This one makes its own custard

I’m not a big maker of puds, though the chaps would eat one everyday… but somehow with yesterday’s weather I thought maybe a pudding would be appropriate.

The main course being duck, I thought an orangey pudding would fit the bill (sorry, I couldn’t resist) and I altered a recipe to take into account the ingredients we had. And here it is:

Orange Surprise Pudding Continue reading “This one makes its own custard”

Adding insult to injury

I realise that it looks as if I’ve really got it in for France today, though it is a country I love and where I have many friends.  But I learned just today that from the spring motorists will be required to carry not only the yellow safety vests and warning triangles but also a breathalyser – well this seems a bit much. The gendarmerie want to breathalyse you and you have to provide the implement.  You then have to make sure you have a fresh one ready for the next time.  There could of course be a market here for producing breathalysers which always read zero!

Death by a thousand cuts

Allegedly Sarko himself is not subject to any such torture. His stratospheric grocery bills and zillion car garage bear witness. But last weekend he had to sit at home while his persecutor, Ms Merkel, arranged a Euro-strategy meeting for AAA-rated members only. A veritable ‘Not-you-Perkins!’ moment! How very dare she?

I do wish there was an English or even French word for Schadenfreude because this summer is going to be filled with it – except in France.

Oh to be in England …

Just in case the heavy snow has not disrupted transport enough in France, there is a strike by airline pilots from today until Thursday. It’s to protest against the government’s plans to impose a minimum service condition on strikes in the air transport sector.  Apparently there were 350 such strikes last year, some of them timed over the Christmas holiday to cause maximum disruption.  The French government feels that such actions give the country a bad reputation abroad – no kidding? – and damage the tourist industry.

Last week there was a teachers’ strike on Tuesday and a local train strike on Thursday.  A minimum service stipulation  has already been imposed on the train unions, but employees do have the right to withdraw their labour if one of their colleagues is attacked.  This is unfortunately a regular occurence on the line between Nice and Marseille.  And a one-in-four train service from Nice to Tende, in the mountains near the Italian border, which only has about four trains a day is not good.  This forces passengers who have to travel to take a train to Ventimiglia, one of those actually running, and wait for an Italian train from Genoa or Savona to take them to Tende or one of the other stations on the line.

We are scheduled to fly back to England on Thursday.  Nice airport has already had problems because it had no de-icing fluid available, so airlines simply cancelled flights rather than leave their planes in Nice overnight. Now the news is that this pilots’ strike, which was supposed only to hit Air France,  is causing delays and disruption to other airlines.

This may explain why a Scot has chosen such a title.

I have a question.

Why do footprints in the snow fill up as fresh snow falls?

Say a footprint in the snow is an inch deep, measured from the surface. Now, say another inch of snow falls. The bottom of the footprint will now be an inch higher, that is, at the original level of the surface of the snow. But the snow surface is now also an inch higher…