Sail with New Freebooters

My first job was ‘employment for the otherwise unemployable’ - as a punched card tabulator programmer for a company that was a memebr of the De La Rue Group. One year, we all received a Christmas present of an unusual pack of De La Rue playing cards. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the name of the [...]

Since I used the name Freebooters for this site and its predecessor, I owe you at least one French pirate story. Here it is.
If you check the website for the Biscay resort town of Les Sables d’Olonne, you will learn that the port is the starting and finishing point for the Vendée Globe – a [...]

Vivienne Mackie takes notebook and camera round homes buried in a hill.
Imagine caves without a single stalactite or stalagmite. Picture caves formed, not by water action, but by human hands. And now imagine those caves along the banks of a river meandering through a bucolic and fertile land. The troglodyte caves along the Loire [...]

Well, we didn’t win any seats, but we got 35% of the votes. Now I understand why established minorities like the British Liberal Party keep rabbiting on about proportional representation. We also created a free ’spectacle’ for the members of the Meuzac commune. Since there was competition for the first time in 13 years, nearly [...]

A month ago, an unknown car came down our untarred country lane and pulled up outside our house (it couldn’t have gone much further - the lane peters out into a bridle path a hundred metres further on).
I went up to the car and asked the driver and passenger who they were looking for. “You”, [...]