Pardon my French ....

On a recent trip to New Zealand, something made me look on Ebay France for pegs. In France they are called "pince a linge".

There was an old (ancienne) wooden peg with a price of 5 Euros. I do not speak French and as I could not understand where the seller was prepared to ship to, I took a gamble and entered my bid.

I was then nervous that the seller wouldn't post it to Australia so I typed out a question and asked good old Google to translate it.

I therefore sent the question in French and sure enough, back came the answer "2.5 Euros".

I am now the proud owner of the Ancienne Pince a Linge shown above.

This success gave me the confidence to bid on "12 tres vieilles pinces a linge zinc BSGDG a voir".



These very unusual steel pegs were 12 Euros plus 8 Euros postage with a few days to go before the auction finished. Someone overbid me and so I put in my maximum bid as 21 Euros and sat back for the final minutes of the auction. With 3 (yes THREE) seconds to go, I was outbid and lost these great pegs. Who in the world was prepared to put in a huge maximum bid for this lot?

Could it be a French museum I wonder?

If you know ..... do tell, s'il vous plait!!!

Hello Kitty, well Hello Kitty, its so nice to see you back where you belong .....

On a recent foray into Ebay Singapore (pardon me for advertising) I made a bid on a "Hello Kitty" peg. I had bid $4.00 and a few days later found that I was the successful bidder.

I wrote to the seller and asked whether she was prepared to post the peg to Australia and asked what the cost would be.

She replied that if I lived in Melbourne, she would deliver it to me as she was flying in for one night in a week's time.

Now DB and I are avid fans of a TV program about border security which highlights the problems the department of Customs and Immigration has with visitors arriving in Australia.

If a person is only staying one day after a long haul flight, their reason for visiting is called into question in case they are simply acting as drug couriers.

Well, this young lady rang me to say she was staying in a hotel near the casino and so(having added money laundering to our list of suspicions) with some trepidation, DB and I drove in to see her.

She handed me the package that I had purchased and I could not contain myself, I had to ask her why she was only staying the one night.

She was an air hostess.

How many people have had $4 purchases hand delivered from a place that is an 8 hour flight away? At least we didn't have to pay carriage!!

Oh Calcutta !!

I have a best friend in England who has connections in India .... more precisely, in Calcutta. Well, actually it is now known as KOLKATA, but sounds the same.

Knowing we were about to visit this city, my friend very kindly arranged for us to stay in the company flat which came with a driver as well as our own houseboy.

We arrived after a long flight. We had been required to change planes in Dubai after a late arrival which meant that.. not only did we have to run through the airport to get the second flight, but also that our luggage got left behind.

On arrival in Kolkata we had to complete a staggering amount of paperwork to report our missing bags, but we were welcomed by the driver who had patiently waited for us.

He drove us quickly to the flat trying to avoid the large potholes in the road on the way. We were on the 6th floor of a large building and our houseboy, Rajat, who spoke a little English directed us to a local shop. The shop was the size of a cupboard and packed to the rafters with boxes and packets covered in dust. Here we were able to buy toothbrushes, toothpaste, soap and a safety razor.

Then we slept .....

DB was still quite ill and so after breakfast Rajat and I left her behind whilst we went to a local market to look for pegs. It took Rajat quite a while to understand just how determined I was to obtain as many different pegs as I could, but that morning we managed to buy 60 different packets. (I think we pegged out Kolkata).

After two days my luggage arrived from Dubai but there was still no sign of DB's suitcase, but that is another story.

Oh Calcutta - 66 new packets, what joy!!