In search of some excercise

For reasons I am not very sure of, every one of our advisers out here is female. In terms of age, they probably range from about 30 to about 60, and in terms of attractiveness, on a scale of 1 to 10, from about 0.5 up to a potential 10.

I say potential because Beauty is, of course, in the eye of the beholder, but I have it on good authority that our two legal advisers, as opposed to Notaries Public, are attractive enough to turn the head of a saint.

This has an unexpected plus - or maybe a minus.

Despite being a macho society, the female form and its allure is a subject of enormous interest. I often think that Feminism has killed both courtesy to women and a proper appreciation of them - which, despite what we are told, they might like to hear.

In any event the two Avocats are much appreciated by all and sundry, one being blond the other a brunette. Of course, they are well aware of the effect they have on we poor men.

Their speciality is land law, so we have quite a few meetings with them. Since the word of their beauty got around, we find that any male sellers are very keen to discuss their "problems" before committing to a sale. Naturally, these are almost non-existent, but the sellers go off with a happy smile and we get the land. I'm quite sure that a few bits have fallen to us because of them, even although one or two of the sellers abuse the system and try for a second and even a third meeting. In general though their expertise has been outweighed by their allure, and it seems to work in our favour.

The other thing that is definitely working for us at the moment is the fact that we have quite a lot of land, and it means we can offer not just money, but a swop or part exchange. We have also been able to tie up a deal to rent some land ( 3 Ha) to a farmer in exchange for giving us another piece - particularly cost-effective.Finally, through our connection with the Topograph, who does all our business and is the head of the University Topograph School, we have a cost advantage over anyone else. Recently, we were able to get a seller's house area surveyed ( he was wanting to sell it to someone, not us) and in exchange we got some land. His cost would have been about Eur 700, ours was only about Eur 150, so we effectively got .77 of a hectare for about one third of what it would have cost us normally.

As you know I am now officially a walker, and because it has been so hot here, I have done less than I should have done. So yesterday being cooler and with the odd cloud, I told Alin I would walk back from Alma Vii to Mosna - about 10 kms.

He was horrified.

"Mr. King! What happen if you get attacked? The Mayor he will not forgive me!"

I explained I walked all over Glasgow without any problems and felt sure a country road would prove no problem.

"No no! I will not allow it!" Ok, I said, drive along in front of me.

"OK! But you just jumping into the car if you see someone." Apart from the fact I have never seen any violence in Romania, my feeling that this was over the top was mitigated by the thought that I was his meal ticket.

So off I set with Alin driving along on front. After a short while I pulled up beside him and told him to go ahead a bit as the fumes were annoying me. Very reluctantly he complied.

A few minutes later, another car passed.

Now I suppose I am quite well known in the area, and the minute the driver saw my face he screeched to a halt and offered me a lift. Alin had spotted this in his rear-view mirror and had come racing back.

Explanations and hand shakes all round and best wishes and off I set again - to be stopped after another kilometer or so by a man driving in the wrong direction who offered to take me wherever I wanted.

This happened every time a car passed, so that instead of taking just over an hour nearly 95 minutes had gone by as Mosna came into view - when another car pulled up. By this time Alin and I were both fed up, and I accepted a lift for the last few hundred meters - which horrified Alin, who drove within 5 feet of the car all the way into town.

But I was just feeling naughty.

" Mr. King, I am not allowing you to do this again! You are giving me hearts attacks! If you are wanting to walk, I will get Gellu to come with you" ( Gellu is the number 2 policeman)
It's rather nice to feel quite so secure.

The Greatest issue facing our Security Forces...

We were down in the Cotswold's over New year, in the general vicinity of that bastion of our defence, GCHQ.
You might think that their major concern was Iran, the Taliban, a resurgent Russia, or even Pakistan, but I can assure you that none of the staff are in the least interested in these areas of concern.
No. The battles and arguments that are waged daily along the endless corridors are to do with parking on the site.
I don't know the absolute numbers ( even this is a State Secret) but at a guess there is a shortfall of about 40% in the number of spaces required.
All sorts of schemes have been tried. £400 if you don't bring your car. This should result in car sharing. All that happens is they take the cash and still bring the car.
£x if you bicycle. See above.
Only allowed to bring the car in 4 days out of 5. They have 8 ( yes 8) people whose SOLE responsibility is to monitor this. And as there are lots of husbands and wives who work together in GCHQ ( after all, how do you meet anyone else if you are a spy? And what would you talk about at home?) by juggling their 2 cars they manage to bring in at least one car every day - and some days two.
I am assured the country's finest brains are working on a new scheme which will create multi-storey car parks.
About a mile from the site and have to have buses to bring people in who are below a certain grade.
Oh, and as the government is promoting travel by bus, they just might put buses on that actually go to the site, as opposed to none which has been the case since it first opened.
PS
Amongst the many fine people we met was an elderly lady, long since retired from being a spy. She had been involved in WW2 with many operations, and I asked her what she felt her main contribution to the war against Hitler had been.
" Well, " she said, " I suppose I would have to say losing my virginity."