news from Manilla and Carcassonne airport

Tilling Market - the hub of the aude - didn't really happen this
morning. But aficionados will be pleased to see that Frenchmen
still wear shorts showing the spirit is not quite dead.

Captain has gone to the airport once this morning, turned
around and come home to Tilling.
Just left for the airport again - now it seems that Ryan Air are
busing folk to Perpignan.
The weather is lovely in Tilling, the music of melting snow in
warm bright sunshine tinkles in the scented air... but
Carcassonne airport is closed, lala.


News from Peter R in Manila containing helpful advice;

"... walking around Marhalika, a notoriously seedy part of
Baguio City, I'd been advised earlier by Mariel not to leave my
Philips media player with the, err, seedy-looking lads in the one
of the ramshackle cell-phone repair booths in the covered
market who said they'd download the firmware I needed to
unscrew the fix I'd got my gadget into by trying to eliminate a
virus (but there was something else going on, I know, in my
subconscious). And the story happened almost exactly as I'd
unknowingly written it.
I got mugged.

It was done in an instant. I felt a strange nudge, a spike of alarm
and dashed my hand to the pouch that held my Sony Ericcson
camera phone fastened to my Girbaud leather belt. Don't have a
wrist-strap hanging free and handy for an opportunist snatch
unless you wanted your phone pick-pouchèd. Which I must have
done 'cos I was robbed - "Hey! What the ...bugger! my phone's
gone!"

Pregnant silence.
Immediately, everyone around me in the busy street scene knew
what had happened. You could have heard an angel fart.

I might as well have highlighted "camera phone bought four
years ago with considerable sentimental value and lots of data,
such as contacts and saved messages which I wouldn't want lost"
and hit the delete key. Gone!

I could have laughed. But that would have seemed unseemly.
It was more appropriate to make the right sort of regretful noises
to oneself and kick one's bottom for being a silly billy. But I
couldn't manage that. I tried. I tried to imagine (Huh!) how I
would lament, on my deathbed, not having taken better care of
my Sony Ericcson mobile phone what I bought on Jamie's advice
(teenagers know best) in that enormous Dixons-type store near
Carcassonne airport - what's its name?

Anyway, straightway, I took a taxi to the supermall and bought
myself the new 32GB, Apple iPhone. I was gonna have to replace
the media player (as I said) and was dithering over getting the
iPod Touch but (agonising over this and that) it ain't got no still
or video camera and, of course, it's not a phone ...

So, thank you, thief! You made my mind up for me. And I get my
own back on the slings and arrows of living in such an outrageous
place as the Philippines. Revenge is sweet. And so is the
user-interface, the lovely touchy-feely screen and the glossy heft
of this cool gadget.

Buy one for your inner boy and live a little before you die.
I know that at over 49,000 pesos it was not a steal but that, listen,
is the whole point. If you don't get it, don't matter.

We, who have now more money than time (remember when
we planned for the future and scrimped and saved for all the
loved ones who had calls on our small wealth - when we had
more time than money?). Well, now we have more money than
time and no one we need to leave it to - let them make their
own way like we did.

Please, buy something totally extravagant for just you, just for
fun, for once in your life, in Christ's name. Amen. I've now got
my eye on the new 15 inch MacBook, of course, for when I get
my pension at the end of the month. That should see me out."