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02/26/2007

England choke at Croke

What a weekend I had we ( Xav and me ) left Nantes airport Friday morning and arrived in Dublin an hour or so later and caught the blue bus into town . It was my first visit to Ireland and superficially it looks similiar to England I suppose the houses ,the english spoken but after a day of browsing the city you catch on to the Irish dynamics. We caught up with our hosts for the weekend Mark and Sussy + their boys who I can't thank enough for their hospitality in the evening and was soon wisked off to a Irish bar with a jam session of folk muscians playing , guiness flowing and dancing. The next day's highlight was the match an evening kickoff . The stadium is just amazing with its atmosphere and efficency of acess and essentials ( toilet and bar ) The view is just so different from the tv and I was soon chatting to Irish guy next to me a nudge every time they scored but so friendly and after everyone shakes hands. I wasn't expecting an English victory I thought the Irish would win by 20pt but they were just brilliant and made few mistakes so stuffed England by 30pt.The only good thing as I said to my Irish friends was that the winners have to buy the guiness and so off to another Irish bar. The only downside was poor Xav was sick ( as a parrot ) on the trip home , At Mark and Sussy house in the car at the airport on the plane and in the car coming back but magically cleared up at home.
Thanks guys for a great time

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02/17/2007

Don't buy shares in France Telecom

France Telecom must rate as one of the worst telecoms in the world ,customer service they don't know what the word means. We have had a lot of storms recently and last Monday my adsl link stoped working ,the phone is OK but with a lot of fuzzy noises on it so I started ringing the various help lines talking to numerous prerecorded voices and after an hour of cursing to the walls got through to a human and hey presto the adsl suddenly works . For a few minutes ,back on the phone again and the same thing . The next time I got more assertive and they said they tested the line and then to add more insults sais that if I paid the call out charge I could have an engineer next week 10 days after the loss of connection to repair their line !!!!!!!!!!!!!! The cheek and you have to agree but is the guy going to get some stick from me the useless company. I don't know if its because its half owned by the gouvernment or its too big and nobody cares.There has been a big job loss in Lannion 220 redundancies from Alcatel I never knew they were so big they employ 1100 in Lannion making it a really hi-tech town with a host of other telecoms including FT

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02/07/2007

Tempo Jazz cd out

Last summer the jazz fanfare band I play in recorded a cd at Coat Aillis the third week of July (even the tourists liked it ) in the play room . Its taken 6 months to get it on a cd ,well you can't rush things its not too bad sounds like a bunch of amateurs having a good time but when our guest artists Boris Blanchet does his solos it goes up a few leagues ,he must be one of the top sax players in France. I'll talk with my webmaster to see if I can get a few tracks on the website.
I am having my credibility blown by the local paper , my french is fine ( I think ) but go to a local french class for advanced conversation run by Isabel a french woman married to Oliver an Irish super businessman . She had invited a journalist from the Telegram to do an article on her class and so we had our photo taken. My french friends are going to give me a lot of stick now as I will have no excuse for poor french and previously I had told them I was taking lessons with Jean Birkin. (Its a joke as she is married to a famous french singer and she her self sings with an atrocious english accent )

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02/05/2007

Old fashsioned boyfriend

I had a phone call from Adam boyfriend of Louise very strange he never rings up anyway he asked permission to marry Louise ! I nearly fell out of the chair I didn't think people did that sort of thing nowadays. I got married with 2 witnesses and then went home and told my parents it saves a lot of hassle . So the big event is next year lots of planning , tophats etc must try to get more enthusiastic.
The French are really twitchy this month with the new law on smoking outside the big shops you see a gaggle of shop assistances taking their nicotine fix. Certain shops like Super U ban them from smoking in the car park so they have to work a 100m to the road for their drug session. Ha Ha
It was the Lannion town band dinner yesterday I think it was one of the worst meals I have had ( not that I ate much ) a lump of Ostrich meat briefly visiting the pan. Paulien doing her dutch thing got a bag from the kitchin and collected a pile of uneatten lumps for the dog. I don't think we will be returning to that restaurant again

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