Just a little something for the weekend....from Rue 89.

For the French speakers among you....General de Gaulle gives his New Year message...from the Other Side........where not even Sarkozy can have him put in detention for 'outrage' to a serving President.


Source...Rue 89, to whom many thanks and awaiting the royalty bill in the new year.

Tennyson

'Ring out, wild bells, to the wild sky;
The flying cloud, the frosty light;
The year is dying in the night;
Ring out, wild bells, and let him die.

Ring out the old, ring in the new,
Ring, happy bells across the snow:
The year is going, let him go:
Ring out the false, ring in the true.

Ring out the grief that saps the mind
For those that here we see no more:
Ring out the feud of rich and poor
Ring in redress to all mankind.

Ring out a slowly dying cause,
And ancient forms of party strife;
Ring in the nobler modes of life,
With sweeter manners, purer laws.

Ring out the want, the care, the sin,
The faithless coldness of the times;
Ring out, ring out thy mournful rhymes,
But ring the fuller minstrel in.

Ring out false pride in place and blood
The civic slander and the spite;
Ring in the love of truth and right,
Ring in the common love of good.

Ring out old shapes of foul disease,
Ring out the narrowing lust of gold;
Ring out the thousand years of war,
Ring in the thousand years of peace.

Ring in the valiant man and free,
The larger heart, the kindlier hand;
Ring out the darkness of the land,
Ring in the Christ that is to be.

Tennyson.... 'In Memoriam'

But it won't happen unless we all put our hands to the bell rope.

Here comes Hogmanay on the half shell

Image via Wikipedia

This is the time of year when French hospital emergency departments are on standby. Not for traffic accidents, but for the incidence of 'oyster knife through the palm of the hand, having drink taken'.

I think myself that the problem is not so much opening the things, but trying to impress the assembled company by doing it at speed, having left the whole operation until the guests arrive rather than, as I favour, wrestling with the brutes shortly before. This gives me time to pick out all the flakes of shell, put the six tea towels that I have used into the wash, and change my clothes. It is a messy operation. I used to have an electric gadget which sawed away at the shells, but it became overheated. I know how it felt.

When we used to go to New Year parties got up by friends using the village hall, I used to watch, amazed, as Frederic or Georges would manage what amounted to a production line, managing closed oyster, oyster knife, oyster duly opened and a glass of Muscadet at the same time. I would have needed as many arms as an Indian goddess, but they managed with the regulation two.

The days of those events are over. The drink driving laws, for a start...and for a finish. Didier is convinced that the gendarmerie, previously relaxed about the coincidence of alcohol and steering wheels, became vicious once the bars were closed down in the gendarmerie barracks, thus their eagerness to breathalyse anything that moves.

Life is difficult enough at the back end of the year. I was warned when I first moved to France not to go into the local town on Friday afternoons in November and December, as the gendarmerie would be trying to pick up on the points and penalties they had been too idle to collect in the rest of the year, and it seemed to be true. Every layby had its' gendarme and pocketbook.

The gendarmerie station in St. Ragondin excelled itself and entered local legend by asking the maire for a special visit by the dustmen to pick up the debris from their New Year party. The dustcart arrived, enormous quantities of bottles were loaded up, and then some bright little gendarme gave the dustmen a ticket because one of the dustcart's tyres was bald. They've been taking their own bottles to the dump ever since.

Two years ago, we ventured out to visit friends on the other side of the nearest town just before New Year, and, coming back in the early hours, were surprised to find all the street lights out. Slowing to a crawl, we became aware that there were lines of paddy waggons in the off street parking, and promptly turned tail to take the ten kilometre deviation through the lanes and villages to get home.

The neighbour had not been so lucky. He had driven through the town and at the roundabout had had the shock of a man wearing a balaclava and armed with a sub machine gun jumping out in front of his car. Convinced he was in the presence of some terrorist, he stopped, only to find that this was a gendarmerie exercise against drink driving.
What amazes me is that the idiot responsible for that good idea assumed that one would stop the car when faced with an unidentified assailant, rather than driving straight over him. Still, I'm forgetting, this is France.

With all this in place, you would have to be mad to go out to a restaurant to celebrate New Year's Eve if you intended to drink more than one glass of wine, as the gendarmerie - surprisingly - know where the restaurants are and where to lurk to breathalyse their customers.
Going to visit friends to celebrate now involves a great deal of mapwork down the lanes and the tracks across the vineyards...just like going to the distillery used to, but this time at night, with more than one glass of wine having been accepted and a torch which is bound to fail at the wrong moment.
It is all too stressful.

We've had our days or muscadet and oysters. We know that 2010 will arrive even if we are in bed at the time. The arrival of a first footer with coal and whisky is highly unlikely. There is no Andy Stewart and the White Heather Club - thankfully - so we're having friends over for a Balti at lunchtime and a quiet drink before bedtime, all to ourselves.

I reckon that the only thing in France that will be lit up tonight will be the Eiffel tower.

A very happy New Year to you.

It's ganging agley again.

Image via Wikipedia

I had the Christmas and New Year well organised.

We are going to a 'solstice party' on the 21st....so entitled by the hosts to annoy absolutely everyone invited and to ensure a vociferous evening. I wouldn't want to be a latter day Druid at that particular assembly - his little golden sickle wouldn't be much defence against some of the dinosaurs slated to be present. We shall all take something to eat and somewhat more to drink and it will be wheelbarrows at midnight, kindly provided by non drinking friends.

Then that was to have been that. End of public festivities, shut the doors and utter peace until January 2nd 2010. We had plans, and they precluded the presence of others. Any others.

The hype of Christmas dismays me...even before Armistice Day, the junk and lights are in the shops, the jingles are playing overhead and people are being persuaded that they need to show their love for someone by buying them useless tat. Or, worse, that feeling obliged to send something to someone, they feel that useless tat would fit the bill. I have long since abandoned sending Christmas presents...I send something that a friend or family member might like when I happen to see it, whatever the season might be.

Family get togethers depend on which bits of the family are getting together, too, so that also is something best left to a more clement season than that of mid winter, rather than risking all out war round the fireside and mother monopolising the television for The Queen's Speech. Let alone the problems of who doesn't eat what, who ate too much of something they shouldn't have and the loud collective fizz of Alka-seltzer at the breakfast table.

This year's Christmas plan was ...books.

There are years when not much really seems to appeal from the reviews, and others, like this one, when I keep saying
'I must read that!'
Blogging has extended my horizons too, encouraging me to start on areas either totally new, or re-opening avenues long closed off by the passage of time and accrual of mental junk.

So, we have both been making lists and thought we would order just in time for the holiday - as otherwise we would just read the lot as they came in and be left to our old favourites by the time Christmas came round.

Well, we're well served for our egoism and optimism. So far, nothing has arrived. I know we have another week but I am getting nervous all the same.

Amazon tracking is great....except that their French centre has gone on strike - thank you the CGT, who think that Christmas pressure is too much for their members to stand. More likely they felt left out, what with the baggage staff at Orly airport feeling the strain and the drivers of the RER network in Paris deciding that working in winter was really beyond the pale.

Other books are coming from the States...notably one by George Soros that a U.K. firm said couldn't be sent to France - something I must follow up. I know Soros was done for insider trading in France some time ago, while his French counterparts got off scot free, but what has that to do with importing a book? Probably a very simple reason and nothing to do with conspiracy theories, but it intrigues me all the same. And why can it come from the States and not the U.K.?

They'll probably all arrive in time, but I am a worryguts...so I'm thinking about which old favourites I will be putting out on the bookcase by the armchairs...empty so far in anticipation of the Christmas goodies to come...to give us a happy holiday.