Author: sheona

According to a German newspaper a Ryanair captain evicted 120 passengers from a flight from the Canary Islands to Belgium. The group, described as young people and students, had refused to pay excess baggage charges. It is not made clear, but I assume that they had checked in on-line and then turned up with too much or overweight cabin luggage, which a stewardess demanded they pay extra for. The Spanish police decided that none of the group should be allowed to fly, for the safety of the remaining passengers who took off three hours late.  The Belgian Foreign Ministry then put pressure on Ryanair to bring the stranded group home today.

Ryanair likes its passengers to check in on-line, but this invites this  sort of abuse of the cabin baggage rules shown here. I’ve seen it myself on easyjet, with passengers having to pay up before they are allowed on board or in one case a bag full of books being emptied out on the floor to be left behind. I know everyone likes to criticise Ryanair and in this instance they seem to have brought the problem down on themselves. If passengers were made to check in at the airport, luggage could be weighed and scrutinised  before boarding and any problems sorted out without the other passengers being held up.

http://www.faz.net/s/RubD16E1F55D21144C4AE3F9DDF52B6E1D9/Doc~E9F8091C4BAAA4C82989CB07E6A3309DE~ATpl~Ecommon~Scontent.html

I hope all Aussies are having or have had a happy Australia Day. To join in the celebrations I bought a packet of Anzac Biscuits at a local supermarket, even though Anzac Day itself isn’t for a couple of months. I’d never noticed them before.

According to the blurb on the packet, these biscuits celebrate “the enduring spirit of Australian and New Zealand men and women and assumed an increasingly important role as World War I dragged on.” They were baked at home using the ingredients available, rolled oats, golden syrup and flour and were sold as fund-raisers for the Red Cross. Now the company donates (a meagre) 4% of sales to support veterans, through the Royal British Legion in the UK.

They’re not the most exciting biscuits ever, and now use dessicated coconut as well, but they’re good for dunking. Am I the only person never to have noticed these biscuits on the shelves before?

In Homebase again this afternoon, continuing my attempts to find a pot plant holder that actually fits one of the pot plants I want to buy, I heard an announcement over the PA system. This was pushing all their sale lines, including what was described as “an organic bath” reduced to a price just over £1,000. What on earth is an organic bath?  I’d be very worried that while I was sitting in it it might disintegrate into neat biodegradable pieces.  Seems quite pricey too.

We’ve just got home from watching this film at the local cinema, and  what a treat it was.   Some great comedy alongside moments of fist clenching tension as Colin Firth portrayed the agonies of someone with a stammer forced to make a speech.   All the actors involved – and there were many big names – were excellent, including Guy Pearce as the Duke of Windsor. Quite a long way from Ramsay Street!  Timothy Spall’s Churchill growl was marvellous.

I’m not sure about Oscar nominations, though.  I don’t know if the Yanks will be able to cope with court etiquette. As soon as George V had been pronounced dead,  Queen Mary had to curtsey to her eldest son.   And the USA did not have to deal with Hitler’s trickery and lies as Britain did, with the population desperate for reassurance that there was a strong king on the throne.

I’m sure it would be possible for such technical experts as Bearsy and Soutie to add to the CW and photo competitions and such a system that would allow those of us not taking part but enjoying the entries to have a vote, to be taken into account by the arbitrator. Doesn’t Strictly Come Dancing work like that? I speak as one of the “I don’t know anything about (whatever it is) but I know what I like” brigade. Is that feasible?

while we think of OZ  patiently working his way through the pile of DVDs we suggested for entertainment over the New Year.

I was standing in the Marche (sorry for lack of accents) Forville in Cannes today gazing at a collection of this season’s truffles. Prices started at 200 euro per kilo and proceeded through 350 euro, 400 euro, 750 euro to 2,200 euro. I couldn’t help wondering how the sellers can tell the difference between the quality of one small, knobbly, earth-covered bit of  fungus and another. It struck me that the Irish government should really be rooting round underneath the country’s oak trees to see if there isn’t a way of raising some much-needed cash lying buried there.

 

I expect this should really be up on Bearsy’s own blog, but I’ve forgotten its web address. Husband is just reading out the statistics for the first Ashes test. How did England manage that? Might there be some red Aussie faces round Brisbane?  Perhaps it was the wrong LBW decision in the first Aussie innings that got England’s dander up. Even though I’m not English and don’t really follow cricket, I can’t wait for the next test.

Looking at Boadicea’s poppies and thinking of Remembrance Day tomorrow made me realise that our hasty trip to France last month took us past many a signpost with names from both the First and Second World Wars.

Sliding down the eastern side of France, so we could easily reach a frontier if the fuel situation got too bad because of all the strikes, we saw both the Angel of Vimy and the basilica of Notre Dame de Loretto, the largest French war cemetery, from the motorway. Our route then took us across the rivers and departments forever associated with dreadful loss of life, the Somme and the Marne.

The return journey started with a view of Mont Agel overlooking the Mediterranean, the last French fortress in the Maginot Line. The big guns there managed to take out the station at Ventimiglia, slightly holding up the Italian invasion of the south of France in the Second World War. A motorway sign to Vesoul in the Franche-Comte reminded me it was one of the first French towns to be bombarded by the Germans in 1940, driving thousands of refugees on to the roads. Past Nancy and Metz into Luxembourg, where fuel was not only plentiful but cheap. Then into the Belgian Ardennes, with the beautiful forests,too good at concealing Panzer divisions. Signposts to Bastogne. Farther north came the signs for Ypres/Ieper, back to memorials of the First War.

Tomorrow is a public holiday in France and wreaths will be laid at countless war cemeteries and at war memorials in every town and village.

We shall remember them.