The Rambling Nappa

New Address

2009-03-18T07:33:00.000-07:00

In February 2008 the Rambling Nappa decided that, after being so long away, he'd better re-invent himself. So he went rumbling:
http://www.rumblingnappa.blogspot.com

French Ramblings (2)

2008-04-07T18:16:00.000-07:00

So the Olympic Torch has a rocky ride through London, the next day Paris provides a repeat screening. The UK has a touch of snow, the North of France gets exactly the same thing. The snow was short-lived however and within a few hours it had virtually disappeared. Good, however, that the weather didn’t stop Portsmouth reaching the FA Cup Final – even if West Bromwich Albion did play the better football. Good, too, that of Mrs Rambling Nappa’s three Grand National selections she found first and second place, even if her third horse (which was also my selection) came a bit of a cropper.

I had an Al Murray moment when watching the French TV equivalent of the Jonathan Ross Show on Saturday. They were comparing Carla Sarkozy’s very chic evening dress with the drapery and tiaras worn by our Royal Majesties and hooting with Gallic mirth, particularly at poor Camilla’s attire. “So what’s wrong if our Royals want to dress up in bedroom curtains with some rocks on their heads? They’re ours, they’re British and we’re proud of them! Bloody French….”

Mrs Rambling Nappa (who has joined me for a few days to try and introduce some order into my affairs) had a Mrs Bouquet moment when we visited a local supermarket today. “Look at that family … just look at them … gross, overweight, slow, rude, appallingly dressed, and the girl what are those things she’s wearing on her feet … what do these French people think they are?”. She then overheard their conversation and, yes, they were in fact our compatriots.

And now I must turn my attention to the Augusta Masters and the small matter of who is going to win it if the Tiger doesn’t. The cast list of players tends to change very little from year to year, so will Messrs Singh, Els and Mickelson be the only three other players to feature on the leaderboard? Or will (here comes Al Murray again) someone English, “who likes proper beer, someone we can be proud of …” come along. A Rose or a Poulter, A Donald or a Westwood maybe? But then again maybe no English players will make the cut and I’ll have to pin my hopes on Padraig.

French Ramblings (1)

2008-04-02T00:46:00.000-07:00

I’ve taken to buying the local daily paper (Courier Picard) to try and help widen my French vocabulary. The headlines for some days have been the aftermath of the French League Cup Final between PSG (Paris St Germain) and our boys RC Lens. The match was decided by a questionable penalty decision in favour of the Paris team, but more controversial than the penalty was the large “banderole” displayed by the PSG fans.

I looked up banderole in my French – English dictionary and was informed that in English “une banderole” is indeed a banderole. The Oxford Dictionary was more helpful – a banderole is a banner or streamer.

Now it takes quite a bit to insult an RC Lens supporter. This is the team of blood and gold (a description of their colours) and their fans come from all over Northern France (including the jardinier that I laid off last week). This is the text that caused such consternation:

Pédophiles, chômeurs, consanguins, bienvenu chez les Ch’tis

Wow! I don’t need a dictionary to start that one. Chômeurs are out-of-work layabouts, and les Ch’tis is a slang expression for inhabitants of Northern France, but the word that absolutely enraged people was Consanguins - what we would term as inbreds. The newspaper headlines have included such as Dégout, honte, scandale … Carrément répugnant, inadmissable. All this is wonderful fodder for the aged Englishman trying to improve his French-speaking skills.

Also in the paper this week is a rather pompous piece about Lewis Hamilton and his amende of 578 euros for getting caught by a radar trap on the A26 in December. He was cruising along at 193 km/h instead of the permitted 130 km/h. There is criticism that he didn’t lose his licence as well, and rather ominous rumblings about EEC legislation to ensure that all Europeans are treated equally when caught by radar traps. This will surely backfire on the French who reckon that they are immune from penalties when racing up the A20 from Dover towards London.

So, apart from leaning on my fork and reading the paper (there’s a Beatrix Potter character - a fox – that comes to mind) what else have I been up to in France. Well, lots of cleaning and painting – the house is now formally on the market. I received a gift of mangey looking carrots from a friendly neighbour (the hundred-year-old lady with one tooth who sells gas cannisters, but who won’t let me lift them because I’m too elderly). The carrots were “pour les bêtes”. I’ve had trouble with late payment of rates and non-payment of insurance premiums to sort out. A malcreant managed to drill a hole in my oil tank and syphon off a couple of hundred litres of outrageously expensive heating oil. And I’ve written a few words. A quiet start to my séjour in France.

Long and Dusty Road - Starts Here

2008-03-21T01:52:00.000-07:00

As of yesterday I've joined the ranks of the unemployed. I've shaken off the after effects of a rather generous leaving party (supper with whole company at a local pub - surprisingly good quality - shared with another leaver), said my farewells and read through the messages on the leaving card. Funny how several of the messages concerned gin and that among my leaving presents was a bottle of Gordons. Funny because I don't think I've ever supped a G & T with any of the employees. Pints of beer and glasses of wine, oh yes, but gin - never. It must be because of a famous office conversation which went something like this:

Monday: "J, why are you looking so glum?"
"I've decided to lay off drink for a month - give the liver a bit of a rest".

Tuesday: "J, why have you got that sticking plaster on your hand?"
"Cut myself chopping up a lemon for my G & T last night".

Anyway I dare say I'll miss the slightly monastic open plan office work ethic. The long silences disturbed only by a ringing phone, the arrival of a cup of coffee "oh, thanks", or a deliveryman. The continuous traffic of emails between employees all sitting in the same room; the lady LARPer's attempts at excellent customer relations on the phone with a foreign person who speaks no comprehensible English apart from a demand to know why the book he ordered from Amazon hasn't yet arrived; other employees bafflement that the Rambling Nappa's hearing is so bad that when some sort of conversation breaks out at the far end of the office he is totally oblivious to it, whilst everyone else is hanging on every word - whether involved in the conversation or not.

Anyway, time to move on. Time to take a rest from books on politics, computing and finance. Time to close down a chapter in my life and to start a new one.

With a lot of help from the long-suffering wife we've cleared out much of the retained debris left over from my physical bookselling days - dozens of files, electrical muddle (computers and miles of network cable, security gates, broken price guns and sticky labels, all these went to East Hampshire civic amenity refuse sites (trying to avoid the watchful eyes of the attendants looking to pounce on anyone disposing of trade waste). The keys of our storage garage have been handed back.

The long and dusty roadbeckons, and I'm off to France on Monday to seek inspitration and to accelerate the sale of the chateau.

I dare say that as a result of this blog I'll get a call from the amenity site people levying a fine, and another email from the daughter-in-law on the subject of copyright infringement (use of a photo taken in Dubai desert).

Duck W-rap

2008-03-15T03:07:00.000-07:00

While the Rambling Nappa's broadband was off the air there was a lot of stuff on TV about factory farming of poultry. Jamie Oliver and Hugh F-Whittingstall seemed to be going on about free-range all the time.

In a moment of insanity last year, I got a bit cheesed off with a Waitrose duck wrap that I purchased (for a lot of money) one lunchtime. It didn't taste of much and I felt sorry for the bird - so I wrote a (nonsensical) rap. It's time it came out of the cupboard...

Duck W-rap is a two parter. Words in upper case are spoken by a duck (f), the rest by a drake (m) – tempo fastissimo. It is neither rap nor poetry, more like music hall opera, partly set to music with soft percussion and additional instrumentation from a decoy duck caller*.

I’M A DUCK!

Ugly maybe, Muscovy or Aylesbury,
Nothing in this world beats a really good duck*.
Wind-dried. Pan-fried. Roasted ad dilectum,
Just a little sore with an orange up my rectum*

I’M A DUCK!

For wherever you go, America or China
I figure on the menu as an apt reminder
That entrée, main course, bitten or chewed
I’m what is classed as a luxury food.

I’M A DUCK!*

When you see me on the pond swimming in the water
Followed by my sons and my wayward daughter
The colours of my feathers, my big webbed feet
My quacking voice it’s all a big cheat

I’M A RUDDY DUCK!*

Now the male of the species, he’s no duck
He’s really a drake but the name’s just stuck
His role in this world like mine is to feed
A zillion hungry mouths – a global greed

WE’RE DUCKS!

In locked-door factories you like to call farms
Exalting in all of their free-range charms
They stuff me with corn with my sons and my daughter
Cooped up in cages ready for the slaughter

YES, WE’RE DUCKED!*

But it’s not just the food thing that gets up my nose
It’s the way that we figure in your toys and your clothes
You shoot us at the fun fair, float us in your bath
Yellow plastic plaything – make me laugh

WE’RE DUCKS

Then there’s Daffy and Donald, Jemima and a Soup
The duck-arse hair thing, and a duckling troop
For your pillows its our feathers that you like to stuff
A bloody billed platypus, but enough’s, enough

I’M A DUCK

Shelduck, Sheldrake, Shoveller, Mallard
Doused in vinaigrette and put into a salad
Hugh Grant’s “Duck Face”, wasn’t he a hero
While at cricket all I am is a big fat zero*

I’M A NOTHING DUCK

I’m warming to my theme, so you’d better listen well
And lower your heads* for a vision of hell
From the kitchens of Peking, Hong Kong and Shanghai
A new way of cooking comes and it’s not “stir fry”
Cut yourself cucumber, then spring onion slices
Roast me in an oven with some eastern spices
Warm up some pancakes, then shred me because
Next you’ll embalm me with rich plum sauce.
Goldeneye, Redhead, Blue Wing Teal
What in God’s name do you think we feel
As our meat is torn up for a pancake roll
A glass of white wine and we’re swallowed whole

A MANDARIN DUCK!*

WHILE HE WIPES HIS TEARS AND TAKES A LITTLE REST
THERE’S JUST ONE FURTHER THING TO GET OFF OUR CHEST
ONE FURTHER INSULT TO HUMOUR YOU FOLK
NOT THAT “CANARD” IS FRENCH FOR A JOKE

It’s a supermarket thing, a sandwich filler
Duck in Hoisin Sauce in the lunch-snack chiller
And to finish it all – the ultimate to cap
They’re marketing us as a hoisin duck wrap

WE’RE DEAD – DUCKS**

©Rambling Nappa 2007

Polymaths

2008-03-08T01:23:00.001-08:00

There are people like me – who troll their way through life. And there are those who are good at everything (just about). Mrs Rambling Nappa used to work with a distinguished surgeon, who was also a qualified architect, who was widely travelled and spoke fifteen languages (most fluently). I seem to remember that he was also a lay preacher or something, virtually built his house, and on, and on.

I’m rambling on about this (enviously) because I recently had one of those “I wish I could write like that” moments when reading an article in The Spectator about Suffolk of all things. Try this:

“But then in this last year Suffolk and I started seeing more of each other. Tentatively at first. I spent some time in Newmarket painting portraits of horsemen under protestant blue skies…”

Or this:

“Meanwhile my dates with Suffolk were coalescing into something of, if not a ‘journey’, then at least a ‘character arc’: sleeping off a wedding in an Elveden graveyard; kissing a girl on a roof; bareback-riding with under-10s across potato field in perfect magenta bloom; the low September sun lens-flaring off a lake and across the stirring silhouette of my girlfriend; losing a few rounds of ‘Escape & Die’ to the sheep; making friends with smoker exiles outside A-road pubs in the bitter Christmas cold: and all against a year of party-blasted dawns imprinted straight into the amygdala, a misty North Sea radiance fading up over crumbling cliffs…”

Wow! I am supremely jealous of that kind of skill with words. And who wrote them? Someone called Thomas Leveritt. I googled him and (to quote) found out that he is half-American, half-British, and 32. He has won the Carroll Medal for Portraiture from the UK's Royal Society of Portrait Painters, and twice been runner-up at the National Portrait Gallery's BP Competition. He has a CV that looks like it ran over an improvised explosive device (his words), with pieces of soldiering, law, computer programming, import-export, film production, signmaking, and teaching scattered all over the place. No matter where you come from, he has a slightly different accent. He published a novel in February 2008 variously described as 'dazzling' (The Guardian), 'crazed and hilarious' (New Statesman), 'radiat[ing] a certain clued-up, slacker intelligence' (Metro).

Damn him! I guess I’ll have to buy his book.

LARPing Around

2008-03-01T14:19:00.000-08:00

I was bit confused when one of my staff requested Friday off - so she could prepare for a LARPing weekend. Needless to say I had no idea what she was talking about; but did I care? I certainly did.

Discreet enquiries to other staff members revealed that the gentle lady in question liked to partake of Live Action Role Playing, meaning dressing up in fanciful costume (leather apparently) and beating the hell out of other participants using latex and foam weapons. A strange way to vent your frustrations, but then again...

Needless to say I googled LARPing and found loads of specialist clothing companies and armourers (as well as pinching the above photo off some-one's site). And it's not just ladies from Petersfield that like this sort of thing. LARPing is everywhere - Belgium, across America, and Germany. They've moved on from the old roundheads vs cavaliers re-creations of Civil War battles. Your modern LARPer will have a specially themed event (Conan the Barbarian meets Godzilla in the Temple of Arkan, sacrifices at 4.00pm, bar opens at 6.00pm, bring axes).

Somehow I feel quite pleased that I'm leaving my job in less than three weeks. I do work with my back to the lady LARPer and I just feel a little uneasy about her. I don't think I'll ask her if she enjoyed her weekend when I go back to work on Monday.

Masterchef - First Cake

2008-03-01T00:38:00.000-08:00

Ouch! It doesn't look very good does it? My first attempt at baking a cake (an educational process intended to climax with the production of a Rambling Nappa Christening Cake in the summer) did not impress the judging panel. Here are a few of the comments.

1. It would have been sensible not to have iced the cake while it was still hot (so the icing simply ran straight off like molten lava)
2. What's that strata of fat running through the sponge?
3. It hasn't been cooked long enough.
4. More baking powder.
5. No, Nigella's all wrong. You don't just bung everything in the mixer and hope for the best.
6. What do you mean it has gone down the waste disposal unit? (the mother of the child)

Oh well. Back to the drawing board.

Bags of Nonsense

2008-02-28T20:40:00.000-08:00

Well done Marks and Spencer. You are doing the right thing by charging us for plastic carrier bags. And how predictable the reaction of other retail giants who are not following suit. A couple of years ago the French government outlawed the free issue of plastic carriers in supermarkets and there has been no violent protest (apart from the Rambling Nappa who repeatedly arrives at the checkout of his local Shoppi with a laden trolley - having forgotten to bring his reusable, hard-wearing 3 euro bag with him - again, and again).

Wales (and I hardly ever agree with anything Welsh) is likely to issue a similar ban. Why, for heavens sake, can't we?

Not so boring - Jonno

2008-02-28T13:32:00.001-08:00

I'd got this image of Jonny Wilkinson as an admirable, but terribly boring English sportsman. A dullard in the mould of Tim Henman. The sort of person you'd find it terribly difficult to strike up a conversation with unless it was about the intricacies of playing backhand volleys off the baseline using multifilament stringing at max tension, as opposed to catgut. Then I read Wilkinson's piece in Monday's Times in which hardly a mention was given to Saturday night's victory in Paris. Instead he wrote entertainingly and interestingly about having a rather splendid lunch the following morning with Toby Flood and Mathew Tait (irritatingly "Taity" and "Floody") at Yves Camdeborde's Le Comptoir off the Boulevard St Germain.

I guess that if you can slot penalties like Jonny, then you have little difficulty in getting a Sunday lunch table at a place like that. But it was a surprise to find a likeable-sounding human being lurking behind the grim facade.

Singing in the Rain

2008-02-23T03:27:00.000-08:00

Many apologies for my enforced absence. Orange Broadband failed my household on New Year’s Eve, and after four weeks of expensive and entirely useless phone calls to Mumbai (Orange technical support division) I still had no broadband service. Accordingly I left Orange and am now a happy Pipex customer with full blogging facilities to hand. My phone contracts with Orange will also cease shortly and I’ll cheerfully and insistently find an alternative supplier. I recommend all my readers to take note and to steer well clear of all Orange products unless they concern fruit.

So what’s been happening? Personally only two news items to report. The first is that the Rambling Nappa managed to ramble last Sunday from his front door in Rowlands Castle to the town of Petersfield ten miles away. I didn’t ramble back again (preferring a lift home from the long-suffering wife), and was left both blistered and knackered from the sudden surge of activity. Heaven knows how people get the stamina to run a 26-mile marathon (or my senior cousin the oomph to cycle from London to Paris - repeatedly.

The second news item concerns a brief conversation I had yesterday with my Managing Director. We agreed that a parting of the ways was a sensible course from both our points of view - so I’ll be unemployed by Easter.

Fortunately I’m not the least bit despondent about this turn of events. I had become dispirited by book-selling and the seeming impossibility of competing profitably with Amazon. I have a backlog of things to do – which includes writing two works of fiction (one for adults, and one for children) and the clearing of the final debris of fifteen years running bookshops (yes, I still own shelves, cctv cameras, tills, stacks of books, and accumulated junk). I have volunteered to bake a christening cake for the latest grand-daughter (this requires an educational process as I’ve never baked a cake before). I need to lose weight and get fit. There’s the prickly issue of selling the house in France. It would be wonderful to sort out my finances so that I could take the long-suffering wife away for a proper holiday. There’s some good cricket coming up this summer (okay I did get up at 5.00am today, saw very quickly how badly things were going for England in New Zealand, and went straight back to bed). In other words I’m rather looking forward to having time to do a few of these things.

I also vow to blog more diligently…

No Broadband means No Blog

2008-01-26T06:49:00.000-08:00

Thankyou Orange!

Towards the end of December my Orange home broadband failed. So far nearly nine hours of (expensive) phone calls to a call centre in India have failed to provide a solution. It wasn't until I googled "Orange PPP Server Down" on someone else's computer that I realised that this is a very common problem that drives Orange customers completely mad.

I'm changing broadband supplier and expect to resume blogging very soon....

Enter the House of the Lord (at a price)

2007-12-02T01:35:00.000-08:00

In London for a couple of days selling investment books at the World Money Show. The venue is the Queen Elizabeth II Conference Centre - just across the road from Westminster Abbey - a perfect opportunity to reacquaint myself with that huge hulk of a place of worship. I can only spare myself 15 minutes or so, enough time to have a quick muse by Poet's corner and to take in the vastness of the place.

There is a slight catch however - an obligation to part company with a tenner in order to gain admission. Okay, so there is some small print to the effect that if you simply wish to pray then you can enter free, but I reckon that my fifteen minutes would be primarily spent as a tourist (although I might take a quick kneel-down if the knee joints can bear it). I do not enter.

London is a very expensive city, and tourism is vitally important. A hotel room is £100, a short taxi trip can cost more than a month's wages in Petersfield, and the cost of a couple of theatre tickets plus dinner for two is enough to try the bank balance of half the visitors to the World Money Show (many of whom were being exhorted by fellow exhibitors to invest in US property - going cheap with a wonderful exchange rate to help you).

Westminster Abbey is a major tourist attraction and, like the British Museum and National Gallery, should not depend on tourist money for its upkeep. The abbey receives funding from neither the church, or the state, and personally I think that is absolutely wrong. If a building is used (famously) for state occasions, then my tax money should go to support it. Then tourists (many of whom are British) could walk proudly through the great doors without forking out £24 for a family of two adults plus two children (special offer).

Oh heck! I'm ranting again.

Missing Numbers

2007-11-25T02:03:00.000-08:00

Always on the lookout for the reasons “why I went wrong” I was reminded recently about my ineptitude at mathematics. Sure I can add and subtract. Multiplication, percentages and even long division are skills I can just about perform. But I went through my formative years regarding mathematics as being much too technical, much too boring. As a result I possibly missed out on both great wealth and, strangely, some (almost incompehensible) element of pleasure.

I could, for instance, have become skilled at computer programming. I would have learned the different forms of Basic, C, C++, the two great aunts (Fortran and Ada), and thence to HTML, Java, and so on. After all this is an area which hardly existed when I was born, and which has developed through my lifetime. As a bookseller I sold the books which inspired the Internet boom of the nineties, but I failed to pay attention to the content of those books and totally missed any opportunity of becoming a dot.com billionaire.

And then there is the Square Mile. Could I have been an Investment Banker, a Hedge Fund Maestro, a Stock Market King? Again, probably not. I’m not good enough, or interested enough, in the maths. This week I leafed through a new book on technical analysis, Marber on Markets. Here are the charts that define good trading. The “head and shoulders” peaks, the different variations, the clouds, the bounces. And Brian Marber explains all these with the rather fetching enthusiasm of a man who really enjoys what he is doing. Whenever I select a share (I don’t do commodities, currencies, bonds, etc.) I act as if I’m on a racecourse looking for a horse to back. “Ah, this one is a snowy white grey (like the older brother) and is drawn on Mum’s birthday – I’ll back that”. Never will I check the form book, the breeding, previous timings and draw numbers. Marber was the first man to run an Investment Fund entirely through Technical Analysis and he prospered. Not only that, but he enjoyed himself.

The good Captain Aubrey in Patrick O’Brien’s novels, may have been a swashbuckling, fast-living, Boys Own Magazine hero. But he was also a keen mathematician, and wholeheartedly enthused about the subject which, as a navigator, was essential to his career. Only yesterday a septuagenarian neighbour told me how a long coach journey taken a few weeks ago had afforded the opportunity “for me to teach Barbara calculus – such fun!”

Maybe I’d better stop fighting with Sudoku puzzles and try and learn some healthy trigonometry instead. A little strenuous mental discipline would probably do me good.

St Pancras

2007-11-18T14:37:00.000-08:00

Sightseeing with the wife in London and a good time to have a look at the re-vamped St Pancras Station. It really does deserve all the praise it is getting. Okay the champagne bar may be the longest in the world, but it was packed end-to-end. The roof is a marvel and the building combines its three functions – as a public space, as the new Eurostar terminal, and as a normal London railway terminus (with trains to Nottingham and Sheffield and the like) extremely well.

I'm a bit confused about St Pancras himself (there appear to have been two of them). Anyway one or other gave his name to an area of London. There was a church once but it seems to have disppeared by the fourteenth century. Ipswich has a Roman Catholic church dedicated to St Pancras and, according to Wikipedia, there is a village of St Pancras in Northern Holland.

I suppose the only let-down to St Pancras station is the tube connection. The ticket hall for the underground station may be an engineering marvel, but it isn’t big enough to cope (another ticket hall is in process of construction). And when you descend for the Victoria or Northern line there is all the bleakness of an under-funded transit system (unpainted, unclean, pipework wrapped in tinfoil endlessly waiting for someone to finish a refurbishment started many moons previously).

But I ramble on. When the redevelopment of St Pancras as the new Eurostar terminal was announced I thought the idea was bonkers. The terminus at Waterloo seemed to do the job well enough and to my eye is much closer to Paris, as well as being wonderfully convenient for central London. Appararently 84 million passengers used the now empty Waterloo platforms and I hope they get re-used sensibly. I'll eat my hat over St Pancras - it is a masterpiece of refurbishment.

Remembrance Sunday

2007-11-18T14:21:00.000-08:00

In the same way as bonfire night is celebrated over a six-week span, people (particularly TV presenters) start wearing poppies in mid-October nowadays. But, despite all my moaning, it is still a very important occasion and the Royal Albert Hall commemoration was particularly well done. The BBC have found in Chris Stewart a wonderfully solemn voice for the big occasion. How extraordinary to see Harry Patch (the last surviving Tommy from the First War’s Western Front) wheeled out – aged 109.

In my odd way I found myself on Remembrance Sunday, at the 11th hour on the 11th day, in a lay-by off the main Dover-Folkestone road as I hurried in pursuit of a ferry. Other cars had stopped for the two minutes silence including (slightly to my surprise) a French motorist.

Once in France I marked the day by stopping for rather more than two minutes at the Etaples Commonwealth Military Cemetery which has 12,000 graves of Commonwealth soldiers, mostly from the First War, and the almost inevitable Lutyens memorial. A few years back the cemetery was vandalised by yobs with paint spray canisters, but now it looks immaculate. The French were treating the day with just as much respect as the British and the locals had laid wreaths alongside those from Britain and the Commonwealth. Sad though that our troops are still involved in active warfare. Peace on earth would be a very good idea.

Waste of Time - Waste of Money

2007-11-01T12:55:00.000-07:00

Oh heck, I'm starting to rant again.

First the poor old Jeep had to be returned to its maker. I'd ignored the first "urgent recall" letter but the rotters tracked me down through DVLA and I agreed to let them do their worst on Tuesday after an hour-long dentist appointment on the outskirts of Portsmouth. "It won't take more than an hour" said the Jeep main dealer - who lives on a modern estate devoted entirely to "main dealers" (Audi, VW, Mercedes, BMW, Seat, etc., etc.) on the other side of Portsmouth, "so you can wait, if you like".

So I waited, and waited, and waited. The first hour passed by okay, I suppose. I had some phone calls to make, a book to read. Like posh car dealerships everywhere I had access to free coffee, a water machine, and the droning of BBC News 24.

There were newspapers and magazines (an odd selection ranging from Harpers and Queen, to Jeep News and 4x4 magazine by way of Esquire and Hello). But I was getting bored. Did Tchibo pay for the coffee machine to be installed, or did the dealership? Does Eden Springs give a bulk rate to all the dealerships on the estate for providing water machines. Every so often Mr or Ms Car Salesman would come by in search of water or coffee - I tried guessing if they were "Jeep" people, or "Mercedes" people (as Mercedes shared the showroom).

Two hours had passed and I thought about blogging about the delay. I even went outside and took a snapshot of the dealership premises. Thank heavens I had taken the day as official holiday. Even so the wife had TV aerial people fiddling with our connections and would doubtless be impatient for my return. I found the viewing area overlooking the Mercedes service area (very clean, lots of diagnostic kit, boring). Having been reassured that work was progressing on my car I sidled off to check the parking area (might my car still be where I had left it? No).

I then started a patrol of the new Jeep salesroom (rubbish), the second hand parking lot (rubbish), and for good measure checked out the other dealerships(all rubbish unless you have £20,000 or so that you are absolutely want to waste unnecessarily).

Pshaw! The three hour mark arrives and there is news: "They've finished your car and it is now being washed". Washed? My car is there for an essential repair at no cost so what are they trying to do by removing the mud and dust camouflage? It'll be another fifteen minutes and so I start photographing the water cooler and coffee machine, I give up! Never again will I visit a Jeep main dealership, unless ...

And then there is the "waste of money". The new laptop I bought myself comes replete with the new Microsoft Vista operating system. What Mr Compaq and friends never told me was that Microsoft Vista is totally incompatible with Orange Livebox technology (which powers my broadband at home).

Sure Orange are apparently working on "drivers" which will lessen the problem, but you cannot buy a new PC today without Microsoft's new Vista operating system pre-installed. So you are stuffed. Somewhat miraculously (and with help from the father of my latest grand-daughter) this blog has come off the new machine, but Holy Cow (to pardon my French)!

Optimism

2007-10-28T02:17:00.000-07:00

Still feeling as if bits of me are falling apart (housemaid's knee, tennis elbow, a left hand that has stopped working in sympathy with the mail workers, neck a bit troublesome, and the recently done dental work beginning to come apart), but, as the song goes "always look on the bright side of life ... tee-tum, tee-tum"!

Yes, I've been trying to figure out ways of marketing a rather handsome little book on optimism to the widest UK market. Word-of-Mouth is the key phrase in any book's marketing campaign, so the first thing to do is to blog about it.

Every year something comes along (usually a book, or a film, or something on TV) that makes you "think", something that stirs the grey cells, and which leaves something of a mark. This year's "something" for me was actually a radio broadcast (or at least the bits that I heard) that comprised the annual BBC Reith Lecture - Jeffrey Sachs' four-part Bursting at the Seams. Here was an extremely intelligent man talking positively about the world's problems, rather than negatively. I was thus pretty impressed to find that Nick Inman's 'The Optimist's Handbook' acknowledges and quotes Sachs extensively.

That said, it's a pretty difficult book to market. For a start "optimism" is not a bookshop category, it is not an Amazon category, there is no convenient pigeon-hole in library or bibliographical subject indexes, indeed the very idea of "optimism" would be rather frowned upon in many bleak university bookstores. The book cannot be classified as humour (it is serious, intelligent and above all interesting) and has little to recommend it as being news-worthy, or controversial (unless you are a born pessimist); it has no Richard-and-Judy endorsement, the author lives in France and is not a famous personality (so no Parkinson or Jonathan Ross), and it does not have a publishing leviathan's sales force to get it stacked high in Tesco. But on the other hand ... "always look on the bright side of life ... tee-tum, tee-tum"!

If Ben Schott's Almanac can do it (spectacularly), then Nick Inman's book must be given every chance. Tomorrow I'll see if I can get it into art gallery and museum shops as a Christmas pick-up, ditto the National Trust. I'll press forward with production of a bookmark for free distribution in bookshops -using some of the great quotes included in the book:

'Twix the optimist and the pessimist
The difference is droll;
The optimist sees the doughnut
But the pessimist sees the hole.
- McLandburgh Wilson

Trust Allah! But always tie up your camel.
- Arab Proverb

I'm an optimist, but an optimist who always carries a raincoat.'
- Harold Wilson

So, rather than complain about the "housemaid's knee, tennis elbow, a left hand that has stopped working in sympathy with the mail workers, neck a bit troublesome, and the recently done dental work", maybe I'll take the Robinson Crusoe approach to life this week:

Evil: I have a bad knee, a painful hand, and a dental repair job that's gone pear-shaped.

Good: But your other knee works just fine, ditto with your hand, and all the other dental repair work is in excellent shape.

Crocked

2007-10-14T02:21:00.000-07:00

I'm beginning to feel sympathy (as opposed to irritation) with England's sporting heroes and their constant injury problems. Flintoff, Owen, Wilkinson, Terry - there doesn't appear to be a single sporting hero who hasn't been on a long-term sick list recently.

For myself, I survived the Blackpool adventure more or less intact, but fouled up my right knee trying to clean out-houses in France. Add to that my hauling every single box of books returned from the Conservative Conference from a pallet store in Alton back to the Petersfield offices on Thursday and Friday (four jeep-loads), and then spending most of Saturday unpacking every box, sorting the books by publisher and then repacking them, I have additional difficulties to moan about: left hand non-operational (recurrence of finger-sprain), right hand okay apart from a chunk removed from fourth finger in tussle with trestle table), left leg knackered as it has to do all the work of the right leg (effectively dead). Thank heavens that the neck hasn't decided to join the party.

Today is Sunday, and I will rest up. I'll reflect on last night's remarkable rugby. I may read a book for an hour or two. I'll see if I can lure the wife into a local hostelry for a proper roast lunch. She'll have to cut the food up for me, but a pint of ale, a bottle of red wine and a snooze should set me on the road to recovery.

Depression, Depression, More Depression

2007-10-10T10:57:00.000-07:00

Being born under the sign of Cancer isn't much of a help. Every time an important decision comes along I start the sideways manouevre, shuffling about in the sand, delaying and prevaricating, um'ing and ah'ing, a bit like an erstwhile employer of mine of whom it was said he wouldn't say "yes" or "no" until the bullet had left the barrel and was about half-way to his chest.

The principal decision to be made concerns the house in France. It has to go. I need the money. Simple - decision made. So we go to France with every intention of having an estate agent's board outside before our return to England three nights later. And what happens? Well I'm unhappy about my first choice of estate agent. I'm unhappy about the likely price. And, of course, I'm miserable as hell at the prospect of losing my one real refuge.

I dutifully swept out the "grange"; I got on my hands and knees to make the arachnid-infested (and mosquito-infested) gite look rather accomodating; and I drove to the nearby town of Hesdin to see if there was any chance of the first-choice agent coming over to inspect/value the house. Inevitably the gite-cleaning meant that my right knee is no longer functional, and the response from the estate agent was a resounding "Non" (as if I wouldn't have realised that one has to book an appointment at least two weeks ahead). Bah!

Still we collected up the last of a bumper crop of bramley apples, some good-looking pears, and some eating apples. And we forgot to bring back the holly bush, and I got a right bollocking from the wife - "you mean we came all this way to put the house on the market, and you couldn't even manage that. The house will have fallen down before you get round to ...", and for good measure, "You still haven't even managed to sell that Jeep of yours after all these years. You cannot afford even to fill it up with petrol; imagine what happens when something goes seriously wrong with it!"

Oh woe, and more woe. And it's back to work tomorrow and I don't feel too hot about that either.

One Less Cast Member

2007-10-06T10:40:00.000-07:00

Today was notable for England's terrific victory over Australia in the World Cup quarter finals; but to the wife and I it will always be remembered as our last day with Scaramouche - aka Scala, Puss Cat, and more recently in this blog 'the cat (just)'.

Heaven only knows where exactly she came from or the details of her early life. The wife and daughter found her in the cats section of the RSPCA Battersea Dogs Home. They set up an immediate rapport but were not allowed to take her home as she had been cruelly treated somewhere along the line (burns were mentioned) and was still under medical supervision. Eventually, and after much coaxing, she was released and became a pivotal personality in our Wimbledon home.

Through fortune and disaster, good weather and bad, she was always there. Sometimes insistent (particularly when the Rambling Nappa arrived in the kitchen early in the morning and attempted to prioritise coffee over cat food), always affectionate and loving, fond of routine - which included a ritual greeting (with soft claws) for the slumbering wife each morning and a special interest in titbits of bacon or marmite toast when breakfast arrived in the bedroom.

She moved easily to our rented house in South Harting. There she maintained a frosty relationship with the neighbours bantams and adored the garden. On our next move to Rowlands Castle this year she quickly became something of a local landmark - sprawled out sun-bathing behind the french windows of our living room, and much commented on by passers-by ("Oh, look!" or "where's the black cat?").

Apart from the family, she'll be missed too by the owners and staff of the boarding cattery (Kats Kastle) in West Byfleet where she was treated like royalty on our frequent trips to France. If we decided to go abroad at short notice Kats Kastle, which is also a refuge for abandoned cats, would find accomodation for her even if they were full to overflowing. She would take up residence in 'Liverpool Corner' - a compound for geriatric, non-violent cats until more suitable premises were found.

The wife and I are determined to have no more pets. Losing them is just too emotional. But we've said that before. Meanwhile, with senility setting in, we'd better start looking for a 'Liverpool Corner' of our own.

Poor old cat. We'll miss her terribly.

Blackpool Days

2007-10-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

The Conservative Conference Bookshop adventure went very well, despite the fact that I never got to blog about it while I was there. The Ford Transit made the journey both ways (we do not mention my pulling out of Sandbach services near Manchester into the path of a fast-moving Tesco petrol tanker forgetting that with a full load of books you cannot accelerate very fast and that a tanker full of petrol takes quite a bit of slowing down - gulp, I'm sorry Tesco).

The hotel was amazingly good, clean and reasonable by Blackpool standards. I got a security pass from the Late Accreditation Office, and by 8.00 last Friday morning (a week ago already) was unloading the van under the watchful eye of some of the 1,179 police officers who were ensuring our safety and security at the Home Office's expense. At 5.00pm on Friday evening we were chucked out of the Winter Gardens as the police needed a 12-13 hour clear period to make a thorough sweep and search of the building. Fortunately the sniffer dogs did not cock their legs on our bookshelves and my colleague and I were able to find a friendly pub to watch England vs Tonga.

I lost a lens from my glasses (the only pair I'd brought) and was helped out by the Blackpool branch of Vision Express on the Saturday (two pairs for £99 in just one hour, with a free eye test thrown in because of my advancing years). I liked the deal although the selection of frames for the "second" pair is limited and my colleagues refer to my 'Swedish Banker' look, as I peer through the small blue frames. Lady co-workers joined us by rail and amazingly at 8.30 on Sunday morning we were open and ready for business.

Over the four days we sold a very respectable number of books (particularly 'The Little Book of Boris', hosted around a dozen signings, and got thoroughly knackered. Boris turned up, William Hague was a sell-out, Sandra Howard charmed everyone, even James Naughtie put in a brief appearance.

As at any "exhibition" event there were moments of hectic (sometimes chaotic) activity followed by strange "angel" periods when everthing went quiet. Odd to see so many TV cameras - often actually on our stand. More than once I asked someone a question only to be answered "Shh! We're filming". We hurried to conceal a remaindered Edwina Currie book when she marched onto our premises. Lots of "Such a shame that Ann Widdecombe isn't here to sign her books"; "When's William coming?", "Will Sandra be here?", and "Are you sure Boris will be here?".

Throughout the event I took soundings about the conference itself - asking journalists, asking politician's wives, asking people signing books how the wider event was going. Throughout the verdict was positive. Hague was good (although his microphone didn't work to start with), George Osborne was "very good", and after Cameron's 69-minute speech-without-notes even hardened journalists were saying that it had been a good result for the Tories.

Sadly for Blackpool this is the last scheduled political conference to be held there for the foreseeable future. Despite the illuminations and general glitter, it is a tawdry place inhabited by pretty awful holiday-makers. Obesity is rife (as are drugs, violent crime, wife-beating and general nastiness) and my stay made me resolve to lose some of my own corpulence. One conference delegate related how he'd received a "hamburger-in-the-face" the night before. The town (and its conference facilities) cry out for regeneration. I hope they get it.

After the closing speech on Wednesday we were able to re-pack our unsold wares, dis-assemble our shelving and get it all packed on pallets. Possibly rashly I didn't go back to the hotel to sleep. I preferred to get out of town and take on the five-hour drive straight away. Soon after midnight on Wednesday night an extremely tired Rambling Nappa parked up his Ford Transit at Rowlands Castle and was thankfully reunited with his wife and cat (just).

Naughtie, Naughtie

2007-09-26T14:20:00.000-07:00

What a dreadful heading! But it was 4.45pm this afternoon and I was, at last, completing my magnum opus - a spreadsheet showing all 400+ titles for the Conservative Conference, their quantities and prices - when the phone rang. A publicist from John Murray, Publishers, asking whether or not I was planning to take James Naughtie's new book to the conference as Mr Naughtie would be in attendance for all four days and would like to sign some. "What book?" I asked, reckoning that I had exhausted every avenue of recent political publishing. "Ah, his new book on Music", came the answer.

How could I refuse? I like James Naughtie's style of interviewing and would have probably accepted a book on pig-farming if he would turn up and sign a few. However it means collecting them from Abingdon en route in my trusty (I hope), rented, long-wheel-base Ford Transit.

Yes, tomorrow's the day I leave the safety of Petersfield and head North for Blackpool. I've got the showcards, the shelving, the cash float. I've got a stapler, some bookmarks and an electric screwdriver. I have a period of peace from the lady co-workers who do not arrive until late on Saturday. And I will probably spend most of the journey northbound fretting about "Les Oublis" - and wondering about what important items have been left behind.

Almost all the expected books have made it, but we are just a tad concerned about Matthew Elliott and Lee Rotherham's new 'Bumper Book of Government Waste, 2008' which has been the subject of heated exchanges with the printers recently. Both authors are at the conference and my modest expectation is that we might sell up to 200 copies. But the books remain stubbornly absent ... as do my credentials and "pass".

In search of Boris

2007-09-25T14:04:00.000-07:00

Well, I've got Peter Oborne pinned down (thanks to pronunciation advice from a reader well used to frequenting Fleet Street hostelries), and there's still no sign of my Conservative Conference "accreditation". We've agreed that a VW Golf will come to Blackpool as well as the Transit van, and an elderly gent called by the office to personally deliver 25 copies of his self-published book commemorating the life of the late Rt. Hon. Peter Thorneycroft. It is a really excellent-looking book and seems absolutely ideal for my vision of the conference. I therefore doubt that we'll sell a single copy.

My lady co-workers have been busily emailing me to complain about the early starts (8.30am each day) and to suggest that they are allowed to sleep in (to around 2.00pm). The wife has been quizzing me as to whether or not the carer (see passim) is one of the lady co-workers (she is).

Meanwhile Boris remains the problem. Will he sign, and when? I have the mobile number of his PA who likes the idea of a flexible timetable, but I worry that we'll either be over-flexible and miss out altogether; or, worse, that he'll come crashing in at one of my rush hours (on Monday morning I have three signing sessions within a three-hour period).

Looking at the conference timetable it all looks rather tedious. Cameron is not scheduled to speak until 2.00pm on the Wednesday, and the only bright spot looks to be the celebrity appearance of the Mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, on Sunday afternoon. At least he once wrote a book (before he became Mayor) and I have ordered up ten copies just in case he passes by the bookshop and cares to sign them. A bit sad in some ways, though, as at my preliminary meetings with the organisers we had been led to expect a visit from big Arnie Schwarzenegger and I had lured the lady co-workers because of this. Better keep quiet.

Nerves Creeping In

2007-09-24T12:09:00.000-07:00

Still no sign of my security pass and credentials for the Conservative Conference in Blackpool. One publisher has managed to double their order which means that I have so many copies of Douglas Hurd's 'Robert Peel' that the van's rear axle is likely to break. My boss is agitating about whether we need to bring his car (yes!), and my lady workers are agitating about having fish and chips on the seafront one evening (yes!).

My main concern is finishing work by 8.00pm on Friday night (constructing the bookshop/stand) and finding a decent pub showing England's World Cup match vs Tonga. Somewhere that serves a good pint of Guinness is called for.

Other concerns: I must phone Peter Oborne about his signing at the conference and I'm uncertain as to how to pronounce 'Oborne'. Will Boris finally come to heel? A nice email from William Hague's p.a. who seems to have her master under control. Suddenly Francis Elliott and James Hanning authors of 'Cameron: The Rise of the New Conservative' are available for a signing. I have plenty of books but no showcard. Why wasn't I more forceful with the "party" about the 2008 Conservative Diary? They have some printed but want to sell them all from the party stand. Blimey, am I losing control?

Then there is the small matter of my breath! I must buy a bucket-load of mints, and bottles of water. Fortunately the new shoes which I have been wearing all day (running-in) are not too uncomfortable, but I must "run them in" for at least another day. I'm worried about parking in Blackpool. I'm worried about how I'll keep up the blogging momentum from Blackpool. And the wife is giving me a bad time for rashly "organising" a visit to the new house by my mother at the end of next week - "much too soon, we won't be properly prepared, most of the house needs redecorating and we haven't even finished unpacking from the move in April".

Oh, woe!

Ranting No Longer - Just Rambling

2007-09-23T14:06:00.001-07:00

It's been a year since I last blogged, and much has changed. More grey hair, another grandchild, a new house, and a new job. I'm still selling books (mostly online) but I do so on behalf of others and receive a monthly salary - a big change from running my own business and paying for the privilege.

I've become involved in different book "specialities". The "ranting" version of me just sold computer books (and still does), but my new persona specializes in books on investing and politics. The cast of characters from the old blog are still intact - the wife, the cat (just), the daughter - bless her.

Returning to someone else's payroll after fifteen years was an odd experience. The new employers have a swish open-plan office in Petersfield and the 10-12 employees all work together. To my surprise I am the oldest employee by a factor of about 30 years (my managing director is younger than the daughter), and a carer had to be appointed to help me through my first months and to teach me how to use an Apple Mac.

We work as quietly as possible (exciting ring-tones on mobile phones are not encouraged) and employees largely communicate among themselves by email - even if the person they are emailing is sitting only three feet away. When conversation does break out it is sotto voce - meaning that the hard-of-hearing Nappa cannot hear a word of what is being said to him. But we've all learned to co-exist relatively harmoniously. For a while the wife got a little agitated about my seemingly close rapport with the young carer (slightly saucy exchanges of text messages out of office hours), but all-in-all it has been a good move - even if it has led me down some strange paths.

Possibly the strangest of the strange paths is my being responsible for the bookshop at next week's Conservative Party Conference in Blackpool. This is a bit of a worrying call as none of us has ever been to a party conference before and I have brought in some 3,500 books to try and sell to the 10,000-odd delegates. The booklist probably includes lots of really unsuitable stuff, but the given wisdom is that author-signings work really well. Accordingly I've got lots of copies of new books by William Hague, Boris Johnson, Sandra Howard, Douglas Hurd, Peter Oborne, etc., and just hope that they all turn up. I've also had a lot of advice from Iain Dale, the political blogger-in-chief who once ran the conference bookshop operation. He too will sign copies of his new books - 'The Little Book of Boris' and 'Iain Dale's Guide to Political Blogging 2007'.

Anyway, four pallets of books and merchandise are heading north already, and I'll be following them in a Ford Transit on Thursday bringing my electric screwdriver, my security pass - if it ever arrives, my camera and a new suit (having embarrassingly burst the trousers of my last suit whilst unpacking books for an investor's event in Docklands last week).