Garden, Lunch And Sacred Cows

Autumn Garden

I'm used to a distinct lack of colour in my garden in the autumn but this year has been a pleasant surprise. The weather combination we have had of significant rain with also significant sun and mild temperatures seems to have given all the plants a boost. Yesterday afternoon, after a day of rain, the temperature was 28 degrees in the sun.

At the front the cyclamen are showing red and white, the plumbago, solanum are providing blue and the French marigolds that seemed to be sulking have woken up and are a mass of gold and red. And another (perennial) plant which I have front and back whose name I don't know and which I can't find in my RHS encyclopedia, though it would surely grow in England, is not only still full of blue flowers but its foliage is turning red and yellow.

At the back the red currant sage is a mass of bloom and and has taken up so much space that I will have to cut it back severely over the winter. Other blooms are dotted around: there's a white Japanese anemone, a couple of marigolds still going, a blue salvia, a honeysuckle and some gaura. But what has particularly pleased me are the roses. I have several David Austin bushes that have struggled to get established and the climbers only started to climb significantly last year, four years after they were planted. This year not only have they continued climbing but have decided to produce a second flush of bloom, as they should. In particular the Pilgim which I have growing up an arch has a dozen blooms on it. My Pat Austin has also decided to produce again. I know now that most plants take a considerable time to get established here but often overlook just how long that time can be. In addition, my small olive tree is covered in olives and the rock plants are all scrambling like mad, which promises a good show in the spring when they start bloomimg again. In short, everything is looking much better than I had anticipated.

In the background leaves are falling off the lime and plane trees and the vines are all turning colour. I wondered whether the grape harvest this year would be any good, given the summer drought, but the vignerons I have spoken too all claim that the harvest is good. The sugar content of the grapes should certainly be high but it seems the volume has been quite satisfactory too.

Reflections On A Lunch Conversation

This Sunday Steve and Jo invited me to lunch with friends Armelle, René, Alex and Pauline. As often when we are a mixture of English and French, and the more so since Steve and I have started our English conversation meetings, conversation focussed for a time on differences between our two countries and languages. The conversation was typical of those we have with French friends here which is why I recount it.

I asked if our French friends understood the significance of the date the 5^th of November in England; they didn't. So I explained that, somewhat paradoxically, although we prided ourselves (rightly or not) on being the cradle of democracy we also celebrated a historical attempt to blow the seat of it to smithereens in The 17^th century: Guy Fawkes Day Moreover, an effigy of some sort was burned on the traditional bonfire and, before it became politically unacceptable, this was often the Pope. We didn't burn Jeanne d'Arc anymore since we had already done that very successfully once. René countered that by asking whether we knew the origin of the famous busbies worn by British troops in formal costume. We didn't and René explained the origin in Napoleonic troops.

That got me thinking about conventions of war, which hardly exist today (pace the Geneva Convention, on the rare occasions when it is observed). Doing research for a talk at the English library here I had discovered the origin of the expression “to show one's true colours”. It dates from the 17th century when warships were allowed to get close to enemy ships by the ruse of flying false flags but weren't allowed to fire on them before showing their “true colours”. The convention was apparently normally observed, even by pirates. That reminded of criticisms I had read of American revolutionaries in their war of independence aganst Britain. The complaints at the time were that the revolutionaries didn't wear any brightly coloured uniforms, as the British did, so that they could easily be seen and identified, and they adopted the “cowardly” practice of hiding in woods and behind walls rather than “bravely” standing in the open to be shot at.

That in turn made me wonder what current sacred cows we had now that would be milked ad lib in the future. One, I suspect, may be an extreme preoccupation with hygiene. I asked René if he knew why Swiss cheeses had holes in them and he didn't. I recalled a story of a Swiss cheese enterprise that had created a totally hygienic, hermetically sealed factory and found that the resultant cheese was palatable but had no holes in it. It turned out that the holes in Swiss cheeses owe their presence to minute particles of hay or straw in the milk from which they are made. Ensure the milk is “pure” and you don't get holes. Another example that came to mind was my time in Senegal, when I had the inoculations necessary for entry to the country but nothing else; and I survived the year with just a few days of stomach upset. The American Peace corps were there and had a fully equipped field hospital in Dakar to which they all went every 6 months for check-ups and various inoculations and yet they went down like flies with all sorts of illnesses. I asked a doctor there why this could be so and he suggested that they had quite probably never been exposed to any germs in their lives and, being suddenly exposed to a multitude of them, had little protection against them. So cleanliness may be next to Godliness, as the Victorians liked to maintain, but moderatio in omnibus also applies. The political correctness currently infecting the UK will also, I suspect, be another sacred cow to be milked in the future.

TTIP Again, Teaching English, Quality And Gresham's Law

TTIP Again

I got an email from an old friend in England, Eric Leach, proudly proclaiming that a petition he had been supporting against TTIP had gathered well over 3 million signatures throughout Europe. And so he should be proud. Apparently a number of councils in England have come out against TTIP and the intention is to get more to do so. By contrast, I've asked a number of friends here who should be aware of TTIP if they are and none seem to be. There are certainly no signs of general revolt as there were, for instance, with the NOME law that allowed the part-privatisation of the electricity industry. But then few here take much notice of what goes on in Brussels until it affects their lives directly. I take this to be this to be an illustration of the general attitude that, although Brussels is important, if the French don't like it's decisions they'll simply ignore them and won't comply.

Quality Food And Drink

Friend Steve and I were discussing the quality of wine locally. We had both known the days of the 1950s and 1960s in England when the bottle you brought to a party was invariably a white semi-sweet Sauternes or Entre de Mers (which, incidentally, I've never seen in France) or an Algerian or Moroccan red. These latter generally had grounds of a purplish colour at the bottom of the bottle and were barely drinkable but enabled you to get into party mood and were your laisser passer if you hadn't been specifically invited to the party. That market in England has totally disappeared from view, as also has that for the Blue Nun style hocks for the blue rinse set.

Here in Mollans and now we are spoiled for choice for rosé wines ranging from light and flinty to full-bodied and most of the local vineyards make at least one good red wine, some extremely good, at very reasonable prices which, allowing for inflation, would have been affordable in our student days. No one seems any longer to make the inferior quality of red wine that we drank as students. And in England there is possibly a better selection of wine from worldwide sources than in any other country, albeit at prices grossly inflated by the tax regime.

What both Steve and I discovered in our discussion is that something very similar has happened to the food market in England. There is still, admittedly, the fast food market but that is now universal. Apart from that, if you want bad food you almost have to go looking for it. One distinction I used to make between England and France was that if you ended up in the middle of nowhere in either country and decided to eat in the local cafe or restaurant, the chances were that you would get a good meal in France and a bad one in England. That seems no longer to be as true. English TV now seems to be obsessed with cooking good food and has been for some time, which is no doubt a contributory reason, but it does seem that the English are now educating their taste buds and using their feet to follow their taste buds. And the market is responding.

Teaching English

I probably should have headlined this teaching and learning English. Because both Steve and I are getting insights into our native English while we are teaching it to the French. I've always thought that English grammar is essentially simple compared to that of most other European languages and hold to that view. There are no cases or genders to think about, precious little in terms of verb conjugation and a fast disappearing subjunctive. Vocabulary is just that in all romance languages; you either know the word or you don't. On the other hand, the use of prepositions is difficult in most romance languages and probably much more so in English beause of our use of them to modify verbs; and, of course, pronunciation in English is a nightmare.

What this seems to amount to, from the evidence of our classes in Mollans, is that most of the participants don't have a great deal of difficulty with written English provided they have the relevant vocabulary which, admittedly, is not normally the case. Vocabulary, anyway, even for me in English, is a never-ending quest. What has amazed me is the huge gulf between most written English and the spoken colloquial variety (even excluding slang). Take, as just one example, one person saying to another: “We're going for a meal Tuesday week; can you make it?” A perfectly normal sentence but…….what is a Tuesday week and are you being invited to cook the meal? You won't find much help from a dictionary even with “going for a meal”. “The drinks are on us” is another phrase we've used; meaning we are soaking wet? And elisions…………..we might write “we are not” but never say it, except possibly for emphasis. It's, aren't, hasn't, hadn't, won't, mightn't (but not mayn't), etc, are all part of everyday English conversation but foreign to people with intermediate English but who are beginners as speakers.

That is part of the quagmire that Steve and I are trying to tread our way through. But it's still fun at the moment, for us and apparently for the participants too.

Gresham's Law

I'm having a problem in the house with basin stoppers at the moment, which made me think of Gresham's Law. Gresham's Law was formulated in the field of economics and asserts that bad currency drives out good currency. However, the principle that inferiority drives out quality is often applied more generally. It has its equivalent in the field of language development, in the Law of Least Effort. That asserts, effectively, that incorrect grammar, spelling, punctuation, pronunciation, etc, will replace good grammar, etc, over time.

I was reminded of this by the basin problem because I have never understood why French plumbing doesn't use plugs in basins and baths. Plugs are virtually indestructible and infallible. The French lever system is fine if it works but the devil to fix if it doesn't. My kitchen sink has the lever system with the lever mechanism hidden somewhere in the bowels of the sink and seems impossible to fix without buying a new sink. If a plug breaks or goes missing it is easy and cheap to replace it. What's more, the French system, which was never used in the UK, is now appearing there more and more frequently. It's a good illustration of Gresham's Law.

I feel the same way about chopsticks. I never use chopsticks to eat Chinese meals (although I can, not very well) because I think that if the Chinese had invented forks they would use them. They have invented spoons, which seem to me more appropriate for most Chinese food, but I can't imagine why anyone who had a fork would use chopsticks unless they wanted to show off their dexterity or have fun with friends seeing who could balance the most rice grains on a chopstick.

Rant over. It's just occurred to me that this argument conflicts with what I have written about food and drink above.

Bread And Road Names

Homage To Bread

One of the pleasures of being here is the easy access to very good bread. There are two bakers in the village who bake their own bread and many alternatives in nearby Buis, Entrechaux and Vaison, several of which style themselves specialists in one way or another. Most seem to have just two doughs for the general run of bread, one for white bread and one for wholegrain, but the variety of crusts they produce is extensive. Then of course there is bread with olives in it, the local fougases, and bread with nuts in it. It is a reason I usually eschew the classic French breakfast of croissants or pain au chocolat and buy a fresh crusty loaf to have with jam or honey. My current favourite is a pain de campagne from one the village bakeries which seems to keep its crustiness the whole day. I haven't yet found an exact equivalent to the granary bread I used to enjoy in England, with it's good crust and soft interior; wholegrain breads here tend to be dense. But that is a small quibble.

Although locals use such fillers as couscous, rice, pasta and potatoes to a considerable extent, bread still seems to be the standard at every meal. I know that if I invite friend Daniel for a meal I always have to have bread to hand, even though he doesn't eat cheese (has a lactose allergy) and even if the meal is a shepherds' pie.

Road Names

I've mentioned in an earlier posting that all the streets in the village and those around it have now been given official names. All those I am aware of are reasonable. A lane near my house that runs under the chateau is now officially but unimaginatively the Chemin sous le Chateau. Friends Steve and Jo were previously at a loss when trying to effect a transaction online which insisted on a street address, when their road had no offical name, and so invented whatever they thought might be appropriate. It is now, very reasonably, the Route de l'Ancien Chemin de Fer, which is what it once was. But what did locals know it as before the railway became along, because there was a previous road that wandered along and across the railway track? The address on their house deeds record it as Au Bout du Cros, which is not actually the name for a street but for an area: a “cros” is an old French term for an area where sheep were grazed. So why not Sheep Lane, or Walking Pullover Lane, which somehow sounds more picturesque to me? I think we are losing the chance to add some former ribaldry and colour to road names, which means the Bowdlerisers and political correctness crew are winning, and that should never happen.

The one good example I can think of in the village is the Passage Tire-Cul, which roughly translates as Drag Your Arse Up passage. And the name is not only colourful but also very apposite since it is a narrow and very steep passage of steps. In London there is still Pudding Lane, Old Jewry, Primrose Hill and Poultry but Magpie Alley and Hanging Sword Lane have gone: and I'm sure there was once a Gallow's Hill. Love Lane is still there and in the City, implying the financial transactions that gave rise to the name, although there may not have been much love involved. Even Haymarket is redolent of its past. But London also has Trafalgar Square which might more relevantly be named Pigeon Shit or Pigeon Bomb Square. I wish, when road naming has to be done, the people responsible would overlook the boring famous people and places that are usually the source, use more imagination and delve into the sites history to find something colourful. Playing safe is too easy and militates against the joys in life. So what if some people are offended? Some always are and are probably going to find a reason to be offended anyway.

TTIP Etc

Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP)

A current news item has really alarmed me. It seems the EU and the USA are about to sign a trade agreement, or may already have done so, with some extraordinary implications. International trade agreements are, on the whole, a good thing I think; they tend to increase trade and jobs. However this particular one apparently includes a clause, current in USA law, that allows corporations to sue governments if governments take measures that adversely affect the profits of the corporations. Moreover, any consequent legal actions and their results, fines, modifications of law, etc, are in camera: not revealed to the public. I find that monstrous not only in itself but also in that it gives rights to American Corporations that we subjects of the Queen don't have; we can't sue the Crown, which includes the major government departments. I don't imagine that will worry our current Prime Minister but it sure worries the hell out of me and so it should do for every UK citizen (and the citizens of every other EU country come to that). If ever there was a case of big power groups putting one over the man in the street surely this must take the biscuit.

Autumn

Our autumn, which arrived early in mid-August, has definitely set in now. It's not just the much cooler mornings and evenings, although the days are still generally very warm, but the appearance of mushrooms such as chanterelles on market stalls and the gradual disappearance of summer fruit. I'm making sure I get the last of the melons and white peaches while they are still around before I have to fall back on the winter diet of oranges, apples and pears. Grapes are now in the shops and the muscat grapes are admittedly delicious and will be with us for a month or so.

Despite the cooler weather, watering plants has still been necessary, if not as frequently and intensively as before. I've completed more small stone walls in the back garden to keep the soil more on a level and have planted more irises and cyclamen in the roadside across from my kitchen window. I've also some more clearing up to do before winter sets in but that is about it as far as gardening is concerned.

More Provencal Marketing

One of the local cinemas, in Buis, has been refurbished over the summer and although already up and running has its official opening next week. The next month's programme has some potentially interesting films and it is a month's programme and, what's more, published and available at the same time as the films. The other nearby cinemas seem to be sticking to publishing a three-week programme, for no obvious reason. It's a small point but a month of offerings seems somehow much more natural and easy to follow than three-week periods that begin and end all over the place.

I actually find it amazing and encouraging that a former flea-pit cinema in a place such as Buis, with little over double the popuation of Mollans, can have a refurbishment. It's all part of the French dedication to culture and determination to keep cinemas open in rural areas as an avenue for culture. I think that is admirable even if the subsidy must have been enormous. And publishing the programme on time and for a month is also a leap in the right direction. It seems to have been traditional here that the programme should not be published and disseminated before the programme starts. Subsidies in this direction are great but a little advance marketing wouldn't come amiss and might even reduce the amount of subsidy needed.

On that note, I went to the Post Office because friend Jo had told me that the village had made a DVD of the recent celebrations of the 300th anniversary of the Dauphin fountain and it was available there. She also warned me that it wasn't on display and I'd have to ask for it. This I duly did, having noticed that there wasn't any poster either advertising the DVD's existence. I was then told that payment had to be by cheque. I had credit card, debit card nd cash at the ready but no cheque book with me; so no sale. It's what passes for promoting the product around here.

Boules And House Numbers

House Numbers

The village council voted some three or four years ago to introduce house numbers to the village. To me it seemed a simple job of going along each road sticking numbers in sequence (preferably) on each house; but what do I know? For a start, many of the roads just outside the village didn't have names or, at least, signposted names, and the actual name of the road could be a subject of dispute. Anyway, over the past year road names have been officially decided and duly posted.

The job of assigning numbers, so I heard, had been goven by the previous council (some 3-4 years ago) to Jean Francois Colonnat, the acknowledged authority on the village's history. I don't yet know whether he discovered the problem of unnamed roads or whether he had a role in giving them names or whether he just threw his hands up in despair. It was a fair bet that any conclusions Jean Francois came to would be historically impeccable but also that the job wasn't going to be done very quickly. So, as the years passed I just assumed that probably something would happen sometime but I wasn't holding my breath; anyway, the village seemed to be doing quite well without house numbers. But last week it happened, in the rue du Faubourg at least, and no doubt house numbers are sprouting everywhere all over the village. My only worry is official documents, like tax returns. Because the tax authorities had got my address wrong and this year I decided to correct it, I had theoretically (only way to correct the address) to move from the Route de Buis (it passes by the end of my road) to the rue du Faubourg, where I have always been. I have always lived there at Les Bleus so the question is this. Now that I am officially number 39, am I going to have to move (theoretically) from Les Bleus to number 39? And I thought house numbring was straightforward!

When the council people came to screw the new number to my wall I said that was OK as long as the number wasn't 13. They didn't understand. It seems that that number has the opposite connotations in France to those it has in the UK. In France 13 is lucky.

Rémuzat

I've just returned from a boules tournament in Rémuzat. There was a feeling around that the national championships (for wrinklies) were becoming too serious and that the camaraderie and general bonhomie that had been a part of them was being lost. As a result, Mollans, Sarrians and Beaume de Venise decided not to go this year but to hold their own tournament instead, in Rémuzat. In fact, players from Carpentras and the Var also came along.

Despite Rémuzat being only an hour's drive, some 40kms, from Mollans I hadn't been there before. It lies in the narrow valley where the Aygues river has carved a channel through the foothills of the Alps. You soon realise you are in different territory as grape vines give out immediately above Nyons, then olive groves also peter out and the road clings to the side of steep escarpments or goes through tunnels beneath the foothills. The steeper roofs around Rémuzat itself tell you this is deep snow country. Vultures were reintroduced here several years ago and they and eagles were to be seen high in the air in abundance during the day.

It was decided to hold the tournament along the lines of the free-for-all boules days we have in Mollans, each player changing parners after each match and the partnerhips being drawn at random out of a hat. Scores are accumulated for each player rather than teams, since there are no set teams, and there is obviously a significant element of chance according to whom you are drawn with and against. Since everybody played six matches the element of luck was supposed to even out over the tournament. Anyway, I managed to get the fifth highest score out of 44 which was more than enough to satisfy my ego, even without the very good bottle of Vacqueras that came with it.

The Cheek Of It

Pigs' Cheeks

One of the differences in life here is the status of butchers. In England when I left they were a fast disappearing breed. I knew of only one in the Reading area, a catchment of around a quarter of a million people. Nearly everyone seemed to buy their meat, usually packaged, from supermarkets, as I mostly did, and the only cuts of meat available were those that the supermarket had packaged. In most of the supermarkets there seemed to be little butchery knowledge available; ask a question and I got mostly blank stares or just a “No, we don't have that”. I once got myself a sausage-making attachment to a mincer but could get the skins necessary from only this one butcher in Reading.

The most obvious initial difference here is that if you want beef mince it does not come in a pack, generally even in supermarkets, but is minced before your eyes from meat that you can see. Meat is more expensive in France than in England but the quality, I find, is often correspondingly better; and expertise and advice is freely available. As it happens, the butcher I most often patronise works in a local supermarket. Talking to him the other day I remarked that I had had both pork and pork cheek in very good restaurant dishes but had never seen either on sale in a butchers. My butcher replied that beef cheek was pretty much the same as shin; the mention of pork cheek, however, sent him into ecstacies. I got the whole dramatic display, as only a Latin can do it; eyes, arms, fingers, lips all extolled the virtues of pork cheek, especially with honey and rosemary. He admitted that you wouldn't find it on sale normally, but he could get it and he would and would put it aside for me. I'm expecting to have it by the end of the week. Not only that, I fully expect to get details from him as to how best to prepare, cook and serve it. I have subsequently looked on the Web for recipes (in English) for pork cheek and found only a handful, all of which warn that you will have extreme difficulty getting hold of it. Not in a small village in France, it seems.

Mediaeval Guilds In France

It occurred to me recently to wonder at the French apparent obsession with qualifications. As a principle, I have no objection to the idea that people should be qualified for the job they are doing; on the contrary, it seems obviously a good idea. As so often though, principle and practice are quite different things.

The thought occurred as a result of the realisation that French estate agents have to be qualified to practise as such. No such qualification is required in England, although an honesty test might not come amiss. Given previous observations about house prices here, I wondered what on earth these qualifications were worth. I now know that if a buyer bids the asking price for a house the seller has to accept it, which partly explains the ridiculous initial asking prices for houses here; why not ask for the moon if someone might buy it? However, there are many other examples of qualifications that people have to have in France that do not apply elsewhere. I have noticed also, for instance, that translations from French into English by officially qualified translators frequently express the meaning more or less correctly while being couched in language that no English person would recognise as English English. So what exactly are these qualifications worth and why the obsession with them?

I've come to the conclusion that it is a latter-day manifestation of the Mediaeval guild system. Then, to practise a trade you had to be “qualified” and belong to a guild to which you owed allegiance. A recent example here is when the government proposed that shops should be alllowed to sell minor drugs, aspirin and paracetamol specifically. The instant result was a strike by chemists, who alone, they deemed, should be allowed to dispense any medicinal drug. And the strike was effective in ensuring that the government dropped the prosposal. So chemists are protected and generic aspirin and paracetamol cost around six times what they cost in the UK.

Possibly the most recent example of a closed shop in the UK, albeit nearly 40 years ago, was the print unions. They were initially challenged then by Rupert Murdoch, admittedly not everyone's cup of tea, but would anyway have been blown completely out of the water by the advent of computer printers. This kind of closed shop, I believe, encourages the idea of a right to a job for life in a specific kind of trade, a right that was initially challenged five centuries ago in the Renaissance and certainly has no place now in the global economy or even, in practice, in a national one. However it remains very much as part of the French protectionist attitude towards their own commerce; which, arguably, is costing the country an awful lot of new jobs. There are now no new jobs for qualified lime-tree flower assessors, nor even any jobs at all, however protected by guilds, nor will there ever be in the future.

Reality Versus Fantasy, French Attitudes

OK

There's a French expression often used during games of boules that got me thinking. The expression is “elle est là”, said of a shot that is neither very good nor very bad. I got to thinking about the expression because I wondered how I would translate it into English. The literal translation “the boule is there” clearly wouldn't do. So I decided on OK; the shot is OK. But the expression was ringing bells in my mind and I suddenly realised that the Ouolof in Senegal have a directly analogous construction. Greetings among the Ouolof tend to be a lengthy ritual. After the opening “assalam malakum” and response you enquire after the well-being of members in the extended family in turn, husband/wife, grandfather, grandmother, children, in-laws, etc, by asking “ana sa”(family member). The standard response to all these enquiries is “munga fa”, which literally means he/she is there. Again the translation into English would be OK; he she is OK. Ah well, I thought it was interesting.

Another Very French Attitude

Friends Claudine and Jacques from St Malo arrived in the village last week for their summer sojourn and we duly got together to chat at the pizza evening. Claudine said Jacques didn't agree with what I had written about the ELSE clause in my other blog (www.theelseclauseonline.blogspot.com). I have the utmost respect for Jacques' intelligence and his IT knowledge so wondered what his objection was. He said that the IF THEN construction worked perfectly well without the ELSE clause; you simply listed the conditions that were of interest (IF) and what should happen (THEN) if each occurred. But, I objected, what if a condition occurred that you hadn't listed? Ah well then, he replied, you have a problem. Indeed, it is exactly that problem that I was addressing. But what Jacques couldn't see was that it was a problem that needed to be addressed. His point was that you should list all the conditions that could occur and, if you did, the ELSE clause wouldn't be necessary. True but……..in reality people make mistakes; that was my point; his point was that they shouldn't make mistakes. And so we went round in circles.

This theory versus practice/reality argument seems to crop up time and again in discussions with French friends. If friend Steve or I criticise something the EU has done the attitude of our French friends seems always to be that the English don't want to be in the EU unless changes are made to better suit Britain; whereas the French are fully committed. As it happens, both Steve and I think the EU has achieved a lot that is good and are in favour of Britain remaining in the EU; but not come what may nor at any price so, yes, we do want changes; we want a dose of reality to leaven the fantasy in Brussels. So, as it happens, do our French friends; they want changes that would favour France. So where's the difference? I think the difference is essentially that the French cannot conceive of a situation where the EU would make decisions that were so against French interests that France would contemplate leaving the EU. And I think that is realistic. If the EU went strongly against French interests the French would not opt out, they would simply ignore or break the offending EU regulations, almost certainly with impunity, as they are currently doing at their Spanish and German borders. Britain, on the other hand, sees opting out as an alternative and can't seem to contemplate simply ignoring unfavourable EU decisions. But maybe we should take the same stance as the French; why see EU directives as binding if other countries don't?  Why not regard them as fantasy rather than reality?

There's a football analogy, for what it's worth, that suggests these differences may resolve themselves over time. The English have traditionally always placed more emphasis on the physical side of the game and the French on the technical side. Nowadays that difference in emphasis is far less pronounced. I remember from playing for Garches in France that although the French eschewed the aggressive and sometimes dangerous tackling that was very much part of the English game they would happily body-check players, obstruct them one way or another, without any intention of playing the ball. A dangerous tackle was a foul in France, obstruction was not, and vice-versa in England. That was fifty years ago; now both dangerous tackles and obstruction are deemed fouls on both sides of the Channel.

House Prices

I read that house prices in London are reaching ridiculous levels and there is a degree of ridiculousness about house prices here. Here it's not the high scale of the prices but the degree of variability that is ridiculous. When I was in England I seem to remember that estate agents would give you valuations of a house that were within 5-10% of one another and generally would not accept taking on the sale much outside that margin. A couple of years ago a house opposite me went on the market, with an agent, at a very optimistic 640, 000 euros. Within 18 months that price had come down to below 400,000 euros and it eventually sold for 280,000 euros. There have been numerous examples of sales around here with similar, if not quite as dramatic, variations in the initial asking price and eventual sale price. I don't understand how that degree of variation can happen if estate agents know their job but initial asking prices here undoubtedly have a touch of fantasy about them. Friends Steve and Jo are currently looking for a house nearer the centre of the village so I hope for their sakes that realism strikes sooner rather than later.