A tour of Tours

To France, for a week in the Loire based in the beautiful city of Tours, and then a week of pure self-indulgence cruising the Seine with a programme mainly consisting of consuming great food and wine plus waiting for the next meal.
Regulars will know that I am keen on trams and whilst we we were there we saw the final tests on the brand-new system in Tours. In fact it was due to start today. So we were unable to ride any of the futuristic, glittering trams but here is a picture of what you can expect should you go there.

Where have all the scammers gone?

Prompted by a newspaper article saying spam was still on the rise, it occurred to me that it has been a long time since my contacts in Nigeria have been in touch. I am due a considerable amount of money – probably at least $500,000,000 (FIVE HUNDRED MILLION as they would undoubtedly put it, since I am patently unable to understand a number unless it is spelt out) and all I have to do is just send a small amount – about $2000 should do it – to one of the Bank Presidents or Lawyers or Government Ministers, all of whom (strangely) have Yahoo or Hotmail email addresses, and all whom require cash sent via Western Union.

I don’t how to account for the drop in this fascinating correspondence. Maybe they don’t think I am worthy to receive this unexpected beneficence. Perhaps my failure to respond to any previous emails has put a black mark against my name. All the DEAR FRIENDS and the dying widows, the ex-politicians and the children of air-crash victims – who are they inveigling now?

And on the same theme, the “Compensation Help Line” who phoned about my terrible accident and promised at least £4300 in damages – well I have not had any accidents but maybe they know something I don’t – but they haven’t been back, they didn’t write to confirm and so I am left here, hurt and alone, bereft of aid.  I mean to say, can’t you trust anyone these days?

Windows 7

After many years using, and occasionally swearing at, Windows XP, I have taken the plunge and upgraded to Windows 7. And one of the little goodies it has presented to me is a program called Windows Live Writer which effectively replaces the old Blogger for Word software which at one time I highly praised, only to find Microsoft removing support from it not long after and replacing it with a built in function in Word which in turn ceased to work after a while.
So this little bloggette is written using Live Writer and now I will press the little button that says “Post draft to blog” and see if it works. Note, if you are reading this then it has worked.

Why oh why no 4 revisited

Yippee! It's happened!! Let exclamation marks be brought up from the stores, unwrapped, given a fresh lick of paint and deployed at will!!!  I have finally had a trouble-free journey both ways 'twixt beautiful Ruislip and downright ugly Finchley Road.  No signal failures. No stalled trains. Not even a wayward guard's hat on the track [er, is that a wayward guard or a wayward hat? Anyway they don't have guards any more, haven't had 'em for years. Ed]

So my previous why, oh why can be marked "case closed" and salted down for long-term storage.  That's a relief. But will this be the mark of things to come or is merely a chimerical phantasm [that's the worst kind of phantasm. Ed:], a dream of what may befall, a cruel mocking mirage to be swiftly replaced by severe delays, service outages and advice to use alternative means of transport? I think I better pack up those exclamation marks and put them safely away, just to avoid tempting fate.

Transport catastrophes

First there was a train crash in France on 12 July
Then a very serious derailment in Spain on 24 July
Yesterday a coach disaster in Italy  on 28 July
and now another train crash, in, of all places, Switzerland  is reported today.

This is becoming worrying for those of us who prefer public transport whenever possible and especially on holiday. And these four countries are certainly in my top 10 holiday destinations. I have written in this blog about travels in each of them. I hope and intend to go on holidaying in these countries and will use trains as an automatic first choice of transport. Let us hope this is the end of this horrible sequence and Europe's trains and coaches resume normal, safe, operations.