Versatile Blogger II

Susie at No Damn Blog has kindly nominated me for the Versatile Blogger award. Susie is an accomplished writer, author of several travel books where she puts herself through hell on foot, bike or other mode of transport and recounts her adventures in a highly readable and entertaining way.

Her blog is indeed a versatile collection of writing on subjects ranging from the time she nicked a dress, to the shock of insurance company home truths, her favourite book reads and her love of animals.

This is the second time I've been awarded this title. The last time was in November 2010 and if you'd like to read the way I stuck to the rules then, click here.

It was all about revealing more information about yourself, but I've done that recently, so I'll just go on to linking to some interesting blogs. I've been trying to widen my sources of news recently. This is because my free subscription to the Times Online ran out in December and I'm buggered if I'm going to pay £120 to continue it, and the Telegraph Online now only lets you read 20 pages for free before they are blocking your reading with a big notice advising you on how to pay to read more.

Yeah, right, so I know I should be supporting these worthy journalistic types, but I'm not giving any money to that bastard Murdoch, so the Times can get stuffed, and I don't like the Telegraph sufficiently to sign up financially either. On the other hand, as I'm in France, and have been for a long time, maybe it's time to dig out some interesting websites on the increasingly dire situation here. While most of the following are written in French, the last one is written in English.

Here is the fruit of my labours:
Nouvelles de France which is a site written by journalists who are "droite, libéraux et conservateurs". An interesting post was written on Friday about the TF1 news appearance by Christiane Taubira, ministre de la Justice, Garde des Sceaux, who spoke about the mariage pour tous projet de loi. In front of millions of viewers she said that the words 'mother' and 'father' would not be removed from the Code Civil. She said « C’est un texte de loi qui n’enlève strictement rien à personne, qui ne supprime pas les mots de « père » et de « mère »».

I'm not sure if she's actually read the projet de loi, but the writer of the post had, and found that "Il comporte 9 pages, 23 articles. Eh bien, les pages 2 à 9, les articles 4 à 21, consistent en la chasse aux mots « père » et « mère » dans tout le corpus juridique français" which basically means that throughout the projet, the words 'mother' and 'father' have been systematically removed. And it's just the start, so basically, she's been caught lying on television in front of millions of viewers. 

La Reforme Sabotée is a website dedicated to taking the piss out of François Hollande's U-turn over a reform of the banking system. He made a pre-electoral promise that he would separate commercial banking from speculative banking in order to protect the public. Well, the banking lobby apparently got to work on him, and his new projet de loi is a mealy-mouthed sop to the idea of change while not really changing at all. The banks love it, the media declare he's wimped out.  Here's an example:

More seriously, LIESI  is a bi-monthly blog where "Une analyse très pointue de l’actualité est proposée tous les quinze jours par la LETTRE d’INFORMATIONS ÉCONOMIQUES et STRATÉGIQUE." Two recent blog posts have been written by Pascal Roussel, "analyste au sein du Département des Risques Financiers de la Banque Européenne d’Investissement (BEI)" on the announcement of end of the euro, and suggesting that it is hiding a different objective.

For nitty gritty and often sensational news that is difficult to access in the MSM (main stream media) because they have politically correct instructions not to talk about certain things, I read Dreuz.info. I don't always appreciate what they write, they can get a tad extreme (they are very anti-Obama), but it is a useful source. One article that had me absolutely gob-smacked was this one on the French justice system dealing with a recidivist criminal, Icham Dapchi, whose latest escapade was taking his girlfriend hostage during 7 hours, necessitating the intervention of the GIPN with helicopters. 

Despite telling the judge that he was dangerous when drunk and on drugs, he left the court on the arm of his girlfriend: "Condamné à 30 mois d’emprisonnement, dont 24 mois avec sursis et mise à l’épreuve, obligation de soins, de travail et de formation… mais sans mandat de dépôt."

I'm sure he'll be a good boy from now on...

Finally, for some light relief, in English, I can strongly advise you read MulitfariousMeanderings written by a jolly lady who lives somewhere in Hérault and has a highly individual and humoristic take on life. Her most recent hilarious post is on 'Nesting and migration in the lesser-spotted boob' which I strongly recommend.

French Parenting

Yet another mother living in Paris has jumped on the bandwagon of writing a book heaping praise on French women and making British women feel shitty in comparison. The latest in a long line of this treacherous sisterhood (which includes Helena wotsit wotsit) is Pamela Druckerman who has written a book called 'French Children don't Throw Food'. All I can say about the title is that she's never visited my eldest's collège where of course throwing food was frowned upon and punished but that didn't stop it from happening.

Our Pam is an American married to a Brit and they live in the rarefied hotspot of elitist Paris where the very top end of French society hangs out. One cannot say her entourage is exactly representative of le tout France. What these women are, compared it seems to the your average Brit, is confident. French mothers are confident about everything British woman cower and feel miserable about: their size, their looks, the way they give birth, the way they bring up their children, breastfeeding, being a mother, being a wife and everything in between except being a friend to their girlfriends. British women never feel inferior about their girl-friendships.

British women needed another book telling us how to raise our kids like a hole in the head, and holding the French up as shining examples of perfection is pretty laughable. If, for example, their children are such paragons of good behaviour, why are the child psychiatrist waiting rooms filled to standing room only with desperate parents dangling on a lengthy waiting list?

If you think about it, perfect French women books are strangely at odds with the other book bandwagon, the Peter Mayle style moving to France and grappling with the forces of ye olde French peasant. How many times have we heard about the recalcitrant plumber, the wily builder, salt of the earth types, taciturn but once you've tamed the beast, your friend for life? Do these men have French mothers who sound like the sort of ones our Pam meets and greets?

When it comes to women, it seems that journalists feel perfectly entitled to lump 50% of the population into one upper social type, the perfect, slim, manicured, elegant French lady. Whatever happened to the peasant farmer's wife in her nylon pinny, aubergine-dyed masculine-cut hair and comfy old booties? She's not usually a chain-smoking coffee junkie, but a solidly built eater of good old stodgy filling nosh.

The mums I see at my sons' schools often look as haggard as any other working mum, and their kids a variety of good and badly behaved. Children might not be brought up as little emperors here (a disastrous method!) but their mothers are often overly protective, mollycoddling them and preventing them from potentially hurting themselves. One of the commonest words you hear mothers of young children cry is 'ATTENTION!'. No wonder they become risk-averse and seek the comfort of life as a fonctionnaire.

Many bourgeois parents try to force their kids into a straight-jacket of robotic mini me's, with hours of school work every night, obsessive attention to school marks, and no say in what they wear. Then you get rebellious types who break away and become successful entrepreneurs. I was despairing of how lazy my son is and the head of a huge business company told me not to worry because the laziest boys made the most creative businessmen. He himself had been a terror. I await to see the results of his wisdom... but in the meantime, my son has decided he needs to get working (phew!).

I think what the French do well is rely on common sense when bringing up their kids, and perhaps the support of mothers, sisters, aunts, and grandmothers, rather than gimmicky books by childless gurus. Why British women are so attracted to bizarre methods of childrearing rather than relying on common sense and a sensible book of essential information is a mystery. But whatever the method chosen rest assured that a mother's place is in the wrong, and our parents fuck us up whatever their nationality.

Philip Larkin - This Be The Verse

They fuck you up, your mum and dad.
  They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had
  And add some extra, just for you.

Is French Business Run on Theft?

That's a bit strong, you may think, but up and down the country people are being fleeced by companies including banks who ignore their legitimate requests to STOP DEBITING MY ACCOUNT.

A few years ago I had a run-in with Cegetel who over-debited my account for 18 months. I had sent Customer Service the necessary registered letter, but apparently to the wrong address - their 'Cancel my Account' address, as distinct from Customer Service, is always written in the smallest possible text in the hardest to find spot on their contract hidden down under 'Really Boring Legalese' and 'General BlahBlah' and I missed it.

Of course, no one wrote to me to tell me my mistake - you're supposed to know, or follow up just in case - or indeed pass my letter on to the right office. That would be way too helpful and probably not in anyone's job description. No, it just went in the bin. I was in the midst of a divorce at the time and my mind was not on following up contract cancellations.

When I did realise what was going on, I spent hours on the phone several time getting through to be told to write to the proper office as they had no record of my request, not even a note on my file in the computer. No one picked up on the fact that there had been no activity on the account for 18 months, they basically told me to suck it up and follow the correct procedure this time. No reimbursing of the excess, natch, not even the slightest 'geste commercial'.

A friend of mine has been trying to get her bank to stop debiting her account for a telephone that was cancelled two years ago. Cancelling a direct debit has to come from the debiting company, the bank won't stop it even though it's your money. If the company has received the registered letter and does not cancel the direct debit, in my book that's theft.

I read another blog recently where someone is battling with SFR who keep 'losing' the registered letters and, naturally, keep debiting the account. Her daughter has left the country to study abroad, a legitimate reason for cancelling an mobile phone account, and yet SFR have been wilfully 'not receiving' registered letters and ignoring all communication (whilst continuing to debit the account, natch). Another where the electricity company mis-estimates consumption by, sometimes, hundreds of euros. In fact, the blogosphere is full of irate customers who are being fleeced of their hard-earned euros by incompetent companies.

Are these companies run incompetently on purpose? or is it part of policy to drag out cancellations for months pretending to lose letters and other documents whilst continuing to debit bank accounts? Is that famous gallic shrug, so beloved of romantic lefties, being incorporated into business management to explain error upon error by arrogant jobsworths?

Maybe this is an example of French business management, perhaps taught on MBA courses and in other business schools - do nothing, deny, do nothing, deny, do nothing, deny, meanwhile feed the money markets with all those ill-gotten gains so even if you have to reimburse what's owed, it ain't been for nuffin'!

How can a company deny receiving a registered letter for which they have signed? Yet they do, every day, countless times a day, incurring huge sums in expensive registered letters to hapless customers. And it's not just one company either. It's a recurring problem right across French business. It's impossible to get things done correctly without following everything up - no one will call you back. It's frankly a wonder that French businesses manage to stay in business at all, and raises a huge question over the degree of competition that exists. One would hazard that 'not much' is the answer seeing how they all have similarly atrocious levels of customer service.

If any one company managed to get their act together over service, I'm quite sure that customers would beat a path to their door.

They are reaping huge profits, these companies, and how? by wilful and persistent denial of customers' rights in cancelling contracts and thieving from their bank accounts through direct debits. Taking money from someone without their permission is theft.

Do we have a choice in how we pay for certain services such as mobile phone accounts? No, they all insist on direct debits or refuse to open an account. The only other option is to use the more expensive pay-as-you-go cards.

Basically they have us by the short and curlies, and then when you try to get out, they don't let you! All you get, as a friend of mine put it, is a face full of shrugging under-worked French shoulders. Monty Python had them sussed. Sit back and enjoy 'Les Francais' from 'Monty Python and the Holy Grail'.

A Lively Exchange

As David Cameron described Sarkozy's furious berating at the EU leaders' summit on his policy of evicting illegal travellers/Roma, a not so heated, but quite lively exchange was going on at my youngest's parent's evening.

An unlikely venue in my opinion, but then I'm not one to air personal problems in public. (Ahem)

So there I was sitting in my youngest's chair so I know where he sits in class now, and the prof could also place me as his mother, although she'd already done that as we'd met to pass some cycling moments together on Tuesday.

First of all we had this complete idiot of a PEEP spokeswoman try and rally us to her cause. She did this in roughly 30 seconds by telling us there would be an open house at 8.30pm and we would be most welcome, that we could contact her on such and such a number and the website for which she gave us an email address (and not her husband's as I'd complained about her having previously!), and then tried to emotionally blackmail us for the remaining 20 seconds telling us our children needed us to participate in the life of the school blah blah blah. Tough. These parents associations - both of them - are squatted by the most boring, unimaginative, appalling, fearful, negative, bossy, controlling, thick French women on the planet. Spending 5 minutes with them ages you by 10 years, causes irrevocable wrinkles, and has you reaching for the deadly nightshade. So tough.

Next we had the English teacher, who, miraculously, is English (or Irish, she didn't say enough for me to guess precisely). She explained that she took the kids for two lots of forty minutes - not a lot - and her aim was to concentrate on getting them to feel at ease with the language.

So this French hatchet faced, thin-lipped battleaxe puts up her hand and asks what the targets are for the kids to know by the end of the year. We're talking 9-10yr olds here. So the teacher, a bit flummoxed, said they should feel more at ease with the language, and Battleaxe insists by demanding to know whether the kids should be able to construct a phrase.

At which point, the teacher asks for the name of Battleaxe's child and B refuses to give it saying that she doesn't want her child to be picked upon as a consequence. I think I gave a sharp intake of breath at this point. This was in front of a class full of parents. The teacher didn't lose her calm - she's probably seen worse; we are in France - and deducted that there must be an agenda going on here. She also realised that Battleaxe had older children (from where she was sitting) and so asked if Battleaxe didn't like her lessons.

"Non, je n'aime pas vos cours" said Battleaxe, and several bottoms shifted uneasily on chairs. She maintained that the kids learned nothing and her other children were none the wiser about English at the end of their primary schooling than they had been when they started. Other parents agreed with her.

The bit I appreciated was when the teacher said to them that 2x40mins was nothing and that what the kids needed was extra practice outside the classroom, and proceeded to give a list of all the things the parents could do to improve their child's level. Haha, that showed 'em. They were expecting a child to write sentences and have homework in grammar and such, which isn't on the curriculum and we all know how the French love to stick to curriculum, and instead they get a teacher who is trying to make kids feel comfortable about talking and telling the parents to get off their butts if they want more.

Old battleaxe had to come round in the end; thankfully she didn't stick to her guns as some excessively stupid ones do, and the evening moved on (slowly).

It was 8pm before I got home to the ravening wolves who had to be fed ASAP. Not easy to conjure up exciting food in 30 seconds when there are little leftovers, so they got ravioli. Had we not spent so much time on the teaching of English 2x40mins per week, I could have been home to cook up some fresh trout, so THANKS A BUNCH Battleaxe! Bitch.

Diner des Cons

I don't think it would be an understatement to say that the French do not have a very commercial attitude, even if they work in the service industry. Remember the Just Smile campaign to persuade shopkeepers and waiters that a smile rather than a scowl brings more business?

You would think that those in the entertainment industry would be a little more commercially-minded because if clients are not entertained they don't return and that means loss of business. You would also think that positive feedback from clients would be welcomed in the spirit it was intended, to improve future events. In the case of one company here, it's greeted with as much enthusiasm as a rude letter of complaint.

Take this response to a letter of positive feedback on a disasterous evening, complete with mistaken identity:
Bonjour,
Je me souviens bien de vous, enfin de Mr X, l'homme enivré qui réclamait à boire au bar toute la soirée ! C'est ça, je ne me trompe pas ? Celui qui voulait régler ces verres par cartes bleus !?
Nous prenons avec respect vos commentaires... Merci de votre aide !
This clubbing evening had cost 65€ each including dinner of 2 dishes. Entrance without dinner cost 35€ so they had 30€ to spend on the dinner - 2 dishes. What did they offer for this by no means measly sum? Unimaginative salad, meat that was cold with rostis that you buy in Lidl, or salmon that was also (unintentionally) cold, tasted and had the texture of cardboard, with an entrée of transparent beef carpaccio. A menu supposedly 'haut de gamme'.

The wine, which had been advertised as included in the price of the dinner, turned out not to be, and final insult, was considered an 'oublie de négotiation' which was made up for with a 'cocktail de rattrapage' of orange nectar and water. Oh, and they were very proud of offering 4 'coupes de champagne' at a thimbleful per coupe.

The loos were smelly, with bald towels, and there was one ladies' for 150 women. Offering a mediocre meal at a non-mediocre price plus inaccurate advertising over the wine, plus a general air of taking the piss and making a fast cash buck is not the way to create a returning clientele.

The letter of positive feedback made several suggestions on how to improve the evening for next time, like employing a better caterer, getting in a local winemaker, honouring their commitments, making the ambiance more convivial with lights and decent music. The DJ was a tosser, apparently. Certainly no David Guetta anyway. It suggested the organisers visit other clubs of that type, including in the UK, to see the sort of competition they're up against.

The response from the organisers, who mistook Mr X for someone else as he couldn't actually drink because he was driving, shows a complete lack of respect for the client. Furthermore, by making everyone pay in cash and not accepting credit cards for the exorbitant bar prices, this suggests more than dodgy dealings for this 'association' which, by the 1901 association regulations, is not allowed to make a profit. Yeah right...

After a further mail which expressed frustration at their lack of commercialism, this is the answer they got back:

je peux mettre tous les temoignages que vous souhaitez, no problemo, attendez vous a une reponse adaquat, la mettrez vous ?...

Bref, on va pas épiloguer sur notre réaction pas du tout auto-satisfaisante, nous vous avons lu avec attention, vous ne l'avez pas fait de votre coté (si si Mr été bien saoul ou semblait vraiment l'être, pour temoins, tous notre staff...). Vous ne semblez pas bien comprendre le français écrit, nous pouvons vous l'écrire en anglais, sachez que je le parle et l'écrit couramment (ironie gratuite que nous vous renvoyons...)

Restons en là svp ! Nous acceptons les critiques, et ne prendrons dans vos messages que le constructif, pas les caprices d'enfants gatés que vous semblez être ....

Sur ce, nous stoppons là cette conversation sterile et vous souhaitons bon courage dans votre monde qui semble bien éloigné du notre.......

It finished by an invitation from my friends for these tossers to attend a 'Diner des Cons' seeing as they had already qualified and were being considered hot favourites to win, and guess what, the organisers only went and accepted!!! We almost fell off our chairs laughing and continued chortling all day.

Heureusement que la ricicule ne tue pas.

Frenchie from Hell

You think you divorced the woman from hell? I bet she doesn't come close to the one I heard about last night.

She was married to the plumber and it seems likely there is something loose between the ears although she won't admit it. She became convinced he was being unfaithful (he wasn't) and that set off a reaction of extraordinary proportions.

First she beat herself up and went to the police with her bruises saying her husband had inflicted them. She did this three times. Then they went on holiday with the kids, camping, cycling, rambling doing outdoor things and getting caught in brambles etc. Upon their return, the caravan still attached to the car, she went to the police again and showed them her cuts and bruises and told them her husband had done them. So they came round and ordered him to leave his home. He found out at that point that there had been 3 other complaints.

He went back the next day to find all his stuff flung onto the garden, his professional papers flying about, torn and dirty, and the locks changed. On his own house.

She accused him of inappropriate touching of their kids and he was forbidden from seeing them for some time.

She falsified his signature on a document declaring that he had given his car to her, took it to the Prefecture, got a Carte Grise and then declared the car stolen. He received a call one day from a police pal asking him if he knew his car was stolen when he knew it was in his garage.

She then got a relative, a bent cop, to steal his car by using a lorry to tow it away. It was heading for Spain when it was retrieved at the border.

She tried to get her hands on his beloved classic car by asking to borrow it when hers was 'having trouble'. Luckily the eldest daughter who was 10 at the time rang her dad and told him not to because there was no problem with her car, her mother just wanted to get her hands on his.

She falsified his grandmother's death certificate to declare him dead to try and get the life insurance. It was in the name of the kids however, so she got nothing. Another pal rang him one day and asked him if he knew he was dead.

She got the local drunk to wait for him at night outside his flat, beat him up, and knife him in the stomach twice. He spent three weeks in hospital. He recognised the thug of course as the local drunk, so the guy did actually spend 3 months in prison. 

She joined the Jehovah's Witnesses, obtained false passports for the kids and took them to Mali as a missionary without informing him, effectively kidnapping them. He didn't see them for a year as he had no idea where she was. He had to use all his contacts to get them back to France legally.

Despite all this, do you think the French justice system has in any way punished her? It would be wrong to say no, but it might just as well be.  She was fined 12K and as she's a welfare case, she has no money and cannot pay. So there you have it. In France you can lie, commit fraud, commit attempted fraud, wrongly accuse someone of something, kidnap, pay a hit man, and steal... and get away with it.

She's still got the kids, too. They chose to stay with her but he does have access. For the time being... She wants to go back to Mali...

How's that for BAD?

Screen Speak/Real Speak

My eldest is a fan of 'Poubelle la Vie'... oops, I mean 'Plus Belle la Vie' which is a tele series on France 3 at 8.15pm on weekdays. It has a certain charm, mostly because it's not set in ubiquitous Paris, but in Marseille.

I don't really follow it, but if it's on, and I'm sitting down facing the tele, then I will, for want of anything better or more energetic to do, watch it.

What always amazes me when I watch French people talking French on tele not in real life, is that they sound nothing like French people do when they normally speak French. I'm not sure whether this is down to crap acting (which it probably is) or is an acting school technique to show how difficult it is to be an actor because you've got to sound totally different and totally alien to real French people.

On the tele, folks are always mumbling, gabbling, sulking, shouting, being cross and basically sounding like they have memorised their lines and want to get them out as quickly as possible: 1) to show how well they know them; 2) because the lines are so bad the actors would be cringing if they had to say them any slower; 3) because they have to cram everything into 30mins which means either they say them within their allotted span of time or they get edited out.

I work with a bunch of French people and they never sound anything like actors do on the tele, or even very often in films. There seems to be Screen Speak, and Real Speak, and ne'er the twain will meet.

French films are often about shouting. French people, according to screen writers, are always cross with each other, so they shout and sulk and storm off or fling insults at each other. My TWDB does none of those things and neither do any of the couples I know. They all talk to each other normally, so what is it with Screen Speak? Why is it so unreal and so bad? Has no one else noticed how excrutiating it is listening to these same actors becoming the same person over and over? No wonder the best ones work hard at their English so they can expand their horizons.

Before you think I'm being horrid and critical about French movies, let me assure you that there are some that I like very much. Le Diner des Cons is an excellent movie with brilliant social observation. I also have a penchant for the earlier 'Taxi' movies because of the car and the first 'Visiteurs' movie. However, in all three, you'll notice much shouting, pouting and bad temper.

To me, it just gets a bit predictable and boring. Give me lively, funny, jolly 'Men In Black' any day!

Rant

I am not in a sweet temper this morning, for several reasons.

1. I had to get up at the crack of dawn (06.45).
2. I had to get in my car and drive my eldest to his new school 15mins away. (Him not a happy bunny, but, as I told him, you'll only have to suffer one first day, and we've all had to go through it.)
3. Try to get my youngest into the local playgroup only to discover they are closed today, the day school is out...
4. Discover by hearsay that there is no longer ever school on a Wednesday morning because they are now operating the 4-day Week. (Work to rule next?)
5. Obliged to take the morning off, thus, to care for youngest who should be in school except it's closed, or should therefore be in the playgroup except they're closed too...
6. So cross I can't do anything constructive with time off except monitor blood pressure. Reflecting on wisdom of scoffing chocolate, but too vain to risk addition of fat rolls around middle and top of legs, so decide to give in to despair instead.
7. Discover folder of information in youngest's bag, no mention of 4-day week, but a list of supplies to buy, including 'workbook protectors'. As workbooks come in 3 sizes, I'm assuming that the teacher is taking the piss by not making it CLEAR which size is needed, so I'll have to guess which one she means. Am remembering just how irritated French teachers make me, and am wondering whether it would be judicious to buy a blood pressure monitor...
8. Try to ring various friends/mother to rant, none of whom are in so...
9. Take out rant on TWDB in an email itemising each organisational/communication failure of school/playgroup after which he'll probably decide I'm a neurotic lunatic and break off diplomatic relations. Regret inability to retract emails... May resort to chocolate after all.

This ends this morning's rant.

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible.

Cue Blond Jokes

So I'm thinking of going blond. Then I would have an excuse for being ditsy and no one would mind.

Actually I've been a sort of light auburny colour for a very long time now, and am getting bored. Summer is rather a good season for doing daft things because I can blame it on the heat getting to my head, so it's the moment to do it.

When I was six I was a lovely little blond thing with greeny blue eyes. Then my hair went mousey, I ceased to be a lovely little thing and became a revolting mess of adolescent features. Not the pubescent cuteness of many young things of today for me. I had to wait another ten years or so before I became presentable.

Mind you, I'm banking on this late-arrived presentableness hanging on into decrepitude. Many cute young things go off once they hit their mid-thirties and turn into sharp-featured old bats. Maybe if you hit surface attractiveness a bit later, you can expect more mileage out of it.

Anyway, back to being blond, I thought I might go a gentle shade of honey blond. What I won't do is go platinum. I'd look a right tart and like death only just warmed up.

French women have a funny attitude to hair colour. They often go for really outlandish shades, mostly based on a colour I call virulent aubergine. The sheer unnaturalness of this on the head of a woman of a certain age (once they hit 50 it's down the coiffeur's for a perm and a nice bit a' colour) is quite stunning. To start with, it's deeply unflattering. The colour is too intense and too dark for many skin types and just drains them of their remaining life.

Of course, you won't find this colour on women like Carla Bruni. No, it's reserved for normal women in normal towns who do things like wait outside the school gates and preserve French beans in sterilized pots. These women are dressed in saggy-kneed leggings, or cheapo jeans or some other sartorially inelegant garment. A few appear in work clothes, but none turn up in Chanel suits or YSL tailored trousers.

I've made an appointment with Boris down the road for Saturday morning. My head will be in his hands, and I'm counting on him to render me blondly superb. This might be something of a tall order however. Going blond will not suddenly make my legs grow an extra 5 inches or take 15 years off my face, but you know what they say: 'a change is as good as a rest' although I am resting quite a lot at the moment what with lounging about on sunbeds for hours on end, but it's the thought that counts...

I just hope it will not all end in tears... or go green in the pool!

Chestnutted

I've found my MP3 charger. Problem is I've now lost the damn player! Bugger bugger bugger. I've also a nasty feeling it's been nicked out of my unlocked car. Strong Language Warning: F U C K

On the good side, cute guy is not the wayward straying evil bugger I thought he was, so that's all right...

Last night I was at a Fête de la Châtaigne at my youngest's school. They were roasting chestnuts and had provided wine, soft drinks and nibbles just to get everyone together. I think it was the parents' association that organised it.

I went along and grappled with some burnt or undercooked chestnuts while my son rushed about playing with his friends. Then I took my plastic cup of red plonkino and retired to a nearby fence to observe the goings on. I felt like some sort of scientist observing the social interaction of an obscure tribe. I didn't know anyone and just felt I didn't particularly want to either. Except one. An ex-neighbour who is ng's physiotherapist, who told his wife I'm looking fabulous at the moment and she hasn't spoken to me since. hehe... There's French women for you!

I must have been in one of my bizarre moods - out of it, stand-offish, unfriendly. Then one lady did come over - the grandmother of a friend of my youngest, who I know. She must have been desperate for company... anyway, we exchanged pleasantries and then I searched around for something to say. She is elegant and kind, but just with enormous communication barriers. Which of course makes any conversation a mere banality and a way of filling the time before you can decently go home.

Eventually I was able to take my leave and rushed off to embrace the human warmth of my two darlings at home. Relief!

World Slavery

The abolition of slavery in Britain is 200years old. Commemorating it is a good way of bringing it to the attention of a wider public who are not fully aware of this era of British history. We don't learn about such things at school, or at least I didn't when I was there, but then we didn't learn about a whole swathe of other parts of history either.

Gillian Reynolds captures some of the frustration surrounding the topic of slavery in her article in the Telegraph today; frustration on both sides, from blacks and whites. Descendents who want reparation for wrongs committed to their ancestors are at loggerheads with those who believe that it's pointless apologising in modern times for actions carried out generations ago. That whole period was infinitely regretful, but an apology from the State would be meaningless. Nations all over the world have committed atrocities since the beginning of time. Why single out one particular atrocity, centuries later?

Gleaned from Wikipedia, some interesting information on slavery:

"There were slaves in mainland France, but the institution was never fully authorized there. However, slavery was vitally important in France's Caribbean possessions, especially Saint-Domingue... In Paris, on February 4, 1794, Abbé Grégoire and the Convention ratified this action by officially abolishing slavery in all French territories. Napoleon sent troops to the Caribbean in 1802 to try to re-establish slavery. They succeeded in Guadeloupe, but the ex-slaves of Saint-Domingue defeated the French army and declared independence."

"The Arab world has traded in slaves like many other cultures of the region. It was one of the oldest slave trades, predating the European transatlantic slave trade by hundreds of years^[8]. The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade is thought to have originated with trans-Saharan slavery...

...As many African slaves may have crossed the Sahara Desert, the Red Sea, and the Indian Ocean as crossed the Atlantic, perhaps more. Some sources estimate that between 11 and 17 million slaves crossed the Red Sea, Indian Ocean, and Sahara Desert from 650 to 1900, compared to 11.6 million across the Atlantic from 1500 to the late 1860s. The Arab or Middle Eastern slave trade continued into the early 1900s...

...The Arab trade in slaves continued into the 20th century. Written travelogues and other historical works are replete with references to slaves owned by wealthy traders, nobility and heads of state in the Arabian Peninsula well into the 1920s. Slave owning and slave-like working conditions have been documented up to and including the present, in countries of the Middle East. Though the subject is considered taboo in the affected regions, a leading Saudi government cleric and author of the country's religious curriculum has called for the outright re-legalization of slavery."

"Slavery persists in Africa more than in all other continents. Slavery in Mauritania was legally abolished by laws passed in 1905, 1961, and 1981, but several human rights organizations are reporting that the practice continues there. The trading of children has been reported in modern Nigeria and Benin. In parts of Ghana, a family may be punished for an offense by having to turn over a virgin female to serve as a sex slave within the offended family... In the Sudan, slavery continues as part of an ongoing civil war; see also the Slavery in Sudan article. Evidence emerged in the late 1990s of systematic slavery in cacao plantations in West Africa."

Instead of breast-beating it would be far better to campaign to outlaw modern-day slavery. Maybe the descendents of slaves could take up the fight to ensure that enslavement is eradicated from the planet so that what happened to their ancestors never happens to anyone else.

Cellu-lie Creams

The ResidentAdo is 16, tall, slim and pretty, and yesterday tried to buy some cellulite cream. After we had picked ourselves up off the rather grubby Carrefour floor, we told her that they don't work.
"They don't work" we said.
"This one does" said she.
"No, none do" we said.
"Yes, this one does" said she.
"It's a con, they don't work, it's the rubbing that helps" said I.
"Get your mother to buy it" said her father.
And that was that, she put it back and I suppose we'll see what she can get out of her mother.

I wondered why a young girl might think she needs to rub a bunch of dubious chemicals on her legs to get rid of imaginary cellulite. Well, we are in France, home of the gullible magic-potion/pill-for-all ills-believing woman, but really, SIXTEEN!

French women spend a fortune on these cellulite creams when a healthy diet, exercise and drinking lots of water is all you need. I remember my mother saying that when she was enduring radiotherapy, she had to drink two litres of water per day. This was a bind and the treatment was wearing, but on the bright side, she lost the cellulite on her legs.

Studies continue to show that cellulite creams don't work, but apparently women who use them are like Creationists: they don't accept the science, they want to believe the fantasy. Who wouldn't? It's boring drinking lots of water, it's tedious having to get out there and exercise, and it's often dull eating a healthy diet. They involve a potential lifestyle change from hedonistic self-indulgence to more healthily rigorous self-control. It's so much easier just to fork out 20Euros plus and enjoy the sensation of applying specialist silky creams on one's legs.

The thing is, you don't need to spend wads of cash on cellulite cream as they do no more than moisturize legs. You can get the same effect by keeping the skin exfoliated with some sort of mitt and massaging in normal moisturizer regularly. French women spend a lot of time looking after their bodies and it's probably this regular application of creams which help them keep cellulite at bay. As they get bigger, however, I think we'll be seeing more dimpled behinds on the beaches in the summer.

Great Christmas Feasting 2006

I always love hearing what other people eat at Christmas and have been reading some salivating accounts of scrumptious dishes on various blogs. Here, therefore is my version of the Great Christmas Feasting 2006.

Christmas Eve took place chez NG who describes herself as a French hybrid and declares she makes the best foie gras in the county. We were pretty keen to test her out, although, to be honest I do not have much to compare with as I usually buy pots of the stuff already prepared. NG has been giving elegant dinner parties forever and can not only prepare delicious food, but she presents it beautifully on one of those perfectly decorated tables. We felt very 'Home & Garden'.

Christmas Eve/Réveillon Dinner was thus :

• An aperitif of nibbles of guacamole, and salmon mousse with linseed bread; magret de canard snippets on sticks, and fine champagne.
• We then moved to the work of art that was the table, and started with mise en bouche. Before she developed a very nasty bone disease, NG used to make these exquisite mouthfuls set in tiny dishes herself, but cannot now do this because the fiddliness of putting them together is too much for her painfully swollen finger joints.
• These were followed by her famous foie gras mi-cuit which, I have to say, was simply utterly delicious. It was rich, but wasn't greasy, and at the same time had a wonderful finesse of taste with perfumes that were revealed in the aftertaste as it slipped silkily down the hatch.
• When the champagne bottle was empty, we continued with one of my three bottles of Chateau Margaux, which, as it came into contact with the palette, vied with the foie gras in silkiness. It's not often we drink such wine, and it was thus all the more appreciated as a rare pleasure.
• Dinner continued with gravlax and giant prawns, salade de magret de canard et noix, and freshly baked rolls from the artisan boulanger over the road. A heart-shaped camembert au lait cru preceeded dessert of exotic fruit salad, a pleasantly refreshing end to the meal.

We ate, not at midnight, but around 8pm which meant we could all get a decent night's sleep having digested properly.

Christmas Day's lunch was at my house and traditionally English. The table was laid with the best porcelaine, crystal and cutlery; remnants of wedding gifts, on an overtly Christmassy table cloth in red, green and gold thread. Festive although lacking a certain finesse...

• We started with Florida Cocktail. To this traditional Hague version of fresh segments of orange and grapefruit we added fresh lychees for the RA. It is simply the best way to prepare for the onslaught of the rest of the meal. Refreshing, cleansing, and you should always eat fruit at the start of a heavy meal rather than the end to stop it fermenting in your stomach.
• The roast turkey was stuffed with a French farce of chestnuts tossed in cream with fried shallots and doused liberally with cognac. I placed bacon slices over the breast until it was time to brown the skin, and cooked it at 190°C for around 2.5hrs plus resting time. It came out moist and perfectly cooked.
• The turkey was accompanied by Nigella Lawson recipes of roast potatoes dusted with semolina, parsnips roasted with maple syrup, and her wonderful sprouts dish with fried bacon, chestnuts, cognac and parsley. I strongly recommend this way to eat sprouts. It has to be the best way ever! We also had a purée of potato and celeriac; bread sauce, gravy, steamed broccolli, chipolatas, and devils on angels' horseback made with prunes we'd soaked in cognac for 12 hours. There was a certain themed ingredient to our meal as you can see...
• Pudding was the classic super scrumptious one and only English Christmas Pudding! We served it with... cognac butter, and cream.
• To drink, we started with champagne, finished the end of the Margaux from the previous day, and continued with the Mailhol from Domaine Henry that we had bought during the Fête de Vin. We opened the Passerille to go with the pudding, and were pleased to note that it went beautifully.

We had a gastronomic feast, making the most out of both French and English traditions. Isn't that the best way to live?

Taking that which is good wherever you find it?

Ecole/School

Depending on who you're talking to, you'll get a completely different idea of where your child is able to obtain a good education.

This week, I've heard two conflicting views: one French, one British. A friend of mine who lives in one of the villages around Montpellier has sent her eldest daughter to the UK to attend a public school for a term. Normally, this school would charge £4,000 per term for a day pupil, or £20,000 full time per year. A staggering amount. If I was paying that I would certainly expect my child to receive a very fine education and lots of extra-curricular activities.

This child attends a private Catholic school in Montpellier mainly because the local school was so crappy she was getting nowhere fast. It was a very small pond and she was neither stretched, nor motivated to do her best. In desperation, then, her parents decided to send her to a private school, 400€ per term. For that she gets, as her mother was telling me, an education that is made up of the most boring material possible, no extra-curricular activities, but a strict work ethic and encouragement to do her best.

To show her another side to education, she has been sent to the English boarding school for this term, staying with her grandparents. Apart from the fact that she is homesick, she is loving it. She is part of acting groups, the choir and anything else she has time to do. The teachers are top notch and she is taught creatively and with enthusiasm. It sounds like the English education system at its best.

A woman I met just yesterday at my youngest's school; a French woman married to a Welshman, told me they decided to come to France, to Montpellier where her mother and grandparents live, because she wanted to be near them, and also because a French education is better than an English one.

It's perhaps unfair to compare the best of British with the ordinary of French, but, while infant and primary education may be fine, in my experience, the problems start with collège and lycée. My children are lucky. We live in a comfortable area where the well-to-do parents are happy enough with the local schools to send their little darlings there. They might receive an acceptable education, but it's a shame the schools only cater to their academic success. All extra-curricula activities have to be undertaken outside school. There is no sport, no music, no drama. Nothing to bring the school together. No sense of belonging through sporting triumphs; musical or dramatic productions. The result is that children have ambivalent feelings about their school.

I would never send my children away to school, but I do wish the best of the different education systems could be studied and adapted to local needs for the benefit of all types of children, and give them a solid reason to feel they belong to their school in heart and mind.