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

Click to enlarge slightly

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.

Breathing my mountains

For the Nth time, this evening's main TV documentary showed me an album of glimpses of my extraordinary "back yard", the Vercors.

Click to enlarge slightly

I realize the extent to which I breathe constantly the atmosphere of these glorious limestone mountains that surround me. I must remain in their midst. I cannot ever leave them. That would be unthinkable.

I once had a crush on a French movie star

The theme of this blog post is silly, which explains why I've never mentioned it before... neither in my Antipodes blog nor even in private conversations. But I'm amused when I recall that old crush, which involved a TV series of 2005: Les rois maudits directed by Josée Dayan. The date of my crush was trivially significant: long before the election of François Hollande as the president of France.

I was totally bewitched by the vision of a French movie star, who happened to play the role of an English queen. In fact, the lovely lady played several roles, as the personage herself had explained:

Autrefois, on m’a donné les noms et les titres les plus divers : princesse de France, fille de Philippe le Bel et de Jeanne Ire de Navarre, sœur de princes et de roi, femme d’Édouard II, duchesse d’Aquitaine, reine d’Angleterre, mère de rois et de reines, rivale de Hugh le Despenser, adversaire d’Eleanor le Despenser, maîtresse de Roger Mortimer, louve de France. Fille, sœur, épouse, amante, souveraine, ennemie, traîtresse. On oublie trop souvent qu’avant d’être tout cela, je n’étais qu’Isabelle...

The wife of Edward II of England,

accompanied by her son Edward, turns

to soldiers ready to arrest her at Harwick.

At that time, I was deeply involved in my study of English history,

concerning research into the ancient Skeffington family.

That's the only plausible reason I had for my silly crush.
It's a fact, though, that I've always found that actress superb.

Movie I won't need to watch

I'm always pleased to hear about a movie that I won't need to watch. News of that kind saves me time and money, and enables me to stay in my delightful home in the hills, instead of feeling obliged to take a trip into the city. Over recent years, I've rarely felt obliged to step into town to see a movie... and I've surely missed next to nothing. The most reassuring situation is when in-depth TV shows prove beyond beyond all possible doubt that I'm perfectly free to avoid such-and-such a movie, with no feelings whatsoever of shame. That is exactly what has happened in the case of a new movie featuring Jean Dujardin and Virginie Efira: Un homme à la hauteur (An Elevated Gentleman).

It's a fashionable girl-meets-boy film with a small hitch: the girl discovers that her nice fellow is a dwarf. The entire movie, if I understand correctly, is a startling demonstration of all the ingenious cinematographic tricks that enable the lady and her gentleman to coexist as if they were an ordinary couple, with a certain difference in size. You should know now that this movie will surely thrill you... provided that you're generally thrilled by that kind of movie.

Prime ministers of my two countries

For the first time ever (if I'm not mistaken), the French press shows a photo of Manuel Valls alongside Malcolm Turnbull in Australia. This provides the French PM with an opportunity of promising his Australian colleague that the Franco-Australian submarine affair will be handled with the utmost attention.

I'm convinced that, in the context of this affair, the two nations are truly operating on the same wavelength. I'm also certain that Australia has made the right choice.

TV journal of Elise Lucet

Click here to see a few samples of the journal of Elise Lucet. She's an excellent journalist, whose highly successful achievements have transported her into a larger TV arena.

Weasel in the works

This is the famous Large Hadron Collider, the world's most powerful particle accelerator, located near the border between France and Switzerland, and operated by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN).

This extraordinary device has been knocked out of action for a week or so. Technicians believe they've identified the problem. Was it caused by deadly high-energy radiation from far away in the cosmos? No, it was simply a tiny weasel that chewed through an electricity cable, causing a power cut.

Scientists have not yet told the world whether the weasel survived. I fear however that the dear little animal surely disintegrated in an instant, in a flash of energy, as soon as it was hit by the powerful charge of electricity. If that were the sad outcome, then the weasel's soul is probably moving currently (no intentional play on words), at the speed of light, towards the distant confines of our Solar System. That is the way the weasel ends, not with a bang, but an echo of a squeal.

Australia's defence white paper

Australia recently announced her plans to make a gigantic purchase of French submarines.

It goes without saying that I'm keen to find out what Australia plans to do with these vessels. Some answers can be found in a 191-page public document known as the 2016 Defence White Paper, containing several pages about submarines, which can be freely downloaded through the Internet.

I have taken the liberty of copying those pages and making them available to my Antipodes readers. Click on any extract to obtain a slightly enlarged display.

This project interests me immensely, both as an Australian and a French citizen. I hope to provide further public information as soon as it becomes available.

All the way to Timbuktu

When I was a child in Grafton (Australia), adults often mentioned the city of Timbuktu (Africa) as if it were a particularly remote place. To indicate that somebody we knew had moved far away, it was sufficient to say that he had gone all the way to Timbuktu. I knew immediately that the fellow in question was no longer in our vicinity, but I had almost no idea of where he might be located, because nobody had ever bothered to tell me where in fact this place was located on a map. Meanwhile, I imagined that there was little point in asking anybody to tell me where this place might indeed be found. It was surely so far away that the route to Timbuktu would be beyond my understanding.

Attitude towards Moslems decreasing in France

An Ifop survey carried out in France for the Figaro newspaper reveals increasingly negative attitudes towards Islam. We can indeed speak of a degraded image of that religion.

In 1989, 33 % of French citizens were “favorable” for the construction of mosques. Today, that favorable percentage has dropped to 13 %.

In 2010, 39 % of citizens who voted (like me) for the Socialist party considered that the place of Islam was « trop important » (too large). Today, we are 52 %.

Brittany bike

Click here to learn about a strange machine that might be referred to as the Brittany Bike, because it was invented long ago by a trio of Druids in the backwoods of Armorica. It's a kind of two-wheeled bicycle, with several slight technological enhancements... but any comparison with the sort of bike you grew up with is probably coincidental.

Before riding through busy traffic on this outstanding apparatus, I believe it would be a sound idea to acquire an insurance policy. My son François assures me that a Celtic cyclist is in perfect safety. Besides, you might notice that the rider in the above photo is not wearing any kind of helmet... which seems to suggest that the Brittany Bike never gets involved in accidents. That might indicate that this device has certain magical powers.

If you wish to order one or several hand-made models of this high-tech
avant-gardist invention, I advise you to send a blog message

to my son, who will provide you with pricing information.

But make your contact as quickly as possible,

for the manufacturer is being swamped with orders...
and they're forced to hire a new team of hobgoblins.

Faster than we thought

An Australian climate scientist has just made a sobering statement: “We never thought the Great Barrier Reef was going to die completely by the 2030s. If that’s true, it’s a lot faster than we thought.” He reveals above all that alleged thinking on this theme has been badly wrong.

Click here to access a grim story on this calamity in The Guardian. One of their innocent readers suggested that Australians should be taxed to cover the costs of protecting the coral. That's a bit like saying that Aussies should have their heads read for not looking into this tragedy earlier on... and for persisting in believing, among certain "experts", that it's no more than a hoax.

USA has invented some new shit for Daesh

Here's the entry to the headquarters of the National Security Agency in Fort Meade (Maryland). For years, the agency has been listening to Daesh militants. From now on, the NSA's military counterpart, Cyber Command, will be handling this intelligence gathering.

US cyberweapons will be used against Daesh in the hope of disrupting the ability of Daesh to spread its messages, attract new adherents, circulate orders from commanders and pay its fighters. For the first time ever, the Obama administration has admitted that it has the ability to create and use such cyber attacks.

Even our familiar friends Facebook, YouTube and Twitter are learning how to detect Daesh messages and then waylay them.

Our enemy’s name

Click here for a Wikipedia article on the entity that is often known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).

Here in France, we don’t like that name, for two clear reasons:

• The terrorist entity in question is definitely not what we generally think of as a state.

• Furthermore, that barbarian terrorist entity cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, be designated as Islamic.

In France, we have therefore decided to designate that entity by the term Daesh. This is simply a translation into Arabic of the letters ISIL

People who persist in referring to Daesh as an Islamic state can rightly be accused of aiding this terrorist organization inadvertently by giving it a pleasant (?) name that those barbarian murderers never deserved.

Wrapped her thighs around a hot tube

Ladies have the right (like men, for that matter) to choose the kind of hot tube around which they would like to spread their thighs. And we have no right to interfere with their tastes. But this Belgian cyclo-cross rider, Femke van den Driessche, went a little too far when she decided that her chosen tube should contain an electric battery, so that it powered her pedaling.

She was caught red-handed—or I might say red-thighed—and made to face a trial for cheating before the Union Cycliste Internationale. She was promptly stripped of her European title, fined 20,000 Swiss francs, and kicked out of the sport fo six years, which will give her ample time to cool down.

Bad bugger back on French soil

France's most-hated man, the 26-year-old terrorist Salah Abdeslam, is back on French soil, no doubt permanently. He was captured on 18 March 2016 at Molenbeek (Brussels).

As far as I can gather (which is never very far in this kind of context), the evil creature has been deposited in a particularly tough prison, Fleury-Mérogis, south of Paris. From this afternoon on, in the context of his new residence in France, the ugly pile of shit should wither away rapidly into oblivion. It is unlikely that Abdeslam will provide the world with any significant information.

Meanwhile, the moronic terrorist will be defended by a highly-reputed and courageous French lawyer, Frank Berton.