Yesterday afternoon, I was surprised to look up at the Cournouze and discover that she was bedecked with a delicate bridal headdress trimmed in white lace.
[Click to enlarge]
There were ominous patches of grey sky up above: not exactly an encouraging moment for a wedding. Besides, isn't she a little bit too old to be dressing herself up like a young bride and getting married? And to whom, might I ask, is my mountain betrothed?
I was intrigued by the information that seems to be conveyed by this photo. The regards of these hostesses are calm. They appear to be oblivious of the mess in the passenger area behind them.
— photo by Alan Cross
They seem to be saying to themselves: "It's the passengers who made that mess, deliberately and stupidly. So they can clean it up by themselves."
This interpretation of the sense of the image is totally false... and so much the better. On this flight between Singapore and London, when the hostesses were serving breakfast, the plane was severely shaken by a zone of huge turbulence, and it almost turned upside-down. Within a short time, happily, the aircraft emerged from the turbulence, and it is said that the hostesses lost no time in cleaning up the mess and making the aircraft spotless.
I often wonder whether there are people (pilots, hostesses, passengers...) who actually get a kick out of flying through zones of turbulence. In asking this question, I think back to the wonderful season of sailing on the Zigeuner in Western Australia in 1986. When the sea was turbulent, I loved to sit on the tip of the bow, where my body could receive the brunt of the waves. But it's no doubt silly to compare sailing on an old wooden vessel with flying in a jet airliner.
Talking about the possible effects of turbulence, many of us can't help thinking that a wing might fall off. Here at Choranche, I once went out driving with a lady friend from Paris who was suddenly terrified, while we were moving up along spectacular roads beneath the cliffs, that the wheels of my Citroën might be about to fall off, sending us hurtling down into the dark abyss. And there's a notorious case, too, of a great vessel in Western Australia whose front fell off.
Two years ago, in a blog post entitled A rose by any other name [display], I mentioned the great French comic Michel Colucci [1944-1986], known as Coluche. In the early 1980s, when strolling between the rue Rambuteau and the Hôtel de Ville, I would often see Coluche seated in the midst of his theatre friends on the pavement of the café Le Reinitas at the corner of the Temple and Plâtre streets on the edge of the Marais.
The rose bush that bears the name of Coluche has just bloomed at Gamone, a month late (because of the wet weather and lack of sunshine), and I picked a specimen.
Back in the Rue du Temple, I would have found it weird to imagine that I might be remembering Coluche, three decades later, through a red rose growing in my garden on the edge of the Alps.
In my childhood recollections, candied ginger is a Proustian madeleine. [If you don't know what I mean, look up the last pair of words in Google.] This delicious foodstuff is associated, in my memories, with Xmas celebrations in the house of my paternal grandparents in Oliver Street, Grafton.
Anne, Don and me at our grandparents' home in Oliver Street
Often, when I drop in at an organic-foods store in St-Marcellin, I buy a bag of candied ginger... and I generally end up eating it all before I get home. You see, I really seem to be addicted to candied ginger. Recently, my Choranche neighbor Tineke gave me a jar of fine candied ginger in syrup from the Netherlands. Recipes on the Internet suggest that it's quite easy to prepare. So, I gave it a try. First, you peel the ginger roots and chop them into pieces.
From that point on, it's basically just a matter of boiling the pieces, three or four times, in a sugar syrup. Here's the end result:
My home-made candied ginger is delicious... but there won't be much of it left by the time this blog post is published. The chunks are soft and tasty, but they're slightly stringy, which simply indicates that the raw ginger rhizomes (roots) that I purchased in a local fruit and vegetables store were not quite as fresh as I would have hoped. If the rhizomes had been younger (as seems to be the case for the abopve-mentioned Dutch product), there would have been no stringiness whatsoever, and the boiling operations would have rendered the chunks quite transparent.
Incidentally, when I drained the ginger chunks, I set aside the precious syrup in which they had been cooked. I then used this syrup to flavor chilled Perrier, obtaining a liquid madeleine from my childhood in South Grafton: ginger ale.
Maybe the ideal way of obtaining fresh ginger rhizomes would be to actually grow the plant here in my vegetable garden at Gamone. For me, though, there's a problem. Experts state that the ideal constant temperature for ginger plants is around 25 degrees Centigrade. That more-or-less rules out Gamone... unless, of course, I were to install a small greenhouse. And, to heat it in winter, I could use a solar panel. Now, that sounds like a pretty complex project aimed at resurrecting my madeleine. Maybe I should choose the relatively simple strategy adopted by Marcel Proust, and write a book on the subject.
For people driving down from Presles to Pont-en-Royans (not a busy road), this photo presents their rapid glimpse of my house at Gamone.
[Click to enlarge]
Emerging from a blind bend in the narrow road, drivers are not inclined to examine the scenery. So, they probably hardly notice the presence of my house on the opposite slopes. I wandered up to that spot a couple of days ago to take a look at work carried out by roadworkers with heavy equipment who removed crumbling rocks that fall constantly onto the roadway. This second photo, from a nearby viewpoint, reveals the final section of this bend, with traces of the work I just mentioned.
Many drivers coming up in the opposite direction decide to blow their horns upon reaching this corner, which is one of the first uncomfortable corners on the road up from Pont-en-Royans. A little later, most of these drivers abandon their horn blowing when they realize that there are dozens of uncomfortable bends like this on the road up to Presles. You simply have to slow down and watch out for approaching vehicles. At places like this on the road up to Presles, if the approaching vehicle happens to be a truck, a tractor or a bus, the only solution is to back up over a distance of a hundred meters or so.
Many people who see the three letters AFP attached to a news story or a photo may not be aware that this acronym designates Agence France-Presse : a celebrated and time-honored French news agency whose representatives operate in some 200 countries. Click here to watch a rapid but revealing panorama of recent AFP images.
Every pagan dog knows that the gods made grass for rolling in. It's the dogs, of course, not the gods, that do the rolling.
At Gamone, I'm not pretentious enough to refer to our grass as a lawn. It's simply a patch of rocky soil on which a pleasant blend of grass and weeds has appeared... with a minimum of assistance from me and my electric mower.
Fitzroy would surely agree with me that all the wet weather over the last month or so, followed by the last three days of sunshine, has enhanced the rollability of our grass.
Over the years, I've become accustomed to inventing ways of moving heavy stuff single-handedly, with a minimum of effort. Here, for example, I was faced with the challenge of moving the heaviest element of my future wood oven. It had been sitting outside in front of the house, and I decided to bring it into the cellar, where the future oven is to be built.
The new door has not been installed yet on the cellar. Even though the weather has improved enormously at Gamone over the last two days, the warmth has not yet diffused into the cellar, which remains quite chilly, even though it's just alongside my living room. So, I haven't yet got back into action concerning the construction of the wood oven. To be truthful, I'm incapable of performing useful manual work in damp and chilly conditions. In my brain, there must be some kind of motivational switch that needs a certain level of dryness and warmth before it'll jump from off to on. In fact, there are probably quite a few archaic on/off switches of an electromechanical kind in my brain, which is a bit like an old factory that was built back in the early days of industrial electricity, before the introduction of modern electronic devices. To use the same term applied to aging computer systems, you might call it a legacy brain. But it still seems to work quite well, for example, in the case of inventing ways of moving heavy stuff single-handedly, with a minimum of effort.
Most people are familiar with the situation of being overcome, emotionally, by the beauty of music performed by a symphony orchestra. Here, it is the beauty of the orchestra itself, the artists and their instruments, that stuns us first of all, leaving us wordless.
This simple video provides me with one of those rare moments when it suddenly feels right, exceptionally, to have faith in humanity.
This morning, once again, I strolled up along the road at Gamone to admire our splendid wild orchids, while attempting to identify as many as I could. In yesterday's blog post [display], I indicated the presence of many Monkey orchids (Orchis simia). I picked a few specimens and brought them home to be photographed. The monkeys in the following specimen have dark purple paws:
[Click to enlarge images.]
In another specimen, the monkeys are pale and slender... and the fellow at the bottom has an erection!
I don't know whether they're two slightly different varieties, or whether the first plant is simply more mature than the second. In the following specimen, probably a Military orchid (Orchis militaris), the form still has arms and legs, but it's more like a woman in a bulky skirt than a monkey:
I haven't been able to identify the following fine specimens, whose flowers have the form of a person wearing baggy pants, but they might be Burnt-tip orchids (Neotinea ustulata):
In various places on the slopes above the roadway, there are entire walls of Pyramidal orchids (Anacamptis pyramidalis).
From a distance, you might mistake each plant for a single flower. But, when you examine them more closely, you realize immediately that each pyramidical head is indeed a group of orchid blossoms.
The larger flowers at the bottom reveal the typical asymmetrical form of each orchid blossom, composed of three small sepals, two small petals and a large third petal, double-lobed, called the labellum.
Finally, the most exotic orchid specimens I discovered at Gamone were members of the Ophrys variety, whose labellum looks like a large insect.
I examined this specimen from every angle, and compared it with photos on the web, in an attempt to identify the exact variety.
I concluded that it could well be an Ophrys fuciflora (Late Spider-orchid), or maybe an Ophrys apifera (Bee Orchid).
Click here to access an excellent website with examples of many wild orchids. Incapable of identifying with certainty my Ophrys specimen, I decided to contact the creator of this website, Philippe Durbin, who's an expert on French orchids. Here's an English translation of his reply:
I can understand your problem, because it's not obvious! I would imagine a hybrid between Ophrys fuciflora and Ophrys apifera. No certainty, however. See if you can find its parents in the vicinity.
Trust me, on my initial orchid excursion, to find a puzzling specimen! Now I'll have to wander back up on the slopes and look around for the mum and dad of this orchid love child. Why couldn't they simply procreate in a hermaphroditical fashion, like most self-respecting Ophrys orchids? Or with the help of a bee, like those queer orchids that get a kick out of bestiality? Maybe the parents of my puzzling orchid specimen had heard of "the good effects of intercrossing" in a book published in 1862 by a celebrated English naturalist.
Charles Darwin: On the various contrivances by which British and foreign orchids are fertilised by insects, and on the good effects of intercrossing.
Click here to access this surprising document, which proves (if need be) that the great Charles Darwin was indeed an amazing observer and scholar.
Yesterday afternoon, when I gazed towards the east from my bathroom window, I was quite excited by a tiny band of clear white sky that seemed to be peeping over the mountain ridge at the far end of the valley. Would this be a harbinger, at last, of the fine warm weather for which we've been waiting for weeks and weeks?
Well, it wasn't, because rain soon started to fall. Consequently, there hasn't yet been a slot of two or three days of sunshine to dry out the patches of turned-up earth, alongside my house, that are destined to be my vegetable garden.
I've got a great little rotary tiller, which I've been using over the last week or so, but this kind of machine is not very efficient in soggy soil.
Ideally, the soil should be so dry that it crumbles apart as soon as clods get hit by the revolving blades. But that's hardly the case for the moment. Meanwhile, the landscape around Gamone is sumptuously green. On my daily walks up along the road with Fitzroy, I've admired glorious patches of wild orchids, which apparently appreciate the damp overcast weather. One of the common specimens that is growing in abundance is the Monkey orchid (Orchis simia), which gets its name from the four mauve lips of the flower, which look like a tiny monkey lying on his back, in the middle of the flower, with his outstretched arms and legs in the air.
On one such orchid, I found a superb specimen of a Five-spot Burnet moth (Zygaena trifolii), which had probably emerged only recently from its cocoon. I succeeded in bringing it home with me, nested in a small bouquet of orchids and wild roses.
Normally, the larvae of this insect (called a zygène du trèfle in French) are supposed to thrive on a common form of wild flowering clover called Birdsfoot Trefoil (Lotus corniculatus). Clearly, my specimen has refined tastes, since it prefers to dine on orchids.
A major characteristic of this free service is that you can communicate with other researchers who are examining surnames that interest you. This feature can sometimes put you in contact with a researcher who has already carried out work that concerns you. In most cases, though, you come upon research results that simply don't ring a bell in any useful way.
As a registered user of GeneaNet, I made a request to be informed of all ongoing research concerning individuals named Skeffington. As soon as I receive an email from GeneaNet stating that one of their members has just uploaded Skeffington data into his family tree, I try to understand the circumstances in which this operation has been carried out. That's to say: Who are these researchers who appear to be interested in the Skeffington family? What is the exact nature of their uploaded data? Etc. Let me simply say that, in spite of countless emails indicating that dozens of GeneaNet member have inserted Skeffington data into their family trees, I have never yet found an iota of pertinent Skeffington information through this service. On the other hand, GeneaNet has helped me considerably concerning the history of former owners of my house at Gamone. So, I continue half-heartedly with the service.
The community of GeneaNet users appears to include researchers who are happy to get involved in what I would refer to as genealogy fiction. That's to say, their research starts out with serious facts, of the kind that we expect in a genealogical context, but they soon link their family tree to massive blocks of existing data whose authenticity is often nebulous, to say the least. Within these blocks of data, many of the individuals appear to be members of the nobility, but their credentials are open to doubt. Meanwhile, other individuals whose names appear in these blocks of remote "cousins" are personages from history and even from legends. A few days ago, for example, I was told that a French researcher had inserted the names of several 17th-century Skeffington individuals into his family tree. When I examined his tree, I was amazed to discover that it contained a gigantic horde of people stretching over more than a hundred generations. One of his alleged cousins was Attila the Hun.
King Arthur was also present.
Jesus and his mother were also distant cousins of this well-connected Frenchman.
Concerning the mother of Jesus, it's frankly weird to find her designated as "the Virgin Mary of Arimathea". The inspired GeneaNet member who contributed this description was surely an adept of an obscure medieval English legend suggesting that Joseph of Arimathea was the paternal uncle of the Virgin Mary, and that he once visited the town of Glastonbury (Somerset) with his young nephew Jesus.
A little earlier on, our well-connected Frenchman had also announced that he was related to Cleopatra and the pharaoh Ramses.
To my mind, this sort of nonsense has no place in serious genealogical research. In fact, I suspect that certain members of the GeneaNet community derive pleasure from uploading tons of fake data of this kind, and the service then encourages other members to establish alleged links to such personages.
My daughter Emmanuelle happened to give me the only Dan Brown novel I possess: the notorious thing whose title evokes the great Leonardo da Vinci [1452-1519]... who surely did not deserve to be manhandled, five centuries after his prolific existence, by a muddy-minded and pretentious US writer.
I was incapable of pursuing my reading of Brown beyond the first few pages of his ghastly tripe. Even the boring movie with Tom Hanks didn't unblock me. I'm simply unable, viscerally, to consume Dan Brown's words and thoughts. They give me an uncontrollable desire to vomit. Meanwhile, I see that this celebrated US novelist pursues his activities, no doubt astronomically successful. Click here to see a delightful review of Brown's latest twaddle.
Click here for further amusing criticism. If one were to ask me how a lousy novelist can become filthy rich through his shit, I would reply that the first step consists of being American.
As an authentic grass-roots American media celebrity, Wolf Blitzer is expected to praise God on CNN. From time to time, inevitably, in the course of his mindless burbling, Blitzer encounters reality.
Is Blitzer really the robotic arsehole whom we see here? Probably... The full name of the God-fearing arsehole is, of course, the United fucking States of America, now getting into the diabolical business of using robotic drones to exterminate certain of its undesirable citizens.
As a boy in Grafton, I grew up in the shade of the celebrated Ford motor company, founded in Detroit (Michigan) in 1903 by the legendary industrialist Henry Ford [1863-1947].
In Australia, the Englishman Charles Bennett, a bike-rider of the penny-farthing era [see], had become a New South Wales champion cyclist in 1883, and he went on to create the highly successful Speedwell brand of bikes [see]. But times were changing due to the arrival of the automobile. Charles Bennett moved into this field, starting up an Australia-wide automobile affair whose branch in Grafton was known as the City Motor Garage and Engineering Company. Around 1920, in Sydney, my London-born grandfather Ernest Skyvington [1891-1985] met up with Bennett, who persuaded his young compatriot to take over Bennett's Grafton business.
That soon became the dominant preoccupation of my grandfather. And, throughout the years that followed, the latest model of the Ford automobile became a standard feature in family photos.
On the left, that's my wonderful grandmother Kath Pickering [1889-1964]. The little boy is my father Bill Skyvington [1917-1978], and the little girl is his young sister, my aunt Yvonne Tarrant, who celebrated her 94th birthday in Taree a few weeks ago.
As soon as he acquired land, enabling him to become a beef grazier, my father (a mechanic in his father's business) was so faithful to the Ford story that he chose V8 as his cattle brand. Click here to see my blog post on this subject.
I learned yesterday that Ford has decided to abandon Geelong.
Why not? After all, these days, nobody rides a Speedwell bike. In any case, another fragment of my childhood Australia is crumbling away.
Dogs are intelligent creatures, and they appear to be able to perform certain cognitive tasks that are beyond the capacity of wolves and chimpanzees. A typical case in which certain dogs reveal their innate intelligence is the ability to understand the human gesture of pointing. We humans are so accustomed to using this gesture with our fellow humans that it's natural for dog owners to attempt to communicate with their animals by pointing in one or another direction. I have the impression that Fitzroy often reacts positively to this gesture, but I must admit that the message gets through most efficiently when I use my outstretched foot to point, say, at a piece of food that I've thrown on the ground for him. But it's not as if I carry out this kind of experiment in such a rigorous fashion that I can vouch for my conclusions.
Brian Hare, a researcher in biological anthropology at Duke University, was keen to study this question of the effectiveness of pointing in a canine context.
Realizing that his university department simply couldn't get together a significantly large enough contingent of dogs for such experiments, he decided to exploit the methods of so-called citizen science. That's to say, he founded a company called Dognition [click here to visit their website] which invites dog owners to enroll their pet dogs in trials that can be conducted with the help of the Internet. That's to say, the company provides you with all the information needed to conduct certain precise experiments, and you then send back the results for analysis by company specialists. I intend to see if they'll accept Fitzroy as a candidate, because I think it would be nice if my dog were to collaborate with a US technology company, and maybe get enrolled in an American university. And that reminds me of my Eskimo joke:
A retired couple of Californian tourists are visiting an Eskimo settlement in Greenland. They strike up a conversation with a woman alongside her igloo. ESKIMO: My son works in a Californian university. CALIFORNIAN: Really! What's he studying? ESKIMO: No, he's being studied.
The excellent science writer Carl Zimmer—author of the fascinating little book about viruses that I mentioned in a blog post in June 2011 [display]—has written an article in The New York Times [here] on the subject of canine cognition.
A couple of days ago, Zimmer wrote another short article [here] on the fascinating questions of why and when certain wolves branched away from their wild ancestors and evolved into dogs. Apparently this split started in East Asia, through genetic mutations, 32,000 years ago. One of the new genes that evolved on the canine branch brought about a flow of the serotonin neurotransmitter into the nervous system, which had the effect of making the primordial dogs less aggressive than pure wolves. Hordes of mellowed-down animals got into the habit of scavenging in the vicinity of groups of early human hunter-gatherers, and that is how we ended up being accompanied by domestic dogs. It's interesting to realize that this process is quite different to the previously-held idea that humans might have stolen wolf pups from their parents and tamed them. It was the evolution of the serotonin-oriented gene that got the "taming" process into action, in a totally autonomous fashion. The only human intervention would have consisted, no doubt, of destroying or chasing away dangerously aggressive scavengers that were not sufficiently "serotoninized". And this would have contributed to the emergence of a pack of increasingly friendly animals.
Let me relate a trivial anecdote concerning Fitzroy and his apparent intelligence.
Over the last fortnight, I've been strolling up to my neighbor's place every day to feed their poultry while Jackie and his wife were away on vacation. Needless to say, Fitzroy always accompanies me. And he never seems to accept the idea that he's not allowed to follow me into the hen house. Sometimes, while I'm stepping in through a wire mesh entrance, Fitzroy has succeeded in sliding into this interesting place, where his presence creates turmoil among the hens, rooster and geese. So, I decided to bring along a dog lead, and tie up Fitzroy before I open the hen house. He wasn't happy to find himself suddenly attached in Jackie's yard, a short distance away from the hen house, and he let me know by a new variety of short squeals, unlike any of Fitzroy's everyday sounds. Less than a minute later, Fitzroy was free, having severed neatly the fabric part of the lead with his molars.
I was amazed. I have the impression (though I may be wrong) that it takes a good dose of cognitive cleverness for a dog to conclude rapidly that the only obstacle that prevented him from approaching the hen house was a band of canvas cloth, which could be cut rapidly by means of his teeth. As you can see from the photo, Fitzroy had already attacked the cord part of this old lead on a couple of previous excursions, but I had imagined those early acts as a mere game, resulting from the presence of the cord near his jaws. As for biting through the canvas strap, in a matter of seconds, that seemed to be the outcome of a deliberate reasoned strategy aimed at freeing himself. In the style of the proverbial prisoner manipulating a fragment of metal fashioned into a rudimentary saw blade to cut through the bars of his cell, Fitzroy was using his teeth as a tool to attain liberty.
Once upon a time, in France, we had an extraordinary national anthem—stirring, but not particularly nice—that evoked blood and gore, the smoke of muskets, and images of slain soldiers.
Recently, we've received an anthem of a higher order, intended to evoke culture, history and harmony among the peoples of the Old World.
But there's yet another anthem, designed to remind us that we Europeans have become a continent of dumb TV-viewers, willing to watch almost anything, no matter how stupid it might be.
The grand final of the notorious Eurovision Song Contest will be taking place next Saturday evening in Sweden. If ever you've been out of contact with the planet Earth over the last decade or so, and you need to know what this spectacular happening is all about, just click here to visit their official website.
As usual, we believe that France is a top favorite, and almost certain to win the contest hands down. Unfortunately, the name of our singer escapes me for the moment. I've also forgotten the title of his/her song.
Up until recently, I used to make comments in this blog—often of a critical nature—on various aspects of my land of birth, Australia. But I've always realized that it's preferable, for several reasons, to avoid this bad habit. These days, I find it harder and harder to even know what's happening in Australia, because my two principal sources of information—the online web versions of The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald—have implemented paywalls. And since I have no intention of patronizing such low-quality newspapers, I no longer necessarily know what's happening Down Under.
NOTE: Method for getting around paywalls. Copy the title of the desired article. Paste it into Google as an argument. This usually works. [Don't tell anybody I told you.]
Here in France, funnily enough, I constantly run into situations that have encouraged me to remain abreast, as best I can, of current events in Australia. You see, every time I open my mouth, French people realize that I speak with a curious accent (my Franco-Australian daughter and son have always disagreed), and they often ask me where I come from. And, as soon as I say Australia, French people inevitably wonder out loud why on earth any sane individual (?) with an Australian passport would have left his native Antipodean paradise for a harsh land such as France... where taxes are astronomical, the economic climate is disastrous, young folk can't find jobs, the sky is constantly overcast, people are arrogant, mustached males eat smelly cheeses and frogs' legs smothered in garlic, nobody speaks English, etc... It would be ridiculous to suggest (even if it were true) that I was attracted to France, long ago, because of all the wonderful women. These days, thanks to the Internet and YouTube, French people know that Australia, too, has superb female creatures such as Jesinta Campbell.
Besides, it's a known fact that, here in France, flamboyant females sit around lazily in cafés getting pissed on coarse red wine... which is hardly a man's idea of nice womanhood.
When French people ask me why I moved here from a fabulous land of milk and honey such as Australia, I make an attempt to reply truthfully... which is possibly a personal weakness, indeed a stupid mistake. Maybe it would be simpler if I were to tell a few white lies, and concoct a standard explanation capable of satisfying everybody. For example, I've already noticed that, as soon as I speak of owning farm animals (merely a couple of donkeys today, but there used to be sheep and goats), most people seem to see that as a plausible reason for my staying put, stoically and permanently, in rural France. French folk who hear such an "explanation" must imagine that, if the Aussie fellow's so stupid as to have purchased French farm animals, then he surely doesn't deserve to return to his native wonderland in the southern hemisphere. After all, not even a French farmer and his wife, booking in for a Mediterranean cruise, would expect to be able to bring their dog along with them.
The basic problem, I believe, is that the Australian tourist authorities have done such a splendid job of presenting Australia to foreign audiences (through TV documentaries, above all) that French people imagine sincerely that my native land is something like a mythical Switzerland transported into the tropics, surrounded by white sands and warm turquoise waters, where countless ordinary citizens have become immensely wealthy simply by digging up precious minerals in the backyards of their suburban homes and selling the stuff to less lucky lands (such as France).
My personal evaluation of Australian society has been dominated, over the years, by three major negative themes:
1. The absence of a profound political culture in Australia (as opposed to politics as a lucrative career) means that the nation's wealth has never been distributed justly to the people. Consequently, Australia's infrastructure and lifestyle (apart from an abundance of good weather) are deplorable.
2. Contrary to what Australians themselves seem to imagine, their land is relatively uninteresting, indeed boring, from a touristic point of view. While there's a lot of empty scenery (which can be interesting at times), there is no visible culture, history or non-superficial social atmosphere.
3. As my Francophile friend Geoff once put it, there are no traditions of written culture in Australia. Among other things, there is no role in Australia for individuals who would be designated in France as intellectual observers.
Concerning that final remark, I was most intrigued to come upon a short critical article written by a young Australian lady named Alecia Simmonds, who's a journalist, an adjunct lecturer of law at the University of New South Wales, and a Merewether Fellow at the prestigious Mitchell Library in Sydney.
Click here to find Alecia's article, entitled Why Australia hates thinkers.
To whet your appetite, I'm appending a few lengthy excerpts of Alecia's excellent article. Certain specimens of colloquial language and parochial allusions might puzzle the non-Australian readers of my Antipodes blog. While insisting upon the fact that I do not necessarily share the strong opinions of Alecia Simmonds, I refrain from commenting upon the detailed substance of her paper.
[...] in Straya, we don't give a dead dingo's donger about academics. Universities make a perfect target because, like few other Western countries, Australia hates thinkers. In contrast to France, where philosophers often grace the covers of Le Monde, and England where Slavoj Zizek writes regular columns in The Guardian Weekly. In Australia, we have Peter Hartcher on anti-Gillard autopilot and the bile-flecked bleating of shock-jocks like Alan Jones.
[...] The problem is that as a country we are hostile to those who are well-educated. We prefer home-spun wisdom to years of research. Our language is peppered with vitriol reserved for those who think for a living: "chattering classes", "latte-sipping libertarians", "intellectual elites" and now Nick Cater's most unlovely term "bunyip elite". If we want to emphasise the importance of something we say that the issue "is not just academic". Any idea that takes longer than a nano-second to understand is howled down.
[...] There's no doubt that Australia is a vast, sunny, intellectual gulag. The question is why. It's certainly not for want of thinkers.
[...] Perhaps there's a link between the myth of Australian egalitarianism and anti-intellectualism. Australian history is popularly told as a story of democracy, equality and classlessness that broke from England's stuffy, poncy, aristocratic elitism. We're a place where hard yakka, not birth, will earn you success and by hard yakka we don't mean intellectual labour. Although, of course, equality is a great goal, we've interpreted it to mean cultural conformity rather than a redistribution of wealth and power. The lowest common denominator exerts a tyrannical sway and tall poppies are lopped with blood-soaked scythes. Children learn from an early age that being clever is a source of shame. Ignorance is cool.
[...] There's also no room for cleverness in our models of masculinity or femininity. For women, intelligence equates with a dangerous independence that doesn't sit well with your role as a docile adoring fan to the boys at the pub. It's equated with sexual unattractiveness. And for men, carrying a book and using words longer than one syllable is a form of gender treason. It's as good as wearing bumless chaps to a suburban barbecue. Real blokes have practical wisdom expressed through grunts and murmurs. Real Aussie chicks just giggle.
Getting back to the personal question of why I reside in France rather than in my native Australia, the most honest and meaningful answer is, of course, that the three members of my family live here (in Paris and Brittany).
BREAKING NEWS: As proof of my resolution to refrain from criticizing my native land, I do not intend to comment unduly and at length upon an astonishing news flash in the latest online issue of The Daily Examiner [here]:
E coli bacteria in the Lower Clarence water supply system
On the other hand, I wish to criticize their ill-informed journalist who wrote the following statement:
E. coli itself is generally not harmful but its presence in drinking water indicates that the water may be contaminated with organisms that may cause disease.
The presence of Escherichia coli indicates, almost certainly, that the municipal water supply has been contaminated by sewage: possibly human fecal matter. The journalist writes as if this bacteria were a mere indicator: some kind of biological litmus paper. He/she doesn't seem to understand, or doesn't wish to say explicitly, that it's the E coli bacterium itself that "may cause disease". A more serious article would have indicated the actual levels of E coli that have been detected.
