Back from Sunny France with an already fading tan and a need for my own comfy bed. We stayed in a really nice place, but the bed was too low and hard, so my back woke me up every morning with a morning twinge before I even thought about swinging my legs onto the floor.
Still, had a very pleasant time wandering around Brittany, visiting various walled cities. Vannes in particular is worth a trip, with the medieval killing zone below the old city walls transformed into some very pleasant formal gardens. Then there were the French street markets, which I really love visiting, and of course the restaurants. Even if they don’t open much before 12 before closing at 2:30 and not bothering to open again until 5pm. We even visited the French equivalent of McDonalds, the Buffalo Grill, and found it head and shoulders above any fast food available in the British Isles.
Nevertheless, I have come back a wiser man, having been taught a little more about French cuisine, and getting one of the local lifeboat crew to teach me how to splice an eye at a ropes end. Ropework being something I last did during my early deep sea fishing days. Splicing an eye was something I never quite got right until I was shown precisely where I was going wrong. Now I intend to use this skill to make a swinging chair hanging from one of the many Sycamore branches overhanging our garden.
As for the glorious sunshine we’ve had, the last October I can recall as sunny as this was back in the late 90’s, after Pinatubo (VEI-6) blew it’s stack. A Summer that despite a rocky start went on all through September to a warmish Winter and early Spring. Now after the VEI5 intensity eruption of Hunga Tonga in January 2023, a similar weather phenomenon appears to be emerging. Which goes to show that you can’t add a whopping extra ten percent of water vapour to the upper atmosphere and then expect the usual weather, no matter what the ‘climate models’ and the scaremonger media claim. Just to clarify, that’s an extra ten percent on top of the usual water vapour content of the atmosphere. And what goes up…. No wonder the weather is a bit out of the usual run.
So yes, we’ve had a wet Summer and a dryish Autumn (so far). Nothing to do with CO2. Just the usual mild nuisances of day to day weather. Like the hot weather bringing out all the eejits.
Any old road up, we’re back home at the Barn, the house is warm and despite the recent rain, nice and dry. Lit a fire in the grate yesterday and enjoyed the cosiness while recovering from a thirty six hour ferry and road trip. Plus the usual pre-trip loss of sleep the previous day. Then of course you need another twenty four hours for the wheels to stop spinning. Well I certainly do. Mrs S on the other hand, is fretting, having forgotten where she put our spare keys ‘for safe keeping’. No doubt they’ll turn up when she comes down to earth.
Now I’m back to my list of jobs to do and the sense that we ate far too much French cuisine. Yes, we had a pleasant time, the sunshine was fabulous, but on our way home north of Finisterre we could see a solid bank of cloud and gloom. Which turned into fog, then a solid Irish rainstorm passing through on it’s way to give the Welsh and English a thorough sousing.
Speaking of doom and gloom, I see the Palestinians in the shape of Hamas have been prodding the Israeli bear yet again. Idiots. If Nettanyahu does go medieval on their arses, which considering the atrocities (Abductions, Murders, Rapes, video evidence all posted online, by Hamas members) recently visited upon Israeli civilians he may well do. Don’t these people ever learn? They’ve been fighting the same damn war periodically for millennia now, since cave men were throwing sticks and rocks at each other. Biting the hand that feeds them, then whining that it’s so unfair that they lose the ensuing fight.
The Egyptians are wisely staying out of it. Smart play. The current US Administration not so much, with their fingers in everybody’s pie, as usual. Seeing as much of the Palestinians war materiel comes from the stuff the Yanks sent to Ukraine, doubly so.
Oh well, it will, as my parents used to say, all come out in the wash. These things generally do if you let them. Unless the current US administration get us into some really deep shit. Which regrettably seems likely given their recent track record.
Good job I filled the car with cheap booze on our way back. Should last us until our next trip in that direction sometime early next year. And while I’m on that topic, isn’t it funny how the French get by so well without all the ‘sin’ taxes on alcohol etc? No nonsense like ‘minimum pricing’ as recently brought in here in the Emerald Isle and Scotland.
Hmmm.
The Bill Sticker Alternative 