End of summer blues

I wish I had something thrilling and titillating to tell you, but I don't. I could file for intellectual bankruptcy (Wouldn't that be a first, eh?) and just post a picture of a porn star (Actually not such a bad idea - note to self) but will probably just plunk for typing randomly-assembled words to fill up a few minutes before I despair at my own stupidity and vacuity and go to bed, accompanied by - I'm serious, I kid you not - an experimental didgeridoo concert on Bavarian Radio. The fact of the matter is that my line of work interests only those already in the business whom I have, as a matter of precaution,  pre-drugged, gagged and tethered to chairs or radiators and seeing as that's all I've indulged in since buying that Audi A3 (well, almost all) I basically have nothing to tell you. I'm still not back in France, I'm still not getting irritated with noisy neighbours, I'm still not drinking the wine regions of Gaillac and Fronton dry, but I am playing lots of Wagner and Verdi, sitting on my terrace in a gorgeously-hot northern Bavaria and having more than the occasional Weissbier, but frankly, do any of you give one? No, and nor should you; most of you visited this blog in the hope of finding some pearls of wisdom related to life in southern France and virtually all posts since May 22nd must have disappointed you (except that one of Pamela Anderson, come on...).

'Come on,' I hear you cry; 'You say your line of work won't interest us, but try us! We're adult, we have our BCGs'. OK, here goes: It probably won't be Frank Castorf; it'll be a collaboration between Hans Neuenfels, Stefan Herheim and Katharina Wagner. Satisfied? OK, where's that picture of a porn star...

See you in France.

Audi A3 Sportback - our passport to freedom.

In my original profile I mentioned the fact that Mrs. Fingers and I didn't own a car. Well, now we do. 'Ooh Gah!' I hear you cry; 'He's finally done what virtually every other adult on the planet did ages ago, and got himself a car'. I know I'm a bit slow on the uptake with all these things but I have been a car owner before: I had a couple of BMW 520i's in Hamburg, back in the late eighties to mid-nineties but gave them away when I moved back to London as I didn't need them anymore. It's a shame you can't get rental car 'miles' which ultimately get you a discount on car insurance when you go back to owning a vehicule, as that would probably have made quite a difference to what I'm going to have to shell out for this one, now. It's also the reason I picked something pretty small and not too powerful: as far as the insurance companies are concerned I am - despite having had my driving licence over thirty years - a new driver; the No Claims Bonus I acquired in Germany expired in 2002 and France was never going to go that extra mile to start me on that percentage. Nor should they, either.

The real reason for getting the car is that we're now equipped to go house-hunting in areas which don't necessarily have a highly-developed public transport system i.e. anywhere in and around Toulouse. It also means we can just pop off somewhere for a day or an afternoon instead of having to stick it out in the centre of town. If you want to get out into deep countryside here, you need a car; it's as simple as that.

Here's a little piccy of the model I bought:

Now there's just the small matter of driving 1600km back to Toulouse in just over a week's time...

Chilean MILF politicians - an artist's retrospective

I'm pleased that certain surfers have - probably much to their enormous disappointment - been directed to my Chilean MILF page, but regret that the full comparative horror - seeing pictures of Harriet Harman, Jacqui Smith and Estelle Morris - has not been experienced. In fact, I get the impression that the Chilean MILF politicians v. Blair's 'Babes' page is probably the least visited page of the entire blog. This does, however, indicate that there is a benevolent God; one who, even in the pornographically liberal environment of the World Wide Web, still spares innocent (well, OK...) internauts the sight of three of the most appalling human execrescences ever let loose on our fair soil. I was just back in England for a week and, hell, it is a gorgeous country; noting that Blair's autobiography is part of a 3 for 2 deal at W.H. Smith's does jab a matchstick at the corner of my mouth, but it's not enough. Not until NuLab and its subversions have been eradicated from the collective conscience can life really improve. I realise this may not make me popular with a large percentage of the population, but, you know: I don't give an airborne reproductive act; that's the beauty of getting older: you care less about what people think and say. It's also why people label us cantankerous old buggers. Can't believe I'm banging on the door of the local Darby and Joan Club when I'm still regularly called 'Young Man', 'Jeune Homme' and 'Junger Mann' (at least in Europe) by people, often younger than I, who then don't expect to be corrected. Bizarre. Age is in the mind, seriously. When you get older, you become more of what you always have been.

This is getting off the point, of course; The point being that Chile - great country, fab miners - has hot female politicians and Great Britain - great country, fab er, scenery - has not. Notwithstanding, I still maintain it is easier to get into a conversation with a Brit than with practically any other national, anywhere. Try it out - at home, if needs be - and let me know. We may be a spent force, an ex-empirical power, an easy touch for Third World benefit scroungers, but hell, can we chat! Seriously, you can start a conversation with a Brit for nothing and about nothing and your life will be richer for it, providing you have a sense of humour and a capacity to give as good as you get. Try it this summer - wherever you are - and watch our population increase even more than it did under New Labour. But naturally, this time. Countries with a good sense of humour tend to have a higher birth rate than stick-in-the-mud nations. Dubious? Check the statistics.

That's enough late-night bollocks. Sleep well. Preferably with one of us.

Delay, Delay, Delay.

 Just back from the inside of a week in England; a wonderful meeting-up with Mrs. F and the Fingernails after six weeks' absence. England was a joy: great weather and no traffic jams, but I realise I just got lucky there, nothing more. It was interesting to see signs in Russian up in Wisbech, a sleepy Georgian market town and epicentre of the local agricultural picking and packing trade and now host to many Eastern European labourers who have done nothing but win friends since their arrival a few years ago. Many return home once the season's over, others stay on and pick up other work. They're also buying businesses and houses, so they're definitely there to stay.

The only downside of the trip was the experience with Swiss Airlines, or whatever they're called this week. Every flight I took was delayed, one connection (same company) was missed and even the Nuremberg flight I was re-booked on after a three-hour hang around took off late. If you're flying via Zurich, as I was, you have to go through passport control and security before picking up your connecting flight, yet there appears to be no airport coordination between a late-arriving Swiss flight and its subsequent connections. There's certainly no fast track for short connections; everyone stands in line as the few border guards there are peer at every passport as if it's the first time they've seen a travel document. They're not going anywhere, so they're not in a hurry. You either make your connecting flight or you do not, there appears to be no kind of policy and everyone you speak to has a dim, glazed-over expression on their face as if mildly surprised you wish to reach your destination as planned. The route Nuremberg-Zurich-Manchester was stressful but the return trip turned out to be less so as we got so late they just informed us we'd all miss our connections and that we should go to the Transfers Desk to pick up our new boarding passes for later flights. They came accompanied with a voucher for CHF 10 which will get you a beer and a pretzel, at least it will if you get up and remind the dozy waitress of your order after waiting for fifteen minutes. I can safely say I have never encountered such a dozy, thick, initiative-free and gormless group of people as I met flying Swiss this last week. God only knows how the country got so rich if this is the mentality. The only part of the trip which worked was when the plane was in the air, but even Air France gets that bit right. Getting to the plane and getting it in the air was the big challenge, and here they failed dismally. A trip which should have taken twelve hours door-to-door ended up taking 18. Never again if I have the choice.