A Whole World Of Pain

I, along with a fair few of my fellow Britains, am ashamed to be ignorant. Ignorant towards our fellow Europeans in a way that makes us feel small minded and, to a certain extent, xenophobic.

I am currently writing this in Lyon, France – a beautiful city full of incredibly friendly people however my shame comes from being completely ignorant of the french language. Apart from a ‘non’ here and a ‘merci’ there, I am currently relying on the locals having learnt a second language – something I never did at school.

Fortunately, I have managed to get by using the time honoured fashion of hand gestures and pointing but it has made me seriously regret not learning a second language in my youth! Last night we searched in vain for a restaurant with a menu that we could understand and eventually found somewhere that listed their menu in English. Again, feeling a little shamed we dined and found it to be a fabulous experience. The traditional Lyonnaise menu seems to consist of interesting foodstuffs such as breaded tripe and tripe sausage, but the taste is incredible.

… and no visit to France could be complete with a large glug of wine and a Creme Brulee to finish with. It is just a pity that the taxi drivers are all completely mad! Having just returned from a meal of duck soup and sea bass, our taxi driver seemed like he had just taken delivery of his new Toyota Prius and spent the journey trying to converse with us in french whilst saying ‘cool’. Now maybe he was swearing and laughing at us in his native tongue, but our lack of knowledge of his language made us non the wiser.

l’anglais ignorant as they may or may not say in Lyon taxi’s!!!

damn hard week working leaves me ranting away at things as simple as a packet of crisps. But no ordinary packet of crisps, no Siree; these are Salt ‘n’ Shake. The simple ingenious idea of the little blue bag inspired memories of hot childhood summers and Olde English Spangles, so I got a box from Makro.

However like everything else from childhood, the memory is tainted. In the same way that Dundee Biscuits and Wagon Wheels have gradually got smaller, my memory of Salt ‘n Shake surely must be wrong unless the modernisation of packaging lines has been specifically created to piss me off! How can I possibly get annoyed at a packet of crisps you may ask, but here’s the thing (I hate that phrase but it works for me at the moment, don’t hold it against me!), the whole point of them is that you add your own salt and then shake – hence the name – salt ‘n’ shake (I’m not giving Walkers the gratification of capitals for their brand now).

So, we agree on the name, salt ‘n’ shake and not hide and bloody seek! Surely it would make sense for them to put the bags of salt in after the damn crisps and not before? What is the bloody point of me having to empty the bag in order to find the salt? And no, this isn’t a one off affair – after the first couple of bags played hide and seek with my salt, I decided to keep a count (yes, I’m sad – I already know that) and I can statistically state that out of the last 9 bags of salt and bloody shakeifyoucanfindit, 8 packets had the little bags of salt right at the damn bottom of the packet. WHY????

Which brings me to my secondary rant via a non existant segue to the issue of Farepak. Now don’t get me wrong, I do feel sorry for these folks but I can’t understand this whole “donate your life so that these people can have a Christmas” thing that is going on. From what I can see, there are many other people who are suffering financially due to issues outwith their control – vanishing pension funds are a pretty obvious one. I don’t see people rushing to the aid of the person who has worked for 40 years only to find an unscrupulous director has disappeared to the Bahamas with all his pension???

Yes, I feel for them but surely the whole concept of giving your money to someone who isn’t properly regulated seems a bit like smoking in bed with your savings under the mattress to me. Maybe I am in the minority, but I can see many other people who have lost much more than those who saved with Farepak to receive a hamper full of goods that suppliers couldn’t sell anywhere else such as crystallised lemons and dates. They have my sympathy, but there not going to get my money I’m afraid…

for some strange reason, I have been feeling pretty mellow these past few days with little ranting going in. This obviously has put me in a bit of a situation as I have nothing to really grate on about on here, but a recent decision to get rid of our old Mondeo car which had sat unused on our drive for some time, and invest in a second cheap car to do all the miles to the office, got me thinking about car salesman.

Now, firstly I completely understand that these guys need to earn a living, but do they have to be so downright untrustworthy? You would expect that the ones earning a living from the large franchises would be easier to deal with, but no they are quite happy to quote you a price 20% above book for the car you are interested in whilst offering you 20% below book for your trade in.

Negotiation with these guys is a fine art and I have now determined that the best way forward is to send the family back to the car. As soon as the salesvulture sees that the wife really likes the car, they know that they can keep the price up as pester-power will win out (which I why I ended up paying way over the odds for the aforementioned Mondeo).

So now I am back trawling Autotrader for a cheap (sub £2k) motor to do 50 miles a day in — and are there any? Well, there are plenty but the prices are so hiked up that even going in with an offer of 25% below screen price would leave little bargains. I always thought that the influx of all these balloon payment schemes giving everyone the potential to own a new car, would force the price of used cars down simply due to supply and demand – but not in my damn world!

Even more annoying is when you travel to the US and see the adverts over there for cars. The prices are sooooo much cheaper, and they all seem to offer 0% finance over something stupid like 5 years – compared to our 9.9% over two or whatever deals they come out with. For a laugh, I looked at Dodge Caliber’s (principally because it looks silly and I drove a Dodge Durango when I was in the US a few years back). Now I have little intention of buying one but the cost in the US is $14,000 whilst here in the UK it is £11,500 – considering the current exchange rate it makes you think!

So back to Autotrader to look for the pearl amongst the shopping trolleys – I swear that some of the cars there with prices of £1,000 are the same quality as the Mondeo I just sold for £80! If anyone has a Ford Capri they are looking to get rid of, just let me know.