Lunch, Entertainment and Pi

Old Fogies' Lunch

The annual lunch for old people in the village, given by the village and served by the village councillors, took place on Sunday. It was a close-run thing, it seems, as the usual caterer cried off sick at the last moment. However, the chef from a restaurant in nearby Plasians was able to fill in and did an admirable job.

The restaurant in Plasians is noted for its brawn, which is always served as a first course in its set meals and so brawn was inevitably the first course today. The second course was a salad with foie gras and slices of smoked duck. That was followed by monkfish in a tomato sauce and then the usual selection of cheeses, baked Alaska and coffee, with white red, rosé and sparkling wine as appropriate along the way. The village certainly does its old people proud on these occasions.

I happened to be sitting at a table with two English “refugees”, which got me thinking about the fortunes of war, Mali being much in the news at the moment. One, Alex, had been brought up and educated in England (he was actually at Bristol University at the same time as I, though we never met there) but his family was in Estonia at the outbreak of World War 2. The Nazis were of course greeted as liberators when they entered Estonia, freeing it from the Russian yoke (for a while). He and most of his family escaped to England. The other, Jim, is a Polish Jew who was living in Belgium at about the same time and was sent on a boat of Jewish refugees to England. There were a number of such evacuations at the time but not all countries would accept them and Jim is eternally grateful to England for allowing him in. Such can be the fortunes of war.

The Entertainments' Committee

There was an extraordinary AGM of the village entertainments' committee ( Comité des Fêtes) last week which I decided to attend. Last year some events that were supposed to happen didn't and those that did generally weren't anything like as successful as they should have been. Unsurprisingly, the chairman of the committee came in for strong criticism, lapsed for most of the time into sullen silence and, at one point, offered his resignation. This was refused, with attendees saying that resignation was beside the point; the point was to identify the problems and resolve them. I liked the lack of rancour, the fact that nobody wanted to crucify the chairman but................The problems seemed to be clear; there was no lack of volunteers or resources more generally: what had been lacking was initiative, communication/coordination and project management skills. Unfortunately, it seemed to me, the chairman had clearly demonstrated that he wasn't a person who took the initiative, couldn't communicate and, apparently had few project management skills since he couldn't identify the problems. So, in effect, he was the problem. But he couldn't be allowed to resign.

I put my name down on a list of volunteers to help and will go to the next meeting armed with some bog-standard project management sheets. It strikes me that what this committee most needs is a formal method of project control that would not only help in the current year but would mean that, for future years, it would not be necessary to start from scratch each time; whoever chairs the committee would have records of what has been done, by whom and when, the previous year.

Gay Marriage Again

This Sunday there was another large demonstration in Paris, this time in favour of gay marriage. The numbers weren't as great as for the demonstration a fortnight ago (against gay marriage) but still considerable: 150,000 to 400,000 depending on whom you believe but probably nearer the lower estimate. In the meantime I had had a chance to discuss what all the fuss was about with friend Patrick and, as I suspected, it is to do with the French conception of family, which they hold so dear. Allowing gay couples to marry entitles them up to the rights accorded under the “Code Civil”, including inheritance law. I still can't really see where there are any problems that couldn't be countered by some slight modifications but the issue is certainly a very sensitive one here in France.

Pi and Pizza

This evening I went with Mana to see the film the Life Of Pi. I had suggested it to Mana but we both ended up disappointed. The photography and special effects were admittedly spectacular but the story only of passing interest and the musings on God (or not) left us both cold. Anything on God leaves Mana cold; for my part, if I want any insight on God theory I look to the debate that has been raging for years among astrophysicists, some believers, some not. They deliberately make no mention of God, to leave aside any question of religion, but refer instead to the possibility of a Designer. Was the universe in as far as we know it designed or did it simply evolve? The answer lies somewhere in amongst some very hairy equations and mind-bending assumptions (like how many universes, parallel or contiguous, you want to assume) with a considerable grasp of probability theory required. A lot of this is beyond me but I enjoy the debate and think that this is not only the correct but (probably) the only way to approach the issue.

After the film I went to join the usual pizza evening but went for the mixed grill that Roberto was offering as an alternative. He was very late in delivering it, having started late, but made up for this by refusing to charge for it because of his tardiness. So I had two good meals for free on successive days; can't be bad.

Footnote
My son, Carl, sent me an email saying my house was now on Google Street View; and so it is.  So if any of you want to look up Les Bleus (street numbers promised for next year) in Mollans sur Ouvèze, you can.  Judging by the photo it was taken either last winter or the winter before, so there is greenery but no flowers on show.

Gay Rites And Second-hand Furniture

Gay Rites Surprises

Last Sunday several hundred thousand people took to the streets in Paris to demonstrate against the draft bill to legalise marriage between homosexual partners. Estimates of the number vary between 350-500 thousand but it was clearly a very large demonstration even by French standards (and the French do love a demonstration).

The high number surprised me. The extreme right wing and Catholic participants were to be expected, the Catholic (or any other) church getting it's knickers in a twist over a sexual matter being hardly surprising. But there were apparently large numbers of the less identifiable bourgeoisie also in attendance. Although moral issues are the province of the bourgeoisie (George Bernard Shaw once wrote that only the middle classes had morals because the rich didn't need them and the poor couldn't afford them) that doesn't fit well with the general laissez-faire attitude of the French towards sex. (More generally, the French don't mind much what you do in most activities as long as you do it with style and panache.) And all this was on top of the fact that Hollande had made this bill a specific, supposedly vote-winning plank of his election manifesto; it garnered the homosexual vote for what that was worth.

So how can the size of the demonstration be explained? My only thought is that it could be the French preoccupation with family life and the bill being seen as a threat to it. Family life is paramount in France. Even French income tax is based on families rather than individuals, the reason the draft bill to tax rich individuals was declared unconstitutional. So maybe that was the reason for the size of the demonstration.

The other surprise for me is that gays are apparently so keen to get married. We are in an era when co-habitation is as normal as marriage and common law conveys pretty much the same rights to couples whether married or not. I don't think political correctness, that haven for control freaks, comes into it, so why is there all the fuss? I have to confess that I don't really understand it.

Second-hand Furniture

Friend Jo had found a couple of really good, reasonably priced second-hand furniture shops and so took me for a browse last Friday. There were some beautiful pieces on offer and at low, low prices.

I bought some old wooden chairs for the kitchen for a song.

I have long held the view that second-hand furniture is often much better value for money than new furniture, both in England and France but particularly so in France. Solid wood furniture is especially good value; the wood is often beautiful in itself and the same item new would cost a fortune. Granite slabs also feature a lot and, again, would cost a bomb new. It occurred to me that any second-hand furniture dealer in England with a lorry could make a good business out of buying here and selling in England and it seems that does happen quite frequently. Some friends told me of dealers they know who do just that. I remember, back in the 1980s, when French wood stoves became fashionable in England, there was a very brisk trade with lorries from England buying up every wood stove on offer here.

One of the differences I noted in second-hand furniture here is how much of it is home-made. I know people in England must have made their own furniture in times past but I've never seen much of it on sale. Here it's quite common and often very well made. You can tell when a piece has been home made because it has quirks indicating it could never have come out of a factory. Friends Steve and Jo have a beautiful dresser that is very well made except that one of the carved wooden pillars supporting the top half must have been aimed a bit off-target for the holes it had to fit into and so makes a sudden twist to the right to get connected. It's the only blemish in the piece and in fact does nothing to detract from it but would never have passed any kind of quality control; a factory would simply have made another pillar but whoever made that dresser presumably didn't have another piece of suitable wood or just couldn't be bothered.

I suspect this may come from the French genius for throwing nothing away if some means can be found of making it useful. I've remarked on this before with respect to French food and suspect it applies to furniture too. Rural France has lots of wood and a typical French peasant attitude would be: if you've got wood and the tools to make furniture, why buy it?

The Force Be With You

The Force Be With You

This evening was the first pizza evening after the year-end holidays and so there was lots of well-wishing for the new year to be done as well as the inevitable “galette des rois”, in both versions, to be eaten. I know I described this new year cake a year ago so I won't do so again. Also, Patrick retired from his job as a physiotherapist at the turn of the year and that was feted with a glass of marc de Chateauneuf de Pape, about the best marc there is. A good evening and it got me thinking about what I would really like to wish people I know and like for the new year. And it is.........”let the force be with you”.

Crazy as it may seem, I think the old Star Wars film touched on a perhaps universal nerve when it came up with that phrase. Whoever wrote that script and, indeed, embedded the idea deeply in the plot, must have experienced what I am about to try to describe. In fact; so must a great many people if the idea is as universal as I suspect.

There have been three separate manifestations of this in my life: sport, writing and personal relationships. I hope I can describe these so that others can relate the same phenomenon to activities and events in their own lives.

The first and perhaps most trivial (but still important) manifestation has been in my very mediocre career in sports of all kinds: specifically, in football, tennis, darts and boules, in all of which I've played for teams at a very minor level. There have been periods, lasting from some 30 minutes to an hour or two, when I played more or less to perfection. I absolutely knew, when I made a shot, that it was going to go exactly where I wanted it to. These periods of perfection never lasted very long and were not repeatable over days; the next day I might play appallingly. However, they were magic when they happened and, for me, unexplainable. Perhaps a period of perfect body and brain coordination? Or perhaps the force was with me. I'm sure that every other sports player, whatever the sport, must have experienced something similar.

The same thing has occurred to me in writing, which has been a major occupation during my life. Sometimes, writing an article of even a few hundred words has been a real labour; at other times, articles of even several thousand words have flowed from my keyboard or pen without a moment's hesitation and barely needed re-reading, except perhaps to add a comma or eliminate a keying mistake. As Nehru said at Gandhi's funeral, you have to find the words. Yet I've never really attempted to write anything I didn't know I could. Sometimes, it seems, it was just that the force was with me.

More importantly still, the same phenomenon occurred very occasionally with personal relationships. In particular I remember a French girlfriend whom I knew when I was 19 and contacted again when I came to France. Once contact had been established, we talked with a degree of intimacy that seemed at once most natural and at the same time incredible given the intervening 50 years. I have felt this same degree of intimacy, in whatever form, become immediate and almost tangible very few times and with very few people in my life but on each occasion so evidently so on both sides that something powerful had to be at work. The force?

Yet again, with my children when they were very young, I remember meeting them again after as little as a week's absence when the reconnection was clearly overwhelmingly emotional for them and so also for me. They blushed, wouldn't look at me at first as though fearing I was just an apparition and then clung to me so tightly that I couldn't release their grip. The force again?

Maybe all these phenomena are not connected as I suppose. Maybe the personal connections are different from those in work or sport. But, whatever is at play, those moments of magic are what I would most like to wish my friends for the new year.

A Happy New Year?

Happy New Year?

For anyone who writes this is the time to wish « all our readers » a happy new year. And so I do. Incidentally, in Scotland, which seems to have laid the principal marketing claim to be the prime usher-in of the new year, it is deemed unlucky to wish anyone a happy new year before the new year actually arrives ; I'm safe on that count. So my wish is a good wish although one that will inevitably face the test of reality. Predictions aren't my forte but a reality check could be on the cards.

I think the major concerns for the new year have to be economic. Perhaps less for people of my age, who have had the benefit of several decades of general economic growth, and more for younger generations, particularly for our children, for those of us who have them. For these latter, the outlook has to be, at best, challenging. From some 15 years ago it became clear that education and health would have to be paid for privately, at least to a significant extent. That is, of course, in countries that had been accustomed to their being either free or highly subsidised. So well and good but private payment assumes private economic well-being. For most western developed countries, this assumption will be false, certainly for next year and probably for several years hence.

.

In France the situation is much as elsewhere in Europe. Unemployment is high, salaries static and inflation above target, with job cuts forecast. President Hollande's trumpeted wealth tax has just been judged unconstitutional by France's highest court. The politicos will amend the tax rules to get round that but the tax will do nothing for the economy even if it sends out generally popular signals.

Life in the village is unlikely to be affected very much. The influx of “foreigners” from anywhere north of Lyon continues and so therefore does the house renovation work that sustains most of the local artisans. There are also several instances locally of new roundabouts, road junctions and road bend eliminations which, although mostly unnecessary, will provide more work. And local agriculture is as ever protected by the Common Agriculture Policy.

Steve, Jo, Edward (Marijke's husband) and Marijke came round for drinks early on new year's eve and we had a discussion on coffee-making, Edward being a designer for Philips' kitchen domestic appliance group. I learned quite a bit from the discussion which I shall try to put into practice. Edward asked me is I had considered taking French nationality, for which I am now eligible. My reply was that I would if the UK left the EU, a possibility that I have never seriously considered before. However, Edward and I agreed that the objectives of the principal EU members were political rapprochement whilst the UK objective was the common market. And Edward and I agreed also that the common market was never going to happen. So, why is the UK in the EU? That question no longer seems to be blue sky in the UK but one that can seriously be asked. Maybe the coming year, and debates on the EU budget, will clarify the point.

At least the weather for the past two days has been brilliant: bright, sunny and with temperatures approaching the 20 degree mark. Long may that continue.