The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

 

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

A Good Evening

A good pizza evening on Monday although I didn’t buy a pizza; I had food at home that needed eating. I find Roberto’s pizzas quite acceptable but I’ve had pizzas in Italy far superior. The main difference is in the pastry; it has to be freshly made. I’ve been told that an oven at 400 degrees is essential and a wood fire is preferable and those conditions are met in pizza van vendors here. But the result is not the same and so I think the main difference comes down to the freshness of the pastry. For a one-man pizza van making the pastry as the orders come in is not practical so the pastry is made in advance and frozen. I think the pastry has to be freshly made.. Lively conversation and another book sold made for a convivial evening. Book sales are still sluggish and I don’t want to be giving paltry cheques to the school so I’m waiting for sales that amount to at least 100 euros to add to the 130 already given.

The Other Visit

I plan to go to the UK for my 85^th birthday, on the 14^th of October. The goal is to meet with family and friends there. The bookings and formalities are all in place, all I have to do is get there and enjoy the time. The “big” questions are only what I should take and bring back for friends on both sides of the Channel, I can deal with that.

What Drives Me

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”

Dylan Thomas’s poem is what drives me. I know that I have to die in however number of years but I want to be dragged kicking and screaming into my last hours. Then peacefully-? Yes, hopefully but only when all is irretrievably lost. I do not want a gradual, calm slide into that last goodnight; and will resist it as long as I can; but who knows?

The Death of Intelligence

There’s a joke going around that the reason for the high interest in artificial intelligence (AI) is that real intelligence is disappearing. And it’s not just a joke; it’s reality and the reason is cost: Employing people generally costs less than buying a software program, usually a so-called wizard, as much of a wizard as the wizard of Oz. And educating people costs more than leaving them ignorant and stupid. But there is a cost in driving down cost in this way and that cost is the neglect of intelligence.

The cost of neglecting intelligence is not obvious but neither is it that difficult to see. Innovation and creativity have been important factors in the past in driving down cost and both require intelligence. And solving problems of any sort requires intelligence.

So why this focus on cost rather than on value? At root of course is money and the former is generally more easily quantifiable in monetary terms than the latter. And quantity of money, at a personal level is an important factor in quality of life. The wealthiest have no financial concerns except how to keep and increase their wealth, the poorest have to struggle just to survive.

So where is the dynamic in all this? I believe it is in right wing politics and, particularly in extreme right wing politics. For the wealthy to achieve their goals there must be low taxes and a cheap pool of labour to create large profit margins. Quality, and quality of life for others, is not a factor. Their only problem in a democracy is how to get a majority to vote for their aims. False information and downright lies can only work if people are ignorant or stupid enough to believe they are true. So intelligence must be denied. Then there can be a society that serves the purposes of the rich and ensures that the poor stay poor.

The best counter to this, and my hope, is the EU with its capacity to blur nationalism.

In the past great civilisations, based on using intelligence, have always met their downfall when confronted by brute force, armies of barbarians. I think the world today is facing the same confrontation, albeit in less dramatic fashion: Intelligence and civilisation versus ignorance and barbarity.

On a personal level, old, half deaf and half blind, I find it increasingly difficult to have to deal with organisations that eschew intelligence in favour of robots and scripts that lack any ELSE clause. When programming I always knew that an ElSE clause was essential. Having thought, and being sure of having thought, of all possibilities, I still needed an Else clause because I wasn’t God, I was fallible. But the problem with an ELSE clause is that it is like a wild card, outside prescribed procedures; it can be useful only if intelligence is applied to it. And intelligence costs in the short term, reducing profits in the short term.

Structures

In trying to understand the universe and everything we search for structures which we assume must be there; in DNA for instance. In order to understand things we need them to have a structure, which we endeavour to discover, and we need them to conform to certain laws, which we also endeavour to discover. But what if some phenomena have no such predetermined state nor necessarily follow predetermined laws. How will we understand them? Ithink this is quantum physics.

The End Of Summer

The End Of Summer

The long spell of extreme heat has ended and we are now into temperatures in the middle 20s during the day and warm enough with a sweater on in the morning and late evening. I feel a liberated man and can now get on to the tasks I have for some time wanted to do. They are numerous but I can feel a surge of energy.

One of these is to finally prevent water run-off from the small plots of earth around the trees opposite my house. I’ve tried stone barriers to no avail because the water creeps between them but now have a couple of small bags of cement to reinforce them. The Fingers crossed that that will work and then that I can find plants that will flower there without too much attention.

Most of the other tasks concern the allotment. It has been the best year yet for that by quite a margin. The early crops of potatoes and leeks were plentiful, as have been those of gooseberries, blackberries, tomatoes, beetroot, aubergines, chillis and courgettes; green beans are loaded but as yet too small to pick. The only failure has been onions, for reasons that I don’t know but all on the allotment have had the same experience.

My renewed energy enabled me to do some digging a day ago to clear enough space to plant more lettuces and also broccoli and shallots for later on. I’ve bought some big bulbs of garlic and have got these sprouting in readiness for planting. Any green tomatoes that are still around in October I will make into chutney.

I haven’t yet made any chilli jam this year but will think about doing that. I haven’t enough chillis from the allotment as I have been using them as I go along but can easily buy the shortfall.

Away from gardening there’s not much. But sales of my book on Mollans have stalled; costs have been recovered so all revenues now go directly to the school, which was always the promise; I need to think what I can do to restart them. I also need to print off some notices giving the restart date for the English conversation sessions and get them posted ar ound the village. My planned trip to Scotland in October is all booked so there is nothing I need to do there except print off some tickets. I’ll be a year older when I return but hopefully won’t feel it.

Notices

I’ve printed off and had sealed in plastic two notices that I’ve posted opposite my house. One, which I’ve pinned to the bench, is a quote from Brassens song Les Bancs Publics. It reads “Les amoureux qui se bécottent sur les bancs publics…..ont des queules s très sypathiques”. The other, pinned to one of the trees, is a quote from a John Donne poem, picked up by Ernest Hemingway: “ne damandez pas pour qui sonne le glas, le glas sonne pour vous”. This quote, which Hemingway used as a warning that WW2 was coming, has always resonated with me and I think applies to world events today. For me, itmeans that warning signs are always there; can you see them and, if so, what are you going to do about them because you, as an individual, must be responsible for what you do or don’t do.

I’m gratified to see lots of passers-by read the notices but have no idea what they make of them. 

The Visit And After

 

The Visit

My family arrived on schedule on the Saturday afternoon for a 10-day visit. For the whole 10 days the weather was indecently hot and that dictated to a great extent what we did; that is, we kept as cool as possible. Every day except Wednesday when we went early to the Buis market started with Breakfast at the Bar du Pont. They spent a lot of time in the pool and I left watering, around thz house and at the 

llotment to the early morning or late evening. This really was very similar to previous years: Natalie relaxing, swimming and reading, Eilidh swimming, learning to dive coached by Andy, taking trips to the Ouvèze to see how many little fish she could catch and also reading a lot; Ahdy swimming and managing to get in the compulsory cycling rides in the early morning. And we all went to the pizza and moules-frites evenings. A trip to the allotment was of course obligatory where Natalie gathered the last of the gooseberries and the first of the blackberries while I watered. We measured Eilidh against my tallest sunflower but she is still not quite there yet.

Also I thought it a good idea for my family to meet my friends so we had open house on the second Saturday evening where everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and Andy did a barbecue. This may not seem very exciting but all the family declared it a very good holiday and I got a lot of practice with my “Ferrari” as well as the pleasure of being with my family.

On the practical side Andy markedly increased the lighting in my kitchen and living room and I Bought a larger screen TV which Andy hooked up to the fibre connection I now have so that I’m in better shape than I was to deal with my failing eyesight.

Obviously I was sad to see them go but, as the saying goes, all good things must come to an end. But not quite all things. I have music to console me: the crickets’ chorus in the day and the frogs’ chorus in the evening. And I can still sit on my balcony in the evening, listen to the frogs , encourage the grapes growing overhead to ripen, drink a glass of Calvados and contemplate the day. That’s not so bad.

Then it is back to the watering and whatever I can find to do in between. When the heatwave ends I shall start playing boules more often.

And After…….

After the visit I still had the meal in the street and the 14^th July to look forward to.

For our annual meal in the street, since there was just me, I just took one dish this year: the usual coronation chicken. Other years my family has been there and I also baked a baklava. I mentioned to Olivier, who is on the council, that watering the plants opposite my house and at the washhouse was becoming difficult for me and the thought that these plants would die when I could no longer do it saddened me. He said that that wasn’t going to happen, that thzeMarie had taken photos and the area was now protected. Great news! It must mean that my digging up of the side of the road opposite (strictly illegal but the neighbours encouraged me) is now officially sanctioned.

The 14^th July was like none previously. Usually the fun and music starts at 9.30 with the national anthem. This year the music started at 6.30 and the national anthem came from the TV on the terrace of the Bar du Pont at the start of the France-Spain match. The music stopped and all attention switched to the TV. I ventured to some friends that if they wanted some more music they could think about singing Viva Espana; but I got no takers. I went home to watch the match as I couldn’t see what was happening on the TV from distance. If the music did ever resume I presume it would have been the funeral march.

Corruption

I am not so naive as to believe that corruption is rare in the western world but the extent and openness of it recently has surprised me. In the Uk there is Farage accepting money from foreign sources to sustain his efforts to change British politics and in the USA clown prince Trump trying to rig the World Cup, aided by the Italian Infantino. In France the managing director of the la rgest European bank, BNP Paribas, has been caught out in what could be described as short-changing customers Money, the accredited source of all evil, is of course at the root of it. This is not the petty corruption that seems commonly to occur around local councils in many places, it is large-scale and not too difficult to discover if not actually in the open. Sleaze reigns, the mega-rich ripping off all and sundry and ,attempting to make the world dance to their tune. When will people at large wake up and put a stop to their game rather than believing in the media and voting for the political parties that support them?

Getting Ready And English Conversation

 

Getting Ready

1. In four days’ time my daughter, son in law and granddaughter will arrive for a ten day stay. It’s shorter than usual this year as my son in law’s (Andy’s) brother is visiting Scotland at a time that clashes with my family’s usual stay here and they naturally want to maximise the time with Andy’s brother since he is coming from the USA. So I’m planning what to do to make their stay here as enjoyable as usual.

If forecasts are correct, the weather will be playing along, hot but more manageable as their stay progresses. They will be shopping en route and I’ve advised them on the best rosé wine that they like to drink that should be available in supermarkets. Anyway they are very familiar with the area from previous holidays here and don’t need a lot of input from me.

They’ll find Mollans changed slightly this year but to little consequence. The usual trips over the bridge to get pains au chocolat won’t happen because both the bakers in the village are now adjacent, by the Bar du Pont. The Café des Sports is still closed and, if local gossip is correct, won’t be offering meals when it eventually opens but just a sandwich bar. If that is correct then I fear for it’s business as the Casino opposite already offers that. The Casino’s new owner has revamped the shop to stock a much wider variety of products than the shop had before. I think this is a bright move, relieving villagers of the necessity to go to Vaison or Buis for many items. My family will notice these changes but they won’t be of much consequence to them. They’ll come to the pizza evenings and moules-frites but otherwise be happy around the swimming pool or paddling in the Ouvèze with maybe a bit of cycling thrown in.

One thing the village clearly lacks is a restaurant. In the past we have occasionally gone to the nearby Les Castors camping site since that has amusements for granddaughter Eilidh. However this week I discovered a new restaurant not far away, in Pierrelongue, La Palanca. The food is good, reasonably priced and the siting is excellent, at the side of the old railway tunnel to Buis and at one end of the new pedestrian bridge bridge over the Ouvèze. There is enough there for kids to explore while waiting for a meal. Maybe we’ll try it together.

There is always of course the ritual trip to the Buis market, which Eilidh finds “amazing. Street markets are not so common in the Glasgow area. Anyway I think I have enough possibilities in mind to make my family’s visit an enjoyable one.

The house is in reasonable shape, the flowers are looking good and the jasmine is flowering all over the balcony. The watering is a chore, around the house and at the allotment, as by 8.00 in the morning it is already too hot to do much, which means getting up really early or doing it in the late evening. But if I can keep that up I think I’m done with getting ready.

End Of English Conversation Season

Well, we managed to end it with a bang. There were about 10 of us, meeting as arranged at the allotments. Normally we would tour the allotments but somehow we didn’t find time for that. Everybody brought food and drink, more than enough. Jacques also brought music and those still able and willing to stand started dancing. Baudouin and Josefa jitterbugging were a revelation and of course Jacques had to join in too, with Pascale. Knowledge of English was not advanced a lot but everybody had an enjoyable time, which was what mattered. That is it now until the end of September. During the rest of the summer everybody has holidays, guests or family visiting and there is rarely enough of us to make up a reasonable class at any one time. So It was goodbye and happy holidays until the end of September.

Death

Death

I have just received the news that my cousin, Sarah, has died. She was not just a cousin but also a close friend for most of my life. She helped me grow up in my adolescence when I was struggling to understand these strange creatures called girls who had suddenly imposed their importance on my existence. She was like the big sister that I never had to me then. She bought cider to celebrate my O level exam results when I was 15 and at a loss as to how to celebrate and welcomed me and my children for a holiday in Southend when I was nearly broke (and not a little broken) after my wife left for another. She shared my love of gardening and football, although in the latter case for different teams; hers were Napoli and Italy, mine Chelsea and England or France. She married an Italian and lived most of her life in Italy.

I’m told she died peacefully and, as with my mother, at a stage when she could do little or nothing for herself. She was three years older than me. And had led a full life and wasn’t religious.

I have written to her family to say that I am very saddened by her death but, in a way, happy for her. I think that when one can do little or nothing for oneself, certainly none of the things one likes to do, then that is the time to let life go. The most one can hope for is that the end is peaceful.

Attitudes to death change over time and according to beliefs. In the past, when the large majority of people were religious, I think death even in late age must have been feared more than it is now. If you knew you were about to die, presumably you thought you had three chances: heaven, hell or, if the jury was still out, purgatory (or equivalents in beliefs other than Christianity). So you had to do a kind of reckoning in your mind as to how many Brownie points you might have accumulated in your life. How well had you followed the prescriptions in the Scriptures or the Quran or whatever and what repentance might recover in your favour. In any case it wasn’t an inviting prospect and certainly one for apprehension. Atheism makes for a kind of quietude, if not with a bare bodkin, as Shakespeare would have it. My hope, when my time comes, is just to die peacefully (and in mid-project; I can’t live without a project). 

The Weather And Patriotism

 

The Weather

The weather dictates a lot of what goes on here, certainly a lot of what I do. If that doesn’t seem surprising to many people it’s relatively new to me. In England I rarely knew from day to day what the weather would be, only more probably colder in winter and more probably warmer in summer, very rarely extreme. So most of the time I disregarded the weather as far as possible and decided what I was going to do anyway. Besides, most of the time I was working and my work was always indoors. Here, the weather can even dictate work.

Pedro, the man who fixed my roof, told me that when he came here at first he worked for a builder and had to be at the builder’s house each morning at 7.30 to start work. One morning Pedro arrived, knocked on the builder’s door and got no reply. It was raining, Pedro was getting wet and so he kept knocking. Eventually the builder opened the door, dressed in his pyjamas, and asked Pedro what he was doing there. Pedro answered that he was there to work. 3Work?”, exclaimed the builder, “It’s raining; we don’t work when it’s raining”.

At the moment summer seems to have arrived with day temperatures around 32-34 degrees. Temperatures are unlikely to dip significantly until mid-August at least. For me, as a gardener, that means watering, watering plants in pots around the house and the allotment. Early mornings are not my forte now so I do it mostly in the evening. It’s tiring but that means I will sleep well. All the planting is now done barring last minute replacements and filling in so watering is the main chore. Rain can be a welcome relief and if we get any it is likely to be a storm which will thoroughly soak the ground for a couple of days. Anyway, the plants around the house are looking good and so is the allotment so those are projects more or less completed for this year; they just need to be maintained.

Another effect the weather has is eating out. I don’t remember ever eating outside in England except at pubs. Here I can hardly remember eating inside at a cafe or restaurant. And I do like eating outside.

Patriotism

The European Champions’ League final between Arsenal and PSG made me reflect on patriotism. I went to watch the match at the Bar du Pont and the assembled crowd there seemed to assume I was supporting Arsenal. But I am a Chelsea supporter, from 1952, and in the previous two years Arsenal had eliminated Chelsea in the semifinals of the FA Cup. So I have an extreme dislike of Arsenal. I didn’t really care who won. So where was my patriotism?

If patriotism means being proud of one’s country I’m afraid I don’t have it. Am I proud of England? No; why should I be? It has, in my judgment, done some very good things but also some very bad ones, like almost every other country. My school education certainly encouraged me to be patriotic but that must be one of the lessons from school that didn’t stick. Do I love England? Yes, in lots of ways I do: I love the countryside, some of the customs, some of the typical dishes, the beer, the variety it displays in many respects and some of the people. Also I was born there and grew up there quite happily; but that is simply happenstance. But simply as an entity, a country, a nation, I can’t see why I should love it or be proud of it. The same applies to France.

I shall enjoy watching the World Cup in the coming weeks and hope that either England or France win it but that is as far as my nationalism goes.

Government And Straight Lines

 

Joined Up Government

I have had a number of conversation with Friend Steve on this subject. Althiugh we have differing political views we both agree that joined up government would be a good thing and that ach to problems holistic approach to problems would help.

In the UK ministerial accountability hinders this. If ministers are to be accountable for the actions of their ministries they need autonomy. Which means that a ministry can take an action to resolve one of its problems that puts another ministry in the proverbial. In theory this conflict gets resolved in Cabinet; but that is just theory.

If a holistic approach seems to be lacking in the UK it appears totally absent in France. I first encountered this when I came to the Sorbonne as a student. In England I had a student card that defined me as a student and therefore entitled me to any advantages available to a student. Access to university classes? Evidently. Discounts on entry to museums, art galleries or theatres? Obviously. Concessions on banking or other financial matters? Included also. I was, after all, a student studying at an officially recognised educational body.

Not so in France. I needed a card for access to classes at the Sorbonne but that was all that it entitled me too. Student restaurants? I needed another card. Discounts at theatres? Sorry, I needed another card. Travel? Yet another card. And so on…….I ended up with a pocket full of cards for different activitites all of which had one thing in common: the fact that I was a student. Could that commonality be used to reduce the administrative load? Of course it could. Was it? Dream on.

What astounds me today is that this practice continues, nearly 70 years later. The most forms anyone who is not already a French citizen will need are those to claim citizenship. Then, if you mislay your health card, what do you need? Many of the same forms. If you want to apply for a driver’s licence what do you need? Many of the same forms. If you want to hire a lawyer what do you need? Many of the same forms. And so it goes on……..A French official once told a Friend of mine that if the government diesn’t have a file on you you don’t exist. But I do; could I be an alien form of life or am I just an illusion?

I’m reminded of one of my favourite films, Orfeu Negro, when Orpheus searches in the underworld for Eurydice. The underworld is a building for bureaucrats and Orpheus searches through rooms full of nothing but filing cabinets. 

Joined up government? Repetitive is nearer the ark and it's the number of duplicates demanded by the French administration that is filling up all those filing cabinets in Hades.

Straight Lines

The word among gardeners on the allotment is that I have a strange way of gardening but that I get results. What is so strnge? The absence of straight lines. My defence is that in gardening we are dealing with nature; we all agree on that. So find me a straight line that isn’t man-made in a wood, in a meadow or on a roadside.

My friend Sylvie, who is helping me on the allotment this year, wanted to knowwhere I was putting the flower corner when I mentioned that I wanted to growsome sunflowers Thre is no flower corner, I said, I plant them among the vegetables. Blank incomprehension. Worse still, there is a lilac tree beside my front door through which a honeysuckle and a clematis are grwing. And the lilac tree isn’t pruned but left to find its own shape. Quelle horeur! But everyone loves the floral display. Strange but it gets results.