St David's Day

No, I'm not going mad.  I can't comment about you, of course, but I can assure you that I am well aware that today is not St David's Day.  That day is 1st March and we are still (as I type these words) in February.  And that's another thing that gets my goat: people who treat the first R in February as either silent or non-existent and insist on pronouncing the word as Feb-you-arry.  Anyway, we'll get back to the good Saint David a little later.

I know how to give a woman a good time.  Just ask the Old Bat.  Why, only the other day I bought her a bouquet of flowers for absolutely no reason whatsoever - just as a sign of my love and affection.  Granted, it was really only a bunch of daffs which had cost me all of a pound.  But still... when it's February (with two Rs) grey out of the window it's good to have a vase of bright yellow daffodils on the kitchen table.

And that brings us back to good old Dave.  You see, he is the patron saint of Wales and the daffodil is the national flower of Wales.

[Do all countries have national flowers?  I know England has the rose, Scotland the thistle and Ireland the shamrock - which is really a leaf, not a flower.  But what about France, or Spain, or Uruguay?]

Back in 2010, I posted about St David's Day actually on the day, 1st March, and that post has attracted more views than any other of my posts.  Far more.  In fact, more than twice as many as the next most viewed.  This was something that puzzled me every time I thought to have a quick peep at the stats Blogger so thoughtfully provide.  But eventually I discovered the reason behind this apparent blip:  Google.

You see, I ended that post with a picture of a vase of daffodils - this one, which I "borrowed" from somewhere I can't remember.

For some reason, people Googling "daffodil image" or similar phrases were given this blog as one of the sites which might interest them.

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Today's mood music is Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No 1.  That's the one that starts dah dah dah dum, dah dah dah dum.  Or something like that.  Played by Martha Argerich, and she can be seen and heard playing this piece on YouTube.

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I thought we might take another look at the church of St Laurence, Falmer, only this time the picture was taken in the summer and from a distance across the Downs.

How could I have missed...

...saying what a tremendous afternoon I had yesterday.  I collected the grandsons ( 9 and 6) at noon and after lunch, the three of us donned coats, hats and wellies, rounded up the dog and set off for the park.  There we spent an hour discovering Grandad's secret paths, exploring the woods, finding dens, climbing trees and throwing tennis balls for the dog.  The two boys raced around with Fern dogging their footsteps.  I did take a camera but it proved almost impossible to get even two of the three in the frame at the same time let alone all three - and it was completely impossible to get them to look in the right direction at the same time!  Then it was back home for warm drinks and games of happy families and snap before their mother collected the boys just after 5, leaving two very happy grandparents - and an exhausted dog!

Hoist with my own petard

That phrase I used for the title is one that seems to have fallen out of use these days and some readers may not be aware of either its meaning or its provenance.  This site provides a good definition.

Many people are well aware of my view of mobile phones.  I consider them to be in the same class as credit cards - useful tools but bad masters that can prove far more expensive than they seem at first glance.  Don't get me wrong: I use a credit card a lot, but I pay off the balance in full every month.  On the other hand, I don't use a mobile phone a lot.  I have one, and I usually carry it when I am out of the house, but it generally stays switched off.  It's there in case of emergency.  I have always felt rather sorry for prople who seem to have a mobile phone permanently attached to their hand.  They wander round the park frantically keying a text message or holding a long, involved conversation - and paying absolutely no attention to what their dog is doing or even where it is.  If they are not making or receiving a call or keying a text, those poor benighted people are for ever checking their phones to see if they have a new text or email.

And I always feel superior to the folks one sees in supermarkets, peering at the shelves with phones stuck to their ears.  "There are two sorts, plain or fancy.  Which do you want?"  For goodness sake!  Can't they sort out the details before going shopping or make a decision themselves?  You wouldn't catch me doing that!

It seems to be happening more frequently now that I do the supermarket trip on my own.  This does have the advantage that I'm not squashed between the trolley pushed by the Old Bat and the shelving as she turns the corner of the aisle without making allowance for my presence.  On the other hand, I can't use the blue badge parking bays so I have to park some distance from the store in order to avoid a woman (and it always is a woman) opening the door of her car and slamming it into mine.  So this week I picked up the shopping bags and the list and called goodbye to the Old Bat who was upstairs cutting her toenails or putting rollers in her hair or something equally feminine.

As always, my first call was at the fruit and veg.  Potatoes - easy.  The cheapest, but sort through to find the mot convenient sizes.  Broccoli and French beans.  Boring.  Those are the OB's two favourite green vegetables and I am bored with them.  We eat them at most meals - but since she does the cooking I don't like to moan.  Cabbage - that's better.  Apples, bananas and on to the dairy section.  Marge.  Ah, which?  Does she want the marge that spreads easily straight from the fridge and that 90% of people think is butter or does she want the marge that Asda declare is best for baking?  I make an executive decision and pick up the former.  Milk, cream, eggs - simple.  White flour.  OK, does she mean plain or self-raising or strong bread flour?

I gave in and rang her.  Then I went back to the marge aisle and effected a swap.

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Today's music:  the original 1944 Broadway cast of Carmen Jones with Bizet's music and words by Oscar Hammerstein II.  I especially like the new words to the Toreador Song: "Stand up and fight until you hear the bell". 

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Just about a mile away from the church in yesterday's picture is the church in Stanmer.  The churches were both built/rebuilt in the 19th century, Falmer in 1817 and Stanmer in 1837, but they look completely different.

Thanks, but no thanks

The Broad posted her menu for a dinner party and I have to say that my mouth started watering, especially over the lemon meringue pie.  That is truly one of my most favourite desserts - but I always, without exception, avoid it if I see it on the menu in a restaurant.  I always avoid the profiteroles as well.  The trouble is that when in the past I have ordered one of these yummy desserts I have been disappointed.

[Short digression.  I was told yonks ago that the French name for profiteroles translates as "nuns' farts" but I always thought they, too, called them profiteroles.  Whereas here in England the choux buns are filled with cream, in France they are filled with ice cream.]

As I was saying, I have always been disappointed when I have ordered either of these dishes in a restaurant.  That is because the Old Bat makes them so much better!  The choux pastry in restaurants is usually dry or hard or chewy or a mixture of some or all those faults.  As for the lemon meringue, it is always either factory made and bought in or the "chef" has used a simple mix rather than make the pie from scratch.  That - making it from scratch - is what the Old Bat does, using real lemons and eggs.

Another once-popular dessert that I am not keen on is Black Forest gateau.  I used to like it, but that was in the way-back.  Way back, somewhere around the late 1950s or early 1960s, there was a chain of restaurants in this country trading under the name "Berni Inns".  Before Berni Inns came on the scene it was rare for people of my class to dine in a restaurant in the evening.  Remember, I am talking about a time when English pubs were still in the spit-and-sawdust stage, or not much farther on.  If you wanted food in a pub you might be lucky enough to find a packet of crisps or pork scratching, maybe even a packet of peanuts, but not even a curled up sandwich was to be seen on the bar, let alone the extensive menus we see nowadays.  In those days, people of my class considered it quite exciting to buy fish and chips and sit down on a bench to eat them from the newspaper in which they wee wrapped.  That was eating out!

But to get back to the Berni Inns.  Their standard menu was prawn cocktail, steak and chips, and Black Forest gateau.  Funny that the prawn cocktail and the gateau disappeared without trace, but both are now staging a come back, especially the prawn cocktail, which is now found almost everywhere.  And, of course, nowadays we have a much wider choice of restaurants, especially here in Brighton.

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The music of the moment is provided by an Irish folk singer, Roisin O'Reilly, from her CD Love So Kindly.  The Tubes have a sample here.

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I mentioned yesterday that I had wanted to take a picture of St Laurence church, Falmer, looking across the village pond.  But this was the best I could do.

Your very good health, sir

Health has been high on my agenda these past week or three.  I think I may have mentioned the fact that three weeks ago I saw my consultant rheumatologist.  But did I also mention that a couple of days before that I saw one of the nurses at the doctors' practice where I am registered for her to take blood for testing?  Well, if I didn't mention it before, I have done now.  Then the following week I saw my dentist and then, two days later, my GP.  This week has seen a visit to the optician for my biannual check-up.  And out of all those visits, the only one that has cost me money was the one to the dentist.  I needed a crown and this appointment was to fit it, the previous appointment having been before Christmas.  I was pleased to hear the optician tell me that (a) I don't need a new pair of glasses - yet - and that my present four-years-old pair should for at least another year, and (b) there is no sign of glaucoma and nary a trace of a cataract.

So that, I hope, is it for a little while.  Oh, no, it's not.  I have to see the dental hygenist in a week or two.

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It's not exactly the "happy hour" as known by some but I have very recently taken to playing CDs on the computer .  As I type I am listening to an album of traditional jazz by Mr Acker Bilk, he of Stranger on the Shore and Summer Set.

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It was a fine afternoon so I took Fern into Stanmer Park and threw a tennis ball for her to chase, which she did for the better part of half an hour before she decided that enough was enough.  On the way home I diverted slightly in the hope of taking a picture of St Laurence church, Falmer, framed by trees and with the village pond in front.  Unfortunately, there were far too many vehicles parked alongside the pond and in front of the church for that - but I did get this shot.  I wonder if anyone has told the cormorant?

FX

I am so easily distracted - as if you were unaware of the fact!  Yesterday's post demonstrated what I mean, although at least I kept pretty much to an alternative meaning of the title.  That, I suppose, means that I could have got away with it and you might not have realised...  I'm doing it again, aren't I?

So.  Foreign exchange.  By which I really mean foreign currency exchange. I am, I suppose, declaring nerdish tendencies when I confess that I have long found foreign money of interest and I have been extraordinarily lucky when it has come to a matter of changing one curremcy into another.  An early example of both my nerdish tendency and my ability to make a profit, albeit small, on foreign exchange occurred when I was working at one of the mid-Sussex branches of the bank.  Back in those days there were very few branches of banks which kept foreign currency on the premises.  They would buy francs, dollars, pesetas etc from customers but would send them to a dedicated 'foreign' branch the same day.  If a customer was going on a trip to another country, the currency could be ordered and would take a few days to arrive.  But my colleague Neal was probably just as nerdish as me and also saw an opportunity so we persuaded the branch manager that a foreign currency till - in other words, a full bureau de change service - would be of benefit to our existing customers, would bring in customers of other banks who might then transfer their accounts, and would increase the branch profits.  The manager agreed and was able to persuade the local directors of the benefits so we opened a foreign till.

After I had left the bank and started as general manager and dogsbody at the newspaper company, I took things a step further.  The paper offered readers postal subscriptions with prices specified in US and Canadian dollars as well as sterling.  I got rid of the Canadian dollar price and set about reducing our costs in exchanging dollar cheques into sterling.  I realised that exchanging each individual cheque through our London bank was unnecessarily costly.  So I opened a bank in New York into which all dollar cheques were deposited.  When the US bank balance had built up and the rate was favourable, I would transfer funds to the UK.  All this made little difference to the company's profit and loss account, but it was enormously satisfying to be playing the game.  Not only playing the game, but winning as well.

Before we bought our French cottage, I realised we would need an account with a French bank which would have to be fed from England.  Over the years, I have kept an eye on the exchange rates and have generally managed to transfer funds when the rate was about as good as it got over a few days either side of the transfer.  The rate has fluctuated dramatically.  Ten years ago, when we bought the cottage, I got more than 1.5 euros to the pound - which made a big difference to the cost in real terms as it meant that the 40,000 euros price translated into £27,000.  As I say, I have generally been lucky - and it has been luck rather than skill - with the exchange rate.  But like Buck and his tax, I look at what I have sent to France and think, "That's a dinner out we can buy that we couldn't last time".  Or the other way round.  I recently sent some money over at an abysmal rate but the pound has grown steadily weaker since then so maybe I didn't do so badly after all.

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I can't say that the snowdrop is my favourite flower but I'm always happy to see the blooms in the garden.  Ours, which are not the earliest, are much earlier than those in Withdean Park and have started coming into bloom this week.  There are other flowers which have been out for quite a while - Christmas rose, cyclamen, winter jasmine - but I regard all those as winter flowers.  The snowdrop is hardly a spring flower but I always think of it as such.  Or, more accurately, as a harbinger of spring.

Foreign exchange

It was only as I typed the heading you can read above that I realised it might quite reasonably apply to a completely different type of exchange to the one I was intending to write about.  So let's get that out of the way first.

Brighton (and Hove, too) is packed to the gunwales with foreign students.  Not only do the two universities attract vast numbers, but we also have language schools galore.  Hosting the students from those language schools is almost a cottage industry in the city suburbs, especially during the summer months when the numbers seem to escalate exponentially.  So much do they escalate, that there are complaints every year about overcrowded buses amongst other things.  For a while, the Old Bat and I hosted such students.  The first was a delightful Norwegian boy, aged about 14.  The second was another Norwegian, also aged about 14, but he was so out of control that we had to ask for him to be rehoused.  The third and last was a German lad of about 18 who was another delight - to the extent that he was happy to help about the house and garden.  But the payment really wasn't worth the hassle as far as we were concerned so we packed it in after...  I can't remember his name... left.

We packed it in until I, then President of Brighton Lions Club, received a phone call from the President of a Lions Club in Lyon, France.  His son, aged about 20, would be studying English in Brighton for a year.  Would any member of Brighton Lions Club be willing to host him?  It just so happened that my elder son would be leaving for a year in Australia just about the time Phillipe would be arriving in England.  My wife was already missing her oldest fledgling (even though he was still at home) so she jumped at the opportunity to mother another.

I drove to Heathrow airport to collect Phillipe only to find that he wasn't on the flight he (or his father) had told me.  It probably hadn't helped that my French was distinctly rusty and none of the French spoke English!  Eventually we met at a different Heathrow terminal where Phillipe had arrived on an Air France flight instead of the BA flight I had been told about.

Despite that somewhat inauspicious start to his stay, Phillipe proved to be a charming young man, full to the brim of Gallic courtesy.  My daughter, who must have been about 14, developed quite a crush on him and wasn't even jealous when he introduced us to a very good-looking girl he had met at the language school.  But all good things come to an end and Phillipe eventually returned to warmer parts, complete with the white Rolls Royce he had bought while over here!  He ran that as a wedding car for a while after his return to Lyon.

Then a friend of Phillipe's parents rang.  Her daughter Laurence would be studying in Brighton.  Could we...?  We could and did and, while not quite as much a part of the family as Phillipe had become, she proved another easy guest.  As did Charles, Phillipe's younger brother, when he, too, studied English here in Brighton.

There have been other requests since then.  Not made directly to us but to Brighton Lions generally.  That is the case when we as a city host so many overseas students.  Much as we have enjoyed having young foreign guests, we are now too elderly (and decrepit) to be able to face doing it again.

But that isn't what I had intended writing about when I typed "Foreign exchange" as the tile of this piece and I don't have time for any more right now.  Maybe tomorrow.

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Although there was some early morning sun towards the end of last week, it has quickly turned into grey, January weather.  I grabbed the opportunity for another "from the bedroom window" picture.