The mentality of the maison close

This still is from 'L'Apollonide', a film showing at the Cannes Festival this year, dealing with the  existence - one cannot call it life - endured by the women in a late nineteenth century French brothel. A 'maison close'.
In other words, a skin flick with the word 'culture' veneered over it to make it all right to be seen watching it.

It was made in part by monies supplied by the Ile de France Region and normally the President of the Regional Council would have been at Cannes to attend the showing.....but 'events, dear boy, events'....have made him change his mind.

Monsieur Huchon does not think it appropriate to attend festivities while his friend Dominique Strauss-Kahn languishes in durance vile on the other side of the Atlantic...and, besides, he was shocked at the violence of the action and the images presented.
No..he's not talking about the film with its obligatory nudity and violence.
He's talking about Monsieur Strauss-Kahn being photographed in handcuffs.

Still, 'L'Apollonide' comes at an appropriate moment.

Everywhere but in France, the revelations of Monsieur Strauss-Kahn's predatory ways with women which have been made in the wake of his arrest on suspicion of sexual assault have roused debate on the role and status of women in French life.
In France, of course, no such debate will take place.
The incestuous circle of politicians and businessmen who rule France from Paris will make sure of that.
With the help of their journalist hangers-on.

France is Looking Glass Land and to understand how it works you have to go behind the mirror it holds up to the world and delve in the dirt and fly droppings behind.

France, you will be told, has a mature attitude to sex and infidelity.
What does this mean?

Well, delving among the fly droppings it means that  in the world of those Parisian circles that rule the country women are a currency in the wallets of men.

At work the woman accepts the 'attentions' of her bosses....or she gets out.
Her husband accepts that she accepts the 'attentions' of her bosses....after all, he is 'attending' to the women who work for him.
That's the way the Parisian world works.

Like the song from 'Kiss me Kate', 'I'm always true to you, darling, in my fashion', where the lady boasts of her preference for diamond clips and Cadillacs over fidelity...where Mr. Harris, plutocrat, wishes to give her cheek a pat and a Harris pat leads to a Paris hat, French women in the ruling circles, far from believing the world well lost for love, believe the world is gained by granting their favours in  return for maintaining their foothold in the circle.
And their husbands agree.

Do these women care that this attitude makes life difficult for the young women entering the world of work, where, as the Hungarian woman who was the object of the attentions of Monsieur Strauss-Kahn at the IMF said
'I was damned if I did and damned if I didn't.'
Of course not.

They live in the 'maison close' of the life at the top of French society.....where life as the rest of us know it does not intrude, where all that matters is money, where people who believe in love and fidelity are regarded...with a Parisian shrug...as 'immature'.

Well, immature I may be, but it feels a lot cleaner to live in the real world than to have to associate with men who are not only NSIT (not safe in taxis) but NSIL (not safe in lifts) and having to act as their plaything.

No Paris hat is worth that.

The World Turned Upside Down

Image by saxarocks via Flickr

Produced during the English Civil War in reaction to Parliament's attempts to make the observance of Christmas  a solemn religious event rather than an excuse for bacchanalia, this tune was popularly supposed to have been played by the bands of the English regiments marching out under the eyes of the victorious American colonists after Cornwallis surrendered to them at Yorktown in the American War of Independence.

Unfortunately, thanks to the quota system for playing music on French radio, it is unlikely to be heard in France, but, at the moment, it would encapsulate the French reaction to the news of the arrest of Dominique Strauss-Kahn  in New York.

And it would encapsulate the local reaction to a latecomer being turned away from a concert out in the wilds of La France Profonde, too.

As I have previously noted, local dignitaries have a habit of keeping everyone waiting when they attend an event, strolling in, well fed and watered, to take their free front row seats.
It is one of their inalienable rights.
So the world was indeed turned upside down when Monsieur Lepalfrenier, maire of his village, departmental councillor and president of the local association of communes, arriving at the usual interval of one hour after the advertised start of the theatrical performance in a neighbouring village, found himself and party turned away.
By the maire.

'Du jamais vu!' said Guy over the telephone, imparting the gory details. 'Unthinkable!'

A little background information might help to show the significance of this shattering event.
Since President Mitterand started a process of decentralisation of power in the 1980s, all sorts of bodies have sprung up in France....departmental councils, regional councils, local planning associations and groupings of communes for common supply of services.....in other words, the effect of decentralisation has been to supply an increased number of troughs in which local politicians can employ their snouts to best effect.

Lately, as part of a general shake up of local government, it has been decided - in Paris - that the rural associations of communes should be attached to those surrounding the local towns and, accordingly, it has been decided by the Prefect - Paris' man in the department whose job is to see what local politicians are up to and tell them to stop it - that the association presided over by Monsieur Lepalfrenier should be split between two local towns....Chiottes la Gare and Benitierville.

Monsieur Lepalfrenier waxed wroth.
His reaction could be best expressed by quoting from Sellar and Yeatman's presentation of 'The Witan's Whail', dealing with King Canute's attempts to impose upon his council his views on outfangthief.

'Wroth was Cnut and wrothword spake
Well wold he win at wopentake.
Fain wold he brake frith and crake heads
And than they shold worshippe his redes.'

You get the general idea.
Monsieur Lepalfrenier was not pleased.
His association would be split between two towns with their own ideas on development...and Monsieur Lepalfrenier would lose one source of his emoluments.

Now, one of the success stories of his association had been the installation of a business park just outside the village of St. Boulot which had attracted a number of firms and which had thus created a significant number of jobs in the area.
Under the proposed changes, the commune of St. Boulot would find itself annexed by Benitierville - which had its own, larger, business park - and the maire of St. Boulot reckoned, with some reason, that his pet project would be left to wither on the vine in favour of its bigger neighbour.
Monsieur Lepalfrenier agreed with the maire.

So the long planned inauguration of Zone B of the St. Boulot business park by Monsieur Lepalfrenier in the presence of local politicians and the prefect promised to be interesting.
What would he say?
Would he 'swinge..this illbegotten lot?'

He rose.
He thanked the assembled dignitaries for their presence.
He said that he thought that the disappearance of his association would be, overall, a good thing, harnessing rural communes to the powerful motors of towns like Chiottes la Gare and Benitierville.

In the silence which followed he shook hands all round and left before the vin d'honneur.
'Du jamais vu!'

Once the dignitaries assembled had collected their breath and their thoughts, there was but one question....
No, two questions.

How much had he got..... and from whom....?

It will not surprise you to know, then, that the theatrical presentation from which he was excluded was held in the village hall of St. Boulot.


With all this going on locally it takes something pretty big to attract attention elsewhere, but the policemen of New York have managed it.
They have taken Dominique Strauss-Kahn, boss of the IMF and ex French finance minister, into custody on suspicion of sexually assaulting and imprisoning a chambermaid at his hotel in New York.

There seems to be general stupefaction that he was taken into custody at all.....after all, he wouldn't be in 'garde a vue' in France  -  a few telephone calls would suffice to push the whole thing under the carpet.

And as for being photographed in handcuffs on his transfer to the court...well, Eva Joly, ex investigating magistrate herself and now ecology party bigwig, saw fit to say that it seemed that the American police didn't seem to appreciate the difference between the boss of the IMF and any other suspect.
Well, no, it seems they don't.
Good for them.
'Egalite' before the law and all that.

The American judicial system has had to be explained.
Notably in 'Le Figaro'.
It's a pity that the journalists concerned hadn't  read the relevant post from Maitre Eolas before informing their readers that under the American system, it was up to the accused to prove his innocence.

No one has all the details of the incident and speculation would be improper but there is one thing upon which the French establishment, whether right or left, is united.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn is the victim.

Perhaps they could explain this to the Americans, who persist in thinking that the victim is the woman bringing the complaint.

But for the French establishment to understand that a chambermaid and an ex minister have the same weight in the scales of justice the world would indeed, need to be turned upside down.

Unfulfilled Promises II

Image via Wikipedia

Some time ago I looked at the heading of this blog and discovered that while I had covered most of the attractions advertised  I had not dealt with the subject of snails.

So I dealt with snails.

As it is now the month of maying when a young man's fancy lightly turns to thoughts of barley break, it is time to deal with sex.

Now, I am aware that I do not mix in the sort of circles where the women spend all day laying on makeup with a trowel only to take it off with a chipping hammer at night or deciding which dress to put on in order to take it off for the 'cinq a sept' - the time when any self respecting French mover and shaker visits his mistress.
The mistress' husband will be doing likewise and in my view this explains the whole restaurant thing in Paris...with all this cinq a septing going on, no one has time to cook.

French Presidents don't seem to confine themselves to the ritual hours.....the only person who knew where the bucolic Chirac was after dark was his chauffeur...and as he was out driving Chirac from one cow's bottom to another no one could ask him anyway.
Oddly enough, Giscard d'Estaing, seen as a far more aloof figure - well, until l'Ex saw fit to write that damn fool novel about Princess Patricia of Cardiff - drove himself to his assignments...thus the collision with a milk van in the early hours of the morning.
While the least said about Felix Faure the better.

Presidents didn't tend to be seen in my neck of the woods....except for Giscard d'Estaing when hunting....so my views on sex in France have been formed and informed by my life in the backwoods of la France Profonde where female animals should be born with iron bloomers and the market in wellingtons shows a steady demand.
However, the pigs won't squeal and the ducks are exercising their right to silence so we'll have to make do with sex between people.

My first intimation of what went on in the rural scene was noticing a table in the local bar-cum-newsagent permanently occupied by three ladies...grandmother- all elastic support stocking and bits of salmon pink corset visible through the blouse - mother - where the varicose veins suggested that the support stocking would be making an imminent appearance - and daughter, whose real features were invisible under the make up.
They always seemed to be there...if not all three then at least the other two...so, meeting Monsieur Untel, source of all information, in the square after buying my newspaper, I asked him about them.

They were, he explained, the local prostitutes. Didn't we have them in England?

Yes we did, but not in the newsagents.

So how do you know where to find them?

They hang about on street corners.

How uncivilised. The English always were a bunch of hypocrites.

Yes, but tell me....they're not the most appealing to look at.....why...?

Because the local chaps are about the same sort of ages and think of them the way they were when they were young......it's a sort of habit, really...the looks don't matter.

So that was that, then.

These ladies used to take their customers home, which was why there were always at least two of them at the table at any one time, but in the last place where I lived the encounters took place in a rather smart wooden cabin further down river alongside a footpath.....as I discovered when walking the dog.
From sniffing and snuffling along he suddenly put his nose up in the air and headed for the open door of the cabin at a rate of knots.
Screams, shouts, dog ejected, door slammed shut.
This was clearly not the time to offer apologies, but I asked my neighbour's daughter in law who owned the cabin and she put me in the picture, which accounted for the cars parked up by the calvary at the top of the footpath.
I kept the dog on the lead until the cabin was well behind us on later walks.

My next encounter with the beast with two backs had been when I was picking grapes.

I had been accepted on Papy's team by then and quite looked forward to the afternoon stints....it seemed to be over too quickly, somehow, so when Papy announced that Denise could do with some help to get her grapes picked I was happy to go along with the rest.
Papy took us in his van, along with his dog, the buckets, the secateurs and the bottles and mustard glasses and unloaded us at a parking spot alongside the vines behind Denise's bungalow.
There were quite a lot of cars and there seemed to be more men than usual in the picking parties already at work, but that apart it was business as usual...just more varied gossip as people from different ends of the commune met up.

We were all at work when the shutters and window of a room in the house flew open.
A naked man clutching his clothes leapt into the garden and came running through the vines, closely followed by Denise in a similar state of nature but not clutching clothes.
It was like a sequel to 'le dejeuner sur l'herbe'...the sylvan setting, all of us clothed and the naked couple legging it towards the parking area.
They got into a car and as it sped away another man came round the corner of the house.
Clothed this time.
Denise's husband.

Where's Denise, then?

Clement's just given her a lift to the shop.

So that was Clement, then.

Nothing more was said.
Clement and Denise, clothed, returned and we all went on working until it was time to clean up and enjoy the supper Denise had prepared.
I noticed she had changed her clothes again but, all through the evening, nothing was said.

I saw Jean at Papy's the next day, and he had obviously heard all about it because he said

Picking grapes was a bit more exciting yesterday, by all accounts! Clement was nearly caught with his trousers down!

Then

You don't want to get the wrong idea about Denise...she just likes a bit of life, that's all and that husband of hers is a miserable old stick. It could have been any of us in Clement's place!

Which accounted for the number of men among the pickers....men dedicated to giving Denise a bit of fun in her life and not averse to giving her a hand to get her grapes picked either.

I don't know if Papy was or had been one of the band of brothers...but by that time his interests were centred in his store of pornography, the pride of the commune and the surrounding area.
He lent them out in a sort of rural version of the circulating library.

Mamie showed me the chamber of horrors one day while he was out and the books I picked up seemed rather dull except for one which featured a priest in the confessional with a female parishioner....you flipped the pages at speed and got an early version of animation.
It reminded me of a book I had had since a child, where you flipped the pages to reveal Bradman demonstrating the cover drive....but Bradman offered more variety.

It must have been in the blood with Denise.
Her real father was a chap who had been maire for years before the war and who could aptly be called the father of his commune...you saw likenesses everywhere, far outstripping the best the postman or the garde champetre could do.
But Denise let the commune down in one respect. She let one man get away.

Despite taking part in the dentist's amateur dramatic troupe her charms had failed to fascinate him.
He was far more absorbed by the cavities of the wife of the owner of the chateau in the next commune and, one day, the two of them ran away together to that haunt of vice, La Baule, never to return.
No dentist and no more Feydeau farces for the village.

A Magouille of Maires.....

Image by Sénat via Flickr

Most maires like the sound of their own voices...give them a vin d'honneur and they're away....usually for what seems like hours... while those present shuffle and cough as a hint that it's time to cut the cackle and get down to the business of the day, which is to attack the tables laden with bottles and glasses.

The speech is the tax you pay for free drink and, as with all taxes in France, it is too high.

You have to pity Sarkozy, though...he had to attend the maires'  national conference and the power of the oratory was such that he dropped off to sleep.

No vin d'honneur for him then.

While tedium seems to be obligatory, some maires display other talents.....talents variously described  as...

Arranging things....or

Promoting their commune's interests....or as I see it

Cronyism.

There are also maires whose peculiar talent leads them to aptly be known as the fathers of their communes, but that's a different story.

To return to the arrangers of things....

For some years now, local councils have been obliged to seek tenders for projects costing serious money, rather than just passing it to the local guy on the grounds that as he was paying the Taxe Professionelle to the commune he was entitled to anything the commune had to offer in terms of the folding stuff.
Or doing it on a Buggins turn principle if there was more than one eligible firm.
Or putting the job Jacques' way as he will in return plaster the walls of your daughter's house with the 'surplus' materials.

Needless to say, this system does not always suit the arrangers of things, so they 'arrange' not to do it properly, which may account in some way for the spick and span 'arrangement' of the arrangers' houses and gardens....

Depressingly, in France this appears to be accepted as the norm, and people just shrug if it is mentioned...
What else, after all, can one expect?
Well, personally I expect a great deal better but I didn't grow up in France.

Recently a case has come to light where a whistleblower denounced a maire and his commune's financial director for questionable dealings with tenders for public works....quoting twelve instances.
This happened six years ago and in the meantime the whistleblower has been sacked.
No vin d'honneur for him either.

You can judge the lack of importance attached to questionable dealings with public money by the time it has taken the prosecuting authorities to get round to prosecuting, although you have to take into account that the prosecutors are appointed by the government and that the political complexion of government and maire are as one.

These things matter more than you might think...

I remember the local bypass.
It was to bypass a town which voted right wing.
So, under a right wing government the finds were voted and works started, involving a forty mile detour unless you knew that you could nip up the lane just before the roadworks and emerge on another main road leading to town.

Then the government changed to a left wing one.
The funds were diverted to start a bypass for a town which voted left.
The forty mile detour to get to the right wing town stayed in place for years...until the government changed again and the funds returned to finish the job.

Still, in this case, after due deliberation and after the maire stood down at the last elections, the prosecutors decided to go ahead with one charge from the original twelve, relating to the development of a housing estate in the commune.
Getting wind of this, one of the firms who had lost out on the tender jumped in on the act, claiming 50,000 euros in damages, this being the value of the works in question from which it would appear that they had been illegally excluded.

The by now ex maire, his financial director and the firm to whom the tender was awarded appeared before the prosecutor, who proposed to deal with them under a fairly recent procedure by which you admit your guilt, the prosecutor proposes a sentence which you accept and you just pass before a judge to have him or her confirm or alter the sentence.
Saves public money and does not give rise to indiscreet enquiry as to why the prosecutor is not asking many questions of the accused... .

The ex maire and his financial director happily accepted the slap on the hand of a 1,500 Euro fine each and walked away.
The boss of the firm concerned didn't.
He can expect a nasty day in court, not so much for what he is supposed to have done, but for not being cooperative.

The judge confirmed the sentences, but refused to allow the firm which had lost out on the tender to start proceedings to recover from the three 'defendants' the 50,000 Euros they reckon winning the contract would have earned them.

Their lawyer is most annoyed.

The court is unmoved.

The ex maire is still in the same political party.

The financial director still holds the same job with the commune.

The whistleblower stays sacked.

Why does this annoy me?
Why don't I just show how integrated I have become by shrugging?

Because it's my money and the money of people like me that these chaps are messing about with.
There is a system which is supposed to eliminate cronyism...it is defied...and the perpetrators walk away with just a slight dent in their well filled pocketbooks.

I haven't forgotten the interesting case of cronyism in another commune where an historic building was to be restored.
Apart from the usual performance in which the departmental architect of Batiments de France (think English Heritage) reduced a thirteenth century interior to something resembling a kitchen from Bricodepot, it stuck in my mind because of the electrical installations...or, rather, the lack of them.

The building was set well away from the village, out in the fields and all the restoration work was carried out using a generator.
Including provision for power and lighting in the building.

Some months after the job was finished, EDF rolled up and dug up the road to the village to provide power.
The spotlights in the roof could be used.
I said it was like a kitchen from Bricodepot.

Some months after that the fields between the building and the village miraculously acquired planning permission and were bought by the commune to set up a new housing estate....

Who was the lucky owner?
The then maire's wife's cousin.

Mark you, I could just be getting a bit cynical here.
The commune in question was in hillbilly country, and it demonstrated the ability of the French to be in the forefront of technical advancement.
Long before anyone had come up with cloning from biological material the hillbillies had come up with it by decades of inbreeding.....everyone in an age cohort looked like everyone else in that cohort and everyone was closely related to everyone else.
So it might be difficult to avoid doing a favour to someone to whom your wife was related.
But the timing of the arrival of  EDF still leaves me wondering....

And then there are cases where cronyism has fatal consequences. But not for the cronies.

The local council of La Faute sur Mer on the Atlantic coast, scene of 29 deaths when the sea breached the defences and overran a housing development, is one to keep an eye on, thanks to the close links between those owning land which was well known to be liable to flood, those awarding planning permission to build houses on the said land and those involved in marketing the said houses.

According to the maire's lawyer...one of the best known and accordingly expensive in France... the deaths lie at the door of the Prefet, for not ordering an evacuation in time.
Personally I think that the responsibility lies with those who knowingly or negligently made that land available for housing, but we'll see what the prosecutors make of it all.....just don't hold your breath waiting for them.
La Faute sur Mer votes the right way.

Not that it acts the right way.
Most of the people who bought houses on that development were not local....mostly townspeople looking to retire to the seaside......so most of the dead were not from local families.
The survivors and the families of those who died have started an association to push for an enquiry into the events leading to the deaths and for proper compensation for those whose houses have been declared to be only fit to be destroyed.
Local people do not appreciate the activities of the association.....graffiti painted on the walls of houses owned by members...more graffiti on the walls of the cemetery where most of those who died in the floods were buried, encouraging locals to support the maire.....and, horribly, a woman visiting her father's grave spat on and insulted.

This illustrates the 'us and them' mentality so prevalent in French country communes where until relatively recently there was little social diversity and where the 'incomers' be they French or foreign, were regarded as prey, for the benefit of locals.
That a 'local' can feel in a strong enough position to spit on and insult the grieving  daughter of an 'incomer' tells you all you need to know about where power lies in la Faute sur Mer.

It also illustrates why the elimination of cronyism has an importance greater than that of misuse of public money.......
Cronyism defies the spirit of equality, equality of treatment.......

But what am I thinking about?
This is France....where equality is only a word painted above the door of the mairie.

Cast not a clout till May be out...except in Deux Sevres

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Deux Sevres is not, as you might think, a description of two finely decorated porcelain plates.
It is a department of France, one of the four which make up the region of Poitou Charente.


As Michael Caine might say .......Not many people know that.

This used to include the French Tourist Board.

Apart from its geographical position, Deux Sevres can also lay claim to a cultural position....that of being firmly in what is described as 'la France profonde'.
Which means an area where if something has not been done before it certainly won't be starting to be done now.

A further explanation.

I know that the saying about casting clouts refers to not being deceived by the advent of spring into discarding your winter woollies too early and getting frostbite in areas best not to contemplate, but clout has another meaning.....
It is also a blow, as in 'gave him a clout' and just at the moment, people in Deux Sevres have the exciting possibility of giving other people in Deux Sevres - excluding maires, gendarmes and other protected species - a clout and getting away with it.....but only up to the end of May.

Whence this sudden immunity...and why only in Deux Sevres?

Under much external and internal pressure, France has finally decided to conform the to European Convention on  Human Rights in respect of the right to a fair trial.
Legislation has been passed, and is due to come into effect on June 1st, to the effect that persons hauled in by the forces of order in pursuance of their investigations will have the right to have a lawyer present during the whole of the proceedings, instead of just for thirty minutes of it, as at present.

This is going to give problems to the producers of the police serial 'Engrenages'  (or 'Spiral', as it is known on English language television)  where the brutality of interrogations forms an integral part of the action...but that's their worry.

Now, in a sudden rush of blood to the head, the Cour de cassation...one of the four Supreme Courts of the French justice system....has announced that as far as it is concerned, from the date of its judgement on Friday April 15th, any verdict in a case where a lawyer was not present for the whole process of interrogation will be annulled on procedural grounds, as being in breach of the Human Rights Convention, which states that all signatory countries must be in compliance, even if their own laws are in breach.

Panic in the dovecotes.
Fancy announcing that just before a weekend! And with the Easter holidays coming up!

The police and gendarmerie are gearing up....setting up information centres to acquaint themselves with the novel idea of having an observer of their traditional practices....
The Parquet (prosecutors' department) is gearing up....wondering what the hell to do about the cases currently in the sausage machine where the accused certainly did not have a lawyer present throughout his interrogation.....
And the avocats (trial lawyers) are gearing up....arranging for more of them to be on call, while wondering  whether they will be paid for this service since the law providing for their payment is not yet in force.

The reaction of the avocats in Deux Sevres?
Their batonnier (shop steward) is outraged.

The Cour de cassation has no power to make law.
Quite right, Maitre...but it hasn't. It has just said what it will do in cases where there is a breach of the Convention on Human Rights.

And it's Saturday!
Well spotted, Maitre!

And I can't do anything until I consult my colleagues.
Which would have been on Monday except that they will be on strike on Monday.
Tuesday, then, Maitre?

And in any case, we're not ready. We will not be stampeded and will not be implementing these changes until June 1st, when the law comes into force.
La France profonde has spoken. Law south of the Loire.

So this is the unprecedented opportunity for the inhabitants of Deux Sevres to run riot until midnight on May 31st.
Sure in the knowledge that no lawyer will be accompanying them for the entire duration of an interrogation they can do as they please.
Clout whom they like.

They might well be convicted at first instance in Deux Sevres...but not to worry.
All they have to do is to go to the regional Court of Appeal in Poitiers and their conviction will be overturned for non observance of procedure.

So if you're living in Deux Sevres....lock up your daughters and make way for the Lord of Misrule!
Until midnight on May 31st.

It's all scandal, naked women and drivel.

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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.