It's all scandal, naked women and drivel.

Image via Wikipedia

I've just had mother on the 'phone.
Or, more accurately, mother has had me on the 'phone.....for what seems like an eternity....with the iniquities of her world.

The new young shopper on a mission to reduce her to a diet of pre-prepared food....
The new morning carer who spends more time filling out her time sheet than she does helping mother....and who can burn toast to a nicety....
Her invisible G.P. and his ever changing locums....(sounds like an act from the old time music hall)...
The hospital car volunteer who refused to take her to hospital... (could it be the scythes on the hubs of her wheelchair, one wondered idly).....
And the state of television.

Confined to quarters while awaiting her knee replacement as a follow on for the hip replacement at the age of 95....three cheers for the NHS....she has been watching television.

Normally, she would watch sport.
Any sport.
She'd watch a knitting competition if it was labelled sport.

She watches the Boat Race every year in keen anticipation of watching the Light Blues sink.
Town she might have been but Oxford Gown takes priority over Cambridge as it has ever since she was a girl, watching the undergraduates throwing fireworks in the street on Boat Race night.
The only thing she won't watch is the Grand National, and I heard her views on the matter once again, as I do every year after the annual slaughter of beautiful animals in the name of greed.

But, with time on her hands, she has been watching television in general.....and she is appalled.

It's all scandal, naked women and drivel.

Mother has encountered the world of chat shows and reality T.V.

What particularly seems to annoy her is a trend for 'celebrities' to witter on about their failures...drink, drugs, serial fornication, you name it....and preen themselves on their ability to have 'come through' it.

She's not against them 'coming through' it...

She's against television channels paying them money to bore the pants off her by using time that could be devoted to sinking boats and soaring gymnasts to boasts of their sordid behaviour in an atmosphere of sickeningly hypocritical 'repentance'.

But, once released and the ear drops applied, I began to think and an idea for a new 'reality' show came to me.

I might be well off track here, as I don't know much more about them than mother's description and a vague memory of someone with a pronounced northern accent recounting what was or had been going on in 'the house'.
To me, 'the house' was the House of Commons so some confusion reigned until it clicked and I clicked off.


So, based on complete ignorance - which seems to be an essential factor for success - here is my suggestion to revitalise the T.V. reality show, while using the current trend of mock repentance.

The penitence stool.

Now, those of you not of Scottish descent may need a little background here.
Take yourself back to the time of Mary, Queen of Scots and John Knox, oarsman extraordinaire, when Protestantism took over from Catholicism at the Reformation.

The reformed church in Scotland was desirous of improving the moral tone of the community.
Accordingly, the priests who carried on under the new regime as ministers would marry the women with whom they had been living in sin and give an example of marital fidelity to their flock, who, in turn, would be encouraged to  maintain a high moral tone under the guidance of the minister and the elders of the congregation.

To those of us brought up on tales...and experience... of the three hour sermon, you'd think that that alone was enough to terrify a high moral tone into anyone...but the Scots are a prideful and obdurate race.

They are not deterred by the solemn warning delivered by a minister to an elderly lady, who, hard of hearing, arrived at church bearing her ear trumpet...

One toot an' ye're oot!

Neither are they altogether persuaded by the urgings to emulate the example of the Good Samaritan.....
There are some areas where you would be well advised to stay on your own side of the street in case the sick man proves to be a decoy put out by a gang of muggers.

Nor are they impressed by the inclusivity promised by the minister who, while commentating on the passage in Luke's gospel about the expulsion of the ungodly....at which time there would be 'weeping and gnashing of teeth'.... became aware of the wide grin on the face of a toothless parishioner.
Not pausing in his stride, the minister bent to address him personally

For you, brother, teeth will be provided.

While their faith in the boundless mercy of the Almighty is not encouraged by the minister's depiction of the fate of sinners at the Day of Judgement....

And ye'll be looking up to the Lord and crying
Lord, Lord, we didnae ken, we didnae ken....
And the Lord will look doon upon ye in His infinite mercy and He'll say unto ye
Well, ye ken noo!

I make no apology for the inclusion of these hoary chestnuts....I still enjoy them, bringing back as they do the smell and taste of the mint imperials with which one both weathered and timed the sermon...and, as I say, we Scots are a prideful and obdurate race, with  skin thickened to rhino-like proportions by the attentions of the native midge in our formative years.

So, to bring the community to heel, the elders thought up a new stratagem.....name and shame.
Once regarded as guilty of incidents of drunkenness or moral licence of any sort, the offenders would be made to sit upon the penitence stool in church...a low stool, placed where all the congregation could get a good look at the sinner throughout proceedings.
No anonymity in those communities.

This is the idea I wish to use for the reality show I have in mind.

You have the audience...the congregation.

You have the host, or hosts...the elders and minister.

You have the 'celebrity', ready to bare all, probably physically as well as verbally.....the sinner.

The hosts will interrogate the 'celebrity' as to their shortcomings...and as to the sincerity of their repentance.
He or she can wallow in all the sordid details to the delectation of the audience, secure in the knowledge that repentance brings returns.

For instead of paying a fine to clear their consciences, the 'celebrities' will be paid.
The audience, having heard the 'celebrity' answer the questions of the hosts, will vote as to how much money to give them in recognition of their rehabilitation.

Everyone will have a voting pad and the results will be shown on some sort of electronic board with flashing lights.
Oh, and we'll need a woman in  an exiguous costume and high heels to operate the board, toss her head and show a lot of teeth.

So if you know anyone in television......

Another local landmark gone...

Image by Matthieu Aubry. via Flickr

Not so much the physical landscape, but the personal one.

Alain e mailed me to say that The Poisoner....better known under that nickname than his own...has died at the age of 91.

And with The Poisoner dies another part of my past in France.

He was the neighbour of a friend in the second village I moved to....and, through the tales of Alain and his wife, I discovered that he was part of local folklore.....a person whose sayings and doings were discussed over a game of cards or a drink in the bar.

He and his wife lived in a state of mutual detestation......but he, typical of a man of his epoch, assumed superiority and dominance.
He spent every daylight moment in his garden and in the big field alongside where he cultivated his vegetables and a few rows of vines.....expecting his wife to assist him by holding implements and carrying or wheeling anything heavy, under a continual fire of criticism and sarcasm.

It was a wonder to me that she hadn't murdered him years before, but thanks to Edith and Alice, of the generation before that of The Poisoner, I had learned to understand the nature of those gender roles and attitudes of pre war rural France which ensured his survival.

He continually complained that his wife had no respect for him....she even laid a place for herself at the table at mealtimes, rather than eating whatever was left over after he had finished, standing by the chimney...as a dutiful wife should.
When, greatly daring, Alain enquired how he countered this act of rebellion the reply was swift and sure..

I take my plate and glass to the dining room ...leaving her in the kitchen..... and if it gives her two tables to clear up, and a lot of running about to get me this or that then that's her problem. She should know her place.

He was no more pleasant with neighbours and passers by.
Women would hear him calling them whores of the worst description because they wore lipstick - or, utmost horror - trousers; men would learn interesting facts about their parentage and their means of making a living.
But no one counter attacked....it seemed as though he was an accepted bogeyman...one of the inevitable unpleasantnesses of life..... and as he refused to participate in any part of village life at least the unpleasantness was confined to a small corner of the commune.

Alain and his wife managed to live alongside without incident because Alain, after long service as a local school teacher, was on the council...and The Poisoner took care not to look for trouble in that direction.
He was unpleasant...but not completely stupid.

He never voted.
Rumour had it that as far as he was concerned the right wing Front National were a bunch of leftist pansies....while as for the rest!

Of the two local rags he took the one favoured by the bigots....not because he was a believer, but because it was good for the death notices which gave him great delight, commenting on how he had outlived yet another person he had known since their days on the school bench together.
Preferably so commenting to the relict of the deceased.
At the funeral.

Inevitably, he detested foreigners.
Having eaten a superb dish of rabbit at Alain's house, I asked him for the source of his supply.
The Poisoner.
Not a gift, you understand...like all the local guys, The Poisoner's pricing system was to check the price of rabbits in the local markets as reported in the newspaper, and charge accordingly.
Alain would see if he could buy me a couple.

The request was put...and was refused with contumely.
How could even Alain, suspect liberal as he was, expect The Poisoner to so lower himself as to sell anything to a foreigner?
He wanted no dealings with them.

So I got my rabbits from Didier, who had the same pricing policy but no contumely.

Later, as the British started to move in in numbers, The Poisoner excelled himself by knocking a young English woman off her bike, by shoving the handle of his rake into the wheels as she passed his field.
Alain remonstrated with him, to no avail.

What was the government about to let these foreigners into France...buying up houses and putting up prices...
(The Poisoner, it should be noted, did not have an old house to sell and was thus excluded from the property boom which was at that time filling the mattresses to bursting point.)

Weren't you worried her husband might come round and have a go at you?

What?  No chance! He's in England...probable seeing some other woman on the side....D'you think I'm stupid or something?

The only time he spoke to me was when I was leaving the area.
He wanted to know the price I'd obtained for the house.
I told him and he sat down on his garden wall, breathing hard.

'Nom d'un chien! There must be some blithering idiots about! Sold to another rosbif, I suppose!

No...to the maire's daughter.

Nom d'un chien!


When his wife had to have a small operation some years ago, he protested that he was by far the more ill and should also go to hospital.
As it was clear that he could not look after himself, he was accordingly taken to the long stay ward... a pleasant ground floor area with access to the gardens...where he proceeded to make a thorough nuisance of himself.

Racist abuse of the North African doctors could have been expected, but his major coup was to confiscate the zimmer frames of other residents and stack them out of range at the end of the gardens, to prevent their users from disturbing his siesta by shuffling about.
The food was declared inedible - he lost weight;  the staff were sadists - confiscated his cigarettes; and everything was the fault of his wife who had allowed quacks and money making charlatans to persuade her that she was ill in order to make money for the hospital.

Once home again, the daily routine took over again...until last year, when tragedy struck.

Alain and his wife were on holiday when it happened, and heard the news from their daughter, who had been summoned by the gendarmerie.

The Poisoner's house had caught fire and it was only by terrific exertions on the part of the fire Brigade that Alain's outbuildings had not followed suit.

He was lucky....The Poisoner's house was burned out, uninhabitable. The roof...which had just been insulated three weeks before...had fallen in....the place was a smouldering wreck.
Neither he nor his wife were hurt and the the maire immediately found them alternative accommodation, in one of the old peoples' bungalows which had been built in the village centre to try to keep the elderly in touch with their friends and families instead of going off to the 'waiting rooms of death', as the local old peoples' homes were known in that area.

The cause of the fire?
The Poisoner's wife had inadvertently left the gas on in the back kitchen when summoned to the garden by her husband...there had been a build up of gas...and an explosion.

It might surprise you - because it surprised everyone else - that he uttered not one word of complaint, nor made any accusation of his wife.

Why not?

Because one could not expect women to have any sense at all and so there would be no point in saying anything. It was in the nature of things.

The change of routine was, I suppose, too much for him. Accustomed to his home and his garden for all his adult years, he must have found life in a group of bungalows with sociable people too trying to stand.

As Alain said, there are all sorts of things on the death certificate, but basically he died because he was 91 and because he had lost his home.

So why does the death of a thoroughly unpleasant man bother me?
I cannot honestly say that I feel in any way that his death, of itself, diminishes me.

I think what bothers me is that I won't be attending the funeral, which brings it home to me that I have really uprooted myself.
I won't be in the church in the square, hearing the sudden bustle at the door as the men come in from the bar just in time to file past the coffin.
I won't be talking to friends as we make the long walk to the cemetery, family and friends carrying memorial plaques, where the workmen will have opened the family tomb.
I won't be paying my respects to the widow and family with everyone else.
If I'd still been in France, I would gave driven over...
I am no longer part of that community...that part of mankind...that made a point of attending the funerals, of marking the passage, of showing support by their mere presence.
It didn't matter who had died...or who or what they were...you went to the funeral.

That was the last place I lived in in France that felt like that....in other areas it was friends and family only unless it was a local 'notable'...just as in the U.K.....and I always count myself lucky that I had that experience of solidarity.
And miss it. As I missed it in later moves in France.
Only now, the reality of an ocean between that village and where I am now living makes it impossible to roll back the years by just driving over to attend the funeral.

Oh, and why, you might ask, was he known as The Poisoner?
He was a  gardener in the true French mould. Not a plant out of line, not a weed to be seen, not a shoot unpruned.

At the first sign of insect damage, blight, or, indeed, of anything out of order in his vegetable kingdom, his wife would be sent scurrying for water in the big back packs used for spraying while he headed for his shed.

That shed must have contained enough of the assorted poisons put out by the agro chemical companies to have been of interest to terrorist groups bent on wiping out France...he sprayed everything that needed it and anything that looked as if it might.
You can just imagine the levels of pesticide, herbicide and goodness only knows whaticide on his fruit and veg...which he then consumed.

If only Monsanto had known of his existence, they could have used him as an advertisement for the innocuous nature of their death dealing products....

Look, he's been using this stuff all his life and he made it to 91.....probably still be alive if his wife hadn't burned down the house...look at the facts...our chemicals are less dangerous than women.

I shall say this only once! Legs eleven!

Image via Wikipedia

I was living in France when, to the horror of everyone except supporters of the right wing Front National, the PS (so called socialist) candidate Lionel Jospin threw away his party's chances by not campaigning in the first round of the Presidential elections.

I remember the newspaper photographs....a jaunty Jospin in black overcoat and red scarf posing in front of his campaign headquarters, christened 'L'Atelier'...the workshop.
I can remember thinking that it would have been a long time since any of the PS politicians had seen a real workshop.....which might have been one factor accounting for the fact that many voters who were more nearly acquainted with them voted for the FN candidate, Monsieur Le Pen.

In the resulting run off between Chirac (candidate of the not quite so right wing party) and Le Pen, left wing voters felt themselves obliged to vote for the former, indicating their disgust at being so obliged by walking into polling stations holding their noses and, in one case, wearing a deep sea diver's suit and helmet.

Now we are in the build up to the 2012 presidential elections and this year's cantonals (local elections) are receiving a great deal more attention than usual, when they pass with a yawn only slightly smaller than the yawn that greets the elections for the European Parliament.
Why?
Because the Front National are doing rather well, under the leadership of Le Pen II - Marine, daughter of Le Pen I.
Dust off the diving suits, history could be repeating itself.


Not because the PS won't be contesting the first round of the Presidentials.....once the potential candidates have finished mauling and denigrating each other in the process of putting up the last man standing....but because people are just fed up.

All the mainstream parties are tarred with the same brush, their leaders seen as more interested in the spoils than in the welfare of the mass of the French people....

The UMP (ruling right wing party) have not only shot down their leader, Sarkozy, on discovering that he wanted to reform a system that had long reserved the good things of life for the very few to allow a very few more to get their hands on the dibs, but have also managed to shoot themselves in the foot with the same bullet, as having nothing to offer the voters but the discredited system they wish to preserve.
With such talent with a firearm, you feel they must all be dedicated members of la chasse.

One paper...I think Le Point...reports that levels of 'fed upness' are such that people are claiming that they will vote FN because they have been fined for allowing their dog to foul a public footpath!
Given all the wails in blogs about dog turds in Paris I imagine that the Front National stand to win handsomely in every Parisian  arrondissement if that's the case.

So it's not really the moment to alienate a large sector of the rural population....the members of the many and varied associations which adorn the pages of the local rags...the chess clubs, the old car clubs, the photography clubs, the sewing bees, the palets players, the ball trappers, the knitting circles, the local history groups...and  for all I know, pole dancing associations.
Membership of these groups alleviates the tedium of rural life, and 'la vie associative' is always hailed as one of the positive features of French society.....so why would someone want to undermine this institution?

Well, one taxman is trying to do so.
His motives are unknown to me....is he a member of the FN anxious to make the gesture that might just tip the scales in his party's favour or is he just doing his job, obeying orders from Paris to rake in every last euro in order to pay for the the Prime Minister to take a private plane between Paris and his home in the Sarthe to avoid the hurly burly of an hour on the TGV?

What is this taxman doing?

These groups frequently support their activities by organising a bingo...a 'loto'. Some organise these themselves, but in the case currently in court, it is clear that some use the services of a bingo organiser...who has a few rounds for his own profit while he is at it.
The taxman claims that this breaks the law.
But if he wins, it won't only be the organiser that will be coughing up....it will be any organisation holding a bingo session that will be in danger.

This is why.

A bingo..or any game of chance....can only escape tax if it is a session confined to a defined group.... and for social, cultural, educational, scientific or what is described as 'animation social' purposes.
Well, I reckon any rural bingo qualifies under any of those latter headings.
It is the defined circle bit that will cause problems.

A village bingo brings in the group organising it and their families, people who just happen to see the notice outside the mairie and the dedicated bingo addicts who will travel distances to take part.
How can this motley assembly ever be described as a 'defined circle'?

Still, as we all know, there is a great French tradition of resistance to oppression and I am sure that the local groups will be organising to meet the threat.

Undercover bingo.

Let us listen in on the secret planning group of the ball trappers.....probably by using the listening devices the gendarmerie have illegally placed on the premises under the pretence that the ball trappers are potential terrorists, on the lines of the Tarnac Nine.

Jules, have you organised the bingo cards?

Yes, no problem...I've printed them off on my son's computer....

And the notices?

Yes, those too....with instructions to bring a torch, a folding chair and a tray to write on.

Right, Didier....have you organised the distribution?

Yes....the postmen are taking them out with the letters the day before. They know which houses to avoid...
I'm meeting them round behind the church so the postmaster doesn't see anything.

What about the venue? Isn't it going to be a bit noticeable, all these people collecting? Suppose we are denounced?

That's exactly why we chose the field behind where the travelling still used to stand before they made it stay in one place.....there are all those lanes through the vines and at least three roads for access to the area...and we'll have sentries with mobile 'phones.

Yes, but getting all these people away safely will be a problem all the same if the gendarmerie make a raid...look at the job we have in the salle de fetes as it is....

Alfred's organising the parking in the fields behind the vines....and at least we won't have anyone trapped in the lavatory...I keep asking for that door to be fixed but they do nothing....They can find money to replace the secretary's typing chair but when it comes to something vital like a lavatory door.....

O.K. Clement....calm down....

Yes, you're right. Have to keep a clear head...
Look, Jean-Pierre, even if the worst comes to the worst and they catch some of us there won't be a problem.

What do you mean, 'won't be a problem'?

Well, I'll just tell them that we're having a rave party for the notaire's son.....and I should know, I'm his clerk.
You watch them slink away......

Farewell, the animal....

Italy beat France 22 - 21 at the Stadio Flaminio on Saturday in the rugby union Six Nations tournament. They've been underdogs in the Six Nations so long that it is a real pleasure to see them win....especially after the dramatic improvements this season under the guidance of their South African coach.


And particularly nice to see them defeat the French, whose press has been very scathing of the Italian team's right to compete with the old Five Nations teams on performance grounds. (Only the Auld Alliance can explain why there was no mention of Scotland in this respect.)

The whole shebang started well, from the formalities onward....

The Italian national anthem is something else....full of references to the Austrian eagle losing its feathers, Scipio's helmet, and, to anyone brought up on the description of the Italian army as having sunburned armpits (thank you, father), the request made of the brothers of Italy as to the whereabouts of victory does tend to raise a smile.

Still, as it was originally a poem written in the period of Italian reunion and the fight against occupying powers one must expect a bit of floweriness and it makes a change from the Marseillaise, with foreign blood running in the furrows and that sad dirge 'Flower of Scotland'.

France dominated early, but fell to pieces in the second half as the brothers of Italy not only resisted but fought.....and found victory.
The French coach later accused his men of cowardice and incompetence and it's just as well that, unlike the armies of the early years of the French republic, he had not brought a travelling guillotine with him as a means of inducing fervour in the ranks as otherwise heads might have literally been rolling.

Which brings us to the animal.

Image by abac077 via Flickr

No, not the fox that was loose at Twickenham for the Calcutta Cup match, but the real animal, the cave man,

Sebastien Chabal.

Not a pretty sight, it has to be said, but one which has reassured French rugby fans for years as the bearded, long haired figure came off the bench to spread mayhem among the opponents by the speed and aggression of his tackling.

I remember him tearing into England in the preliminary rounds of the 2007 World Cup, held in France, where the night skies around me in the depths of rural France resounded to raucous, triumphant renderings of the Marseillaise, foreign blood having been flowing well in the furrow on that occasion.

Even then his wind seemed to be going....he was finding it hard to get through a whole match...but when he came on, both team and crowd picked up their spirits....the cave man had arrived and the tide would turn for France.

While I am sure he is a model family man and probably, being a French professional sportsman, reads philosophy and writes poetry in what time he can spare between tearing carcasses apart and throwing tractors, it has to be said that I don't think I'd appreciate him galloping toward me like a human version of the juggernaut on the field of play....and a number of rugby union players have clearly been of the same opinion.
Thus his value to France.

But I think he lost his magic in that World Cup series of 2007.
First, France lost to England in the semi finals....and his shock and disbelief was palpable.
Night skies around me in rural France decidedly quiet.

Then Argentina beat France in the play off for third place...and showed the rugby world how to counter Chabal.
He had come off the bench, and the crowd roared its approval. His colleagues picked themselves up...their morale was boosted...the wonder worker was there.
Then Argentina made a substitution too....and onto the field trotted a mammoth, the personification of a brick shithouse. An ambulatory one.
Play restarted. Chabal had the ball and the brick shithouse went straight for him, picked him up as though he were featherlight and slammed him into the ground.
The brick shithouse was sent off.....but his purpose had been accomplished. Chabal was a spent force, unable to prevent his team going down to a mighty defeat.
I don't think he has ever been the same player since.

However, he has been a good servant to French rugby and it is sad to see him in the tumbril with the other five players dropped by the French coach for the last match in the tournament....and perhaps for good.

The French financial miracle.....

Image via Wikipedia

Or how to turn 26,700 Euros into 2,000,000 Euros in nine years, by completely legal methods.

It has to be said that this is not available to everyone.....but it would get the imprimatur of all those who believe in the French national preference (French come first, the rest get the leavings) as it has no tinge of what are disdainfully referred to as Anglo Saxon financial practices...which for me  conjures up visions of Grendel's mother emerging from the lake, briefcase in hand, followed by a troop of bankers in cross gartering and horned helmets, but then I'm not French and do not share the national cultural vision.

To activate this miracle, the person concerned has to be qualified to attract an investigation into their financial affairs by the French taxman.....a privilege not open to all, even in the land of  liberty, equality and fraternity.

It excludes the super rich...the ones who hand out the folding stuff in doggy bags to politicians who come to tea..
It excludes politicians...as it would be regarded as indelicate to enquire into the origin of the contents of the doggy bags for fear of inclusion of the super rich in the miracle which is about to be vouchsafed unto you and it would be equally indelicate to enquire into the uses made of the contents of the doggy bags for fear of involving a third group who suffer a like discrimination...
Local notables.....the sub prefect, assorted maires, political fixers and the ladies with whom they spend the hours from five o'clock until seven in the early evening.

There is a further requirement, just to complicate matters...but then, if it looks too good to be true, that's just what it is and this is no Madoff scheme.

There has to be a 'denunciation' to the tax authorities to enable them to start the process.

Now, in France, denunciation can be regarded as a civic obligation...and the German occupying forces were astonished at the readiness of the French to carry out their civic obligations.
Nothing much has changed since.
But you need to carry out your civic obligations with a bit of circumspection.

A denunciation is the provision of information to an appropriate body that alerts the said body to the existence of something nasty in its woodshed.....like someone fiddling their tax returns or underpaying their workers' social security payments.
However, a denunciation has to be signed and an address given...which is where the circumspection comes in.

Careful enquiry needs to be made as to the social milieu of the person to be denounced.

Denunciation of anyone in the three social sectors excluded from the operations of the miracle tends to result in the denunciator being investigated instead, which rather defeats the purpose, although discouraging other would-be denunciators from wasting the time of hard pressed bureaucrats.
A quick flip through the family tree of the local taxman is not a bad idea either...on the same grounds.
But without a signature, no enquiry can be made...according to President Sarkozy.
A potential dilemma for the denunciator.

But help is at hand.
In a judgement of 1998, the Cour de Cassation decided that the taxman could proceed to seize property and goods on the strength of an anonymous tip off......a 'delation'.
And the judgement stands.

So an anonymous letter will do the trick.
However, even if avoiding the risk of investigation, the delator...as we must now call him or her....knows that no one from the four sectors outlined above will be investigated, so has to aim the barbs at someone deemed appropriate prey.

Someone who has, to general astonishment, made his own way without the help of powerful local family or connections to a point where he is wealthy - by local standards - and thus attracts jealousy, that curse of French life which animates the spirits behind the formal courtesies and rituals of everyday routine.
His money will evidently be of suspect origin as not being collected in doggy bags.

The financial miracle can begin!

The taxman starts an investigation into Monsieur  Goupil's affairs. He finds that Monsieur Goupil has understated his financial position and owes the taxman 294,000 Euros.

Monsieur Goupil responds by hiring a fiscal specialist who, after four years, brings the taxman to agree that Monsieur Goupil only owes  26,700 Euros.

However, before Monsieur Goupil can settle his agreed debt of 26,700 Euros, he first has to pay up the 294,000 Euros to clear the original claim, at which point the taxman will initiate the somewhat lengthy process of refunding it to him.

Now, if at this point Monsieur Goupil agrees to pay up, the miracle does not work, but those who have earned their money the hard way tend to have a sense of injustice being done and should he consider this a distinctly unjust procedure, the miracle can proceed.
Monsieur Goupil will place all his assets into voluntary receivership to avoid the taxman getting his hands on the loot while safeguarding the jobs of his employees.

The administrator appointed will then start selling off the assets at knock down values at auction...incidentally destroying the jobs of the employees.
Monsieur Goupil, realising too late that in his case the age of miracles is over, John Paul II notwithstanding, tries to raise the 294,000 from the assets in receivership.
But they are no longer his assets.
He is hauled into court, given a six month suspended sentence, made officially bankrupt...and has to pay the administrator 56,000 Euros.

By this time his various obligations, debts, fees and costs amount to 2,000,000 million Euros..
The miracle has happened!

The state has turned a debt of 26,700 Euros into one of 2,000,000 Euros.....

Monsieur Goupil is living in a caravan dependent on friends for food.....

And somewhere a delator is cursing his or her pusillanimity in not signing the letter, which means that the taxman has no way of expressing the gratitude of the state by a donation of the folding stuff in a doggy bag.

Umshini wami

Image via Wikipedia

South Africa's President, Jacob Zuma, has just completed a state visit to France where, among other matters, he was due to discuss French involvement in the supply of nuclear power to his country - though why anyone would want the leaky products of Areva when South Africa had its own super Pebble Mill nuclear project is beyond me.

Well, it isn't really beyond me. I just wish it were.

Why develop your own projects, encouraging your own R and D talent and resources when more people (people who matter, you understand, not ordinary people) can get their hands in the till by encouraging international commercial cooperation.
What has efficiency, safety and value for money to do with it?

This is part of the Alice Through the Looking Glass world of the financial and political nexus model which has superseded democracy as the mode of government in first world countries.

Still to return to the visit.
It is devoutly to be hoped that the French head of protocol managed a better job of rendering that stately and haunting South African national anthem 'Nkosi sikelel' iAfrica' than did his counterparts of the French Rugby Union when France played South Africa at home in 2009.

He probably did, while as the FRU's aim was, as ever when France organises a tournament, to disrupt the opposition, the aim of Sarkozy is to keep Zuma happy.

He'll be happy with the dosh dished out by France, to be sure....but he is looking for more.

South Africa ordered six of the new Airbus 380s...but thanks to technical hitches...like cutting the wiring too short...and financial shenanigans...there were delays.
The delays were such that South Africa cancelled its order.
But Airbus kept the deposit, and South Africa would like it back.

Now, anyone who has lived for sometime in France and has had a problem with white goods will know that Zuma is on a hiding to nothing here.....and even more so because the sums involved are large.
As are the white goods at issue.

merewoman will confirm this after her epic batttle over the Philips Senseo coffee maker which didn't..make coffee, that is. She had to threaten to bring in the heavy mob.

I too have experience of the delights of French customer relations, from the woman who upped the price of the embroidered sheets at a vide grenier while I was still buying them on the grounds that I liked them and that I was English......the shock and insult to Scots blood was such that she made no sale that day.....to commerce proper.

The first was when I was new to France, in the days when bricolage - DIY - was a serious affair of men dressing in special overalls to hide in their sheds and take six months to make a bread board.
None of the big chains, the Bricodepots and Bricomans, existed and the smaller ones, like Mr. Bricolage, catered only for the six months bread board makers.

So, needing paint, I went to town and found a shop which not only sold paint but mixed it as well...which was handy as the colours on offer ready to go as it were were less than inspiring.
There seemed to be vast quantities of eau de nil, which had featured largely in the houses of my youth to the extent that I never wished to see it again and certainly not on the shutters which I had taken from their hinges and brought to the barn to work on.

There are moments when you find yourself on a ladder at a first floor window heaving an oak shutter as tall as yourself off two sets of iron hinges when you wonder if there is some sort of mathematical formula for how far backward you can lean with the shutter in your hands before the ladder decides to follow your general direction.
If there is, I don't want to know about it. Making fear concrete would be more than I could bear.
Especially when you have to do it another eleven times or risk leaving the house look uneven.

I had decided on a sort of drab olive colour and found something approximating to it on the chart offered by the lady with the mixing machine.
I decided how much I wanted and she duly mixed paint and banged down paint pot lids...those special French ones which prevent you from closing the tin properly after use in the fond hope that the paint will dry out and you will be forced to buy a new tin when touching up your paintwork a year later.
She wrote the mix number on the bill...thus confirming my suspicions that I would be needing more the next year and I paid up, wondering how it was that I was funding the French national debt singlehanded while just seeking to paint my shutters and went on my way.

That oak soaked up paint the way traditional fast bowlers supped ale.
It swallowed the primer....equivalent in cost to buying France a new nuclear submarine.
It slurped the undercoat.....enough to fund half an Ariane missile.
It turned its attentions to the olive drab......it clearly liked it - a cheeky little number with turpentine overtones and a long finish.

I returned to the paint shop.

I handed over the bill with the mix number and Madame got on with mixing. She seemed in an awful hurry to bang on the lids when she had finished and I could see why.
The colour was nothing like the olive drab...more like a matt black.

That's not the right colour!

Yes it is.

It's not. Look at this paint stain on my hand.

It is. It has to be. This is the colour for that number.

Then the number must be wrong. I had olive green paint and this is nearly black.

It will settle when you stir it.

No it won't. I'm not taking that.

But I've mixed it. You have to. Anyway, you can use it for undercoat.

I don't want black paint. The whole point of putting the mix number on the bill was to avoid this.

You must have written it yourself and made a mistake...being a foreigner, you didn't understand French.

The handwriting for the number and the rest of the bill are the same....

As I left the shop I saw something I had previously overlooked......the notice on the door for the chamber of commerce publicity drive.

The customer is king.

So now we know why Louis XVI ended up under the blade of the guillotine....he must have kicked up about the paintwork at Versailles.

Given that persistence at tin of paint level...what chance does President Zuma have when it comes to millions of euros worth of white goods?

There is a chance that they might try to divert him with a bunga bunga party....to which he is as partial as Signor Berlusconi...but as it is unimaginable that an African President could be bribed by anything so trivial I suspect that he will have to invite those concerned to an evening at the South African embassy in Paris to explain the realities of the case. I am sure that once EADS directors and French government ministers hear him singing his favourite song, the advisability of coughing up will become apparent.

He will entertain them with his rendering of 'Umshini wami'...

Loosely translated as 'Hand me down my machine gun'.

The voice of small town France.....

Image via Wikipedia

I came across something today which brought to mind all the good memories of France and which solved a small mystery.
What had happened to 'le chat' who used to write a small column for the local rag in the area in which I lived when first in France casting a kindly but sharp eye on the various doings in his town through the medium of his two characters, le chat and la vache.

Even though I moved away, I still followed his column and was saddened when recently it ceased to appear in favour of something more anodyne.
Why?
Election time?
The anti-drink lobby?
Who knows...

So I was delighted to find a reference to a blog which 'le chat' has started and on chasing it down found that his voice remains unchanged.

And then I thought that for people really trying to get to grips with how France is...how it thinks, how it expresses itself....then following this blog will provide an opening.
It echoes small town life...the problems with the roadworks, the local politicians, local beaurocrats, silly stuff seen while walking around, all described succinctly and with humour.
This is daily life reported, not by Poncey of Paris but by.......

Balthazar Fourcalquier

as 'le chat' now wishes to be known, on his blog at

sapristibalthazar.over-blog.com

There is a link in my blogroll...but, be warned, it just leads to a page of gobbledygook.

To find 'le chat' you need to go first to

here

and look for him on the list...among diverse other blogs ranging from taking over a dentist's practice to buying property in the area via two groups of anti capitalists and one description of railway modelling.
The list is a gem in itself.

Don't be discouraged by the fact that you will almost certainly not know the town or its notables....you'll soon catch on and if you can follow the goings on of The Archers this will be child's play.

And don't take one look and retreat muttering
'Goodgoddlemighty it's in French!'
It is, but it's simple French and a little perseverance will bring you an insight into cultural references that would otherwise pass you by.

And don't forget the music...there is a little triangle in the top left hand corner to press.

It's all good fun and I heartily recommend it to you.

As 'le chat' used to say

'Soyons serieux...a quoi on trinque?