My DVD player seemed finally to have become immune to my coaxing strategies and refused to open its drawer whatever I did so I bought a new one.  Trying it out for the first time I took the opportunity to view two discs that have remained in their shrink wrapping for some considerable time.

I'm not sure how I acquired either of them.  I think Masters of European Football IV must have been a freebie that I've been too weak willed to throw away.  It purports to be a set of profiles of a dozen famous footballers but it's really just a selection of their shots at goal.  By the time I'd watched six players my boredom threshold had been well and truly breached so the remainder will remain  a mystery.

Jeane Manson is an American singer who made it big in France.  So big that she had to sell her house and horses in Normandy and retreat to a but and ben in Spain to pay off a tax bill.  I don't think that put her too near the poverty line though.  Anyway at some time she cut a DVD singing Christmas songs with a Red Army choir and I have it.  How did I get it?  Well at Barbansais there wasn't a lot to do in the evenings. The supermarkets and FNAC often had deals on DVDs, five for a tenner and so on.  I think I must have picked up this DVD as a make-weight in some such deal.  It's not to my taste though.  I only managed to get through it by fast forwarding.

But I still haven't managed to throw either of them out.