Last Post Before Christmas

Wine
Daniel and his son Kevyn came round to eat tonight and, as ever with Kevyn, the talk turned to wine. Kevyn is one of those French people who is passionate about wine and he took issue with my assertion that the Appellation Controlée (AOC) “trademark” is going to disappear, because it has little relation to taste. He agreed with my current perception but said that the trademark could go one of two ways. Either it disappears or, as he thinks likely, it will become much stricter and therefore have useful meaning. I think he's right in suggesting the alternative but think that the democratic vote (i.e.the need to sell wine, whatever) will fudge the issue to the extent that AOC will remain meaningless.

I was trying to explain to him the choices presented to me when I wanted to buy wine, at a reasonable price for everyday drinking, in England. What we both agreed about was the need for some reliable quality/price indicator. It's difficult to see how this can be effected but we both agreed again that, at the current time, the Côtes du Rhone red wines are the best value for money in France; and that is reflected in UK supermarket shelves, where affordable Bordeaux and Burgundy wines of any quality are noticeably absent. But you still have to suck it and see.

Téléthon
The Téléthon, as I've probably remarked previously, is France's answer to the UK Children In Need weekend blitz on TV. Except that this is France's major and only annual, nation-wide, charity money-raising event and it's not specific to any single charity; it raises money for charities local, regional, national or international. Anyway, I went along last Saturday to join in some of the activities, including the boules tournament. As it happened, Daniel and I came runners-up, which earned me a zip-up nylon jacket (plain black on the front but with Téléthon and quad bike riders club(?) emblazoned on the back) and a bag full of apples; the former will be useful in the summer.

Darts
My « kids » bought me a Chelsea dartboard and darts for my birthday and, as I already have a dartboard, I offered the one I had to Patrique and Valérie in the Bar du Pont. Patrique considered my offer and then asked if it was a board for plastic darts. I replied that any kind of normal darts could be used and he then asked about the points ; I said they were steel and he replied that they were now banned in bars in France. Apparently, darts in France (in bars) now has to be an electronic game, with the board sensing where darts with plastic points hit. I often grumble about impositions emanating from HSE in the UK but the French seem to have stolen a march on us here. Patrique said that if darts with steel points were allowed serious injuries would result. The French must be more aggressive than I had thought.

Anyway, I offered the surplus dartboard to Daniel and Kevyn this evening and they gratefully accepted. I think that Daniel's kids will get a deal of pleasure from it; at least, I hope so.

Christmas Readings
The BELL (Beaumont English Language Library) had it's pre-Christmas get-together last Sunday with an invitation to read to the members anything on a Christmas theme. I must admit that Christmas hasn't been high on my literary agenda, the only decent thing I remember reading on the subject being Dicken's Christmas Carol. However, deciding to give some thought to the idea, I found a book on mediaeval festivals in my bookcase and, within it, a useful piece on Christmas then. I had always thought that first-footing was a Scottish and New Year tradition. Not so. In mediaeval England, Christmas festivities could not begin until the high table at any assembly had been first-footed by the Lucky One, who brought the spirit of Christmas into the room with him from outside.

Carols
Thanks to Herculean efforts from Jo, Steve, René and Armelle, the carol-singing evening went very well, with a good audience at both the old folk's home and the Bar du Pont. Thanks to Armelle and René, there were enough French singers and thanks to Steve and Jo there were enough people who could actually sing well to drown out my foghorn voice. We sang in English, French, German and Latin (the Provencal option, which we had considered, was eventually dropped). Everybody had a good time, which was the prime objective of the exercise; and three kids went away with Christmas hats that they hadn't expected and were delighted with. Daniel filmed the whole event and so there should be a visual record of it.

One of the linguistic problems (for the English) which I noticed took me back to my days of scanning French verse at school and university. Words that end in an “e” in French have an extra syllable that is barely noticeable in normal speech but which has to be accounted for when reading/singing verse They therefore affect the flow of the text and that was something that some of we English found slightly difficult when singing. However, I've no doubt the French found the English pronunciations even more difficult, particularly as we rendered “Ding Dong Merrily on High” in its original old English version (e.g bells swungen).

I think that, as the evening was an undoubted succees, we may want to repeat it next year. However, I also think there were lessons to be learned. There's no doubt that this kind of event is not natural to the village. René and Armelle were enthusiastic and supportive because carol singing is as common in Alsace as it is in England; that is clearly not true of Provence. A good crowd was attracted to the Bar du Pont but the audience was mostly the “intelligentsia” of the village and surroundings; there were few real locals there. Patricia, my cleaning lady, was very enthusiastic when I spoke to her on the very morning of the event and said she would be there but did not come, which was sad. However, she felt positively towards the idea and had ideas of her own about walking round the village singing and attracting children to join in. This last point, I think, is something we should take on board. If the children want to come they will bring their parents with them. There was also the question of posters advertising the event, beautifully designed by René, but posted only a week before the event; several people I spoke to said they hadn't noticed them.

If we do the same next year, it's clearly going to take an exceptional effort to get the locals out of their warm houses at 8.00pm on a winter evening and start a new “tradition” for the village. But.....it can be done and, maybe, with the lessons of this year behind us and some more local support, which I feel could be forthcoming, we could do it.

Fingers
There's something I haven't recorded which I've known since being here, probably through friend Steve. I had always interpreted Churchill's famous V sign as being simply V for eventual victory; in fact, its origins go much further back. I had slightly puzzled at the fact that sticking two fingers in the air could be as much of an insult as sticking a single finger up (a kind of two-way version of “up yours”). The explanation, it seems, lies somewhere around the battle of Agincourt. The French, to taunt the English long-bow archers, would stick one finger in the air to signify that any English archer they caught would have a finger cut off to prevent him firing arrows again. The English responded with two fingers up to show that they still had them and would fire on the French. So there was originally a cultural distinction; not so much “up yours” as “over to you”. Incidentally, that would imply that Churchill's V sign during the war was effectively an insult to the French. I wonder if anyone thought of that (or cared about it).

There Should Be A Law.......

There Should Be A Law..........

Steve, Jo and Mana came round to eat tonight and I asked Mana about the origins of the serious divide I perceived between the religious and non-religious in France. Mana didn't see it as I did and thought there were as many people who didn't care much one way or the other in France as in England. Anyway, she and Steve both thought that the church/state divide didn't go back as far as Napoleon but probably had its origins in the Republican governments of the late 19th century. Certainly the divide wasn't enshrined in law until 1905.

I wondered what was the case with the UK military now, the discussion having reminded me of something a friend of my youth had told me. He had joined the Royal Navy and, on signing up, had been asked a lot of questions including his religion, to which he had replied : « none ». So the interviewer duly wrote down C of E ; at that time (the late 1950s) it seemed that you had to have a religion to be in the Armed Forces. God as well as my country, presumably. Steve reckoned that you probably weren't allowed to even ask the question now.

Which led us on to political correctness. We all, other than Mana, had numerous examples of idiocies to recount. Steve and I both being Chelsea supporters discussed the case of John Terry, the Chelsea captain, who allegedly swore at a West Ham player using a racist remark (the West Ham player, incidentally, didn't realise this until after the match.) We both agreed, that for once, Sepp Blatter the EUFA President had got it right. If that had in fact happened then the players should sort it out themselves after the match; many things are said and done in the heat of a moment that are best sorted out between the parties themselves when both are calmer. That's just common sense. Steve reckoned that there wouldn't be any rugby players still playing if the same criteria were applied to rugby. The fact that this is now a case being passed to the Director of Public Prosecutions defies all common sense, if only because the police must have more important calls on their time.

We were discussing the same thing at one of our pizza evenings, partly in the context of the DSK affair, and apparently analogous cases exist in France. Jean Ioannides asked if cases of sexual harassment were common in the UK now and commented that the his wife probably could have had him dismissed if she had not responded to his advances, since he'd met her at work. He added that he would never have dared make the same overtures in the current climate.

Of course all this is a matter of degree and the law is notably bad at dealing with matters of degree except in sentencing, where the punishment can (but won't necessarily) be made to fit the crime. The point of all this preamble is that there should be a law, which it can't be beyond the wit of man to devise, that asserts the pre-eminence of common sense. What, as one judge once put it, the man on the top of the Clapham omnibus would think. Currently, on the contrary, it is principles that have pre-eminence. People of principle are supposed to be admired; I regard them more often as charlatans. Principles, in my experience, are frequently used as a way to avoid discussion; if someone says an opinion is a matter of principle, the you aren't supposed to argue with it. They are inflexible bludgeons with which to hit people over the head, of particular value to bigots and dogmatists. Therein lie many of the idiocies in our society because it is principles that are enshrined and enacted in law, even if in defiance of all common sense.

So who's for a Law of Common Sense that would state that if, in a given situation, a legal principle dictates some course of action that defies all common sense, the Law of Common Sense should prevail?