Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Paris. Show all posts

Friday, August 12, 2011

Redevelopment of Paris riverbanks

The 61-year-old Socialist mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, seems to be succeeding in persuading citizens of the City of Light (so-called, primarily, because of the intellectual force of the Enlightenment), including elected city councilors, to accept and encourage a vast project aimed at redeveloping 15 hectares of the Seine riverbanks.

He is the man behind the rent-a-bike project named Vélib.

Delanoë is also the man behind the summer transformation of the banks of the Seine into an urban "beach": the Paris Plages operation.

Let us examine the Paris/Seine riverbanks redevelopment project. The Seine flows from the east to the west through Paris.

In this map, you can see the two islands that constitute the heart of Paris. The bigger one is the Ile de la Cité (with the cathedral Notre-Dame de Paris), and the smaller one is the Ile St-Louis. The Arc de Triomphe is indicated by the blue dot in the upper left-hand corner, the Louvre is located in the middle of the map, whereas the Eiffel Tower is located in the lower left-hand zone of the map at the place labeled Champ de Mars. With respect to the direction of the river, the upper part of the map designates the Right Bank region of the city, and the lower part, the Left Bank. The riverbanks redevelopment project concerns 9 sites, 4 of which (in green) are located on the Right Bank, and 5 (in red) on the Left Bank.

A basic goal of the redevelopment project consists of reducing the presence of automobiles inside Paris, and transforming this precious Seine waterfront territory (Unesco World Heritage site) into an attractive environment to be appreciated by pedestrians and cyclists. On 4.5 hectares (30% of the global area of the project), automobile presence will in fact be reduced to zero, while the flow of automobiles will be channeled and controlled stringently in the remaining zones covered by the project. Needless to say, various professional bodies in Paris are already starting to complain about problems likely to be encountered when trying to use a private motor vehicle in the city.

The project will not be terribly costly: a basic investment of 35 million euros followed by yearly operational costs of some 5 millions euros. By comparison, the budget of the Barangaroo development project in Sydney, covering an area that's 50% greater, is 6 billion Australian dollars, which is over a hundred times the cost of the Paris riverbanks redevelopment project. Admittedly, no skyscrapers will be built in the middle of Paris!

The Paris municipality launched the project a year ago, in July 2010, and this was followed by an intensive four-month period of public presentations, debates and workshops. In-depth studies were carried out during the first half of 2011, and a vast public inquiry into the project is under way at present. Actual work on the project will be carried out during the first half of 2012, during which time Paris will inevitably be transformed into a vast construction site. And the new facilities will be opened up to the general public in the course of the second half of next year. So, if you happened to be visiting London for the Olympic Games, you might even be able to drop across the Channel to take a peek at the new face of Paris/Seine. (Clearly, I'm an optimist.)

Retrospectively, we can say that the riverbanks of Paris were largely sacrificed to the goddess Automobile during the presidency of Georges Pompidou, from June 1969 to April 1974. This gentleman from Auvergne—a former Rothschild banker—used to get around in a Porsche. I remember running into him in 1969, out in the village of Houdan, to the west of Paris, where Christine and I had rented a farmhouse. Pompidou, who had a property in nearby Orvilliers, was buying his weekend stock of cigarettes.

At that time, the French people in general were enchanted by automobiles, and they liked the idea of driving into the heart of Paris along a two-lane riverside highway.

It wasn't until much later, when environmental issues came to the forefront, that people started to think that maybe there were better things to do with a lovely river such as the Seine, on its way through a magnificent city such as Paris, than to cover its banks in macadam and transform them into an urban autoroute.

But the damage had been done. So, today, it's a matter of seeing whether it can be undone.

Since it's not yet easy to obtain English-language information concerning the Paris/Seine riverbanks redevelopment project, I thought it might be worthwhile if I were to devote the rest of this blog post to a kind of virtual visit of what we might discover in Paris in a year or so's time. So, let's imagine that we've come from Normandy or Brittany, and that we're driving into Paris from the west, along Pompidou's right-bank highway. I propose that we stick to the Right Bank, and that we visit the four sites numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4 in the above map of Paris. Then we'll leave the Right Bank, cross over the eastern tip of the Ile St-Louis and drive back along the Left Bank, visiting the sites numbered 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9. So, let's go! Incidentally, all the architects' images that you are about to see can be enlarged by clicking.

We're traveling on the Right Bank to the east, in the same direction as the white automobile. So, this first image points back to where we came from. We've already driven past the Eiffel Tower, located on the Left Bank, which can be seen in the background on the other side of the Seine. As of next year, if we stop here [site n° 1 on the map], we'll have access to several great museums, including the new modern-art space that will be opened in the Palais de Tokyo. The pedestrian Debilly Footbridge, built over a century ago, enables us to walk across to the Left Bank.

On the Left Bank, we can visit the recently-inaugurated museum of the Quai Branly, dear to the heart of former French president Jacques Chirac, concerning the civilizations of Africa, Asia and Oceania (including our Australian Aborigines). But let us return to the Right Bank and continue our journey towards the center of Paris.

Here [site n° 2 on the map], we are within walking distance of the world's most illustrious museum: the Louvre. But we only have to stroll across the Seine to meeet up with the Orsay Museum of painting and sculpture from the period 1848-1914. Let us continue eastwards.

At the level of the Paris city hall, the Hôtel de Ville [site n° 3 on the map], we encounter a couple of joyful barges, the first of which is designed for kids, while the second is a floating bistrot.

We move towards the final Right Bank redevelopment zone, which is in fact a riverboat station, named Célestins [site n° 4 on the map].

At that point, we cross over the Seine to the Left Bank, and head back in a westerly direction.

At the level of the Orsay Museum [site n° 5 on the map], we encounter what might be thought of as the spiritual center of the Paris/Seine riverbanks redevelopment project. Materially, it is a giant aerial staircase descending towards the sacred river. The architects label it a place of meditation… whereas the wary mayor of Paris, Bertrand Delanoë, has the pragmatic courage to admit that we still do not know if such a fabulous structure can indeed be built! Let's hope that solutions will be found, enabling us to visit this magic place of an evening.

Back at the level of the Concorde [site n° 6 on the map], but remaining on the Left Bank, we encounter a magic archipelago of floating islands.

Next, there's the illustrious Alexandre III Bridge linking the Place de la Concorde to the French parliament building [site n° 7 on the map].

Moving towards the Eiffel Tower, we meet up with a hitherto undistinguished place where barges deposited gravel, known quaintly as Big Stone [site n° 8 on the map].

Then we move into the Left Bank territory of the Pont d'Alma [site n° 9 on the map].

I hardly need to point out that, at the Right Bank extremity of this peaceful bridge, Princess Diana died on August 31, 1997.

Now, what must we think about this virtual journey through Paris/Seine riverbank places that will only become meaningful next year? Well, if I can speak as a former longtime resident of Paris, I would not hesitate in saying that it sounds fabulous… and I heartily congratulate Delanoë on his imagination and courage (because, as you might imagine, there are detractors).

Paris, of course, is priceless, beyond measure. And must be preserved. Bravo Bertrand!

Tuesday, May 10, 2011

Three decades ago in Paris

At 8 o'clock in the evening on 10 May 1981, this is the TV image that informed us that the new president of the Fifth Republic was a Socialist, François Mitterrand.

Revelers soon took over the Place de la Bastille in Paris. Here is one of the rare surviving photos of that wonderful evening:

I myself was lost in the middle of that huge throng. People flocked there spontaneously. Ever since the French Revolution in 1789, it has been a sacred spot for the People of the Left. It was an astonishing evening. People found it hard to realize that Mitterrand, who had been defeated in several presidential elections, was finally victorious. During those first few hours, nobody worried too much about possible political problems that might lie ahead. The citizens merely bathed in the euphoria of their momentous electoral victory.

The celebrations at the Bastille took the form of an impromptu evening of singing and dancing. There was a makeshift stage on which various singers and other celebrities appeared from time to time. In a way, I think that everybody was half-expecting that Mitterrand himself would soon be there in front of us, in the warm air of a May evening in Paris. Instead, we were greeted with thunder, lightning and a deluge of rain. God Himself had dropped in on us, to join in the victory celebrations.

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Flowers from Jerusalem

There are unusual things in my archives. This old card presents a hybrid "tree" composed of six tiny wildflowers from sites in the Holy City.

I've wandered through each of the first five places, but I'm incapable of recognizing any of the dried wildflowers. As for the monastery of St John in the Wilderness, my wanderings never took me as far south of the city as that. On the back of the card, the unknown pilgrim provides us with a brief explanation:

Christine came upon this card in one of her old books and, knowing that I'm an ardent admirer of the Holy City, she gave it to me. And it's the sort of thing that merits display on an Easter blog.

Talking of Easter, rather than evoking antiquated beliefs that have become totally obsolete by now, it would be better if we were to celebrate the men and women who once built the cathedrals.
Then Joshua called the twelve men […], out of every tribe a man: […] Take ye up every man of you a stone upon his shoulder […] that this may be a sign among you, that when your children ask their fathers in time to come, saying, What mean ye by these stones? Then ye shall answer them […] and these stones shall be for a memorial unto the children of Israel for ever.
Joshua 4 : 5-7
Last night, on the Arte TV channel, there was a fabulous French documentary concerning the construction of the Gothic cathedrals. For years, I used to walk several times a week in front of the great cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris.

In these old photos, the façade was still grimy… as I remember it when I first arrived in Paris, before Malraux got around to scrubbing it clean. I was fascinated above all by the leftmost of the three pairs of doorways, designated as the portal of the Virgin.

In the tympanum, the upper triangle presents one of the most amazingly Oedipal images in Christendom: Jesus is crowning a youthful female, about his own age, who gazes at him in adoration. That woman was in fact Mary, his alleged biological mother.

Sunday, April 17, 2011

Moving into a troubled city

Last Thursday evening, a fascinating TV program concerning the long and tumultuous career of the former French police chief Maurice Papon [1910-2007] reminded me retrospectively that I was surely a naive and uninformed Antipodean when I first arrived in Paris on Sunday, 4 February 1962. In particular, I was totally unaware that the French nation was in a state of undeclared war with her former colony, Algeria. On Monday, 12 February, a week after my arrival in Paris, I started working as a computer programmer with the European headquarters of IBM. Between these two events in my narrow personal existence, the tragedy of the métro Charonne had unfolded. Papon's police had pushed leftist political demonstrators down the steps towards the underground station (not far from where my daughter now lives), without realizing that the steel grid was closed, resulting in the death of nine individuals.

On that cold day, I was wandering around in the Latin Quarter, searching for an item of clothing that I had never possessed back out in Australia: an overcoat. Since I was incapable of understanding French-language newspapers, and had no access to TV, I was unaware that a tragedy had taken place over on the other side of the Seine. In any case, I was quite unaware of the Algerian conflict in which France had been bogged down for years. Among other things, I had never heard of the bloody events that had occurred in Paris on 17 October of the previous year (at a time when I had just celebrated my 21st birthday, out in Sydney, and was looking forward excitedly to leaving soon for Europe on the Greek vessel Bretagne), when Papon's police simply executed spontaneously and brutally an unknown number (between tens and hundreds) of Algerians who appeared to sympathize with the FLN [National Liberation Front] and tossed their bodies into the Seine.

Within a few days of my settling down in Paris, I was brought face-to-face with the realities of living in a city in which plastic explosives were being detonated by insurrectionists, intending to draw attention to nasty events on the other side of the Mediterranean. One evening, as I opened the door into my tiny hotel room in the Rue des Ecoles (just a few hundred meters away from the Sorbonne), an explosion destroyed a bookshop on the other side of the street. I remember the familiar horn signals of police vehicles against the delicate tinkling (like proverbial Xmas sleigh bells) of glass fragments falling from shattered windows in the vicinity of the targeted bookshop. A few days later, when I arrived at the IBM building in the Cité du Retiro (just near the Elysée Palace), I learned that an explosion had occurred there during the night. A month later, everything calmed down overnight when the president Charles de Gaulle signed a peace agreement with the FLN on 18 March 1962 at Evian-les-Bains, in the French Alps.

Meanwhile, IBM France (whose headquarters were located at the Place Vendôme) had given me an identity card.

By that time, I had moved into a tiny so-called "maid's room" at the top of the Hôtel du Pas de Calais in the Rue des Saints Pères.

An aspect of my professional situation at IBM that amazed me was the effort they were devoting to the challenge of my obtaining a French work permit. The procedure was set in motion by an initial visit to the Préfecture de Police on the Ile de la Cité. This was the headquarters of the domain of de Gaulle's police chief, Maurice Papon: a vast stone building alongside the Seine, just opposite the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, built around a square courtyard.

I was accompanied to the préfecture by a curious Frenchman who was surely being paid by IBM to assist foreigners such as myself. Within the precincts of the police domain, he seemed to be on friendly personal terms with many members of the clerical staff. Consequently, we were never obliged to line up in queues, or even wait to be received by prefectural personnel. I was amused by a trivial gimmick that my guide exploited constantly. In his coat pockets, he seemed to have an ample supply of American filter cigarettes. Whenever he ran into somebody he knew, his initial gesture consisted of offering him/her a cigarette, which was inevitably received with a smile, and immediately lit up. (Office employees all smoked furiously at that time.) Clearly, this gift of a cigarette was some kind of symbolic trick (a code?) intended to indicate that he had a job to do (organize my request for a work permit), and needed help from his friends.

I would not actually receive the desired document for another three months. During that time, IBM arranged a contact for me in London (since only a French consulate in a foreign land could actually instigate the issue of a work permit to a non-French individual), and it was planned that, as soon as this London contact received a consular request demanding my presence for an interview, I was to drop everything I was doing and jump onto an Air France Caravelle bound for London, enabling me to turn up at the consulate as if I had just taken the London Underground to get there. That trick—which necessitated no less than three return trips to London—enabled me to carry on working for IBM in Paris in spite of the fact that I did not yet possess a work permit. Obviously, everybody—both at the Paris prefecture and at the consulate in London—knew that I was playing a silly game, but we were obliged to behave like that in order to obtain the precious document in a manner that was superficially legal… which was finally issued to me on 15 May 1962.

Over the years, since then, I've often thought back to those first three months at IBM in Paris (where I would remain for another four months), and I've always wondered how a US company in Paris might have got around to employing a French fellow such as my guide, whose job consisted of leading me through the curious procedures that would enable me to become a regular employee in France. Well, it was only last Thursday, in the middle of the TV program about Papon, that I finally received a plausible but totally unexpected (and not particularly nice) explanation. At some time after being named Préfet de Police in March 1958, Papon called upon IBM France to develop a modern punched-card system (not yet using a computer, if I understand correctly) to handle the "management" of the tens of thousands of potential FLN activists residing in metropolitan France. In other words, for Charles de Gaulle and the French police hierarchy, IBM may have been considered as more than just an ordinary American business corporation. And there may have been vague reasons of one kind or another for treating foreign IBM personnel as VIP workers.

We must not, however, exaggerate. If the French authorities had really wanted to make it easy for me to work legally in France, they would have simply handed me a work permit, instead of expecting me to wander around in their red-tape world (of the Paris prefecture and the London consulate) for three months before issuing me a lousy temporary work permit. In any case, it's almost certain that many French visionaries (including de Gaulle) sensed that the intriguing computer phenomenon, represented ideally by IBM, would no doubt play a role in the industrial, scientific and economic future of France.

POST SCRIPTUM: It goes without saying that the work for which I was employed by IBM Europe (programming the IBM 1401 computer), from 12 February 1962 up until 28 September 1962, had nothing whatsoever to do with the above-mentioned punched-card project carried out by IBM France with a view to controlling the Algerian population residing in France at that time. IBM was an emanation—as is well known—of the Hollerith punched-card company, whose most celebrated primordial exploit in data processing (as this activity came to be called) entailed the use of punched cards to process the results of the US census of 1890. So, there was nothing particularly exceptional in Papon's use of this same punched-card support, some 70 years later, to store data concerning people in France. As for Maurice Papon, he was finally condemned and jailed for his role in the deportation of Jews from Bordeaux during the Nazi Occupation, and he was also stigmatized (but never actually pursued in a law court) for the murky aspects of his treatment of Algerians. But it would be an absurd deduction to imagine that there might have been anything intrinsically evil, a priori, in the above-mentioned IBM punched-card project. On the other hand, all this precise and well-organized police data concerning FLN suspects, placed conveniently at the fingertips of Papon, would have certainly made it easier for him to perpetrate evil deeds.

Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Stacking up firewood

In my article of 29 October 2010 entitled Fitzroyal happenings [display], I included a photo of the big heap of firewood that I had I just received. Since then, I've started to stack it up under a corner of the roof of the house, so that it will start to dry out.

Moving the wood over an average distance of four or five meters is always a tedious and tiring task, which I often carry out by tossing each piece. This afternoon, I was pleased to discover that the job can be performed easily and tirelessly with the help of a hand truck… referred to in French, curiously, as a diable (devil).

I purchased this simple device back in Paris, just before leaving for the Dauphiné in 1993. I remember a mate at the Cactus bar (in the rue des Archives) looking at me with astonishment, as I wheeled it back from the BHV department store alongside the Paris city hall. "William, you're not expected to actually purchase that kind of device. You're supposed to find a friend who can lend you one." Fair enough, I explained, but I would need it when I reached the provinces with my belongings. My mate explained that, normally, you even have the right to forget to return the borrowed diable to its rightful owner… who would then be obliged, when he next needed such a tool, to borrow one from another friend. And so on. It's a fact that certain kinds of objects (particularly tools) move around between members of a community in that fashion. Books, too, often behave like that.

Here in the country, people rarely borrow things from neighbors. The only unexpected case I can remember is that of a friend who dropped in one day and told me that he had broken his glasses, which made it difficult for him to drive his car. "Would you happen to have a spare pair of glasses that I could borrow, William?" I did, in fact: old glasses that no longer corresponded to the current state of my eyesight. He tried on a pair, and was delighted. Afterwards, for years, I was happy to see that this friend carried on wearing my old pair of glasses.

Long ago, when I was still in Paris, a brother-in-law dropped in and had an unexpected opportunity of meeting up with my most recent lady friend, who was about to catch a train for the provinces. My brother-in-law was kind enough to suggest that he could accompany my lady friend to the train station. As things turned out, he "borrowed" her like a diable, and ended up accompanying her in the train to her provincial town. I never saw her again. So, I had to find myself new lady friends. Back in those carefree days, in Paris, life could be like that.

Saturday, September 11, 2010

Why are they all weeping?

The national French library has an excellent online service named Gallica. Among countless treasures of all kinds, they propose issues of the French daily Petit Journal illustré from 1884 to 1920. The following illustration appeared on the front page of that publication dated May 6, 1928:

Everybody is weeping… including a policeman and a horse. Try to guess why all the tears?

Answer: An accident had just occurred involving a truck transporting produce from the old Paris food markets known as Les Halles. It had been hit by another truck, and its load of vegetables had been scattered all over the road, and crushed by other vehicles. The first truck had been transporting a load of onions.

Friday, August 6, 2010

Bizarre events in Paris

In August, many regular residents of Paris go away on vacation, and the city is left to tourists. For a month, the banks of the Seine have been transformed into a vast beach, thanks to a fleet of trucks that dumped 1350 tons of sand on the macadam.

On the water, as at any self-respecting beach resort, there are canoes, kayaks, yachts, row boats and pedalos. But no swimmers, because the quality of the water is not yet fit for that… in spite of the promise made in 1977 by Jacques Chirac, when he was mayor of the capital.

This summer, the Seine has been the scene for two mysterious happenings. First, at the start of a warm evening, an empty Austrian tourist bus plunged spontaneously (or so it appears) into the river and disappeared from view. The next day, the carcass of the vehicle was dragged up into shallow water.

More recently, a big barge full of 355 tons of gravel (similar to the one you see, out in the middle of the river, in the following photo) suddenly sank in the same vicinity where the tourist bus had taken a bath.

Before the barge could be refloated, the gravel had to be removed. For the moment, I don't know whether or not this material has been used to extend the artificial Paris beach in a way that would no doubt appeal to English visitors (accustomed to gravel beaches).

Theories are arising concerning the possible existence of some kind of mysterious Bermuda Triangle effect in the vicinity of the Eiffel Tower. In particular, Paris authorities are worried (although they won't admit it publicly) that the celebrated landmark tower might decide to topple over spontaneously and take a dip in the river. In Seine…

Thursday, March 11, 2010

Associative thinking

Most serious individuals concentrate upon one thing at a time. I'm not suggesting that they have what might be called "one-track minds". I'm merely saying that, when they decide to talk about X, they deliberately leave Y locked up in the wardrobe... which makes for nice easy-to-follow conversation. As for me, I'm not like that. Whenever I'm talking about X, I find myself searching constantly for associated pretexts that might enable me to liberate Y from the wardrobe. This makes me an impossible conversationalist, because my listeners find it hard to pin down what I'm talking about. In polite terms, one might say that I practice associative thinking.

Over the last few days (since the death of my uncle Ken Walker), I've been browsing through old family photos.

The bikes leaning against the fence of the Walker home in Waterview (South Grafton) are Malvern Star track machines, manufactured down in Melbourne. And, in the late '30s, one of the most famous members of the Malvern Star team in Australia was the French champion Charles Rampelberg.

This postcard was pasted in my childhood bible: "Cyclone" Johnny Walker's big brown-paper scrapbook of press cuttings. A native of northern France, Rampelberg was racing out in Australia when World War II erupted. His name appears in records of the six-day races at Sydney in 1938 and 1941. Seriously injured in a fall when his head struck a wing-nut of his front wheel, Rampelberg was obliged to end his cycling career. Unable to envisage a return to his war-stricken homeland, he decided to get into business in Australia as a delicatessen. Later, having made a fortune through this activity, Charles returned to Paris and worked as a marketing representative for his brother Emile Rampelberg, who was renowned as a graphic designer in the textile field, with family links to the great house of Boussac from northern France.

Prior to his career in Australia, Charles Rampelberg had won a bronze medal in the kilometer time trial at the 1932 Olympic Games in Los Angeles. Back in France, this celebrated track cyclist had surely raced at times (although I've found no records that substantiate this speculation) in an indoor cycling stadium in Paris known as the Vélodrome d'hiver (winter velodrome), located near the Eiffel Tower. I've attended fabulous six-day track-cycling events in both Paris Bercy and Grenoble. The following photo (unidentified) gives you an idea of the hallucinating atmosphere of such places.

Today, we have no authentic images of the Paris velodrome, known familiarly as the Vel d'Hiv.

It was located not far from the spot where Australia's embassy now stands. In fact, while the champion cyclist Rampelberg was recovering from head wounds out in the Antipodes, and setting up his delicatessen business, horrific events were taking place back in the cycling stadium in Paris. On 16-17 July 1942, this place was the focal point of a horrendous roundup of Parisian Jews, destined for extermination in the Nazi camps of Poland. And the most amazing aspect of this terrible affair was that it was carried out, not by German Nazis, but by Frenchmen!

On TV last Tuesday evening, there was much talk about this terrible site and this ignominious event, known now in French, for all Eternity, as the rafle du Vel' d'Hiv (roundup of the winter velodrome). This page of modern French history is darker, even, than the notorious Armistice signed by a fuddy-duddy Philippe Pétain. One of the frightening items of fallout concerning this disgusting affair is the fact that one of its prominent French instigators, René Bousquet, remained a personal friend of François Mitterrand.

These days, countless Francophiles such as myself have been striving to fathom these events. In a sense, we've succeeded, as demonstrated by the immense pride with which I shout out on the rooftops my unbounded admiration and love for the fabulous Fifth Republic of Charles de Gaulle. But don't think of us as dupes. We know that there were dark days... which will continue to take a lot of explaining. That's what I mean by associative thinking.

Monday, February 8, 2010

Google video during the Superbowl

The title of the video is Parisian Love, and it suggests that Google can help a Superbowl spectator to find his French true love in Paris.



I managed to do that a long time ago... with no help from Google. As a non-American, I left out the bit about finding a church in Paris. As for Emmanuelle's lovely crib, I seem to recall that it was a gift from Christine's parents. There too, we were able to get by without Google. Thank goodness for that. In those days, Google didn't even exist!

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

Gérard dislikes automobiles

Mounted on his old horse, Don Quixote attacked windmills with nothing more than his knight's lance.

France's celebrated actor Gérard Depardieu is suspected (but not yet formally accused) of having attacked an innocent automobile parked in a Paris street in the vicinity of Gérard's apartment. He operated almost barehanded, so it appears. The damages are brutal: a broken windshield and doors kicked in.

Observers are wondering what might have motivated such an assault. It has been suggested that this act of destruction might be interpreted as fallout from Copenhagen's failure to achieve what had been expected in rules stipulating cuts in carbon dioxide emissions. It's a fact that the automobile is looked upon as a major culprit in this domain, along with farting cows. So, maybe the actor's behavior was a symbolic personal expression of his profound desire that our children might inherit a cleaner planet. In that case, though, why did he perform this noble act in the middle of the night, in a somewhat stealthy manner, instead of operating in broad daylight, in front of a crowd of environmental activists and joyous spectators?

If indeed this hypothesis of an aversion to automobiles turned out to be correct, then it would be nice if Gérard were to go along to the police station, when he is summoned, on horseback, like Don Quixote. This would make a huge positive impact upon global-warming protagonists throughout the world... and might even persuade the municipal authorities in Paris—who have already reintroduced bicycles with much success—to examine the possibility of reverting massively to horses for transport inside the City of Light.

Realistically, we must not exclude the possibility that alcohol and aggressiveness might have played a role in this act of violence. If that were the case, then the lucky car-owner should look forward to the pleasure of soon being able to drive around Paris in a famous pristine vehicle. He could put photographic banners on his brand-new doors to thank publicly the benefactor... referred to affectionately as Gégé.

This automobile—the Gégémobile—could rapidly become a unique and highly-priced collector's item.