samedi 13 décembre 2014

Websites, Metrics and Wine

Bad Websites
I wrote some time ago about the stupidity of websites using the UK postcode system unthinkingly, particularly those which would claim to be part of the global market. My annual trip round websites where I look for possible Christmas presents, cards, etc, has shown up more stupidities.

Looking for Christmas cards, which I prefer to buy from charities rather than commercial firms where possible, I went to the Oxfam website. Thee was a reasonable selection of cards from which I chose various packs and I then went on to choose other items. Right at the end of the purchase sequence, when it came to confirming items in my basket, the packs of cards I had chosen were marked as unavailable outside the UK. This meant paging back through the site to delete them, the site was very slow and I ended up aborting the transaction. The problem could have been avoided had Oxfam marked cards as being available only within the UK up front. It was a good demonstration of how to piss off customers and encourage them to shop elsewhere.

Another demonstration of stupidity occurs on the SNCF website. The site demands the age of would-be passengers. If I put in my correct age (over 60) the site automatically assumes I want a reduced fare for pensioners, which is restricted in availability both in numbers of seats and times of trains. The result is a very short list of choices of trains, usually at inconvenient times. To get the full list of trains available I have to falsify my age. It took me a while to discover this since nowhere on the site is it stated. In the case of SNCF, there is no train alternative so maybe they don't care about the difficulty in using their website. Also, many airline sites refuse to give you a general flight schedule; you have to propose to book a flight and then manoeuvre around alternatives when a general schedule would be much more helpful. In this respect, travel agency sites are often easier to use than airline sites; I wonder if the airlines realise that.

All this leads me to wonder about the testing websites are put through. In any IT development there is a whole battery of tests that should be applied, one set of which should be user testing: how easily, efficiently and effectively the software can be used by Jo Public. Testing was always the poor relation in IT development and that seems still to be the case; it would be easy to assume little or no user testing had been carried out on many websites. One glorious exception is Amazon, which has probably been a significant factor in the company's success. Not only do I find that I can do everything I want on their website, I find I can do it quickly and easily. I've been looking for a site that exposes website stupidities but can't find one; it's badly needed and overdue.

Metrics
I went to the Post Office to send off Christmas cards en masse and was duly given strips of stamps in multiples of a dozen. It didn't strike me as odd at the time but friend Steve pointed out you'd really expect them to be in multiples of ten in a metric country. He had an experience a few years ago when he went into a local hardware shop to get some chipboard and he had measured out what he wanted in yards. The shop assistant huffed and puffed and said we sell it in metres (obviously) and so did the conversion. When Steve asked how much it was per square metre he was told that they charged for it in yards. Confusion reigns!

There are other anomalies, such as the “demi” you ask for in a cafe when you want a beer being a half-pint rather than a half litre. Apparently in Napoleonic times there was an attempt to metricate the calendar, which obviously didn't have much success. Beautifully simple as the metric system is, there are some things that just aren't suited to it and now, anyway, a lot of things have gone binary or octal.

Wine
WE Brits are apparently drinking much more wine than 30 years ago, according to all accounts, which makes me wonder about the future of various staple dishes in the English diet. Baked beans on toast, for instance, particularly with brown sauce, wouldn't go with any wine I can think of. Neither would kippers or grilled herring. I can't see wine enhancing fish and chips or sausage and mash either. My point is this: almost any French dish I can think of seems made to go with one sort of wine or another. As the Brits drink more wine, will that start to shape the composition of dishes in the typical diet?



lundi 17 novembre 2014

Weather And Charities

Weather
Last autumn and winter were unusually wet and this autumn has been the same so far. The Ouveze is full, fast flowing and discoloured, if not yet in full flood, the consequence of several days of rain over the past week. Today, however, was bright and sunny which gave me the incentive to get out and plant the flowers and bulbs I had bought earlier. There are another 80 narcissi bulbs out front, some replacing those I removed last spring to make way for further planting, but probably about half that number additional to last year. I have also made additional use of cyclamen this year as they seem to like the conditions and bloom more or less continuously. So the front of the house should look good through the winter and into the spring. Unfortunately, cyclamen don't do blue and I'm not keen on pink so I've opted for red and white.

Charities
One of the differences I found when I came here was the absence of the ubiquitous charity shops in the UK. Had there been one nearby I would probably have volunteered, as I did in the Oxfam bookshop in Reading before coming here. So a recent news item caught my attention.

It appears that a book is due to be published very shortly on the charity industry in the UK. It appears not to take any moral stance but is full of facts and figures that would seem to pose some very disturbing questions. For instance, the charity “industry” in the UK has a turnover of £80 billion. That is a staggering figure, making it one of the more important industries in the UK. Indeed, that could be seen as a wonderful feather in the cap of the British, giving so much to charity; but is all that money going where it is intended?

Unfortunately not, it would seem. There is no suggestion of fraud but there would seem to be a huge problem of proliferation of charities. The total number is just short of 200,000 so that, unsurprisingly, the Charity Commission which provides overall governance is struggling to maintain any kind of control. Of that total, nearly 2000 are dedicated to issues concerning children, which most people would agree should be a major focus; but 2000? Other interesting figures are that there are 581 charities devoted to cancer care/cures, 354 devoted to birds and 255 to animals. The obvious question is not whether all these charities are worthy in their own right but whether this is an efficient way of channelling donations to the quite probably worthy, and needy, causes.


Every charity, quite properly, must show that it is appropriately administered and the larger ones must have their accounts professionally audited. Administration costs money and so does auditing; a reasonable estimate of auditing costs for the larger charities has to run into hundreds of millions of pounds. An apparent loophole in declaration of accounts seems to allow such costs, and sundry others, to be allocated as charitable spend. The result is that when charities proudly proclaim that X% of the money they receive goes where the donor expects, that is in fact far from the case. A truer figure would indeed seem to be around half to two thirds of what is officially claimed. Surely that needs legislative attention, of a form that would encourage charities to amalgamate and increase the percentage of donations that actually goes to the front-line operations that donors normally intend.

vendredi 24 octobre 2014

Bell, Book And Candle

BELL
I went to the Beaumont English Language Library (BELL) (www.beaumontenglishlibrary.com) to hear a presentation by Julia Rothenberg of Harvard University on James Joyce's Ulysses. It proved interesting and revealed an unsuspected fact. Joyce apparently didn't speak Irish, although Ulysses itself was translated into Irish quite late, in 1984.

The visit to the library enabled me to button-hole Julia's husband Albert, who is a professor psychiatry at Harvard on a point that has often intrigued me: concept definition in psychiatry. I have always assumed that defining the concepts psychiatrists use must be a difficult problem in the absence of any clinical indicators. It seems I was only partly right. Concept definition is a problem but psychiatry gets round it by the use of agreed tests and expert consensus. That's hardly ideal and must leave significant room for uncertainty but it would seem to be a case of needs must. However, psychiatry is not depending on advances in clinical indications. I thought it needed better understanding of how the brain works but that turns out to be only partly true. As Albert pointed out, whilst we now know a lot more about areas of the brain that are active when we do certain things or experience various emotions, we still understand next to nothing about what exactly is going on in those active areas. Albert suggested that a much greater understanding of synapses will be needed before any progress is made on that front.

Friend Steve and I have agreed to give a talk some time next year on the origins of popular phrases and sayings. That leaves plenty of time to prepare but has already set me investigating sources and is proving an interesting way to spend otherwise unoccupied hours. One origin I have already found is that of the phrase “nineteen to the dozen”, meaning going all out. Apparently it derives from water pumps used in Cornish mines which were powered by coal and which, at maximum capacity, could pump out 19,000 gallons of water for every 12 bushels of coal consumed. A bushel, for those who left school after the 1960s, is an old volumetric measure of dry goods equivalent to 0.35 cubic metres.

Islam
I find myself with very mixed feelings about the anti-muslim sentiments that I encounter here, in England and among very reasonable friends. In some ways these sentiments are easily understandable given ISIS, Al Quaeda and cases of sexual violence, forced marriages, etc, hitting the headlines in the UK. Outrage must be the normal response for any westerner. My problem is that I understand that to be exactly the response that the extremist groups most want. They want a global war between muslims and the rest of the world and also, it would appear, between muslim factions. Outrage fuels the inferno they want to create.

At root, I can't see this as a struggle between muslims and the rest, as indeed some moderate muslim groups have said it is not or should not be. I see it as a naked struggle for power waged by groups who above all want dominance, want to be able to dictate to the world how it should live. That has happened a number of times in history; all that is new this time around is that Islam has been chosen to provide legitimacy and a constituency. If these groups simply said what they really want, total power, it would be easy to dismiss them; so they seek some form of legitimacy, to gain a following. I find it ironic that we label ISIS et al as mediaeval, which is indeed how their behaviour appears, when muslims in Europe in the Middle Ages were quite the opposite. In muslim-occupied Spain jews, christians and others, whilst excluded from holding office, were otherwise treated as equal citizens, an amazingly liberal approach for those days. When El Cid and the reconquest happened, muslims were offered the choice of conversion to christianity or death. And then came the Spanish inquisition............


The other serious conflict is clearly a clash of cultures which, I believe, has not been helped in England by extremes of political correctness. I firmly believe in tolerance but also that when there is a clash of cultures the predominant national (in this case English) culture must take precedence. And people of other cultures must accept that or face penalties or exclusion from the country. In 90% of countries in the world this would be automatically assumed and I see no reason why England should be different.

mercredi 1 octobre 2014

The Law

From Matera
My final outing in Matera stay was to the Benedictine Abbey of Michael Angelo in nearby Montescaglioso, nestling in the village at the top of a hill. Reception offered a guided tour, which we took; and just as well. Most of the interest, apart from the main building structure, was behind locked doors which had to be opened by the guide. There were some Greek ruins over which the monastery had been built, starting in the 5th century and ending in the 12th. The monks seemed to have lived a fairly plush life when there wasn't a war going on around, the cells being spacious and quite well furnished. I enjoyed the visit.

I was due to fly home on the Monday but the strike by Air France pilots (euphemistically called a “mouvement social” rather than a “grève”) threw a spanner in the works. I am wondering if this interesting change in nomenclature lowers the official statistic for the number of strikes in a year. “No, no, nowhere near 1000; only 300 in fact; the rest were mouvements sociaux or some such.” Anyway, a flight from Bari to Beauvais, a coach from there to the Porte Maillot in Paris, a taxi from there to Roissy and a train from there to Avignon where friend Steve picked me up did the trick, even if it did take 15 hours door-to-door.

I am tempted to express my feelings on Air France but find myself inhibited by a recent court case reported in the papers. A lady who had an unpleasant experience at a restaurant (poor food, service) related the same on her Facebook page, naming the restaurant. The restaurant sued her for defamation and won damages. The court verdict was not based on any inaccuracies in her account but simply on the fact that what she wrote had the potential to damage the restaurant's trade (and so it bloody well should!). Liberté? Whatever happened to freedom of speech in France? And how on earth do you do restaurant reports or critiques of anything else come to that? So all I can really say is that the return flight by Air France didn't go off wonderfully because it didn't go off at all.

Countering Terrorism
France looks as though it could be going to put its foot well and truly in it with a new bill to counter terrorism. The problem of protecting freedom from terrorism without adversely affecting that same freedom too much is well known. However, the new French bill, which proposes blocking websites with terrorist material on them, has obvious and serious flaws.

For one thing it makes a special case of material available over the internet. That's just plain stupid and a refusal to acknowledge lessons that have been learned elsewhere over the years. Material that may be illegal over the internet could therefore be legal if delivered some other way; anomalies here we come. The UK Sale of Goods Act (1979), designed to protect consumers, defined an economic good as something tangible, thus failing to protect consumers from bad services (or computer software). Similarly, the ancient Copyright Act (1911) specifically assumed marks on a page or similar, thus requiring a much later intellectual property rights act. That mistake could at least be excused by changing times and history but there are no excuses now. All media and means of delivery should be covered by any new legislation; surely that lesson must have been learned.

Secondly, and more importantly, although the bill refers to the already legally defined terms provocation and incitement to terrorism, Article 4 also cites justification (apologie) of terrorism. But the bill doesn't give criteria for when a justification should be considered noxious and blocked, neither does it propose a body to define and interpret any such criteria. An explanation, for instance, could easily be interpreted as a justification if someone wanted to take that view. That looks like a free hand for the government to block anything it wants for just about any reason, including any embarrassing criticism it could do without.

NB  I included accents and they have screwed up the text presentation somewhat.  Why can't Blogger deal with accents?

mercredi 17 septembre 2014

Matera

Matera
I arrived at my cousin’s in Matera without hitch, apart from a rather long hike around Terminal B in Rome’s Fumicino airport.  Having confirmed the gate for my onward flight to Bari, I walked the length of the terminal to present myself at it only to find that it had changed.  And then again………….As my cousin’s son Enrico said when I told him of this: “Ah, Alitalia; welcome to Italy.”

We all (myself, cousin, my daughter, her partner and my cousin’s family) met for lunch at a local hostelry.  The hostelry was on a farm that was part of a scheme in the region whereby a grant could be claimed if the farm served meals consisting of produce 75% grown\made on the premises.  Anyway, the food was excellent and copious.  A starter of types of ham, cheese and salads on a large platter, supplemented by more of the same that wouldn’t fit on the plate, was followed by two courses of pasta, one with mussels and the other with mushrooms.  Then came roast chicken and lamb with salad, again supplemented by more of the same that wouldn’t fit on the plates. Then came two dessert courses, fruit followed by pastry and ice cream, and finally a plate of cheese with which to finish off the dregs of the wine.  We’d started at 1.00 and left at 6.00.

I was fit only for a couch or bed after this but it had been decided that we should go on to visit the vineyard of another of my cousin’s sons, Matteo.  The domain is called Parco Dei Monaci and sits on a south-facing hillside outside the town.  The 20,000 vines are capable of producing the same number of litres of wine but Matteo and his wife carefully choose only half of the harvest to be made into wine.  A very slow fermentation process means that none is bottled until it is three years old.  The result is three wines: a rose made purely from primitivo grapes, a red wine made similarly, and finally a red wine made from a blend of primitivo, cabernet sauvignon and merlot grapes.  The latter has been awarded a gold medal and all three sell for between 15-25 euros a bottle.  Having drunk all three I can testify that they fully justify their price.

An evening at a favoured pizza restaurant produced a surprise.  The chef had found a trick with ice cream.  You place a mound of ice cream on a plate and put it in a very hot oven.  The key has to be in the temperature of the oven and the amount of time (30 seconds?) the ice cream is in it.  The result is a mound of ice cream, cold in the middle with a crust on top and surrounded by a puddle of melted ice cream.  Pretty neat, I thought.


A trip to the Sassi (stones) proved interesting.  The Sassi are part of the old town where there are caves that have been inhabited continuously for 30,000 years, one of the oldest continuously inhabited sites known on earth.  It was easy to see that much more could be made of them but a complex recent legal history apparently prevents that.  Part of the site was blocked off as a film was in the process of being shot.  Its title is “Jesus The Lord” or something like that.  Some 30 films have been shot partly or entirely here so its obviously a popular location.  Mel Gibson starred here in Passion Of The Christ and a remake of Ben Hur is scheduled to be shot there starting some time next year.  It appears there was some fall out from Mel Gibson’s time here at a local restaurant he favoured.  He wanted his pasta done a certain way and pasta alla Mel Gibson now features on the menu.

mercredi 3 septembre 2014

Boules And A Film

The Unwritten Rules Of Boules
The regulated rules for the game are known to most players but the unwritten rules can be just as important. Here is a guide to the latter

1 You never ever play badly

2 If your boule goes way past the cosh, it must have hit a stone or slipped from your hand.
Shouting “Ah, elle m'a glissé de la main” will confirm that your shot would have been good

3 If your ball falls short, it must have hit an invisible deep patch of dust or gravel

4 NB Since stones, gravel and dust make up all boules terrains, one or other of these explanations must be true

5 If you fail in some other way, such as not spotting the shot that everyone else can see
is required, you have to offer an explanation along the lines of “Ah, but if I had hit that
boule on this side and that boule had ricocheted on to that side of that other boule and....

6 If your opponent throws a ball that appears to stop equidistant from the cosh to yours,
you have to exclaim “Le point est toujours à moi”. If your opponent demands that the
distances be measured and the result is unfavourable to you, you must demand to inspect
the tape and regard it overtly with extreme suspicion. The delay afforded by asking for a
third opinion will help your opponent to forget how he put his boule where it is

7 If your opponent's boule nearly beats yours but just fails to do so, it is only courteous to say “Quel dommage”. The effect on your opponent's game of repeatedly saying this is not your responsibility

8 If you win a game it is only courteous to look sad and say “Désolé “. If you win 13-0 you
could politely add “Vous n'avez pas eu de chance” and suggest a return game

Fortunately, the players in my village are well aware of the unwritten as well as the formal rules and adhere to both.

More Boules
I went to Buis to watch some exhibition games played by players from all around France. Small stands had been erected around the terrains and it was very pleasant sitting in the sun and watching the play. However I was also slightly depressed by seeing a standard of play I couldn't even aspire too, let alone reach. I shall have to be content with being “good enough” for games in and around the village. As it happened, I went to play in the afternoon and played very well, but by my standards not those I had been watching.

A Film

A film is being made in the village. It is apparently exactly 20 years since a group of Dutch youths who were staying in the village decided to walk up Mt Ventoux. On the way down, one of them fell and was killed. The film is to commemorate that event. I shall probably enjoy seeing the film if I get a chance, even if it is in Dutch, but at the moment it is a considerable nuisance. Parts of the village have restricted access and if you are within 100 yards of the action you are told not to talk or only in whispers. I'll be happy when the film crew move off to Mt Ventoux.

dimanche 31 août 2014

Expressions And Attraction

New Expressions
At dinner with friends Rene and Armelle I was asked what I thought of my new neighbour, a woman who has bought the house that used to belong to friends Neville and Liz and which sits just above mine. She had wanted to meet me before she moved in and Neville and Liz had arranged a time but she didn't show up until later. By then I had gone off to play boules. So my answer had to be that I didn't know. Armelle said she had spoken to another of my neighbours, Florence, and Florence said she and the new neighbour were like “cul et chemise”. It wasn't obvious to me what that meant until it was explained (very close, apparently). So, it was good to learn a new expression but I was frustrated to find that I couldn't think of the English equivalent. Later, Steve and Jo suggested “bosom friends/pals” or “being in each others pockets”. Problem solved but I don't want to forget my English.

Weeks ago Daniel had introduced me to the expression “heureux comme un poisson dans l'eau”. That time I could find the somewhat crude but definitely more expressive English equivalent: happy as a pig in shit.

Rules Of Attraction
Over lunch with Daniel he brought up the subject of a common female acquaintance and said how attractive he found her, pointing out her good figure. He has his Marie but said to me why didn't I, as it were, “go for it”. I agreed that she was, in general terms, an attractive woman but said I wasn't attracted to her. I've become used to attempts to pair me off, possibly because of my somewhat haphazard lifestyle or perhaps simply because I am a spare male. My friend Steve's wife Jo thinks I need a wife; I jestingly reply that I've already had one of those and didn't go that much on it. Neighbour Jean-Pierre is also on the job. Whenever I'm introduced to a single woman in his presence he gives me a nudge and says: “Elle est disponible, Yann, vas-y”.

The point is that Daniel seemed to need an explanation of why I didn't find this woman attractive, despite her obvious “assets”, and I struggled to say why. A friend, yes, and someone with whom I could happily pass some time; but attractive to me, no.

What I needed was some description of what attracts me to a woman so I tried to search back in my mind as to what had attracted me to women in the past, not necessarily just those with whom I had had a relationship. Daniel's “bums and tits” approach was certainly part of the picture, perhaps an essential part, but very far from all of it. Physically, I do know that I am attracted to women with slim rather than more generous figures but that is about as far as I could go in terms of general shape. I know that some characteristics of eyes and mouth play an important role but can't define what they are; it's not big/small, it's something else. Gestures too can be important. I remember once sitting in a café watching a woman at another table whose lower arm and hand movements were so flowing and graceful as to be almost a work of art in themselves; they fascinated me.

Of course there's personality as well, when I get to know someone, and I know that positive, happy, outgoing personalities attract me more than introspective morose ones. But saying that reveals little and is probably true for most people. Then there words, words, words. I like irony and studied understatement (I am of English origin, after all) and I often find ruefulness, self-deprecation and perceptive comments attractive, as well as a sense of humour (obviously). And common interests provide cement for a relationship but don't explain that fleeting moment, that “certain sourire” when attraction is first established.

The problem is that all these factors individually, although they all contribute, don't really explain anything. The answer is probably somewhere in my genes but I don't know anyone who carries a map of their genes around with them for comparison. Anyway, the subject is of more interest to my friends than to me at the moment. All I know, and it is enough for me, is that I can tell, usually fairly immediately, if I am attracted to a woman or not. Whether she happens to be “disponible” or not at the time is another question. And whether or why she is attracted to me is also something I can shed little light on.


“ Je suis comme je suis, je ne suis pas là pour plaire” (Prévert)

jeudi 21 août 2014

This And That

Stasis?
It occurs to me that I haven't written anything for over a month and that is longer than I like to leave my blog unmolested. The problem, I think, has been too much of the same enjoyment. The days and evenings of the summer seem to have flown by, cooler than usual, but still warm and sunny. I've enjoyed the fête days, the regular boules sessions, meeting up with the recidivist visitors who come only in the summer months and sharing meals with friends. But all that is as usual and there has been little out of the ordinary to comment on. Am I becoming stuck in a rut?

I don't know but feel I should be doing more. There's a limit to the time I can spend drinking Calvados on my balcony and contemplating my navel. The flower displays front and back just require watering now. All the jobs that needed doing in the house are now essentially done. I've thought about adding another layer of polish to the old hand-made tiles in living room and painting the 150 year-old tiles in my bedroom; the surface of these has really gone so there is no other way to renovate them. But these feel like jobs for the winter.

The job that needs doing and which I have been putting off (there's always one) is to recreate my website on Mollans. It's been offline for too long since I changed the host server. Recreating the pages shouldn't be too arduous from the back-ups I have but I know that redoing the SEO in three languages and declaring it to the search engines is going to be a chore. I really must start on it, though......tomorrow?

I do have trips to Italy in September to see my daughter and cousin and to England in October to see my son, which will break the routine, so maybe they will shake me out of my torpor. Or maybe I'm just becoming a bit neurotic in my old age.

Tenth Anniversary
It's ten years (eleven, actually, bit I forgot to celebrate last year), since the American national computer society (the ACM) gave me in 2003 the grand title of Pioneer of Software Engineering. This was richly undeserved, although the time lapse explains why. The recognition was for work to which I contributed in 1968. In fact, the work was done by some 40 of us at a NATO-sponsored think-tank. The key to my personal recognition was simply my age. I was 26 at the time and most of the participants were in their 40s and 50s; they contributed, with their knowledge and experience, much more than I ever could. The ACM wanted the think-tank commemorated with a paper given by one of the participants in Garmisch, Germany, where the original meeting had been held. But.......35 years had elapsed and most of the original participants were either dead, in their dotage or unable to travel. I was simply the one who was left.

In fact, I was only at the original meeting at all because of a series of coincidences and really shouldn't have been in such exalted company.  Yet the other participants, both at Garmisch and the follow-up meeting in Rome, seemed to value my contributions,which pleased but also puzzled me. One of the participants, Bob Barton, who was then VP Engineering for Burroughs Corp, described my role as that of a catalyst: I led the others to think in directions that they wouldn't otherwise have considered.  This could be explained by my background in languages rather than the maths and engineering backgrounds of the others; plus, I like to think, a certain ability with abstract thinking.  Anyway, it was a privilege for me to get to know and work with the other participants, most of whom were professors or heads of research at the peak of their careers, on what proved to be important fundamental thinking on future directions for software development. Their contributions certainly shaped my future thinking and career.

lundi 14 juillet 2014

Bastille Day


Bastille Day
This 14th of July was, for me, a particularly enjoyable occasion. There are evenings that I have experienced before in the village, at the Feu de la St Jean for instance, when the villagers collectively appear at their best. At the funeral of Diana (Princess of Wales) her brother asked rhetorically of her two sons “who will make your spirit sing?”. That phrase has always had a resonance with me, encapsulating the feeling one can get occasionally that all is good with the world (despite whatever is making the news headlines at the time). Wordsworth expressed the feeling in Intimations of Immortality as ”we feel that we are greater than we know”. That is what I felt on the evening of this 14th of July.

When I got to the Place Banche de Cour, in front of the Bar du Pont, I joined Daniel, Jacques, Claudine and Michelline at a table and then went looking for food. There were pizzas, burgers, sausages and chips on the menu (I opted eventually for a burger and chips). But.......I had a joke in mind. So I said to various people that I was disappointed that there was no “fromage de tete d'aristocrate” (aristocrat brawn) on the menu. This was met with blank stares; joke failed. So I attempted to explain that, since there were a lot of loose aristocratic heads around on the original 14th of July the French, being French, must have made brawn out of them and that should be a traditional dish for the date. That explanation did extract some laughs; that is until Patrick, a serious and meticulous character, said that the original Bastille day preceded all the guillotining and so there wouldn't have been any spare heads to make brawn out of. There's always one, isn't there? He's a bridge and chess player of course.

Anyway..............I went on to have a thoroughly enjoyable evening. There was music, dancing, conversation and plenty to watch to keep me amused. At one point the band struck up with a song that I love, the first line of which runs “Il me semble que la misere serait moins penible au soleil”. Everyone was joining in singing it and I wanted to know who sang it and the title. Everybody knew the former: Charles Aznavour. But nobody knew the title of the song. So when I got home I did a Google search and found that the title was “Emmenez-moi” (au bout de la terre). The next time there is a similar gathering, probably at the moules-frites next Thursday, I shall go round asking people what the title is and score a few brownie points.

Conversation ranged from boules to education in Tunisia, Islam, power, the colour black and quantum physics, which kept me nicely occupied, and whilst drinks were flowing more than freely nobody got very drunk or obstreperous in any way. And the moppets were in full swing, dancing with other moppets, parents or dogs; it didn't seem to matter.

The “black” mentioned above came about because of a news item I had read earlier in the day stating that a group of British scientists had managed to produce a colour black that absorbed 99.32% of light. The colour black, as most of us know, absorbs light and sight depends on reflected light. So if you can produce a black that is black enough (reflects no light) you won't actually be able to see it; and as you get closer to that goal, as this invention does, you get some intriguing side-effects. Fascinating, isn't it?

lundi 7 juillet 2014

England Versus France


Thursday Evening
I went to the Bar du Pont on last Thursday evening to have mussels and chips and bumped into Nico. I have agreed with him and Mathieu to have them redo the tiling on my terrace floor as there is a problem with its permeability. I knew the tiles there weren't designed for outside use but the builder promised to coat them with a sealant, which he did. Two years later the problem recurred and he came again to add sealant. Now the problem has arisen for the third time and so I decided to have a permanent job done with new tiles. Nico had twice arranged to collect me to go to Avignon where he knew a good place to get tiles and twice had failed to turn up. So I wanted to see him. He said he was sorry about the previous Monday, the last time he failed to turn up, but they had been behind with another job they were doing. Anyway they were coming the following Monday to start on my terrace (no mention of tiles). It didn't matter; I went to Vaison and found some. And Nico and Mathieu duly turned up today to start work. It's not quite straightforward as they have to put iron bars into the wall to support three pots off the ground which have climbing roses, clematis and jasmine in them and so can't be moved away. But, anyway, they have started in early July as they said they would and that is something of a first for this area.

To have the mussels and chips I sat at a table with the two Dany Sue, Michele and her cousin Annie from England. Annie is French but married an Englishman who died a few years ago and has lived half her life in Teddington; and she loves it. What she loves above all is the theatre, cinema and concerts in London but she also loves marmite, lamb with mint sauce and drizzle! I found it very entertaining to hear her expound on the delights of these latter to the obvious puzzlement of the others, particularly the drizzle which so many of us have specifically came here to avoid There is no equivalent to marmite in France so it took some time to try to explain it and, admittedly, an extract of yeast, put like that, doesn't sound that appetising. So the wonders of marmite toast were lost on the French there.

Annie has become anglicised but retains at least one French trait: obsession with the English royal family. She said she'd seen some marvellous pictures of George taking his first steps walking in public. I nodded understandingly but it quickly became clear I hadn't a clue who she was talking about. “George,” she said in astonishment, “William and Kate's son.” “Oh yes,” I said unenthusiastically, at which point she accused me of being a traitor. So I accused her of the same. Dany intervened to say he thought I had found my proper home here in Mollans, that I very much belonged here. Clearly the same is true of Annie in England. We discussed the point and decided that neither of us would want to swap places; though, as we crossed the bridge afterwards she did go into raptures in front of the Dauphin fountain on the other side, remembering how she had played there as a child and washed her doll's clothes in the wash-house. So we both have happy memories of our origins on each side of the Channel but are both happy at now living on the other side.

mercredi 25 juin 2014

Summer News


News Summery
Friends Nick and Marigold came to stay but only for one night as I had to depart the following day for Chorges. Anyway, they seem to have enjoyed their short stay, said they felt really relaxed and had a good night's sleep despite or because of being serenaded by the Mollans' frog's choir over in the river, backing a nightingale soloist. Now that the hot weather has arrived the frogs' choir is a nightly event, although the nightingale doesn't always appear.

The regional boules chamionships at Chorges were fun, even if our teams didn't do that well. A downpour on the first afternoon caused a bit of pile-up of games to be played the following day so there wasn't any time to explore the area but the alpine scenery around the venue was magnificent enough.

At Roberto's house-warming a few weeks' ago I tasted a red wine that impressed me a lot. It had some grape variety in it that was unusual for this area, possibly Cabernet Franc I think. Anyway, it was made by Denis Tardieu in nearby Villedieu so I went looking for it. I found the vineyard some way up a very rough track but there was nobody there. I found a local cooperative, asked there and was pointed to an adjacent house. The occupant told me he had none of Denis Tardieu's wine and that Tardieu didn't have a shop which sold it; it might be best to phone him, he said. I found Tardieu's website which has a phone number that is for work purposes only and an email contact link that doesn't work. So I think I've found the classic Provencal wine-maker; makes very good wine but can't be bothered with selling it.

World Cup
Being a football-aholic I've been glued to the television most evenings and, for once, it has been an unfailing pleasure. I've been particularly impressed by the unfancied teams, such as the USA, Australia and Iran, playing consistently good football even while spending most of their matches on the defensive. It's a welcome change from the dour, unconstructive defence seen from similar teams at many previous tournaments. There are usually one or two teams that do much better than expected (e.g. Costa Rica) and one or two unexpected defeats but nothing like the current world champions', Spain, drubbing at the hands of the Dutch. Italy's defeat by Costa Rice can be put down to the Italians' habit of drawing or losing matches they don't desperately need to win whilst winning the ones they do. Another good aspect is that no obvious favourite to win the tournament has emerged: Argentina and Brazil may be the bookies' favourites but neither has particularly impressed and Holland, Germany or France could still do it.

Probably the less said about England's performances the better. This was a World Cup at which everyone agreed little could be expected of the England team, it was too young and inexperienced; and little is what we got. At least we might have expected a few positive moments to keep as treasured memories but the only outstanding memories are of defensive blunders. Hodgson wasn't anybody's first choice as England Manager except the FA's, who can generally be relied upon to make at best uninspired and at worst downright stupid decisions. However, he is a reasonably good manager with a deserved reputation for putting together well-structured and organised teams from the talent at his disposal. Sadly, even that didn't show here.

Feu De La St Jean
The 24th was the official start of summer, a bit late as I have commented before, but that's Provence for you. Tell people that there's going to be a knees-up on the 21st and they will come on the 24th. There was no food available in the square in front of the Bar du Pont this year but a marching band arrived as advertised around 9.45; a lot of drums plus some brass: a tuba a saxophone and a trumpet. They marched through to the other side of the bridge and then I went to see the fire lit on a dry part of the river bed below the bridge. There was a long delay and I suggested to the people around me that the matches had been forgotten, which got a laugh. I added: “or maybe they are just waiting for Jeanne d'Arc to arrive” which caused some sharp intakes of breath; the French will never forgive us for burning Jeanne d'Arc.

When the fire was finally going the band came back into the square and played again. Not many people danced but the moppets did, three of them aged about 4-6, all energy if a bit short on coordination. I love to see them dance, totally unselfconscious and uninhibited. There was also a dog that was clearly bemused by the nusic and dancing and seemed unsure whether to join in or bite someone. It made a pass at both but was on a short lead so achieved neither.




mardi 10 juin 2014

Early Summer Thoughts


It's Summer
Summer doesn't officially arrive here until the 24th of the month (the fete de la St Jean) but the weather says it has. We have had very hot days of sunshine and, today, a tropical-style storm. The pansies that have done such a good job since last November are exhausted and the bulbs have bloomed and died so I've been buying plants. They should ensure a decent summer display, front and back.

The warm summer evenings have allowed me to indulge in my favourite late-evening past-time of a Calvados on my balcony while I engage in some navel-gazing, encouraged by the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine and to the background of the frogs' chorus from the river. My son, Carl, has started to show an interest in philosophy so I've sent him some books. There's not a lot I know and can tell him other than of the importance of the “dubito” preceding Descartes oft-quoted “cogito ergo sum” and Wittgenstein's suggestion of the ultimate futility of the subject. But that's the end and he is at the beginning.....and there could be insights along the way.

And there is something else that preoccupies me and my Calvados.................................

Testing Times
Rules are rules. It may be the backstop of every Jobsworth and the rules may be against any common sense or human understanding but once they are made they (supposedly) have to be observed. So, do we worry much about how and why they are made? A story in the press caught my attention.

Here is the background. A 37-year old woman who was born in Germany of a German father and unknown mother, who came as a child to England and has lived virtually all her life there, is married to an Englishman and has two English children. She applied for a passport for a holiday abroad with her family and was refused it; not only that, she was told that she might have to be deported as an illegal immigrant. The remedy? She could apply for British citizenship by passing the citizenship test. This was the response of the Home Office which otherwise reportedly said: “Rules are rules”. Being tautological this must be correct; who made the rules, to what end and subject to what tests are just a few of the important questions that are begged.

So what's in the citizenship test? Questions on English history and the flag are prominent. You might think that ability in the language and knowledge of, for instance, the status of women and the role of education might be more pertinent but I could not possibly comment. What would your (legal test) “man on the top of a Clapham omnibus” suggest as criteria for the test? I don't think it would be questions on English history and the flag. So who created the test and thus the inferred rules and to what criteria (subjected to what tests)? No answer to that, I'm afraid, except that “rules are rules”.

There have been few occasions in my professional life when I had to create a test but I was conscious when I did so that I had also to create a test of the test. Anyone can create a test in the abstract and fantasisers clearly often do; what also is needed, and what fantasisers don't create, is some way of demonstrating that the test will produce the practical (as well as the theoretical) results that it is designed to. The test of the test should do that. One criterion is that examples supposed to easily pass the test should do exactly that. So, could all existing bona fide English citizens easily answer questions on English history and the flag? I don't need an answer; I merely wish to show that the citizenship test clearly fails its own test.

A more difficult case concerns human rights. The UN has created a charter stating what they are and the EU has a court to ensure that they are upheld within its territory. It is difficult to argue against this worthy statement of what should be but what is the practical effect? It may help some Syrian refugee, possibly starving and in danger of physical assault, that he/she has a right to education, health, food, clean water and free speech but I doubt it. In practice, and I stress the word “practice”, the UN Charter on human rights becomes primarily a playground for lawyers and those with money or influence. Was the Charter itself subjected to any tests of its effects in practice? Not to my knowledge. And here, rules are rules only if anyone sees fit to observe them.

The root problem, I think, is that it is too easy to sign up to statements of intent that are full of good intentions and, indeed, often impolitic not to do so. Why would you not sign up to good intentions? The answer is because, once rules are inferred, what is easily practicable and an obvious solution to particular situations is ruled (sic) out. So the Home Office can't simply be told to get a life and grant the passport application; and convicted criminals and terrorists can hope to escape their just desserts.

Dare I say it? Perhaps we should reject all invitations to sign up to statements of benign intent, however impolitic that may be, unless they have been subjected to appropriate tests of their practical consequences. In the case of human rights, if you live in a country where democratic human rights are generally agreed and observed, any breach of them is far more likely to be because the rules, implied or explicitly stated, are not observed by the relevant authorities rather than because of anything in the fine print for lawyers to argue over. The remedy is not in further statements of rights (and implied rules) but in forcing (shaming?) authorities to face up to their responsibilities. A free press should do that and that will nowadays generally happen, over the Internet if not by locally paid-off media.

So let's get rid of rules unless they are accompanied by tests created at the same time to demonstrate that they will achieve the effects that they are designed to. Otherwise, use common sense. On the other hand, if we really want cloud-cuckoo land, there's a citizenship test I know of ready to be used.






lundi 26 mai 2014

Europe And More On Paris


More On Paris
I wrote my notes on Paris too quickly; I discover there was more I wanted to say.

One of the points was that Paris seemed to have kicked it's reputation as the rudest city in Europe. I had encountered rudeness there many times, when I was a student there and on subsequent visits. However, I never attributed it uniquely to Parisians. Rather I thought it was a function of a large city. People who work in large cities are usually in a hurry to get somewhere, having to deal with chaotic traffic, etc, and are often tense with no time for courtesy. That wasn't what I found this time.

About 15-20 years ago, when Paris' popularity as a tourist venue seemed to be fading, the relevant authorities at the time conducted a survey to find out what visitors did and didn't like about Paris; the results put rudeness at the top of the dislikes. What's more, a subsequent survey among the French themselves gave the same result. So an official charm offensive was launched. I've no idea whether it was a result of that, or a general change of attitude or simply that we got lucky but my friends and I encountered courtesy everywhere. The Chopin hotel staff were extremely helpful, the staff in the café we frequented were courteous, as were the staff in the restaurants, the one taxi driver we used and, particularly, travellers in the metro. Every time we stepped into a metro car someone got up to offer a seat to friend Ed. I found that moving. Well done Paris.

I noticed too, in the taxi we took from the Ile St Louis back to the hotel, that the driver immediately switched on his Satnav. The hotel wasn't listed but its location, the Passage Jouffroi, was and the route to it was shown, which the driver duly followed. This sprung two thoughts in my mind, although I've no idea whether all Paris taxis are so equipped. Firstly, there was no danger of being taken on a joy ride around Paris at our expense because the designated route was clearly shown. Secondly, the driver must have needed much less detailed knowledge of Paris than he would otherwise have had to have since the Satnav, obviously with a great deal of local data added, obviated this need.

But............Paris is expensive, particularly to a country bumpkin like me. Drinks and meals cost 2-3 times what they cost in Mollans and were notably more expensive than, for instance, in London. That said, getting around by public transport cost about the same; a metro/bus ticket cost about the same as in London with an Oyster card.

European Elections
Having been one of the minority in all major European countries who voted in the elections this weekend I was interested to get the reactions of my French friends here. The gains of the extreme right-wing parties were indisputable but what did they amount to and signify? Friend Patrick was anxious to discount them as being of only short-term significance but did add in our discussion, somewhat alarmingly form my point of view, that the processes in Brussels were opaque and this didn't seem to worry him. Friend Rene was more worried by what he saw as a general move towards populist parties, saying that there was a danger that simplistic approaches to complex problems could gain general support in a generally poorly educated public. Neither saw any imminent threat from extreme right-wing groups except to the extent that their recent success could adversely influence the policies of other political parties.

My own view is that Brussels got the kick up the are that it deserved and, in that respect, the results were good news. I didn't like the trend to the right but saw it as primarily a protest vote. The EU clearly has to change if all the very valuable contributions it has made are not to be lost. That, to me, is a very clear message from the results which should have been conveyed to the elite in Brussels who seem to believe they are above all accountability. If they cannot see this message at least they will have to deal with a bolshie parliament rather than a spineless one.

Three things Rene and I both agreed on. Brussels processes should not be opaque, the European parliament has to become the master of the commission and not its servant and due fiscal (primarily banking) and accountability measures have to be put in place. The European parliament rather than the commission having ultimate power could effect both of these things. That also should resolve the problem of the tiny election turn-out. It's difficult to criticise people who do not bother to vote for a body that has little effective power; currently, voting can easily be viewed as a cosmetic exercise to provide a semblance of democracy. If the European parliament had real power, the commission autocrats would no longer control policy and could be made accountable for their effectiveness. In my view, that would be a giant step forward for Europe.

An Apology
I have to apologise to all grasshoppers, on steroids or not, for a gross calumny. They were not the bandits plundering my balcony plants. The culprit was a family of rats. Returning from a pizza evening I saw a rat performing acrobatics on the vine above my balcony. In thinking about what could possibly raid my balcony from one end to the other, high and low, in a single night the possibility of a rat had not occurred to me. Yet, in a country village, rats must necessarily abound. This was clearly a vegetarian rat and something of a gourmet, since its chosen fodder was plants' new shoots. Happily, a week if rat poison attached to the vine has resolved the problem and the vine and all the plants are now recovering. In fact, the rat poison was doubly effective in that the rats seemed to prefer it to new shoots and so left them alone while consuming the poison before it had its final effect. Maybe the rats weren't such gourmets after all. Again, my humble apology to grasshoppers; may the summer be long and hot for you and may rubbing your legs together be tuneful and not give you blisters.

jeudi 22 mai 2014

Bad Science And Paris


Bad Science
Some while ago I read a book called “Bad Science” which put the boot into alternative medicine and the cosmetics industry; and loved it. There's an associated website. Now, by chance, I've found another website I love which is dedicated to bad science or, more specifically, to the dangers inherent in coming to any conclusions based purely on mathematical correlations. It's TylerVigen.com.

Did you know, for instance, that there is a very close correlation (0.94) over a decade between cheese consumption per capita in the USA and the number of people who die each year by becoming entangled in their bed sheets? If you're going to the USA (or already there) better not eat cheese before going to bed unless you remove the covers. Even worse, margarine lovers who marry in the US state of Maine are virtually certainly doomed to misery; there's a 0.99 correlation between margarine consumption and the divorce rate in the state. As you might guess, the site simply looks for graphs which match over a significant period of time on any subject and calculates the correlation coefficient; you can draw conclusions if you want to but probably only a politician would.

I loved this site particularly because it reminded me of a tongue-in-cheek article by Michael Frayn in his Miscellany column in The Guardian, decades ago. At the time, the populist newspapers were making a scandal out of a fashion among some schoolgirls to advertise the fact that they had lost their virginity by wearing a golliwog broach. The broach was obtained by sending some labels off jars of a popular brand of marmalade, which had a golliwog as its brand symbol, to the manufacturer. Frayn found a graph of sales of the brand of marmalade and also a graph of schoolgirl pregnancies and saw that they matched. The conclusion the article came to (tongue in cheek) was obvious. If schoolgirl pregnancies were to be reduced, contraception and sex education were irrelevant; what was needed was to reduce consumption of that brand of marmalade.

Paris
I'm just back from two days seeing old American friends Ed and Jeanne in Paris. I hadn't seen them for a decade and, in the meantime, Ed had contracted Alzheimer's. There were obvious problems but we were able to reminisce happily over drinks and meals. Ed did occasional seminars in London over a period of years and had obtained consultancy assignments for me at the State of Oregon and Nike.

An item on Jeanne's agenda was getting an ice cream at Berthollin's on the Ile St Louis, which we did, and both also wanted to visit the Musee Rodin again. That was a disappointment as there were few of Rodin's works on display. I understand that some of them are probably on loan from time to time but too much was missing. The Kiss and The Thinker were there, inevitably, but the bronzes of The Burgers of Calais that I had seen previously there in the grounds were missing as also were all the dancers and two of my particular favourites, The Cathedral and She Who Was Once The Beautiful Wife Of The Helmet-maker. The Cathedral, for me, is both a beautiful piece of sculpture and a beautiful concept: two hand in concave shapes with the fingers just touching. The whole museum had had a make-over since I was there before and the pieces of sculpture that were there were displayed in acres of space, which I suppose was to their benefit. However, English translations of the French titles had been added and obviously not checked by any native English speaker. Millions must have been spent on the refurbishment; wasn't there enough left to check the translations? Why do the French persist in doing this? I'm beginning to think it must be some kind of revenge for Waterloo.

If the Musee Rodin was a disappointment our hotel wasn't. The Hotel Chopin is at the end of a quiet passage right in the heart of Paris, off the Boulevard Montmartre. It's a small old-fashioned hotel with tastefully decorated rooms, excellent service and very modest prices. This last applies to the train journey also; the 500kms from Avignon to Paris (in 2 hours 40 minutes) cost me about the same as the 30 miles from Reading to London would have in England.

jeudi 1 mai 2014

The Way Of The World


Paranoia
I'm getting paranoid about a cricket that is using my balcony as a lunch table. This is not a small insect like its English equivalent but a locust-like monster. I have previously seen it winging its way from somewhere down by the river across to my side of the road and thought nothing about it. Now it is making its presence felt by consuming three clematis, an entire geranium and attacking the shoots on my vine and jasmine. Whist I am quite happy to let insects and animals have a share of my plants I don't count what this insect is doing as sharing; it's total destruction and therefore war. My feelings are much the same as those Americans must have had after Pearl Harbour about unprovoked aggression.

Birds come all the time to the feeders on my balcony so there is fairly constant fluttering there. But now I find myself looking each time I detect movement to see if it is a bird or something else. I've even been out on the balcony with a torch at night when I thought I saw something move. It's getting to me. I saw this grasshopper on steroids on my balcony railings a few week ago before it started its feast and stupidly just shooed it away. If I catch it again I shall scrunch it or blast it with fly killer, much as I dislike killing wild life.

I shall deal with it (if I catch it!) much in the way I deal with slugs and snails. I don't mind these creatures having a few leaves out of my garden but when they come in an army and take out whole rows of plants I resort to chemical weapons (slug pellets). War has been declared!

Common Market?
Friend Steve, a convinced free-trader, is incandescent too. The latest manifestation of the French attitude towards the common market has been revealed by an attempt by US General Electric to take over Alstom, the French engineering firm. The French minister for industrial renewal, Arnaud Montebourg, has stepped in to halt the take-over. Alstom makes the very successful TGV trains but has been burdened by debt since a multi-billion bail-out a decade ago. There is a good fit between the businesses of the two companies. However, Montebourg would rather Alstom accepted a bid by Siemens, which has guaranteed French jobs for three years, and which would create “a great Franco-German alliance”. But......there is a large overlap between the businesses of the two companies, which means that Siemens would in three years time almost inevitably hold a dagger of extensive job cuts to the throat of the French government or demand a repeated similar scale of bail-out. But, there again, it might not be the same French government then so why should Montebourg care? There are numerous previous examples of the same kind of government intervention in French industry under such pretentious pretexts as patriotism, the national interest, etc. The reason given for intervention this time though has completely changed the game.

Montebourg declared that Alstom was part of France's heritage, which he naturally was concerned to protect. Who could object to protection of heritage? By so doing, though, he has removed Alstom completely from the commercial arena and placed it in the category of historical monuments. It may indeed be a fossilised company, I don't know, but the point is that it thereby becomes subject to the laws relating to conservation rather than commercial competition and these, of course, focus on preserving the status quo. Montebourg's action also raises the question as to whether Alstom should be under his jurisdiction at all or whether it fits better under the minister for culture.

Any Brits who still hold out hopes for a common market..........dream on!

Third World Aid
I've been reading a book by Paul Theroux, the travel writer, published in 2002 and recounting a trip he made by road, rail and boat from Cairo to Cape Town. The book is entitled Dark Star Safari. I found it generally fairly interesting if repetitive (but maybe the journey was like that); what shocked me were persuasive arguments Theroux put up to stop all international aid to the third world. Having worked for several years as a volunteer in an Oxfam bookshop after my retirement and before coming to France, I have always been in favour of aid to the third world. That I should have to question this assumption now shook me. I don't buy into the guilt trips that go along the lines of, given what we former colonial powers have done to these countries, we owe them. I simply think it inhumane to hear of people starving or dying from easily preventable diseases without wanting to do something about it.

However, Theroux argues as follows. The happiest and healthiest people he met on his travels lived primarily in rural areas engaged in subsistence farming. The most wretched were those in towns trying to make a (mostly dishonest) buck any way they could. In the towns were also the rich and powerful, many of whom were “managing” aid funds which had become a significant part of the countries' economy. I know from acquaintances on the aid front line that if 60% of an aid grant actually gets to the people and projects intended then that is a good result. We all know that corruption is rife in the third world but what actually happens to the residue? OK, a lot of it goes into individuals pockets (that we all know) but a lot also goes to buy weapons to keep the rich and powerful in power, thus preserving the status quo. Theroux argues that change is needed (who would dispute that?) but that aid programmes actually militate against change; they actually reinforce the reliance on repression and corruption.

We all also know of schools built that serve no purpose because there is no money to pay teachers or buy books and equipment or infrastructure that quickly becomes useless because it is not maintained. I am also aware that saving people with easily curable diseases may simply swell the numbers that die of starvation. It seems obvious (to me) that a great deal of coordination is required in aid projects, if for no other reason than to prevent this problem, but also that the only people who could do this are the very “elites” who have no interest in doing it. So what is the solution?

Theroux argues that Africa should be left alone for a while to find its own solution. The implication is that a whole lot more would have to be done manually, thereby creating employment, albeit of a subsistence variety. Locally obtainable materials would have to be used, helping sustainability. But there again, slave labour is not beyond the bounds of possibility. My awful conclusion is that Theroux may be right but that what would ensue might be unthinkable. I really don't know enough and I can' get my mind round it. The awful thought remains that aid might actually be a hindrance. I would like to help in some very small way but don't want to be a well-meaning, misguided fuddy-duddy.


samedi 12 avril 2014

Update


Update
This is proving to be a wonderful time of the year here. Spring seems to have arrived a couple of weeks early. We've had a prolonged spell of good weather, locally produced asparagus and strawberries have been in the shops for a couple of weeks and the second round of flowers after bulbs are doing their thing. The coronilla in my back garden, which I cut back severely last autumn because it had grown so large, is covered in perfumed bloom with some of it already starting to die off. Several irises have bloomed and faded away already and the first blooms are out on my roses, one on the Dublin Bay in front of the house and one on the Shropshire Lad at the back.

I've been busy. All the plants I took inside to over-winter are outside now. Two of the three Dilapidenia I brought in survived and are now outside my bedroom window. The geraniums are also outside now in their pots, so the summer planting is coming together. A clematis I planted in one of the pots against the wash-house opposite has produced its first blooms and the climbing rose seems to have established itself. Also, my “front garden”, the plants I've put in the edge of the road opposite together with the move of the bench there seems to be attracting some regular customers, which is gratifying. People come and sit there in the afternoon so that initiative seems to be being appreciated. It's tempting to start the flowering baskets but I shall hold off until mid-May.

In the house I've started to improve the terrace room. It doesn't feel “lived in”, naturally enough since it's not lived in except during the summer but it should feel better than it does. One factor is the lack of anything on the expanse of white walls. I've hesitated to put photos in picture frames on the walls as any thing small will get lost. However, at the recent car boot sale in the village I managed to buy some relatively large frames for a couple of euros each so I went to the photography shop in Vaison and got some photos enlarged to A3 size, plus some others to A4. They are now in frames and, together, should break up the too sterile white space on the walls. I've also decided to use the terrace room more this summer. I tend to think of it as the overflow room for when I want to invite more than four people to eat, neglecting the possibility of having aperitifs there. So I shall do more aperitif invitations this summer; they are a lot less work than a meal.

Structure And Chaos
The good weather has meant that I have been able to spend time in the evenings sitting on my balcony with a Calvados to hand (or a Genever that friend Marjolaine kindly gave me) and muse about whatever comes to mind. Recently I seem to have found myself musing about the role of structure and chaos or randomness in the world and our lives. Having worked in IT for most of my life I understand quite well the significance of structure and the possibilities and limitations of various defined structures (hierarchies, networks, lattices, stacks, circles, hybrids, etc) but chaos, randomness and concepts such as infinity (Russell's paradox) and negative zero have also intrigued me. It was one reason I decided to take a brief course in chaos theory at Reading University before I left England. And, of course, given my linguistic background, I tend to relate these concepts to language.

Even a cursory perusal of the Internet demonstrates that very few people have any mastery of language. I could understand why, in England, the myth that one's native language was learned parrot fashion arose but never why the myth held sway for so long. Even 50 years ago the idea was demonstrably false. And I never understood either why knowledge of grammar should be deemed to curtail creativity; the implication is that creativity can come only from chaos or randomness which, again, is demonstrably false. Michaelangelo is the perfect counter example. Language, any living language, is always in a state of evolution and evolutionary changes can result from (random?) mistakes apart from other factors. But that happens only very occasionally and I don't regard that as a reason to neglect grammar. The result, in England, has been a couple of generations of people who haven't been taught grammar and who clearly don't understand how to use language (and a generation of teachers who can't teach grammar because they have never been taught it). I blame dogmatists, as always; will we ever be free of this scourge?

Scottish Independence
Scottish independence is making a lot of the news headlines but I really can't find it in myself to take an interest. A lot of the brouhaha seems to me to be the well known Westminster game of overgrown schoolboys throwing bread rolls at each other. An American, Bob McClure of the Southern Methodist university in Texas, taught me back in 1968 that Texas was really an independent state in America. At the NATO-sponsored IT think-tank in Garmisch, anyone who got up to speak had to announce their name and nationality. All the Americans there duly gave their names followed by USA or United States. Bob didn't; he was McClure, Texas. Maybe that is the way Scotland should be independent.

lundi 31 mars 2014

Politics


Mayoral Elections
Our local elections are now done and dusted and I have at last found out exactly how they work (and at least one version of how proportional representation works).

On the first round of voting a week ago, The list with which I had been asked to help came first with 38% of the vote, the others having around 30%, 20% and 8%. Horse trading between the 2nd and 3rd didn't work so the bottom two lists dropped out. That left the first two in a head-to-head for the second round of voting. I didn't realise there was any right/left wing aspect to the lists but Le Monde in its national coverage had the first list classified as left-wing, the second and third as right-wing and the third as unknown or independent. So it looked as though the overall apparently majority right-wing vote might swing the head-to-head in favour of the second list. In fact, the opposite happened and the first list got in with 60% of the vote. So it would appear that most voters were not voting along political lines but were voting for individuals on the lists irrespective of their supposed political allegiance.

This is how it works after that. Since the first list has to have a majority on the new council, it automatically gets 8 of the 15 new councillors. Then since it got 60% of the vote, it also gets 60% of the remaining seven seats. Since 60% doesn't go exactly into 7 and since fractions of councillors aren't allowed (one is left to wonder, if fractions were allowed, if the head would be included in any parts selected – maybe just the spleen) the first list gets 4 more seats on the council and the remainder go to the runner-up. So that is the composition of our new council.

Press headlines were made by the success of the extreme right-wing National Front over the nation as a whole. The NF claimed that their success proved they were not simply recipients of a protest vote but were being accepted as a mainstream political party. I couldn't agree with that analysis. Extremist parties will pick up majority votes in areas where there is a great deal of social unrest in minor elections, even sometimes in major elections. However, it was obvious that parties politically opposed had combined in several cases to keep out NF candidates. This is sure to happen again in major elections and perhaps to an even greater extent. In populous areas, voting was clearly political, in less populous areas much less so. This would seem natural and, indeed, perhaps as it should be.

Who's responsible?
I recently bought a rose bush to go in my back garden and noticed that there was a sign on the packaging warning that the bush was not to be eaten. Now I can honestly say that I've never seen a rose bush on a menu anywhere (and I've been in some 60 countries throughout the world) so I presume that the vast majority of people must already know that rose bushes are not to be eaten. However, I suppose that ever since some woman successfully prosecuted MacDonalds because, when she tipped a cup of their coffee over herself, it burned her, there must be some people who don't know that hot liquid can burn. So I suppose the notice on my rose bush packaging is justified. Should anyone eat a rose bush and get a thorn stuck in their throat, they won't be able to sue the supplier; they were warned.


lundi 17 mars 2014

It's A Funny Old World


It's Funny.............
It's funny how things turn out sometimes. My small and surreptitious efforts at growing flowering plants across the road from my kitchen were, I thought, never going to amount to a great deal. Despite my fond hope that a new mayor, if it was the one who might be persuaded he owed me something, would let me turn the parking space into a flower bed was really just that: a fond hope. Unbeknown to me, neighbours Jean-Pierre and Monique and some others who had gathered at their house one evening, were discussing my gradual extension of the flowers there and hit upon an idea.

There is a bench further along the road, placed so that promenaders can sit and take in the view across the river. What if they moved that to the space in front of my house? There wouldn't be any room to park a car then and I would be free to carry on planting. So that is what they propose to do. Then I shall plant some lavender and focus more on scent; with no need of any mayoral edict; the neighbours have done it for me.

More On Elections
I played boules this afternoon with Daniel, Marie and Mana. Mana took me to task as to why I hadn't attended any of the other open meetings with mayoral election candidates. I explained that one meeting clashed with an evening when I had invited Jo and Steve to eat and the other clashed with an important foot ball match I wanted to watch. Mana wasn't impressed with my second excuse and I had to explain my priorities. I told my children when they were young that, as far as I was concerned, they could choose their politics and, if they wanted a religion, choose that too. But I wasn't having any Arsenal supporters in my house. There was only one football team that could be supported and that was Chelsea. I felt, and still feel, that it is important to get priorities right on the really important things in life.

Anyway, as it turned out, Mana was greatly unimpressed by the meetings I missed. One was apparently very poorly attended and the candidates neglected to use the microphone so Mana couldn't hear what they had to say. For Very Important Elections, only in Mollans could this happen. At the other, the candidates had decided to offer no agenda but simply said “elect us and we will discuss it”. I didn't like to ask Mana whether she had tried to establish their position on the Ukraine crisis (or the national economy, immigration or unemployment) but presume she didn't even bother.

St Patrick's Day
I went down to the Bar du Pont this evening for the usual pizza but Roberto was also doing baby chickens, so I had one of those. Interestingly, in England we know these as the French word “poussins”, which the French don't appear to use. They call them “coquelets”. Anyway, it was St Patrick's day and so the bar owner, Patrique, was celebrating. The French celebrate not only their birthdays but also the saint's day of their first name. The assumption is that you are named after a saint and, Heaven knows, there are enough of those names to go round. However, I remember a job interview I was conducting while at ICL when I wanted to verify the candidates name. I just said something like “your Christian name is Norma and your surname is xxxxxx”. The young woman tersely responded: “it's not a Christian name”. OK, I should have said first name rather than Christian name, and I've no idea what all the Normas since creation could have been doing not to get at least one saint among them, but that defensive/aggressive response set the tone for the interview and, no, she didn't get the job. A simple, “yes it's Norma but it's not actually a Christian name” might have set a different tone.

Whatever. Patrique, a Mollanais from birth who has no Irish affiliations that I am ware of, duly celebrated by buying us all a verveine, a green liqueur. Good health to Patrique!






dimanche 9 mars 2014

Election Meeting


Election Meeting
The list of village councillor candidates and proposed new mayor which I mentioned in my last posting had an open meeting this Sunday evening so I went along to hear what they had to say. I wasn't expecting much but the meeting did provide some interest and merriment.

The main thread of the presentation was that the candidates promised to be always available, to openly explain all decisions and listen to what villagers had to say. That much might be expected but it did at least show that some listening had been done. The current council clearly tried to say as little as possible about the recent change of community of communes until it was a fait accompli, a point that still rankles among many villagers.

In more detail, the presentation dealt with new school legislation which adds half a day to the school week, to be devoted to sport and cultural activities, but provides no budget for it. The candidates asserted that the cost would not be large and proposed that the village budget should absorb that, so that the activities would be free to the children. Another topic was the Haute Aire, the large patch of elevated waste ground on which we play boules in the centre of the village. It is admittedly a bit of an eyesore and the proposal was to redo it as a recreation square for the village, perhaps with flower beds, etc. As long as they leave enough space for boules that will be OK. It was also proposed to upgrade the water purification station. Mollans' water has always seemed OK to me but is officially classified as of only medium quality by WHO standards, probably because of potential contamination from agriculture. Anyway, I have spring water in the fountain just outside my house.

I thought questions might be interesting but was disappointed when the first two were about car parking and noise. A woman complained about cars being parked in front of her garage and another about car noise; I wondered where she could live because there is hardly any car noise even on the village by-pass. She should live in Reading. Then there was a question on the positioning of dustbins and a woman got up and, rather than simply ask a question, went forward to grab the microphone and address everybody. She said that of course the candidates were showing themselves in their best light now (I presumed everybody already knew that) but......and I couldn't catch her question. Anyway, she was immediately shouted down by the audience and retired to her seat in a huff. There was also a lady who said she would love to organise theatrical events and give acting classes but there was no theatre in the village. How many villages of 1000 inhabitants have theatres?

It was left to Mana, dear Mana, to save the day for me. She said: “The biggest problem in the village is unemployment; what are you going to about that?” The mayoral candidate, clearly a bit taken aback, said what he could; that the council, if elected, would look favourably on any enterprise that proposed to bring employment to the village; what else could he say? I was disappointed when Mana left it that. I fully expected her to follow up saying that the national economy was a mess and what was the village council going to do about that? And what was their position on immigration and what were they doing about the crisis in the Ukraine? Ah well, another time maybe.


mercredi 26 février 2014

Shellfish Etc


Shellfish Etc
Georges Corbo offered his shellfish lunch again today at the Bar du Pont and I duly went along with friend Steve (Jo, his wife, doesn't like shellfish). We ate outside in the sunshine on the terrace, the first time I have done so this year although there have been many days when I could have had lunch on my balcony.

Georges has just been elected president of the Amities Mollanaise, the village old peoples' club, so Steve said to him that, being a president, he had to have a mistress. I added that, going by Hollande, maybe one mistress wasn't enough and that he should have at least two. Unfortunately there were only a half-dozen of us taking the meal so it probably wasn't worth the trouble for Georges. I hope he'll try at least one more time.

Also there were friends Dominique and Chantal and we started discussing colloquial phrases and their origins. Steve noted that whilst, when it rains hard, the French say it is raining ropes (purely descriptive), in English we say it is raining cats and dogs. The origin of this, supposedly, is that in the days of thatched roofs cats and dogs would often climb into the thatch for warmth. When it rained, the thatch became slippery and the cats and dogs slid out of the thatch. I can't confirm the veracity of that at the moment.

Following on from that, Chantal volunteered an explanation of the expression “to fall pregnant”, which is the same in English and French. It has always puzzled me, since it suggests a random happening such as falling ill or falling in love, whilst in fact there is a very ready explanation for the condition resulting from a very specific act. Chantal said that it derived from frequent ignorance among young peasant girls who, barring miraculous conceptions (for which a few claims have been known), could not understand how they had become pregnant. Hence, for them, it was a random inexplicable event.

We also talked about changes in society, particularly family life and shop opening hours. Some three years ago I noted that the first supermarkets here had decided to open on Sunday and that therefore they would all have to; sure enough they have. That may seem relatively inconsequential but is an element in a huge social change over the past 50 years in both France and the UK. When I was young in England, Saturday was the day for recreation. On Sunday, everything was closed; no sports, no theatre or cinema. You were supposed to catch up on any jobs not done during the week or else massage your puritan guilt complex. I remember wondering why we couldn't have continental Sundays, where the rule seemed to be that as long as you went to church in the morning you could do what you liked during the rest of the day; all the entertainment facilities were on offer.

What seems to have happened is that work patterns have changed to the point where there are no set days for doing anything. If families are to live to a pattern, and I believe most do, then they have themselves to impose that pattern on their week, based probably around varied work schedules. No general patterns imposed from outside are any longer discernible, neither are there social pressures to do any set thing on any set day. I think that may be one reason why family life often suffers; there is no generally set time for it, such as evening meal times or Sundays, so it has to be consciously planned for and often gets forgotten.

Dominique and Chantal commented that the same changes were discernible in France. The situation in the large towns was very much as in England but the old patterns of life still persisted to an extent in rural France. There the sacred two hours for lunch was still widely observed, for instance, and retention of primary schools in even very small villages such as Mollans meant that children still came home for lunch. I like that and that is perhaps why, even 12 years into retirement, when I can do pretty much what I like when I like, I still feel I should be enjoying myself at weekends and not doing whatever jobs are awaiting attention. Old habits die hard.