- entry 2025/07/06

Going to Big Town

The journey down was surprisingly uneventful. They are putting a roundabout into the middle of Soudan which will be annoying.

A roundabout in the process of being built.

And a lot of the main road to Châteaubriant (Pouancé in the other direction, leading to Laval (northeast) and Segré (southeast)) has been relaid and made nice. Not that there was much that needed sorted. I pulled over into a bus stop to let a long queue of cars pass, and the same on the other side on the way home. ☺

Me letting a ridiculous number of cars go by. 😳

Anyway, I told myself that I had two reasons to go. The first was to get Heinz BBQ sauce, which I completely forgot about because I was more elated at finding the second thing which was unsalted crisps. Like any human, I like crisps. What I like less is all the rubbish that they put into them. In the UK, my preferred crisps were Smiths that came complete with a little salt sachet so you could choose the exact correct dose of salt, which in my case was none.
When I was wandering around the big Leclerc in Bain after having my car seen to, I noticed that Pom'Lisse, an own-brand of crisps, had an unsalted version. I bought two bags because I wasn't sure how it would go regarding quality. But with 66% French potatoes and 34% sunflower oil... they are actually really nice.

I bought...a few.

I got a tin of Heinz Beans. During my summer holiday I will try it. These gave me an allergic reaction, but you know, I'm starting to wonder now if there's something actually wrong with the beans or if this was some sort of side effect of the poison pepper. I know I can't blame pepper for everything - my intolerance of alcohol and orange juice predate that by many years. But the more recent things? I'm starting to wonder - especially as I put pepper into my beans.
So I'll try them again. Bought, expensively, from this supermarket as I have never purchased from here - they have either come from Amazon or from the local supermarket. Getting these should mean a different lot number. Yup, I am the sort of person that thinks of such possibilities.

The summer sales started on the 25^th of June. I didn't even realise until I saw stuff in my local supermarket on my usual Friday shop. Because of this, I stopped by Gémo and Districenter in case there was any interesting clothing on sale. In a word, no.

I then went to Picard for a Buddha Bowl (description here) and, well, that's about it. I had raspberry tart in the freezer and apart from a few little meals to microwave, I didn't get anything else.

Following that, I stopped at Burger King for a cold drink and a pile of onion rings. Yeah, yeah, I know, but it wasn't a meal - I have not forgotten. Just a drink and something to nibble on the way back home. On the way out, I had to lean on the horn. This woman, who saw me get into the car, was yacking on her phone and standing right in front of me. She didn't move out of the way in anything even remotely resembling a hurry. But that seems to have been a theme today. In the supermarket car park, two families were talking and were more than willing to park their arses in the middle of the passage. Can we maybe have an exception in the law that running over dumb pedestrians that won't get out of the way of cars on places made for cars and not people (there's a stripey bit for the people) is fair and justified?

"Keep Calm" it says....BOUGE TON CUL!

The onion rings were lovely, but I felt a bit queasy for the rest of the day. In the three years (three years? already?) since I've been to BK, I forgot how ridiculously greasy everything was. It was like I got a whiff of onion ring every time I burped. So, yeah, maybe next time I'll just get an egg-mayo sandwich from the supermarket...because I don't think my digestion is up to that amount of grease these days. Thankfully I haven't turned into my mom and ended up with a Gaviscon dependency - but there are dumb things one shouldn't do, and I can't help but think that BK is "a dumb thing". I guess I ought to add onion rings to the "learn how to do it yourself" list, right there with cheesecake.

Chocolate bar drinks - review

Three sorts of hot chocolate capsules.

The capsules

I think in both cases we can say it's about 15g per drink. The Bounty and Mars makes a 150ml drink, while the Kitkat makes a 130ml drink.
The Bounty and Mars cost around €4,50(ish) for eight capsules. Kitkat is a euro more expensive but offers 16 capsules.

In both cases, I cut open the top of the capsule to squeeze out the ~30ml(ish) remaining in there.

Bounty

Yes, we shall start with the much-hated coconut one. ☺

This is a fairly creamy tasting chocolate with a hint of coconut. You can taste it more than you can smell it, although I suspect if you gave me this blind I am not necessarily certain that I would be "oh, Bounty". There is a sort of nuttiness, though, so I may guess hazelnut or something.
Ingredients: Sugar, 14% fat-reduced cocoa powder, coconut oil, whey, glucose syrup, 3% milk chocolate, lots of E numbers and more types of whey.
66 calories per drink, 1.9g fat, 11g glucides, fibre not mentioned, 0.8g protein, and 0.22g salt.

Kitkat

Mars

Verdict

That being said, you can do a lot better if you buy a pack of powdered milk and a jar of whatever your favourite hot chocolate is. That way you can make a milky hot chocolate easily and with nothing more than a kettle.
Speaking of which, I think a nice Tetley can help me overcome all of this instamatic hot chocolate.

Scumbags

It is quite stark noticing the difference between Trump's response to the recent flooding (because Texas is a red state) and his response to the fires in California (because it is a blue state). A review by Politico's E&E News indicates that in Trump's first term he was "flagrantly partisan at times in response to disasters" and "hestitated to give disaster aid to areas he considered politically hostile" and "ordered special treatment for pro-Trump states".
It seems as if this trend continues with the second Presidency. Surely the most basic part of running a country is that you're supposed to be in charge of helping everybody in disaster situations, not saying "tough titty" if they voted for the other guy. After all, if you are President, it means the other guy lost, so who they voted for in the past is not really relevant. That treating people as second class citizens may well ensure they'll never vote for you (or your party) in the future.

Trump, of course, is a big believer in democracy. So much so that his response to the shock election of a non-white all-American to run New York was met with threats to defund the city and then to deport the man. The man that was democratically elected.

Speaking of which, the Trump/Musk bromance has fallen apart. It's kind of clear that an alliance of two people with massive egos and their heads firmly up their arses was not going to last long. So Musk now wants to set up a rival political party (because that worked so well for Sarah Palin), and Trump's response was to suggest either setting DOGE on him for all the financial help from the government, or just deport him - given as he's a foreign-born notorious drug user - he offered $420/share for Tesla and $54.20/share for Twitter, 420 is some sort of code for cannabis use.

Now, while I think Musk is trying to stick it to Trump, the thing is that - even with all of his money - he isn't going to become President, like ever, unless he somehow manages to persuade (or bribe) enough Senators to change the Constitution, and - you know - I just can't see Democrats, or most Republicans, voting to let foreign born citizens be able to land the top job. In fact, restricting such a position to a true born and raised citizen doesn't seem an entirely terrible idea (if the UK had such a rule, we could have been spared Johnson - who knows what might have been if he didn't blow along with the winds of public opinion in order to get himself the premiership?).

Furthermore, to be blunt, they are both massive arseholes. So it's not like people that think Trump is awful can cheer on Musk, because he's no better, and vice versa. This is just two playground bullies having a public squabble after a disagreement on how best to wreck a country.

Imperial 200 Typewriter

A typewriter as old as me.

The main problem is that the ribbon has long gone beyond the point of usefulness. I have ordered a replacement from Amazon, and Amazon don't seem to be offering me any next day service any more. The soonest is Wednesday, most things are Friday. Is this an acknowledgement that their carrier can't be arsed to deliver here on time? Or maybe they got the message and will send stuff via La Poste/Colissimo now? And if there's no more next day delivery, do I get a reduction in my Prime Membership? Because this "you just saved €6,99 in postage" doesn't mean a thing if stuff takes as long as the bog standard €2,99 service. Just saying...

Anyway, my ribbon is supposed to arrive on Friday so it gives me a week in order to strip this machine down and give it a clean and apply some sewing machine oil to the moving parts. I'll also need to go over the impact heads with a magnifying glass to see if any need some TLC with a solvent-soaked rag, but a quick visual check didn't show anything particularly wrong.

It seems as if it was quite a popular little thing in its day. Prices now, for restored ones, seem to go from £50 to over £150. I think I paid a fiver in a charity shop about thirty-odd years ago. But those were the days when all this "retro" stuff was unwanted junk that people struggled to get rid of.

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It's not that I don't want to hear from my British friends, it's because your country makes stupid laws.
 
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C Ferris, 7th July 2025, 09:34

Never say Never again - RO E-Book reader update :-)

David Pilling’s Mouldy Lawn, 7th July 2025, 16:37

What drives you to publicise your infantile and puerile views as a middle-aged kidult? Just wondering.

C Ferris, 8th July 2025, 07:45

His Mum used to call us lot - his imaginary friends!

C Ferris, 8th July 2025, 08:26

AI doing programming - programmers washing dishes :-(

jgh, 8th July 2025, 22:31

I've been an advocate of Adult Citizen Franchise for decades, but it's a poisoned chalice, and if ever you try to advocate for it, you are met with a barrage of: how *DARE* you try to steal voting rights from foreigners, RACISSSTT!!!!    My ex-HongKong ex-wife is particular supportive, as she sees millions of people coming to the UK and voting, when she had to go through the seven-year legal slog of becoming a proper British Citizen to get the rights of citizenship (which was stolen from her in 1984), and why the hell bother, when they just hand out those rights like sweeties to anybody stepping off a 'plane.

Rick, 9th July 2025, 06:15

I was pleased when the UK introduced the right to vote for overseas citizens. I am now represented at local level in my previous constituency, but have no representation in Westminster... but it's a start.    As a non-citizen here in France, I have no voting rights at all. I used to be able to vote in the EU elections and also for the town mayor (a privilege extended to all EU citizens), but Brexit went and broke that.    I'm not sure how I feel about non-citizen voting. On one hand you can say that if you live, work, and pay taxes in a country you should have the right to vote there; but on the other hand there's more than enough foreign interference in elections and how well do non-citizens actually know how the government works and what the various parties stand for?  It was quite clear from Brexit that many people had *no* idea how the EU functions, for example.

C Ferris, 9th July 2025, 08:25

Rick can you use the RO MP contact Prog to send a msg to your Westminster MP

Rick, 9th July 2025, 10:30

What I meant is that I am represented as "Guildford borough", there is no MP in Westminster directly representing expats (unlike many countries). Like I said, it's a start...

Rick, 9th July 2025, 11:16

"infantile and puerile views" - note that this is attacking me, not what I'm saying. I guess one can't defend the indefensible.    But, really, I do still wonder why a person that clearly disagrees with my ability to say what I think and my refusal to let injustices pass (because I'm clearly left of centre politically) even bothers to carry on reading? Go read the comments section of The Daily Mail, it'll be more to your liking...    Oh, and kindly refrain from abusing the good name of those who have been beneficial to the RISC OS world, thank you.

jgh, 10th July 2025, 02:14

If you live there... But you're not a citizen. I can't vote in Japan, I can't vote in America.  If you're rich enough to pay taxes you can vote.... Errrmmmm. NO!  My principle is that if you want to participate in the civis you must become a civi. Not buy your way in, not have-a-pulse your way in.    Now I can argue or agree with how difficult/easy becoming a citizen is or should be and how governments can just change the rules arbitarily, eg Hong Kong.

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