Finally can make a great cuppa joe!

While I haven’t solved the peanut butter problem, I can now at least have a decent cup of coffee in the hotel room. What I mean to say is there are wonderful café venues all over the place here, and the espresso will curl the hair and instantly cure (cause?) impotence, but in the room -- #$%& Nescafe instant! This is France, for heaven’s sake. This is the home of café au lait and other caffeinated concoctions to die for, and in the room they have ‘intercoursing’ Nescafe Instant! It’s an outrage!

So, for the price of 10 Euros we availed ourselves of a Bodum. It’s heavenly. It’s blissful. Why aren’t they in all hotel rooms? The French invented the Bodum, after all. I mean, I want coffee the moment I open my eyes, so I’m not about to step out to a café before I’ve even showered. Anyway, the Bodum makes a mighty mean cup of coffee. I’ve used them before, but not for years. Now I’m using it again. It makes me feel ever so cosmopolitan.

By the way, while on the topic, I am yet to discover a Starbucks in Grenoble, not that I’m looking for one. There may be one, but I haven’t come across it. There is a McDonald’s, but I think there’s a McDonald’s on Venus, so that probably doesn’t count. Like Wal-Mart, and the mere existence of Paris Hilton, it’s something one lives with.

We have a lovely big, flat-screen TV in the room. It’s much nicer than what I have at home. The only trouble is, everything is in damn French. I tried to watch the Simpsons en francais the other evening. It loses something. I gave up. We do actually have three English-speaking channels, but they are only news channels – BBC, Sky TV, and CNBC Europe. If one is obsessed about news stories that repeat every hour, combined with obsessive market reports, then one will be enlightened, if not entertained. After that, one reads.

Oh, and very little access to English literature of the magazine or newspaper variety. I do, blessedly, get the wonderful International Herald-Tribune every day. Takes me right back to my first European trip way back in 1968. The London Daily Telegraph is periodically available at one newsstand I found, but it’s hit or miss. Magazines? Forget it. Thankful I brought a few paperbacks with me.

Anyway, the big story over on this side is the McCartney-Mills saga. Ms. Mills I must say, not to be unkind, of course, is a really stupid bimbo in the approach she has taken to their failed nuptials. What she somehow failed to appreciate, obviously, and what North Americans might not even appreciate fully, is that Sir Paul in both the UK and Europe in general, is an icon; a god. He is no tragically deteriorating Michael Jackson but still, in his mid-60s, a powerful force. And this little failed model, mediocre-looking and insufferable-tempered little sillybilly thinks she can take him down? Ain’t gonna happen.

Back with you soon.