Search results matching tag 'France'

After the operation: Maurice Back Home

SabineKMcNeill — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 10:11:00 GMT

Obviously, there are pains after an operation! But the joint pain is gone, immediately post op, he says... today, 30th March, after a fine paella, lunch with a succulent leg of chicken, French style, tarte Normande, a well matured chevre cheese and cafe noir to die for, served by a bevy of beauties, we are not sure if Maurice will surface for a week or two.

Lunch to be followed by personal 'kine' (physio) et il cherche la porte derriere l'hopital pour le bar (Bar d'Hopital) en face du Centre Hospitalier de Bretagne pour 'autre' medication, (changer le liquide avec la meme coleur apres l'operation [regardez la photo gallery]) et il trouve Cyber space!

Et cette cigare, apres une semaine, incroyable!

He has asked the doctor to find the pieces 'de la vielle hanche' for the photo gallery.

Meanwhile his 'asyle', asylum application, protection from wicked Welsh HM Partnership and plodding police, is now in front of the board in Paris.

If you want to find out yourself, ring him in the hospital in France on 0033 29728 4450 1085. He has no internet connection, tres antique!

mais 'le service' est merveilleux .

0033 624 571 548 dans sa poche ou a la maison, St Doha: la semaine prochaine, il espere, 0033 296 258 451.

THANKYOU for letters and telephone messages from all over the place!

FINALLY: Proper Health Treatment in France instead of Wales

SabineKMcNeill — Thu, 24 Mar 2011 20:10:00 GMT

As reported earlier this year, Maurice J Kirk BVSc found protection from the bullying of South Wales Police, by obtaining asylum in France¹. Since then he has also managed to obtain surgery for a replacement hip, despite the falsification of his Welsh medical records by Dr Tegwyn Williams of Caswell Clinic, Bridgend.

Cardiff Crown Courts had repeatedly accepted the doctor’s evidence, which stated that Maurice suffered from ‘paranoid delusional disorder‘. This was apparently complicated by ‘significant brain damage’, a possible brain tumour and therefore considered him too dangerous to be released from a psychiatric prison. Supposedly, Maurice believed he was being bullied by South Wales Police and had been separated out for special treatment.

To clarify, his French surgical team arranged for a brain scan and physical examination neither of which Maurice could obtain from either the Welsh area NHS or Dr Tegwyn Williams. For almost a year now on crutches and latterly on significant levels of morphine and other strong analgesics, Maurice has been battling for disclosure and clarification of his records. After all, they were used in ten or more Cardiff Crown Courts, to oppose his bail applications while in prison and psychiatric clinic for seven months. And they were the basis for his Welsh surgical team refusing to operate.

Leaked police memos² revealed that South Wales Police had meetings with both, the Independent Advisory Group (IAG) and those agencies covered by Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA). In 2009 these resulted in ‘Operation Tulip’ to try and have him sectioned under the 1983 Mental Health Act and imprisoned for an indefinite period. But having been found not guilty in trading in machine guns, Maurice had obtained his liberty in February 2010.

Therefore, Maurice reverted back to the Welsh courts to get his medical records released. But that failed. However, he discovered that Professor Roger Wood of Swansea University had re-written his own medical report and back dated it, given that Maurice was in liberty.

Then Maurice attempted disclosure under the Freedom of Information and Data Protection Act, but the Information Commissioner refused to intervene. In his support, an online campaign³ yielded over 230 signatures and more than 4,000 page views, but did not make a difference either. Cardiff Crown Court continues to refuse the disclosure of the medical information on court logs or let Maurice hear the court tapes of hearings that took place while he was left locked in his cell. His civil action for damages against South Wales Police is currently being adjourned. But his claims comprise the continuous harassment that stopped as soon as South Wales Police had succeeded in getting him struck off the Register of Veterinary Surgeons in 2002.

Dogged with his poor health condition, Maurice now had to withdraw from his action for damages against the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, thereby losing all the proceeds of recently selling his house. He says ”If someone had told me nine years ago that the College is immune to prosecution under its Royal Charter⁴, I would never have been as stupid as to commence legal proceedings. Now I just hope to regain my health such that I can cope with the legal action against South Wales Police. Since it was lodged in 1996, it has been delayed for long enough, deliberately of course. As a bullying case, it is unusual, extreme and indefinite. It’s time to close that chapter of my life, and I’m glad my brain is normal while I’m looking forward to a new hip.”

¹ http://bit.ly/fGAOfc

² http://mauricejohnkirk.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/09-06-08-medical-mappa-4p-only.pdf

³ http://www.gopetition.com/petition/40825.html

⁴ http://bit.ly/azN1nV

To France at Twice Cub Speed

Maurice — Wed, 04 Jun 2008 02:21:00 GMT

Well, that is the way to get rid of any suggestion of depression and blow away, temporarilly, the stench of the British legal system.

I left the cottage in Brittany, now fit for letting, after a huge 10 Euro lunch and was down by the Spanish border in no time. Difficult to light a cigar on the bike though.

Flew past Chateau Buzet, one of my favourite wines, just outside Bordeaux and due today to speak again to the flying club here to obtain a french licence before looking around my favourite rose, with a hint of retsina sap, near Banyuls Sur Mer.

Last night over an idylic plate of moules fricas? with an amazing cream sauce, browned under the grill, I met Bud Froelick from Houston, Texas! What a laugh an a joke we had till the small hours while he explained the US psyche with respects to the world out there beyond their borders. Taught me a bit of french to having had a cottage for some years now in the foot hills of the Pyrenees. Off now to find a Pied de Terre? for my arthritic winter months writing up my experiences under the thoroughly deceitful and asinine British Judicial System.

Maurice Arrives in France

Maurice — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 22:47:00 GMT

Just landed at St Malo harbour, Brittany, from Portsmouth on my Honda CBR 1000F to find my old car in the car park has disappeared. The French Authorities tolerate we local English leaving ‘old bangers' at the Ferry Terminal but not for this long!

My un-planned extended stay in Texas, at ‘Uncle Sam's Pleasure', has lost me not just my flying licence, but now my cut away speed model Ford Orion motor car. Talking of the CAA they have sent me some more ‘official info' from the US that reads like an Enyd Blyton children's book. Apparently it states I radioed McGregor Airport with some nonsense message about visiting a Mr Bush by aircraft. No such thing ever happened as the US Authorities very well know having all the evidence to suggest no transmission was ever made, whether by VHF Radio or ‘C' mode Transponder, while I was flying around Texas. As for the GPS they took off me and will not return, that stayed in my kit bag switched off all the way to Crawford.

I also now have a document quoting the McClellan County Police that I was 'not arrested' at the scene nor had I committed any civil or criminal offence. As I said to the boss of the legal department of Air Crew Licencing, in London, "If I had been in charge of air safety anywhere in the world with the information just sent across the ‘pond' from the US I would have marched the culprit pilot directly to Broadmoor (the UK's secure mental hospital) and thrown away the key".

Anyway it may take me years to fight through the courts so here I am looking frantically for a French ‘abinitio' pilot's licence pretty damn quick but where do I learn to fly French style and learn the lingo? Thierry of Air Journey has already found me a friend, François SIEGEL in Paris to possibly expedite the problem.

This old motor bike, resting in the long grass, once our front lawn, is supposed to get me to the South of France tomorrow but am I not getting a bit too arthritic for just a lumpy beast? As I mount her it reminds me of the French aristocracy being winched on to their jousting horses in their heavy suits of armour for the battle of Agincourt!

France for a Pilot's Licence

Maurice — Sat, 31 May 2008 05:08:00 GMT

Well the choice was Aussie, NZ or Canada but France carries a certain 'picance' (or what ever the word is) after the behaviour of Uncle Sam's Depatment Homeland Security. Must get the bike out and head for the ferry...tallyho!

2 of the aircraft on the list all but sold and back at the week end for 'talk' and some 'aeronautical activity'.

If I am not allowed back in US then the plan to fly round Africa in my French registered 1943 J3L4 Cub must commence!

Ciel Bleu

A Quiet Day in Brittany

Maurice — Mon, 04 Apr 2005 05:29:00 GMT

Breed of cow down the road?

I drop gen off to try 2 daysof school.....loved it!

George, a Jersey equivalent to why the "Toilers of the Sea "chappie suffered 16 years in Guernsey, mentions a caravan to go.

Bought in minutes, blind, we are round in the "rope guided ford", rather like a camel, to tow her to the lake.

Fishing holidays for houses and caravan advertised now on site within hours of purchase .

Due at court in Loudeac for 2pm but our extended lunch of sea food, the likes I have never seen before, despite my experience, took precident over the eviction of a tenant ,squatting in a shack, next to the lake.

But I still went to Court just to see how it compared. Same old devious games by advocates.... designed just like your typical British Court ...no one in the public gallery can hear a damned thing....perish the thought if they did!

Barbeque is called for..... being first to buy charcoal at the local store this year and loaded with fat legs of fresh "poulet" and belly pork, a few bottles of locally made cider and we are off. I amuse Gen by calling over the first Cuckoo not realising my calls,mainly for stalking pigeon with a rifle, caused a plague, or equiv.word, of at least 4 or 5 Tawny owls screaching for the rest of the night,,,,fantastic!

Up at 7 to catch the boat and our horses have arrived. for next season's hunting. To think, we leave all this wild life around us just to go back to Wales and a world of bent lawyers, before Vietnam by cub.......it needed little for me to stay!

A 2nd Day in Brittany

Maurice — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 06:14:00 GMT

Well, as if running out of excuses, I think I have at last found the perfect spot to write those four books on four quite different subjects.

Imagine, just a quiet Brittany country lane outside your door that only runs a few hundred yards to a farm and the great ten mile forest of Hardonnais. Across the road is my large fishing lake stocked with Brochet, 2 feet long or more, gurt Tench, great Crucean and Mirror Carp and many others? The field behind, tucked between forest and wood that will take a twin, for sure, Mike’s sideways and the farmer is already looking after hunters for the locals as the Breton hunt, great curly horns and all ,meet right here.

Now the house is just post war with an enormous ‘cave’ beneath to store the wine and cider still (alambique et distillerie) or four cars, if you are that way inclined. The outhouses hide further accommodation for at least six or eight for fishing/shooting/fox hunting holidays and a cider press, a bit dilapidated. A job for Dad, next time he’s out here. Of course there is a well of water tasting like nectar, a pigeon loft, numerous apple trees, large garden, ancient old trees on all sides and the ancient bread oven, all on its own, in the field.

Down the road is a steady supply of pork and beef from a ‘Porc Blanc de Ouest’ prize winning herd, wild boar and deer from the forest, all sorts of vegetables from the farms around with an auberge on all points of the compass, varying from the strictly local culinary delights, to the Breton array of fish and crustacea, the coast being only forty minutes away. But what is this breed of cattle doing, living here, so far from the Switzerland, if not winning nearly all the prizes in Europe?

Lunch at Madeleine Hotel for 9.5 Euros, including an hors d’oeuvre of fish pate, a scrumptious steak, cooked French style, to follow then with a wide selection of cheeses, gave little room left for my bottle of wine, all included and a pudding of apple tart from just under the grill. I finished off with the standard black coffee, a French cigar and chatted with the locals who seemed to know, already, Wales played rugby.

Ah yes, ‘Le Rugby’. I just had to be down to the Irish Pub at Langourla to support Wales’s chance to get ‘that damned illusive Grand Slam’. Then, if that was not noisy enough, it was drinks with the neighbours and then off to ‘Couscous’ in the village hall where there must have been nearly two hundred locals with kids running round and under the dinner tables, singing, dancing (properly) and enjoying the company over a glass or two. Back to the Irish Night where I was caught on camera wearing the WRONG HAT, in between the dances. 2 am and it is time for home to a small ‘calva’ and my lovely log fire ‘incerre’ in the cottage.

But enough of this, it is time my pre flight diet came into force of abstinence as the flying, from now on, is going to be a damned sight harder than the little doodle around the Antipodes.

A Day in Brittany

Maurice — Wed, 23 Mar 2005 06:00:00 GMT

Awake at six from the ship’s horn as we enter St Malo harbour in the thickest of fog. I lug my baggage round to a back street to find my aging Ford automatic, literally dumped there as we had dashed on to Caen after last weeks birthday festivities.

There’s a problem. The accelerator cable has broken and I am in a hurry to meet Albert about buying a fishing lake. Boy Scout initiative is called for - a piece of fencing wire strategically moulded to fit the carburettor levers, a piece of bright green rope threaded through the window and I am airborne. I set track for Dinan Aerodrome where I am ordered to give a talk, once I have mastered the language! I thought pilots in Europe had to be conversant with English to obtain a flying licence? So I put down, again, to the Battle of Crecy or Poitiers perhaps, as they obviously want to get their own back!

Smash, crash! Who put the lights out? Twenty kilometres down the road and the bonnet flies up, cracking the windscreen in several places and totally obscuring my view. Earlier, in the suburbs of St Vran, my wire lever system on the throttle linkage had snagged (engine failure RAF chipmunk checks?) on the under side of the bonnet causing the engine to be stuck on full throttle. Driving on the key worked for a while but I later decided to raise the bonnet 4 inches and to just drive on the safety catch. With much aplomb, I again screeched to a halt, rectified the matter by lashing down the crumpled metal with more rope and screamed away, before I attracted undue interest.

Aeroclub de Dinan was an old stomping ground in the 70s as a staging post for export of my elegant French ladies. Ah, the memories of each passionate relationship together, travelling up from deep down south to cross the English travel, trying to avoid all adversity, they being scantily dressed for the Bureau Veritas, let alone the CAA with their demand for forests of paperwork. Since when did a piece of paper improve an old girl’s performance? Was it safe enough for one flight, that’s what mattered? The former had warned me, if they caught me, it would be ‘les menottes et le prison (red wine with lunch)’. Both authorities, rumour has it, put their heads together and conspired. Both falsification of evidence and a blackmailed witness caused my Egon Ronay’s Guide on the culinary delights to be experienced of no less than 6 UK prisons in 6 months, for which I am still very, very bitter.

Francis, the chief pilot, with his four month Yorkshire Terrier greeted me with his usual ‘French actor’ English and posed for the photo before showing me round the old Armee de L’air Fouga Magister CM170 with the characteristic Beech Bonanza tail.

Later, down at the lake near Merdrignac, surveying the fishing potential, I swore I heard a hunting horn and hounds speaking. The farmer soon confirmed they were hunting ‘le renard en chevaux’, a subject currently under threat in England, should a self centred power crazy government be re elected in a few weeks. Sadly they had ‘gone on’ by the time I had trekked through the forest with its incredible flora, deer and wild boar.

Back with ‘le notaire’ and Albert, sorting out the lake, the latter told us of his trip,in 1945 in a wooden Jodel low wing monoplane, made just up the road at Dinard. They were flying 10 to 15 feet along the breaking waves, as one does, but along the Utah and Omaha beaches of the June 6th 1944 D-Day landings. All of a sudden an enormous explosion and a great water spout blew up in front of them causing the pilot to pull hard right on the joy stick, as it was called in those days, to avoid certain catastophe. The army and French navy were still clearing the battle scarred beaches and sea of mines and were destroying them under ‘controlled’ explosions!

At 6pm in my village, I was collared by Eugene from outside his bar, whilst I was trying to get a photo of the kids and ‘Le Tricolore’, flying outside the Mayor’s Parlour to help load thirty 50kg bags of phosphate fertilizer that has now crippled me for a while due to my 8 broken or seriously damaged joints. In consolation though I was, at least, rewarded in the bar with a generous serving of Ricard! Then it was the little village of Laurenan for supper and so to bed.

Pegasus Bridge, D Day minus one

Maurice — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 05:46:00 GMT

Well I should have known better…. Turning up to a French Port at Caen, Normandy, having not shaved for 3 days and without a tie, rambling on about where the locals should come back with me and learn that oval shaped ball game called rugby. (Wales beat France, last week, after a spectacular come back in the second half). Les Authorities did their little bit.....

Les Douanes (Customs) took me to the cleaners….tipping out all my belongings from each piece of luggage, but not my own pockets which I thought curious? From that experience I spent a fascinating hour with a Gypsy Major expert, on board the ferry, having now recovered from the ordeal parrying off such comments as, “do you have a problem with courts and Authority?”…..and where did they get that if it was not off Big Brother , the European Computer , designed with stealth by Blair and his trade mark of deceitful lawyer tactics? A system, for which I strongly approve to combat crime but already a day to day example of how it wil be abused when identity cards finally arrive.

But let us not again slip into the gutter on such matters but let me tell you how retired Roy Gardiner, a life long aero engineer with De Havilland, witnessed so much history in Aviation. I met him on the ferry, over supper and was soon totally absorbed into his stories.

Geoffrey DeHavilland bought out the Rhone engine factory in France in the late 20’s and took the whole lot back to Edgeware, Stag lane which meant Roy spent much of his life converting petrol and Avtur engine designs between metric, American and UK imperial measurement! He was "the man" on gypsys.

It was the gypsy that had me on first solo in an RAF Chipmunk , in 1964, but that did not interest him, it was his stories such as, his colleagues who designed the first 2 strokes and Fairy’s boat designs, first used slung under an RAF aircraft, to be dropped for air crew recovery.

And to think I had just spent 2 hours at Pegasus Bridge and the Museum to remind me just how close the battle of “Overlord” had been, fighting to get a foot on Europe.

Now, in 2005, I wonder whether the loss of life and its principle was worth it, now we are dominated by such a corrupt legal trade, dominating both government, our courts and now even officious little french port customs officers?

Central Brittany in the snow

Maurice — Thu, 03 Mar 2005 04:55:00 GMT

Awakened by the 7 am church bell after a night long into the small hours, of sorting out the cameras, projector and laptop. A bag of spaghetti, in the form of numerous tangled leads and cables are now at last into separate piles. Now what on earth are they all for?

I have instruction books strewn every where as I toil away, having forgotten how to edit, move, store or plain delete movie and still digital records since I did it for the New Zealand leg of the journey. It was so much easier in the old days; an old bellows camera and a few rolls of black and white film, to be turned into the chemist on your return!

There’s two inches of snow on the ground and I’ve just bought a new toy, a chainsaw engine. The birthday dinners start on Friday and will go on right through to Sunday night so, it is out of bed, cut the logs, visit 2 restaurants and the hotel with the final numbers crossing the English Channel.

Then it is back to the UK to shuffle a few court papers on my Judicial review against the RCVS, pick up a booster Rabies and Typhoid shot, order the Malaria pills, sell an aircraft, block a repossession order on my house by Nation Wide and fight it in court.

Three hours later - Change of plan, now stuck in snow drift without a jack handle!

Old abandoned chariot down the road.
The counter at the local bakery.