festive good wishes

And when we decided to make sure our Christmas was snowy, we couldn’t have predicted the weather back home. Nonetheless, the pristine snow here, around half a metre deep, is just about right for the full-on effect.

Add a few mountain ranges and some gluhwein and it all begins to make sense. Santa was around during the evening too, and dropped a few peanuts, oranges and -er- Diam bars.

Wishing any passing readers the very best for the season. I'm mainly 'off the air' at the moment until the reindeer have passed by.

gratuitous Christmas morning piste scene

The cake shop detour

We have rule of thumb when we drive around in Europe that if we are within around 100 miles of Stuttgart, then we’ll drop into Böblingen. I lived there for a couple of years and its good to visit some old haunts.

A ritual is a visit to Cafe Frech, for a coffee and a cake. I lived next door to this cake shop and several of us would meet there informally on a Saturday morning to plan the weekend’s mischief.


We also still know a fair number of the surprisingly many cafes, bars and restaurants in the town and usually take advantage of one or two during a fly-by. And true to form, the roads were clear as we arrived, it then snowed overnight and gave us what amounted to a ‘before’ and ‘after’ view of the town.

I’ll have to save Böblingen for a proper post another day.

dream sequence?

"träume nicht dein leben, sondern lebe deinen traum!" - "Don't dream your life, instead live your dreams" said the diagonal writing on the wall above my bed.

I realised it was around 3am and through the open curtains I could see fresh gentle snow flakes replacing those that had melted during the day.

I moved slightly and the waterbed echoed with several new ripples. Today there will be Schwarzwälderkirschtorte.

pie eyed

"Great mince pies, which recipe did you use?"

Mum's twinkle of eye, "The one from the Carol Concert."

We reached around to pick out the programme from the shelf, where it was filed between 'The Triangle' and an Adobe Photoshop CS4 primer.

Sure enough, last week's Albert Hall concert had included a recipe for mince pies.

"The extra orange and apple is a great tip..."

We all nodded in agreement.

Meanwhile, Ian was on his second plateful. The temporary family time was a useful respite from Uni and an excuse to power down and eat something that didn't look like an alien species food experiment. Sandwiched next to Ian was David, lost in his own world of butter thin margins. It was all, he explained, about knowing the best way to open the packet.

We paused at this profound thought.

Then Elizabeth was explaining the shopping phenomenon of Christmas Eve. "Its called Panic Buying," she assured us. "Most of the clothing will be returned to the stores. Men need to remember to 'buy small' rather than large if they are to escape some of the inevitable criticism."

I suggested an emergency purchase desk could be set up in the entrance of certain key stores, with a subset of emergency gifts and some sensible 'panic buying assistants' to help the last minute errant shoppers.

Ron was chattering about the recent trip to Twickenham ostensibly for a rugby match. Attending by public transport had created a unique opportunity for beer consumption which he and a few accomplices had found advantageous for many hours. The encounters with last train commuters sounded suitably improbable. You really did need to be there.

"More mince pies, anyone?"

interlude avec neige

Well, the train tracks may have been iced up, the trains stuck in the tunnels and the M20 reduced to a parking lot, but we found an excellent way to get to France, propelled by some of the finest mince pies on the planet.

There was nothing for it but to switch to the clearly posted signs for the Ferry and to dig deep into a Langham's breakfast on the ship before settling into the quiet comfort of the Club lounge. To be honest, it all passed so quickly that we nearly didn't have time to grab some Swiss Francs for later in the week.

As luck would have it, we were parked right by the front ramp from the ship, so we were first onto the road. After Calais, the French roads were decidedly quiet, with the main excitement being the occasional snowplough cutting a finely etched perimeter to the road surface.


And so we arrived. There was trauma amongst the ducks and swans. They'd had to up sticks and move to a remaining small pond of water in amongst the ice.

The drive was also rather snowy as the picture above suggests, and don't get me started on the moat. If anyone ever wanted to invade, just wait until the winter months to see the design defect in this particular form of defence. The idea of pouring hot water in to keep the moat defending just won't, well, hold water - even with a government grant. Stlll, the house has been here since the thirteenth century, so mustn't grumble.

Anyway, its time to draw the shutters for the evening, put another log on the fire and then maybe stroll along to the Orangery for a tipple and a nibble.

It's starting to feel a bit like Christmas.

santa claus

Yes, its official, based upon two web counters.

My highest accessed posts in December include the word "Santa".

EuroTunnel, Ferries, Weather, Motorways Updates for Xmas Travel

Countdown for the holiday season is well and truly under way. As I'm trying to get to France at the moment and the tunnel information on the Eurotunnel site is singularly useless, I thought I'd improvise a few links.

1 BBC Motorway information (M20) is the key one to watch Click Here

2 BBC Eurostar update Click Here

3 SE Weather forecast from the Met Office Click Here

4 Highways Agency Motorway Traffic Flow - select M20 Click Here

5 BBC Five Day Calais Weather Click Here

6 Traffic Master National live traffic jam reporting Click Here

7 meteofrance French weather shows orange alert for North France Click Here (Thanks, maximumbob)

8 Eurotunnel phone line (UK) 08444 63 00 00 (Thanks, Catherine)

There - that took all of ten twelve minutes to assemble.

Shame that Eurotunnel couldn't do something similar.

I've switched to the Ferry.

snow go slow blow (Yo Ho Ho)

The last time I drove to France (earlier this year), there was an Operation Stack in effect on the M20. It is where they close the motorway and convert it into a lorry park.

Well, guess what? I have tickets to travel again this weekend, using the Tunnel to avoid the problems of the Ferries at this time of year.

Except.

Port of Calais is closed.

The M20 motorway to Folkestone is closed

Four or five trains were inserted into the French end of the tunnel in some form of destruction testing spree. "Hmm, one won't work, let's try another, and another."

Thankfully everyone has been rescued, but I wasn't expecting the journey to be such an adventure.

I may need a different Chris Rea track this year.

meanwhile, in a nearby Lane

Most of the main roads seem to be cleared of snow again, although side roads and some of the lanes around here seem to still have their share.

My thermometer says its -2.5C despite sunshine although snow on the sunny side seems to be melting fast. I need to get the car ready for tomorrow's expedition and will almost certainly encounter more of the white stuff.

no comments?

I've received an email that says if I don't upgrade Haloscan commenting in the next two weeks, it will all disappear.

The new system is called Echo and I'm not expecting it to work properly at the start. I see my blog now has Echo comments from today and Haloscan prior.

Also that the little counters that say whether there are comments have stopped working. And my customisations.

UPDATE
In fairness to the people at Echo, they do seem to have responded pretty quickly.

I seem to now have all my comments cutover to the new system, and also have the comment counter updating.

There is still a problem with the recent comment box in the sidebar (which I have demoted to the end of the sidebar for the time being).

The look and feel of the new comment box is different but It can still run as a popup layer like Haloscan did (or as a web page or inline) so once I've found the CSS I can re-customise it.

Elapsed period of wobble = about 15 hours.

UPDATE 2
I suppose I'll call it 'path of least resistance'. I plinked the $10 for the upgrade and I seem to have all my old comments still visible and a little box appearing to take new ones. Theres a load of other new social networking facilities and voting systems which I've suppressed, so the end effect is functionally similar to the Haloscan I had previously, except the most recent comment is now at the top of the list.

When I have more time I may adjust some of it, but I suppose I've crossed the bridge now and the blog is still functioning.

den lille havnfrue

The little mermaid became a daughter of the air in the real version of the story. She'd walked on legs as painful as swords whilst unable to speak and then through self sacrifice moved onto a path towards an eternal soul.

Putting 35,000 delegates into the mermaid's city and expecting debates to reach conclusion was perhaps optimistic. It can become more like crowd control and revert to the safety of procedure and form, rather than content and outcome.

With factions and passing statesman showboat agendas, there's a risk that the main purpose is swamped. At its basic, there's a few main greenhouse topics like:

- Will industrialized countries reduce emissions of greenhouse gases?
- Will Chindia limit emissions?
- Will the developed world supply dosh to help developing countries?
- How will the process and money get managed?

Its a shame if it all becomes a cynical exercise in table shape wrangling after two years of preparation. I'd call that high carbon footprint industrial tourism.

In the story, the mermaid's destiny is shaped by good deeds from children of the earth.

Let's hope so.

don't tap it, whack it

I've never really enjoyed Hershey chocolate.

It reminds me of some form of detergent. I've sometimes thought that it should be dispensed rather than sold.

Maybe its because it has to be tropicalised or made extra safe for storage or something, but it doesn't seem to have any of the qualities of chocolate other than a slight approximation of the color.

Therefore it worries me when I hear that Cadburys - which includes Green and Black amongst its range - is rumoured being bid for by this particular company.

The other bidders for Cadburys are Kraft, the makers of cheese slices. Perhaps surprisingly, I think they manage to produce chocolate that it more edible than the premier American brand.

Perhaps Cadburys can launch a Creme Egg attack to avoid getting whacked?