The weather here continues to amaze with clear blue skies and warm weather . Nice just seems to miss all the bad weather by about 50 miles.

I have been taking a mental note of the demographics of the people here and as regards total foreigners which I would have to say don't seem to outnumber the locals rather like, say Malaga,Mallorca or London, I would say the following:

Total population 344,000 5th largest city in France

15% Foreigners -    80% Nth African
                             15%  English speaking (66% Irish, 37% English)
                               5%  Russian speaking

No Spanish
No Germans
A few Dutch and one Estonian.

Q: So how many English speakers are there here?

On my shopping list today is a salad bowl and a toilet seat, I will try not to get them mixed up in the middle of the night.

I was looking for a squeezer for my bucket and mop. You know the plastic bit at the top to wring the water out in. Unfortunately you cant buy just that bit you have to buy the whole new bucket and sqeezer. Bugger that.

Can you believe that I found one on my way home last night in a pile of rubbish!!!! Just the bit I wanted , no bucket just the sqeezer.

What next? a toilet seat?

"Thank you madame, I will take it"

Why is the café au lait the same Price at all the bars in Nice?

€2.80 café au lait. I would have thought someone would have tried to be a little adventurous and put it at say €2.50, but Non! €2.80 everywhere, except the language school where I go where its €0.50.

It’s the same with a small beer. €2.50 pretty much everywhere so why doesn’t someone put their prices down to €2? Even for a day. Strange. I will continue to investigate.

My waitress was rather petite

It works out the cheapest place for beer is MaNolans the Irish bar near the sea front where at happy hour its €3.90 a pint. Talking of happy hour, the last time I was in there watching a few minutes of the Ryder cup, I 

called the barman over and asked him..

“When does happy hour finish” as I pointed at my empty pint glass

“Five to eight” he said with an apologetic shrug as if to say youve missed it mate.

I looked at my watch, he was right, it was ten past eight. Damm it.

That’s weird, I thought as I made my way home on my bike, why not finish at eight? That bothered me for quite a while until I realised he was telling me the happy hour period.

My French lessons continue

The weekend bought some heavy rain. I have noticed that “Le Meteo” on French TV is pretty accurate. They forecasted wind then rain in the afternoon, and they were bang on.

Before the rain hit I thought it a good idea to give the car a bit of a run as it’s been standing idle for a week or so. After a bit of a cough and a start (and that was me) she burst into life and off and we headed into the interior of Alpes Maritime.

It wasn’t long before we were heading up the alongside the river Var Northwards towards the Alps. This soon turned into a valley which in tirn, turned into a spectacular , steep-sided gorge. I had been travelling 30 minutes and we were already well and truly into the hills and the shining Cote D'Azure could have been a million miles away.

It certainly felt it when I got out of the car for a coffee at a small village. It was freezing and I wished I had put on little more than just shorts and a T Shirt.

I decided to stop and come home as I didn’t want to get caught in the mad rush to get back down the mountain and I was right to do so as there was a Wood festival further up the valley.

Pierre's 7-Iron was a bit too much club

The heavens opened later on that evening and I decided to go do some shopping at Carrefour. What a mess the French supermarkets are. There was stuff all over the floor, half the tiles were missing, shelves half empty. 

It was as if someone had said the end of the world is neigh and there had been a mad rush to get provisions.

Massive queues too.

Ce la vie I thought.

"Bonjour .....Le aisle Sept est ouvert"

Omen from the gods

The day started oddly to say the least as I climbed down the step ladder from my mezzanine bedding area, I’m going to fall down those one of these days, and I bleary eyed put the hot water on for cup of tea. 

There was the customary squawking from the pigeons outside from across the road on the roof of the flats opposite.

“Hold on” I thought as I watched the water slowly heat up on the electric hob. 

It’s one of those old ones from the 1970’s that take an age to boil anything especially when you have switched the wrong hob on and unlike todays it doesn’t glow red you just wait and nothing happens for 10 minutes. Then take twice as long to cool down after you have switched it off. 

“Pigeons don’t squawk”

I turned and looked out of my window and across to the roof.

A Seagull, big and bright white and standing erect and tall against the drab roof top and a stark contrast to the gloomy pigeons that normally gather there.

That’s strange I thought, the seagull was surrounded by small grey feathers, then it bent its head down and grabbed something, which looked like a dirty grey rag, shook it violently and pecked at it.

I rubbed my eyes and tried to focus on the rag.

It wasn’t a rag at all

It was a dead pigeon!

And it was eating it. I say eating more like devouring the thing. There were feathers everywhere and it was again and again pecking and ripping at the soft underbelly of the flying rat.

"I didnt order this"

I stood there transfixed, I didn’t know seagulls ate other birds. The shiny red blood was now visible as the seagull had broken the skin and was getting stuck into the juicy bits.

I half expected the seagull to peck a bit then fly off but how wrong could I be. It didn’t stop and continued until I had to leave the flat 15 minutes later.

I returned about two hours later and the carcass of the pigeon was there and it had been picked clean. I say clean, the skin was still all intact but you could see every last morsel of meat had been eaten from inside.

"Heeeeere's Jonathan"

The search continues for a rugby club and I think I have found one. Well I hope so, I sent them an email asking if they had a vet’s team. It’s a village just a few kilometres outside Nice.

And the best thing is the name of the village it’s called Tourettes!

The mind boggles.

Tourettes V Nice Rugby Match

Centre circle before the game starts for the toss up with the captains of both sides and the referee.

Ref: “Ok heads or tails”

Tourettes RFC Captain “ Tails”

Ref: “Tails it is”

Tourettes RFC Captain: “Bollocks”

Nice Prices info:

I popped into all the estate agents along the main street and around where I live. I think I have one of the best addresses by sheer luck. It’s on one of the streets with massive villas and when I mention it they all raise an eyebrow…….

"Weve won!"...."Crap"...."Bugger"........"Shit"..........

Nice they say.

Yes it’s in Nice I reply (Ed enough of Nice nice jokes)

They don’t realise I am living in a hole with cockroaches.

Yes they, the cockroaches, have arrived. It seems to be a direct correlation between when Cemille, the owner, turned up with a portable oven. I pointed out that the oven part of my cooker was not working. He said “Pas de problem” and he would bring a portable electric one.

He came round and delivered it. It was brand new and works really well….on Pizzas. I’ve only used it once, but it seems that maybe the aditional heat from the table-top oven, has confused the Cockroaches because as a result they have woken up and are out for a walk taking advantage of what they think is an Indian Summer.

They are small, so far, so not really a problem, although last night I tried to stab one with my wooden spoon. 

I missed it and it ran two inches then disappeared! I mean completely!! There wasn’t any hole it had scuttled down or anything it just disappeared.

I quickly removed my ‘just made burgers’ from the worktop and then had a horrible feeling that perhaps it had crawled into my burger.

I tried not to think about it too much. Hmmm I thought the lettuce is crunchy tonight.

After my lip smaking feed, I went to wash up the plate keeping a close eye on any inanimate objects that moved. I placed the plate in the sink and turned on the tap. Nothing but air came out!!

I tried the cold tap….nothing. I went into the loo and nothing from the taps in there either.

“Genial” I said to myself.

I had just finished my salty tasty burgers, they were good too, and I had just finished the last of the flat lemonade. I glanced at my watch and realised all the shops were shut. So recognizing I was going to have to drink whatever was left in the fridge I tentatively looked in to see what remained.

I opened the door and inside was:

A bottle of Rose wine

2 small bottles of Carrefour beer

Half a pint of semi-skimmed milk

2.5 ltrs of Red wine form Bordeaux   (This is an estimate as it is a 3ltr wine box)

And About a pint of water left in the end of a bottle of water.

Unselfishly I immediately got the bottle of water out and watered the plants outside.

"Im off to get a proper drink"...."Oi wait for us"

  

The variety of shops here is quite astounding.

It takes you back to a time when a high street was a myriad of individual enterprises offering specialist wares.

For that reason one ends up wandering down the many of the pleasant streets, gawping at what’s on offer and then realise you are miles away from home and refreshingly there are hardly any pound shops and best of all not one charity shop in sight. 

What a refreshing change. 

They were a bit up-themselves in this shop

Yesterday I went past two wig shops, a specialist pump shop, and an aquarium decoration shop just to mention a few.  There are so many restaurants here and all of them had people in eating away and it’s only a Wednesday!

Again, I thought to myself, no crisis here.

The search continues today for a rugby club with a vet’s team. You would have thought that there would be e plethora of clubs but this is not the case.

I have another meeting with my bank manager tomorrow where I am going to discuss banking or am I just using that an as excuse to see the lovely Jennifer.  

I popped in to pick up my new cashpoint card that I received yesterday and told her in passing that she was the spitting image of Natalie Portman however from her reaction; I think something got lost in translation.

What was said                                                                      What was understood

Me: “Bonjour”                                                                                  Hello

JF:    “Bonjour”                                                                                   Hello

Me: “You remind me of Natalie Portman”                You look like Nigel Spackman

JF “What, the ex- Liverpool and Chelsea midfielder?”    Thank you very much

Me:  “Au revoir”                                                                               Goodbye

JF:     “Piss off”                                                                                     Good bye

I skipped out of the bank, a job well done.

Last night’s street pickings were a little thin unless you wanted cardboard boxes or a few pallets you were out of luck. Maybe it’s just Tuesday nights. I will be ready.

Instead I wandered through the local neighbourhoods trying to get a feel as to what areas are safe at night and which ones aren’t. Most seem pretty ok around the centre. There are understandably a lot of North Africans, they seem to be the majority of non-French in the city but generally all was ok albeit it was only 10:30pm. Maybe at around 4am it’s a different story.

I passed one restaurant with tables outside and a Jazz type band on the terrace and they even had a dancer entertaining the punters. Well it was only when I passed the ‘dancer’ that I realised that he wasn’t with the band at all, just a pissed up bloke prancing about like only a pissed up bloke can do.

He couldn’t dance like that if he was sober and his life depended on it I thought.

Natalie Portman in the Black Swan