The Boules “Rencontre”
The planned boules get-together duly took place on Sunday and was generally acclaimed a great success. That was the main thing. There were 48 players and a dozen prizes, which Michèle had managed to extract from local businesses, to distribute. The top and bottom three scorers all got prizes and the rest were distributed through a random draw of the players. The event was officially called a “rencontre bouliste”, a boules get-together, to make it sound as intended less formal than a competition or tournament. At the end of the evening everyone seemed happy so the event will probably become an annual one.
Unfortunately I lost my rag somewhat when registration got underway. We had anticipated various small problems and decided on ways to circumvent them. I had been slightly worried, knowing the way of the world here, that people wouldn't turn up for registration until the event was due to start, at 4.00pm, and that the event would thus drag on into the evening. A game generally takes about 35-40 minutes but can last over an hour if the teams are well-matched; and each player was allocated three games. As it happened, people turned up early so there was no problem there. The idea had been to give each contestant a number and, with that, a slip of paper showing the number of their partners for first, second and third games, so that as soon as they had registered they could look for partners and opponents (who was against whom was on a sheet at the registration desk) and get the show on the road. What actually happened was that people were just given their number at registration so we had to go around afterwards finding people and giving them the appropriate slip. It didn't matter much but was messy and meant that we couldn't get started until over 40 people were registered. Anyway, the “rencontre” finished in good time.
Then we'd decided that as we wanted everyone to meet new people and that couples would quite probably come to registration together, we wouldn't give consecutive registrants consecutive numbers. Knowing this, when I drew up the fixtures I didn't worry about pairing numbers 1 and 2 or 7 and 8, for instance, as I assumed they wouldn't be couples. This seemed to be forgotten at registration so consecutive registrants did get consecutive numbers and consequently several couples played as such (although only for one of their three matches). We'd also noted that the total number of players had to be divisible by four and so, as organisers, we decided we wouldn't register ourselves until the total was known and would then add ourselves as necessary to make up the requisite total. This didn't happen either, resulting in two would-be contestants having to be turned away.
As I saw the decisions we had made being ignored I started to get angry; which was silly really as everyone else seemed to be happy to just muddle through. It was the more silly in that all my anger did was to make people concerned for me and why I wasn't having a great time like the rest of them.
A learning experience for me.........................
Another learning experience was drawing up the list of “fixtures”. The general idea was that each participant should play three matches, each time with a different partner and with as a wide a variation of opponents as possible. It turns out to be a simple matter to draw up the list of matches if, but only if, you know the total number of contestants in advance. Making people register in advance was likely to drive down the numbers playing and thus defeat one of the main objectives of the exercise. We had no idea what the eventual total would be; estimates varied between a conservative 30 and an optimistic 60. Not knowing the total in advance makes the problem absurdly complicated and involves an optimisation. If you plan for a higher total than you actually get the whole plan falls over and is irrecoverable. So you have to plan conservatively. We could have planned for 36, for instance, which would have given a wide variation in partners, but then would have needed an extra plan for a possible additional 4 or 8 players; and the variation possible within 4 or 8 is very limited. We opted to plan for successive groups of 12, with additional plans for 4 or 8 if necessary. Within a group of 12 the variation possible is obviously much more limited than that within a group of 36 but nonetheless greater than that possible within a group of 8. Participants did say that they would have liked more variation but it is not obvious to me how we can achieve that. So be it.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
Village Update, Language And Politics
Village Update
The last two scorching days, 29 degrees in the sun, have demonstrated that summer is really here. It always strikes me as slightly ironic that when the sun really gets going, the reason that many of us are here, we immediately try to avoid it: shutters or curtains closed, long siestas, etc. Certainly no one who doesn't have to will do physically hard work in the hot sun but I feel that there should be more elegant ways of avoiding the excess heat but still be enjoying the sun. Fortunately, my kitchen and living room remain relatively cool, protected by thick walls and the lime trees opposite.
The next round of fruit is now in full flood. Strawberries and cherries are past their best but are replaced by melons, nectarines, peaches and apricots. I especially love the apricots both for their colour and flavour. I've heard it said that the small apricots are really the best but I love the large ones, the size of small apples, coloured red and orange, that are full of juice.
This week is the beginning of the summer festivities here. I called in at the Mairie the other day to ask for the calendar of events for the year and, in typical provencal fashion, they haven't got around to producing it yet. Half of the events will be over before it comes out. However, the “feu de la St Jean” is on Friday, officially for some reason the first day of summer here, and will provide a general village get-together and knees-up outside the Bar du Pont. Then will come the fête votive, the 14th of July, painters in the streets and so on, week after week until the end of the month. August is grand-children month, when everyone of about my age who has grand-children gets to look after them for a while.
Next Sunday will see the boules tournament I have been helping to organise take place. I'm meeting Michèle tomorrow to decide on some of the finer details and have worked out the apparently complicated scoring system that Daniel proposed. He insisted on describing it as democratic, which gave me no insight as to its real purpose, which I now understand is to help ensure that no two people will end up with the same number of points. Once I had understood that the rest was easy.
Language And Politics
An Australian friend, Ian Mackay, has been commenting on my blog particularly with respect to language and has contrasted Canadian French with French French. His knowledge of Canadian French is considerably better than mine. In doing so he has raised some interesting points. We both agree that the verb “relooker”, which I commented on earlier, must be about the ugliest word invented in any language. The question is: how does it arise? Ian states that there is a Québecois equivalent to the French Academy that is faster on its feet, quicker to produce a proper French equivalent to new phenomena, and thus avoids the introduction of bastardised English words. He also makes the point that differences in the approach to language in anglophone and francophone countries appear to reflect political differences. The anglophone approach is much more free market: new words come and go, needed or not, and nobody cares very much. The francophone approach is much more state-controlled, at least in intention.
This last insight turned my thoughts to the Common Market and it immediately occurred to me that there was a fundamental difference here also between the British and French approaches. The EU was conceived as both a political and economic body. However, the French are interested almost solely with the former aspect and the British with the latter. Although the French have had to open their borders to EU labour generally they make it as difficult as possible for any foreign qualifications to be accepted. And they have no intention at all of allowing other EU countries to compete with their industries if they can avoid it, whatever Brussels decrees. The British, on the other hand, naively open their industries to competition from other EU countries and fret about admittedly useless EU political appointments such as a President, Foreign Minister, etc, which cause no problem at all to the French. The big insight for me, although I can't understand why I didn't realise it before, is that for the French the Common Market is a non-starter.
The last two scorching days, 29 degrees in the sun, have demonstrated that summer is really here. It always strikes me as slightly ironic that when the sun really gets going, the reason that many of us are here, we immediately try to avoid it: shutters or curtains closed, long siestas, etc. Certainly no one who doesn't have to will do physically hard work in the hot sun but I feel that there should be more elegant ways of avoiding the excess heat but still be enjoying the sun. Fortunately, my kitchen and living room remain relatively cool, protected by thick walls and the lime trees opposite.
The next round of fruit is now in full flood. Strawberries and cherries are past their best but are replaced by melons, nectarines, peaches and apricots. I especially love the apricots both for their colour and flavour. I've heard it said that the small apricots are really the best but I love the large ones, the size of small apples, coloured red and orange, that are full of juice.
This week is the beginning of the summer festivities here. I called in at the Mairie the other day to ask for the calendar of events for the year and, in typical provencal fashion, they haven't got around to producing it yet. Half of the events will be over before it comes out. However, the “feu de la St Jean” is on Friday, officially for some reason the first day of summer here, and will provide a general village get-together and knees-up outside the Bar du Pont. Then will come the fête votive, the 14th of July, painters in the streets and so on, week after week until the end of the month. August is grand-children month, when everyone of about my age who has grand-children gets to look after them for a while.
Next Sunday will see the boules tournament I have been helping to organise take place. I'm meeting Michèle tomorrow to decide on some of the finer details and have worked out the apparently complicated scoring system that Daniel proposed. He insisted on describing it as democratic, which gave me no insight as to its real purpose, which I now understand is to help ensure that no two people will end up with the same number of points. Once I had understood that the rest was easy.
Language And Politics
An Australian friend, Ian Mackay, has been commenting on my blog particularly with respect to language and has contrasted Canadian French with French French. His knowledge of Canadian French is considerably better than mine. In doing so he has raised some interesting points. We both agree that the verb “relooker”, which I commented on earlier, must be about the ugliest word invented in any language. The question is: how does it arise? Ian states that there is a Québecois equivalent to the French Academy that is faster on its feet, quicker to produce a proper French equivalent to new phenomena, and thus avoids the introduction of bastardised English words. He also makes the point that differences in the approach to language in anglophone and francophone countries appear to reflect political differences. The anglophone approach is much more free market: new words come and go, needed or not, and nobody cares very much. The francophone approach is much more state-controlled, at least in intention.
This last insight turned my thoughts to the Common Market and it immediately occurred to me that there was a fundamental difference here also between the British and French approaches. The EU was conceived as both a political and economic body. However, the French are interested almost solely with the former aspect and the British with the latter. Although the French have had to open their borders to EU labour generally they make it as difficult as possible for any foreign qualifications to be accepted. And they have no intention at all of allowing other EU countries to compete with their industries if they can avoid it, whatever Brussels decrees. The British, on the other hand, naively open their industries to competition from other EU countries and fret about admittedly useless EU political appointments such as a President, Foreign Minister, etc, which cause no problem at all to the French. The big insight for me, although I can't understand why I didn't realise it before, is that for the French the Common Market is a non-starter.
Monday, 13 June 2011
Clearing Up And Language
Clearing Up
Today had a lot going for it. Firstly, although the weather was at times overcast it was warm until late in the evening; and I love the warm evenings that we should have from now on until September. Partly as a result of that I played boules for a solid three hours, with mixed success although I was playing consistently well, which was all that really mattered to me.
Secondly, I finished the work in my bedroom, albeit there is still some re-arranging and cleaning to do. However, considering that I first started scraping paint off beams back in last autumn, that is something of a milestone. The cleaning will be a considerable job but not a complicated one. Much more complicated will be persuading myself to get rid of old clothes. I really need to be ruthless on this and am not sure I can be. I've already discovered four sets of clothes for “dirty” jobs and have decided to get rid of two of them; arguably I need only one but..........Then there is the question of what I need here as against my UK wardrobe. I haven't enough presentable shorts and have too much warm/winter clothing. I'll sort that out somehow (?).
Finishing the bedroom has meant finding something to do with my old wardrobe, a self-assembly piece of furniture that was unstable and which I have come to hate. I bought it three years ago, cheaply, to replace a kind of striped tent, of the sort you might find at Henley regatta, which served as a wardrobe for my predecessor. I hated that too, which is why I bought the replacement and now a new wardrobe. Fortunately I met Serge this evening, who's trying to do up a large old house in the village on no money and he wants to take it. It's a much preferable solution to taking it to the local tip.
Thirdly, on the food front, I've now made some apricot jam (the markets are full of apricots) and bottled some cherries in alcohol. That should be it on the preserves front, unless I decide to make more chili jam or pickled shallots, until the figs come along in late summer (more jam). Jam was never important to me in England but but is generally “de rigeur” here for breakfast and I also like to buy unflavoured yoghourts into which I put a dollop of jam. I need a few more cherries to use up the remaining fruit alcohol but that will take only a few minutes.
Fourthly, the warm evening meant that today's pizza get-together, which for a change was mussels and chips, lasted until 10.45pm, an elongated session of chat and jokes with some 40 of us all together. It's one of the things I really look forward to in the summer here, with all of us outside the cafe watching the darkness draw in around us.
A Word A Day
Friend Steve put me on to a website that provides a word a day, it's derivation and usage, and which I have found consistently entertaining, the more enjoyable in that it is free. It can be found at wsmith@wordsmith.org. Surprisingly for me (with my prejudices) it is an American site, proving that there are still Americans who read and take an interest in language. It occasionally produces some unexpected insights, as well as general interest. It has a theme per week and this week's theme is the use of nouns as verbs, a practice I generally dislike when good alternatives already exist. The word today was “friend”, for which the verb to befriend already exists; but to friend someone is apparently being increasingly used on Internet chat-rooms. Instinctively I don't like that. But apparently the verb to befriend is the upstart newcomer, to friend as a verb having been used in English some three centuries earlier than to befriend (13th to 16th centuries). So much for my prejudices.
Today had a lot going for it. Firstly, although the weather was at times overcast it was warm until late in the evening; and I love the warm evenings that we should have from now on until September. Partly as a result of that I played boules for a solid three hours, with mixed success although I was playing consistently well, which was all that really mattered to me.
Secondly, I finished the work in my bedroom, albeit there is still some re-arranging and cleaning to do. However, considering that I first started scraping paint off beams back in last autumn, that is something of a milestone. The cleaning will be a considerable job but not a complicated one. Much more complicated will be persuading myself to get rid of old clothes. I really need to be ruthless on this and am not sure I can be. I've already discovered four sets of clothes for “dirty” jobs and have decided to get rid of two of them; arguably I need only one but..........Then there is the question of what I need here as against my UK wardrobe. I haven't enough presentable shorts and have too much warm/winter clothing. I'll sort that out somehow (?).
Finishing the bedroom has meant finding something to do with my old wardrobe, a self-assembly piece of furniture that was unstable and which I have come to hate. I bought it three years ago, cheaply, to replace a kind of striped tent, of the sort you might find at Henley regatta, which served as a wardrobe for my predecessor. I hated that too, which is why I bought the replacement and now a new wardrobe. Fortunately I met Serge this evening, who's trying to do up a large old house in the village on no money and he wants to take it. It's a much preferable solution to taking it to the local tip.
Thirdly, on the food front, I've now made some apricot jam (the markets are full of apricots) and bottled some cherries in alcohol. That should be it on the preserves front, unless I decide to make more chili jam or pickled shallots, until the figs come along in late summer (more jam). Jam was never important to me in England but but is generally “de rigeur” here for breakfast and I also like to buy unflavoured yoghourts into which I put a dollop of jam. I need a few more cherries to use up the remaining fruit alcohol but that will take only a few minutes.
Fourthly, the warm evening meant that today's pizza get-together, which for a change was mussels and chips, lasted until 10.45pm, an elongated session of chat and jokes with some 40 of us all together. It's one of the things I really look forward to in the summer here, with all of us outside the cafe watching the darkness draw in around us.
A Word A Day
Friend Steve put me on to a website that provides a word a day, it's derivation and usage, and which I have found consistently entertaining, the more enjoyable in that it is free. It can be found at wsmith@wordsmith.org. Surprisingly for me (with my prejudices) it is an American site, proving that there are still Americans who read and take an interest in language. It occasionally produces some unexpected insights, as well as general interest. It has a theme per week and this week's theme is the use of nouns as verbs, a practice I generally dislike when good alternatives already exist. The word today was “friend”, for which the verb to befriend already exists; but to friend someone is apparently being increasingly used on Internet chat-rooms. Instinctively I don't like that. But apparently the verb to befriend is the upstart newcomer, to friend as a verb having been used in English some three centuries earlier than to befriend (13th to 16th centuries). So much for my prejudices.
Sunday, 5 June 2011
Sex, Politics and.....Realism?
Sex, Politics and......Realism?
The Strauss-Kahn affair has been filling a lot of news articles here, as elsewhere, and seems also to have spawned some ill-conceived columns in the English press. Broadly, the English press seems to be saying: “Ah, now the French are having to review their relaxed attitude towards sex; it's time for the revenge of English propriety over the French libertines". In fact, it's nothing of the sort.
Judging from the reactions of the pizza crowd and other French friends, the underlying attitude of the French to sex remains very much the same. The first reaction I noted was that several friends were persuaded by the idea that the affair was engineered by Sarkozy. Strauss-Kahn was all set to be the leader of the Left and very likely to inflict a bloody nose on Sarkozy at the forthcoming elections. And the French love a conspiracy theory even more than we English do. The fact that there was not a shred of evidence to support this theory merely dimmed the suspicion slightly.
The other reaction was that Strauss-Kahn was in the wrong because he used coercion. The French may be relaxed about informal sexual encounters but not about coercion. Coercion in such matters is wrong, full stop. For Strauss-Kahn, anyway, the political dream is over, at least until memories fade.
Incidentally, any scandal there has been has been limited to coverage of the story on the Internet. The French printed press has reported the case widely but not any salacious details. In that, it has kept true to its respect for the privacy of the private lives of public figures. And none of my acquaintances has suggested that Strauss-Kahn was wrong to have had a dalliance. Thus the basic difference in French and British attitudes, which the French regard as inclined to be prurient, remains the same.
For me, the general French attitude to both sex and politics is exemplified by realism. There are things which people do which they may not like but they accept that they are part of life and don't get their knickers in a twist about them. I think that that is generally laudable but some aspects do grate against my Anglo-Saxon sensibilities.
A little while ago when Steve and Daniel were eating with me and conversation got around to the Common Market, Steve brought up the case of the order for new trains for Eurostar. Siemens was initially selected as the supplier but a French representative on the selection panel objected and the contract eventually went to Alsthom, a French company. Daniel's reaction was that this wasn't unusual and that Alsthom had obviously increased their bribe. This shocked me. It wasn't simply his suggestion of a bribe that did this but his firm belief that of course a bribe was involved. I have no idea whether this was true but the underlying attitude bothered me.
I do find this aspect of French realism troubling. It is the calm acceptance that people in important positions will, in Anglo-Saxon terms, abuse their power. In French terms, it is a realistic view that there are certain perks, be they women (or men) or money, that go with the job. I have to accept that, in the real grubby world, the French view is indeed realistic. What I find difficult to accept is that, while large financial contracts have no doubt often (always?) been this way, they have to remain that way and nothing can be done to stop them, which seems to be the prevailing French view.
I find I have a different attitude to dalliances in high places and there is, of course, a feminist aspect to this. If bribes in high places shock me, dalliances don't. If power is an aphrodisiac for men and women, then so be it; both parties know, if I may express it this way, what their relative positions are. In Anglo-Saxon feminist terms, women involved in such affairs would be victims of male dominance. That isn't the French feminist view. Several of my female friends regard themselves as feminist and their attitude to such affairs is, if no coercion is involved, that both parties presumably enjoyed themselves so let them get on with it. Here, too, there is a divergence in French and British attitudes. French feminists are very hot on equal pay, opportunities and rights but not on the extreme postures in which their English and American counterparts often indulge. Maybe in this too they are just being more realistic.
The Strauss-Kahn affair has been filling a lot of news articles here, as elsewhere, and seems also to have spawned some ill-conceived columns in the English press. Broadly, the English press seems to be saying: “Ah, now the French are having to review their relaxed attitude towards sex; it's time for the revenge of English propriety over the French libertines". In fact, it's nothing of the sort.
Judging from the reactions of the pizza crowd and other French friends, the underlying attitude of the French to sex remains very much the same. The first reaction I noted was that several friends were persuaded by the idea that the affair was engineered by Sarkozy. Strauss-Kahn was all set to be the leader of the Left and very likely to inflict a bloody nose on Sarkozy at the forthcoming elections. And the French love a conspiracy theory even more than we English do. The fact that there was not a shred of evidence to support this theory merely dimmed the suspicion slightly.
The other reaction was that Strauss-Kahn was in the wrong because he used coercion. The French may be relaxed about informal sexual encounters but not about coercion. Coercion in such matters is wrong, full stop. For Strauss-Kahn, anyway, the political dream is over, at least until memories fade.
Incidentally, any scandal there has been has been limited to coverage of the story on the Internet. The French printed press has reported the case widely but not any salacious details. In that, it has kept true to its respect for the privacy of the private lives of public figures. And none of my acquaintances has suggested that Strauss-Kahn was wrong to have had a dalliance. Thus the basic difference in French and British attitudes, which the French regard as inclined to be prurient, remains the same.
For me, the general French attitude to both sex and politics is exemplified by realism. There are things which people do which they may not like but they accept that they are part of life and don't get their knickers in a twist about them. I think that that is generally laudable but some aspects do grate against my Anglo-Saxon sensibilities.
A little while ago when Steve and Daniel were eating with me and conversation got around to the Common Market, Steve brought up the case of the order for new trains for Eurostar. Siemens was initially selected as the supplier but a French representative on the selection panel objected and the contract eventually went to Alsthom, a French company. Daniel's reaction was that this wasn't unusual and that Alsthom had obviously increased their bribe. This shocked me. It wasn't simply his suggestion of a bribe that did this but his firm belief that of course a bribe was involved. I have no idea whether this was true but the underlying attitude bothered me.
I do find this aspect of French realism troubling. It is the calm acceptance that people in important positions will, in Anglo-Saxon terms, abuse their power. In French terms, it is a realistic view that there are certain perks, be they women (or men) or money, that go with the job. I have to accept that, in the real grubby world, the French view is indeed realistic. What I find difficult to accept is that, while large financial contracts have no doubt often (always?) been this way, they have to remain that way and nothing can be done to stop them, which seems to be the prevailing French view.
I find I have a different attitude to dalliances in high places and there is, of course, a feminist aspect to this. If bribes in high places shock me, dalliances don't. If power is an aphrodisiac for men and women, then so be it; both parties know, if I may express it this way, what their relative positions are. In Anglo-Saxon feminist terms, women involved in such affairs would be victims of male dominance. That isn't the French feminist view. Several of my female friends regard themselves as feminist and their attitude to such affairs is, if no coercion is involved, that both parties presumably enjoyed themselves so let them get on with it. Here, too, there is a divergence in French and British attitudes. French feminists are very hot on equal pay, opportunities and rights but not on the extreme postures in which their English and American counterparts often indulge. Maybe in this too they are just being more realistic.
Thursday, 26 May 2011
Weather, Fruit and Fashionable English
Back Again From England
A health scare with my mother, fortunately resolved, took me back to England again earlier than planned. The weather had been good there so I was hoping I could get my mother out into her garden for a few hours or maybe to drive somewhere with her. But the weather turned sullen, mostly overcast and with a cold wind that chilled even when the sun was out.
Nonetheless, the countryside looked sumptuous with its green livery of new leaves. Here the countryside looks green too but somehow less fresh than in England; I decided it is probably the predominance of evergreen trees here, the fir trees and truffle oaks, that makes the difference. And, in England, the wayside poppies here were replaced with ox-eye daisies everywhere.
When I stepped off the plane in Avignon, dressed in pullover and jacket for my early flight from England, I found that the temperature had risen into the 90s. While I was away the cherries that were loading down the trees all around had started to ripen and it looks very much as though there will be a glut. Unfortunately most of them are of white varieties that are good to eat but not for jam making; and the best for preserving in alcohol are the bitter variety. So a lot of eating has to be done! It still surprises me that there are so many abandoned cherry trees, on the edges of fields and by the roadside. Clearly at one time they must have been part of a garden or an orchard but now they stand in one or twos unattended; and a great source of free cherries. Strawberries too are now in plentiful supply so I shall make some jam. If the other fruit crops follow suit it will be an exceptional harvest all round this year. Already the first local melons are appearing in shops and markets as also are the first nectarines and peaches.
Also, the lime trees are now in bloom. The flowers have a wonderful scent of honey which, for some reason, doesn't carry into the tea that locals make from them. The tea used to be used as a soporific to help you get to sleep but has largely been superseded by sleeping pills of one sort or another. You can still buy the flowers occasionally in the markets but the tea tastes of nothing more pleasant than hay.
Fashionable English
Having breakfast with Daniel yesterday in the Cafe des Sports I noticed a headline in his paper that described someone as having been “relookée”; it was the “k” that caught my eye as it doesn't occur in pure French. Daniel explained that it meant that the lady in question had had a face-lift, in effect given a new look. It seems just one more case of English words being Frenchified in the French fashion world. This occurs in simply scores of instances in fashion magazines, Marie Claire, Elle, etc, presumably the converse of the English use of French words in fashion. “Le shopping” for instance is not used for everyday shopping but for clothes shopping, more specifically shopping for fashionable clothes. And “les people” are socialites. There is also “le best of” for the top fashion items. I suppose it is a back-handed compliment to the English.
A health scare with my mother, fortunately resolved, took me back to England again earlier than planned. The weather had been good there so I was hoping I could get my mother out into her garden for a few hours or maybe to drive somewhere with her. But the weather turned sullen, mostly overcast and with a cold wind that chilled even when the sun was out.
Nonetheless, the countryside looked sumptuous with its green livery of new leaves. Here the countryside looks green too but somehow less fresh than in England; I decided it is probably the predominance of evergreen trees here, the fir trees and truffle oaks, that makes the difference. And, in England, the wayside poppies here were replaced with ox-eye daisies everywhere.
When I stepped off the plane in Avignon, dressed in pullover and jacket for my early flight from England, I found that the temperature had risen into the 90s. While I was away the cherries that were loading down the trees all around had started to ripen and it looks very much as though there will be a glut. Unfortunately most of them are of white varieties that are good to eat but not for jam making; and the best for preserving in alcohol are the bitter variety. So a lot of eating has to be done! It still surprises me that there are so many abandoned cherry trees, on the edges of fields and by the roadside. Clearly at one time they must have been part of a garden or an orchard but now they stand in one or twos unattended; and a great source of free cherries. Strawberries too are now in plentiful supply so I shall make some jam. If the other fruit crops follow suit it will be an exceptional harvest all round this year. Already the first local melons are appearing in shops and markets as also are the first nectarines and peaches.
Also, the lime trees are now in bloom. The flowers have a wonderful scent of honey which, for some reason, doesn't carry into the tea that locals make from them. The tea used to be used as a soporific to help you get to sleep but has largely been superseded by sleeping pills of one sort or another. You can still buy the flowers occasionally in the markets but the tea tastes of nothing more pleasant than hay.
Fashionable English
Having breakfast with Daniel yesterday in the Cafe des Sports I noticed a headline in his paper that described someone as having been “relookée”; it was the “k” that caught my eye as it doesn't occur in pure French. Daniel explained that it meant that the lady in question had had a face-lift, in effect given a new look. It seems just one more case of English words being Frenchified in the French fashion world. This occurs in simply scores of instances in fashion magazines, Marie Claire, Elle, etc, presumably the converse of the English use of French words in fashion. “Le shopping” for instance is not used for everyday shopping but for clothes shopping, more specifically shopping for fashionable clothes. And “les people” are socialites. There is also “le best of” for the top fashion items. I suppose it is a back-handed compliment to the English.
Friday, 6 May 2011
Economic Distinctions
Nice Distinctions
One of the most important laws of language development is the Law of Least Effort. It normally applies only to pronunciation and spelling but seems to be taking a hold in semantics too. I've mentioned before the distinction between disinterested and uninterested, which seems to be fading; the distinctions between less and fewer and majority and most are other examples. It seems the same is happening in French.
A word that is ambiguous in English but which the French had sorted is “another”. In English, for instance, wanting another (item) can be either wanting one more of the same or wanting something different. In French the ambiguity is avoided, “encore un(e)” being more of the same and “un(e) autre” being something different. Admittedly, the same distinction can easily be made in English by using “a different one” or "one more" rather than “another” but another is still ambiguous. I mention this because the subject came up in conversation over dinner with Steve, Jo, Daniel and Michèle and Daniel and Michèle both said the distinction is going in current French. They are introducing the same ambiguity that there is in English.
As the world becomes more visually oriented so language seems to be becoming less precise, although there is no real need for this. It probably owes much, in England certainly, to the way language has been taught in schools over the past few decades. Does it matter? I've asked the question before, because there are always alternative ways of expressing oneself, but now I'm coming to the conclusion that it does; otherwise misunderstandings are too easily made. I've just started filling in my UK tax return for next year; I'm not sure why I still get one but I do. Being resident outside the UK I have to state how many days I have spent in the UK and I'm also asked to state how many working days. Since I normally come for a week, I simply subtracted the number of weekend days from the total days to arrive at the latter figure. Then I thought: why am I being asked this? I thought: OK, maybe for some statistics they are collecting. But then it occurred to me that what they really wanted to know was not how many working days I spent in the UK but how many days working. This is the kind of ambiguity that can so easily creep in and either needs footnotes to sort out or else buggers up their statistics (serves them right). Or, of course, we could pay more attention to the language we use.
It has just occurred to me that it would be possible to calculate the cost, for every official form and every recipient, of printing every foot note rendered necessary only because questions are badly expressed. The total must be millions of pounds. Now there's an argument that could be persuasive.
All this contrasts starkly with the time when I chaired the British Standards Institution committee drafting a definition of Year 2000 compliance, when every word and phrase in the definition was carefully examined for ambiguity. It helped then to have lawyers on the committee. I wonder how much money they are making because of carelessly drafted documents. Lazy language must be a gold mine for them.
One of the most important laws of language development is the Law of Least Effort. It normally applies only to pronunciation and spelling but seems to be taking a hold in semantics too. I've mentioned before the distinction between disinterested and uninterested, which seems to be fading; the distinctions between less and fewer and majority and most are other examples. It seems the same is happening in French.
A word that is ambiguous in English but which the French had sorted is “another”. In English, for instance, wanting another (item) can be either wanting one more of the same or wanting something different. In French the ambiguity is avoided, “encore un(e)” being more of the same and “un(e) autre” being something different. Admittedly, the same distinction can easily be made in English by using “a different one” or "one more" rather than “another” but another is still ambiguous. I mention this because the subject came up in conversation over dinner with Steve, Jo, Daniel and Michèle and Daniel and Michèle both said the distinction is going in current French. They are introducing the same ambiguity that there is in English.
As the world becomes more visually oriented so language seems to be becoming less precise, although there is no real need for this. It probably owes much, in England certainly, to the way language has been taught in schools over the past few decades. Does it matter? I've asked the question before, because there are always alternative ways of expressing oneself, but now I'm coming to the conclusion that it does; otherwise misunderstandings are too easily made. I've just started filling in my UK tax return for next year; I'm not sure why I still get one but I do. Being resident outside the UK I have to state how many days I have spent in the UK and I'm also asked to state how many working days. Since I normally come for a week, I simply subtracted the number of weekend days from the total days to arrive at the latter figure. Then I thought: why am I being asked this? I thought: OK, maybe for some statistics they are collecting. But then it occurred to me that what they really wanted to know was not how many working days I spent in the UK but how many days working. This is the kind of ambiguity that can so easily creep in and either needs footnotes to sort out or else buggers up their statistics (serves them right). Or, of course, we could pay more attention to the language we use.
It has just occurred to me that it would be possible to calculate the cost, for every official form and every recipient, of printing every foot note rendered necessary only because questions are badly expressed. The total must be millions of pounds. Now there's an argument that could be persuasive.
All this contrasts starkly with the time when I chaired the British Standards Institution committee drafting a definition of Year 2000 compliance, when every word and phrase in the definition was carefully examined for ambiguity. It helped then to have lawyers on the committee. I wonder how much money they are making because of carelessly drafted documents. Lazy language must be a gold mine for them.
Sunday, 1 May 2011
House and Inland Revenue
House
I've been thinking for a while that I should get more pictorial and I finally got around to it this weekend. I keep wittering on about the pots at the front of my house and my small back garden but have never included any pictures. So, below is my back garden as it was last year in late May. The flowers in the left foreground are Salvia Pratensis which grow in profusion by the wayside here and from which I pinched a couple of specimens; they've since self-seeded.
And below that is the front of the house a couple of years ago when long-time friend and some time colleague Alan Knight came to visit with his partner. I'll try to include more photos in the future (he promised).
Government Intelligence
I seem to have resolved my differences with the Inland Revenue in England, at least in theory. The result in practice remains to be seen. However, the Glasgow office has admitted that it has no knowledge of the letter sent to me by their Nottingham office containing instructions on submitting my self-assessment return and, moreover, that had they had it the current misunderstandings would not have arisen. My reaction was to ask the Glasgow office to request a copy of the letter from their Nottingham office so the matter can be resolved. This, apparently, is not possible; I have to send Glasgow a copy of the letter from their Nottingham office. Joined up government? Dream on!
The stupid thing is that all such situations can be resolved by the simply ploy of having personal models. All it needs is for government departments/agencies to have a unique ID for each person they deal with common to all financial communications and to build a simple IT model around that. All communications are then attached to, and retrievable from, that model; it really is that simple. The Swedish government has had such a system for decades but made the mistake of making the social security number the unique ID for all individuals for all purposes. This makes it too easy for hackers to get at personal information of all kinds. What is needed is an ID that is unique for a specific set of purposes but not for all.
Around three decades ago an inspired IT manager at the Royal Marsden hospital, Jo Milan, recognised the problem and created an IT patient model. This is several orders of magnitude more difficult than creating a personal financial model yet he managed it with arcane and barely adequate IT facilities. The achievement was totally ignored, indeed rendered infeasible, by government when it came out with recommendations for computerising hospital systems. Three decades on, it seems that government intelligence remains, as ever, an oxymoron.
I've been thinking for a while that I should get more pictorial and I finally got around to it this weekend. I keep wittering on about the pots at the front of my house and my small back garden but have never included any pictures. So, below is my back garden as it was last year in late May. The flowers in the left foreground are Salvia Pratensis which grow in profusion by the wayside here and from which I pinched a couple of specimens; they've since self-seeded.
And below that is the front of the house a couple of years ago when long-time friend and some time colleague Alan Knight came to visit with his partner. I'll try to include more photos in the future (he promised).
Government Intelligence
I seem to have resolved my differences with the Inland Revenue in England, at least in theory. The result in practice remains to be seen. However, the Glasgow office has admitted that it has no knowledge of the letter sent to me by their Nottingham office containing instructions on submitting my self-assessment return and, moreover, that had they had it the current misunderstandings would not have arisen. My reaction was to ask the Glasgow office to request a copy of the letter from their Nottingham office so the matter can be resolved. This, apparently, is not possible; I have to send Glasgow a copy of the letter from their Nottingham office. Joined up government? Dream on!
The stupid thing is that all such situations can be resolved by the simply ploy of having personal models. All it needs is for government departments/agencies to have a unique ID for each person they deal with common to all financial communications and to build a simple IT model around that. All communications are then attached to, and retrievable from, that model; it really is that simple. The Swedish government has had such a system for decades but made the mistake of making the social security number the unique ID for all individuals for all purposes. This makes it too easy for hackers to get at personal information of all kinds. What is needed is an ID that is unique for a specific set of purposes but not for all.
Around three decades ago an inspired IT manager at the Royal Marsden hospital, Jo Milan, recognised the problem and created an IT patient model. This is several orders of magnitude more difficult than creating a personal financial model yet he managed it with arcane and barely adequate IT facilities. The achievement was totally ignored, indeed rendered infeasible, by government when it came out with recommendations for computerising hospital systems. Three decades on, it seems that government intelligence remains, as ever, an oxymoron.
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