MooN

that's why Pete moved there...

Thank you, one of the last pieces I made during my year of training.

always have been... despite my busy schedule for the weekend I found time to take part in the demo ride organised by the FFMC ( French FEM affiliated motorcycle action group) protesting against the proposed legislation imposing a "Control Technique" ( french equivqlent of the MOT) for motorcycles, and this despite numerous independant and even govt sponsored studies concluding that: "no evidence can be found of a link between mechanical failure and motorcycle accidents" " No other european country where such testing exists can demonstrate any corrolation between the testing being implemented and and a reduction in the number of accidents imvolving motorcycles" " technical or mechanical failure is a demonstrable cause in les than 0,3% of motorcycles accidents in France" and so on and so forth. The main mouving force behind the attempt at implementing this new legislation is a millionaire businessman whose name is... DEKRA which just hqppens to be the same name as the largest chaine of MOT testing stations in the country ( the potential market is possibly worth 5 billion euros)... so yes, the french are revolting in the way they are best known for, despite covid Regs, and despite shit weather. about 250 bikes held a protest ride around the 3 DEKRA testing stations this afternoon. It may well be a waste of time, but similar demos have been held all over france this week end and with general elections looming, who knows.

This weekend I will be mostly: making shutters: I had 3 quotes to have our downstairs shutters replaced, 2 pairs 1m50 x 1m ish and one triple shutter 2m20 x 1m50 ish all 3 quotes were over 3000€ ! That's just taking the piss so seeing as I have 3 weeks of furlough to deal with and the weather should be good enough to work outside I thought I'd have a go myself. Though I've never made any shutters, I did originally train as a marine carpenter / boat builder. I had to clean nearly 20 years of cobwebs off this before I could start Having no power tools other than a cordless drill, I bought pre sawn planks for about 100€, ( doing one to stqrt with and see how it turns out) a box of screws, and a couple of thicker planks for the cross members, took the measures from the existing shuters and set to. dismantled them this morning for a 1st coat of varnish tomorrow. just then need to reassemble, 2 more coats varnish and fit to the existing hinges. total cost around 130€ per window.

I got in on the tail end of DSUK I think, pretty much as it merged/ morphed into maximum bikes which I sorely missed when it dissappeared into the morass of "fess de bouc" and promptly died a death. I leapt at the chance when you got this going Pete.... fuck that says a lot about how sad my life is! ?

"a few prawns short of a sea food salad" " bercé trop pres du mur" is my fave french one. Literally meaning they rocked his cradle too close to the wall, inferring his head went; bump... bump...bump...

" madder 'n' a box o' frogs"

trawling through some photos yesterday amd came across this from our last Britanny trip. In Britanny they make ( apart from crépes) whant they call "Kouign" ( pronounced "Queen") which are pancakes more like blinis and can be savoury or sweet. This restaurant extrapolated this and produces a "Burger Kouine" ( burger King, get it?) which has "Kouine" instead of a bread bun. Bloody lovely! uuuurrrpsss !

"froler la mort n'est rien, passer a coté de la vie est autrement plus grave" french biker proverb. "dicing with death is nothing, missing out on living is far more serious"

Ah, "Bodgit and Scarper" I remember years ago replacing a through hull fitting on a boat in the water and when the company director asked how it went, my oppo replied point at himself and I, " Bodgit and Scarper" boatfitters to the gentry! I nearly wet myself, never having heard the phrase before... still makes me giggle now.

I wonder how many times I've used that bike park in my misspent youth? My CM125 used to know the road from watton to Norwich on it's own I reckon. The Forum wsn't there in those days though. @Slowlycatchymonkey I was member of the the Norfolk Mountain Rescue team for a short while...

I want to know why Phil's GS is disguised as a honda... red white and blue striping, gold anodised rims... ?

to be fair though, that's not just women...

I'll send you mine, please PM address...?

oh yes they can! insofar as any one individual is concerned ( you in this case) you do what you feel right with and don't go with a trend just because "they can't all be wrong". Unfortunately for me, the adv shape bike is what suits me best physically, always has been so I just have to put up with people assuming I'm just another ADV trend follower... Fuck'em, who cares what the others think ride what suits you.

only cos they always ease lockdown too soon and everybody goes apeshit and sets it all off again! there was an interesting quote doing the rounds a while back, something along the lines of " your grandfaters generation suffered the depredation of world war and endured the hardships of being drafted, forced separations, kill or be killed, the horrer of the trenches and all that war entailed, followed by years of rationing and hardship to rebuild their country. You are being asked to stay home on the sofa infront of the telly with your loved ones AND YOU CAN'T EVEN FUCKING MANAGE THAT! It boils my piss. there I said it.

nononononononno.... Biscuit comes from the French "bis" meaning "2nd" or " again" and "Cuit" meaning "cooked" so by definition a "biscuit" is cooked twice. Legally ( and not a lot of people know this... ) the difference between a biscuit and a cake or pudding ( to be fair, this is english law) is that a biscuit is hard, and goes soft when stale and a cake or pudding is soft and goes hard when stale. ? now you can't say you never learn anything useful on here!

well I've driven 6 hrs and 600km to spend an our and a half with broher in law today, as we're being locked down again from monday. limited to 10km of the house ( except for work, which has to have written justification) but I'm furloughed again till 26th anyway so that's that. schools closed as well for 4 weeks so animals kids are at home too. this is now valid for the whole of france.

looks yummy, but erm... those are not biscuits buy the way. ?

Nope, alomst ALL food products in france go via the Rungis market, there are miriad stupid situations whereby fish from Marseille ( for example) is caught, sold off the boat, travels to Rungis, is sold there to a wholesaler, and then taken back to Marseille to be sold as "fresh" on the markets and in the restaurants there... some story all along the coast, the restaurants only by from their wholsaler who only buys in bulk from Rungis... stupid, stupid, stupid... Having discovered this I no longer eat "fresh" fish unlessI can buy it from the boat, which is what we do when we holiday in Britanny. It's also why I never, ever eat shellfish in a restaurant here.

Auxerre is 300 odd km from the nearest coast Pedro, that means that any fish is offloaded and sold on the dock, then it goes to the market in Rungis (paris), then it goes to the wholesalers, then it goes to the fishmonger... that means a minimum of 36 hrs in a truck.... + the time on a market stall hat is not fresh! I lived too long on the cosat to eat 48h old "fresh" fish.

Thanks, history is kinda my thing but can get boring very quickly for those not interested so i try and keep it to a minimum ?

or not?

to Beaune to stock up on tins of tuna,mackerel, sardines, fish soup, and various other delicacies from "La Belle Iloise" https://www.labelleiloise.fr/en/information/the-cannery-1 As I am to be in lockdown with the animals children I will need to feed them I suppose and tins of fish with rice, or pasta, or spuds, is about the limit of my culinary skills. Besides, I like fish but live too far from the sea for anything to be truly fresh by the time it gets here... I'd planned to ride anyway today so adapted my ride to swing by Beaune and pick up a haul of canned fish. fuel first Have you read "Clochmerle"? this made me think of it. A monument to the local dead of the first war when the french troops still wore bright blue uniforms. Rare to see one still coloured "Blessed be the cheesemakers" Epoisses has a well preserved chateau fortress that is still privately owned and in the same family since 1661 which is sufficiently rare in France to be worthy of note, as most of them changed hands with the revolution in 1790summat. The very pointy extremeties of the castle walls is typical of castles designed by Vauban who was the first person to figure out that a fort based on an exaggerated star floorplan allowed all of the walls to be swept by fire from at least one other he was an incredible guy and hugely important in French history. stopped her for Lunch and took a leaf out of Bobo neleg's book of lunch by having sarnies and a flask of tea ( how very english of me!) by the time I got to Beaune, which is a aealthy and pretentios place heaving with porche cayennes andBMWx6s and audi convertibles, and got what I wanted from a mindnumblingly dense shop assistant I needed to push a bit to get home before curfew so didn't stop much on the way back except once to remove the thermal liner from my jacket and have another swig of tea As per usual, I outran the gps and got home with half an hour to spare... about 320 km in all. ?