Rick's b.log - entry 2022/05/22

20 years celebration dinner

I fired up the oven...

Fray Bentos Just Chicken

And I fired up the multicooker...

Bow tie pasta!

And after about half an hour, I had farfalle, or bow tie pasta, gently tossed in some marge; and a Fray Bentos Just Chicken pie, which was mostly gravy and pasty. But since those two parts are the reason why I eat it, that was just fine.
Normally, I'd give the pasta a light dusting of black pepper, but thought that doing so might be pushing my luck. As it was Panzani cooked in Volvic, it had enough taste by itself.

Twenty years celebration meal.

So there you go, my twenty years celebration meal... just a few days late.

In normal circumstances, I might have been tempted to go down to Châteaubriant and get something exciting from Picard to go with the Fray Bentos. But there was a minor spot of inconvenience that upset the plans. Or, in other words, shit happened. Oh my god, did shit ever happen... ☺

At the doctor's waiting room

Colorectal testing as of 50 years of age.

I thought this might be useful to know, as well. While it doesn't say "for foreigners that suck at talking on the phone", I guess that could count as an difficulty listening or speaking...

An alternative emergency services number.

And, finally, the government has set up a whole thing around the first thousand days of a baby's life (or until the age of about 2¾) which are not only a giant shock to new parents, but extremely important to the development of a child. Don't show the little bundle of puke enough love, it'll grow up into a narcissistic nutjob and either get a promising career in finance, or become a high school PE teacher.
No self-respecting parent would want to be responsible for either of those options, so... there's a website to help.

What I like about this is the way they've set up the two models, to have such an "oh my god, what have I done?" expression. Especially the woman. She looks like she's wondering what happens if she gives it a gentle poke, while the bloke is clearly thinking "you're tiny, honey, so where the hell did this thing come from?".

Publicity for 1000 premiers jours.

The endless crusade of the conquering windmills

So, of course, I headed in that general direction. And eventually found this at the edge of a forest.

Windmill? Not quite.

It's not a windmill. Nor is it a radio broadcasting tower. And nestled in a dip between a forest and hilly land, it doesn't even make sense as a place to put a windmill, yet...

The reason for the "antenna".

This explains what is going on. It's a test pole, probably has some wind vanes up top, placed there to measure the wind characteristics to see if this would be a good spot to blight with yet more windmills. But I guess this is to be expected given that France has set itself the target of 40% of its electricity coming from renewable sources by 2030. I guess, also, there are some pretty attractive subsidies for people wishing to rent out their land for power generation.
Macron is very much behind renewables. Le Pen, on the other hand, promised to tear them all out.

So, it looks like maybe in the coming years, more blinking red lights in the night sky. Unless the French are dumb enough to vote Le Pen in five years, in which case whether or not there are windmills might be the least of anyone's concerns.

Well, the sky has turned a murky grey, so I wouldn't be surprised if this didn't happen...again.

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David Pilling, 23rd May 2022, 00:10

Hmm I once spent a night in A&E watching a TV repeat the jingle "pee in your wee, go and see your GP" every minute, hard to know what the worst medical attention grabber is.    We had one of those test masts out at sea to check windmills would not upset test flights from the nearby militaty aircraft factory (BAE Warton).

Rick, 23rd May 2022, 20:34

Pee in your wee? Aren't the two words synonyms?  Maybe it should have been "B in your wee, freak out, and then go see your GP"?

David Pilling, 24th May 2022, 17:44

Should have been "blood".

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