The Heat Is On

Lucky Me

The July 14^th celebrations were a delight for me, reminding me of so many reasons why I like being where I am. I signed up for the paella on offer in the Place Banche Cour in front of the Bar du Pont and sat with the usual group of suspects, village friends who regularly attend the pizza evenings. A band was already installed when I got there (the centre of the village having been blocked off as usual) but nobody was really listening to it. It simply provided a rather noisy background as I went round saying hello to friends and acquaintances at other tables. What struck me immediately was the contrast with a previous evening, a couple of weeks before, when I had gone for moules-frites in the same square and recognised only a dozen people; the square was full of tourists. I've no idea why the tourists had chosen not to attend the July 14^th celebrations but they weren't there.

The music stopped for the feeding and, after the paella, the celebrations began in earnest, starting with the inevitable Marseillaise. I got up to stand for this, out of respect for all my other friends standing (bar one; I must ask him about this). And then the music continued and the dancing began. And this is what appeal to me most; the French are known for their love of elegance but it doesn't necessarily apply to their dancing. The moppets as usual were more energy than coordination and there were one or two couples of very good dancers but the vast majority just jigged around, some looking faintly ridiculous. It didn't matter, though; that was the whole point. Everybody was enjoying themselves and that was all that really mattered. At one stage the band struck up with “By the rivers of Babylon”, which got a roar of approval from those of us who had been singing it in front of the Dauphin fountain a month earlier. We had sung it as more or less a spiritual and the band played it to a heavy rock rhythm but that didn't matter either. I meandered home at half-past midnight thinking how lucky I am to be in this place.

A Greek Tragedy

I was disappointed that the Greeks courage failed them at the last and they voted for the recessionary measures demanded by the EU. The Greeks were the first to invent great tragedies and I do unfortunately believe they are at it again. The Greek Prime Minister doesn't believe the measures can work and neither does the IMF nor most economists, it seems. If they are right then Greece is in for such a long spell of misery that it will test another of their great inventions, their democracy. Exiting the euro would undoubtedly have led to a couple of years of extreme pain but at least with a chance to re-establish their economy beyond that. In the worst case now there will be even longer misery but still leading to an eventual exit. The best option in my view, a benign, planned and perhaps temporary exit from the euro was never on the table and the EU must take the blame for that. The EU was happy enough to accept Greece into the euro on the basis of blatantly fudged accounts and is now making the Greeks pay for the EU's own folly. The pipe-dreamers in Brussels have their first victim and, given the economic state of some other euro zone countries, it may not be their last. The euro needs radical reform, urgently. If it doesn't get it it could even conceivably lead to the break-up of the EU, which would be another tragedy.

Heat Wave

We have now had temperatures in the 80s and 90s continuously for over a month. We usually have some very hot spells in July and August and had a heat wave before in 2003, but that lasted only a fortnight. I haven't experienced such continuously very hot weather before outside of Africa. It means I have been spending significant time every day watering plants and, even so, with variable success. It also makes playing boules very tiring, although I have been playing more frequently than usual as there is nothing else I feel like doing in the heat (and there is no football to watch on TV). Even my much loved late-evening Calvados on my balcony has been substituted on occasions by several glasses of cold water. Well, I came here partly for the sun and heat and now I have well and truly got it.