Onset Of Winter

Onset Of Winter

A lorry with a telescopic arm has been out putting up the Christmas decorations and causing chaos in circulation in the village wherever it stops, as it completely blocks the roads. Ah well, it's only twice a year (once again to take them down) and the decorations themselves are quite restrained. The shops are full of boxes of chocolates, foie gras and ducks. It marks the onset of winter, although the sunny weather has so far remained for most of the time ; boules in shirt sleeves is still possible some days.

The handfuls of bulbs that wouldn't fit into the pots in front of my house have now been planted in three groups in the back. They should make a decent display in the spring, alongside the aubretia and anemone blanda in the terrace wall. There's not much showing out the back now (a clump of chrysanthemums) except for the redcurrant sage, which is a mass of bloom. I haven't known it flower so profusely at this time of the year in England but I noticed that one in Daniel's garden is similarly covered in bloom. In a minor fit of gardening enthusiasm last spring Daniel bought a dozen narcissi bulbs. I told him they wouldn't bloom until the following spring but he didn't care. In fact, to my surprise they are in bloom now. I thought spring bulbs had to be frozen before they would bloom (the trick used by horticulturists to make hyacinths, for example, bloom at Christmas – freeze them in late summer) and Daniel's certainly haven't experienced any frost since last spring. So, another gardening surprise for me out here.

Religion

One of the Christmas carol troupe, Anne-Marie, has pulled out citing her reluctance to sing religious songs. She was less than enthusiastic to start with so that may also have contributed to her decision. However, religion certainly seems to be more significant in France than in England. Nothing like the rather catch-all C of E seems to exist. The minority protestants are very protestant and, muslims apart, the rest of the country seems to divide into serious Catholics and very atheist atheists or agnostics. My friend Mana and neighbour Monserrat don't actually spit at the mention of religion but are not far off doing so. None of the English singers is notably religious, some of us definitely not so, but having to find Christmas carols that weren't in any way religious would be an awful chore. How much of this divide in France is attributable to the wars of religion and how much to the church/state split initiated by Napoleon I don't know but I feel inclined to find out more.

Exchange Rate, Christmas Presents And Sudoku

Having for some time cursed the Pound's tendency to keep steady at about 1:1.2 against the Euro, despite the Euro's troubles, I'm finding that it actually works to my advantage in some marginal cases. As usual in the lead-up to Christmas I've been scouring Amazon and other websites for possible Christmas presents. My mother actually wants nothing that I can give and needs nothing that anyone can give (I'll buy some lavender essence, soap, etc for her) but I troll through DVDs on Amazon for some winter evening entertainment. Last year I bought Lost In Translation and Closer, two films that I enjoyed. This year I shall buy Taxi Driver, Black Swan, Léon and Incendies. What I noticed, flicking between Amazon France and Amazon UK, is that the Pound/Euro prices seem to be calculated at about 1:1.4. The same was true of electronics sites I looked at. Being able to purchase easily in either country, I'm taking advantage of the weak pound by buying in the UK.

One of the ways I pass the time on winter evenings is doing killer sudokus, the version where the opening grid has no numbers except total values for groups of cells. I've thought for some time that these sudokus are an ideal way to teach kids arithmetic. I mentioned this some time ago to Armelle, who teaches maths and gave her some sample puzzles; the easier ones are certainly appropriate for kids of 11-15. However, she has so far done nothing with them. She retires at the end of the school year so that is understandable, although a pity I think.

Chit Chat

Chit Chat

The weather remains clement and there is nothing out of the ordinary going on. My pots out front are now full of bulbs for the spring and I have a few left over which I will plant in the back. I'm waiting for the first severe frosts to hit before cutting down the solanum, plumbago and clematises in the front.

My boules playing is going particularly well at the moment as I seem to have managed to add consistency to my talents(...?). I haven't lost a match for a week, playing with a a range of partners. It has an interesting “double whammy” effect on the opposition in that they seem resigned to losing when I'm opposing them, if I start off OK, and so don't play as well as they could, which makes it easier for me. Interesting game psychology.

Daniel is having problems returning hospitality because he doesn't cook normally and the paella man who used to have a stand on Saturday mornings in the village no longer comes. So Daniel can't buy a round of paella for Saturday lunch-time to thank people who've fed him during the week. Apparently the paella man was refused space for his stand on the weekend of the Painters in the Street, reasonably enough as the centre of the village is crowded with painters, paintings and onlookers then. However, he took umbrage, vowing never to come to Mollans again. That seems to be another Clochemerle moment. Assuming it was profitable for him to come before, and it seemed to be, he is cutting off his nose to spite his face and all for an assumed slight.

Claudine and Jacques are back from Brittany for a month's stay and were insisting at the pizza evening today that I write some more fiction. This is a result of Claudine having finished translating the fourth short story I'd written about the fictional character Cecil Roads I'd invented when doing a creative writing course in England. The character appeals to the French, I think, because he is somewhat anarchistic. Both Claudine and Jacques find the character hilarious and want some more material to translate. The problem is that I find writing fiction extremely difficult. I created Cecil Roads with the idea that I could put him in various situations and perhaps stitch together a short novel; and that provided the necessary material for the creative writing sessions. However, I need to think of more situations with humorous potential and I'm running out of ideas. Maybe that will give me something to think harder about during the winter.

Musings On Government

Musings On Government

I'm just back from a week in England again ; my mother and « kids » all OK. The weather wasn't bad but I didn't get out much except to shop and so had my customary overdose of television while there. News and discussion/documentary programmes were dominated by the Euro and border control, which led me to musing about government more generally. (The useful shopping I did for here consisted of buying jars of mincemeat for Jo to make mince pies, Father Christmas hats and some elegant red lanterns; all for our carol singing session here in December.)

The border control debate centred of course on Teresa May's spat with her civil servants. The spat was of little interest to me; she was “courageous” in Yes Minister terms to take on a very senior member of her Ministry but will no doubt escape with just a few feathers missing even if Brodie Clark wins his case in court. He, incidentally, wrote an article in The Times declaring that border controls were extremely efficient, which surprised me as they show all the symptoms of a buggar's muddle. I can't see how the issues involved can be anything other than extremely complex, enough so to defeat a few geniuses let alone a bunch of civil servants.

Populist concerns always arise when jobs are scarce and services stretched but, although they have to be addressed by politicians who want to stay in power, are generally uninformed or based on bigotry. Significant influxes of immigrants in a short time and security are the issues I muse about.

On the one hand it seems to me that a lack of any discernible immigration policy is at the heart of the problem. There surely has to be some control of immigrant numbers over unit time, if levels of service to the community are to be maintained. I find it difficult to envisage that intra-European migration, which cannot be suppressed, is a problem. There may be temporary imbalances from time to time but the Common Market was designed to allow labour flows to employment areas and, currently, if anywhere is experiencing an overload it can only be Germany. The only danger of a significant overload would be from a country where an outbreak of civil war or some other catastrophe caused large numbers to emigrate from that country (if they could find the means). Such cases shouldn't be difficult to identify although sharing the burden with other stable countries could be problematic.

The question of security strikes me as much more difficult. Any putative Albanian gangster isn't going to come directly to the UK; he will come via Ireland or Italy. That means either iron security for incomers from all destinations, and hence long queues at all border points, or an EU-wide immigration policy. A UK policy alone could not be effective; which rather knocks my idea of a need for a UK policy on its head. Incidentally, the HSE aspect of queues at border points hadn't occurred to me before the current brouhaha. My current movements tend to be between Avignon and Southampton airports and a queue of more than 6 people at Avignon airport would probably merit newspaper headlines.

Of course there are many other aspects to immigration but the idea of the need for a policy that would have to be EU-wide was the one that stuck in my head. It implies a degree of integration with other EU members that does not yet exist and may never do so; certainly it won't happen tomorrow.

The Euro debate has similar implications. I loved the spat that occurred when David Cameron exhorted the Germans to get their act together because the Euro was adversely affecting the UK economy and various Germans ripostes to Cameron to either join the Euro or shut up. I happen to believe that the decision for the UK not to join the Euro (a feather in the cap of Prudence, of all people) was correct. I believe that for all the reasons we are seeing now. Every currency in the world except the Euro has a fiscal system behind it. All the Euro has is a set of rules that were always going to be bent and, indeed, were already being so from its very inception. Whatever the outcome of the present shenanigans I can't see the Euro surviving unless the ECB takes on the full role of a central bank. If it somehow survives the present crisis it will continue to be open to speculative attacks that will cause mayhem unless the Euro is backed by a proper central bank. Whether the Germans like it or not they will have to suck on that one, even if they have to remain the principal contributor to its funds. It's the price of the political dream and they will have to pay most of it.

The most serious aspect of this, to me, is that the future of democracy in Europe is bound in with this issue and that it reinforces the thought that banks rather than politicians are now running western countries. If banks create situations that entail politicians making unelectable policies, who governs? Not only do economies fail but democracy itself does. If Merkel doesn't force the ECB to take on a full central bank role, the Euro fails. If she does, she may well fail at the next elections. France is likely to have a new government next summer, to add to the changes in Greece and Italy. All these changes of government, with the possible exception of France, are likely to be to the right. A military coup is already a possibility in Greece. The very serious underlying question is: if financial institutions hold all the real power now, how do democrats get it back from them? That, I suspect, requires not “simply” an EU-wide policy but a global one.