Falling apart?

The rumor mill has been running at full steam today, particularly in Switzerland, concerning the alleged imminence of a breakup of the French presidential couple. Cécilia Sarkozy didn't accompany her husband on a recent trip to Bulgaria, where she became a heroine after playing a role in the liberation of the nurses imprisoned by Muammar al-Gaddafi in Libya. Then she didn't accompany Nicolas to the rugby match in Cardiff in which France defeated the All Blacks. Finally, last Sunday, Cécilia failed to take part in a TV talk show in which Michel Drucker received the female minister of Justice Rachida Dati, a close friend of the Sarkozy couple.

Would a falling apart of the Sarkozys have any dramatic consequences in the French presidential and political context? Not at all, to my way of thinking. On the contrary, I would imagine that countless ordinary French observers have been wondering how the hell any lady, with the kindest heart and purest intentions in the world, could be courageous enough to stand by, let alone run after, such a busy and excited gentleman as Nicolas Sarkozy.

Gamone creature

This shy little fellow has taken up residence recently in the ancient stone cellar behind my living room: the place where the monks once made wine. When I opened the door and turned on the light, I found him hanging from the tufa ceiling, so I raced upstairs and grabbed my Nikon. He wasn't very happy to find somebody using a flash on him in the middle of the night. He started to fly around a bit, but decided to stay. So, I quickly turned out the light and left him in peace.

Ever since reading the fascinating chapter on bats written by Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker, I've developed a huge respect for these incredible creatures, whose engineering is far more complex than anything ever designed and built by humans. I'm often spellbound by their flight in the early evening twilight, when they're catching insects for dinner. Besides, they are beautiful creatures, built a little like miniature Formula 1 automobiles, or jet fighters. Suspended upside-down on the ceiling of my cellar at Gamone, this delightful little bat is an excellent antipodean symbol.

Bloody beliefs

Last week, I drove to the village of Notre-Dame-de-l'Osier, not far beyond Saint-Marcellin. In the local church, this stained-glass window tells a curious bloody story. On Assumption Day 1649, a local Huguenot named Pierre Port-Combet was trimming a willow tree in front of his house, to obtain twigs of the kind used to make wicker baskets. Devout Catholics—such as Pierre's wife Jeanne Pélion—knew, of course, that it was a sin to work on such a feast day. Suddenly, Pierre was astonished to see that his curved pruning sickle and his clothes were covered in blood. Thinking he had cut himself, Pierre went into his house, to clean himself up, but neither he nor his wife found any trace of the imagined wound. When they returned to the willow tree, blood was flowing from slashed branches. Pierre was henceforth notorious throughout France, which led to his being condemned by the religious authorities for working on 15 August.

The sequel of this story is illustrated by a second stained-glass window. In 1657, eight years after the amazing phenomenon of the bleeding willow tree, Pierre was plowing his field when a lovely female stranger [the Virgin Mary] appeared and informed the Huguenot that she knew him, that she disapproved of his Protestant beliefs, and that he would soon die if he didn't convert to Catholicism. True enough, soon after the apparition of the Virgin, Pierre Port-Combet fell ill and died. And the legend of Our Lady of the Willow Twigs [osier in French] was born.

The Virgin's personal concern for the conflict between Catholicism and Protestantism amuses us today. One would imagine that the lady's apparition upon the planet Earth might have been directed towards more universal and profound issues, instead of making the long journey from Heaven simply to reprimand a humble Dauphiné farmer because he was a Protestant. But, as we all know, the ways of God remain mysterious. Meanwhile, a lovely little chapel has been erected at the spot where the Huguenot's bloody willow tree once stood:

A flower-bedecked altar evokes the Virgin's warning words to the unrepentant Huguenot:

Devout believers take these past events seriously, as proven by the quantity of thanksgiving plaques:

In the middle, to accord an allure of credibility to this affair, there's a photocopy of a declaration made in 1686 by the Catholic widow, Jeanne Pélion, 30 years after the death of her Huguenot husband. That was the time it took for the message of the mother of God to sink in. Recent marble plaques inform us that such-and-such a believer got through a baccalauréat exam thanks to the Virgin, whereas another was even awarded a superior university-level certificate with the help of Our Lady of the Willow Twigs. Conclusion: As every true believer knows perfectly well, religion works!

Block and tackle

Living on slopes, as I do, is quite different to living on flat land. And living on my own is quite different to being accompanied by a wife and a horde of country offspring. To do anything whatsoever, I can only count upon myself. The other day, a fellow working on the new bitumen road up past Gamone asked me: "You don't live here all year round, do you?" He seemed to be amazed when I said yes. From my viewpoint, I can't imagine where the hell I might live if I didn't live here at Gamone. Do observers see me as a wealthy guy who resides normally in Zurich, say, and only comes here to Choranche to admire the countryside from time to time, when he's tired of the noise of the city? It's a little like the surprise of people who learn that I cook for myself, instead of going out every evening to eat in one of the many imaginary restaurants in the vicinity of Choranche. Or the observers who are surprised that an Australian such as myself doesn't drop out to Bondi, Alice Springs or the Great Barrier Reef every so often.

At Gamone, I'm often obliged to move heavy stuff—such as blocks of limestone—from one place to another, often over sloping ground. I do so with the help of an excellent block-and-tackle device, seen in orange in the following photo:

On the left of this photo, there's a ten-meter length of silver chain that I purchased a few days ago in a hardware store at Valence. Often, when I'm using the block-and-tackle tool (attached to a tree, for example) to drag stuff from one point to another, I use nylon ropes. But this is a silly solution, for the ropes soon become inextricably knotted. So, it's preferable to work with heavy chains instead of ropes. My newly-purchased chains are indeed heavy. In the hardware store, a young guy was struggling to drag out the ten meters of chain, supervised by a friendly and attractive female colleague, with a glint in her eye.

He: "These chains are terribly heavy."

She (in a perfectly serious tone of voice, as if she were commenting upon the price of my purchase): "In the case of a vicious mother-in-law, you can't settle for anything less."

That's what I love about France and the French. People are never totally serious. They retain a great sense of humor and linguistic skill.

Intriguing tourist

I've always been amused by the following innocuous joke: A tourist is driving in the Australian outback, looking for a friend of a friend whose property is located at a place named Stumpy Hollow. Having asked for directions in a roadside pub, he receives precise information from the publican: "No problem, mate. Just keep driving straight along the road here. In another hour or so, you'll see a road sign marked Stumpy Hollow 1 mile. Carry on driving. Two miles further on, you'll see another identical road sign, but pointing back in the direction from where you came. The place you're looking for is located midway between the two road signs."

In the Cartesian spirit of France, with later inspiration from a methodical Corsican soldier named Napoléon Bonaparte, every square meter of the land bears a precise geographical reference, composed of the names of the commune in which the place is located, and the département to which that commune belongs. For example, my property at Gamone is located in the commune of Choranche, with an official population of about a hundred inhabitants, which is a part of the department named Isère. In a typical rural commune, there's often a central village or bourg in which the mairie [offices of the mayor] is located, along with the commune's main church, possibly a school and a post office, and usually a few cafés. In the same rigorous manner that I just mentioned, French road authorities place a huge name-panel at the entry to every village in France.

Friends in automobiles, knowing that my address is Choranche, often have trouble in finding me because they don't understand the difference between a village (bourg) and a commune. So, they drive to the tiny village named Choranche, located some 3 kilometers further down the road from my house on the slopes at Gamone.

Why am I talking about all this? Well, in France, many villages are affected by what we might call the Stumpy Hollow Syndrome. That's to say, you don't realize you've arrived in the village before you start driving out of it. One such village, not far from where I live, is L'Albenc... which appears to motorists as little more than a few buildings grouped around a bend in the road from Saint-Marcellin to Grenoble. In fact, I'm exaggerating, because you encounter a village "square" at L'Albenc [a round-shaped intersection of a few streets] with a church, set against the backdrop of the Vercors mountain range.

Nearby, the dull façade of an old house overlooks a sad fountain:

On the other side of the road, there's an attractive restaurant:

But the place is so clogged up with parked automobiles that it's hard to appreciate its charm. In fact, as for countless tiny French villages, you have to stop for a moment in L'Albenc to see what lies behind the Stumpy Hollow bend in the road. And, once you stroll away from the busy road that has mortally wounded the village, there are charming surprises, including even an ancient castle:

The greatest surprises of all are to be found in the archives, which inform us that a strange tourist named Nostradamus once spent an evening in L'Albenc, in 1545, at an inn named La Croix blanche [The White Cross].

The village looked like this about a century ago:

The mairie of L'Albenc informs me that nobody, today, knows exactly the location of the auberge where the celebrated seer spent an evening. A possible site is this ancient building, whose façade looks as if it might date from the 16th century... but that is pure speculation on my part. So, let us abandon present-day L'Albenc, and look at what the archives tell us about the famous evening that Nostradamus spent in this Dauphiné village.

Charmed by the quiet elegance of the 42-year-old Provençal tourist who signed in as Michel de Nostredame, the female innkeeper of La Croix blanche, named Christine Châtaigner, invited Nostradamus to dine at the table of half-a-dozen local dignitaries, who had ordered a simple but tasty local dish of roast chickens. Nostradamus wanted to know how such fabulous "slow food" might have been prepared, and he learned that the secret consisted of feeding the chickens with crushed wheat macerated in milk.

The L'Albenc hosts of Nostradamus imagined their curious guest, at first, as a reformist preacher of one kind or another. Nostradamus corrected this error by informing his friends that he was in fact a medical researcher. He had been summoned to Lyon to investigate an outbreak of the plague, and he was now wandering through Provence in a non-directive manner. As fine an after-dinner orator as Bill Clinton, the charismatic Nostradamus declared: "We are entering upon a huge schism. From a religious viewpoint, your village [L'Albenc] will not escape from the normal order of events. Invaders, claiming to interpret liberally the teaching of the Bible, will burn down your churches. For forty years, civil war will bring iron and fire to the Dauphiné. Even when peace treaties have been drawn up, the cost of supporting troops sent here to maintain peace will devour your resources. In the end, however, your village will return to its ancient beliefs. As in the case today, there will be a single religion here." Those in the tavern who listened in bewilderment to the speech of Nostradamus wondered whether the chicken meat of L'Albenc possessed the curious power of turning a tourist into a soothsayer. As for the oracle himself, he took leave of those who had listened to his words, and went to bed, for he intended to leave L'Albenc early the next morning.

Shortly after the visit of the strange tourist, L'Albenc and a good part of the Dauphiné province were devastated by religious wars between Huguenots and Catholics for nearly forty years, from 1561 to 1598.

Roadworks at Gamone

Recently, in email discussions with Australian friends visiting France for the rugby, I pointed out vaguely that I might be hindered in meeting up with them because of impending roadworks at Gamone, demanding my presence. Last Friday, I noticed that a crimson arrow had been drawn, with a can of spray paint, at the point where the macadam is to be extended.

This was a sign that the work was about to start. Sure enough, this morning, the calm of Gamone was shattered by the arrival of trucks, a roller and a mechanical shovel. Now, the reason I'm concerned by these operations is that I want to take advantage of the presence of the mechanical shovel in order to remove the tip of the following embankment:

As soon as the workmen arrived, I explained my wishes [which I had already transmitted to the firm by phone], and they gave me rapidly an affirmative reply. So, I got to work instantly on the demolition of the sturdy woodshed that I built a long time ago:

The general idea is that the removal of the earth and the woodshed will open up a large roadside space, enabling me to build a garage for my automobile.

This afternoon, I interrupted my demolition work in order to drive to Tain-l'Hermitage to meet up with my Grafton highschool friend Cathy Prowse [née Fuller] and her husband Vernon, who are participating in a rugby tour that stopped at the Chapoutier cellars in the celebrated wine village. [These winemakers have bought vineyards in Australia.]

Pleasant surprise. When I got back to Gamone, I discovered that the operator of the mechanical shovel had already started to remove a lot of the earth. This was unexpected, because we haven't had the slightest discussion yet about the price of the work. Tomorrow, I'll be up at dawn to continue my demolition of the woodshed. In the afternoon, my South Grafton friends Andrew and Ingrid Pollack will be arriving by automobile, to spend the night here. I've already organized a fine evening dinner for my guests [foie gras de canard avec pêches, as invented by Paul Bocuse, followed by canard laqué]. When they arrive, in the middle of the afternoon, they'll probably find me in dirty work overalls on top of the carcass of my woodshed, with a mechanical shovel scraping away alongside me. How's that for rural authenticity?

Home produce

Most people are enticed by the mythical concept of consuming their own homegrown produce. As the mentally-retarded big guy named Lennie in Steinbeck's Of Mice and Men put it: "... live off the fatta the lan'." The idea of homegrown fruit and vegetables appeals to almost everybody... except maybe people who can't be bothered to cut an apple in half, before biting into it, to make sure it doesn't conceal a worm. Maybe meat is an exception. I'm not sure that everybody likes the idea of slaughtering lambs, or even chickens. I think tomatoes are a fine example of the merits of homegrown stuff. I have the impression that every tomato I've ever grown at Gamone has tasted better than any other tomatoes I've ever eaten. But I don't know to what extent this judgment might be purely psychological.

This year, at Gamone, the walnuts are exceptionally big, but the harvest is relatively small. The same might be said for my apple tree.

Bad day for the Southern Hemisphere

There's a saying in French: Before you've actually shot the bear, don't try to sell its skin. We might reflect upon this wisdom in the rugby domain. Within the context of the rugby opposition between the Old World and the Southern Hemisphere, observers [including myself] were starting to believe that the latter were invincible.

— Almost everybody thought that England would be skinned by the Wallabies at Marseille this afternoon. It was a great match... for England, above all.

— As for this evening's confrontation in Cardiff between the French Blues and the New Zealand Blacks, everybody was convinced that France would be skinned. Instead, they won.

It's weird to see Australia and New Zealand eliminated from the Rugby World Cup in the space of a few hours. I often feel that the primordial difference between the Southern Hemisphere and the Old World—not only in rugby, but in other domains, as well—is that ancient nations such as England and France nurture silly old values of a mysterious nature that might be termed determination, perseverance and idealism... as opposed to the pragmatic criteria of the New World, based at times upon flashy opportunism. I'm aware that my hasty analysis of the situation is fuzzy and no doubt faulty. But we still need to explain how and why the illustrious and flamboyant Wallabies and All Blacks could get eliminated amazingly in a single day by the old-fashioned English Roses and French Roosters.

In any case, yesterday, we were all ready to sell a few European bear skins. Today, alas, we realize that the beasts in question have not in fact been shot and killed. On the contrary...

Ground level is good for you

This blurry but otherwise charming family photo was taken over a quarter of a century ago by a little boy. Today, if you visit the website of François Skyvington [display], you'll see that he has made a lot of progress in the art of photography.

During that happy gathering, my 89-year-old grandfather told us with amusement that, if he could succeed in attaining the grand old age of 100, he would be looking forward to receiving a personal letter of best wishes from the queen... which was apparently a customary thing back in those days. Unfortunately, he didn't make it. On Australia Day 1985, he climbed up onto a swivel chair to change a lightbulb in his living room at Burleigh Heads, and suffered a fall that led to his death.

As a child, visiting Australia's beautiful Blue Mountains with my grandparents, I recall that Pop [as we called our grandfather] was just as anguished by mountainous heights as I am. If vertigo is an inherited affliction [which it probably isn't], then it's certain that I picked up the bad genes from Pop. In any case, the silly circumstances of Pop's mortal accident have made me particularly wary of the risks of injuries through falling from a height [as distinct from stumbling on the slippery slopes of Gamone and breaking a leg, as I did a few years ago].

In yesterday's news, when I came upon statistics concerning the causes of accidental deaths in France [for the year 2004], I seized upon this opportunity of using for the first time my brand-new spreadsheet software from Apple, called Numbers, to draw a simple chart (in less than a minute) representing the French deaths data:

Of the 18 548 mortal accidents in France, 5 354 were attributed to falls. This was twice the number of deaths due to suffocation, which is a category consisting primarily of gluttonous folk who choke on such things as pretzels. In these statistics, the most obvious sign of a global evolution in society is that relatively few people die of poisoning... which is no doubt good news for fast-food merchants. Instead of poisoning ourselves by the stuff we eat, we simply become fat and flabby and fall victims to so-called natural deaths due to stuffed arteries. That's progress.

Wild rabbits and environmental issues

Often, I like to see how new words have come into existence. And sometimes, to understand a new word that appears to be modern— a neologism, as they are called—you have to start a long way back in time. Let me tell you how a curious new word has appeared in French.

It's a roundabout story, which starts with rabbits. As an Australian brought up in a country town, I've always thought I knew a little bit about these animals. On countless occasions, out in the bush, I saw my father take his rifle from the back of the Jeep to shoot rabbits. They were Dad's number-one enemy, because they consumed the precious grass intended for his beef cattle. In France, I discovered that the word lapin designates the huge backyard rabbit reared in cages for meat. To talk about small wild rabbits running around in the fields and forests, as in Australia, the French use the expression lapin de garenne.

Most French people, asked to define a garenne, would probably reply that this word designates patches of uncultivated land in the country where you're likely to find wild rabbits. In the Middle Ages, a garenne was a hunting reserve. At that time, in Paris, much of the land to the south of the place where the Eiffel Tower now stands was a swampy garenne. Finally, it was cleaned up and cultivated by the monks of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, who grew vegetables there. The track leading down to the former garenne came to be called the rue Garanelle, and this was later changed to rue de Grenelle. From the start of the 18th century, numerous aristocratic mansions—called hôtels in French—were erected in this fashionable street.

One of these splendid dwellings was the home of the Duke of Châtelet [nothing to do with the famous square of that name in the center of the city]. When this gentleman was guillotined in 1777, the Hôtel du Châtelet became state property. For many years, it was the palace of the archbishop of Paris. After the separation between the State and the Church became law, in 1905, the Republic asked the archbishop to pack his bags, and the noble mansion was henceforth occupied by the ministry of Employment.

In this building, on 25/26 May 1968, at the height of the social turmoil in France [referred to, since then, as mai 68], representatives of the government of Georges Pompidou [including a certain young secretary of state named Jacques Chirac] negotiated with trade unions and management organizations, resulting in a 25% increase in the basic wage, an average 10% increase in effective salaries, and the adoption of the 40-hour working week. Since then, the historic outcome of this meeting has been referred to as the accords de Grenelle [Grenelle agreement].

Today, the name of the street where this agreement was signed has become a common noun in everyday French: grenelle [still spelled incorrectly, most often, with an uppercase G]. The new word is used to designate a major national get-together involving participants, often with widely differing viewpoints, who are intent upon achieving a consensus. At the present moment, for example, a vast process of debate and study aimed at finding solutions to environmental problems is designated by this neologism: the grenelle of the environment. For wild rabbits, that's a big hop.

Two happy men

Last Friday, 58-year-old Dominique Strauss-Kahn, a former French finance minister, was elected to the position of managing director of the IMF [International Monetary Fund], whose headquarters are located in Washington. On Monday, he was received at the Elysées Palace in Paris for a 45-minute discussion with Nicolas Sarkozy, who had been instrumental in promoting the candidacy of the socialist Strauss-Kahn for this prestigious international job.

Normally, French people in big jobs prefer to avoid revealing their income, because it's considered bad taste in France to talk publicly about one's wealth. As a professor at the political science institute in Paris once put it: "In France, money only becomes respectable after it's a few generations old." Be that as it may, everybody now knows that Dominique Strauss-Kahn's tax-free salary will be 495 000 US dollars. Besides, he'll get driven around gratis in a Lincoln. I hope he'll also receive free luncheon vouchers for the staff canteen.

In France, not surprisingly, people were interested above all in finding out whether Strauss-Kahn's acceptance of this job rules him out as a presidential candidate in 2012. Reading between the lines, I have the impression that this would not appear to be the case. First, Strauss-Kahn stated explicitly that he "remains socialist", which means that he hasn't abandoned the domain of French politics. Then, in diplomatic language concerning the elections of 2012, he pointed out that "the final words in such affairs always belong to the French people". That's a roundabout way of saying that, if the French people cry out for him loudly enough, he'll no doubt make himself available.

My kitchen door

As I explained in my recent article entitled Gamone enhancements [display], I'm thinking of installing a wrought iron and glass marquise above my kitchen door. I took this photo of the door in question—with the autumn-hued slopes on the other side of Gamone Creek reflected in the glass—so I can show it to the fellow who manufactures marquises, in order to choose an ideal model in his collection.

It's actually quite a small door. The opening in the stone is no more than 85 cm wide and 226 cm high. For the moment, the bell is screwed into the oaken beam above the door, but I think I'll move it to a bare patch of the wall, maybe well to the right. The lamp, too, will no doubt have to be moved, because it's in the way of the future marquise.

Talking about the bell, I was irritated to discover, back in 1994, that the architect in charge of the initial restoration of the house had installed an electric buzzer in the two-centuries-old stone wall, as if it were an urban flat. During the recent work on the façade, the buzzer short-circuited two or three times, outing my computer. I would like to get rid of it, but the problem is that I'm not sure how to go about removing the bloody thing, because it's connected directly to the power box. What an absurd gadget! What an idiotic architect!

Water pipes dug up at Gamone

A couple of years ago, when the bend in the dirt track that runs up beyond my house was about to be transformed for the first time into a macadam road, a mechanical shovel unearthed broken fragments of earthenware water pipes in the zone between the spring and the house.

Since I had already come upon old black rubber tubing used to bring spring water down to the house, I imagined that the earthenware pipes must have been part of an earlier water system. Some four-fifths of the inside of the pipe fragments were blocked by a calcareous deposit, now as hard as rock.

The inside surface of the pipes was lined with an enamel coating, making it easy to detach the calcareous core. The enamel then appeared smooth, bright and shiny, as if it were fresh out of the pottery oven.

The chief of the earthmoving firm that was building the new road recognized the pipes immediately, since this was probably not the first time that his machines had dug up such stuff. "Those are the well-known ceramic pipes from the town of Bollène, down on the Rhône." Although he was sure of the origin of the pipes, he didn't seem to know much more about them: neither the date at which they were manufactured, nor the name of the company that produced them.

When I made inquiries at the town council of Bollène, they told me that there were no manufacturers of water pipes in the region, and that none of the council members had ever heard of such an activity, in the past, in their town. This indicated, first, that these folk were surprisingly uninformed concerning the industrial heritage of their region, but it confirmed what I had imagined: namely, that these ceramic pipes were probably part of a very old installation, maybe even dating from the time of the monks at Choranche.

The pipes looked like expensive stuff, and their installation must have been a relatively delicate and time-consuming affair. I found it hard to believe that a modest Gamone farmer such as Hippolyte Gerin, mentioned in my article entitled Façade at Gamone [display], would have had the means, and gone to the trouble, of investing in such a sophisticated system. Besides, the thickness of the calcareous deposit in the pipes suggested that they had been in service for a long time before falling into disuse, and being replaced by rubber tubing.

After a few more inquiries through the Internet, and by phone, I've discovered that Bollène was indeed reputed for centuries because of the fine quality of local clay, which made it possible to manufacture high-quality industrial ceramics: not only water pipes, but refractory tiles for ovens. A director of a well-known tile manufacturing firm at Bollène told me that his company—which was quite old— was still making water pipes around the start of the 20th century. With a view to finding out more about my Gamone pipes, he suggested I should contact the university at Avignon to see if somebody has written a thesis on the history of local activities in industrial ceramics.

Readers will have gathered that I get a thrill out of attempting to solve puzzles of this kind...

Accident or assassination?

A Martian, seeing the following banner displayed on the Internet, might imagine that this affair is about to be examined for the first time:

[Click here to visit the website. It is not yet—and might never be—very interesting.]

Mohamed al-Fayed would like to see Queen Elizabeth II and the Duke of Edinburgh participating in the inquests as witnesses. In bookmaking terms, I would say that the odds of seeing members of the royal family in this role would be about the same as the chances of England winning the World Rugby Cup.

It's a pity that the Poms, at the start of this tragedy, never had enough imagination and psychological perspicacity to think of awarding the late Dodi's father with a strong symbolic token of his integration into British society in general, and the outskirts of royalty in particular. It would have been so simple to grant him a so-called life peerage in recognition of his services to the UK. He might have become, for example, Lord Fayed of Harrod's. This would have surely appeased him sufficiently to avoid all the excessive conspiracy stink that has been smoldering in the wings now for a decade.

My bunyip family

Most people have heard tales about the mythical Aussie beast known as a bunyip, but sightings have been rare, and scientific research on this creature has been even rarer still. I happen to have a couple of fossilized specimens here at Gamone.

I found both the big oval slab with a "mouth" and the huge "leg" down alongside Gamone Creek when I first arrived here, and I brought them back up to the house. They're hard and heavy: probably limestone that has been washed smooth for centuries by the creek (when there's water in it). As for the baby bunyip, it's a different kettle of fish. It's a piece of white limestone that I unearthed, a few years ago, at the site of the medieval castle at Rencurel... which is no more, today, than a curious mound on the slopes. Here's the other side of the block:

I have the impression that it's a fragment of carved stone that has been washed smooth by running water. In fact, I'm unlikely to ever know what forces created these forms. So, it's less frustrating to decide, once and for all, that they're bunyip fossils. Who could possibly disagree?

Finding people through the Internet

One of my female friends back in Paris was a prolific and eclectic writer. She had decided, a long time ago, to invest in a multi-volumed copy of the Encyclopædia Britannica, and I believe that this big expensive tool played a major positive role in her work as an author.

Today, thanks to Internet tools such as Google and Wikipedia, everybody has access to a far greater encyclopedia than the Britannica. Over the last day or so, I've been in a research situation that illustrates one of the ways in which the Internet is a far more powerful source of encyclopedic knowledge than any mere printed book could ever be.

In my articles entitled First word of a poem [display] and Rilke's hermit [display], I pointed out that I've been working on the creation of a movie script based upon Rilke's novel entitled The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge. In the context of the author's fictional personages, there are references to a few dozen authentic historical individuals, some of whom are well known (for example, the French poetess Louise Labé, or the Spanish Carmelite nun Theresa of Avila), whereas others are no longer as well known today as they were back at the time when Rilke was writing his novel. I had trouble identifying two individuals, mentioned briefly by Rilke, named Anna Sophie Reventlow and Julie Reventlow. In a conventional encyclopedia, of the kind printed on paper, these individuals may not have marked their times sufficiently to earn a place in history, as it were. In the context of the Internet, using Google, individuals such as these two Reventlow ladies are often described in genealogical contexts... and that's exactly how I was able to obtain precious information about them, enabling me to understand why Rilke has brought these authentic individuals into the fictional world of his novel.

I was even able to find portraits of the two women. Furthermore, obtaining this information through the Internet enabled me to become acquainted, by email, with the man who produced the genealogical website, who is in fact a descendant of the family in question. And this was like using the Internet to unearth and enter into contact with real-life memories of Rilke's world... which is far more than what you can do with a paper encyclopedia.

Two cultures

When I was a young man, a widely-read little book by the British scientist and novelist C P Snow presented a dichotomous vision of contemporary intellectuals. On the one hand, there were those with a scientific education and preoccupations. On the other, there were traditional intellectuals concerned by the humanities (literature, philosophy, history, etc). Snow coined the striking expression "two cultures" to designate this breakdown. He claimed that the existence of this dichotomy constituted a fundamental barrier in the quest for harmonious and universal solutions to society's problems.

Personally, I first became aware of this phenomenon when certain people expressed surprise at the fact that I should wish to study both mathematics and philosophy, simultaneously, at university. Much later, at the research service of the French Broadcasting System, I had the privilege of working with Pierre Schaeffer, a splendid innovator in multidisciplinary thinking. But I still came upon colleagues who found it strange, for example, that a computing professional such as me might be interested in the linguistics of Noam Chomsky. (Today, of course, most people would no longer find this strange, because they know that computers exploit languages such as Basic and Java.)

The planetary success of the personal computer and the Internet has narrowed the gap, I think, between "cultivated folk" (in the old-fashioned sense) and "technical people" (who know how to write programs, for example). Besides, many ordinary individuals know that science—through disciplines such as cosmology, genetics and neurophysiology—has much to say (if not everything) about human beings and the world in which we exist. So, only an exceptionally reactionary observer would cling to the notion of a giant cleavage between science and traditional culture. Even the antiquated separation between science and philosophy has practically disappeared... and old-fashioned religion is slowly paying the price of increased scientific enlightenment. What I'm hinting at, in that last statement, is that it's becoming more and more intellectually difficult to maintain the beliefs of traditional religions.

In the midst of our new "computer culture", I often hear people on TV complaining that addiction to modern machines such as computers and portable phones is having an adverse effect upon a certain aspect of traditional culture: namely, the ability to spell correctly and to write in a grammatically correct fashion. Yesterday, for example, a well-spoken French fellow, employed in some kind of a stock-market job, explained in a TV interview that young people like himself communicate so rapidly and so profusely today, using computers and portable phones, that they tend to disregard such niceties as spelling and well-structured sentences. Now, this might be true as far as text messages and chat forums on the Internet are concerned, but I think we should relativize things before making global generalizations about the alleged negative effects of modern communications systems. In particular, it's ridiculous to suggest that there might be any kind of paucity in spelling and literary expression in the vast domain of what we might refer to as encyclopedic websites, characterized above all [but not exclusively, by any means] by Wikipedia. Here, on the contrary, all the is are dotted, all the ts are crossed, and every comma counts. Everything is rigorous, striving towards informational completeness and perfection. The web, at this level, is not a place for fast facts à la McDonald's.

Maybe the antiquated "two cultures" expression might be resurrected usefully in a modern context. On the one hand, there are the speedy youngsters, using portable phones and chat forums, who don't give a damn about spelling or expression, as long as their many muddy messages get through. On the other hand, there are the countless great web authors who are engaged in the passionate challenge of installing humanity's history and intellectual heritage on the Internet. It is normal that these two "cultures" should coexist, but it would be idiotic to confuse these two totally different preoccupations. One is a culture of immediate facility; the other, a culture of ageless wisdom. And the actors, in each of these two cultures, are not at all the same.

It could only happen in France

The following true story is perfectly trivial, but it's amusing in the sense that it could only happen in France. It starts with a typical photo of Nicolas Sarkozy, in a hurry, taken on 12 September 2007 as he leaves the weekly Conseil des ministres at the Elysées Palace.

Journalists confronted with this image [taken by an AFP photographer] were intrigued to notice that Sarkozy was carrying what appeared to be a handwritten paper. Once the photo was enlarged [no doubt on a computer screen], the contents of this document could be easily examined and analyzed. Surprise! The round handwritten letters had obviously been penned by a female, and the document appeared to be a personal letter that started out as follows: "I have the impression that I haven't seen you for ages, and I miss you..." The short letter indicates that the writer and her husband will be away from France for a while, then it ends on a highly personal tone: "I'd love to succeed in seeing you during the following week or weekend. Millions of Besitos." Although I'm not familiar with this kind of language, I would imagine that "besitos" are little kisses. My God, everybody thought, this is as good as love notes between Charles and Camilla! Was it imaginable that the president of France, leaving a ministerial meeting, was carrying an open love letter under his arm, for everybody in the world to see? Was this another example of the Sarkozy shock style (like spending a few days on the luxury yacht of a friend, or jogging in front of press photographers) aimed at startling mildly the world in general and his French compatriots in particular?

Next step in the puzzle. Journalists had no trouble in identifying the woman who wrote the letter: Isabelle Balkany, a 60-year-old local-government personality, and the wife of Patrick Balkany, a member of parliament. The Balkanys have always been close political associates and personal friends of Nicolas and Cécilia Sarkozy. Was it thinkable that Nicolas Sarkozy might be involved in a romantic relationship with the wife of a prominent politician?

Following step. Isabelle Balkany quickly explained to curious journalists that she was indeed the author of this letter, but that it was addressed, not to the president, but to his wife, Cécilia Sarkozy. "I'm simply an old friend of Cécilia's." Fair enough. But, in that case, why was Nicolas walking around with Cécilia's personal mail, opened, in his hand?

Final step [for the moment]. Here we move into higher realms of expression, which can only be appreciated if you know how to read and write immaculate French. I'll try to summarize the situation. There are certain tiny linguistic details in written French [as in written Latin] that reveal the sex of the individual to whom the letter is addressed. For example, if you see the sentence "Tu es désirable", you don't know whether it's a male or a female who's being described as desirable. But, if you see "Tu es beau", you know it's a male who's being described as handsome. And, if you see "Tu es belle", you know it's a female who's being described as lovely. Well, in the context of the affectionate communication written by Isabelle Balkany, there's a tiny word, vu [past participle of the verb voir, to see], whose spelling would normally indicate the sex of the individual to whom the letter is sent. If Isabelle Balkany's sentence "I have the impression that I haven't seen you for ages, and I miss you..." were intended for a female receiver, such as Cécilia, then the tiny word should have been written with a final e, as vue. In fact, it's written as vu.

Maybe this simply means that Isabelle made a spelling mistake. Maybe she speaks and writes French, as the saying goes, like a Spanish cow. If not, it's Nicolas who may have made a faux pas by strutting out of the ministerial meeting with a private love letter under his arm... unless, of course, he did so deliberately. Who knows? In any case, as I said at the beginning of my article, this delightful storm in a wine glass could only happen in France.

Top 50

Whereas France is hosting the world cup in rugby, the nation's most popular individual is a soccer star: Zinédine Zidane. For those of you who might have forgotten the event, or missed seeing it because they were holidaying in a tropical jungle without access to TV, Zidane was the guy who used his hard bald head to butt the Italian player Marco Materazzi, who apparently made some kind of improper remark concerning a female member of Zidane's family.

Click here to see the entire list of France's 50 most popular individuals, as determined by a poll conducted by the Journal du Dimanche. If you browse around in the chart, you'll find lots of actors, singers, sporting heroes, TV personalities and even an ageing nun, a few politicians (including a president of the French Republic) and a soccer trainer... but no business chiefs, scientists or rugby stars.

Façade at Gamone

When I bought Gamone, on Australia Day 1994, it was a rough place.

The left-hand ground-floor of the building served as stables for animals, probably goats. Outside, a steel trellis was covered with grapevines. Notice too, on the far right-hand side of the following photo, the primitive outdoor toilet. The house was not yet connected to the municipal water supply.

The main façade of the house was stained with advanced signs of humidity. Inside, all the woodwork was rotten, and there were big holes in the remaining floorboards. Looking back on things today, I think I was courageous, if not intrepid, to invest in such a place... but it was love at first sight!

Today, the scaffolding has been removed from the façade of Gamone, and the restoration work can be admired.

The following photo shows a broken iron element that was dislodged during the restoration work. Can you guess what it was?

It was a scraper for removing mud from your boots. I'm not sure that such an article could be found in modern hardware shops. You can see it in the following photo, taken half a century ago, of Hippolyte Gerin, who used the iron boot-scraper as a bracket to stack up tools:

Click here to see a series of fifteen larger photos concerning the evolution of Gamone from the time of Hippolyte up until today. In the closeup photos of the restored façade, there are good images of specimens of the famous bluish stone called pierre bleue de Gamone [Gamone blue stone]. The restored façade also presents specimens of blocks of solid limestone (probably recuperated from noble ruins), porous tufa (from nearby Bouvante) and poor-quality marne (clayey rock that cracks easily, no doubt collected on the adjacent slopes). You can also find pinkish stones, bits of brick and even wood! The façade of Gamone remains, more than ever, a material and mineral poem.