Midsummer Musings

Back Garden

A storm overnight two days ago and a subequent light breeze have brought blessed relief from the oppresive heat of the previous three weeks; temperatures are down by around 10 degrees and it is pleasant once again to be outdoors. A consequence is a lot more people out and about in the village. I hadn't seen Mana for weeks and assumed she'd gone off to visit friends she has in Greece, as she does most years ; but she turned up at boules yesterday and so I invited her to come and eat on Friday.

The heat fried some flowers I planted in the back garden to give some late season colour before they ever got established and that has prompted me to have a radical rethink of what I do there. It's looking very sad at the moment. I've decided that, despite the 500 litres of compost I've added to the soil, more is needed. Also, the wooden slats I've used to hold the soil in place are beginning to rot. So, I shall turn over the ground to extract more stones and build low walls with those to replace the slats. Even with the soil improved, I think that small bushes are the only answer as regards plants. I've bought a small hibiscus and hope it will stay a manageable size for a few years. Then I'll look for some patio roses, cistus or helianthemums to fill in, with perhaps some more lilies as they seem to do well. The back garden at this time of year seems to be a perennial problem but I still think I can find a solution.

Adjacent is a photo of the front of my house as it is at the moment.  There is in fact more colour there than meets the eye but alo too much green, due in no small part to the shadow cast across the front of the house by the lime trees on the opposite side of the road.  The large sunflower from a seed ropped by birds feeding on my balcony can just about be discerned at the level of the grapevine over the balcony.  But.........I need to do some more rethinking to, once again, get more colour at this time of the year.  Part of the problem is that three blue solanum in pots at the front which bloomed profusely last year have decided not to do so this year, perhap again because of the shade thrown by the lime trees.

Islam

Over lunch a few days ago, Steve, who is a history buff, and I got into conversation about the Moorish invasion of Spain. Steve pointed out that the Moors got as far north as Troyes in France but quickly dropped back again behind the Pyrenees and left little trace of their brief visit further north. In Spain, of course, their influence has been enormous and, I would argue, all of it beneficial. They not only left architecture of great beauty but also created a centre of scholarship in their great library at Cordoba and gave the world a lesson in tolerance. Islam became the official religion, of course, but christians were allowed to practice and were for the most part accepted as more or less equal citizens, although they could not hold office. By contrast, when El Cid and his cronies reconquered Spain, muslims were offered a stark choice: convert to christianity or die. It's almost the converse of what seems to be happening in the religious world today. And the christians effectively tried to ruin the beautiful mosque in Cordoba, a circular representation of the sun, by building a rectangular church in the middle. Someone once said that, if there was a God, religion was a cruel trick he played on humanity.

It's always puzzled me why the Spanish invaders are called Moors. The inference is that they came from Mauretania, which may have been partly true but can't have been the whole story. I met a number of Moors in my time in Senegal and they are a physically distinct race: jet black hair, jet black eyes, relatively pale skin and small in stature, contrasting hugely with the Taureg and very physically distinct from other arabs I have met. Those in Senegal at the time specialised in working with silver and ebony. The invading forces from north Africa may well have included Moors but must have included also many other arab types. So why are they always referred to as Moors? Perhaps scribes of the time knew no better.

PS
Formatting this post I've found again that accents do funny things to blog and website insertions.  The typesize changed after the tonic accent that I originally placed on the first "o" of Cordoba (the correct spelling).  I have deleted the accent but can't get the typesize to revert.  I've found in adding to my website on the village (www.mon-mollan-sur-ouveze.fr) that inclusion of an accent frequently causes the HTML round the following text to go crazy and generate spurious HTML which involves me in hours of extra work.  I can't be bothered to find a way to edit out the spurious HTML here. 

July

July

July is the festive month in Mollans and so our street party was followed by the 14th of July commemoration of the storming of the Bastille. There was a band in front of Bar du Pont but I didn't bother to go as I was eating with friends earlier and felt too lazy.

Hot on the heels of that the Tour de France went along the village by-pass. As I've mentioned before, the Tour is not really a spectator sport on the ground as it's all over in the 20 or so seconds it takes the cyclists to pass. However, it being so close to the village I didn't have to find a place to stand three hours beforehand so I went along. A lot of people had got in position in time for the « caravan », when sponsors pass by and thow freebies at the crowd, about 2 hours before the cyclists arrive. There appears to have been a somewhat unseemly scramble for free caps, newspapers and other trinkets which didn't interest me. Many then left the roadside to return when the cyclists were due. I got in position, about an hour before « the event » and decided I'd put on full regalia as there was the prospect of an English winner: Union Jack T-shirt and black bowler hat got an outing.

The week before, my daughter Natalie and her boyfriend Andy arrived for a few days. It was good to see them both in high spirits. Andy decided to attempt to cycle up Mont Ventoux but made it to only about half-way up before his legs gave out. It's not a challenge to be taken on lightly and he obviously lacked enough practice. Anyway, he didn't seem downhearted and, when he returned, I took him and Natalie on a short wine tour so they had a good selection of the local wines to take back to the UK with them. Waiting for the Tour, I bought an official goody bag from a passing Tour van and have sent it off to them in the post. It could be the inspiration for another attempt.

While doing our wine tour we stopped for lunch in the village of Gigondas, which I hadn't visited before although I've been to various vineyards in the area around. It's very small and the centre is occupied by restaurants and wine cellars. It made me wonder what it would be like in winter. We ate lunch with an inexpensive carafe of the restaurant's house wine. For a house wine, it was very good. I guess they don't make inferior wine in Gigondas; it wouldn't be worth anyone's while. But it might be worth my while looking for wine there that is just outside the officially classified area; there mighy be some bargains to be had.

The weather since the beginning of the month has been summer arriving with a vengeance: hot sunny days with temperatures from the high 20s into the 30s and with storms brewing up in the evenings every few days. I have twice invited people to eat thinking we could hear the fountain on the terrace tinkling in the background only for its sound to be drowned out by a downpour.

And the tourists are here in abundance, many of them posing in front of my house to take photos. I feel quite flattered by that, particularly one evening when I was nursing a calvados on my balcony and one shouted up: « Monsieur, votre maison est magnifique ».

French

It seem the French are officially softening their stance on the positioning of the language. Rather than trying, albeit forlornly, to insist it should be the major language in the world, the French have decided simply to accept that it is just one of many important languages. This change of stance coincides with a proposal from Academia that some courses at French universities should be taught in English. Horror of horrors! It hasn't stopped the inexorable incursion of English words into French. Friend Steve was recently amused to find a notice displayed above PCs in an electronics store exhorting customers to « boostez votre business »; at least « votre » was French. That gave me another couple of words to add to le chat (not a cat, pronounced as in English), le show, le talk, le best of, le test (and the verb tester), etc.

Early Summer

Le Feu de la St Jean

I think the summer proper has at last started. It certainly has officially as the Feu de la St Jean took place as planned on the 24th June. It being a Monday, Roberto was there with his van but offering mussels and chips rather than pizzas. The weather was good, if not as warm as usual, and there was entertainment of a sort, a Basque band that marched through the square rather than staying and playing in it. However, it was a quite enjoyable start to the summer and the weather has since stayed summery, with temperatures well into the 20s and beyond.

Street Party

Our annual street party took place on the first Sunday in July as usual and was once again a thoroughly enjoyable affair. This time I met four people I hadn't previously known and whom I hope may become friends in the future : a Dutch couple who have bought a house at the end of the road and a Franco-American couple who are in the process of a gradual move into a house 50 yards down from mine. They are from Dallas and, it seems, already readers of this blog; I didn't know my readership had got that far!

Stuck In A Rut

I keep thinking I must read more French fiction and keep reverting to re-reading books I have had for years. I asked Mana for some ideas for more recent fiction but the only ones she could come up with were a tranlation from the English and another that didn't appeal. Daniel could only suggest Michel Houellbecq and, in any case, I'm not sure his taste in fiction corresponds to mine. Houellbecq I have already read and like somewhat, although he tends to concentrate on some of the more perverse aspects of human nature.

One problem is that I have found it difficult to define my taste in fiction, since I have liked crime novels, political novels, science fiction and many other genres but don't like any genre as a whole in particular. What it comes down to, I think, is that I like novels that provide me with insights into human nature and the human experience; encapsulated in fact a single title, La Condition Humaine (Man's Estate is the English title) of Malraux. Hence my fixation on, apart from Malraux, Camus, Gide, Sartre, Giraudoux and the other existentialists. I had thought that this fixation was because those were the authors I read in my teens and early twenties when I was studying French but now think it may be more than that. The existentialists were, after all, preoccupied totally with ruminations on human experience. So maybe I'll just have to find some modern existentialists.

Garden Colour In July/August

This year I've had another go at producing a decent floral display at the back in July/August and failed miserably again, though in part due to snail damage to my dahlias. I didn't go for a snail carnage this spring and paid the price. But, having thought about the problem, I may give up. I've concluded that I'm fighting against nature and that's a battle I'm unlikely to win. Looking around, I can't see much colour that is not lavendar, oleanders, hollyhocks or hibiscus. Hollyhocks I have, also lavendar though not in such profusion that it stands out. I also have a small oleandar. The problem for me with oleandars and hibiscus is that they take up too much room in a small garden. And the problem with smaller plants is tha they generally do their blooming earlier. It makes natural sense: if you want the best conditions for blooming, water and sun, it makes natural sense here to do that in the April to June time-frame. In July/August, many plants get scorched and so die back. So maybe I'll just concede that nature knows best.

A Country Bumpkin

Back From England

Arriving in England gave me culture shock. I didn't realise what a village country bumpkin I had become. It's not that long since I was last in London but that was just for an evening. The proliferation of crowds of people, cars, buses and houses all around was simply so unfamiliar. I was well aware that Bow, where my son Carl lives, is something of a Bangladeshi enclave but there were also significant numbers of Chinese, Turks and Caribbeans. There were most probably also many others from origins that I couldn't readily identify, a real racial melting pot.

However, I didn't witness or sense any racial tension, although there may be some. Voltaire once wrote of religion that if one were to have religion it was important to have something like twenty religions rather than just two; two would always be in conflict whilst twenty could live happily together.

Bow, I discovered, is an area of London that is due a makeover and, indeed, in the process of getting it. Whilst many of the main streets could probably do with wome demolition, the side streets were full of Georgian houses that, renovated, would form sublime roads. No doubt the speculators will be in there in force before long.

The shops in the main streets were much better than the dreary line-up of financial outlets and betting and charity shops that is the lot of many high streets in towns where all the best shops have moved into malls. The food shops, most of which proclaimed themselves Food Centres, all seemed to have a very wide selection of fruit, vegetables and « exotic » provisions, reflecting the cultural diversity of the area. They were complemented by a similar variety of retaurants and takeaways, many very good and cheap.

And I discovered the Oyster card, the cheap way of using public transport in London. It works brilliantly as do the buses and tube trains, all cleaner than I remembered them, frequent and the former relatively fast even in areas of traffic congestion.

Wandering around Oxford Street I acquired some garb that I had wanted for a long time: the most garish Union Jack T-shirt I could find and a black bowler hat, garb to wind up my French friends at boules or for England-France games watched in the Bar du Pont. I duly wore them to the first boules game on my return, to laughter and jokes all round.

What didn't go well in England was the weather. I had anticipated spending some time in the many good parks, reading and watching the world go by. But windy, cold and often wet conditions ruled that out. I did manage a trip out to see one of my favourite National Trust gardens, Mottisfont, with friend Margaret, but although the garden still looked beautiful it was a good two weeks away from the peak it should have been at at that time of the year. Mercifully, the rain that fell on the way to it ceased when we got there athough the cold conditions didn't help appreciation of the scents for which it is rightly famous.

What most surprised me about my trip was the realisation that, despite having lived almost all of my life in and around towns, I have quite quickly become a contented villager of southern France. Driving back from the airport I was immediately at peace rediscovering the calm, the wooded hills all around, the sense of space and the sun.

Sport

Boules

We duly went to the regional boules championships for rural wrinklies as planned and this time entered three teams. The championships were held at Roquebrune sur Anges, near Fréjus on the coast, and I was really looking forward to the event. When we went before, a good time was had by all. Unfortunately, that was not to be repeated.

The evening meal when we arrived was possibly the worst I have ever had in France and subsequent meals showed little improvement. One of our party, Dany Sue, called over the head chef at lunch-time on the second day to ask what was going on. The « chef » explained that it was out of his hands: Head Office dictated what was to be served as meals and he just cut it up or heated it up. The organisation running the site was Renouveau, who have a large chain of such sites. I'm not sure whther it was lack of local knowledge or budget considerations that caused that site to be chosen but the discontent was widespread so it is unlikely we'll be going near their sites again.

Disappointment at the food was compounded by my team's performance at boules. The courts were admittedly difficult to play on, a thin coveringof gravel over tarmac, but it was the same for everyone and we'd overcome similar difficulties in the national championships three years previously. None of us played consistently well and we ended up being placed 20th. On the positive side, one of our teams came 6th and the main playing day was blisteringly hot.

We didn't stay for the final lunch but took off and found a good Relais Routier which had a tasty menu for just 13 euros. Around their car park was a hedge with flowers that I thought I recognised and sure enough a twitch of my nose confoirmed it was made up of gardenias. I'd tried a couple of times to grow these in England without any success (they really need a tropical environment) but here was a while hedge of them. Their perfume surpasses anything I know.

Football

My overwhelming and totally irrational support for Chelsea (if they lose I know the ref has been bribed) cheered me up on my return when they won the Europa Cup. My almost lifelong support (an aunt took me to my first game when I was 10) was again justified. The aunt supported Chelsea too from the time she took an interest in football until her death in 1953 but never saw them win a major trophy. I was more fortunate, seeing them win four major trophies over the following 20 years and four more before our Russian saviour arrived. Rather less fortinately I also saw them relegated four times over that period. They have recently won 11 major trophies in 10 years so all is well on that front.

A Spring In The Air?

Spring Weather ?

I realise that I go about the weather rather a lot but then I am still English. The point this time is that English weather, in principle, doesn(t happen here. Specifically, the inconsistency that makes weather such a common topic of conversation in England is normally absent here. However, while England is experiencing untypical weather, we have typical English spring weather here. Over the pat two months the weather has varied from warm, sunny days, with the classically Provencal cloudless deep Wedgwood blue skies, to cool, even cold, days of overcast skies and drizzle. Provencal spring, equivalent to early summer in England, keeps promiing to arrive but is still struggling to manage it.

One welcome side-effect is that spring flowers, such as primroses and violets, which normally appear here only in shaded damp places, are all around in abundance. In that and other ways, this part of Provence is experiencing a typically English spring.

However, in the Wednesday market in Buis this week I found the first local asparagus and strawberries, including some wild asparagus. I haven't tried that before but will do this Friday when Steve, Jo and Nick come to eat. Driving along, I also noticed that the fruit orchards are starting to bloom : cherry, almond and maybe apricot. This is welcome as there hasn't been much colour by the wayside apart from the ubiquitous rosemary, which has been in bloom for some time. Coronilla is also starting to break, including the bush in my back garden. And I can finally say that all the plants I hoped would come through the winter have done, the three solanum in the front all now showing signs of new growth.

Joke

I owe this joke to friend Armelle.

A boy is buying a new car and the salesman is impressing him with one that has the very latest radio technology which reponds to speech commands. You can ask it to play any track and, if your request is not precise enough, it asks you for more information. The salesman invites the boy to try it out for himself.

The boy thinks for a moment and then says : « Halliday ».

The radio responds : « Johnny or David ? »

« Johnny » says the boy and the radio duly plays a track by Johnny Halliday.

Trying again the boy commands : « Iglesias ».

The radio responds : « Julio or Enrique ? »

The boy is so impressed he buys the car and drives off. Alittle later on, driving through town, the boy is carved up by another motorist cutting sharply in front of him.

Indignantly the boy shouts : « Bastard, arse-hole ! »

The radio responds : « Berlusconi or Sarkozy? »

Heavy Stuff

Public/Private Ownership

The current debate in the UK about the apparent partial privatisation of the NHS through the back door prompted me to think about attitudes to private and public ownership in the UK and France. The point is that infrastructure in France seems very largely to work well; in the UK, it seems frequently to work badly. Why?

Their is a definite contrast between the UK and France in this respect. The French seem to have a very clear view of arrangements between private and public ownership. Almost all infrastructure in France is owned and run by the state. Road infrastructure is owned by the state but maintenance is let out to private organisations. Railways are state owned and run. So are electricity (effectively) and gas; a risible 25% of electricity is theoretically liberalised as a sop to EU directives. Telephony is minimally liberalised at the moment but could become more so. The French like it this way and, whatever Brussels decrees, are determined to keep the status quo.

In the UK, I would argue that liberalisation of telephony has been an outstanding success; rates tend to be between a third and a half cheaper than in France. But it is difficult to point to any others. Electricity and gas are arguable, although electricity in France is still cheaper than that in the UK (piped gas is generally available only in sizeable conurbations). Roads and railways in the UK are certainly inferior to those in France.

The health service is interesting, as I have touched on before. In France it is totally privately run, with chargeable rates set by the state; and the service is generally excellent. It is the effect of the state setting chargeable rates that interests me. If you want to see an eminent surgeon or other specialist, he/she will charge more and you will have to pay the difference; but perfectly competent specialists seem to charge much lower rates than do those in the UK. A recent conversation with an ex-hospital consultant friend in England revealed that he had the alternative of waiting some 10 weeks for an appointment or going private, with a £150 fee for a consultation. The cancer specialist I see, gratis, can normally make an appointment within ten days and I know that his charge to the state is around £50. The point is that since the large majority of people can pay only what the state reimburses most medical staff set their fees accordingly. This could, and no doubt will, change in the future but seems a better arrangement than that pertaining in the UK. It seems likely to me that, in France, there will be a growing divergence between what the state will reimburse and actual medical charges, resulting in the patient having to contribute more; but the state reimbursement rates put a useful brake on price rises. The UK expectation of a totally free service means that access to the service, and the quality of that service, has to supply that brake.

Behind all this is the effectiveness of private/public arrangements. Numerous, disastrous so-called PFI initiatives in the UK indicate that the Civil Service has no idea how to negotiate with private enterprise. In France, state bodies are notorious for their hard-nosed negotiations. Therein, perhaps, lies a key difference between approaches to this question in the two countries. Possibly equally key are how and why the two sides get together. In France, there seem to be generally agreed and established roles for each; in the UK, cooperation often seems speculative, arbitrary and designed primarily to cut visible state expenditure (in theory if not in practice). It may be this speculative and arbitrary aspect that militates against the Civil Service's ability to negotiate. Whatever the reasons, the private/public split seems to be better managed in France than in the UK.

Citizenship and Democracy

This Sunday, as I usually do, I had lunch with Steve and Jo and the conversation got around to democracy, citizenship and communities'(see below): big topics, though we've already between us put the world to rights so often I sometimes wonder that it can till be in the mess it in. However, these are topics that simply won't go away and are good conversational fodder to enhance an extended lunch.

We all believe that western democracy, imperfect though it undoubtedly is (made even more so in the case of the UK by the proposed crass press legislation), is a cornerstone of western European society. Which turned my mind to the citizenship commitments proposed for new immigrants and a conviction that a commitment to democracy should be included specifically. That means not simply a commitment to obey the law, which is pretty obvious but too general, but a commitment to uphold democracy. Forget the nonsense about God, the Queen and British history, which are really no more than incidentals in this context, and focus on democracy and language. I don't believe anyone can function usefully in a country without at least a minimal mastery of its language; and overt support for a principle at the very base of its constitution (written or not) is also required. I understand that this assertion can provoke a number of quibbles but believe, if implemented, it would solve far more problems than it creates.

Communities

I've commented before on the great sense of community which I value here. Comments from various friends living elsewhere make me realise jut how valuable this is and also where it does not seem to apply. Large towns always seem capable of it, even if they do not achieve it in all areas, and so do villages, albeit needing some kind of subsidy in many cases. Where it almost never seems to apply is in suburbs or housing estates. Which makes me believe that these are not natural environments in which human beings can thrive. But they exist and countles people live in them.

So what's to be done? Clearly, some kind of catalyst in the form of a community officer is indicated and I know they exist but have little idea of what they do. Clearly also some kind of physical community centre is required, which often does not overtly exist (but underused schools do). Then it is a question of will and cost. I see bits of this picture in areas of the UK that I know but also huge untapped potential. The problems, I suspect, are that the results would not be easily quantifiable or show on sacred government targets and that local government budget is far too centralised in the UK. Against that, the gain in quality of life could be huge with a similarly considerable economic pay-off (reduction of crime, enhanced social care, etc). To me, it seems a small risk for a potantially large gain. It simply (????) needs someone to break the current mould of legislative goals and priorities within which it doesn't fit.