My latest Sherlock Holmes short story Miss Violet Dixon (deceased)

My latest Sherlock Holmes short story Miss Violet Dixon (deceased)
The front cover created with Gimp with help from Aubrey Watt on You Tube.

Tuesday 15 January 2013

Today (and for that matter yesterday!) is a RED day, what I mean by this is that EDF (our electrical supplier here in France) has decided in their wisdom to make today a RED day. We are on a tarrif called TEMPO which meand that for most of the year we pay a lot less for our electricity than the basic rate but there is a catch! During the winter months when demand is very high, EDF decide it's a RED day for those on the Tempo tarrif and our electricity costs not 9 cents a kW but 50 cents a kW!!! So, on red days almost everything gets turned off! We know the day before what 'colour' day it's going to be so we can bake bread and run the dishwasher the night before.

On a red day I have to set the alarm clock for 5.55am so I can hop out of bed and switch off all the electric readiators and then go back to bed. We have a big stone fireplace in our lounge which burns logs and we currently have about 9+ cubic metres of wood stored in the sous-sol (the cellar / underground garage). So, a nice fire is blazing and we are warm! Temperature outside is a not so balmy 6ºC whilst inside it's a warm 19ºC. Better than in the UK where it's struggling to get above 1ºC

On a completely different topic, I still find it strange that some websites that I go on (particularly in the US) will not let me write my name as Dick as it assumes I am being rude. Hmmm, this I sometimes can get round by putting D!ck but why should I? Once more we are hit by Nanny State syndrome. Yes, we want to protect folk from obscenity but not at the expense of avoiding reality and contextual common sense. We have a friend who works in a school in the UK, my name is blocked by their mail server whenever we write to her. So, what happens then if the kids want to go and see the pantomime Dick Whittington? Madness!






No comments:

Post a Comment