Food And Politics

Food

This is the beginning of a week that promises plenty of good food. Yesterday Georges Corbo put on a sea food lunch at the Bar du Pont. He was the village metal worker before he retired, making the iron steps that lead from my terrace to the garden at the back among other things. After his retirement last year he tried offering a plate of oysters and prawns on Saturday lunchtimes at the Cafe des Sports but didn't get enough takers to make it worthwhile. But sea food is clearly his thing and so he put on the lunch at the Bar du Pont.

The sea food platters comprised brown shrimps, prawns, oysters, whelks and half a crab, more than enough for everyone and there were 14 of us tucking in. I hope that was enough to make it worthwhile and merit a repeat. The dessert was, inevitably at this time of the year a “galette des rois”. And I learned the reason for the two types of galette made here. Georges Corbo proudly told me he had made the galette himself, a Marseilles galette. Apparently, the galette consisting of a sponge cake with dried fruit is typical of this locality, with its tradition of dried fruit. The other type of galette, flaky pastry with a solid marzipan filling, is apparently typical of Marseilles. I have often wondered at the reason for the two different types of galette. To the amusement of all, the charm hidden in the galette was a small metal penis. Only in France...............

Next Saturday friends Robin and Jill have invited me to a goodbye lunch before they return to England and the following day there is the old wrinklies' lunch offered by the Mairie. So I shall have been well fed over the week.

Politics

Conversation at the sea food lunch focussed on the political situation in France, with Hollande now as popular as the proverbial fart in a lift and the subject of ridicule from all quarters. He didn't help himself in a speech last week that was supposed to be important by making the core of his speech the statement that he had changed, in view of the economic situation, from being a socialist to becoming a social democrat. This may be a significant point in terms of political philosophy, and the French are fond of that, but the current situation would seem to demand rather more than a fine philosophical distinction. And Hollande's buffoon image wasn't helped by pictures blazed across all the papers of him hiding under an over-large helmet on a chauffeur driven scooter on a visit to his mistress.

He did earn sympathy of a sort from my French friends but because the media coverage was diverting attention from more important matters rather because of any intrusion into his private life. This last would no doubt make even more headlines in England. Having sired four children with Segolene Royale while keeping journalist Valerie Trierweiler as his mistress, he now apparently has an additional mistress in dancer Julie Gayet. That would certainly provoke headlines in the British press but is pretty much par for the course among senior French politicians and would not normally be deemed worthy of press coverage.

That it has could be a result of paucity of other news or it could mark a shift in French attitudes. In a way, the general French attitude to love, sex and marriage seems to have been shaped by their nobility, for whom marriage has always been essentially an economic or political alliance, separating love and marriage and focussing on the family fortune. That stance seems to have been adopted widely by the populace. A recent survey revealed that two fifths of men and women did not believe fidelity in marriage was important, two thirds of men and one third of women regard love and sex as separate entities and the same percentage of men and half of all women think physical attraction automatically leads to sex. That helps to explain why dismay here at press coverage of Holland's private life is not directed at the salacious details, as it would be in Britain, but at its diversion from more important issues.

Loth to see my French friends in despair at the lunch over their political situation and the dearth of alternatives to Hollande, I suggested that perhaps Britain could help by offering France a king. After all, we have a large number of princes and I'm sure we wouldn't miss just one. However, I have to admit that my suggestion was not met with great enthusiasm.