"Then I've got something for you"

That's what the butcher said to me when we'd said our bonjours and handshake.

Saturday is my shopping day. I mooched to the shops and said my usual '2 kilos de mandarines svp' a pause. There were none left. merde! 'I've saved some for you'; and the grocer disappeared and bought the 2kg bag of small oranges. 'pour vous' he said.

daaamn, I thought. Have I been living here that long. Evidement!

Then it got weirder. The butcher looked over at me as I usually buy a chicken.

'Le meme' he said

'dommage' I said 'J'ai les moules pour ce soir'

'Attendez-vous' he said, and disappeared.

I wondered whether he'd come back with oranges. He didn't. It was better than that!

'voila' he said 'ca sera deliciuese avec les moules'

And he produced a bottle of white wine!

So I shall have moules with apparently a lovely white wine tonight! I shall let you know how it goes!

To boldly go.....

Yesterday, I was sitting in my office when a two men came through the door. One was Claud. The other I'd never met.

'Have you met Jean-Luc Picard?' asked Claud of I

'No,' I said, 'But I suppose now I have.'

'Hello Dominic,' said Jean-Luc

'Pleased to meet you,' I said, 'And if you don't mind me asking, what exactly do you do?'

'Amongst other things, I'm head of enterprise.'

He didn't understand why I found that funny. I did. You do!

HR obviously have a sense of humour

Eurocommute

Paper tickets. They're like cheques. They should have stopped being used at least five years ago. But they haven't been.

I did my sometimes normal Eurocommute today. Although it was wake up in England and go to work in Paris rather than wake up in Brussels. Partially exciting, partially exhausting.

This morning it started at Ashford International at 06.45am. I'm not a fan of Kent; I'll be honest. It's similar to northern France; you get the feeling it could be better, like you're going through it to get to somewhere nicer (London and Paris respectively).

So this morning I turned up to be confronted by three families with suitcases and a confused looking man with a rucksack. They were trying to work out how to use the ticket barrier. Even though the ticket has an arrow on it. I waited, e-ticket in hand. After much faffing, I asked if I could help, so I put the ticket in the machine and the gate opened. Stunned silence and bafflement from the Kentish people. I scanned my e-ticket and was through.

Straight into a queue for security. With alarms going off: as someone had gone through with all varieties of metallic things about their person. The man in front of me tutted. And then forget to take the coins out his pocket. I took my belt off just to make sure.

Passport control was lovely; I was wearing my Paris hockey hoody so had a chat to the jobsworths about the not very clever kentish people and even got a smile!

And then the most stupid thing. 'The train is now arriving at platform 4. Please make your way down to the platform.' So people sort of did. Until they got to the top of the stairs.

Carriage 1-9 Carriage 10-18

There was a pause as everyone had forgotten which carriage they were in.

I held my head in my hands.

Now I don't think the people of Kent understand Eurostar.

I don't think they've ever been that fast. Every time another train went past the window, a child would scream. The same child. The same scream. 'Ohhh we are going quite fast'

We were going at half speed because of snow. I feel asleep.

I felt sorry for them. Not because they couldn't work out what was happening, or how anything works, but because High Speed Rail is a normality for me. Hurtling through countries is what I do. What I enjoy doing. The British should have the same.

So I got off the train in Paris and helped the family of the screaming child with their bags and told them how to get to Disneyland.

The End of the World? Nearly the End of Me!

Getting run over isn't the most fun thing that has ever happened to me. I'll be honest with you here readers! But I survived (thank you bulletproof scooter!) enough to write you a blog about global warming!

See what happens when no one mentions it;

It snows overnight so I can take a picture like this from work:

Then evidently the global warmists started talking again as the sun came out:

But the weather didn't like this and wanted snow!

So it came.....

And came some more!

What's white and sounds like a lizard? A blizzard!

a plus mes amis!