Recently I had the occasion to look up the word "Frustration". In fact, throughout very nearly the whole month of October, I came to know every twist and horrid turn of that particular word. How to describe total frustration, anger and annoyance as our internet line failed us - repeatedly? Stranded comes to mind.
From being "on the pulse", AMB came to a grinding halt as our Livebox decided to go on the blink and drop our internet connection every two to three minutes. It was impossible to do anything and, though we tried to remain calm throughout it all, I had the distinct feeling of being marooned on a desert island. Without the internet it was, quite literally, the end of the world and dark, miserable, lonely days would be ours until the end of time while the world-wide web went on gaily without us. A sad, and very sorry, state of affairs and the reason why AMB Cote d'Azur is published later than usual.
We normally take a copy of the current site and work on updates on our local network. Sadly, the internet connection never held long enough for us to even get to that first stage. The second stage finds me uploading all the new articles, adding photos and tweaking here and there. Once that is finished, the third stage is to copy the newly revised and updated site back up to our UK server. Great when everything flows smoothly - not so great without a constant internet connection.
On a brighter note, some positive things did happen. We had great pleasure in welcoming John Fitzgerald on board as a new contributing author to AMB. John lives in Roquebrune and will be bringing us news from his side of the Riviera and has already penned a lovely article for us which you can read in this current issue. We also received an article by Huw Williams of Riviera Rambling concerning the Circuit de la Lauvette. Huw will also be sending in further interesting walks that you may like to try out yourselves once the better weather is back again.
Our Christmas and New Year issue is already starting to look great and full of festive cheer. Anne Ager returns to our pages with another wonderful mouthwatering Christmas recipe, while AMB's dedicated team of writers will again regale you with some really great articles to make this the best Christmas and New Year issue yet! Look out for AMB on Sunday 13th December!
