth would anyone go to the Black Forest to pay homage to a guy whose only claim to fame was that he enabled old woman to more closely resemble their pets? The book is going in the bin.

December 9, 2006 - The Millennium Hotel, Mayfair

2007-11-23T20:54:00.000+01:00

By far the most interesting - if tragic - item in the news recently has been the case of the Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, who was poisoned with a lethal dose of radiation in London. When the story first broke, the actual date of the poisoning wasn't clear, but they knew it was sometime around the end October / beginning November . "Hmmmm" thought I, "That's about the time I was in London on a business trip. Never mind - London is a big place."

Not big enough apparently, because it is now known that the poisoning took place at the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair - which is where I stayed at that time.

Now, before you get too worried Mum, that's about as bad as it gets concerning my particular connection to this story. It is now known that the poisoning took place on November 1st, on which date I am sure I was safely back in Luxembourg. I think I was there on 25th and 26th October, so I have my fingers crossed that any radioactive material brought into the hotel was done after those dates. Also, I stayed on the 5th floor - Litvinenko was on the 4th - and I had a beer at the Turner Bar, not the Pine Bar where current consensus has the poisoning taking place.

So I appear to be safe, but if someone asked me would I ever return to the Millennium Hotel in Mayfair, I would immediately strap them into a straightjacket and march them barefoot to the nearest psychiatrist. Nevertheless, this started me thinking: Can you still book a room at that hotel? Are they still charging crazy prices despite all the negative publicity? Can you still have a beer there? The answer to all these questions is - unbelievably - "yes".

So, just in case you still regret missing out on Chernobyl, a basic double room in the Millennium Hotel is available at the obscene price of 220GBP per night. A junior suite will set you back more than double that. Rooms on the fourth floor are not listed separately, but I'm sure there'll be availability if you ask. Bizarrely enough, every single room listed comes with "exclusive access to the Club Lounge". Well, it's hardly "exclusive" if every overprivileged sod staying in the hotel can use it, is it?!? Seriously though, maybe this is the only publicly visible link that the hotel is showing to the Litvinenko case - I assume that a beer in the Pine Bar is now out of the question, so they're using the Club Lounge as an alternative. Personally, I still wouldn't have a drink within a kilometre of the place, would you?

December 3, 2006 - 'Tis the season to be tacky

2007-11-23T20:49:00.000+01:00

Foreword - I admit. I'm a miserable old scroogy snob.

It's the first weekend of Advent in Luxembourg. All across this tiny nation, ordinary folk are putting up their festive decorations just in time for St Nicholas' Day (Wednesday). We ourselves have set out our Christmas tree, a nativity scene, a selection of seasonal wooden toys and two candle lanterns. Our neighbours have responded by adorning their unfinished bare-concrete balcony with a strip of neon blue lights, a bizarre plastic Santa with green hands and another Santa made from synthetic fabric who appears to be reverse-abseiling their facade.

What possesses people to do this? I realise that we're being slightly hypocritical by setting out a nativity scene when - weddings excepted - we have never once been to church together in Luxembourg, but I can see absolutely no symbolic, seasonal or aesthetic beauty whatsoever in plastic Santa Clauses and neon blue lights.

The abseiling Santa particularly offends me. When I saw my first abseiling Santa about three years ago, I thought to myself, "An abseiling Santa. How (very) mildly amusing." When I saw my second abseiling Santa four seconds later, I simply thought, "How tacky". The 54,392 that I have seen since then have not swayed my opinion in the slightest. The very worst thing about them is that they don't even make sense. Since when did Santa need to climb up (or down) the facade of houses? Everybody knows that Santa flies using his magic sleigh and reindeer, lands on the roof of houses, pops down the chimney, deposits his gifts, eats the goodies left out for him, squeezes back up the chimney and back onto his sleigh to visit the next lucky boy or girl. Abseiling over the balcony is simply not in the story anywhere...

*****

Amusing true anecdote

I am obviously not the only person to find these abseiling Santas offensive. Two years ago, residents of the Rue de Neudorf in Luxembourg City woke up one morning to find that all their trashy Santas had been nicked during the night and strung up unceremoniously on the local council's Christmas tree. Disappointingly, despite massive public encouragement, the prankster did not repeat the trick last year.

November 19, 2006 - German radio

2007-11-23T20:46:00.000+01:00

There are many wonderful aspects of life in Luxembourg - central location, high quality of life, beautiful countryside, warm summers, good healthcare, etc, etc. Unfortunately, there are also drawbacks. Radio, for example, is a serious problem. On the face of it, you'd think we have a good choice, but the French DJs talk too much, the Luxembourgish stations have far too many unlistenably-annoying jingles and we can't get any English stations in this remote valley that we call home.

All this means that when we are spending a Saturday morning at home, Joelle automatically tunes into German radio. Most of the time I just bite my lip and bear it, but it is beginning to get to me. It is AWFUL...

Do you know all those stereotypes about Germans having the worst musical taste on the planet? Well, they're not true. They have undoubtedly the worst musical taste in the UNIVERSE. It is as if they are stuck in some sort of cheesy early 1990's slow-section-of-the-school-disco void. Occasionally, just occasionally, a decent recent tune makes onto the German airwaves. For example, I recall SWR-3 proudly announcing three weeks ago that they were going to give the first national play of the new Scissor Sisters' song "I don't feel like dancin'"... about three months after the rest of the civilised world heard it. Good tune - I haven't heard it on German radio since.

We spent yesterday morning tuned into RTL-Radio ("Die besten hits alle zeiten!"). During the four hours of listening time, we heard various hits from Wet Wet Wet, Smokie, The Scorpions, Sting, Men at Work's "Down Under", that German cowboy Eurovision song, Celine Dion (twice - possibly the same song; I can't identify between them), Aha's "Take on me" (twice) plus some stuff from the 1980's that I have purposely avoided ever learning to identify. Bryan Adams' godawful Robin Hood squelchy-ballad actually caused me to throw one of Samuel's toys at the radio. I missed.

In the name of effective blog research, I've just switched the radio on again. They're playing Smokie. Excuse me while I destroy something...

November 13, 2006 - Samuel and the doctor

2007-11-23T20:44:00.000+01:00

Joelle would disagree with me, but I reckon that Samuel is pretty resistant to coughs, colds, fever etc. compared to other kiddies.The number of times that we have needed a doctor to check him over have been thankfully few and far between.

It's WHEN he gets sick that is the problem...

As a general rule, he never EVER gets sick during normal medical centre opening hours. Weekends are a favourite time to develop a chesty cough, particularly about 11am on Saturday morning when doctors are just closing up for the weekend. If a little sore throat and snivel develop into a Niagara Falls-type runny nose, it invariably occurs in the early evening, heightens during the night and dries up conveniently in time for the next morning. Public holidays are a speciality - rarely does Samuel miss the opportunity to force us to spend our day off in the emergency pediatric department of the hospital at Kirchberg. Best of all was the time that he decided to get sick en-route to Portugal, causing us to spend four nights near Biarritz (two in a caravan as the B&Bs were full) and therefore taking us over a week to make the journey to Joelle's family.

Another wonderful characteristic that he has is the ability to temporarily cure himself of all visible ailments at the precise time that the doctor is examining him. For the past 30 hours, Samuel has had a runny nose, a sore throat, vomiting, been coughing up phlegm and - for the first time ever - has had fever. Or, to be more precise, the past 30 hours with the exception of the 15 minutes I spent with the doctor this morning, that is. During the examination, he never coughed once, never snivelled once and his temperature magically returned to normal. One hour later, he was in the uncontrollable throes of sick infant misery once again.

We love him really.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A TOPICAL EXAMPLE OF HOW MY RAZOR-SHARP WIT IS WASTED ON MY DARLING WIFE

Jonny - I'm back from the supermarket!
Joelle - Did you get the thermometer for Samuel?
Jonny - Of course.
Joelle - Is it one that you put up his bottom?
Jonny - No, it's a special one that you can use on his fingers.
Joelle - His FINGERS???
Jonny - Yes. Look - it says so right here on the packet. 'Digital thermometer'.
Joelle - [blank yet confused stare]
Jonny - Oh forget it...

October 6, 2006 - People are people; celebrity means nothing

2007-11-23T20:42:00.000+01:00

When I was 18, I idolised a footballer. The goalscoring prowess of a young Alan Shearer turned the unfashionable Blackburn Rovers into Premier League champions and created the image of footballing deity in my head.

Then I got tickets for Manchester Utd vs Blackburn at Old Trafford. I arrived ridiculously early and waited for the Blackburn team coach to arrive at the stadium. When it did, Alan Shearer was sitting by the window about 2/3 of the way towards the back. I was about 5 metres away from him and as I watched him something inside me said, "But... he's just a normal person".

It was probably my first brush with celebrity and I don't know what I expected, but it had a profound impact on me. Ever since then I have realised that people are people; celebrity means nothing. As my mother-in-law so eloquently puts it, "their sh!t smells the same as ours". And so it comes to pass that I feel no more intimidated in meeting a celebrity as I do a roadsweeper.

The same applies at work. I don't see why I should act any differently towards a member of the Executive Committee or a Junior Assistant: I judge them on their character, not their position, and trust that they judge me likewise. When a colleague and I were invited to attend the Board of Directors meeting on Wednesday night, my first thought was of the annoyance that I wouldn't be home in time to put Samuel to bed. Being nervous at the thought of being in the presence of such an "important" group of people didn't even cross my mind.
In fact, it didn't dawn on me that the situation might be potentially intimidating at all until we entered the boardroom itself. My colleague, about 5 years and several job grades more senior than I, just froze. He looked petrified.

By the end of the evening, our presentation had been relatively well received. Afterwards, we both chatted amongst the executives and board members on mundane subjects such as house prices, how to motivate disgruntled teenage children and whether it had been a good year for apples. After all, they're just people. There really isn't anything to be scared about.

September 25, 2006 - Saying goodbye

2007-11-23T20:35:00.000+01:00

I work for a large company - people join and leave all the time. During the duration of their employment they are generally normal, humble and intelligent human beings. Then, they announce that they will leave... and suddenly believe that they should be the centre of the universe.

Upon handing in their notice, the departing employee begins to think of every single person that he or she has ever worked with / spoken to /stood behind in the queue at the cafeteria - and sends an email to all of them. The email basically says "I'm leaving, but I want to have a meal / drink with you all because I love you all so much and I was very happy here." So why leave then?

The meal is inevitably poorly attended, but the gullible departee is brainwashed into thinking that this is simply due to everyone being abnormally busy and nothing at all to do with the fact that he/she is a boring pleb with a body odour problem. In fact, the going-away ritual merely gathers pace with the obligatory card and present, organised not-so-secretly by the departing employee's coffee partner. Signing the card requires making up some ridiculous lie about how wonderful the person was and just how much he / she will be missed, whilst carefully trying not to write the same lie as others and avoiding the subject of body odour.

Then comes the main event - the last day at work. Another email is sent to the ever-expanding list of "work colleagues" with even more fake superlatives on how wonderful the past xxx years have been and how he/she would like to cap it all with another drink in the cafeteria at 5.30pm.

Lured by the prospect of free alcohol, this is generally well attended. The card and presents are duly distributed. Funded by means of putting an unfeasibly large amount of money in an envelope in the assumption that everyone else is doing the same, the present never fails to surprise. As the crappy little personalised egg cup collection (or whatever) is being handed over, my mind always does the quick calculation:

(Money given by me x Number of people in attendance) is significantly more than Value of crappy little present

After supping a glass of cremant and listening to a speech in which it is confirmed that the poor demented departee really, truly believes that he/she will be missed, I feel that it is my duty to say a personal goodbye. I take a deep breath, walk over, shake hands, wish luck, lie about staying in touch and go back to my desk, praying that I will never fall victim to this particular affliction once my time at this company comes to an end.

September 17, 2006 - Growing a new lawn

2007-11-23T20:32:00.000+01:00

One of the things that you quickly realise upon becoming a responsible adult with a house, wife and baby is that mundane things are never easy. Ironing, for example, is an art that I am sure I will never master. Changing the nappy of a hyperactive baby is another. Growing a new lawn? Oh dear...

PROBLEM: It's not raining
SOLUTION: Water the garden artificially

PROBLEM: We don't have a sprinkler
SOLUTION: Stand in the garden with a hose for half an hour every night pretending to be a psychopathic fountain

PROBLEM: The hose is too short - the water doesn't reach approximately 20% of the garden. We can't seem to buy an extension piece for it either
SOLUTION: Several time-consuming trips every night with a watering can to the aforementioned arid areas

PROBLEM: Wind, blowing in the direction that I want to direct the hose
SOLUTION: Waiting for less windy moments, interspersed by loud swearing and drying off

PROBLEM: The dog, wanting to enter the garden to hide things / do its business / annoy us
SOLUTION: Close the garden gate

PROBLEM: The gate fell off a long time ago
SOLUTION: Park my car across the gaping space where the gate used to be

PROBLEM: Birds. Despite the fact that it's early autumn and there is an almost embarrassing abundance of wild berries, nuts and seeds around the forest, every bird in Eastern Luxembourg has decided that our grass seeds are the tastiest thing they have ever known
SOLUTION: A makeshift army of scarecrows consisting of bits of tin foil flapping about on the end of sticks. To be honest, it doesn't really work

PROBLEM: Moles. MOLES??? We never had moles when the garden was an unmitigated mess. Now that it is all beautifully flat and level, they all seem to want to stick their heads out wondering what all the fuss is about
SOLUTION: None, really. I have considered standing above the molehills with a big soft mallet in one hand and a candy floss in the other, but as yet, all I've done is try to level them out as much as possible

This had all better be worth it...

September 4, 2006 - Le train a grand vitesse

2007-11-23T20:29:00.000+01:00

Quite frankly, the TGV worries me. Zipping along at 300kph+ is just fine in the air, where there is basically nothing to bump into, but that sort of speed on the ground is simply wrong. Just imagine the sort of mess that thing could make if, say, a cow wanders onto the line...

Getting on the TGV* from Luxembourg to Paris, I notice a number of things that don't exactly make me sleep easy. Firstly, there is no security whatsoever; I could have had absolutely anything in my big black suitcase. Assuming the other suitcases are not packed with explosives, they still remain a worry: instead of some safe containment area where they can be laid flat and secured, they are placed on the parcel rails above our heads! Any sort of braking manoeuvre at 300kph will send those things hurtling through the carriage like bricks towards babies.

Seatbelts on aeroplanes are completely useless - if something happens at 10,000 metres, a puny little seatbelt is hardly going to help. However, on a train that may have to brake suddenly at over 1/4 the speed of sound, you may still have a whisper of a chance; a seatbelt might just be beneficial. Alas, there are no seatbelts on the TGV.

Most worrying of all is the coffee. People buy the modern-day equivalent of boiling tar from the cafe carriage and then stumble down the aisles trying not to scald other passengers as they go. A high-speed would probably spell a relatively quick and painless death; getting scalded by a capuccino in your sleep is another matter entirely...

*Pedantic note: The TGV from Luxembourg to Paris is only a baby TGV. The train itself is fully grown-up, but the line is just a baby until next year sometime. Therefore, I never actually got anywhere near full speed, at least not for any length of time. Still, the coffee remains frightening...

August 26, 2006 - Nice work if you can get it

2007-11-23T19:43:00.000+01:00

Weddings bring out the best and worst of Luxembourg. The best is the food and drink - delicious hot and cold canapes, tasty sandwiches and a fondness for seafood that seems utterly unreasonable for a landlocked nation, all washed down with lashings of sparkling wine and beer. The worst is the music...

Oh dear. What a shame. No offence dear Luxembourgers, but you really are physically, culturally and mentally much too close to Germans to be allowed to attempt to choose or play any sort of music whatsoever.

The music at Luxembourgish weddings is generally provided by a solitary dodgy-looking middle-aged man with a moustache and a keyboard; the wedding of Aimee and Nico yesterday was no different. To be fair to him, he wasn't the worst I've heard - the tunes were awful, but at least the standard of playing was surprisingly good. So good, in fact, that I could quite happily ignore him and concentrate on looking after Samuel whilst Joelle chatted.
Then, I stupidly took my eye off Samuel for two seconds. In that time, he had sped across the dancefloor and towards the keyboard player. By the time I caught him up, he was up on the stage and basically at the foot of the speakers. I picked him up before he managed to chew on any cables, and turned my eye towards the musician. A bouncy little "oom pah pah" number that sounded exactly like everything else was streaming from his instrument. I watched his hands move energetically up and down the keyboard - and couldn't believe what I was seeing...

He wasn't playing! It was just a recording! He was cheating!

His hand movements didn't even remotely match the melody (I use the term lightly) of the music. This guy had obviously programmed his keyboard to pump out a variety of Luxembourgish and international favourites, then makes money from sitting by his keyboard at wedding parties and acting like he knows what he is doing. Disgraceful!

By the way, he didn't take requests. I wonder why?

August 12, 2006 - Express photo development (Luxembourg style)

2007-11-23T19:35:00.000+01:00

You think Luxembourg is a technologically advanced nation? Think again...

Today is Saturday. We need some photos (like the cute one of Samuel opposite) developed for Tuesday. Our nearest town, Echternach, is a major tourist centre. Surely this can't be a difficult task? Alas, Luxembourg never fails to surprise.

Admittedly, there used to be a place doing 1 hour photo development here, but it is now closed down. As an alternative, we thought that Cactus might do it. They don't, but they were able to tell us the address of another place , and sure enough as we walked up the "Rue du montagne" (not as hard as it sounds) we saw the sign in front of us: "EXPRESS PHOTO"

"Hello, can you develop these photos for us in one hour?"

"Er, no. When do you need them by?"

"Well, Monday afternoon really."

"MONDAY?" [laughs out loud] "We can do them by Thursday if you like. Would that be OK?"

THURSDAY?? That's five days away! What sort of utterly useless express photo development is that? We have had one-hour development in rural Northern Ireland since I was barely out of nappies. What's wrong with this place?

August 10, 2006 - Courtesy call

2007-11-23T19:33:00.000+01:00

The phone rang last night as I was slurping down some spaghetti bolognese. I picked it up; an annoying voice came through:

"Hello, Mr Awe?"

"Yes" [I assume she meant me]

"This is a courtesy call from Preston North End in Ing-er-land. We would like to know if you would be interested..." [rattles on for two minutes on crap special offers that can't possibly be of any interest to anybody]

"No, bye"

I have a few problems with this. Firstly, it was NOT a "courtesy call". It was a bloody annoying marketing call. There is absolutely nothing courteous whatsoever about disrupting my dinner in a desperate effort to sell me things that I don't want. Secondly, there was no need whatsoever for the patronising language. I know perfectly well that Preston is in Ing-er-land - I lived there for four years. Just because I've moved to Luxembourg doesn't mean that I have become an imbecile.

Still, I can be grateful for one thing - I don't live in Ing-er-land. I imagine that there, these annoying cold calls are an everyday occurence, along with cold text messaging and, worst of all, cold weather.

August 9, 2006 - Rachmaninov and roadworks

2007-11-23T19:31:00.000+01:00

Life doesn't have to be a chore. Even the things which shouldn't be much fun all have a beauty somewhere within - our greatest challenge is to find it.

Driving 80 minutes to Hahn airport really shouldn't be a pleasure, and yet I always enjoy it. Setting out early on Saturday morning, the clouds were heavy, but the air was still. Two buzzards watched me cautiously from their posts as I went down the hill towards Brouch. Approaching the Moselle Valley, sunlight peeped out from behind the menacing clouds, illuminating the ripening vines. High up in the misty Hunsrück, roadworks stopped me as the second movement of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto No.2 reached its heart-breaking climax. I closed my eyes and yearned for the traffic lights to stay at red just for a minute longer...

And then? The best bit of course - meeting Dan and Lisa and heading back home once again.

July 13, 2006 - My inevitable future?

2007-11-23T19:29:00.000+01:00

I was contently walking around the streets of Echternach yesterday evening when I came across a very disturbing scene. At first, it looked completely innocuous. Then, as I looked closer, I could see that not only was the situation pretty horrible, but that it was a glimpse into what could become my inevitable future.

The scene was as follows: seven men in suits having coffee after their dinner on the terrace of a trendy restaurant. Doesn't sound too bad yet, does it? Four of the men looked like they were Europeans, the other three were from Asia. Business trip.

The three Asian men were all sitting in exactly the same pose - hands on table, straight upright and staring expressionlessly at the not-so-busy street in front of them. Two of the Europeans were talking softly to each other, with a third half-heartedly listening in. The Asians were completely detached from the quiet conversation, as was the fourth European, whose whole demeanour hit me hard.

He was sitting at the edge of the table and slumped over it, leaning slightly away from the rest of his "colleagues". Everything about him quietly screamed "I DON'T WANT TO BE HERE!!!" Perhaps he wanted to be at home with his wife, perhaps in a bar with his real friends, perhaps reading his kid a bedtime story? Unfortunately for him, he wasn't doing any of those - he was wasting an evening of his life entertaining some business guests in the valiant cause of his career and future salary rises.

This is where my future comes in. I'm a 30-year old Chartered Accountant with more qualifications and experience than just about any other 30-year old employee anywhere. I have a nice, highly paid job for a big, growing company. Everyone says my future is bright. Maybe it's not? If my future is wasting my evenings either at my desk or in overpriced restaurants with people that I don't like, then it really isn't very bright at all. All the salary rises in the world can't compensate for the fact that I only have one life, one wife, one kid to read a bedtime story to.

June 27, 2006 - Northern Irish security

2007-11-23T19:26:00.000+01:00

Here's a funny little anecdote courtesy of my mother:

Mum was recently invited up to a posh event in the Northern Ireland parliament buildings at Stormont. Being related to me, however, she lost her invitation. Undeterred, she finished her gardening in Carrick and drove the three hours across the North of Ireland to Stormont, where, of course, she was confronted with security.

"Do you have an invitation Madam?"

[Long-winded response about how she used to have it but somehow managed to lose it but sure that it will turn up when she least expects it, etc, etc, etc]

"Could you open your boot please Madam?"

So, Mum opened the boot of her car where the security guard was confronted with - a bucket of stones from Mum's garden in Carrick.

[Long-winded explanation of how a bucket of stones from the other side of Ireland managed to find its way into the boot of the car and how she doesn't usually carry a bucket of stones around with her, especially if she's coming to somewhere important like the Northern Ireland parliament, etc, etc, etc]

But get this - SHE WAS LET IN!! Despite having absolutely no invitation and a bucket full of vandalism waiting to happen, she was allowed to drive right up to parliament, park and go hobnobbing for the rest of the evening. Incredible!!!

June 26, 2006 - Worthy spectators?

2007-11-23T19:23:00.000+01:00

I am presently sitting by my office window watching the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of my company boarding a luxury coach bound for Cologne. In approximately two hours' time, they will be sipping champagne in an executive box in anticipation of a World Cup second round match.

I have several reasons to feel angry here. I am a genuine football fan, and yet I couldn't get a ticket without paying half my monthly salary to some dodgy grey-market in-betweener. Earlier efforts to get a ticket were thwarted because I don't have a Mastercard (official sponsor of FIFA World Cup 2006) and later efforts were scuppered because my name failed to materialise from the lottery at work.

Most of all, however, I am angry because I have just seen an entire coach-load of overprivileged executives on their way to a game that they never wanted to see in the first place. In fact, I am confident that 95% of them have ABSOLUTELY NO INTEREST IN FOOTBALL at all. I overheard one of them the other day talking about Brazil, and he forgot Ronaldinho's name. RONALDINHO!! Only arguably the most famous and most talented footballer on the planet!

Don't get me wrong - I have nothing against any of our Executives or Board Members. I just think that there are more worthy, more genuine football fans who deserve to take their place in that stadium tonight instead.
One thing provides me with some solace. Due to an upset in Group G, the game they are going to see is - Ukraine vs Switzerland! It is far and away the least appealing of all the second round games. Not that the executives will be paying any attention to the football after a few glasses of the bubbly stuff...

June 2, 2006 - Tick, wrong, tick

2007-11-23T19:20:00.000+01:00

Ticks are a problem when you live beside the forest and you have a hyperactive dog. These disgusting little creatures work their way through doggy hair until they reach a nice tender bit of doggy skin, where they take a big bite and spend the next few weeks gorging on fresh doggy. They like humans too, as Joelle found out recently.

Anyway, to get back to the story, I came back from the cinema late on Tuesday night (see previous entry) to find a note on the kitchen table.

"Oonagh has two ticks on her belly. I can't get them off."

No problem - I am a tick-removing expert! I got the tweezers, called a nervous-looking Oonagh, rolled her over and searched for ticks. The first one was easy - a bit fat one which was removed within seconds. The second one was just as fat, a brown spot 1/2cm across nestling on the white belly of my dog. I carefully manoeuvered the tweezers around it, squeezed tightly and pulled.

Oonagh yelped; the tick stayed in. I calmed her down, apologised and tried again. YELP!!!!!! YELP!!!!

It was only then that my mistake became evident. That wasn't a tick - that was one of her nipples that I was attempting to surgically remove! Poor Oonagh. The real other tick was located soon afterwards. It was much smaller and, not surprisingly, easier to remove than her nipple.

May 28, 2006 - Lego is great

2007-11-23T18:37:00.000+01:00

Lego is great!

I used to love playing with it when I was a child - building all sorts of fancy houses, constructing fairy-tale castles, re-creating the pyramids etc etc. I thought I was pretty good at it to be honest, so I reckoned that building a REAL wall in my cellar would be easy and fun.

I was wrong.

First of all, Lego doesn't need cement. This wasn't particularly hard to make, but those bags sure are heavy and it has made a bit of a mess of my yard. Secondly, there is absolutely no doubt which way round Lego bricks are meant to be placed - nobbles at the top; holes underneath. Real bricks aren't like that at all. I had put a few bricks flat side down on the cement when it struck me how unLego-like the whole thing looked. I asked Joelle to phone her Dad for advice - he confirmed that I was doing it right and then announced that he was on his way to build the wall himself.

Back as a child, if I had planned to build a spectacular Lego cathedral or whatever and some other kid tried to take away my bricks or build another stupid mulitcoloured house, I was never too happy about it. Some things don't change.

I huffed. I stopped building and refused to help Joelle's father. After all, I didn't invite him and it was MY wall. Regardless, he came, decided that the bricks were upside down after all, pulled down my wall, drew some really crooked lines and -in about two and a half hours - managed to build a lop-sided wall about 35cm high. I can't help but think that I would have done better on my own.

Once he had safely left my house, I came down from my huff and continued with the wall. In two hours (approximately the time it used to take me to build a fairy-tale castle) I had done twice as much as Joelle's father - and had run out of cement.

As I packed up my things, I reflected on the building work done. It was rubbish. It was just an ugly wall 1 metre high in my cellar serving no other purpose besides that the local council asked me to build it there. In fact, it's nothing like playing with Lego whatsoever.