Quick update

My tow bar arrived today. Hats off to Messrs P F Jones who sold it to me and UPS for getting it here from the UK in 3 working days. What great service from both of them. Typical deliveries of things I’ve bought off the internet are 4 or 5 days for France and even longer from Germany. I tried to source a tow-bar kit locally but gave up after searching for a few hours and decided it was quicker, easier and more economical to get it shipped from the UK. Even if I could find one, I doubt it would be less than the £110 including delivery that it came out at. Here’s a pic of it just out of its packaging on my kitchen floor.

Look, I love France and the French people – I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t – but when it comes to business enterprise, I’m afraid my experience is that they’re a tad lacking compared to their British counterparts. So why aren’t the British taking the European market by storm? I have no idea – I think it’s probably something to do with lack of market or business confidence or maybe even a lack of national pride. Now I understand why, when I had my own small internet-based business, I regularly used to get orders from countries like France and Holland, even as far afield as Scandinavia. The UK market insists on getting quality and service and a good price and there doesn’t seem to be that same urgency over here. Some ex-pats might find it a bit frustrating, I guess, but it doesn’t bother me too much.

We’re expecting a few showers during the rest of this week but I’m hoping to get the tow-bar fitted so I’ll be all ready to pick the X-Air up. Wim’s not back till this week-end and he said he’d like to give me a hand, which I’d appreciate, but we don’t know exactly which day yet. Bertrand is off to England next week so for the moment I’ve pencilled in Sunday 7th October for the big day. I’ve also ordered a large tarpaulin off the internet which I can use to cover the X-Air for the journey and then cut up to make a set of outdoor covers out of. Now this I did source locally as quite coincidentally, the day before Mme. La Poste dropped a little brochure into my mailbox containing all sorts of offers, and lo and behold, there was a good quality 8m x 12m 240 gsm tarp for only 139.99€ compared to £190.58 for a 7m x 11m 250 gsm one from the same source that I got the tarp from that I made MYRO’s covers out of. The French delivery, though, will be the usual 3-6 days (yawn :-|)

By the way, regular readers might have noticed that I’ve already changed the My Trike banner image from a pic of MYRO to one of the new X-Air. I don’t think it’s out of place or too early and just recognises that the MYRO era has ended and it’s time to move on. I’ve been reading some of the recent posts on the BMAA forum bemoaning the state of the Association, the lack of involvement of the membership and the over-regulation that everyone is subjected to over there, so bearing in mind the associations that MYRO had with my own treatment at the hands of the BMAA and the system during not one but two permit procedures, maybe that’s a good thing. I think that my new French X-Air has got FUN written all over it and after my brief flight in Brittany, I can’t wait to get it into the air down here. It struck me the other day that whereas the French microlight scene is all about the personal freedom to have fun, it’s totally different back in the UK, where the philosophy is ‘if you’re having fun we can’t be regulating it enough’. It just isn’t like that here in France, but anyway, I’m out of all that stuff now and glad to be. Vive la Difference 😉