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We caught the Metro from our hotel (there is a station in the basement) to the airport and all was well, until we boarded a dingy Finnair aircraft (codeshare with Qantas).  After a long delay on the ground we finally got going (Fin in air?), probably not their fault.

But then the plane started falling apart. As we took off, bottles of water tumbled down onto Wendy from a broken pocket above.

We were soon to be served an almost inedible one-course meal - no bread; no salad; no little chocolate or cheese, no desert.  We chose different options but both were equally horrible and pushed aside, hardly touched. It was like the Woody Allan joke in 'Annie Hall': comparing life in general to a retirement home: "terrible food - and such small portions".  We both asked for wine. Red or white?  No varietal sub-options. We were each given a tiny one-glass bottle. Wendy asked for another. Certainly madam - snigger. She's still waiting.

Oh well! Maybe breakfast would be better? But there was no breakfast! The only other food provided on the flight was in a small cardboard box, literally thrown, from side-to-side, as the attendant passed down the isle. It contained some sort of tasteless, bar only marginally more edible than the box it came in.

On the bright side the plane didn't crash. And we have now found another airline to put at the bottom of our list, that was almost worse than Aerolineas Argentinas. 

 

 

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Travel

Southern France

Touring in the South of France

September 2014

 

Lyon

Off the plane we are welcomed by a warm Autumn day in the south of France.  Fragrant and green.

Lyon is the first step on our short stay in Southern France, touring in leisurely hops by car, down the Rhône valley from Lyon to Avignon and then to Aix and Nice with various stops along the way.

Months earlier I’d booked a car from Lyon Airport to be dropped off at Nice Airport.  I’d tried booking town centre to town centre but there was nothing available.

This meant I got to drive an unfamiliar car, with no gearstick or ignition switch and various other novel idiosyncrasies, ‘straight off the plane’.  But I managed to work it out and we got to see the countryside between the airport and the city and quite a bit of the outer suburbs at our own pace.  Fortunately we had ‘Madam Butterfly’ with us (more of her later) else we could never have reached our hotel through the maze of one way streets.

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Fiction, Recollections & News

Getting about

 

 


This article contains a series of recollections from my childhood growing up in Thornleigh; on the outskirts of Sydney Australia in the 1950s. My parents emigrated to Australia in 1948 when I was not quite three years old and my brother was a babe in arms.

Read more: Getting about

Opinions and Philosophy

The Last Carbon Taxer

- a Recent Wall Street Journal article

 

 

A recent wall street journal article 'The Last Carbon Taxer' has 'gone viral' and is now making the email rounds  click here...  to see a copy on this site.  The following comments are also interesting; reflecting both sides of the present debate in Australia.

As the subject article points out, contrary to present assertions, a domestic carbon tax in Australia will neither do much to reduce the carbon impact on world climate, if implemented, nor make a significant contribution, if not implemented. 

Read more: The Last Carbon Taxer

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