So Many, But Which One?????

You need to get a more accurate car!

 

Actually, I apologise, @KT53, you are right, I checked and speedometers are indeed alleged to be wrong by a certain margin.

It would be fairer just to fine us all for being on he road at all – we are a nuisance and we pollute!

 

Absolutely! I say, bring back walking. It takes a little longer (not in London, though); you just need to plan in advance a little more. For instance, if you live on Lizard point and you want to pay a Christmas visit to a relative on Lerwick, just start walking at Easter time. You won’t have time to do anything else but, as some would say, if you want to go to Lerwick, you probably have nothing better to do, anyway (but they are envious people who are in denial of its natural beauty) … Well worth the walk! And it’s so dark up there, you won’t even notice the time change.

 

You jest but the long-term State policy over here is clearly aimed at getting the peasants out of their (short-term) newly-acquired electric cars and onto their (newly-acquired, of course) electric bicycles. The Agglo of the big towns in Lot et Garonne is spending billions to carefully ensure that motorists will no longer be able access town centres, markets, railway stations, hospitals and leisure facilities. I'm looking forward to seeing how it works when for e.g. you need to get to A&E with a broken leg
Sadly, the net result of this policy is that the town centres and especially the markets, beloved of older and less able-bodied consumers, are abandoned in favour of the big out-of-town supermarkets that provide easy, free, abundant parking.
It's not even as though the peasants have the option of public transport in rural France.....
There's also an element of hypocrisy (isn't there always?) very similar to the tobacco conundrum. 'Road security' fines add up to billions of €€€€s which would be sorely missed if ever their policies are fully realised, so there has to be a careful juggling act between being green, trying not to b****r up the economy even more, and trying not to instigate the next French revolution.
I'm off for a 40km stroll to Bergerac today, to a rare plant fair. I won't be buying any plants, of course, because I've no way of carrying home anything heavier than a potted cyclamen, but hey, c'est la vie

 

AND breathe …!

 

You’ve handed it on a plate. But just a moment, I can’t write here, the conservatory has been commandeered; I need to write this from the crypt...When we moved into our house in 1997, our neighbour was appointed at his place of work by an impulsive and uncompromising lady to deal with all matters appertaining to British sport; being more principled than cautious, he rashly decided nobly to abolish all tobacco advertising from motor racing. Sadly, he had overlooked a crucial factor: his superior was a lady who was not for burning the bridges that tied her husband to the tobacco barons of the realm. Following some shady shuffles, our poor neighbour lost his job; the fact that he happened to be married to a chain-smoker adds irony to the hypocrisy you raised, but it gets better; a couple of years later, his smoking wife, also a bit of a fire-breather, decided to alleviate the heat generated in her south-facing conservatory by installing in their garden two air-conditioning units, each the size of a large bath, just across from the pond adjacent to our conservatory. We had had no wind of this and one day, opening our front door, still on the porch, we were greeted by a droning growl which reached us across the entire house, despite all doors and windows being closed. We made cautious approaches to discuss, but received short shrift. We wrote a polite letter which was greeted by the following response (and I quote verbatim): “Our air-conditioning units make no more noise than the birds in the trees.” We could barely believe that this could have been put in writing. We approached the council’s Noise Pollution Department who sent two representatives, one carrying a clipboard and the other a case filled with sound-measuring equipment; as we opened the front door, the one with the clipboard said to his colleague: I don’t think you are going to need any of those! By the end of the week, the air-conditioning units were banned and had to be removed. But this is where the irony multiplies: our lady neighbour, our bird expert, was none other than the head of the council’s Noise Pollution office. Mrs Lao still dines out on it, rounding off her story with a resounding We had her shut down by her OWN department!

 

We too had occasion to avail ourselves of the local Council's noise nuisance recording equipment in UK. But that was une histoire of a charming if alarmingly reproductive neighbour with Tourette's. She'd start haranguing her immense family of equally charming but linguistically challenged daughters and her wuss of a husband as soon as she regained consciousness and was still going strong at midnight. Every day. Things calmed down somewhat when she saw the recording equipment being delivered, despite her assurances that she'd 'got friends at the Council and we could go ***** ourselves'. I believe that they moved to Spain, which rather unfairly perhaps has ensured that it's the last country on Earth that I would willingly visit

 

This was a very long story and, writing it from the crypt, I tried to keep it short. The longer version would have had to explain that the units, in fact, serviced their whole house AND also contributed to the heating system, so they had to work exceptionally hard, especially as the children would have them working full tilt while having all the doors and windows open. All this worked in our favour. Despite one’s philosophy that half your troubles won’t happen anyway, we are keeping a curious eye on the potential developments of heat pumps … but we’re not there yet … hopefully, by the time they materialize, they’ll be “reasonably” quiet.

Anyway, many waves have since clean washed the shores, civility prevailed, and I regret to report that our tobacco crusader of La Mancha and his wife are now both breathing the unpolluted air of more ethereal pastures.

... Vienne la nuit sonne l’heure
Les jours s’en vont je demeure ...

 

What an interesting spelling! Is it not **** ?

 

I don't know, having led a somewhat sheltered life

 

VERY

 

Funnily enough, that's we are going next. We'll let you know.

 

Judging by how seductive you look on your profile picture, I am not surprised.