Hospital
I had to return to the hospital in Carpentras on Tuesday to have a check-up following my operation for bowel cancer last summer. There's no sign of more cancer so that is a relief. They did, however, find a condition in the colon called “diverticulose sigmoïdienne”; I had to look that one up. It is apparently a common condition in someone my age, common as arse-holes you might say, small hernias that are not serious unless they perforate. When I looked up what it meant I found that the most common cause is a poor diet, lacking in fibre. Which is strange because I eat a fairly high fibre diet, not because I study diet but because the foods I prefer, notably lots of fruit and salads, tend to be the healthy choices.
The nurse who delivered the anesthetic was at pains to say that she was the person who would be “putting me to sleep” and to see that I was comfortable with that. I asked if she could give me a nice dream at the same time ( like Chelsea winning the league next season, to avoid any louche innuendos) and she simply smiled sweetly. I dream, or rather am aware of dreams, very rarely and when I am aware of having dreamt it is usually a nightmare of facing university final exams. When I look back it doesn't seem like a traumatic time but somewhere in my psyche it must have registered as such.
Anyway, I'm glad the business is over for another year. I find taking the purge necessary before the examination a daunting experience because of the sheer amount of foul liquid which has to be drunk to clear the colon beforehand. To add insult to injury, the purge powder is officially not deemed to be a necessary medicine and so is not reimbursable by the State or medical insurance systems. Though why anyone would take a purge if it wasn't absolutely necessary defeats me.
Shopping
I did a big shop today having not shopped for a while and stood wondering at the richness of colour in the supermarket fruit and vegetable section. It all looked much more voluptuous and enticing than the equivalent sections in English supermarkets and i wondered why, since the produce on sale is essentially the same in both cases. The only difference I could identify was that the section in all the supermarkets around here is laid out in flat displays, as in the open markets. You take it all in at a glance, rather than having the total display subdivided by high shelves as in most English supermarkets. That, and the general lack of packaging seems to account for the effect and it certainly makes you want to buy more. That led me to wonder whether the marketing guys here have got one over their English counterparts. It could be but, if so, the marketing people responsible won't be from Provence.
Confirmation Of Boules Success
My cleaning lady came in today and was full of how successful the boules “rencontre” had been. Her friends had all commented to her on what a good time was had by all and she asked if we were going to repeat it. I said I thought we would next year but she was thinking of August. She made the point that I have commented on before, that July is packed with celebrations of one sort or another but August is barren (grandchildren time). (I could have phrased that better.) Anyway, I'll ask the others how they feel but I suspect that once a year will be enough for them.
One reason that Patricia, my cleaning lady, stated for the success was that no-one felt pressured to win; they were just there to enjoy themselves. Daniel, with whom I play a lot, had said when we planned the event that that would be a critical factor. He hates pressure to succeed and, though a very good player, won't take part in regional/national tournaments for that reason. Funnily enough, although the success of the “rencontre” was very important to me, I don't feel that kind of pressure when playing. I worry a little about how I play, and get frustrated if I am not playing well, but don't worry much about the eventual result. Competitiveness is a funny thing.
Chelsea
While I was playing boules today a family came to watch who were chattering away in English. They got all excited watching me play and took a number of photos of me playing. At first I couldn't understand why (despite the obvious brilliance of my shots!!!). Then I realised that it must be because I was wearing a Chelsea shirt. I didn't let on that I was English; fortunately I quickly realised that the photos were going to be the subject of stories about how the family had found an old Frenchman in a little village in the middle of nowhere who was a Chelsea supporter. I didn't want to spoil the story.
jeudi 30 juin 2011
lundi 27 juin 2011
The "Rencontre Bouliste"
The Boules “Rencontre”
The planned boules get-together duly took place on Sunday and was generally acclaimed a great success. That was the main thing. There were 48 players and a dozen prizes, which Michèle had managed to extract from local businesses, to distribute. The top and bottom three scorers all got prizes and the rest were distributed through a random draw of the players. The event was officially called a “rencontre bouliste”, a boules get-together, to make it sound as intended less formal than a competition or tournament. At the end of the evening everyone seemed happy so the event will probably become an annual one.
Unfortunately I lost my rag somewhat when registration got underway. We had anticipated various small problems and decided on ways to circumvent them. I had been slightly worried, knowing the way of the world here, that people wouldn't turn up for registration until the event was due to start, at 4.00pm, and that the event would thus drag on into the evening. A game generally takes about 35-40 minutes but can last over an hour if the teams are well-matched; and each player was allocated three games. As it happened, people turned up early so there was no problem there. The idea had been to give each contestant a number and, with that, a slip of paper showing the number of their partners for first, second and third games, so that as soon as they had registered they could look for partners and opponents (who was against whom was on a sheet at the registration desk) and get the show on the road. What actually happened was that people were just given their number at registration so we had to go around afterwards finding people and giving them the appropriate slip. It didn't matter much but was messy and meant that we couldn't get started until over 40 people were registered. Anyway, the “rencontre” finished in good time.
Then we'd decided that as we wanted everyone to meet new people and that couples would quite probably come to registration together, we wouldn't give consecutive registrants consecutive numbers. Knowing this, when I drew up the fixtures I didn't worry about pairing numbers 1 and 2 or 7 and 8, for instance, as I assumed they wouldn't be couples. This seemed to be forgotten at registration so consecutive registrants did get consecutive numbers and consequently several couples played as such (although only for one of their three matches). We'd also noted that the total number of players had to be divisible by four and so, as organisers, we decided we wouldn't register ourselves until the total was known and would then add ourselves as necessary to make up the requisite total. This didn't happen either, resulting in two would-be contestants having to be turned away.
As I saw the decisions we had made being ignored I started to get angry; which was silly really as everyone else seemed to be happy to just muddle through. It was the more silly in that all my anger did was to make people concerned for me and why I wasn't having a great time like the rest of them.
A learning experience for me.........................
Another learning experience was drawing up the list of “fixtures”. The general idea was that each participant should play three matches, each time with a different partner and with as a wide a variation of opponents as possible. It turns out to be a simple matter to draw up the list of matches if, but only if, you know the total number of contestants in advance. Making people register in advance was likely to drive down the numbers playing and thus defeat one of the main objectives of the exercise. We had no idea what the eventual total would be; estimates varied between a conservative 30 and an optimistic 60. Not knowing the total in advance makes the problem absurdly complicated and involves an optimisation. If you plan for a higher total than you actually get the whole plan falls over and is irrecoverable. So you have to plan conservatively. We could have planned for 36, for instance, which would have given a wide variation in partners, but then would have needed an extra plan for a possible additional 4 or 8 players; and the variation possible within 4 or 8 is very limited. We opted to plan for successive groups of 12, with additional plans for 4 or 8 if necessary. Within a group of 12 the variation possible is obviously much more limited than that within a group of 36 but nonetheless greater than that possible within a group of 8. Participants did say that they would have liked more variation but it is not obvious to me how we can achieve that. So be it.
The planned boules get-together duly took place on Sunday and was generally acclaimed a great success. That was the main thing. There were 48 players and a dozen prizes, which Michèle had managed to extract from local businesses, to distribute. The top and bottom three scorers all got prizes and the rest were distributed through a random draw of the players. The event was officially called a “rencontre bouliste”, a boules get-together, to make it sound as intended less formal than a competition or tournament. At the end of the evening everyone seemed happy so the event will probably become an annual one.
Unfortunately I lost my rag somewhat when registration got underway. We had anticipated various small problems and decided on ways to circumvent them. I had been slightly worried, knowing the way of the world here, that people wouldn't turn up for registration until the event was due to start, at 4.00pm, and that the event would thus drag on into the evening. A game generally takes about 35-40 minutes but can last over an hour if the teams are well-matched; and each player was allocated three games. As it happened, people turned up early so there was no problem there. The idea had been to give each contestant a number and, with that, a slip of paper showing the number of their partners for first, second and third games, so that as soon as they had registered they could look for partners and opponents (who was against whom was on a sheet at the registration desk) and get the show on the road. What actually happened was that people were just given their number at registration so we had to go around afterwards finding people and giving them the appropriate slip. It didn't matter much but was messy and meant that we couldn't get started until over 40 people were registered. Anyway, the “rencontre” finished in good time.
Then we'd decided that as we wanted everyone to meet new people and that couples would quite probably come to registration together, we wouldn't give consecutive registrants consecutive numbers. Knowing this, when I drew up the fixtures I didn't worry about pairing numbers 1 and 2 or 7 and 8, for instance, as I assumed they wouldn't be couples. This seemed to be forgotten at registration so consecutive registrants did get consecutive numbers and consequently several couples played as such (although only for one of their three matches). We'd also noted that the total number of players had to be divisible by four and so, as organisers, we decided we wouldn't register ourselves until the total was known and would then add ourselves as necessary to make up the requisite total. This didn't happen either, resulting in two would-be contestants having to be turned away.
As I saw the decisions we had made being ignored I started to get angry; which was silly really as everyone else seemed to be happy to just muddle through. It was the more silly in that all my anger did was to make people concerned for me and why I wasn't having a great time like the rest of them.
A learning experience for me.........................
Another learning experience was drawing up the list of “fixtures”. The general idea was that each participant should play three matches, each time with a different partner and with as a wide a variation of opponents as possible. It turns out to be a simple matter to draw up the list of matches if, but only if, you know the total number of contestants in advance. Making people register in advance was likely to drive down the numbers playing and thus defeat one of the main objectives of the exercise. We had no idea what the eventual total would be; estimates varied between a conservative 30 and an optimistic 60. Not knowing the total in advance makes the problem absurdly complicated and involves an optimisation. If you plan for a higher total than you actually get the whole plan falls over and is irrecoverable. So you have to plan conservatively. We could have planned for 36, for instance, which would have given a wide variation in partners, but then would have needed an extra plan for a possible additional 4 or 8 players; and the variation possible within 4 or 8 is very limited. We opted to plan for successive groups of 12, with additional plans for 4 or 8 if necessary. Within a group of 12 the variation possible is obviously much more limited than that within a group of 36 but nonetheless greater than that possible within a group of 8. Participants did say that they would have liked more variation but it is not obvious to me how we can achieve that. So be it.
mardi 21 juin 2011
Village Update, Language And Politics
Village Update
The last two scorching days, 29 degrees in the sun, have demonstrated that summer is really here. It always strikes me as slightly ironic that when the sun really gets going, the reason that many of us are here, we immediately try to avoid it: shutters or curtains closed, long siestas, etc. Certainly no one who doesn't have to will do physically hard work in the hot sun but I feel that there should be more elegant ways of avoiding the excess heat but still be enjoying the sun. Fortunately, my kitchen and living room remain relatively cool, protected by thick walls and the lime trees opposite.
The next round of fruit is now in full flood. Strawberries and cherries are past their best but are replaced by melons, nectarines, peaches and apricots. I especially love the apricots both for their colour and flavour. I've heard it said that the small apricots are really the best but I love the large ones, the size of small apples, coloured red and orange, that are full of juice.
This week is the beginning of the summer festivities here. I called in at the Mairie the other day to ask for the calendar of events for the year and, in typical provencal fashion, they haven't got around to producing it yet. Half of the events will be over before it comes out. However, the “feu de la St Jean” is on Friday, officially for some reason the first day of summer here, and will provide a general village get-together and knees-up outside the Bar du Pont. Then will come the fête votive, the 14th of July, painters in the streets and so on, week after week until the end of the month. August is grand-children month, when everyone of about my age who has grand-children gets to look after them for a while.
Next Sunday will see the boules tournament I have been helping to organise take place. I'm meeting Michèle tomorrow to decide on some of the finer details and have worked out the apparently complicated scoring system that Daniel proposed. He insisted on describing it as democratic, which gave me no insight as to its real purpose, which I now understand is to help ensure that no two people will end up with the same number of points. Once I had understood that the rest was easy.
Language And Politics
An Australian friend, Ian Mackay, has been commenting on my blog particularly with respect to language and has contrasted Canadian French with French French. His knowledge of Canadian French is considerably better than mine. In doing so he has raised some interesting points. We both agree that the verb “relooker”, which I commented on earlier, must be about the ugliest word invented in any language. The question is: how does it arise? Ian states that there is a Québecois equivalent to the French Academy that is faster on its feet, quicker to produce a proper French equivalent to new phenomena, and thus avoids the introduction of bastardised English words. He also makes the point that differences in the approach to language in anglophone and francophone countries appear to reflect political differences. The anglophone approach is much more free market: new words come and go, needed or not, and nobody cares very much. The francophone approach is much more state-controlled, at least in intention.
This last insight turned my thoughts to the Common Market and it immediately occurred to me that there was a fundamental difference here also between the British and French approaches. The EU was conceived as both a political and economic body. However, the French are interested almost solely with the former aspect and the British with the latter. Although the French have had to open their borders to EU labour generally they make it as difficult as possible for any foreign qualifications to be accepted. And they have no intention at all of allowing other EU countries to compete with their industries if they can avoid it, whatever Brussels decrees. The British, on the other hand, naively open their industries to competition from other EU countries and fret about admittedly useless EU political appointments such as a President, Foreign Minister, etc, which cause no problem at all to the French. The big insight for me, although I can't understand why I didn't realise it before, is that for the French the Common Market is a non-starter.
The last two scorching days, 29 degrees in the sun, have demonstrated that summer is really here. It always strikes me as slightly ironic that when the sun really gets going, the reason that many of us are here, we immediately try to avoid it: shutters or curtains closed, long siestas, etc. Certainly no one who doesn't have to will do physically hard work in the hot sun but I feel that there should be more elegant ways of avoiding the excess heat but still be enjoying the sun. Fortunately, my kitchen and living room remain relatively cool, protected by thick walls and the lime trees opposite.
The next round of fruit is now in full flood. Strawberries and cherries are past their best but are replaced by melons, nectarines, peaches and apricots. I especially love the apricots both for their colour and flavour. I've heard it said that the small apricots are really the best but I love the large ones, the size of small apples, coloured red and orange, that are full of juice.
This week is the beginning of the summer festivities here. I called in at the Mairie the other day to ask for the calendar of events for the year and, in typical provencal fashion, they haven't got around to producing it yet. Half of the events will be over before it comes out. However, the “feu de la St Jean” is on Friday, officially for some reason the first day of summer here, and will provide a general village get-together and knees-up outside the Bar du Pont. Then will come the fête votive, the 14th of July, painters in the streets and so on, week after week until the end of the month. August is grand-children month, when everyone of about my age who has grand-children gets to look after them for a while.
Next Sunday will see the boules tournament I have been helping to organise take place. I'm meeting Michèle tomorrow to decide on some of the finer details and have worked out the apparently complicated scoring system that Daniel proposed. He insisted on describing it as democratic, which gave me no insight as to its real purpose, which I now understand is to help ensure that no two people will end up with the same number of points. Once I had understood that the rest was easy.
Language And Politics
An Australian friend, Ian Mackay, has been commenting on my blog particularly with respect to language and has contrasted Canadian French with French French. His knowledge of Canadian French is considerably better than mine. In doing so he has raised some interesting points. We both agree that the verb “relooker”, which I commented on earlier, must be about the ugliest word invented in any language. The question is: how does it arise? Ian states that there is a Québecois equivalent to the French Academy that is faster on its feet, quicker to produce a proper French equivalent to new phenomena, and thus avoids the introduction of bastardised English words. He also makes the point that differences in the approach to language in anglophone and francophone countries appear to reflect political differences. The anglophone approach is much more free market: new words come and go, needed or not, and nobody cares very much. The francophone approach is much more state-controlled, at least in intention.
This last insight turned my thoughts to the Common Market and it immediately occurred to me that there was a fundamental difference here also between the British and French approaches. The EU was conceived as both a political and economic body. However, the French are interested almost solely with the former aspect and the British with the latter. Although the French have had to open their borders to EU labour generally they make it as difficult as possible for any foreign qualifications to be accepted. And they have no intention at all of allowing other EU countries to compete with their industries if they can avoid it, whatever Brussels decrees. The British, on the other hand, naively open their industries to competition from other EU countries and fret about admittedly useless EU political appointments such as a President, Foreign Minister, etc, which cause no problem at all to the French. The big insight for me, although I can't understand why I didn't realise it before, is that for the French the Common Market is a non-starter.
lundi 13 juin 2011
Clearing Up And Language
Clearing Up
Today had a lot going for it. Firstly, although the weather was at times overcast it was warm until late in the evening; and I love the warm evenings that we should have from now on until September. Partly as a result of that I played boules for a solid three hours, with mixed success although I was playing consistently well, which was all that really mattered to me.
Secondly, I finished the work in my bedroom, albeit there is still some re-arranging and cleaning to do. However, considering that I first started scraping paint off beams back in last autumn, that is something of a milestone. The cleaning will be a considerable job but not a complicated one. Much more complicated will be persuading myself to get rid of old clothes. I really need to be ruthless on this and am not sure I can be. I've already discovered four sets of clothes for “dirty” jobs and have decided to get rid of two of them; arguably I need only one but..........Then there is the question of what I need here as against my UK wardrobe. I haven't enough presentable shorts and have too much warm/winter clothing. I'll sort that out somehow (?).
Finishing the bedroom has meant finding something to do with my old wardrobe, a self-assembly piece of furniture that was unstable and which I have come to hate. I bought it three years ago, cheaply, to replace a kind of striped tent, of the sort you might find at Henley regatta, which served as a wardrobe for my predecessor. I hated that too, which is why I bought the replacement and now a new wardrobe. Fortunately I met Serge this evening, who's trying to do up a large old house in the village on no money and he wants to take it. It's a much preferable solution to taking it to the local tip.
Thirdly, on the food front, I've now made some apricot jam (the markets are full of apricots) and bottled some cherries in alcohol. That should be it on the preserves front, unless I decide to make more chili jam or pickled shallots, until the figs come along in late summer (more jam). Jam was never important to me in England but but is generally “de rigeur” here for breakfast and I also like to buy unflavoured yoghourts into which I put a dollop of jam. I need a few more cherries to use up the remaining fruit alcohol but that will take only a few minutes.
Fourthly, the warm evening meant that today's pizza get-together, which for a change was mussels and chips, lasted until 10.45pm, an elongated session of chat and jokes with some 40 of us all together. It's one of the things I really look forward to in the summer here, with all of us outside the cafe watching the darkness draw in around us.
A Word A Day
Friend Steve put me on to a website that provides a word a day, it's derivation and usage, and which I have found consistently entertaining, the more enjoyable in that it is free. It can be found at wsmith@wordsmith.org. Surprisingly for me (with my prejudices) it is an American site, proving that there are still Americans who read and take an interest in language. It occasionally produces some unexpected insights, as well as general interest. It has a theme per week and this week's theme is the use of nouns as verbs, a practice I generally dislike when good alternatives already exist. The word today was “friend”, for which the verb to befriend already exists; but to friend someone is apparently being increasingly used on Internet chat-rooms. Instinctively I don't like that. But apparently the verb to befriend is the upstart newcomer, to friend as a verb having been used in English some three centuries earlier than to befriend (13th to 16th centuries). So much for my prejudices.
Today had a lot going for it. Firstly, although the weather was at times overcast it was warm until late in the evening; and I love the warm evenings that we should have from now on until September. Partly as a result of that I played boules for a solid three hours, with mixed success although I was playing consistently well, which was all that really mattered to me.
Secondly, I finished the work in my bedroom, albeit there is still some re-arranging and cleaning to do. However, considering that I first started scraping paint off beams back in last autumn, that is something of a milestone. The cleaning will be a considerable job but not a complicated one. Much more complicated will be persuading myself to get rid of old clothes. I really need to be ruthless on this and am not sure I can be. I've already discovered four sets of clothes for “dirty” jobs and have decided to get rid of two of them; arguably I need only one but..........Then there is the question of what I need here as against my UK wardrobe. I haven't enough presentable shorts and have too much warm/winter clothing. I'll sort that out somehow (?).
Finishing the bedroom has meant finding something to do with my old wardrobe, a self-assembly piece of furniture that was unstable and which I have come to hate. I bought it three years ago, cheaply, to replace a kind of striped tent, of the sort you might find at Henley regatta, which served as a wardrobe for my predecessor. I hated that too, which is why I bought the replacement and now a new wardrobe. Fortunately I met Serge this evening, who's trying to do up a large old house in the village on no money and he wants to take it. It's a much preferable solution to taking it to the local tip.
Thirdly, on the food front, I've now made some apricot jam (the markets are full of apricots) and bottled some cherries in alcohol. That should be it on the preserves front, unless I decide to make more chili jam or pickled shallots, until the figs come along in late summer (more jam). Jam was never important to me in England but but is generally “de rigeur” here for breakfast and I also like to buy unflavoured yoghourts into which I put a dollop of jam. I need a few more cherries to use up the remaining fruit alcohol but that will take only a few minutes.
Fourthly, the warm evening meant that today's pizza get-together, which for a change was mussels and chips, lasted until 10.45pm, an elongated session of chat and jokes with some 40 of us all together. It's one of the things I really look forward to in the summer here, with all of us outside the cafe watching the darkness draw in around us.
A Word A Day
Friend Steve put me on to a website that provides a word a day, it's derivation and usage, and which I have found consistently entertaining, the more enjoyable in that it is free. It can be found at wsmith@wordsmith.org. Surprisingly for me (with my prejudices) it is an American site, proving that there are still Americans who read and take an interest in language. It occasionally produces some unexpected insights, as well as general interest. It has a theme per week and this week's theme is the use of nouns as verbs, a practice I generally dislike when good alternatives already exist. The word today was “friend”, for which the verb to befriend already exists; but to friend someone is apparently being increasingly used on Internet chat-rooms. Instinctively I don't like that. But apparently the verb to befriend is the upstart newcomer, to friend as a verb having been used in English some three centuries earlier than to befriend (13th to 16th centuries). So much for my prejudices.
dimanche 5 juin 2011
Sex, Politics and.....Realism?
Sex, Politics and......Realism?
The Strauss-Kahn affair has been filling a lot of news articles here, as elsewhere, and seems also to have spawned some ill-conceived columns in the English press. Broadly, the English press seems to be saying: “Ah, now the French are having to review their relaxed attitude towards sex; it's time for the revenge of English propriety over the French libertines". In fact, it's nothing of the sort.
Judging from the reactions of the pizza crowd and other French friends, the underlying attitude of the French to sex remains very much the same. The first reaction I noted was that several friends were persuaded by the idea that the affair was engineered by Sarkozy. Strauss-Kahn was all set to be the leader of the Left and very likely to inflict a bloody nose on Sarkozy at the forthcoming elections. And the French love a conspiracy theory even more than we English do. The fact that there was not a shred of evidence to support this theory merely dimmed the suspicion slightly.
The other reaction was that Strauss-Kahn was in the wrong because he used coercion. The French may be relaxed about informal sexual encounters but not about coercion. Coercion in such matters is wrong, full stop. For Strauss-Kahn, anyway, the political dream is over, at least until memories fade.
Incidentally, any scandal there has been has been limited to coverage of the story on the Internet. The French printed press has reported the case widely but not any salacious details. In that, it has kept true to its respect for the privacy of the private lives of public figures. And none of my acquaintances has suggested that Strauss-Kahn was wrong to have had a dalliance. Thus the basic difference in French and British attitudes, which the French regard as inclined to be prurient, remains the same.
For me, the general French attitude to both sex and politics is exemplified by realism. There are things which people do which they may not like but they accept that they are part of life and don't get their knickers in a twist about them. I think that that is generally laudable but some aspects do grate against my Anglo-Saxon sensibilities.
A little while ago when Steve and Daniel were eating with me and conversation got around to the Common Market, Steve brought up the case of the order for new trains for Eurostar. Siemens was initially selected as the supplier but a French representative on the selection panel objected and the contract eventually went to Alsthom, a French company. Daniel's reaction was that this wasn't unusual and that Alsthom had obviously increased their bribe. This shocked me. It wasn't simply his suggestion of a bribe that did this but his firm belief that of course a bribe was involved. I have no idea whether this was true but the underlying attitude bothered me.
I do find this aspect of French realism troubling. It is the calm acceptance that people in important positions will, in Anglo-Saxon terms, abuse their power. In French terms, it is a realistic view that there are certain perks, be they women (or men) or money, that go with the job. I have to accept that, in the real grubby world, the French view is indeed realistic. What I find difficult to accept is that, while large financial contracts have no doubt often (always?) been this way, they have to remain that way and nothing can be done to stop them, which seems to be the prevailing French view.
I find I have a different attitude to dalliances in high places and there is, of course, a feminist aspect to this. If bribes in high places shock me, dalliances don't. If power is an aphrodisiac for men and women, then so be it; both parties know, if I may express it this way, what their relative positions are. In Anglo-Saxon feminist terms, women involved in such affairs would be victims of male dominance. That isn't the French feminist view. Several of my female friends regard themselves as feminist and their attitude to such affairs is, if no coercion is involved, that both parties presumably enjoyed themselves so let them get on with it. Here, too, there is a divergence in French and British attitudes. French feminists are very hot on equal pay, opportunities and rights but not on the extreme postures in which their English and American counterparts often indulge. Maybe in this too they are just being more realistic.
The Strauss-Kahn affair has been filling a lot of news articles here, as elsewhere, and seems also to have spawned some ill-conceived columns in the English press. Broadly, the English press seems to be saying: “Ah, now the French are having to review their relaxed attitude towards sex; it's time for the revenge of English propriety over the French libertines". In fact, it's nothing of the sort.
Judging from the reactions of the pizza crowd and other French friends, the underlying attitude of the French to sex remains very much the same. The first reaction I noted was that several friends were persuaded by the idea that the affair was engineered by Sarkozy. Strauss-Kahn was all set to be the leader of the Left and very likely to inflict a bloody nose on Sarkozy at the forthcoming elections. And the French love a conspiracy theory even more than we English do. The fact that there was not a shred of evidence to support this theory merely dimmed the suspicion slightly.
The other reaction was that Strauss-Kahn was in the wrong because he used coercion. The French may be relaxed about informal sexual encounters but not about coercion. Coercion in such matters is wrong, full stop. For Strauss-Kahn, anyway, the political dream is over, at least until memories fade.
Incidentally, any scandal there has been has been limited to coverage of the story on the Internet. The French printed press has reported the case widely but not any salacious details. In that, it has kept true to its respect for the privacy of the private lives of public figures. And none of my acquaintances has suggested that Strauss-Kahn was wrong to have had a dalliance. Thus the basic difference in French and British attitudes, which the French regard as inclined to be prurient, remains the same.
For me, the general French attitude to both sex and politics is exemplified by realism. There are things which people do which they may not like but they accept that they are part of life and don't get their knickers in a twist about them. I think that that is generally laudable but some aspects do grate against my Anglo-Saxon sensibilities.
A little while ago when Steve and Daniel were eating with me and conversation got around to the Common Market, Steve brought up the case of the order for new trains for Eurostar. Siemens was initially selected as the supplier but a French representative on the selection panel objected and the contract eventually went to Alsthom, a French company. Daniel's reaction was that this wasn't unusual and that Alsthom had obviously increased their bribe. This shocked me. It wasn't simply his suggestion of a bribe that did this but his firm belief that of course a bribe was involved. I have no idea whether this was true but the underlying attitude bothered me.
I do find this aspect of French realism troubling. It is the calm acceptance that people in important positions will, in Anglo-Saxon terms, abuse their power. In French terms, it is a realistic view that there are certain perks, be they women (or men) or money, that go with the job. I have to accept that, in the real grubby world, the French view is indeed realistic. What I find difficult to accept is that, while large financial contracts have no doubt often (always?) been this way, they have to remain that way and nothing can be done to stop them, which seems to be the prevailing French view.
I find I have a different attitude to dalliances in high places and there is, of course, a feminist aspect to this. If bribes in high places shock me, dalliances don't. If power is an aphrodisiac for men and women, then so be it; both parties know, if I may express it this way, what their relative positions are. In Anglo-Saxon feminist terms, women involved in such affairs would be victims of male dominance. That isn't the French feminist view. Several of my female friends regard themselves as feminist and their attitude to such affairs is, if no coercion is involved, that both parties presumably enjoyed themselves so let them get on with it. Here, too, there is a divergence in French and British attitudes. French feminists are very hot on equal pay, opportunities and rights but not on the extreme postures in which their English and American counterparts often indulge. Maybe in this too they are just being more realistic.
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