Smiffy2

Frozen chips, sausages, pies & pasties, small portions of roast meat, the things I quoted earlier. The point is that it's smaller, simpler and cheaper to run than a big oven. Some charities give them to families in financial distress as a way of cutting energy bills.

Yup. Good for chips, chicken breasts, sossidges, pies and pasties, roast veggies. Not for gourmet meals, but a good time-and-trouble saver, but a thing that rhymes with mugger to keep clean. And even the big ones are small.

Well the one on Channel 5 has been a complete pile of Donkey Gonads. I use my airfryer quite a bit, but it's easy to get in a rut - I'd like some new ideas, and not necessarily those that require a top-of-the-range multimode singing and dancing AI controlled model, but ideas that are sensible - I'm not going to fill the basked with curry (no, really). The one I have in France can be controlled from my phone. Why? I have to be there to put the ingredients into the damned thing, why would I wander off and start it from another room? Pointless. And breathe...

Morning all. Woken at 7.30 by the Amazon driver playing knock down ginger. Order included 3.5kg of birdseed, in a plastic tub. A broken plastic tub. So the birdseed was in the box; when it poured out over my feet on the doorstep it gave me a clue that not all was well. So now I have 5 litres of loose birdseed and nowhere to keep it. Impressed? Not so much...

Same thing happened with DIY SOS, the stories took over, and it often felt awkward...

Wasn't he the Singing Bus Driver?

A reception room is one in which you receive people who visit you. That simple!

In the brief period of my life in which I worked for an estate agent, yes, downstairs rooms were referred to as 'reception rooms'. Probably not the dining room, unless you were stretching it. And some of the stories I could tell...

Ummm... I have 2 or 3... Front room, breakfast room and dining room. (Which is full of #1 son's possessions at the moment.)

I've just seen an episode of the Australian version of 'Repair Shop' - the programme where members of the public bring broken things with high sentimental value to a bunch of experts who fix them up and leave everyone with a nice, warm fuzzy feeling. The Oz one left my jaw on the floor. A kid brought in a train set - literally a Hornby Dublo 3-rail set which had belonged to his grandfather. Neither he or his mother had ever seen it set up or running but they wanted it fixed. The boy said he wanted to see his 'favourite train' running again. He said it was the Flying Scotsman. That got my attention, 'cos I don't remember that one... In fact it was 'Duchess of Montrose' in BR Green. Missing the front bogie, the pony truck and the tender. And, it transpired, the motor. They gave the job to the 'electronics expert' - who repairs radios and so on. He proceeded to strip the motor from a working loco and just stuck it in Montrose. Which they then gave back to the child (who struck me as being a bit odd) still minus tender, bogie and pony truck, with no attempt to clean it up from its rather shabby condition. Then triumphant bleating as it ran round an oval of track on just the driving wheels whilst said kid squealed with delight. When I have seen what the team in the UK version can do I was appalled...

Julie says 'TRY A MAGNET'... duh. It's not steel.

@jamie92208 Chimp question... How can I tell if it's steel? If it is I assume it will bend?

I wonder if I might impose upon the worthies here for some advice, given that we have modellers of skill and resource? My daughter-in-law's father died last year, and she was greatly upset. Last month she visited - he lived in Spain - to find some mementoes to remember him by, only to find that most had been thrown away. She did find, however, a model plane (he was a keen amateur pilot) but in packing it her mother broke it into pieces, bent pieces at that. This is how it is now. It is very heavy, and may have either been a kit, or has been repaired in the past - signs of superglue. What advice would you give a chimp who is desperately keen not to screw this up, as it would mean so much to her to see it fettled and standing on a proper plinth. The metal doesn't seem to be too brittle (I've partly straightened the airscrew with my fingers) but I know how casting metal goes... I've also cleaned and fettled one of his film cameras (Nikon F60) and found a film in it which I've sent off to be processed. I'm planning to use that camera to take a 'family portrait' of Dan & Rebecca and have it framed as a memento. So any sound advice would be extremely appreciated. TIA.

And all good lesson plans, of course.

I have just seen the Governor in Maryland state that 'prayers are working' in the bridge collapse rescue efforts...

Morning all. Weird weather here in La France Profonde, sunny one minute then driving rain, heavy winds and cold... Had a man come and do odd jobs yesterday, and I managed to sell him an unused lawnmower. Good outcome. Feral cats still feral, happy to eat but not play. Ungrateful little mammals. One actually clawed me when I gave him a treat. On the checkout thing I've noticed that just this week the LeClerc in St Hilaire has got a self service section, but just two tills. Given that most people here have a ten minute chat with the checkout operator every time they go through I doubt they will be popular except for the lads going through with a bottle of pop and a bag of crisps at lunchtime. No whelks, but we do have oysters...

In colloquial English 'French' often means 'done differently so we assume it's foreign and France is nearest' - see also French Knitting and French Cricket. And 'pardon my French' when using an English, or even Anglo-Saxon swearie.

Surely pain perdu is sweet, and eggy bread is savoury: they aren't the same thing.

L'Armee de l'Air has just been over - four Dassault Mirage 2000s at 200 feet, somewhat noisy! But quite impressive...

Big fan of fish, chips and mushy peas. Oh yes. When I get back to England... Speaking of food Julie and I went to the English Breakfast Club in Notre Dame de Touchet this week. It's a charity thing run by a group who support English cancer sufferers in France. We met up with some friends, and a new bloke who seemed a bit lonely and glad of someone to sit with and chat to. The breakfast was excellent, sausage, bacon, hash browns, fried egg, tomato and toast. Could have done with some boudin noir, but there you go. I think we'll go again. Yesterday I made Bolognese, must be more French - no sanglier around but I did buy a huge tray of local free range pork. Have a Fantastic Friday Folks!

On the dodgy photos subject there seems to be a lot of misunderstanding. This is based on the difference between 'editing' and 'manipulating' an image. One is acceptable, the other is not. I'd be inclined to take her at her word. She is an 'amateur photographer'- albeit with access to the very best gear, and the latest Lightroom and Photoshop. We all mess around with photos and I doubt she's ever thought about the difference between editing and manipulating. Editing is cropping, altering colour saturation, colour balance and perhaps definition. Manipulation is altering the image in some material way (for example, at its simplest, using the Photoshop 'Replace Sky' command or one of the other presets). I do that all the time, makes for some nice images. For publication editing is OK but manipulation isn't - for AP even removing red-eye counts as manipulation. This is for very obvious reasons. I very much doubt she has ever made that distinction, or even heard of it. I doubt many amateur photographers have, either. And I can't for the life of me see what she has done - unless she has taken two images, where one of the kids has a happier face and swapped them over. Easily done and wedding photographers do it all the time. But manipulation. So - TL:DR - nothing to see here, move along, leave the poor woman alone.

The cat jiggered off. This is him:

Morning all. Smiffy here in La France Profonde. La France frigide... Not done much except clean and tidy for old friends coming out tomorrow. Yesterday I jetwashed the patio at 6º in a pair of Julie's crocs. Didn't do my legs and back any good... Today shopping and then five days of drinking, talking and possibly visiting the English Breakfast Club. More of that later. Oh, and we seem to have acquired another cat.

Back in about 1971 I did a teaching practice at Southmoor School in Sunderland. It wasn't a Jewish school, but had many Jewish pupils, so we finished early on Fridays, so they could get home before shabbat. I'm told that the once-vibrant Jewish community of Sunderland has mostly been dissipated; kids left to find work and eventually their parents followed them.

Wotcha whelk-worriers. It's been a bit full-on today. Took Julie up to Guy's so that she could have a tooth extracted, so now she's a gummy mummy. Same as with me, the extraction bit isn't so bad but we both react to the anaesthetic/whole procedure and end up a quivering (literally) wreck - and after the extraction, of course, she had pretty much the length of the Northern Line to contend with (although no problem getting a seat). That was about five hours, start to finish. Then when we got home I messaged #1 son to say all was well and he told me that he was in A&E at St Helier with d-i-l who was having serious breathing problems. She went out to see her mother in Spain over half-term and caught something, turns out to be a viral infection, so she's on antibiotics and steroids. Not good. On the bright side I chucked a load of cash at Daisy to help pay for her school journey - New York... Made her happy. Tomorrow I sort out the car for travelling to France. It's a bit grotty... Have a good weekend everyone, and happy birthday, Ian.