Getting ready for a harsh winter

A big truck-load of firewood arrived at Gamone on the morning of Christine's arrival, and the pile of wood has been present since then, covered by a tarpaulin. Over the last few days, I finally piled up the firewood in my shelter, where it's neatly stacked in six rows.

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A municipal employee, seeing me piling up all this wood, said that I was surely expecting a harsh winter. It's a fact that I now have a huge stock of firewood. Fitzroy watched with interest all this activity.

A week ago, I had moved blocks of stone into the area of my letter box, to minimize the risk of somebody running into either the mail box or the metallic fence posts in front of Gamone.

I also piled dozens of rocks onto the mound between my residence and the road.

News from the outskirts of Europe

The July 2016 newsletter of Britain’s College of Arms, which just reached me, indicates that an interesting event has occurred.

The Rt. Hon. Theresa Mary May, Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury of the United Kingdom since 13 July 2016, is entitled to bear the Arms of her husband Philip John May. He is the son of Robert John May, who was granted Arms, Crest and Badge by Letters Patent of Garter and Norroy and Ulster dated 10 October 1997. College reference: Grants 163/211.

Why was I absent for so long?

It's a crazy story... like many things in today's world. I was fed up with my costly iPhone contract, so I simply discarded it. Unfortunately, that phone link was being used periodically by Google to verify that I was indeed the owner of the Antipodes blog. As soon as the iPhone number disappeared, it was as if Google considered that I no longer existed. I had to go through several dull processes to convince Google that I existed and that I was indeed the fellow named William Skyvington who was in charge of the Antipodes blog. Finally, everything seems to have fallen back into shape.

I'm back on my Antipodes blog

God exists!

Wisdom spreads from the mouth of a child

There has been a lot of talk on the Internet about a 15-year-old Canadian lad, William Gadoury, who indicated a remote place in the jungle of the Yucatan peninsula where his calculations suggest that archaeologists are likely to discover an unknown Maya temple.

The boy's conclusions are based upon a fuzzy personal theory according to which the Mayans located their temples as mirror images of the layout of constellations in the heavens. This theory is, of course, pure mumbo-jumbo…  but nobody dares to tell the lad that there are few chances that a temple will indeed be found at the spot he has indicated. We are all so accustomed to religious trash that most people like to think that wisdom will flow magically from the lad’s mouth.

Personally, I’ll lay my head on the block. I’m totally convinced that his mumbo-jumbo guess will turn out to be pure childish bullshit.

People in Brittany should teach their cars to swim

The municipal authorities do their best to inform visitors that they must not forget that the tide rises and falls once a day... as it has been doing for many centuries. Some visitors seem to imagine that their precious automobile will surely notice that the water is rising, and climb to higher ground.

Out for a stroll

If you find yourself in this kind of situation, don't forget to check constantly that the appearance and size of the animals are not changing dramatically. In any case, don't ever be tempted to feed them.

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Paris, six months ago

After the terrorist attack, holes left by bullets in the window of
the bar La Bonne Bière were filled with red roses.

Making an effort to avoid watching Eurovision

This weekend, I plan to make an effort to avoid watching the world's most idiotic TV show, Eurovision. The craziest thing of all is that my native land, Australia, is pursuing its aims to become a permanent member of this organization. Clearly, Australia is stupid. Here's their candidate, named Dami Im, as True Blue as they come...

French Left is lost

The Left has lost its way. They're wandering around in the desert, but without a map or a compass. The prime minister Manuel Valls would surely like to lead his people in the right direction, but I fear it's no longer possible.

His party is in shreds. The situation is sad to watch, like the end of an epoch. The show is no longer amusing. The performers have lost their touch. The clowns are not funny.

I don't know how it will conclude. Maybe in a catastrophe...

Time scanners

This evening I watched a fascinating TV show on ancient archaeology, produced by an excellent US team from the University of Arkansas, whose main speaker was Dallas Campbell. They use an amazing high-tech gadget: a portable scanner that can detect the form of stone structures hidden below the surface. They examined a famous construction in Jordan of the ancient Nabataeans: the site of Petra.

Their spectacular performance opens up revolutionary perspectives.

Allah should get off the bus

Observers are going to say that, in a city whose new mayor is Muslim, it's nice to find Allah moving around on the celebrated red buses. I disagree. God is ugly and disgusting, because he's a harmful falsehood, no matter how he travels around. May he remain hidden. It's time for a change. Let the light of atheism move in, to replace religious stupidity!

French justice steps in

I would imagine that many French people are shocked by this affair. As much as the French are not necessarily narrow-minded about sexual naughtiness, they really hate the idea of a rude randy fellow who tries to use his authority to pick up women. Be that as it may, the judiciary authorities didn’t remain idle for too long. This morning, the parquet (official body of magistrates) decided to launch an investigation into the alleged misconduct of Denis Baupin. As I indicated at the end of my blog post on this subject, Denis Baupin himself charged France Inter and Mediapart with defamation... which, to my mind, was a mistake that will pursue him negatively.

I believe it would be honorable for Baupin’s wife Emmanuelle Cosse to resign immediately from her ministerial job for as long as the above-mentioned investigation is being conducted.

Click here to see severe reactions in the French press.

Here is the infamous photo (Baupin is second on the left) that apparently set the ball rolling:

This group of bright fellows thought it would be a smart idea to celebrate Women's Day by wearing lipstick. Not surprisingly, their idea backfired. They strike me as a bunch of dumb pricks...

Australian researchers searched… but they found next to nothing

Researchers from the University of Sydney in Australia attempted to discover factual data proving that mobile phones, since their introduction into society some 30 years ago, might have been responsible for cases of cerebral cancers. Their conclusions have just been published in The International Journal of Cancer Epidemiology.

Between 1982 and 2012, some 34,000 cerebral tumors were encountered in Australia: 20,000 male cases, and 14,000 female. Meanwhile, the use of mobile telephones increased enormously. In 1993, only 9 % of individuals over 20 years old possessed such a device, whereas they are now over 90 %. For the sake of the study, let us suppose that the use of portable telephones was responsible for a 50 % increase in the presence of cerebral cancers, as numerous observers have suggested. That hypothesis would mean that, in a population of 100,000 individuals, we should discover 11.7 male tumors and 7.7 female. In a male population of that size in 2012, the researchers encountered only 8.7 cancers; in a female population, only 5.8 cancers. So, there’s something seriously wrong with the familiar theory concerning the grave dangers of portable phones.

At the celebrated Institut Gustave-Roussy in France, the cancer epidemiologist Catherine Hill is outspoken: “The evolution of the incidence of cerebral tumors has nothing to do with portable phones. If there were indeed a slight relationship, it would be too small to detect. It’s amazing that people who are afraid of the possible danger of their portable phone are prepared to carry on smoking!”

Prominent French politician loses his job due to allegations of sexual misconduct

Denis Baupin is a deputy of Paris, and a vice-president of the National Assembly. After a fortnight of investigations, two prominent press organizations—Mediapart and France Inter—revealed today that this prominent political personage has a serious reputation of inappropriate sexual conduct. Within a few hours, as an outcome of these allegations, Denis Baupin resigned from his post at the National Assembly. For the moment, nobody has filed charges against Baupin.

His wife Emmanuelle Cosse is a minister in the present government.

Shooting the messenger : L'avocat de Denis Baupin, Emmanuel Pierrat, a fait savoir mardi 10 mai que son client déposait plainte "à l'encontre des journalistes signataires et des directeurs de la publication de Mediapart et de France Inter", pour "diffamation publique" selon les informations de l'AFP. 

That news is truly sickening. From now on, I'll be wary of believing in randy French arseholes who like to call themselves "ecologists".

Family history can be confusing

Here's a studio photo of my grandfather Ernest Skyvington [1891-1985] with his parents William Skyvington [1868-1959] and Eliza Mepham [1865-1899].

During my youth in Grafton (Australia), I was in constant contact with my grandfather, who had become a successful businessman in the Ford automobile domain. After my move to France, I became most interested in genealogy, and my grandfather—whom I called Pop—tried to provide me with as much information as possible on this subject. I was disappointed to discover, though, that Pop's knowledge of his English ancestors was amazingly flimsy, as if his ship voyage to Sydney in 1908 had discarded all "luggage" about his background in London. Here, for example, are two blatant cases of missing information that alarmed me for years:

• Pop could offer me no serious information whatsoever concerning the destiny of his own father, William Skyvington. He imagined vaguely that this man had been killed during World War I, but he could offer me no serious information whatsoever on his death. Now, if Pop had been an ignorant hillbilly, abandoned by his London relatives, I might have understood his ignorance. But that was not at all the case. Members of his mother's family were smart individuals, interested in literature and music, and relatively well off.

• When I asked my grandfather whether he could recall his own grandfather, Frank Skyvington, Pop amazed me by saying that he had never once heard such a name!

There was clearly something weird and disturbing in this curious state of affairs! A deep psychological problem? In the family-history domain, Pop seemed to have been brainwashed. I simply don't understand...

• Click here to read my very first blog post, entitled Family-history shock, published on 3 May 2010, on what culminated, several years later, in the Courtenay Affair.

• Click here to read the major blog post in this affair, entitled Chromosomes reveal the truth, published on 3 August 2014.

• The final step in understanding the Courtenay Affair consists of acquiring my book:

They Sought the Last of Lands

My Father’s Forebears

© William Skyvington 2014

Gamone Press, Choranche

ISBN 978-2-919427-02-4

This book can be ordered by dropping in at your local bookshop.

Plantu can imitate perfectly the style of any fellow cartoonist

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Nice weekend

This is the kind of sweet weekend that I've been looking forward to constantly since my return to my wonderful mas de Gamone six months ago. Choranche is a spring poem.

Gamone is such a paradise of greenery that I can't avoid the temptation to ask myself whether dangers could emerge here. Terrified above all by images of today's horrors in Canada, I'm thinking of the possibility of bush fires. Normally, that's not a typical threat in our corner of the world. But we shouldn't refuse to think about it.

Popularity of our French president is lower than ever

A poll published yesterday indicates that the popularity level of François Hollande has descended to its lowest level ever since the start of his presidency. Only 16 % of the people who were questioned said they had confidence in the head of state to “tackle efficiently the major problems” of the nation. That’s a drop of 2 % since the previous survey. This fall is surprising in that France’s latest economic figures have been rather reassuring.

Space odyssey

The movie 2001 : A Space Odyssey by Stanley Kubrick made a huge and lasting impact upon me.

The monolithic slab seems to be a giant silicon chip that programs and powers our earthly existence.

The movie culminates in a vast journey through the so-called Star Gate, which ends up in an old-fashioned bedroom, often referred to as the renaissance room. I have always imagined this kitsch bedroom as the attempt of  a nouveau riche American to create a fake copy of a supposedly stylish place.

Last year, when I had an accident at Gamone that could have killed me, followed by a few months of convalescence in Brittany, visions of this Kubrick bedroom reoccurred to me constantly. I tended to think that I had in fact moved through the Star Gate and that this was my tomb.