Tag Archives: appearing on television

Sunday 7th January 2018 – HEROES!

us granville girondins bordeaux stade louis dior manche normandy franceThe players and officials of US Granville do a lap of honour around the pitch after their match against the Girondins of Bordeaux.

And quite rightly so, because they have just pulled off the Shock of the Century in French football. A part-time team playing Regional football in CFA2 North-West – the equivalent I suppose of the Conference North in the UK, have just knocked Premier League Bordeaux out of the French FA Cup.

And they made it look easy too.

Getting to the ground was quite something because the street was cordoned off and I had to drive miles to meet Terry. But we made it in plenty of time. And I was interviewed on France 3 too! My fame is spreading!

us granville girondins bordeaux stade louis dior manche normandy franceAnd it’s just as well that we got there early because the Stade Louis Dior was packed.

We ended up standing on the bank on the training ground looking aross at the pitch because it was the only really decent vantage point.

And we were treated to an event that I for one won’t ever forget.

I’d had another less-than-impressive night and despite it being Sunday I was wide-awake at 07:30.

Mind you, I’d been on my travels during the night, and a welcome return to our nocturnal rambles of Nerina and Zero. Formerly regular visitors but have been conspicuous by their absence for a while. Nerina and I were trying to book ourselves into a hotel in West London and having an inordinate amount of difficulty doing so, and I was close to losing my cool. Nerina suggested that we went for a walk to cool down, so we went outside and found ourselves aongst a large numger of Orthodox Jews who were diriving horses and carts laden with goods and produce pretty much as they might have done in the late 19th Century. We ended up walking along the towpath of a canal and Zero went skipping off with her head in the clouds. I was pointing out these tourist signs of historic object and the like and trying to interest her in them but like most kids of that age she was more interested in flowers and butterflies and the like.

I waited until 08:00 to leave the bed and by 09:00 I had breakfasted. And then – SHOCK! HORROR! I went working on a Sunday. I brought up the television and assembled it, and then had to do some rearranging of my living room to find a place to install it. That even involved some more vacuuming!

Configuring it was another thing – not helped by the fact that there were no batteries in the remote control and I had no fully-charged ones lying around. I’m short of good AAA batteries so I need to buy some more.

It took me ages to try to find the “DVD” switch on the remote control and in the end gave up. But I installed the DVD player anyway (and the remote control for that has stopped working) and much to my surprise the TV recognised automatically the signal from the DVD and started to play the disc.

So I sat and watched a film. And it really is nice to watch a DVD on a decent screen after all these years. 80cms is pretty big in my apartment.

And then the football.

Quite frankly, the Girondins of Bordeaux were abysmal. They had a midfielder by the name of Jérémy Toulalan. In his career he’s had 36 caps for France, transfer fees of almost €20,000,000 and when he was in Spain he was on a salary of €4.2 million. And yet if ever there was a player so disinterested in a match I have yet to see it, even in District football. In my own personal opinion he should have been ashamed of himself because it’s players like him who ought to be pulling his team up when they are down, not chickening out of the game.

If there ever was a gulf between the two teams, you would have said that it was Granville who were the Premier League team. They took the match by the throat and went on the rampage from the kick-off. And Bordeaux had no answer.

Had Granville’s finishing been any better they would have been 3-0 up after half an hour. They missed a penalty after 10 minutes and had two other shots at point-blank range either saved or blazed over the bar. And that’s not counting the shot that the keeper completely misjudged and had to hastily scramble over the bar to save a load of omelette sur le visage.

The Girondins of Bordeaux scored with their first attack after 37 minutes, but that was their best effort. US Granville’s keeper didn’t have too much to do.

In the second half, Granville came out as they went in – storming down the field driven on by the n°2 and the n°8 who had the games of their lives. And as the match progressed you could sense that it was not impossible that they might do something here.

And as we drifted into the final 5 minutes with Granville camped in the Bordeaux half the most amazing thing happened. The Girondins began to lose their discipline. We had a rash of yellow cards and then, totally inexplicably, the Girondins right-back put in a dreadful challenge on the Granville winger right out on the touchline. There was no need for it – the winger was going nowhere and it really was a vicious tackle. Result – a RED CARD.

Girondins of Bordeaux down to 10 men.

4 minutes of injury time and with 3:50 played, the Granville n°2 put in a low cross into the area. It took a wicked deflection, right into the path of a Granville attacker who sidefooted it straight into the empty net. He was probably more surprised than anyone else in the Stade Louis Dior.

The crowd was in raptures.

There was just enough time for Bordeaux to kick off before the referee blew for time.

No replays in France – we play on. And Bordeaux for once started to play. They looked quick and keen but by now Granville’s tail was up and they kept them out quite comfortably.

And then a break downfield. No fewer than two Girondin defenders missed the ball and it fell right in front of the Granville centre-forward. Surely he must score with an open goal – but a Bordeaux defender wrestled him to the ground.

Bordeaux now down to 9 men – and the penalty? Well, Stanislaus wasn’t going to miss aanother one. Granville take the lead – and they deserved it.

We haven’t finished yet. Granville, with a two-man advantage, burst forward yet again and a midfielder hauls him back by the shirt. The referee goes over to speak to the midfielder about it, and we will never know what the reply was. But it must have been good because the referee reached into his pocket and pulled out a straight RED CARD.

Bordeaux down to 8 men.

The rest is history. You can’t come back with just 8 men on the pitch and Granville hung on for the most unlikely victory which they richly desrved and did a lap of honour around the pitch.

The manager of the Girondins of Bordeaux said after the match “it was just one long nightmare of a Sunday afternoon”. His side, losing its cool like that and having three players sent off against a bunch of regional part-timers was disgraceful. US Granville came out of the game with credit.

We walked back to the car park and I drove home. Frozen to the marrow and I’m still cold now even though the heating is going full-blast and I cooked a pizza in the oven.

I’ll probably be ill for a week now, but ask me if I care? I’ve had a memorable afternoon and there won’t be another one quite like this.

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Saturday 9th July 2011 – There’a an old French saying …

… to the effect that “il faut etre vu pour etre connu” – which roughly translated means that “you have to be seen in order that people will recognise you” and this is what I keep telling people. You need to get out and about and visit all kinds of events possible and make sure that people recognise you, so that you stick in their memories.

I take it to extremes of course – I drive a yellow-and-black van and all the clothes that I wear are yellow and black – corporate clothing. And it works too. Some people came up to me in LIDL today – “you’re Eric, aren’t you? From the Anglo-French group. We recognised your van on the car park”. And of course, being colour-coded, they knew whose van it was. Works every time.

But with the idea of being out and about, and going to all of the events possible, some times you come up trumps as well.

TF3 indignes des combrailles francois carriat barrot le quartier puy de dome franceFrancois, the local environmental activist from Barrot at Le Quartier, was having another one of his events and he’s asked me to go along. I like Francois very much and his friends are quite friendly too and interested in what I’m doing, and so I went along with pleasure.

But I never expected the French television chain TF3 to have a camera and a reporter there

.

TF3 indignes des combrailles francois carriat barrot le quartier puy de dome franceLuckily Caliburn is sign-written and so I parked him in a strategic place. But I’ve learnt something of a little lesson here ahd what I’m now going to do is have a banner made – one that I can keep in the back of Caliburn together with a few bits and pieces of samples just in case anything like this happens again. You live and learn.

And so it just goes to show – you need to be prepared for all eventualities and have everything to hand. You never know who you are going to meet when you are out. Nothing like this would ever happen if you stayed indoors brooding and sulking.

strawberry moose barrot le quartier puy de dome franceAnd I wasn’t the only one who goes in search of publicity and seeking a presence in front of the television cameras.

Strawberry Moose was pleased to see the television people too and took the opportunity to have his views aired on television. Appearing in public before his fans and making new friends has always been top of his priorities

Interestingly, one of the guys at this meeting was talking about building his own wind turbine. Even more interestingly, this American company I was talking to yesterday sells all of the complicated machinery that you need that you can’t manufacture yourself when you are building your own wind turbine.

I have a feeling that I might well be on to something here.

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Tuesday 27th April 2010 – Well, I finished …

… my tract on distance learning. Normally we can get through one page of dialogue in the 5 minutes that we have, and by the purest coincidence the tract that I prepared was exactly 4 pages long and with breaks in the right place at the end of each page. Now how about that?

But a depressing feature of this article was that I sent a whole heap of e-mails out to all kinds of institutions involved in distance learning, making it quite clear that I was offering some kind of free air time to those organisations concerned.

And do you know how many of these organisations took the trouble to reply? JUST ONE

And do you know what their reply actually said? “Thank you for your recent email.  I am writing to confirm that it has been passed on to xxxx, Head of Media and Public Relations and she will reply to you in due course”. And seeing as we are in the studio tomorrow recording, it will of course be far too late for her contact to do any good.

But one thing that I am learning, and learning quickly, is that there is no such thing as a recession. There are loads of customers queueing up at places with loads of the folding stuff waving around, but British (and some other) companies just can’t be bothered to get off their collective derrieres to go and get it. Employees far too busy on their Social Networks during working hours to actually do any work. And when the place goes t|ts-up as it inevitably does, then there are all the tears and the weeping and the pleading. And in the meantime the customers are fed up of waiting and have p155ed off elsewhere.

Just trawl through the pages of this blog – especially during the summer of last year when I was in the UK – and see exactly what I mean. I know that if there was the slightest possibility of getting my organisation or business some free air time to a whole host of captive customers I would drop everything to do the necessary. It really is unbelievable.

Next stop was down to Liz and Terry’s to see how the not-very-patient was doing and to plan the remainder of our radio programmes – such as the events for the month. And here was another thing – we have (as you can probably imagine) abandoned our idea of contacting the local government offices for information as they can’t be bothered to reply either and instead we have approached regional Government for their assistance. They very kindly sent us an extremely useful booklet with all kinds of helpful information. But as we were scanning through it, it didn’t look quite right. Colser examination revealed that it was the booklet for …. errrr …. 2008.

I tell you what – I am getting thoroughly sick of this. It must be dreadful trying to do this kind of a job for a living – with 90% of all enquiries going unanswered, 5% replying too late, 5% when they do reply not taking it seriously. Invited guests who promise to attend suddenly disappearing and leaving us holding the baby.

And do you know how much Liz and I get paid for doing all of this? Absolutely nothing at all. And there’s no expenses budget either. We travel at our own expense, pay for our own phone calls and the like. And last month at the studio they didn’t even offer us a cup of coffee, despite the plainest of plainest hints.

Yes, it isn’t easy being famous and my hate goes off to everyone else who has made it to the top like Liz and I are going to. They talk about dogged perseverence, sheer bloody-mindedness and all these other characteristics that are essentials for stardom and having been celebrities for just a couple of weeks, we can understand exactly what they mean.

And that reminds me, said her, abandoning yet another good rant for the moment – we have to wear our best bib and tucker tomorrow because we are going to be photographed by the press.

In other news my 3D modelling has been restarted now that I’m home. And I did manage to find a freeware canoe so that my characters stranded on the beach could paddle off to safety. Had I not managed that they would have been up the creek without a paddle. But as I was preparing their getaway I came across a freeware flying bathtub.

Now isn’t that much more exciting? it can take my characters onto a whole new plane.

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Monday 12th April 2010 – Well, we are all going to be famous now.

We were all filmed at our Anglo-French Conversation Group this evening – but there’s no need to get excited. It was just one guy with the camera and the microphone and that was that – all very low key. He asked me about 6 questions and then proceeded to film the attendees and ask them a couple of questions.

I was all on my own to do the organising though as Christiane had to work and Liz was busy rescuing Terry from the hospital where she had taken him yesterday. He had had a fight with his chopsaw and finished second.

home made cloche les guis virlet puy de dome franceToday I finished my megacloche and if I had have had time to photograph it I would have regaled you all with a photo yesterday. But anyway, here it is today. It’s 1m20 tall, 1m20 deep and 1m60 wide. The front slopes at 45 degrees and so is a veritable sun trap.

Or it will be when I put some glass in it. I don’t have enough old caravan windows to finish it but Simon reckons he has some old windows lying around and I can go and liberate them in due course.

Once I finished that I started moving the old pile of gravel that I had left when I was taken ill in 2003 and also digging over another raised bed. I know – I said that I wouldn’t dig any more but I have to fight my way in to where the fruit trees start, and there is a strip of about 3.5m x 1m looks so inviting for a bed of potatoes if I can get all the ground alder out.

Being on my own this evening I told Bill about Terry’s little contretemps and asked him to explain it to everyone, which he duly did.
“Not his whole finger? asked Mark incredulously.
“No” replied Bill. “The one next to it”.

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Saturday 10th April 2010 – It’s Saturday again.

Where did the week go? I’m organising Monday night’s meeting of the Anglo French Group and it seems like only yesterday that it was last Monday night.

And so why do I need to organise the meeting? Well, we are all going to be famous. French TV has heard about our radio show and is coming to interview us on Monday early evening. They also want to have a nosey at the Anglo-French Group and have a chat with them.

Well well well!

So today seeing as there was only one footy match this evening – at 20:00 – it was “shopping in Commentry”, and I had quite a good day. Apart from the usual stuff they had good quality spades on sale in ALDI (I have a garden fork and a shovel of this brand) so I bought one to replace the spade that was broken. I’ve been using the Deputy Spade for the last few days but it’s nothing like as good.

I was also doorstepped on the carpark of the ALDI by someone who wanted to talk about solar panels. A man who has lived 20 years in France and can’t speak French! I asked him if he was planning to learn and he said that he couldn’t be bothered. It really beggars belief – all these Brits that moan like hell about foreigners who come to the UK and won’t speak English and insist on native-language help in British Government offices. They ought to come over here and look at some of the Brits – they won’t moan about them, I bet. Yes, there are even plans to have English-language assistance in some of the French town halls.

Not that I’m all that bothered about it but it’s the people who need the English language help over here that are the ones that moan about the foreigners needing native language assistance back in the UK. The irony goes totally over their head.

While I’m in “rant mode” – remember the other day that I was talking about dealing with some people by the employment of a pickaxe handle? Well, it just so happened that at the Bricomarche they had some pickaxe handles on sale and seeing as I didn’t have one in Caliburn I treated myself. Now let someone argue with me. Never mind the baseball bat – I’m not into globalisation and a good old pickaxe handle as used by generations of British tea leaves will be just fine.

Glorious hot day too, and nice and warm in the swimming baths at Neris but no swimming races or swimming galas. I was quite disappointed. But I wasn’t feeling down – there wasn’t any need to seeing as we didn’t have the pleasure of their company.

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Tuesday 6th April 2010 – I think …

… that Spring might actually have made it.

Yes, a glorious hot day, but of course we have had these before. What actually did the business though was that the temperature in the heat exchanger got up to over 50 degrees – the first time since as long ago as 8th September, would you believe – and in the 15 litres of water underneath the caravan window we had 32 degrees – easily and by far away the highest temperature since I installed a permanent thermometer a few weeks ago.

Yes, Spring might be here but this morning wasn’t. That’ll teach me to mess around with this 3D animation program until it’s starting to get light outside. The boulangere woke me up – at 11:30!

raised beds les guis virlet puy de dome franceBut as I said it was a beautiful day, and I took full advantage by planting the lettuce that I bought on Saturday. They’ve gone into a bit of a raised bed that isn’t covered off by a sheet of corrugated iron.

They don’t half look insipid when they are transplanted though and a really good watering didn’t seem to improve matters. They’ll probably need a day or two or three to revigorate.

And after lunch I started to dig out where I’ll be putting the megacloche. And that was none-too-easy as the whole area is honeycombed with tree roots. Of course I forgot to buy a handle for my pickaxe and unfortunately I broke my really good spade, leaving me with just a cheap one. I’ll have to scout around for a new one and it’ll have to be good. Cheap ones don’t last long round here.

I was interrupted by this TV presenter woman who wanted a chat. It seems that she’s serious about talking to us. Our fame must be spreading!

And would you believe it – it’s started to rain now!

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Sunday 4th April 2010 – Easter.

Yes, it’s a Bank Holiday and that can only mean one thing – a day off.

So coffee in bed once more and a lie-in until 10:15. After that I read a book and did some work on the computer and that is the sum total of my day.

In fact I’ve been having a bit of fun on the computer. There’s a 3D animation program that’s been doing the rounds – pretty old technology and ages out of date, and it’s just been released on freeware with a few specimen characters. Anyway I downloaded it (it took almost all afternoon because it’s huge) and had a play.

Actually it’s something of a misleading offer because although it’s true that it’s all free, you get characters that are for all intents and purposes featureless and although you can animate them as they are, you have to buy the accessories like hair, eyes, clothes and the like. The program is tremendously complicated and there is also no instruction manual or help facility – what there is is an on-line forum where the contributors, in typical internet on-line forum manner, just hurl all kinds of abuse at each other. Total waste of time.

But after about 3 or 4 hours at it and with a shed-load of perseverence I managed to create my first animation – not very exciting but it’s a start. It’s the kind of thing you can have hours of endless fun doing if you have the time to spare. But it’s not something I’m going to be chucking any money at.

In other exciting news it seems that our radio programme has attracted the attention of French television who want to be put in touch with the presenters (Liz and Yours Truly). It’s something to do with a television programme about the Combrailles. It all sounds thoroughly exciting.

And in other other news, I see that the Zionists have allowed a delivery of clothes into Gaza – the first since 2007 in case you were wondering. For a race that complains about the inhuman treatment that they received 70 years ago they should know better about treating others with even more inhuman treatment. And the fact that they claim so bitterly about “terrorism” when the territory they occupy was captured through terrorism is so ironic as to be insulting and indecent.

I have no sympathy with them at all – if they treat the Palestinians (many of whom are Christians) like dogs, then they deserve to be bitten.

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Friday 9th October 2009 – Well I never!

groupe anglo francaise group combrailles queue de milan pionsatWell, alright, maybe I did just a few times.

But we had this impromptu Anglo-French conversation group meeting for the benefit of Dutch television and despite the fact that it was all done at such short notice, we managed to have 20 attendees.

Now I can’t think of any meeting apart from the inaugural one back in June last year when we had 20 people. And some people there tonight we hadn’t seen in ages and others we hadn’t seen at all. Such is the lure of the silver screen and the opportunity of being behind it instead of in front of it. The acid test though will come on Monday evening at one of our habitul reunions. If we manage to get half of the “extra” people to come there then I promise you that I will eat more humble pie.

And talking of being stage-struck, I was gob-struck. I know that it’s very rare that I miss out on a publiclty opportunity but a couple of people who appeared at this meeting brought with them a pile of publicity leaflets for the businesses that they are running. One woman owns a hot-air balloon and there was certainly enough hot air at this meeting to have got her balloon off the ground with no trouble at all.

tongue and groove attic windowBack in the attic I’ve finished the tongue and grooving as much as I can and I’ve framed the windows in the roof. I can’t do any more until I’ve fixed the next lot of plasterboard, which is Monday’s job.

Tomorrow is shopping day which involves picking up my furniture and just a few bits and pieces from Brico Depot. And that will be that because I won’t be doing any more for a while. When the attic is done I’ll be vegetating for a couple of weeks.

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Monday 5th October – I bet that you are all fed up …

tongue and groove attic ceiling
… of seeing pictures of my blasted attic and this flaming roof. But not half as fed up as I am with doing the perishing thing. It’s never going to be finished at this rate.

About another two hours on this side of the roof tomorrow and then I can crack on with the other side. And for that, as well as having to cut around the central beams, I have to make the framework for round the windows.

Mind you, although it took me ages to get going this morning by late afternoon I was well into a rhythm and it was a shame to stop, but I had to go to the Anglo-French group.

I was working with Marianne the journalist tonight and it turns out that she is a reader at the Departmental Archives at Clermont Ferrand. She goes there every Wednesday and she’s promised to take me there one of these days and show me round. She’ll even help me get a readers’ ticket.

But talking of the Anglo-French group, yours truly might be making a dramatic return to the silver screen. My last TV appearance was in late December 1999 when I was interviewed (in Flemish, by Flemish TV) at Brussels (Zaventam) Airport for a TV programme about people travelling to celebrate the millennium. I was in fact off to New York.

rior to that I hosted (again on Flemish TV a programme about my favourite places in my local commune, which at the time was Schaerbeek. It’s one of the poorer communes in Brussels but it does have some magnificent and undiscovered corners. When I first went to live there I spent every weekend walking around getting to know the place.

My first TV appearance was just as memorable. August Bank Holiday 1974 – the Windsor Free Rock Festival and a TV news crew scanning the field looking for “typical rock fans” and Andrew Jenkins and I staggering into shot, each with a Watneys Party 7 can under each arm. Of course, my parents would happen to be looking at the news just then, wouldn’t they?

But back to the plot. A Dutch television producer wants to film the Combrailles and the efforts that are being made to welcome foreigners to the area. It seems that our little group has attracted their attention and they want to film us. These days we are about 12 or so regulars who come week after week after week more or less. Liz is sending out a mail to all of the subscribers to tell them of the filming. I’ll be interested to see how many of them turn out for the camera. Nantwich Parish Church usually has a congegration of about 15 for the evening service but when “Songs of Praise” was filmed there in the late 1960s you couldn’t get into the church for all of the dramatically-born-again-Christians who crawled out of the woodwork and into the church.

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