Chelsea tractor

Life for pedestrians here is nasty, brutish and short. Pedestrian crossings are just convenient aiming points to correct the trajectory of accelerating vehicles. Pedestrianised streets resound to the staccato exhausts of scooters and motorbikes driven by boy racers of all ages. Advanced toreador skills are needed, even by arthritic grannies, to weave out of their way at the last moment.

Yesterday we saw a particularly memorable incident. A young woman was asking for help, as her car had broken down in the archway of the Porte Marine. She had got out of her car and was gesturing for assistance.

This gate is the main choke point for all the fuming cars, jeeps, vans, motorbikes etc. which then clog the streets of Old Antibes with their incessant circling, and make walking along the Promenade de Grasse less than pleasant.

A puce-faced, overweight Englishman driving a very large white 4X4 got fed up with all this waiting, and seeing that he could effect a passage through the gate if the woman driver was not in the road gesticulating for help, he gunned his motor, engaged four wheel drive, and literally pushed her out of the way with his jeep. He was treated with shouts of "connard" in a rich local vernacular accent (for an equivalent in English, think a famous, comically Austrian accented quote from one of the Governator's more violent films). The newly christened arsehole drove on imperturbably, despite a number of outraged people shaking fists at him.

But then Denis Genovese, the prudhomme of the local fishermen, organised some assistance. We pushed the woman's car to the quayside, where Denis got out some jump leads from his van. Like many Antibois of his generation, he probably knows more about starting other people's cars than he would let on.

Seen from the other side

Last Saturday, the lifeboat pager went off at ten at night. A routine rescue and a calm sea, fortunately, but we weren't back before 1.30 in the morning.

Some few hours of sleep and I was away for the day on another boat, taking a TV film crew to observe Opération Delphis, a census of dolphins, whales, jellyfish and marine rubbish. Our zone for observation was some 20kms out to sea from Nice.

We never got there. About 8kms into our trip the engine conked out and we had to radio for assistance, duly provided by the lifeboat from Nice. So in one morning I had rescued others and then been rescued myself.

Yesterday we piled into another boat and towed the offending tub back from Nice, ducking as the airliners noisily landed and took off from Nice airport.

Hard tack

On Friday the lads at the lifeboat station inflated a survival raft to teach kids from a colonie de vacance about water safety. As it inflated, with a loud wheezing sound, it stretched and yawned like an elephant waking up. The kids loved it, but a reporter from Nice Matin, who got too close for a good shot, had a real fright.

In the raft were the usual survival items: fishing hooks, chart, torch, knife etc., plus a supply of ship's biscuit. You would need to be pretty hungry to eat it, as I have rarely tasted anything quite so horrible. Still, it is formulated to keep you alive, with a scientific mix of fats and carbohydrates.

The kids thought it was revolting. Not so our doves, who found it so much to their liking that they began bossily pecking my fingers for more...

Soaked down to size

I have to admit, overfeeding those doves had got me a bit worried. They were growing, nay, bloating, at an alarming rate.

It turns out, however, to have been nothing but hot air and feathers. Whilst waiting for her evening meal, Mrs Ringneck got soaked by a violent thunderstorm, and her true dimensions, unfluffed, became apparent...

We have a problem...

Umm: If we'd only listened to the advice Hitchcock gave in The Birds...

By feeding up the doves, they are growing huge, and now tower over us, as we eat our breakfast, waiting to be fed. Just hope they prefer bread to humans!

Modified Behaviour

The BH was none too happy, earlier in the year, when a pair of doves ransacked her window boxes, pecking out all the new shoots and flowers in bud. They were ravenous and shameless, occasionally waddling into our living room seeking further goodies, and staring back at us impudently when we tried to shoo them out.

Only one solution: get them to eat something else, and as far as possible from the window boxes. Doves and pigeons are like very simple computers. A little knowledge of Avian Basic programming and the solution was solved.

I have trained the pair of them to eat breadcrumbs from my hand, up on the roof terrace. They have got so used to pecking at morsels held between my fingers that now they look puzzled when we scatter the crumbs from the breadbasket on the tiles. Food is when you get it straight from the hand.

Train des Pignes

Yesterday's trip to Puget Theniers and Entrevaux was pretty tiring by car, though the dramatic landscape made all the hairpin bends and sheer drops worth it. Much better to have let the (narrow gauge) train take the strain. It looks suspiciously like Arthur's train, and is certainly not a whole lot bigger.