The Anonymous Widower

The White Cliffs Of Dover Have Moved To France

According to this article in the Metro, if you use your mobile phone on top of the White Cliffs of Dover, you may get charged as if you’re in France.

Landlord of the Coastguard pub and restaurant on the beach Nigel Wydymus, 53, said: ‘We are a little telecommunications enclave of France here.

‘It did not cause a huge amount of trouble for a few years with mobile phones because you got a message saying welcome to France but since smartphones have come in it’s more of a problem.

No-one has checked, but I wonder if you’re on the French side under the cliffs there, you might find the British signal is your phones preferred choice.

i do remember, when I would fly back in my Cessna from France, I was quite surprised at how far beyond the French coast, I could pick up a UK signal. Not that I made a call, as I probably needed two hands to fly the plane, but some of my passengers did.  And of course that was well before smart phones.

March 11, 2013 Posted by | World | , | 2 Comments

Educating The Germans

I’ve just read this piece on the BBC’s web site called “Affection for Britain brews in Germany”.  Part is about the Germans new-found love of tea and the author, Stephen Evans, says this.

The office of one of the Green MPs in the Bundestag, you see, has made a collective decision to switch from coffee to tea.

So when I was there the other day, I was relentlessly quizzed about brewing times – they seemed to want the correct answer to the very second – and which tea to use.

I was not much help, except to say, “Make sure it’s a strong, black tea, probably Indian.”

They had made a bad start, offering me a cup of insipid weak Darjeeling, which would have shamed a gnat. They had not made sure the water was boiling.

It is definitely a piece worth reading.

What everybody forgets is that the Great British Breakfast is actually the Great German Breakfast, as in the Victorian age, everywhere had their German delicatessen  which introduced bacon and sausage to many in the UK. The Germans had to leave, when there was a bit of trouble with the Kaiser in 1914.

 

 

March 11, 2013 Posted by | Food, World | , | 3 Comments