Cultural Differences And Immigration

Cultural Differences: France

Friend Jo mentioned recently that she found many of her French acquaintances very self-centred. Not selfish, indeed many are very generous, but self-centred, as though the world revolves around them. On reflection I decided that I had noticed the same, so was this one of the cultural differences between the French and the English I keep trying to tease out (always recognising the danger of generalising on the basis of a small sample)? Of course both cultures are changing all the time but I think there is a recognisable difference here.

In this respect the English culture taught, if not always practised, is one of abnegation, self-subordination to the goals of the group. It is a reason why the English, in general, have made good team players but been less successful at individualist sports. When I was young and playing football in France I noticed that indivudal technical ability seemed to be prized more than efforts directed at team play. A brass-band consultant friend, who does a lot of work in France, recently complained that his chief difficulty was turning a collection of very competent musicians who all considered their role to be soloists into a cooperating band. An American friend in Senegal, coaching basket ball teams, said that his main difficulty was trying to get players to use team play to get close to the basket before shooting rather than attempting highly speculative efforts from 30 metres (which were much more appreciated than team play if they succeeded). It is noticeable that conversations in shops are sacrosanct, however many people are waiting to be served; first, the server must finish his/her conversation. That is not difficult to accept in a small village environment but may explain also why service is so bad in large stores and chains: the idea that service to the customer, the third party, comes first is alien. So maybe Jo is on to something here although, as I have said, both cultures are changing.

Immigration

That led me to think about cultural differences in the wave of immigrants entering Europe. Let there be no doubt, once large numbers of African and Middle Eastern immigrants are installed in Europe there will be huge cultural differences to be overcome and, more worryingly, the potential for very destructive social unrest.

Two recent stories in the press caught my eye. One was of an adolescent Afghan, housed in a hostel in Germany, who was going hungry because he refused to eat at a table at which women were also sitting (which was normally the case). The other concerned African refugees (all men) housed in a villa in a small town in Italy who were becoming disruptive in the town. They had two major complaints; the first was that they had nothing to do all day, the second was that they needed a cleaner to clean the villa (African men couldn't be expected to clean it).

These are pretty trivial examples of what can be expected to follow. A survey of recent immigrants by a qualified agency in Germany found that around 50% were essentially unemployable, because of lack of skills and lack of understanding of the language. These are primarily young to middle-aged people, who may have escaped intolerable conditions, but what is to be their future? How can they earn any sort of living, for themselves and their families, particularly if benefits are curtailed, outside of illegal activities of one sort or another? Moreover they come from countries/cultures where corruption is endemic, a way of life. And what will the reaction of the indigenous population be to that? And what are the likely political consequences? “Simple” cultural differences have already resulted in numerous court cases in the UK with respect to forced marriages and so-called “honour” killings. Add to that kind of cultural mismatch a potent mix of unemployment, poverty and resultant desperation and what do you get? Syrian refugees may want to return to their original homeland if and when the conflict ends, dependent on the regime then in place, but refugees from other areas (the large majority) will not.

Those who have welcomed and promoted cultural diversity have focussed on the undoubted richness in cultural variety in narrative, song, dances and food. But those are minor, albeit significant, elements. Fundamental differences in terms of life expectations, assumptions on ways of living, acceptable behaviour towards other people of either sex and how society should be run seem to have been overlooked in previous considerations and now need very urgently to be addressed. True, such issues have existed before but never before in such quantity at one time. Will the European democracies be able to cope? There is as yet no sign of them even understanding the problems that lie ahead, let alone preparing to do anything about any of them other than the danger of importing terrorists. The English programme for induction into English culture has never been anything but a horribly bad joke but there is no reason to believe that any other European country recognises and is equipped to deal with these issues. The governmental humanitarian response to the influx of refugees has been mixed but not totally negative. However, the social response could easily become so and if, politically, Europe is to escape a lurch to the extreme right, possibly the disintegration of the EU and who knows what else, somebody had better come up with some answers very quickly. Political leaders are apparently already discussing possible futures for Syria and the surrounding region. They would do well to direct some of their attention homewards also on questions other than just benefits.

Christmas Carols

Christmas Carols

As usual at this time of the year our ad hoc merry band of carol singers, organised, rehearsed and exhorted by friend Jo, have delivered our annual carol concert (three times). Since carol singing is not a tradition here, this is something I think we have genuinely added to the calendar of village life and to the enjoyment of many. The above photo says some of it, the introductory speech by René below probably says all else that needs saying.

Chorale de Noel

Votre impatience -légitime- fait chaud au cœur. Mais auparavant et comme c'est la dernière fois -on me l'a promis- que me revient l'honneur de présenter la chorale, permettez-moi d'en profiter un peu.

Cher public, chers amis de Mollans et banlieue

C'est pour notre chorale un vrai plaisir de revenir pour la cinquième fois vous présenter nos chants de Noël.

Certains d'entre vous nous suivent depuis nos débuts, c'est un acharnement que nous ne méritons pas. Nous essaierons ce soir de vous donner le courage de revenir une sixième fois.

Pour ceux qui nous découvrent, consolez-vous de savoir que nous serons encore meilleurs que l'année dernière. Car, c'est une constante dans notre chorale de ne jamais faire regretter la prestation précédente. J'en connais qui ne sont pas venus ce soir parce qu'ils savent déjà que nous serons encore meilleurs l'année prochaine.

Pour cette cinquième édition nous avons essayé de rajeunir … ce que nous vous proposons.

Il y en aura pour tous les goûts. Pour ceux qui croient au ciel, pour ceux qui n'y croient pas, pour les enfants, pour ceux qui n'en sont plus, pour les mélomanes et même pour les sourds ….

Ce sont les plus beaux.

Aussi, pour les personnes appareillées et pour profiter au maximum nous conseillons le réglage des aides auditives au minimum. Encore plus bas n'est pas déconseillé. Et même là, quand vous rentrerez ce soir chez vous, vous vous direz :

« -ce n'est pas possible, je suis allé écouter ça ! »

A force de volonté, il est possible de refouler ses larmes.

En effet, à nous seuls nous sommes capables de faire chuter l'ambiance d'une salle de fête de plusieurs degrés.

Parmi nos chants de Noël vous reconnaîtrez facilement ceux qui sont en français. Ce sont ceux qu'on comprend le mieux, souvent les plus réussis.

D'autres sont d'un accès plus difficile, presque énigmatiques. C'est à cela qu'on sent qu'ils sont anglais. Ils laissent cependant l'esprit joyeux, rêveur, parfois même ahuri. Je ne saurai dire si à les traduire on les comprendrait mieux. Il est préférable de laisser à l'anglais un peu du mystère qui fait sa différence. Mais c'est déjà bien assez beau comme ça.

Les gens qui ont voyagé remarqueront également un passage en allemand. Il s'agissait là de faire plaisir à l'un d'entre nous qui a survécu à une aventure galante inachevée en Germanie.

Nous avons dans notre chorale pour principe de laisser à chacun d'entre nous une certaine liberté dans l'interprétation. Les anglais ne sont pas les seuls responsables. L'harmonie en souffre parfois mais c'est très bon pour le moral. J'en connais qui répètent solitairement la nuit pour trouver une interprétation personnelle.

Aussi si pour certains puristes le plaisir ne sera pas dans l'oreille, nous l'espérons dans le cœur et voir les yeux se border de lumière. Celle de Noël qui éblouit l'enfant et réveille l'ancien qui vieillissait par habitude (ma minute de poésie).

Je voudrai maintenant et au nom de la chorale remercier Valérie et Patrick qui malgré les craintes fondées de mouvements de fans trop enthousiastes nous accueillent ce soir pour le cinquième fois avec les mêmes inquiétudes. En reconnaissance nous sommes prêts à accepter le CDI dont ils nous menacent depuis longtemps et renoncer ainsi à une carrière plus ambitieuse au café des sports voisin. Merci Valérie, merci Patrick.

Nos remerciements aussi à Jo, notre chef de chœur qui avec l'autorité d'un homme politique de gauche qui exige de voter à droite et la candeur d'une Mary Poppins qui comme tous les anges n'a pas les pieds sur terre a réussi à faire de cette bande de délinquants du solfège quelque chose qui a du bon sens.

On aimait Mollans pour ses illuminations de Noël -remarquables surtout le jour- et voilà que grace à Jo cette commune s'enrichit d'une chorale qui compte désormais dans le patrimoine immatériel du village.

Un dernier mot à titre personnel pour rassurer mon épouse. Je ne lui tiens pas rigueur de son deuxième mensonge en trente ans de vie partagée.

Le premier était à notre première rencontre quand elle m'a dit que j'étais beau gosse, (quoi que … )

le second il y a cinq minutes quand elle m'a assuré que j’avais une belle voix.

On savait l'amour aveugle le voici aussi sourd.

Vous avez grace aux petits fascicules distribués la possibilité de réduire par votre participation mon influence dans ce que vous allez entendre,

Nous comptons sur vous

Merci

The Wealth Gap, Infrastructure And Christmas

The Wealth Gap

I increasingly feel that this is an important problem not just in the UK but probably for most of the developed world. An article on a statistical analysis from reputable sources in the USA triggered what follows below. The article stated that, for the first time in countless years, the number of households in the USA classified as middle class was below 50% and that that percentage had been shrinking for the last 40 years.

Now, I assume that the only viable economic system we have been able to find is based on capitalism. To paraphrase Churchill's view on democracy, it's the least bad system. Socialism embraces capitalism, albeit with a rather different attitude to the distribution of the profits of capitalism than the agendas of more right-wing political parties. The only economic alternative to capitalism that we have been able to come up with is economic communism and that has been tried and seen to fail in a number of countries. So we are lumbered with capitalism as an economic basis. Some, admittedly, would like to see capitalism disappear entirely but then they need to come up with a viable alternative.

Naked capitalism, however, capitalism red in tooth and claw as Tennyson would have it, clearly contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. Left entirely to its own devices, it will produce an economically feudal society of the sort that provoked the French revolution and thus ensure its overthrow. Consciousness of this has instigated controls of various sorts, especially tax and laws on working conditions and wages, in different countries to mitigate its most destructive aspects. An important question then is whether, currently and in a new global market, these controls are sufficient.

The large and increasing wealth gap becoming apparent suggests to me that they aren't. America, land of opportunity, etc, has owed a great deal of its economic stability to a large and thriving middle class. That class, it seems, is rapidly disappearing, with a very small percentage moving economically upwards and a rather larger percentage moving downwards. The same is true of the UK. In the UK, as in most European countries, the outstanding need is to revive the economy, which in large part means more inhabit

ants spending more. That, of course, presumes that they have money to spend and austerity measures mean increasingly that they don't. Numerous economic commentators have stressed that the incipient UK economic recovery is very fragile, unsurprisingly in the circumstances. It is unlikely that David Cameron's head will be severed on a block in the Tower of London but he would appear to be leading the country into a situation where, in less forgiving times, that could have happened.

So what's to be done? In the wake of the banking crisis there was a very understandable reaction to want to crucify bankers, or at least to chop their huge bonuses. Whilst that measure would undoubtedly have given great emotional satisfaction to many it would have been difficult to implement, easy to circumvent and could have unwanted side-effects; so it didn't happen. To the chagrin of a great deal of the population, it turned out that the only practical thing to be done with the investment bankers who had gambled wildly and ruined many people's lives was to let them have another go at it, albeit with reduced funds to gamble with. So what can curb the bonuses widely viewed as outrageous, or indeed the same in kind for many at the top of the capitalist ladder? What measure could reduce the wealth gap?

I believe a law is necessary, along the following lines, that specifically addresses the wealth gap. It needn't be a permanent law; it could run for, say, 5 or 10 years. What it would state, for any company of a given size, say 30 employees or above, is something like that any salary increases, bonuses or benefits in kind would have to reduce the wealth gap between the average remuneration of the top 10% beneficiaries and the bottom 20 %. (Those percentages are off the top of my head; they may well need refining.) It would be possible to add a minimum percentage reduction but that might not be necessary, even just a penny difference might do it, since clearly the middle ground would have to benefit also. The point is that a company would still be free to offer whatever largesse it chose to its upper echelons but would at the same time have to offer more, spread more thinly, obviously, to its lowest echelons. It shouldn't need poiting out that a small bonus to a low-paid employee will have a vastly different and much more positive economic effect than a large bonus paid to a highly paid employee. And since the lower echelons would be far more numerous, even without the percentage difference I have suggested, that would put a severe brake on what could be distributed at the high level. But the company would still have a choice in deciding what, overall, it could afford to distibute or wanted to divest.

Anyway, that's my solution. I can't see any reasonable objection that companies could make to it on practical grounds and it might even save capitalism from itself.

Infrastructure

I am convinced that the French have a better grasp of what constitutes infrastructure and how to manage it than we Brits do. Infrastructure is a word that trips easily off the tongue but is difficult in practice to define, as I discovered in my IT career, where similar considerations apply. It's easy to define it as elements on which the whole of society depends and enumerate such items as transport, communications, energy, healthcare, etc, but far less easy to define specific items within all these. The point is that infrastructure in general is better managed centrally in any country; and centrally implies government. It's clear that government should control all the above entities but which should it run directly?

France seems to have a clear view of this. It's answer is that the government should run almost all of it. The big exception is healthcare, which is entirely privately run but very closely controlled by the government. I think the French have got that largely right, with the exception of telephony. Telephony is unwarrantedly expensive in France through lack of competition but everything else works better.

The French also have a better alternative, I think, to public/private combinations. The British PFI initiatives have almost all been disastrous for the public sector. In France, the government builds infrastructure and may or may not let the private sector maintain it. As regards roads, for instance, the government pays to construct motorways but lets the private sector maintain them. In return for maintenance, the private motorway operators charge tolls. However, there is always an alternative to using a motorway so the tolls must be perceived as reasonable and the condition of the motorway has to be good if people are to decide to use it. This leaves the private companies with the conundrum of how much to spend on maintenance and how much to charge for tolls. There is never a question of how much should be spent on these roads, as there is in Britain. The private owners either get it right or go bust.

This view on infratsructure devolves right down to quite small items, such as cinemas and libraries. The French consider access to culture as a right that makes cinemas and libraries part of infrastructure. So, our little village had a new library, termed a media centre, built for it a couple of years ago. The government underwrote a lot of the cost of building it but won't incur the cost of running or maintaining it. If the village wants it, it must find volunteers to run it or pay people to do that. So the library is run by volunteers. The same goes for the cinema in nearby Buis. This has been completely renovated, largely with government funds, but is run by volunteers. The message is: if you want such amenities, the government will pay a large part of the cost of creating them but you have to prove you want them by covering the running costs.

This clear, cohesive view on what constitutes infrastructure and how it should be managed strikes me as a great strength, albeit with a few blindspots such as telephony. In the UK, by contrast, there seems to be no clear view. Infrastructure, however defined, may or may not be built by government and may or may not be run by it. The criteria for decision seem to be random questions of how much money is available at the time, who has it, and who wants it. Cinemas are certainly not regarded as infrsatructure in the UK, perhaps understandably as there is no right to access to culture in the UK. On the other hand, Post Offices in the UK arguably constitute part of the infrastructure of small villages and yet are not regarded as such. The result is piecemeal, opportunistic, privatisation and often, more importantly, privation. The current UK government certainly has no view on infrastructure other than wanting to be rid of it. Future governments may take a different view but what I think is needed in the UK, and has been lacking for decades, is a clear cohesive view that would lead to cohesive solutions rather than chaos to be exploited by private profiteers.

Christmas

Christmas has been looming for weeks but started to happen for real in the village this Sunday. A Father Christmas had been hired for the village kids, for whom donkey rides across the bridge were also organised. Patrique in the Bar du Pont asked our ad hoc choir to sing some carols, as we duly did. I've remarked before that carol singing is not a tradition here but the carols were well received, with many in the audience joining in. Patrique had also arranged for Roberto to come, offering tartiflette or plates of seafood to follow the carol singing. I had seafood, oysters, prawns, crab and whelks, which was very good although it did nothing to counter the midday chill. The same happened last year when I took a photo of my son Carl sitting outside the Bar in front of just such a dish, looking only slightly less cold than the seafood.

Back From England

Back From England

I have just returned from a long weekend in England. I left Marseilles in sunshine, which continued as we flew above the clouds before descending below them to Heathrow. That was the last I saw of the sun, apart from a brief hour on Monday, until after my return on Wednesday morning. The renowned tupperware lid was fixed firmly over the capital.

Not that it spoiled my enjoyment of my brief stay. I met a friend and my “kids” as planned and spent time with them, had some very good meals including the compulsory fish and chips, very well cooked with thin crisp batter, and more than a few pints of good bitter. I offloaded various delicacies from this part of the world to friends and family and had time to do some shopping for myself before leaving. So it was a good trip.

I think many major cities in Europe have successfully come to grips with the transport problem and London is certainly one of them. Public transport is clean, efficient and inexpensive, with very frequent services and lots of new rolling stock and buses. The new no-cash, card-contact-only payment system speeds things along impressively and the visual and audible reminders of where the bus/tube is headed and the name of the next stop are useful for old dodderers like me who are liable to forget where they have to get off. True there was quite a lot of congestion along the roads but there is not a lot anyone can do about that; the excellence of the public transport system probably keeps road congestion to a minimum anyway by discouraging use of cars unless there is no practical alternative. Having lived in a small village for eight years now I find I've become averse to crowds and, although there were plenty of people everywhere, nowhere I went was oppressivley crowded. Fortunately I didn't have to travel in the rush hour at any time. I must have heard most of the major European and Asian languages spoken during my brief stay so the tourist trade is obviously doing well. Tourist information was abundant, clear and useful everywhere.

I visited the British museum and think I could probably spend a week happily just going round the main museums, all of which currently have free entrance. That can be important because London is definitely expensive. Meals were not too expensive and it was possible to find good value for money but accommodation very definitely was. Before going I searched for a reasonably priced hotel in a fairly central location and had great difficulty finding anything under about £70 (100 euros) a night. It seems that most of the smaller hotels have turned their rooms into dormitories sleeping 4-8 per room, which is fine for young back-packers, but I wanted my own room. For the larger hotels, a price of £150-250 per night seemed to be the norm. In the event I found a hotel in the Earls Court area for my target price that was clean and comfortable if spartan in facilities.

I bought some clothes, since there were sales discounts everywhere, some back bacon, marmite and good cheddar cheese to take back to France and also a 3kg gammon, which seems unobtainable here. I shall soak it in cider for a week and then roast it with cloves and honey, as I used to do every Christmas in England, to have over the holiday period.

The airports need a mention. I could have missed my flight out. I had arranged with friend Daniel to drive to Marignane, leave him with my car to spend the weekend with his son in Marseille and then drive back together on the Tuesday evening. As we approached the airport police cars suddenly appeared and blocked off the entrance. We the had to make a long detour before joining a queue of traffic back past the entrance again; fortunately it was then open and I had time to catch my plane. I presumed there was a security alert of some sort, which didn't actually bother me. Anywhere large numbers of people gather can be a target for terrorists, at any time, and I regard the risk of being in the wrong place at the wrong time as a matter of chance, beond my control. What worried the airport security staff though were my (explosive?) goats' cheeses, little crottins. I'd bought cheeses to take to England and they were in my hand luggage. The security staff were very polite and offered to let me return to check-in to have them placed in my hold luggage but were quite firm that they could not travel in the cabin. Their explanation was that soft cheeses, though they could hardly be classed as liquids, were not allowed. That clearly wasn't the case as two large slices of tome were happily passed over. I think the objection must have been to whole cheeses in which something could be hidden, although just how much danger could be presented by a small crottin was beyond me. Finally on airports, having got to Heathrow, checked in and passed through security, I saw a notice showing the estimated time to get to the gate I was leaving from posted as a 20-minutes brisk walk. That is best part of a mile. Even now, let alone if Heathrow is extended as proposed, they need to install a lot, lot more travellators, provide road trains or put travellers through a gym test beforehand to see if they are able to make it. I shall avoid Heathrow until they do so.

ISIL And Paris

ISIL and Paris

It is impossible to ignore in this blog what happened in Paris last Friday but also difficult to know what to add to the widespread media coverage, other than a very personal view. So this is it. The many manifestations of only too understandable grief have been matched by expressions of similarly easily understandable anger and immediate threats and, indeed, actual acts of retaliation. And the attacks in Paris have clearly strengthened the hand of the extreme right-wing, anti-immigration Marie Le Penn.

Yet I can't help thinking that all the anger is exactly the reaction that ISIL wants. There is a saying that revenge is a dish best eaten cold and I believe that this is a classic case. If ISIL is to be defeated, not just now but into the forseeable future, then it cannot be done on the battlefield alone. ISIL is undoubtedly evil but not necessarily stupid. It is ISIL's objectives, chaos in Europe and a war between muslims and the rest of the world, that must be defeated. The attacks in Paris must therefore not be allowed to contribute to those. In the current situation, a defeat on the battlefield probably has to be achieved but that will by no means be the end of ISIL, nor can it be.

There will always be a small minority attracted to the idea of a glorious death in some cause or other: dulce et decorum est. But that does not explain the thousands who have flocked to support ISIL, the large majority being disaffected msulim young men. But, to counter this, making a preferential case for young muslim men in Europe does not make make much sense either; anyway, it is hardly realistic in the current climate of opinion. More understanding of the mindset of muslims in Europe would be welcome but that has to be two-way: the muslim community itself must adapt better to European ways and demonstrate not just in words but in deeds that it totally rejects ISILand is at least completely tolerant of European habits and traditions.

That may be asking for the moon right now but steps in that direction can certainly be taken. What must be abundantly clear is that the West should stay out of Arab affairs once the situation in Syria and Iraq is sorted (temporarily). Intervention in Iraq and Afghanistan undoubtedly played a big role in the rise of ISIL. It may offend western sensibilities to see citizens of other countries suffer subjugation and torture but what must also be understood is that a simple humanitarian reaction (easily understandable) may simply increase that suffering even in the short term. Democracy and freedom as we know it have never played much part in the Arab world and we in the West should not seek to impose them. We have to accept that a large part of the world is inhumane by our standards and adopt the greatest care and reflection before intervening in any way. The tyrant Assad will probably end up ruling Syria again, Afghanistan will probably fall once again under Taliban control and who knows what will happen in Iraq. We simply have to leave those countries to find their own destiny. As a corollary, aid programmes will also have to be significantly rethought.

Accepting this will be as hard for those of humanitarian bent who want to help the world as it will be for those whose only concerns are wealth or power. But that, I believe, is how it will have to be.

Footnote

None of my friends in the village have been directly affected by the events in Paris as far as I know. Most have contacted friends and relatives there to ensure they are safe. However, I have also noticed that the handful of muslims in the village have been keeping a very low profile, which is a pity as they are all decent people and their stance, though understandable (again) should not be necessary. Indeed, in a way, it is a small victory for ISIL's objectives.

Garden, Lunch And Sacred Cows

Autumn Garden

I'm used to a distinct lack of colour in my garden in the autumn but this year has been a pleasant surprise. The weather combination we have had of significant rain with also significant sun and mild temperatures seems to have given all the plants a boost. Yesterday afternoon, after a day of rain, the temperature was 28 degrees in the sun.

At the front the cyclamen are showing red and white, the plumbago, solanum are providing blue and the French marigolds that seemed to be sulking have woken up and are a mass of gold and red. And another (perennial) plant which I have front and back whose name I don't know and which I can't find in my RHS encyclopedia, though it would surely grow in England, is not only still full of blue flowers but its foliage is turning red and yellow.

At the back the red currant sage is a mass of bloom and and has taken up so much space that I will have to cut it back severely over the winter. Other blooms are dotted around: there's a white Japanese anemone, a couple of marigolds still going, a blue salvia, a honeysuckle and some gaura. But what has particularly pleased me are the roses. I have several David Austin bushes that have struggled to get established and the climbers only started to climb significantly last year, four years after they were planted. This year not only have they continued climbing but have decided to produce a second flush of bloom, as they should. In particular the Pilgim which I have growing up an arch has a dozen blooms on it. My Pat Austin has also decided to produce again. I know now that most plants take a considerable time to get established here but often overlook just how long that time can be. In addition, my small olive tree is covered in olives and the rock plants are all scrambling like mad, which promises a good show in the spring when they start bloomimg again. In short, everything is looking much better than I had anticipated.

In the background leaves are falling off the lime and plane trees and the vines are all turning colour. I wondered whether the grape harvest this year would be any good, given the summer drought, but the vignerons I have spoken too all claim that the harvest is good. The sugar content of the grapes should certainly be high but it seems the volume has been quite satisfactory too.

Reflections On A Lunch Conversation

This Sunday Steve and Jo invited me to lunch with friends Armelle, René, Alex and Pauline. As often when we are a mixture of English and French, and the more so since Steve and I have started our English conversation meetings, conversation focussed for a time on differences between our two countries and languages. The conversation was typical of those we have with French friends here which is why I recount it.

I asked if our French friends understood the significance of the date the 5^th of November in England; they didn't. So I explained that, somewhat paradoxically, although we prided ourselves (rightly or not) on being the cradle of democracy we also celebrated a historical attempt to blow the seat of it to smithereens in The 17^th century: Guy Fawkes Day Moreover, an effigy of some sort was burned on the traditional bonfire and, before it became politically unacceptable, this was often the Pope. We didn't burn Jeanne d'Arc anymore since we had already done that very successfully once. René countered that by asking whether we knew the origin of the famous busbies worn by British troops in formal costume. We didn't and René explained the origin in Napoleonic troops.

That got me thinking about conventions of war, which hardly exist today (pace the Geneva Convention, on the rare occasions when it is observed). Doing research for a talk at the English library here I had discovered the origin of the expression “to show one's true colours”. It dates from the 17th century when warships were allowed to get close to enemy ships by the ruse of flying false flags but weren't allowed to fire on them before showing their “true colours”. The convention was apparently normally observed, even by pirates. That reminded of criticisms I had read of American revolutionaries in their war of independence aganst Britain. The complaints at the time were that the revolutionaries didn't wear any brightly coloured uniforms, as the British did, so that they could easily be seen and identified, and they adopted the “cowardly” practice of hiding in woods and behind walls rather than “bravely” standing in the open to be shot at.

That in turn made me wonder what current sacred cows we had now that would be milked ad lib in the future. One, I suspect, may be an extreme preoccupation with hygiene. I asked René if he knew why Swiss cheeses had holes in them and he didn't. I recalled a story of a Swiss cheese enterprise that had created a totally hygienic, hermetically sealed factory and found that the resultant cheese was palatable but had no holes in it. It turned out that the holes in Swiss cheeses owe their presence to minute particles of hay or straw in the milk from which they are made. Ensure the milk is “pure” and you don't get holes. Another example that came to mind was my time in Senegal, when I had the inoculations necessary for entry to the country but nothing else; and I survived the year with just a few days of stomach upset. The American Peace corps were there and had a fully equipped field hospital in Dakar to which they all went every 6 months for check-ups and various inoculations and yet they went down like flies with all sorts of illnesses. I asked a doctor there why this could be so and he suggested that they had quite probably never been exposed to any germs in their lives and, being suddenly exposed to a multitude of them, had little protection against them. So cleanliness may be next to Godliness, as the Victorians liked to maintain, but moderatio in omnibus also applies. The political correctness currently infecting the UK will also, I suspect, be another sacred cow to be milked in the future.

TTIP Again, Teaching English, Quality And Gresham's Law

TTIP Again

I got an email from an old friend in England, Eric Leach, proudly proclaiming that a petition he had been supporting against TTIP had gathered well over 3 million signatures throughout Europe. And so he should be proud. Apparently a number of councils in England have come out against TTIP and the intention is to get more to do so. By contrast, I've asked a number of friends here who should be aware of TTIP if they are and none seem to be. There are certainly no signs of general revolt as there were, for instance, with the NOME law that allowed the part-privatisation of the electricity industry. But then few here take much notice of what goes on in Brussels until it affects their lives directly. I take this to be this to be an illustration of the general attitude that, although Brussels is important, if the French don't like it's decisions they'll simply ignore them and won't comply.

Quality Food And Drink

Friend Steve and I were discussing the quality of wine locally. We had both known the days of the 1950s and 1960s in England when the bottle you brought to a party was invariably a white semi-sweet Sauternes or Entre de Mers (which, incidentally, I've never seen in France) or an Algerian or Moroccan red. These latter generally had grounds of a purplish colour at the bottom of the bottle and were barely drinkable but enabled you to get into party mood and were your laisser passer if you hadn't been specifically invited to the party. That market in England has totally disappeared from view, as also has that for the Blue Nun style hocks for the blue rinse set.

Here in Mollans and now we are spoiled for choice for rosé wines ranging from light and flinty to full-bodied and most of the local vineyards make at least one good red wine, some extremely good, at very reasonable prices which, allowing for inflation, would have been affordable in our student days. No one seems any longer to make the inferior quality of red wine that we drank as students. And in England there is possibly a better selection of wine from worldwide sources than in any other country, albeit at prices grossly inflated by the tax regime.

What both Steve and I discovered in our discussion is that something very similar has happened to the food market in England. There is still, admittedly, the fast food market but that is now universal. Apart from that, if you want bad food you almost have to go looking for it. One distinction I used to make between England and France was that if you ended up in the middle of nowhere in either country and decided to eat in the local cafe or restaurant, the chances were that you would get a good meal in France and a bad one in England. That seems no longer to be as true. English TV now seems to be obsessed with cooking good food and has been for some time, which is no doubt a contributory reason, but it does seem that the English are now educating their taste buds and using their feet to follow their taste buds. And the market is responding.

Teaching English

I probably should have headlined this teaching and learning English. Because both Steve and I are getting insights into our native English while we are teaching it to the French. I've always thought that English grammar is essentially simple compared to that of most other European languages and hold to that view. There are no cases or genders to think about, precious little in terms of verb conjugation and a fast disappearing subjunctive. Vocabulary is just that in all romance languages; you either know the word or you don't. On the other hand, the use of prepositions is difficult in most romance languages and probably much more so in English beause of our use of them to modify verbs; and, of course, pronunciation in English is a nightmare.

What this seems to amount to, from the evidence of our classes in Mollans, is that most of the participants don't have a great deal of difficulty with written English provided they have the relevant vocabulary which, admittedly, is not normally the case. Vocabulary, anyway, even for me in English, is a never-ending quest. What has amazed me is the huge gulf between most written English and the spoken colloquial variety (even excluding slang). Take, as just one example, one person saying to another: “We're going for a meal Tuesday week; can you make it?” A perfectly normal sentence but…….what is a Tuesday week and are you being invited to cook the meal? You won't find much help from a dictionary even with “going for a meal”. “The drinks are on us” is another phrase we've used; meaning we are soaking wet? And elisions…………..we might write “we are not” but never say it, except possibly for emphasis. It's, aren't, hasn't, hadn't, won't, mightn't (but not mayn't), etc, are all part of everyday English conversation but foreign to people with intermediate English but who are beginners as speakers.

That is part of the quagmire that Steve and I are trying to tread our way through. But it's still fun at the moment, for us and apparently for the participants too.

Gresham's Law

I'm having a problem in the house with basin stoppers at the moment, which made me think of Gresham's Law. Gresham's Law was formulated in the field of economics and asserts that bad currency drives out good currency. However, the principle that inferiority drives out quality is often applied more generally. It has its equivalent in the field of language development, in the Law of Least Effort. That asserts, effectively, that incorrect grammar, spelling, punctuation, pronunciation, etc, will replace good grammar, etc, over time.

I was reminded of this by the basin problem because I have never understood why French plumbing doesn't use plugs in basins and baths. Plugs are virtually indestructible and infallible. The French lever system is fine if it works but the devil to fix if it doesn't. My kitchen sink has the lever system with the lever mechanism hidden somewhere in the bowels of the sink and seems impossible to fix without buying a new sink. If a plug breaks or goes missing it is easy and cheap to replace it. What's more, the French system, which was never used in the UK, is now appearing there more and more frequently. It's a good illustration of Gresham's Law.

I feel the same way about chopsticks. I never use chopsticks to eat Chinese meals (although I can, not very well) because I think that if the Chinese had invented forks they would use them. They have invented spoons, which seem to me more appropriate for most Chinese food, but I can't imagine why anyone who had a fork would use chopsticks unless they wanted to show off their dexterity or have fun with friends seeing who could balance the most rice grains on a chopstick.

Rant over. It's just occurred to me that this argument conflicts with what I have written about food and drink above.

Bread And Road Names

Homage To Bread

One of the pleasures of being here is the easy access to very good bread. There are two bakers in the village who bake their own bread and many alternatives in nearby Buis, Entrechaux and Vaison, several of which style themselves specialists in one way or another. Most seem to have just two doughs for the general run of bread, one for white bread and one for wholegrain, but the variety of crusts they produce is extensive. Then of course there is bread with olives in it, the local fougases, and bread with nuts in it. It is a reason I usually eschew the classic French breakfast of croissants or pain au chocolat and buy a fresh crusty loaf to have with jam or honey. My current favourite is a pain de campagne from one the village bakeries which seems to keep its crustiness the whole day. I haven't yet found an exact equivalent to the granary bread I used to enjoy in England, with it's good crust and soft interior; wholegrain breads here tend to be dense. But that is a small quibble.

Although locals use such fillers as couscous, rice, pasta and potatoes to a considerable extent, bread still seems to be the standard at every meal. I know that if I invite friend Daniel for a meal I always have to have bread to hand, even though he doesn't eat cheese (has a lactose allergy) and even if the meal is a shepherds' pie.

Road Names

I've mentioned in an earlier posting that all the streets in the village and those around it have now been given official names. All those I am aware of are reasonable. A lane near my house that runs under the chateau is now officially but unimaginatively the Chemin sous le Chateau. Friends Steve and Jo were previously at a loss when trying to effect a transaction online which insisted on a street address, when their road had no offical name, and so invented whatever they thought might be appropriate. It is now, very reasonably, the Route de l'Ancien Chemin de Fer, which is what it once was. But what did locals know it as before the railway became along, because there was a previous road that wandered along and across the railway track? The address on their house deeds record it as Au Bout du Cros, which is not actually the name for a street but for an area: a “cros” is an old French term for an area where sheep were grazed. So why not Sheep Lane, or Walking Pullover Lane, which somehow sounds more picturesque to me? I think we are losing the chance to add some former ribaldry and colour to road names, which means the Bowdlerisers and political correctness crew are winning, and that should never happen.

The one good example I can think of in the village is the Passage Tire-Cul, which roughly translates as Drag Your Arse Up passage. And the name is not only colourful but also very apposite since it is a narrow and very steep passage of steps. In London there is still Pudding Lane, Old Jewry, Primrose Hill and Poultry but Magpie Alley and Hanging Sword Lane have gone: and I'm sure there was once a Gallow's Hill. Love Lane is still there and in the City, implying the financial transactions that gave rise to the name, although there may not have been much love involved. Even Haymarket is redolent of its past. But London also has Trafalgar Square which might more relevantly be named Pigeon Shit or Pigeon Bomb Square. I wish, when road naming has to be done, the people responsible would overlook the boring famous people and places that are usually the source, use more imagination and delve into the sites history to find something colourful. Playing safe is too easy and militates against the joys in life. So what if some people are offended? Some always are and are probably going to find a reason to be offended anyway.

TTIP Etc

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)

A current news item has really alarmed me. It seems the EU and the USA are about to sign a trade agreement, or may already have done so, with some extraordinary implications. International trade agreements are, on the whole, a good thing I think; they tend to increase trade and jobs. However this particular one apparently includes a clause, current in USA law, that allows corporations to sue governments if governments take measures that adversely affect the profits of the corporations. Moreover, any consequent legal actions and their results, fines, modifications of law, etc, are in camera: not revealed to the public. I find that monstrous not only in itself but also in that it gives rights to American Corporations that we subjects of the Queen don't have; we can't sue the Crown, which includes the major government departments. I don't imagine that will worry our current Prime Minister but it sure worries the hell out of me and so it should do for every UK citizen (and the citizens of every other EU country come to that). If ever there was a case of big power groups putting one over the man in the street surely this must take the biscuit.

Autumn

Our autumn, which arrived early in mid-August, has definitely set in now. It's not just the much cooler mornings and evenings, although the days are still generally very warm, but the appearance of mushrooms such as chanterelles on market stalls and the gradual disappearance of summer fruit. I'm making sure I get the last of the melons and white peaches while they are still around before I have to fall back on the winter diet of oranges, apples and pears. Grapes are now in the shops and the muscat grapes are admittedly delicious and will be with us for a month or so.

Despite the cooler weather, watering plants has still been necessary, if not as frequently and intensively as before. I've completed more small stone walls in the back garden to keep the soil more on a level and have planted more irises and cyclamen in the roadside across from my kitchen window. I've also some more clearing up to do before winter sets in but that is about it as far as gardening is concerned.

More Provencal Marketing

One of the local cinemas, in Buis, has been refurbished over the summer and although already up and running has its official opening next week. The next month's programme has some potentially interesting films and it is a month's programme and, what's more, published and available at the same time as the films. The other nearby cinemas seem to be sticking to publishing a three-week programme, for no obvious reason. It's a small point but a month of offerings seems somehow much more natural and easy to follow than three-week periods that begin and end all over the place.

I actually find it amazing and encouraging that a former flea-pit cinema in a place such as Buis, with little over double the popuation of Mollans, can have a refurbishment. It's all part of the French dedication to culture and determination to keep cinemas open in rural areas as an avenue for culture. I think that is admirable even if the subsidy must have been enormous. And publishing the programme on time and for a month is also a leap in the right direction. It seems to have been traditional here that the programme should not be published and disseminated before the programme starts. Subsidies in this direction are great but a little advance marketing wouldn't come amiss and might even reduce the amount of subsidy needed.

On that note, I went to the Post Office because friend Jo had told me that the village had made a DVD of the recent celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Dauphin fountain and it was available there. She also warned me that it wasn't on display and I'd have to ask for it. This I duly did, having noticed that there wasn't any poster either advertising the DVD's existence. I was then told that payment had to be by cheque. I had credit card, debit card nd cash at the ready but no cheque book with me; so no sale. It's what passes for promoting the product around here.

Boules And House Numbers

House Numbers

The village council voted some three or four years ago to introduce house numbers to the village. To me it seemed a simple job of going along each road sticking numbers in sequence (preferably) on each house; but what do I know? For a start, many of the roads just outside the village didn't have names or, at least, signposted names, and the actual name of the road could be a subject of dispute. Anyway, over the past year road names have been officially decided and duly posted.

The job of assigning numbers, so I heard, had been goven by the previous council (some 3-4 years ago) to Jean Francois Colonnat, the acknowledged authority on the village's history. I don't yet know whether he discovered the problem of unnamed roads or whether he had a role in giving them names or whether he just threw his hands up in despair. It was a fair bet that any conclusions Jean Francois came to would be historically impeccable but also that the job wasn't going to be done very quickly. So, as the years passed I just assumed that probably something would happen sometime but I wasn't holding my breath; anyway, the village seemed to be doing quite well without house numbers. But last week it happened, in the rue du Faubourg at least, and no doubt house numbers are sprouting everywhere all over the village. My only worry is official documents, like tax returns. Because the tax authorities had got my address wrong and this year I decided to correct it, I had theoretically (only way to correct the address) to move from the Route de Buis (it passes by the end of my road) to the rue du Faubourg, where I have always been. I have always lived there at Les Bleus so the question is this. Now that I am officially number 39, am I going to have to move (theoretically) from Les Bleus to number 39? And I thought house numbring was straightforward!

When the council people came to screw the new number to my wall I said that was OK as long as the number wasn't 13. They didn't understand. It seems that that number has the opposite connotations in France to those it has in the UK. In France 13 is lucky.

Rémuzat

I've just returned from a boules tournament in Rémuzat. There was a feeling around that the national championships (for wrinklies) were becoming too serious and that the camaraderie and general bonhomie that had been a part of them was being lost. As a result, Mollans, Sarrians and Beaume de Venise decided not to go this year but to hold their own tournament instead, in Rémuzat. In fact, players from Carpentras and the Var also came along.

Despite Rémuzat being only an hour's drive, some 40kms, from Mollans I hadn't been there before. It lies in the narrow valley where the Aygues river has carved a channel through the foothills of the Alps. You soon realise you are in different territory as grape vines give out immediately above Nyons, then olive groves also peter out and the road clings to the side of steep escarpments or goes through tunnels beneath the foothills. The steeper roofs around Rémuzat itself tell you this is deep snow country. Vultures were reintroduced here several years ago and they and eagles were to be seen high in the air in abundance during the day.

It was decided to hold the tournament along the lines of the free-for-all boules days we have in Mollans, each player changing parners after each match and the partnerhips being drawn at random out of a hat. Scores are accumulated for each player rather than teams, since there are no set teams, and there is obviously a significant element of chance according to whom you are drawn with and against. Since everybody played six matches the element of luck was supposed to even out over the tournament. Anyway, I managed to get the fifth highest score out of 44 which was more than enough to satisfy my ego, even without the very good bottle of Vacqueras that came with it.

The Cheek Of It

Pigs' Cheeks

One of the differences in life here is the status of butchers. In England when I left they were a fast disappearing breed. I knew of only one in the Reading area, a catchment of around a quarter of a million people. Nearly everyone seemed to buy their meat, usually packaged, from supermarkets, as I mostly did, and the only cuts of meat available were those that the supermarket had packaged. In most of the supermarkets there seemed to be little butchery knowledge available; ask a question and I got mostly blank stares or just a “No, we don't have that”. I once got myself a sausage-making attachment to a mincer but could get the skins necessary from only this one butcher in Reading.

The most obvious initial difference here is that if you want beef mince it does not come in a pack, generally even in supermarkets, but is minced before your eyes from meat that you can see. Meat is more expensive in France than in England but the quality, I find, is often correspondingly better; and expertise and advice is freely available. As it happens, the butcher I most often patronise works in a local supermarket. Talking to him the other day I remarked that I had had both pork and pork cheek in very good restaurant dishes but had never seen either on sale in a butchers. My butcher replied that beef cheek was pretty much the same as shin; the mention of pork cheek, however, sent him into ecstacies. I got the whole dramatic display, as only a Latin can do it; eyes, arms, fingers, lips all extolled the virtues of pork cheek, especially with honey and rosemary. He admitted that you wouldn't find it on sale normally, but he could get it and he would and would put it aside for me. I'm expecting to have it by the end of the week. Not only that, I fully expect to get details from him as to how best to prepare, cook and serve it. I have subsequently looked on the Web for recipes (in English) for pork cheek and found only a handful, all of which warn that you will have extreme difficulty getting hold of it. Not in a small village in France, it seems.

Mediaeval Guilds In France

It occurred to me recently to wonder at the French apparent obsession with qualifications. As a principle, I have no objection to the idea that people should be qualified for the job they are doing; on the contrary, it seems obviously a good idea. As so often though, principle and practice are quite different things.

The thought occurred as a result of the realisation that French estate agents have to be qualified to practise as such. No such qualification is required in England, although an honesty test might not come amiss. Given previous observations about house prices here, I wondered what on earth these qualifications were worth. I now know that if a buyer bids the asking price for a house the seller has to accept it, which partly explains the ridiculous initial asking prices for houses here; why not ask for the moon if someone might buy it? However, there are many other examples of qualifications that people have to have in France that do not apply elsewhere. I have noticed also, for instance, that translations from French into English by officially qualified translators frequently express the meaning more or less correctly while being couched in language that no English person would recognise as English English. So what exactly are these qualifications worth and why the obsession with them?

I've come to the conclusion that it is a latter-day manifestation of the Mediaeval guild system. Then, to practise a trade you had to be “qualified” and belong to a guild to which you owed allegiance. A recent example here is when the government proposed that shops should be alllowed to sell minor drugs, aspirin and paracetamol specifically. The instant result was a strike by chemists, who alone, they deemed, should be allowed to dispense any medicinal drug. And the strike was effective in ensuring that the government dropped the prosposal. So chemists are protected and generic aspirin and paracetamol cost around six times what they cost in the UK.

Possibly the most recent example of a closed shop in the UK, albeit nearly 40 years ago, was the print unions. They were initially challenged then by Rupert Murdoch, admittedly not everyone's cup of tea, but would anyway have been blown completely out of the water by the advent of computer printers. This kind of closed shop, I believe, encourages the idea of a right to a job for life in a specific kind of trade, a right that was initially challenged five centuries ago in the Renaissance and certainly has no place now in the global economy or even, in practice, in a national one. However it remains very much as part of the French protectionist attitude towards their own commerce; which, arguably, is costing the country an awful lot of new jobs. There are now no new jobs for qualified lime-tree flower assessors, nor even any jobs at all, however protected by guilds, nor will there ever be in the future.

Reality Versus Fantasy, French Attitudes

OK

There's a French expression often used during games of boules that got me thinking. The expression is “elle est là”, said of a shot that is neither very good nor very bad. I got to thinking about the expression because I wondered how I would translate it into English. The literal translation “the boule is there” clearly wouldn't do. So I decided on OK; the shot is OK. But the expression was ringing bells in my mind and I suddenly realised that the Ouolof in Senegal have a directly analogous construction. Greetings among the Ouolof tend to be a lengthy ritual. After the opening “assalam malakum” and response you enquire after the well-being of members in the extended family in turn, husband/wife, grandfather, grandmother, children, in-laws, etc, by asking “ana sa”(family member). The standard response to all these enquiries is “munga fa”, which literally means he/she is there. Again the translation into English would be OK; he she is OK. Ah well, I thought it was interesting.

Another Very French Attitude

Friends Claudine and Jacques from St Malo arrived in the village last week for their summer sojourn and we duly got together to chat at the pizza evening. Claudine said Jacques didn't agree with what I had written about the ELSE clause in my other blog (www.theelseclauseonline.blogspot.com). I have the utmost respect for Jacques' intelligence and his IT knowledge so wondered what his objection was. He said that the IF THEN construction worked perfectly well without the ELSE clause; you simply listed the conditions that were of interest (IF) and what should happen (THEN) if each occurred. But, I objected, what if a condition occurred that you hadn't listed? Ah well then, he replied, you have a problem. Indeed, it is exactly that problem that I was addressing. But what Jacques couldn't see was that it was a problem that needed to be addressed. His point was that you should list all the conditions that could occur and, if you did, the ELSE clause wouldn't be necessary. True but……..in reality people make mistakes; that was my point; his point was that they shouldn't make mistakes. And so we went round in circles.

This theory versus practice/reality argument seems to crop up time and again in discussions with French friends. If friend Steve or I criticise something the EU has done the attitude of our French friends seems always to be that the English don't want to be in the EU unless changes are made to better suit Britain; whereas the French are fully committed. As it happens, both Steve and I think the EU has achieved a lot that is good and are in favour of Britain remaining in the EU; but not come what may nor at any price so, yes, we do want changes; we want a dose of reality to leaven the fantasy in Brussels. So, as it happens, do our French friends; they want changes that would favour France. So where's the difference? I think the difference is essentially that the French cannot conceive of a situation where the EU would make decisions that were so against French interests that France would contemplate leaving the EU. And I think that is realistic. If the EU went strongly against French interests the French would not opt out, they would simply ignore or break the offending EU regulations, almost certainly with impunity, as they are currently doing at their Spanish and German borders. Britain, on the other hand, sees opting out as an alternative and can't seem to contemplate simply ignoring unfavourable EU decisions. But maybe we should take the same stance as the French; why see EU directives as binding if other countries don't?  Why not regard them as fantasy rather than reality?

There's a football analogy, for what it's worth, that suggests these differences may resolve themselves over time. The English have traditionally always placed more emphasis on the physical side of the game and the French on the technical side. Nowadays that difference in emphasis is far less pronounced. I remember from playing for Garches in France that although the French eschewed the aggressive and sometimes dangerous tackling that was very much part of the English game they would happily body-check players, obstruct them one way or another, without any intention of playing the ball. A dangerous tackle was a foul in France, obstruction was not, and vice-versa in England. That was fifty years ago; now both dangerous tackles and obstruction are deemed fouls on both sides of the Channel.

House Prices

I read that house prices in London are reaching ridiculous levels and there is a degree of ridiculousness about house prices here. Here it's not the high scale of the prices but the degree of variability that is ridiculous. When I was in England I seem to remember that estate agents would give you valuations of a house that were within 5-10% of one another and generally would not accept taking on the sale much outside that margin. A couple of years ago a house opposite me went on the market, with an agent, at a very optimistic 640, 000 euros. Within 18 months that price had come down to below 400,000 euros and it eventually sold for 280,000 euros. There have been numerous examples of sales around here with similar, if not quite as dramatic, variations in the initial asking price and eventual sale price. I don't understand how that degree of variation can happen if estate agents know their job but initial asking prices here undoubtedly have a touch of fantasy about them. Friends Steve and Jo are currently looking for a house nearer the centre of the village so I hope for their sakes that realism strikes sooner rather than later.