I never thought I'd say this, said a friend.....

But I'm almost missing Sarkozy!

We both laughed, as Sarkozy hadn't been high in our popularity stakes though he might have done better if he had succeeded in pushing through his reforms of the French economy in the teeth of opposition from his own party.

Then it came back to me...from when I was first in France, at some point the incoming President would be judged in the light of his predecessor....and found wanting. It was just happening a little sooner than usual for Hollande.

That sinister man Mitterand was President when I moved to France and some of the veils were beginning to shift from his past...his service in the Vichy regime....the protection of top collaborators...the suicide of colleagues.....although the bombshell that he had been keeping a second family at the expense of the taxpayer would not be revealed until much later when both families turned up to his funeral.

Then came Chirac, mired in corruption from his time at the Mairie of Paris....and the faces were long.

What a man to follow Mitterand who, be he what he was, could at least use the French language properly! 

Chirac was a rustic...fit only to stroke rumps at the Paris Agricultural Show!

He could stroke a few other rumps too....his boon companion and chauffeur would collect him in an unofficial car at eight o'clock and they were off on the town.

No one knew where he was - probably least of all himself - so on the night that Princess Diana was killed in Paris his Interior Minister had to wait until the President rolled in from his night on the tiles before making decisions on how to handle the affair.

Mme. Chirac was unforgiving. The chauffeur was 'translated' to the post of inspector in the cemetery service.

And after Chirac, Sarkozy...the outsider. The man who was going to shake up France....once he had solved the problem of acquiring a wife to replace the one who had bolted....once he had finished holidaying on the mega yacht of a mega rich friend....once he had dined with his supporters at Fouquets in the Champs Elysees...

Mitterand had had a sombre dignity, Chirac had had charm.....Sarkozy had temper.

He showed emotion...if he was annoyed, everyone knew about it: no waiting a year to send someone to a cupboard in Limoges 'in the interests of the service' for not ensuring that only short arses surrounded the President on televised appearances - the official concerned would be on his bike in very short order.

His appearance at the Paris Agricultural Show was not the regal procession of Chirac either....

To a man who refused to shake his hand he replied

'Casse toi, alors, pauvre con!' which might be roughly translated as 'Bugger off then, idiot.'

For clarity it couldn't be beaten.....but it was felt to be lacking in class.

And now we have Hollande....the man in the baggy Bermudas. 

The man who announced that change was to happen now. 

Except that now was then, when he was campaigning. 

Returning from his holidays this week he announces that change will happen in the fullness of time........

So, while we wait for the reappearance of les neiges d'antan - the snows of yesteryear - let's take a look at  the irrepressible Chirac doing what he did best....enjoying the company of les girls.

Here he is on holiday at Dinan this summer, posing for photographs....note the left hand.

And here he is accompanying his grim wife Bernadette to one of her fund raising events...

And getting into trouble....as he says to his delightful companion 'You have to watch out for women...'

And for the man sitting on Chirac's right hand....Francois Hollande, the great white hope of France.

The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day.

A happy little chap, isn't he?

But he would not be much older than this when his mother told him that she hadn't wanted him....she had wanted a girl, and furthermore she had known he was going to be bad luck because when she was pregnant a black rat had run across the path in front of her.

Things did not improve.
He would splash in puddles and muddy the clothes she had made....there would be a quarrel between the parents over his 'wildness' which would end in his father hitting his mother who would roll on the floor crying out to him
'Look what you made him do!'

Little drudge in the household....
Down to the back door of the bakery at 6.00 am, summer and winter to have fresh bread on the breakfast table.....
Doing the shopping after school  in town, to bring it back on the train and found panic stricken by the priest when he had mistakenly put the shopping money on the collection plate....
Out weeding the vegetable garden every evening.....before washing up and then rocking to sleep first the little brother and later the little sister  before his own bedtime.

Summer was his release.
Sent, travelling alone from the age of five, to his father's mother he was in the world of his cousins and their friends, in and out of houses and gardens, taking turns to ride a rusty old bicycle in a pair of shorts made from an uncle's worn out corduroy trousers.....sheer freedom.

His mother would bring the two younger children to stay with her parents....in the same town.
He would go to the house every morning to say hello, but that was the limit of the contact. His shabby shorts did not fit her picture of herself as the devoted young mother whose fine sewing adorned her offspring.

Thwarted in his desire to study art, pushed into a job he did not want to do, dealing with a father who became demented when his wife left him, trying to hold things together and blamed for everything, his teens and early twenties were no brighter.
The black rat was always across his path.

Yet when, many years later, his elderly mother began to have accidents...leaving the gas on, taking tumbles...he was the only one of her children to offer to take her into his own home, to convert the ground floor of his house into a flat for her and provide daily assistance and nursing care, at his own expense.

Because the child had been taught by the nuns to honour his father and his mother and to return good for evil.... and the childhood showed the man.

High Finance in La France Profonde

A friend's grandson works as a general handyman for the council....it suits him well.

Varied work, mostly outside, and home for lunch!

As part of his job he works at the council owned campsite, a very pretty spot indeed where tall trees provide plenty of shade and the river runs in an arc round three sides of it.

It isn't a tourist hotspot, so the lady whose house lies across from the entrance collects the fees when she trots round in the evening to see if everyone is all right, but the basic amenities are in place....hot water, loos, showers and blocks to wash clothes and crockery.
All spick and span.
Part of the grandson's job is to make sure it remains so, as well as cutting the grass and checking on the state of the little bridge which crosses the river.

There are regulars, who stay for a couple of months, most of them (the men at least) being keen fishermen, and there are overnighters, most of whom have ended up there by underestimating the distance to their actual destination and looking for the nearest site at which to lay their weary heads.
Not enough business to tempt the council to tart it up.......but enough to wash its face.

So my friend was surprised to see the question of the campsite being put on the agenda for the next council meeting and when her grandson came home for lunch asked him if he had any idea what it was about.

Yes, he had. It was the norms.

Well, everything in France is governed by norms...but which norms were these?

New ones for campsites...and for hotels, too he thought...and gites....anywhere people could stay. But this was the one for campsites.

She knew it was no use asking for more information, his mind being on his lunch, so it was lucky that she met the maire's wife while going to the hairdresser in the afternoon.

Yes, Clovis is really upset. That's why he put it on the agenda.

Upset about what, exactly? I thought it pretty well ran itself with Marie-Claude nipping over in the evenings...

Well, it does, but then there were these new norms.
It came out some time ago....you have to be inspected and whatnot and there's a fee or you can't be classified and go in the guides.
Clovis and Monique went through it...handy her being a retired civil servant, she's used to all this....and it seemed that the campsite was all right, except it didn't have designated pitches....you know, white lines and little hedges and so on.

But there's no need for all that, there's plenty of room and some people have a couple of caravans and like to park  up together.....

Well that's what Clovis and Monique thought, so they decided that, what with the fees and all that they wouldn't bother to register.
It's always done all right on word of mouth and with the bit of passing trade, so that's what they did.

So why is it on the agenda, then?

Because Clovis has just had another circular from the Prefecture.
They charge VAT at a reduced rate at the moment.....but if they don't register it goes up from seven something to nineteen something!

The regulars wouldn't be very pleased at that!

No, they wouldn't...I can hear old Victor now...!
Clovis did some figures and took them round to Monique and she agrees....by the time you put on the extra VAT it will cost more to stay on an unregistered site than a registered one!

So what's Clovis going to do?

Well he rang up the Prefecture, but they're not budging....no registration, up goes the VAT.....so he's put it on the agenda.

It's just  another wheeze to get money out of people, says my friend.

Like those useless inspections before you sell a house...like the septic tank inspections...like pulling down weirs to improve water quality because they daren't ask the farmers to keep their sprays away from the watercourses....like telling people to use less water and then putting up the bills because they're not getting enough money in....it's a world gone mad!

And I agree with her, indeed it is a world gone mad.
Manic regulations covering more and more aspects of life...and each with a price tag for the ordinary person to pay.

But she wasn't the only one with news...I had some for her.
I was now classed as a speculator.

You may remember that in the upsurge of ill will to bankers a financial transaction tax was to be imposed, the proceeds going to someworthy cause like an African dictator's villa in Switzerland.
This, it was claimed, would help to make speculation less attractive...would stop speculators distorting the market.

I have shares in a French company which I have tried to sell, only to fall back from the attempt each time foiled by the inability of La Banque Postale

A. To maintain my internet account without changing the access code but not giving me the new one.

B. to understand the word 'sell' in their own language.

I now understand that they were acting in my own best interest.....they were preventing me from becoming a speculator.

Because according to the detail of the financial transaction tax it will  only be levied if you have held the shares for more than one day.

Now dealing rooms see shares hurtling in and out of their possession in minutes if not seconds as they clip their percentage from the passing shower of gold.....so they won't be hit.
They are thus not speculators distorting the market.

But I am, if I ever manage to outwit La Banque Postale.

A Road in France

My lawyer in Costa Rica is to take a holiday in France with her cousin.
Guidebooks have taken over from legal texts in her office and perusal makes it clear that they are visiting Paris and Provence. Nothing but Eiffel Towers and lavender to be seen.

They are travelling between the two by TGV, their hotels are booked and my lawyer is very excited.
She always loved the idea of France as a girl, but her school did not have enough pupils who wanted to learn French to allow her to learn the language, once spent a fortnight in Normandy as a young woman (it rained) and cannot wait to get on the 'plane.

At home after our meeting, I looked at the travel sections of the online newspapers...and there it was...Paris and Provence, Provence and Paris.... with just a nod to the Languedoc and to Burgundy.

Where's the rest of France?
The bits with Eiffel bridges and clocks and church towers that no one cares about...
The bits with fields of angelica or saffron instead of lavender

The bits that don't pull the crowds...

I used, when at a previous house, to take one road quite often....going to major town for the Saturday market, or to the hospital. There was another road...across country....but it took too long for someone trying to get a parking spot near the market before the crowds arrived, so it was the main road that I used.

A road through a France entirely foreign to those who commission travel pieces.

I would arrive at the main road from the side road through the woods where I would look for mushrooms every autumn, the junction marked by a granite celtic cross.

Unique in the area in its style, it and other crosses in the region were supposed to mark pre Christian assembly points and I was heartbroken when a lorry careened into it...the pieces were there, it could have been repaired....but it was replaced by a miserable, lumpish concrete cross painted dull yellow...the 'ton pierre' so beloved of the 'heritage' professionals of the department.

On to the main road.....and on the left the sinister spikes of what was known locally as Chateau Congelateur - Freezer Towers - could be seen rising over the tiled roofs of what had once been its home farm.
A fifteenth century building, over restored in the full Gothic style in the late nineteenth century, it was a fitting home for a doctor who believed in cryogenics.
He had retired there from Paris and was held to be a good doctor when acting as locum for his  local colleagues, once the patient could get over the fact that he never cut his hair and appeared to have a mandarin attitude to his nails.
He had installed a freezer in one of the outhouses which was, in due course, occupied by his wife, local speculation being rife as to whether she was dead when she went in.
There was a mighty ruction with Electricite de France when a power cut threatened to defrost her....EDF sought an order that he should have his wife buried, but contacts in Paris soon hit that idea on the head and the Prefect contented himself with telling him to buy a generator.
In his turn, he went in the freezer, the process supervised by his son - another doctor - but eventually the pressure of opinion was such that the son was forced to move his parents, freezer and all, to a location in Paris.
Chateau Congelateur was up for sale....but remained unsold years later when I was leaving not only the area but France itself.

The village behind had no less than seven chateaux of all ages and styles and had one of the rare monuments in the area to the Republicans of the era of the Vendee Wars.....the Royalist troops advancing, the maire and eleven others climbed up into the steeple to fire on them and, despite the Royalists firing the church under them, their musketry was enough to see off the danger.

In the twentieth century it was the home of a post impressionist Irish artist....

And I used to wonder if this work of his was from his garden there.

Further on the road, emerging from more woodland, the land began to rise, and the vineyards took over.
In the pre war period there was a tramway here, hauling wine from the hinterland to the big merchants on the Loire...the only trace left being the boxy French railway architecture of the little stations and crossing houses alongside the road.

Over the crest and into the outskirts of the town....by the time I left well supplied with supermarkets, DIY emporia and major outlet stores for clothes...very different from the days when tractors were parked outside the one supermarket as the old boys in wellies went in search of their wives' shopping.
But in the approaches to the mega sprawl stood an old building.

Known as the Carolingian palace, where Louis the Pious learned of the death of his father Charlemagne, it was nothing of the sort....the palace had been sacked in the Viking raids and the remnants of the materials had been used ro build a defensive tower much later.....but the mere belief demonstrated that this had once been an important town on the network of the old Roman roads.

Out of town...and on an improved route.
On the right, a turning for a village of troglodyte dwellings....not cliff dwellings as along the banks of the Loire, but dwellings hollowed out of the surrounds of a quarry, open to the sky, not like the miles of  tunnels now used by vignerons to mature their wine.  Not really a refuge either...but I suspect something to do with escaping taxes.

Flat land now, sloping gently away to the Loire.....but we're only half way and already we could have pulled off the road to explore the quarries, the gardens and the architecture....so time to take a break.

No wonder the editors don't commission stuff like this...it would take a book, not a third of a column....and they believe our attention span is the same as their own...negligable.

Stopping the Music

All over France the summer air is full of the clash of steel as towns and villages relive their past glories.....whether it's the dashing rapier thrusts of the duelling musketeers at Richelieu or the plate armour and broadswords at Chinon.

These are usually efforts put together by local people....but the big effects at the major festivals can be 'bought in'....jugglers, clowns, fire eaters and the inevitable people on stilts who excite the dogs.

These people...together with singers, dancers, actors, cameramen, soundmen and all the raff and scaff of the arts world usually work under the employment regime of 'intermittents de spectacle'...a special provision for people whose professions are notoriously unstable.

But a cold wind has been blowing in their direction.....the Cour des Comptes - a sort of national audit office - has noted that there is a whopping deficit in the scheme...and a great amount of fraud by both employers and employed.

Perhaps the police should take the threat to the wellbeing of the cultural classes into account when making their enquiries into the robbery at the medieval fair at Bitche in the Moselle.
A large scale event, all had gone well and on the last night the organisers were counting the proceeds.
Unfortunately they had not entered sufficiently into the spirit of things to surround their tent with men with chain mail and halbards so were taken aback by the arrival of several men in medieval costume armed with axes who demanded - and got - the takings of some 20,000 Euros.
Call for Brother Cadfael and track down the mountebanks!

We already have robber barons on the international scale, imposing tolls on every aspect of daily life, just like the medieval barons in their castles controlling the mountain passes....not surprising, then, that we have the descendants of the roving bands of mercenaries left high and dry by the dearth of employment in their speciality as the systems which supported them crumble.

But should the system which protects those who work in what might generally be described as the culture industry be also thrown on the scrapheap?
France is renowned for its support of cultural activities....classifies them, in fact, as cultural, not industrial - l'exception francaise - and subsidises them to a massive degree.

The Cour des Comptes has never attacked the notion of subsidising cultural activities, but it has frequently criticised the special regime for the 'intermittents'.

It claims that employers - including major television chains - deliberately exploit the system.
Rather than take on permanent staff officially, with a contract for a determined period (CDD) or a contract for an indeterminate period (that rare bird the CDI), they will take them on as 'intermittents'.
They pay them for twenty days, lay them off for ten, and then take them on again. The worker in the 'intermittent' system is then paid the ten days at full rate by the state.

But what of actors, dancers, for example, whose chances of regular employment of this sort are very poor?
They don't have to worry too much.
As long as they work for 507 hours in a ten month period  - some 14.5 weeksout  of 40  at 35 hours to the week  - they will qualify for full benefits to be paid for 8 months.
A much better deal than that offered to interim office and construction workers.
No wonder they don't mind not being paid for rehearsals by the theatre company....the state picks up the tab.

As it does at one remove in the festivals, events and programmes put on by local government during the year...everything from the Cannes Film Festival to the twice a year Market under the Stars in your local town, via music and art festivals and the theatre.

Local authorities employ people specifically to arrange these events...it has all become a widespread industry.
A culture industry.

Now, while I know that the term 'men in tights' has been used to describe the staff of the Serjeant at Arms of the House of Commons,

I feel that I have a distinct preference for those men in tights as opposed to this sort of thing....

On display at a festival recently held in a village near where I used to live.
As Rolande remarked gloomily,

You can't go to anything now without half naked men swinging through the air and spoiling the fun.

She went through the various local festivals, noting that where once entertainment was provided by  the local musicians, towed round the commune  in a trailer behind a tractor, becoming more and more tuneless as they tucked in to the tables of wine and food set out by each hamlet, now some group or other has to be paid to provide entertainment....if, as she said you can call it that.

She strongly objects to some stranger clad in tawdry tinsel springing out out at her at an amateur painting festival and trying to get her to participate in some story telling exploit.
She says she is the one who feels exploited by the smirking smartypants artist.....the poor benighted soul who has to be helped to 'open up', to 'develop her potential'.

It's a good job they don't try it on Papy. 
He may be now well over his biblical years but any tinsel clad female performance artist lighting on him stands a fair chance of discovering a more literal sense of opening  up and development of potential, while the male variety is pretty well guaranteed a swift  swipe at his tawdries with Papy's stick.

Rolande, Papy their friends, me....we're all unreconstructed.
We like, and liked, things being done by friends and neighbours.....the dance being the folklore group set up in the area...the music being the local band and choir...the entertainment provided by the local maires and councillors after a well oiled communal lunch attempting the sack race...the local children parading with their chinese lanterns......people we knew, enjoying themselves with us.

What we don't like is some pretentious rubbish being foisted on us in the name of culture...and having to pay for it!

We deeply resent having theatre performances which are allegories of politically correct thinking about immigration.
We know about immigration.
Some of us are immigrants, some of our grandfathers were immigrants.
 Italian and now British names litter the telephone book along with Vietnamese and African.

We do not need a feminist statement of flamenco.

And if we need three men wearing papier mache donkeys' heads serenading us with guitars then we can train the councillors ourselves.

We have thriving cultural associations...run without subsidy.
We have top class speakers in their field willing to come to us for minimal expenses.
We can organise a coach to the big town for a concert or the theatre.
We can even find our way to Paris.

So any attempt at reform of a structure which inflicts an industry of the second rate upon us at public expense will be welcome.

Except it won't happen.

Like the barons of banking, the mountebank industry is seen as too big to dismantle....and the lovvies vote Hollande.

French villages. The Beautiful and the Banal.

The French television chain, France 2, has had a competition to choose France's favourite village from 22 preselected to represent the various regions of the Hexagon.....and the votes went in favour of Saint-Cirq Lapopie, in the Lot in south west France.

It seems that the mostly French voters had the same idea of what constitutes a favourite village as the foreign tourist....there have to be narrow streets, preferably cobbled, geraniums must be launched from every window and the place has to be gussied up to within an inch of its life while a chateau doesn't go amiss either....

So I suppose it was the possession of a well known chateau which tipped the balance for the Pays de la Loire candidate in favour of Montsoreau, alongside the Loire, though it has a dearth of geraniums, few cobbles and a main road running through it.
As for the gussying....my own theory is that the monthly brocante market on the riverside is held to hide the true ghastliness of the place.
Visitors always want to go there...but not twice.
One encounter with a trader intent on selling you a so called Quimper chamber pot with an eye in the bottom at a price that has your own eyes watering is enough for even the most hardened tourist.

My vote would have gone to one of Montsoreau's neighbours - Turquant - even if its chateau isn't associated with the novels of Dumas.

It has two places where I used to buy wine, for a start - and wine had to be good to get me to travel miles to get it - though while this personal note would weigh nothing in the scales the vignerons' places of business certainly would.

The man who made one of the best dry white wines in the region had his cave in, literally, a cave.

You can see it above, last on the right, alongside the house. The cliffs overlooking the Loire have been hollowed out both for building stone and deliberately to create dwellings since far back in time and some of the caves contain decidedly sophisticated houses.
When I was first in France, no one wanted to live in them any more....they preferred a nice new breezeblock bungalow  in a development...so they were going for a song.
By the time I left they had become trendy des res for Parisians and arty types with the dosh to pay the astronomical prices demanded.
My vigneron had lived through it all and just used his cave for storing his wine....the walls were black with the mould deemed indicative of a healthy balance of temperature and humidity and the wine was superb.
.
The other vigneron produced red wine and lived in the village. The houses on either side of the quiet road that leads up from the river to the vineyards above are built of the local stone and glow softly gold in the afternoon sunshine, wallflowers blooming red and yellow in the cracks in the blocks and the breaks in the crepi. There are even geraniums in summer...though only in window boxes.

And to my mind the chateau has a lot more going for it than the one at Montsoreau. That one has only the Dumas connection now that the museum of the Moroccan troops has moved out, while the chateau at Turquant housed Ben Bella, freedom fighter and the first president of independent Algeria in the six years of his captivity in France after he was kidnapped by French colonial forces.

So why do the French televison voters go for Saint-Cirq Lapopie?

Because it as different as possible from their high rise flat in town...and  from the village of their grandparents in La France Profonde.

For example...St.Ragondin.

The most banal village in France.

A square where there is a market once a month.

One veg stall.

Where the hairdresser has closed down for lack of custom.

The chemist could find no one to take on the business.

The dentist likewise.

And don't even think about putting out the umbrellas on the pavement outside the caff   'le Pot de Vin'...the local English would nick them.

So, enjoy the most beautiful villages in France...but don't believe that that they are alive.

ll known

Blogulike

In the days when I was a commuter I used frequently to get back later than anticipated and rather than wait for a bus and then change for another, I used to walk across town to get home, thinking shanks' pony a better alternative.

It was a pleasant walk for the most part...a little window shopping to be had in the centre, tree lined streets leading to another parade of shops with a late opening wine store and deli and then the trek past or through the park, depending on the season and the presence or absence of the local idiot fringe, to find the dogs waiting to mug me as I opened the front door.

But the first part of the walk was different....just outside the station there was a series of fast food shops...some local, some franchises.... from fish and chips (run by a Chinese family) past Kentucky Fried Chicken, a kebab house, a burger bar and the one which never failed to amuse me....Spudulike.

I used to wonder if indeed I would like their spuds and usually concluded that, as the title implied I would, from sheer perversity I probably wouldn't.

And Spudulike came back to mind today.

I thought I would do a little housekeeping on the blog and start by tidying away the blogs that have ceased to appear.
Inevitably, I started reading them - it's fatal to let me near reading material if there is anything else to be done - and found myself wondering about their disappearance.
Some announced their departure, others slid quietly away, but I miss them all.

So they're still there waiting for another housekeeping day!

Then I thought I'd go through the blogs I follow generally, whether on the Google thingy or on e mail as the Wordpress blogs seem to be....and I found a few that, on reflection, I decided to drop from my list as I wouldn't be missing them.

The difference between 'missed' and 'not missed'?

I think it comes down to a sense of contact between the blogger and the reader.

Not just common interests, because thanks to blogging I've had all sorts of horizons opened up by people who do what they do with passion, who make me see things differently, or for the first time.

I think it is the sense of privilege that someone is letting you into their world, enhancing your own.

The blogs that I am going to jettison are frequently very informative and well written, but the common factor is their distance - as I see it - from the reader.
It is not just a matter of replying to comments or not, though to me that is important if only as a matter of courtesy, it is more my feeling that the blog is complete of itself....needs no dialogue, wants no dialogue....hears no tolling bells.

I don't often, but should, look for new blogs, as there is so much talent and warmth in the blogging world, but don't really know how to go about it.

I have started messing about on  Wordpress (thank you Perpetua!) in an amateur sort of way and have been startled by the acknowledgements aimed at getting an increased readership by a sort of scattergun technique....not one I'll be using!

There are various 'catalogue' sites too...but I have problems there, all of my own making.
I cannot get to grips with the ways in which they use categories. I am category autistic.
None of them fits my style of blogging - as far as I know - and the categories I try don't throw up what I am looking for.

So if anyone knows of a sort of Blogulike site....I'd be glad to hear of it.
I have housework that needs to be avoided....