A scorpion on the loose!

As one might expect, life can be pretty interesting here along the Cote d'Azur.



Our friends Dave and Mary came over from Bedfordshire to spend an extended weekend with us.  The first full day of our visit together was spent in Monaco.  Which was a Good Thing(tm) because the entire village was to be shut down the next day.  It seems that some Important Chinese Person or other was visiting the Prince.

The day after the Chinese visited the Prince saw the traffic flows around Nice seriously disrupted and we didn't know why.  Well, it turns out that French President Macron was meeting nearby with the very same Important Chinese Person to no doubt plot the Chinese Economic Takeover of France.  No wonder the buses weren't running their regular routes.  No wonder there was a heavier than usual Gendarme presence.



The knock-on effects of these disruptions (economic and transportation) could still be felt the day our Good Friends escaped the bright and sunny climes of southern France for the more familiar cold wintery England.

After spending the day over lunch and then on the colline that overlooks Nice our Good Friends were packed and ready to brave the bus system out to the airport.  So down the hill we went to the Rond Point and around the corner we go to pass in front of Station Gatto.  Around the gas pumps and...



... wot's all this, then?

It seems that the disrupted traffic patterns had washed up something rather interesting.  Flotsam in the form of a sportscar.

There sat a very pretty roadster of one kind or other.  The engine was exposed and mechanics were tending to a sparkplug.  One man was lighting a fire under the sparkplug's gap.  But that's not how you light the engine's fire, now is it?  No, he must've been working on heating up the plug or trying to burn off some carbon from a rich-running motor.



So what did we have here?  Oh, look, there's a scorpion on the rear fin.  Oh, look, there's a nameplate on the valve cover.  Ah.  It's an Abarth of one kind or other.

OK.  Need to move along.  Off to the bus.  And past Place Garibaldi.  And past a huge Gilets Jaunes manifestation. But that couldn't be right either, could it?  It was late Monday and... oh... never mind.  They were there and that's just that.  'Round another corner and to the first bus stop of the Aeroport Bus.



The transfer of humans and luggage was successfully achieved.  Our Final Farewells were well made.  And I'm hoofing it back to the Rond Point and our Winter AirBnB.

Thinking about things and doing a bit of research I learn that the Abarth is a 1955 207A.  What a pretty thing it is.  Being made for export makes sense in that sufficient time has passed from when the House of Savoy and the Northern Italians run things here in Nice and that France likely now qualifies as one of Abarth's export markets.  Hence, seeing the 207A washed-up here and not in Italy seemed to fit history as scribbled somewhere by someone out on the 'net.



Approaching Station Gatto I hear the flat *blat* sound of a running highly tuned (for it's day) 4 cylinder.  Hah!  They got it running!!

Or did they?

As I walk up they're pulling jumper cables off the the terminals.  The car again sits silently.  What next? it seems to be asking.

Nice is noisy!

In leaving Paris for the winter I gave up seeing two events that I normally would really enjoy attending.  The first event would've been in January with la traversee de Paris.  The second would've been in February with the Retromobile show.  Both tend to be filled with cars that'll make motorheads turn.  I often dream of owning a vintage automobile after seeing so many great things running the streets of the city.



It should come as no surprise that I've over-compensated a bit in coming to Nice.  I've been looking for every motor-related event and museum I can find along the cote d'Azur.  A little diligence with elbow-grease and I've hit paydirt.

Walking back from a visit to Coco Beach I spied the garages of the Classic Car Club of Nice.  I enquired to see if I could take photos.  Before Jude and I could see what there was to be seen a little Teckel a Poil Dur came up to us to say "hello" and he captured our hearts.  He is such a sweet little dog.  After our first visit we've taken to stopping by once a week to pay our Favorite Dog a wee-visit.



Somehow I came across an affiche for a motorcycle show and decided I had to go.  We boarded the Bus 100 en direction Menton one cold Sunday afternoon to go see a few old motorcycles in Roquebrune Cap Martin.  There is a club in the area that plays host to a salon de motos.

The very first motorcycle I saw on entering the show was a fabulous Egli Vincent.  Words escape me.  There are no descriptions worthy of the beauty of that beast.  It was the very first time I've ever seen one in the flesh.

After spending an hour at the show we returned to Nice where I plotted and planned another adventure.



Not long after the salon de motos I came across a description of a monthly rassemblement out in Saint Laurent du Var.  Leaving Jude with our American Guest, Missy, I jumped a TER from Riquier out to the other side of Nice.  It was a bit of a hike down to the port, but I found the cars I was looking for.

It didn't take long for me to uncover a very fine Alfa Romeo 1300 Sprint Junior.  Oh, she was beautiful.  Her owner was sharing his pride and joy with several couples who stopped to ask questions, and I got to take a peek at the motor.  The Junior was correct in nearly every possible way.

Soon there was a deep rumble as only an American V8 from the '60's can rumble and, sure enough, up drove a bright red Shelby Cobra 427.  She slid in not too far from a wonderful blue '68 'Vette.  The French seem to love American heavy iron.



All this happened in the first month our being here.  With these out of the way, perhaps we can return to exploring a bit of Nice, right?  Alas, there's the Prince's private automobile collection in Monaco that I must go see.

Ah, the never-ending glories of personal transportation.  I was certainly not prepared for any of this. 

Have I mentioned the Ferraris and Lamborghinis that pass below our front window that overlooks the Moyen Corniche?

Nice is nice, right?

Wintering in Paris can be a little hard on us Old Folk.  The joints ache.  The muscles are stiff.  The feet are cold.  Shopping can be like mounting a small expedition into the Hindu Kush.


Watching  France 2 TeleMatin and the Meteo seems to show at least one consistently warm place during the winter in France.  That place is Corsica.  But we don't want to escape to Napoleon's Island.  No, we'd prefer something a bit closer to home and somewhere that might not require either aircraft nor ship to reach.

Bordeaux seems warm-ish.  Le Pay Basque Nord (the French side of Basque Country) looks promising.  And there's a little pocket of warmth just next to the Italian border along the Mediterranean Sea.  Menton, Monaco, and, hmmm... wot's this?  Nice.  Huh.  We hear it's nice in Nice.

To sweeten the pot, a friend was looking to spend *gasp* a winter in Paris.  So, why not let them stay in our apartment there while we seek the sun in Nice?  Why not, indeed.  Oh, and let's stretch this a wee bit while we're at it.  Let's make this a three month warmth seeking sun loving adventure, shall we?


So plans were made and destinations booked and... cleaning scaffolding goes up on the apartment we were to rent and the booking agency offers other options.  Except that the place we originally rented was off the main drag and was quiet and peaceful.

The replacement apartment?  You guessed it.  At the feet of the building is the Moyen Corniche just beyond the eastern Rond Point of the city where everyone and their uncle accelerates up the hill as they launch their way toward Eze, Monaco, Menton, and the Italian border.  It seems they need a seriously furious running head start just to get up the hill.

There goes peace and quiet.  But what's a few loud motorcycles and poorly driven 400bhp Subaru four cylinder vehicles, right?  Ugh.

On the other side of things, the Heavy Iron/les Poids Lourds (not in the French sense of the phrase, but in the Western American motorhead sense) are very much like quiet sharks trolling the waters.  The seriously fast stuff is quiet as they move in/out of town.  Why flaunt 12 cylinders of Madness in your Lambo or Ferrari?  Why spool up that Twin Turbo in your Porsche.  *tsk*tsk*


Jude was the first to find a good solution to the noise.  Earplugs.  For sleep.  Fortunately it works well and things aren't as bad as all that.

In fact, things are quite good.  The front balcony allows us to sit out in the sun where I can keep an eye on les Poids Lourds movement.  Working on our bronzage is an important perk of this experience.  With luck we will return to Paris in the Springtime well tanned.

What cultural points can we win with the Parisians?  Who cares.  It's gorgeous down here and we're enjoying every single sun-drenched moment of it.  Our old bones and muscles are in Absolute Heaven!

It's nice in Nice.

All Hallows Eve ~ 2018

We are fast upon the celebrations of All Hallows Eve.

Having lived here for going on a mere 7 years we've picked up a thing or two about what's happened over the centuries and I feel I could cover the delicate subject of perfume shops, les halles, 2 million dead people, the bankruptcy of the French monarchy, and la danse macabre.

People are born and people die.  That's life, right?

So what to do with all those who died?  Well, some places in the Orient they turn the dead bodies over to vultures (Tibet).  In other places the dead are burned and the ashes are sent downstream (India).  In yet other places the heads of the dead are preserved and worn as one might a big piece of jewelry (Borneo).

In the Occidental west we tend to put dead people in the ground.  We know this has been going on for a very long time as we still dig up a rather old dead body or two every now and then out in the peaty bogs of England.

The French are no different.  During the 12th century a cemetery smack-dab in the middle of Paris was enlarged to accommodate a few more dearly departed soul's remains.  It was known at the time as Campeaux.  Soon it was call the Cimetière des Saints-Innocents.

Over the ensuing 500 or so years, more than a few people were buried there.  A charnel house had been built where bodies were, in some cases, processed.  The area attracted prostitutes, a large food market, perfumeries and other life-saving businesses sprouted up around the cemetery.  La danse macabre was performed.

Over time this meant the area would become a rather meaty mixture of things.  One could be baptised (at the church), buy food for the day, do a little danse, get happy doing the bunga-bunga with the opposite sex, die, and be buried, all within the same small quartier of town.

Things were getting grim.  The perfumeries were having trouble competing with the stench of the dead, and even la danse macabre itself died and was presumably honored before burial.  The locals started to agitate to have something done about the cemetery.  It held more corpses than it could reasonably contain and things were stinking to High Heaven.

What to do?  The answer was left to the soon to be headless dead himself Louis XVI.  Being a weak king (even the American Revolutionary Jefferson said the people could have greater cause against other kings as this one hadn't really done much to credibly incite the full-throated revolt of 1789) and wanting to stick yet another finger in the eye of the English he backed the American side during it's revolt of 1776.  This was a huge drain on the royal treasury.

To add to the royal financial misery, on September 4, 1780 there was a big storm.  The cemetery filled with water which put pressure on the walls leading to the basements of surrounding houses (how they could stand the stench is beyond the belief of this modern mind), which burst the walls, and thus disgorged more than a few dead bodies into the surrounding wine caves.  If you know anything about wine you know that dead bodies and wine do not make for a tasty combination.

The king acted.  First, the cemetery was shut down.  Second, the old Roman limestone quarries were requisitioned.  Third, the cemetery was to be cleaned of its contents by sending everyone and their remains to the old quarry that was at the time outside the city limits and well away from sight, smell, and any wine caves that might otherwise be sullied by floating dead bodies.  The job would take a year.

The only problem was, the Catholic Church insisted on getting its pound of dead flesh out of the deal.

Each and every chariot of bones hauled out of the old Cimetière des Saints-Innocents was to be headed by a sacred procession, paid handsomely, and some might say paid royally, which they most certainly were, out of the royal treasury.  Is it any surprise that the job actually lasted much longer than a year?

In the end, there was no money left to fight the angry citizens who stormed the Bastille.  There was no money left to continue supporting the American Revolt.  There was no money left to pay lawyers to defend the monarchy.  There was no money for cake for anyone.  The king and queen of France lost their heads.  The monarchy was dead and bankrupt.

The food sellers were happier to have the cemetery moved.  Les Halles, aka: the stomach of Paris, since nearly all food coming into the city passed through there, now smelled primarily of food and horse dung (from all the horses that pulled the food laden carts into the city).  The prostitutes moved to slightly better conditions by plying their trade at les Halles.  The Paris Catacombs opened for business south of town and became what is even today a rather popular tourist destination.

So what's all this about la danse macabre?  It turns out that as the cemetery was being cleaned out, the charnel house walls that had been painted with scenes of la danse were revealed.  The paintings had for centuries been covered by the many stacks of dead bodies.

If you visit the catacombs, keep an eye open for yellow colored bones.  Those would be the dearly departed souls who suffered from cholera.  Cimetière des Saints-Innocents must have been a truly ghastly place.

Pox, Tigers, Beauty, and Trash...

This year is turning out to be the Year of the Family.

We were headed to Rome for seven days and then Florence for five.  Daniel was coming over with his partner and asked if we could all meet in Italy.  We hadn't seen them since their marriage two years ago.

In the weeks leading up to our departure I increasingly felt I was fighting a virus of some kind or other.  I wasn't feeling well at all and my shoulder started hurting pretty badly.  Two days before we were to leave I had a small rash break out.  Then the day we left it appeared that I was developing a textbook case of the shingles.

I was taking the pox to Italy.

Jude had the shingles a few years ago and it was horrid stuff.  Her face was involved and it was a very slow process of healing.  Portions of her face are still numb from the nerve damage.  So I wasn't looking forward to this.

On our first day in Rome we visited a pharmacist and asked what they might have.  I was given pain meds and an aloe vera/tea tree oil lotion.  Between the two I was able to make it through the trip without being too cranky and snarky, even though blisters spread from just over the heart, across the upper chest, through the armpit, and down one arm to the wrist.  I have to say that trying to focus on the tasks of daily living and trying to take in the beautiful sites was mentally taxing.  The pain, even now, three weeks later, is constant.

One morning Jude awoke and said she thought we had bed bugs.  Her legs were bitten by some little evil bug.  I thought the bites looked like mosquitoes had gotten to her.  Daniel had similar bites develop on his legs, too.  We couldn't rule out bed bugs, even though I wasn't being bitten (I had other nasties to deal with, I guess).  So we waited.

A week later we visited the Michelangelo Hill that overlooks Florence and walked through swarms of mosquitoes.  Sure enough, Jude's legs were bitten and the bites became inflamed.  She's very reactive to insects and little did we know that the swarms that got her were the nasty African Tiger variety.

Doing a little research (unfortunately well after the fact) uncovered the truth.  Italy is lousy with 'skeeters.  Visitors are, apparently, being warned to bring repellant to ward off the nasty critters.  Jude's legs look terrible and she assures me that the pain is constant for her as well.  We may know better next time, but for the moment my wife and I are both the Walking Wounded.

Jude was bringing the plague back to France.

Even behind the pain and suffering we could notice a few things.  What struck us were a few differences between France and Italy.  The train stations, for example, are nice and clean in Italy.  There is no trash strewn about like there is at Paris train stations.  It makes us wonder what's so difficult about keeping French public places as clean as their Italian counterparts?

Indeed, there were many wonderful museums and fine meals during our Italian Adventure.  It was great to see Daniel and his partner.  We had a few laughs and shared many good moments.

Have I mentioned what we saw in Modene?  There is a large block building that is the local mortuary.  I can't imagine why the building is so big, but it is.  On one side is a sign that says "Eskimo Cold Storage."  There are many curious things in this world, aren't there?

Next up?  My father and brother are due to arrive in just under two weeks.

When Wine Bottles Float...

Just outside the shop door rested a Spad, a Sopwith, and several WWI German aircraft.  All gorgeously restored.  All in flying condition.


The French can be so civilized.  The fridge door is opened to reveal a very nice collection of beer, which we're offered to choose from as we like.

We're talking with a man who's restoring a very early aircraft.  He's been to the Reno Air Races and speaks very passable English.  I ask him what he's working on and he shows me a wing that was built in America, but broke when the plane flipped ass over teakettle.  He showed me how the forces along the wing were not distributed correctly and how the French design was different, being tapered to the ends where the American version was straight box sectioned to the bitter end.

The woodwork was beautiful on the French made wing.  It reminded me of the woodwork that my father does.  When I share this observation with our Beer Giver he brightens up and says that the very best aircraft woodworkers tend to be luthiers, just like my father.

I need to back up.  Before we get to this point in our adventure we stop off for a bite to eat.

OK.  So les rognons that Sylvie is having are cold.  That's not fun.  But all the rest is pretty darned nice.

We're having lunch with our friends at a restaurant that they've known for many years.  The original owner is still running the resto.  It's like an "event" center.  The place is sprawling.  From the kitchen three out of four plates were spot on perfect.  The wine (a Bourgogne) is tasty.

As we're eating Sylvie relates how her father's cave was transferred to another family location after he died.

The subject of wine came up when I asked her if she could taste the difference between les vins ordinaire and the Good Stuff.  I know.  It's a loaded question.  But of course! the French will tell you they can tell the difference.  Still, I wanted to explore the topic a bit over lunch.

Sylvie's father, from the sounds of things, was rather well to do and upwardly mobile.  I could have things confused but he might have been reaching for the Classe Bourgeoise.  It apparently takes time and dedication.  One of the many aspects of living at a certain level of French society is having as fabulous a cave as financially possible.  His was pretty amazing.

The cheese plate arrives and we continue our Wine Topic.

There was an inondation one year that was so severe that water flooded the caves in the area and floated the dead man's entire wine stock.  Horror of All Horrors, the water unglued every single affiche from the bottles!  This meant a bottle of '45 Rothschild was virtually indistinguishable from any other great Bordeaux vintage from other well known chateaux.  Being upwardly mobile, one would expect more Bourgeoise preferred Bordeaux than Bourgogne which are favored by Socialists, and such was the case of her father's cave.

What year and which chateau was in those bottles was anyone's guess.  So what to do with all that Great Unidentifiable Wine?  Sylvie and her mother talked things over.  It was evident there was nothing for it but to open whichever bottle was at hand and drink it with an evening's meal.

Such an adventure that must've been, knowing these were all incredible vintages from famed chateaux, and having only ones taste buds to trust and to guide.  I'll have to ask Sylvie sometime how long it took she and her mother to enjoy all the things that had lost their labels when they floated merrily around la cave.

Lunch was too soon finished.  It was time to visit the Jean Salis aerodrome and the civilized gent who offered up a couple beers and an interesting conversation about woodworking and the Reno Air Races.

Short Story ~ Home Protection Policies

Heard somewhere deep in the Franche-Comte region of France - *BOOM*

Everyone headed for cover.  It sounded loud.  It sounded close.  Too close, in fact.

An old lady continued to sit tranquillement on the front porch.  What was all this about, anyway?

The porch and house were rather large.  In fact it was so large there was enough room for three families.  The little old lady lived in the center residence.

Place was recently sold.  Interestingly, the seller refused to move out.  She was old and simply wanted the money to live out her days in peace and quiet on her property, thus corrupting any traditional idea of what it meant to sell something.

Even with a bit of arm-wrestling the old lady couldn't be moved.  So, the new owners took the two residences on either side of her and bided their time.  They might have only a few more years to wait.

*BOOM*

Only this time people didn't scatter quite as quickly.  Everyone had come to realize that she didn't like people coming onto "her" property.

Whenever friends of the new owners dropped by for a visit, an even older than its user fusil would be picked up, pointed at the sky, and the trigger pulled.

She loved to shoot off the rifle to try and scare people away.