There's No Easier Way To Find What You - The Bugle

More documents

Recommendations

Info

JANUARY 2012 ○ THE BUGLE ○ www.thebugle.eu 8 ♦ NATIONAL NEWS Newspaper reports 100year-old's birthday 4 pages before his obituary Respected French newspaper La Voix du Nord was left redfaced last month when it ran a story on local man Arthur Deschuytener, who had recently celebrated his 100th birthday at the Alphonse- Daudet retirement home in Lille. However, four pages later in the same edition, they also ran an obituary for him; he had died a few days after his birthday party. Under the headline “Singing in the Century”, they described the centenarian as “full of life” but a few pages later ran the notice: “Staff at the nursing home Alphonse-Daudet are sad to announce the death of Mr Arthur Deschuytener at Lille.” Mr Deschuytener's niece said that he was a “very well known figure in his district because of his joy of life and dynamism” and had been looking forward to his 100 th birthday for six months. He spent it surrounded by friends and family. ■ One of Europe’s largest IT companies has introduced a ‘zero email’ policy, banning staff from sending each other emails. Thierry Breton, CEO of Atos and a former French finance minister, who is behind the move, claims that only 10 of the 200 emails his staff receive on average each day are relevant to their work. Staff apparently spend between 5-20 hours handling these emails each week. British conman's attempt at seduction wrecks villa An amorous Brit found himself in deep water this month when his attempts at seduction caused thousands of euros of flood damage to a villa he had ‘appropriated’ for his intended courtship. The man, said to come from Manchester, reportedly broke into the property near Nice to create a love nest for an American girl he had recently met. He set the romantic tone with Champagne, candles and rose petals and added a touch of his own apparently bizarre style by hanging images of Winnie the Pooh and the Manchester United football team on the walls, as well as putting up a black pirate flag. When he found the rooftop pool empty, he decided to leave it to fill while he went to collect his date. In the end, she was 3 “It is not normal that some of our fellow employees spend hours in the evening dealing with their emails,” Mr Breton said. “The email is no longer the appropriate (communication) tool. The deluge of information will be one of the most important problems a company will have to face (in the future). It is time to think differently.” The company, which is on the Paris stock exchange, plans to use ‘chat’ based tools inspired hours late and refused to come back to the villa with him. When he did finally return, he came face to face with the irate Italian owner who was horrified to discover that countless works of art had been damaged and that the ground floor of the villa was knee-deep in water. The total cost of the damage caused is believed to be €60,000, including broken heating and lift systems. The man had already spent a week in jail for not paying a luxury hotel bill in Monaco and spent another night behind bars for this latest stunt. He has been ordered to appear before a judge at a later date. Apparently unashamed of his actions, the man arrived back at the villa the next day, telling the Italian owner that he had been forced to sleep in his car and asking if he could have his belongings back! ■ French firm introduces zero email policy by Facebook and Twitter for communication purposes. Mr Breton is not alone in this way of thinking. “The email is a real problem,” says Nicolas Moinet, information and communication professor at Poitiers University. “We have now reached crazy situations where employees go to a meeting, continue to send emails and then ask colleagues present to send them an email to know what was said during that meeting,” he told 20 Minutes news website. A recent survey by www. silicon.fr suggests that email may have already had its day; it found that only 11 per cent of 11 to 19 year-olds use it, preferring online social networking for communicating. Personally, Mr Breton said he had already adopted the new method. “If people want to talk to me, they can come and visit me, call or send me a text message,” said the 56-year-old. “Emails cannot replace the spoken word.” ■ Votes come in for new Frenchisms at annual XYZ Festival The Académie Française, the body that has governed the French language since 1635, is notoriously protective about what words it allows into its celebrated dictionary, particularly with regards to Anglo-Saxon invasions. It will be challenged to update it again this year following the 10 th annual “XYZ Festival of new words”, held recently in the northern city of Le Havre. This year's winner was attachiant(e) – a combination of attachant (captivating, endearing) and the slang word chiant (bloody nuisance) to denote someone you cannot live with but cannot live without. Not far behind came aigriculteur suggesting a farmer unhappy with his lot in life – as many are – by mixing the French word for farmer with aigri (embittered). Other entries were the verb textoter (to write an SMS message), something last year's winner, a phonard – a pejorative term for someone who is permanently glued to their mobile – would do all the time. Previous festivals have created such classics as ordinosore (ordinateur plus dinosaur, an outof-date computer), bonjoir (bonjour plus bonsoir, a greeting to be said around midday), and photophoner (to take a photo with a mobile phone). Sociologist Éric Donfu, founder of the festival, says the aim of the event is to breathe fresh life into the French language. “This festival defends the idea, as expounded by Victor Hugo, that language is a living thing and dies if we don't invent words,” he said. Only time will tell if the Académie Française will agree with the festival's voters and include the new offerings into official parlance. ■
Beer, glorious beer!! Regular environment contributor, Arthur Smith from Harlequin Developments, takes a look at something close to many of our hearts... beer! There are environmental factors to consider when enjoying a cool beer, but they do not necessarily need to spoil your enjoyment - in fact, if you brew your own, it can be quite the opposite. I thought this month that I’d write about something that we all might have consumed over the festive season (although writing this before Christmas feels kind of strange), and that might be of interest to readers, namely…….. beer. Beer is an amazing beverage that's been with us for a very long time - it dates back to 9000 BC in Ancient Egypt. Today, it's said to be the third most popular beverage in the world. There's nothing quite like a cold beer on a hot day and I am known to partake of a beer now and then. A major environmental challenge of any beverage or food product aside from packaging is transportation, i.e. food miles. Regardless of whether a beer is made from organic ingredients and bottled in recyclable glass or aluminium containers, it still has to be shifted from point A to point B. Millions of barrels of oil are consumed each year and huge amounts of greenhouse gas emissions are generated just in transporting beer. Until such time that beer trucks are all electric and recharged by solar panels, it's going to be pretty difficult to address this issue on a commercial scale. It seems such a waste that all those emissions and other associated oil consumption nasties are generated to ship what is essentially just water. Nearly 25 years ago, I decided to take a crack at brewing my own beer. The environment wasn't on my mind then, just beer. Cheap beer, and lots of it. Digging back into my foggy memories of the time I remember it being quite an easy process. I bought a barrel, hydrometer, thermometer, bottle caps and a press, plus the ingredients in a readily available kit. Oh, I also needed bottles which by some strange coincidence were in plentiful supply in our house. Soon the amber fluid was flowing in large quantities. Generally speaking it takes about 1 week to ferment a brew, depending on temperature. A cold environment will require an external heat source such as a low wattage thermal pad under the barrel and/or a blanket around the barrel. After fermenting, the beer is left for around a week to mature before bottling. It should then be left 3-4 weeks before drinking. I think I used to manage to hold off for about a week or so. Not one for doing things in half measures, I also decided to see how high an alcohol content I could achieve through the addition of more sugar. I never had it tested, but by god it had a kick! Aside from some undesirable effects, it's not particularly bright to do this because if too much sugar is added, the bottles can explode. If you do drink beer regularly and have a degree of self control, there are many advantages to home brewing. From an environmental aspect, there's very little in the way of emissions involved in terms of transport and you can also gain more control in what you are consuming as there are many organic beer kits now available. If you've seen how much ready-brewed organic beer is, there are massive savings to be had. You could even use rain water for an even more natural brew. You can use glass bottles over and over again, saving on resources and energy used in bottle production and recycling. While recycled glass uses only two thirds the energy needed to manufacture glass from raw materials, the remainder is still a substantial amount. If you only brew during warmer times of the year, you can also avoid having to incorporate an external heat source during fermentation. There's also just something so satisfying about brewing your own! These days, you can buy a home microbrewery kit for as little as €50, containing everything you need to get started, including step-bystep instructions. You can find a ton of kits simply by running a search via your favourite search engine. If you really get into home brewing, you don't need to stop at beer, you can also try cider and with some more specialised equipment, wine, port and spirits. So, if as a result of reading this you do have a go at home brewing, when testing your first batch say cheers to the environment and please also have a beer for me. ■ Arthur Smith Harlequin Developments www.harlequindevelopments.com Tel: 05.55.68.67.56 Mob: 06.06.60.46.97 www.thebugle.eu ○ THE BUGLE ○ JANUARY 2012 FRENCH LIFE ♦ Green alternative uses for beer 9 Many of us will have experienced the morning after syndrome where you wake up to find your home looking and smelling like a bombed brewery. What to do with all those flat, warm, half empty beers laying around? (Unlikely I know) There are so many uses for beer aside from drinking it, using it in cooking or wasting it, and beer can sometimes replace more environmentally unfriendly products for a variety of applications. Here's a few ideas: Dealing with snails and slugs - Snails and slugs love beer. A beer trap can be made which is just a small dish or jar with beer poured in and then buried in affected areas up to the rim. The snails and slugs drop in but can't get out (a sort of ‘Cheers’ for gastropods). Another interesting variation on this is to spray beer on weeds so the snails eat those instead of your plants, thus using a pest to control a pest. Of course, once you're out of weeds, then you'll need to still deal with the snails and slugs. Dealing with fruit flies - To get rid of fruit flies in your compost heap put a little beer in a cup. Then cut the corner off of a sandwich bag and place the cut corner in the cup, folding the rest around the cup and securing with a rubber band. Place the cup in the bin. The flies go in and then cannot get back out. Rodent trap - Mice and rats are said to also be attracted to the smell of beer. A little poured into a bucket with a ramp leading to the lip can be used as a bucket trap. Of course you still need to deal with them, and they will be likely be drunk and possibly argumentative by that point. Compost booster - Sprinkle the beer over your compost heap and then turn it over. It's said to give the micro-organisms a real boost. Plant fertilizer - A little beer splashed around the base of plants will provide them with additional nutrients, but don't drown them in the stuff. Cleaning wooden furniture - A little beer on a cloth rubbed into your wooden furniture will help remove dust and grime and revive the grain patterns. Bee deterrent - Places shallow dishes of beer on the outer boundary of the area where you are having a BBQ or a picnic to entice bees to those spots rather than where you are gathered. I've seen variations on this tip bandied around as a beer trap intended to capture and kill bees. Given that bees are critical to food production and are facing enough challenges at the moment through Colony Collapse Disorder, I'd strongly recommend not trying to kill them. Bees are our friends. ■
Page 1 and 2: January 2012 Issue #27 Six under in
Page 3 and 4: Warmest November since records bega
Page 5 and 6: Asian supermarket ram-raided Asian
Page 7: SIRET: 502 907 108 00018 RENOVATION
Page 11 and 12: © 2005 - George Owens (Flickr) 2 8
Page 13 and 14: Based in Saint-Mathieu, Darren Davi
Page 15 and 16: ADVERTORIAL NEW SALES RECORD FOR HO
Page 17 and 18: Harlequin Developments Established
Page 19 and 20: The Living Room www.thebugle.eu ○
Page 21 and 22: www.thebugle.eu ○ THE BUGLE ○ J
Page 23 and 24: www.thebugle.eu ○ THE BUGLE ○ J
Page 25 and 26: The Living Room Upcoming events Thu
Page 27 and 28: WEEKLY MARKETS EASY MEDIUM HARD www

There's No Easier Way To Find What You - The Bugle

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?