Among the colloquial expressions from my childhood and adolescence that I've never forgotten, that's one of my favorites. It's a metaphor for moving fast, in the sense of escaping. Back in Grafton, though, it was a silly metaphor, because the only bats we ever saw were so-called flying foxes, which flew no faster than crows. Here at Gamone, I love to watch small bats darting around in the twilight. But they seem to return every few seconds to the same flight zone, as if they were intrigued by the observer (me)... which wouldn't really be an effective strategy for escaping from Hell.
Last night, the bats I watched in the darkness were the automobiles competing in the Monte-Carlo rally.
To reach the starting line, spectators had to walk out of the village of Saint-Jean-en-Royans for a few kilometers, in total darkness. But it was worth the effort. I managed to find standing room alongside the starting enclosure, just behind the automobile about to leave. In the final ten seconds or so of the countdown to the departure, the events are spectacular. The driver turns on his main lights, and the result is a little like lighting up a football stadium... which means that these guys are never actually driving in the dark at all. Then there's a metallic clang as he operates his brakes (I suppose) and starts revving up the motor to a deafening pitch. For a few seconds, the angry beast seems to be straining at the leash, like a Boeing about to set off down the runway. When the vehicle finally takes off, it's truly like the proverbial bat out of hell. The machine seems to hurtle madly from zero velocity to God only knows what fantastic speed in a couple of seconds.
After the first half-dozen departures (including the two superb vehicles of the Subaru World Rally Team, one of which was handled by the Aussies Chris Atkinson and Glenn MacNeall), I scrambled a hundred meters along the grassy drain on the edge of the road so that I could stand on the first curve, from where I had the impression that the automobiles were racing directly towards me, in a blinding blaze of white light. There I struck up a conversation with a spectator whose attitudes, even in the dark, gave me the impression that he knew what the rally was all about. He turned out to be a 34-year-old former Formula-Renault circuit driver from Lyon. Whenever a vehicle flashed past, often accompanied by ear-shattering backfiring (due, so I learned, to poorly-regulated ignition), my neighbor provided me with a rapid analysis of the identity of the machine, the performance of its driver over the opening stretch of two hundred meters that we were observing, and even his judgment on the aesthetic qualities of the noise of the motor. For example, for a certain angle of the dangle of the exhaust pipe, the speeding vehicle emits an unpleasant metallic sound, as if some of its nuts and bolts were loose.
The most interesting thing I learned is that the Monte-Carlo Rally, to a large extent, is a rich man's pastime. At the top of the lineup, a dozen professionals are working for automobile manufacturers (Citroen, Ford and Subaru), but the majority of the 47 entrants are ordinary drivers who have used their wealth and their connections to get into the race. I was struck by the fact that these drivers are in fact behaving in a way that is normally prohibited. They're driving hugely-expensive automobiles at a break-neck speed on narrow winding roads, often on the wrong side, with their headlights full on, and creating an unearthly din. The only ingredient that's missing is a few grams of alcohol in their blood! I remarked to my informed neighbor that the relative lack of publicity stickers on the vehicles had intrigued me. He explained that the overall impression created by a phenomenon such as the Monte-Carlo no longer corresponds to the sort of public image that automobile manufacturers wish to convey.
On the drive home, I had to be careful not to put my foot down too heavily on certain stretches of the dark road. It's a sobering thought to realize to what extent we humans are essentially bright monkeys with an inbuilt gift for imitating things we encounter in the world around us.
Friday, January 19, 2007
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Don't knock Hubby!
Up until today, the Socialist presidential candidate Ségolène Royal had a dynamic and outspoken spokesman, 44-year-old Arnaud Montebourg. Unfortunately, last night on television, he cracked a trivial joke. An interviewer asked him if Ségolène, in her presidential campaign, was bogged down by any handicap. Montebourg replied spontaneously, with a grin: "Ségolène Royal has a sole weakness: her partner." Now, this kind of a joke didn't go down well with the boss. During the night, Montebourg realized that he had committed an idiotic faux pas, of the kind that cannot be tolerated in the context of such a saintly female as Ségolène. At dawn, he submitted his resignation, while explaining that his words were intended as a pure joke. Acting magnanimously in the style of a soccer referee who wants the game to go on calmly, in a dignified manner, Ségolène told her spokesman that his remarks were "out of place", and she suspended him for a month. For a political party whose emblem is the red rose, you might call that, in soccer terms, a pink card.
It takes a lot of imagination for French observers to figure out the possible consequences of this novel situation in which the female candidate is in fact, in everyday life, the partner of the chief of France's Socialist party, François Hollande. Everybody in France knows that Bernadette Chirac, the wife of the French president, has devoted a lot of energy over the last decade, in liaison with the judo champion David Douillet, to a huge charitable operation that consists of collecting small coins (referred to as "yellow pieces" in French) to benefit hospitalized children in France. A wag suggested that, if ever Ségolène were to replace Chirac, then François Hollande might take over this charitable work of Bernadette.The husbands of female chiefs of state are a fascinating subject. We've become accustomed to the chap named Philip Mountbatten who has been walking along unobtrusively in the wake of Elizabeth II for the last half a century. Then there was the delightful case of the likable hubby named Denis Thatcher who had been courageous enough to marry the future Iron Lady.
If ever the Democratic senator Hillary Rodham Clinton is elected as the future president of the USA (an idea that pleases me greatly), it will be interesting to see whether she decides to hire her husband for some kind of White House job. On the other hand, it's understandable that Hillary might not like the idea of putting Bill in a situation where he could be tempted to prowl around once again among the female office staff.
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Events
Although I've never had an opportunity of witnessing the start of the Sydney/Hobart yacht race or the Melbourne Cup or Sydney's Royal Easter Show, I'm aware that major annual events of this nature divide up the year and punctuate life in Australia like mileposts in time. Here in France, Bastille Day and the Tour de France (which coincide in fact) play a similar role.
In the next few days, two major events will be taking place in the region where I live. One is the biennial International Hotel Catering and Food Trade Exhibition in Lyon, which lasts for no less than five days. I attended it a few years ago, and was highly impressed by this lavish celebration of luxurious eating, set in a city that many people think of as the French capital of great restaurants. [Click the image to go to an English-language website concerning this exhibition.]
Tomorrow evening, the nearby village of Saint-Jean-en-Royans will be the center of the automobile rally world. For the first time in a dozen years, the Rallye Automobile Monte-Carlo has returned to the Vercors. I last watched it taking off from down at the corner of my property, the year I bought Gamone. But the drivers later complained that the Vercors was too dangerous, in the sense that leaving the road would often amount to running over the edge of a cliff. So, they never came back here. Tomorrow's opening leg is a short night drive from Saint-Jean up towards Bouvante (the place where the Chartreux monks—those who made wine here at Choranche—had their monastery) and then across to a popular resort on the plateau for cross-country skiing... when there's snow, which is not the case at present. [Click the image to go to an English-language website concerning the Monte-Carlo Rally.]
I've just driven to Saint-Jean to do some shopping in their small supermarket. The village is covered in red and white balloons and ribbons: the colors of the principality of Monaco. There'll be huge crowds there tomorrow. I haven't yet figured out where I'll go to watch. If I drive up to the plateau, I'll be stuck there until late in the evening. So, I might simply stay in Saint-Jean and watch the start. Some of the local ecologists are scandalized by the idea of an automobile rally in a nature park such as the Vercors, and they've issued a petition against it. I don't really agree with them, because I look upon the Monte-Carlo leg as a very special event, which is unlikely to harm the environment. I hope that no silly buggers decide to cut down a tree that falls cross the road, or to pour oil on the road (as they did a few years ago, up behind Gamone, for the local Saint-Marcellin rally).
One thing is certain. At the food fair in Lyon, it's unlikely that anybody will be demonstrating against ecological dangers. But it's probably a fact that rich food and wine in France have harmed many more people than the automobiles of the the Monte-Carlo Rally.
In the next few days, two major events will be taking place in the region where I live. One is the biennial International Hotel Catering and Food Trade Exhibition in Lyon, which lasts for no less than five days. I attended it a few years ago, and was highly impressed by this lavish celebration of luxurious eating, set in a city that many people think of as the French capital of great restaurants. [Click the image to go to an English-language website concerning this exhibition.]Tomorrow evening, the nearby village of Saint-Jean-en-Royans will be the center of the automobile rally world. For the first time in a dozen years, the Rallye Automobile Monte-Carlo has returned to the Vercors. I last watched it taking off from down at the corner of my property, the year I bought Gamone. But the drivers later complained that the Vercors was too dangerous, in the sense that leaving the road would often amount to running over the edge of a cliff. So, they never came back here. Tomorrow's opening leg is a short night drive from Saint-Jean up towards Bouvante (the place where the Chartreux monks—those who made wine here at Choranche—had their monastery) and then across to a popular resort on the plateau for cross-country skiing... when there's snow, which is not the case at present. [Click the image to go to an English-language website concerning the Monte-Carlo Rally.]I've just driven to Saint-Jean to do some shopping in their small supermarket. The village is covered in red and white balloons and ribbons: the colors of the principality of Monaco. There'll be huge crowds there tomorrow. I haven't yet figured out where I'll go to watch. If I drive up to the plateau, I'll be stuck there until late in the evening. So, I might simply stay in Saint-Jean and watch the start. Some of the local ecologists are scandalized by the idea of an automobile rally in a nature park such as the Vercors, and they've issued a petition against it. I don't really agree with them, because I look upon the Monte-Carlo leg as a very special event, which is unlikely to harm the environment. I hope that no silly buggers decide to cut down a tree that falls cross the road, or to pour oil on the road (as they did a few years ago, up behind Gamone, for the local Saint-Marcellin rally).
One thing is certain. At the food fair in Lyon, it's unlikely that anybody will be demonstrating against ecological dangers. But it's probably a fact that rich food and wine in France have harmed many more people than the automobiles of the the Monte-Carlo Rally.
Simple thoughts that soar into the air
To demonstrate pictorially that she was thinking of her big brother (that's me), one of my dear sisters has just sent me this nice photo, taken during her recent visit to the USA, of a FedEx van in Miami:
I can sense already that the airwaves are filling up with a huge question: What the hell does a FedEx van in Miami have to do with an Aussie recluse who lives in an Alpine wilderness in the south of France? In a nutshell [forgive me for overusing that metaphor, but my farm-that-isn't-really-a-farm-at-all is covered with scores of walnut trees, and I spend days every September picking up nuts], my sister has heard me express my admiration for these international delivery organizations, which not only deliver urgent stuff on the other side of the planet (important for an Antipodean such as me), but allow you to use the Internet to follow every step of the transport operations.
There's an expression that annoys me: snail mail. There's nothing snailish whatsoever about the giant aircraft that take off from places all over the planet, often in the middle of the night, in order to get the mail through. In France, where the national organization is called Chronopost, the concept of international mail couriers evokes the heroic Aéropostale company, which became one of the founding partners of Air France in 1933. And the pioneering epoch of air mail leads us to think too of the great writer and pilot Antoine de Saint Exupéry.
In France, the name of this illustrious adventurer adorns the international airport of Lyon. But he is remembered throughout the planet as the author of The Little Prince, which is as great a work of imaginative literature (in my opinion) as Lewis Carroll's adventures of Alice.
[If you click the image to the left, a link takes you to a presentation of an opera on The Little Prince.]
So, I thank Anne for thinking of me while she was in the USA, since her thoughts (not to mention her photo) have led me in turn to think of wonderful exploits and people.
I can sense already that the airwaves are filling up with a huge question: What the hell does a FedEx van in Miami have to do with an Aussie recluse who lives in an Alpine wilderness in the south of France? In a nutshell [forgive me for overusing that metaphor, but my farm-that-isn't-really-a-farm-at-all is covered with scores of walnut trees, and I spend days every September picking up nuts], my sister has heard me express my admiration for these international delivery organizations, which not only deliver urgent stuff on the other side of the planet (important for an Antipodean such as me), but allow you to use the Internet to follow every step of the transport operations.
There's an expression that annoys me: snail mail. There's nothing snailish whatsoever about the giant aircraft that take off from places all over the planet, often in the middle of the night, in order to get the mail through. In France, where the national organization is called Chronopost, the concept of international mail couriers evokes the heroic Aéropostale company, which became one of the founding partners of Air France in 1933. And the pioneering epoch of air mail leads us to think too of the great writer and pilot Antoine de Saint Exupéry.In France, the name of this illustrious adventurer adorns the international airport of Lyon. But he is remembered throughout the planet as the author of The Little Prince, which is as great a work of imaginative literature (in my opinion) as Lewis Carroll's adventures of Alice.[If you click the image to the left, a link takes you to a presentation of an opera on The Little Prince.]
So, I thank Anne for thinking of me while she was in the USA, since her thoughts (not to mention her photo) have led me in turn to think of wonderful exploits and people.
Therapy
One of the motivations that got me started on this blog was my regular reading of the blog of the Dilbert creator, Scott Adams, which can be found by going to his main website at http://www.dilbert.com and then clicking the blog banner. Or you can click here:
I like the way Scott Adams talks each morning about whatever springs into his head, which might be anything from a scruffy hotel in which he's just spent the night to one of his intricate theories about humanity and society. I've always maintained that the excellence of the language appearing in the Dilbert cartoons contributes greatly to their impact. There's never a word too many, or the wrong word, and every phrase seems to have been constructed with care. Well, in Scott's blog, we find the same kind of linguistic faultlessness... which has often made me wonder (I guess I'm jealous) if there might be some kind of an editorial team working in the shadow of the artist. Scott seems to speak openly of himself as a successful businessman, rather than a great cartoonist of the traditional American kind. [I've inserted the verb "seems" to underline that the alleged "fact" I relate is rather fuzzy, because I'm totally out of my depth when it gets around to concepts such as "a successful businessman" or, even more so, "a great cartoonist of the traditional American kind".] So, it would be perfectly normal if he had a team of talented individuals to assist him.
Scott often speaks of his having to steer a straight line to avoid rejection by the numerous newspapers to which he is syndicated. This means that he has to avoid images that might shock narrow-minded viewers. Although he has never said so, I would imagine that he has to avoid cartoon situations in which he might be accused of making a political statement, in one way or another. Well, in his last two blogs (called Vacationing Toward Victory and Better off Losing?), Scott has just gone completely over the deep end... in an anti-Bush sense.
The most amusing thing is that Scott has made this explicit political coming-out (which is unlikely to really surprise any of his fans) at a time when he is supposed to be receiving specialized therapy—of a psychological kind, if I understand correctly—to rectify a serious speech defect. I wonder if somebody could persuade Dubya—who doesn't express himself all that well—to go along to the same therapist...
I like the way Scott Adams talks each morning about whatever springs into his head, which might be anything from a scruffy hotel in which he's just spent the night to one of his intricate theories about humanity and society. I've always maintained that the excellence of the language appearing in the Dilbert cartoons contributes greatly to their impact. There's never a word too many, or the wrong word, and every phrase seems to have been constructed with care. Well, in Scott's blog, we find the same kind of linguistic faultlessness... which has often made me wonder (I guess I'm jealous) if there might be some kind of an editorial team working in the shadow of the artist. Scott seems to speak openly of himself as a successful businessman, rather than a great cartoonist of the traditional American kind. [I've inserted the verb "seems" to underline that the alleged "fact" I relate is rather fuzzy, because I'm totally out of my depth when it gets around to concepts such as "a successful businessman" or, even more so, "a great cartoonist of the traditional American kind".] So, it would be perfectly normal if he had a team of talented individuals to assist him.Scott often speaks of his having to steer a straight line to avoid rejection by the numerous newspapers to which he is syndicated. This means that he has to avoid images that might shock narrow-minded viewers. Although he has never said so, I would imagine that he has to avoid cartoon situations in which he might be accused of making a political statement, in one way or another. Well, in his last two blogs (called Vacationing Toward Victory and Better off Losing?), Scott has just gone completely over the deep end... in an anti-Bush sense.
The most amusing thing is that Scott has made this explicit political coming-out (which is unlikely to really surprise any of his fans) at a time when he is supposed to be receiving specialized therapy—of a psychological kind, if I understand correctly—to rectify a serious speech defect. I wonder if somebody could persuade Dubya—who doesn't express himself all that well—to go along to the same therapist...
Tuesday, January 16, 2007
My God, what a close shave!
At the time I was born, in September 1940, boy babies in the United Kingdom and the British Empire incurred the risk of being named Winston. I believe that my Protestant great-aunt Henrietta Kennedy [1881-1952] made an attempt to impose this choice upon my parents, but I escaped narrowly thanks to the weighty presence among my paternal ancestors of two great-grandfathers named William. The eldest Beatle wasn't as lucky as me. Born on 9 October 1940 at the maternity hospital in Liverpool, he was named John Winston Lennon.
When I was a youth in Grafton, I remember hearing the funny-sounding names of French politicians on the radio news. The Fourth Republic was regularly falling apart and then getting patched up for a short period, before collapsing yet again. Surnames that amused me were Queuille and Pflimlin (which—I've since learned—was barely pronounceable even for the French). An individual who was often mentioned on the news was Guy Mollet, general secretary of the political organization that would later be transformed into the party that is now backing presidential candidate Ségolène Royal. Just for the record: Back in those days, sitting on a kitchen chair in Grafton with my feet up alongside the warm stove and listening to accounts of events in faraway France, I would never have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would meet up personally, one day in France (while working for French TV), with two statesmen who were often mentioned on the news: Jules Moch [1893-1985] and Pierre Mendès-France [1907-1982].
Every now and again, people in the UK get a kick out of reminding the French of a mind-boggling secret diplomatic mission carried out by France in 1956. [Last night, in the UK, there was a radio broadcast on this affair.] At that time, Guy Mollet was the French prime minister, and his British counterpart was Anthony Eden. Well, according to a record in British state archives unearthed by the BBC, Mollet took the initiative on 10 September 1956 of crossing the Channel, turning up on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, and suggesting to a flabbergasted Eden that... maybe England and France should look into the possibility of joining hands and becoming a single nation!
Sure, it's easy to appreciate retrospectively, today, the bee in Mollet's bonnet, and why it got transformed in this spontaneous and spectacular fashion into a fly in Eden's ointment. [Excuse the mixed metaphors.] In Egypt, Nasser had just nationalized the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, England's friend Jordan and France's friend Israel were on the point of coming to blows, and anti-French tensions were mounting in Algeria. Fortunately, Eden had enough good old British phlegm and common sense to calm down his French visitor, and pack him off back to Paris. And there's no reason to suppose that Mollet's crazy idea might have prevented the dramatic events that ensued in the Suez Canal...
Can you imagine, today, a European nation called Frangland, with the Channel running right down the middle of it? My God, what a frightening thought! Gentlemen in bowler hats scurrying down the Champs-Elysées, gendarmes marching along the Mall and changing the guard at Buckingham Palace...
One of the rare entities of a combined French/British nature that has endured for any length of time is a student residence in Paris known as the Collège franco-britannique. Over forty years ago, within those hallowed walls, I met up with a splendid French girl who was studying at the Sorbonne. We decided to get married, and we even ended up having two marvelous children. Admittedly, our marriage didn't last too long, but we have remained good friends, even though the waters of a Channel flow between our respective lives. I would even claim that there's nothing better than a Channel to delimit the territories of very different people who are intent upon remaining friends.
I really can't figure out what Guy Mollet had in kind when he set out for London in 1956. Who knows? Maybe he just dropped across there on a regular shopping trip, like countless French people, to pick up a few odds and ends at Harrod's or Marks and Spencer's. Then he got carried away while having a few pints with the boys in a nice pub, eating warm pork pies and chatting up charming young London birds. Inevitably, thoughts of union started to germinate in Mollet's mind. Besides, he wasn't used to drinking warm beer. He suddenly banged his fist on the bar of pub, startling the drinkers, and yelled out a cry of joy like Archimedes jumping out of his bath: "Jesus, man, I love this place. I love the people. And I'm the prime minister of France. Why don't we get married?" Before the folk in the pub could stop him, Mollet dashed off to Downing Street, to spring his idea upon the father of the future bride...
No, it probably didn't happen like that. In any case, I'm convinced that it's better for England and France to carry on living side by side in sin, with the Channel running down the middle of their big bed.
When I was a youth in Grafton, I remember hearing the funny-sounding names of French politicians on the radio news. The Fourth Republic was regularly falling apart and then getting patched up for a short period, before collapsing yet again. Surnames that amused me were Queuille and Pflimlin (which—I've since learned—was barely pronounceable even for the French). An individual who was often mentioned on the news was Guy Mollet, general secretary of the political organization that would later be transformed into the party that is now backing presidential candidate Ségolène Royal. Just for the record: Back in those days, sitting on a kitchen chair in Grafton with my feet up alongside the warm stove and listening to accounts of events in faraway France, I would never have imagined in my wildest dreams that I would meet up personally, one day in France (while working for French TV), with two statesmen who were often mentioned on the news: Jules Moch [1893-1985] and Pierre Mendès-France [1907-1982].
Every now and again, people in the UK get a kick out of reminding the French of a mind-boggling secret diplomatic mission carried out by France in 1956. [Last night, in the UK, there was a radio broadcast on this affair.] At that time, Guy Mollet was the French prime minister, and his British counterpart was Anthony Eden. Well, according to a record in British state archives unearthed by the BBC, Mollet took the initiative on 10 September 1956 of crossing the Channel, turning up on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street, and suggesting to a flabbergasted Eden that... maybe England and France should look into the possibility of joining hands and becoming a single nation!Sure, it's easy to appreciate retrospectively, today, the bee in Mollet's bonnet, and why it got transformed in this spontaneous and spectacular fashion into a fly in Eden's ointment. [Excuse the mixed metaphors.] In Egypt, Nasser had just nationalized the Suez Canal. Meanwhile, England's friend Jordan and France's friend Israel were on the point of coming to blows, and anti-French tensions were mounting in Algeria. Fortunately, Eden had enough good old British phlegm and common sense to calm down his French visitor, and pack him off back to Paris. And there's no reason to suppose that Mollet's crazy idea might have prevented the dramatic events that ensued in the Suez Canal...
Can you imagine, today, a European nation called Frangland, with the Channel running right down the middle of it? My God, what a frightening thought! Gentlemen in bowler hats scurrying down the Champs-Elysées, gendarmes marching along the Mall and changing the guard at Buckingham Palace...
One of the rare entities of a combined French/British nature that has endured for any length of time is a student residence in Paris known as the Collège franco-britannique. Over forty years ago, within those hallowed walls, I met up with a splendid French girl who was studying at the Sorbonne. We decided to get married, and we even ended up having two marvelous children. Admittedly, our marriage didn't last too long, but we have remained good friends, even though the waters of a Channel flow between our respective lives. I would even claim that there's nothing better than a Channel to delimit the territories of very different people who are intent upon remaining friends.
I really can't figure out what Guy Mollet had in kind when he set out for London in 1956. Who knows? Maybe he just dropped across there on a regular shopping trip, like countless French people, to pick up a few odds and ends at Harrod's or Marks and Spencer's. Then he got carried away while having a few pints with the boys in a nice pub, eating warm pork pies and chatting up charming young London birds. Inevitably, thoughts of union started to germinate in Mollet's mind. Besides, he wasn't used to drinking warm beer. He suddenly banged his fist on the bar of pub, startling the drinkers, and yelled out a cry of joy like Archimedes jumping out of his bath: "Jesus, man, I love this place. I love the people. And I'm the prime minister of France. Why don't we get married?" Before the folk in the pub could stop him, Mollet dashed off to Downing Street, to spring his idea upon the father of the future bride...
No, it probably didn't happen like that. In any case, I'm convinced that it's better for England and France to carry on living side by side in sin, with the Channel running down the middle of their big bed.
Monday, January 15, 2007
Show me your machines
My former mentor Pierre Schaeffer [1910-1995] invented musique concrète, which consisted of using equipment such as microphones, audio filters and tape recorders to create music composed of multifarious noises. One might have imagined this graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique as an electronics geek fascinated by machines, but this was not at all the case. I believe Pierre always had more respect for pianos, violins and the human voice than for devices that you plug into an electricity socket. He used to refer mockingly to a Japanese admirer, himself a composer, who turned up one day at Schaeffer's musical research center in Paris and said: "Maestro, show me your machines!" It was like a mindless command from an alien: "Take me to your leader!" Pierre detested the idea that anybody might attribute more importance to equipment than to the humans who manipulated it.As a longtime computerist, I tend to be fascinated by certain machines, particularly when they seem to be capable of performing interesting tasks in an "intelligent" style. (Don't ask me what the adjective "intelligent" means.) But the anecdote about Schaeffer and his Japanese visitor springs into my mind and interrupts my enthusiasm—like a circuit breaker—whenever I feel myself getting too carried away by impressive electronic equipment. For example, the other day, when I was adding my two cents worth of praise concerning the Apple iPhone, I had the impression that my old friend Pierre was looking down on me from his heavenly research center and softly sneering.
Ah, not a day goes by without my thinking what a pity it is that Pierre is no longer with us to cogitate upon the consequences of the Internet. I'm not sure that he would have actually got around to using the net himself (except maybe for writing a blog), but I'm convinced that he would have invented several theories and written a dozen books about it. And he would have encouraged all of us to produce multimedia accounts about the metaphysics of the Internet, and he would have then shot down our work in flames, concluding that we were all incapable of correctly analyzing this new phenomenon. And, as usual, we would have all agreed with Pierre...
Recently, my daughter gave me this new machine, which is supposed to make such things as toasted sandwiches. It's not, however, the sort of machine that whips up my enthusiasm. Curiously, the appliance doesn't have an on/off switch. So, you have to actually pull the plug out of the socket to turn it off. Worse, during my unique test of the device, it succeeded in blowing the circuit breaker in my kitchen... which also shut down abruptly my Macintosh. So, you might say that this appliance didn't get off to a good start with me. I'd gladly give it away to a needy neighbor, but no neighbor needs a fire to break out in his kitchen.
In any case, as I mentioned in a previous blog, I already have a pair of excellent French machines: one for making bread and the other for toasting sandwiches.Meanwhile, without becoming paranoid about the possible consequences of power outages or the circuit breaker shutting down my computer, I've taken steps to handle these eventualities... which could arise because of a lightning spike. My latest new gadget is a so-called UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply).
It includes a big battery and weighs over five kilos. As soon as there's a drop in power, or a total outage, the unit goes into action and keeps the computer running, at least up until you can close it down correctly. In fact, I bought two of these UPS units: one for the Macintosh and its peripherals, and the other for my broadband box and phone sets. One of these days I'll buy a third one for my TV, and a fourth one for my hifi system. But I repeat [Do you hear me, Pierre?]: I am not at all an ordinary electronics gadget-lover.In a recent post, I included a photo of kangaroos intrigued by solar lamps on an Australian lawn. The friend who sent me the photo informed me that these lamps are made in China, and that there's no longer any kind of local manufacturing industry in Australia for such products. One of the pleasant surprises concerning the above-mentioned UPS units is that they're completely made in France, which is a rare enough situation to deserve special mention.
Now, I haven't even got around to describing the electronic peripherals I also purchased to backup my Macintosh correctly, and to burn video DVDs... one of which I intend to send, in the next few days, to relatives out in Australia. But I already have the impression that this is surely the most boring blog article I've written up until now. Pierre Schaeffer was right. That "Show me your machines" stuff is even duller than the dog-eared magazines we're invited to browse through while waiting for a haircut or a medical visit.
How to read my blog
I've spent a large part of my professional existence (not only in France, but in Australia too) teaching people how to use computers in one way or another. So, it's hardly surprising that I should think about explaining how to read my blog, because I know that such things don't necessarily "come naturally" to newcomers. In a previous post, I talked about sending in a comment to the blog. This time, I intend to deal with the sidebar links, to the right of the actual articles.
At the top, in the ABOUT ME zone, there's a button labeled VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE. In fact, you won't learn much by clicking this button, but it's a standard feature of all blogs such as mine, administered by Google.
The next sidebar zone is labeled LINKS, and the buttons point to three of my websites.
Next, there's a zone labeled PREVIOUS POSTS which, as its name suggests, contains buttons that take you to some (but not all) of my previous blog articles (called posts in blog jargon).
Finally, down the bottom, there's a small but important sidebar area labeled ARCHIVES, which enables you—often in an indirect manner, involving several steps—to display all the articles I've written, starting with the post of 9 December 2006 whose title was Why have I created this blog?
Incidentally, one of the things I never know with certainty is how my blog is actually displayed on other computers. When I publish a new article, I have to do a fair amount of tweaking to position correctly the graphics and the text. In doing this, I'm looking at my blog as it appears on a Macintosh running the Firefox browser. Maybe it looks quite different on other platforms.
That's all I'll have to say of a didactic nature. I ask readers who knew all this already to excuse me for being pedantic.
At the top, in the ABOUT ME zone, there's a button labeled VIEW MY COMPLETE PROFILE. In fact, you won't learn much by clicking this button, but it's a standard feature of all blogs such as mine, administered by Google.
The next sidebar zone is labeled LINKS, and the buttons point to three of my websites.
Next, there's a zone labeled PREVIOUS POSTS which, as its name suggests, contains buttons that take you to some (but not all) of my previous blog articles (called posts in blog jargon).
Finally, down the bottom, there's a small but important sidebar area labeled ARCHIVES, which enables you—often in an indirect manner, involving several steps—to display all the articles I've written, starting with the post of 9 December 2006 whose title was Why have I created this blog?Incidentally, one of the things I never know with certainty is how my blog is actually displayed on other computers. When I publish a new article, I have to do a fair amount of tweaking to position correctly the graphics and the text. In doing this, I'm looking at my blog as it appears on a Macintosh running the Firefox browser. Maybe it looks quite different on other platforms.
That's all I'll have to say of a didactic nature. I ask readers who knew all this already to excuse me for being pedantic.
Sunday, January 14, 2007
Empty space
Next summer, if you'd like to camp or set up your caravan in a delightful setting just opposite the village of Choranche, look for this house:
The words Camping chez la Mère Michon (nickname of the female proprietor) are quite big. You can't miss them.
The reason I mention this camping spot is that the owner and her family are friends of mine, and I told Michelle that I might be able to help her, a few years ago, by setting up a small website concerning her camping park. In fact, her camping venture evolved rapidly, since many passing drivers were attracted to her park by the huge Mère Michon sign. Finally, my website didn't play a significant role in the affair. In the camping domain, not even a planetary computer network can compete with the expression Camping chez la Mère Michon painted in huge letters on the front of your house. Besides, Michelle never had a computer, so I couldn't put an e-mail address in the website. Consequently, my website was soon forgotten, and it rotted away like an old tent or caravan left standing out in the wind and rain and sun and snow. Another trivial detail. Certain observers who think they're clever and funny (like me, for example) would contend that some of the success of Michelle's sign is that many motorists imagine for a split second that they've seen the expression Mère Nichon, which might be translated roughly as Mother Boobs, and they wonder whether they've come upon a nude camping park.
Now, why am I rambling on about all this? Well, it so happens that websites I've built for friends are often a flop, for one reason or another. And, in such cases, I end up inheriting their empty space (obtained free of charge from the French Internet company named Free). Michelle's camping park is located in the neighboring commune of Châtelus, and the abandoned website was named http://chatelus.free.fr. I couldn't think of anything serious to do with the empty webspace, since the commune is a rather small and dull place. So, I decided to build a small website (in French) about a charming but totally fictitious Provençal village called Châtelus. And that's what you can see there today if you click the above address.
Another webspace that I inherited through disuse is the one in which this blog is housed. If you want to see the perfectly normal public website for which this space was initially acquired, simply reduce the address to http://missionman.free.fr. Here's how this primordial website came into being, in a local café a few years ago:
David: William, I've often thought that a website might help me to get jobs.
William: What kind of jobs?
David: Well, theoretically, anything at all, provided that it's well-paid. I'd be prepared to travel abroad to perform tasks of one kind or another, in situations where my employer wouldn't have the time or capacity to carry out those tasks for himself.
William: So, you see yourself as a man who would get paid to perform missions of an unspecified nature...
David: Well, my employer would finally have to specify exactly what he wants me to do. And how much he's prepared to pay me, along with expenses. And my job would consist of doing it, in a way that satisfies my employer.
William: It all sounds a bit vague, a bit mysterious. People might think you're talking in terms of jobs of a more or less illicit nature...
David: No, I've got to leave things vague, because a typical mission might be anything at all, such as renting a holiday home for my employer and his family on a Greek island, or purchasing some special kind of product that can only be found in Africa, or maybe picking up business documents in South America...
William: OK, I'll build you a vague little website. And it's up to you to decide how to use it effectively.
Retrospectively, I think our conversation was pub talk, because I'm not sure that David ever used his tiny self-promotional website in any way whatsoever. I don't even know whether he noted down the address of it. In any case, he never picked up e-mail sent to the site (most of which was spam, I believe). So, I decided to borrow his webspace for my blog. And that's why readers who don't know this simple story might imagine today, when they see my blog address, that I think of myself as a man of mysterious missions or, worse still, that I've settled here in order to carry out missionary work aimed at christianizing the wild Alpine Yeti in the vicinity of Choranche and Châtelus. Not at all! On the other hand, I do tend to think of this blog, from a communications viewpoint, as a kind of mission of an unspecified nature...
The words Camping chez la Mère Michon (nickname of the female proprietor) are quite big. You can't miss them.
The reason I mention this camping spot is that the owner and her family are friends of mine, and I told Michelle that I might be able to help her, a few years ago, by setting up a small website concerning her camping park. In fact, her camping venture evolved rapidly, since many passing drivers were attracted to her park by the huge Mère Michon sign. Finally, my website didn't play a significant role in the affair. In the camping domain, not even a planetary computer network can compete with the expression Camping chez la Mère Michon painted in huge letters on the front of your house. Besides, Michelle never had a computer, so I couldn't put an e-mail address in the website. Consequently, my website was soon forgotten, and it rotted away like an old tent or caravan left standing out in the wind and rain and sun and snow. Another trivial detail. Certain observers who think they're clever and funny (like me, for example) would contend that some of the success of Michelle's sign is that many motorists imagine for a split second that they've seen the expression Mère Nichon, which might be translated roughly as Mother Boobs, and they wonder whether they've come upon a nude camping park.
Now, why am I rambling on about all this? Well, it so happens that websites I've built for friends are often a flop, for one reason or another. And, in such cases, I end up inheriting their empty space (obtained free of charge from the French Internet company named Free). Michelle's camping park is located in the neighboring commune of Châtelus, and the abandoned website was named http://chatelus.free.fr. I couldn't think of anything serious to do with the empty webspace, since the commune is a rather small and dull place. So, I decided to build a small website (in French) about a charming but totally fictitious Provençal village called Châtelus. And that's what you can see there today if you click the above address.
Another webspace that I inherited through disuse is the one in which this blog is housed. If you want to see the perfectly normal public website for which this space was initially acquired, simply reduce the address to http://missionman.free.fr. Here's how this primordial website came into being, in a local café a few years ago:
David: William, I've often thought that a website might help me to get jobs.
William: What kind of jobs?
David: Well, theoretically, anything at all, provided that it's well-paid. I'd be prepared to travel abroad to perform tasks of one kind or another, in situations where my employer wouldn't have the time or capacity to carry out those tasks for himself.
William: So, you see yourself as a man who would get paid to perform missions of an unspecified nature...
David: Well, my employer would finally have to specify exactly what he wants me to do. And how much he's prepared to pay me, along with expenses. And my job would consist of doing it, in a way that satisfies my employer.
William: It all sounds a bit vague, a bit mysterious. People might think you're talking in terms of jobs of a more or less illicit nature...
David: No, I've got to leave things vague, because a typical mission might be anything at all, such as renting a holiday home for my employer and his family on a Greek island, or purchasing some special kind of product that can only be found in Africa, or maybe picking up business documents in South America...
William: OK, I'll build you a vague little website. And it's up to you to decide how to use it effectively.
Retrospectively, I think our conversation was pub talk, because I'm not sure that David ever used his tiny self-promotional website in any way whatsoever. I don't even know whether he noted down the address of it. In any case, he never picked up e-mail sent to the site (most of which was spam, I believe). So, I decided to borrow his webspace for my blog. And that's why readers who don't know this simple story might imagine today, when they see my blog address, that I think of myself as a man of mysterious missions or, worse still, that I've settled here in order to carry out missionary work aimed at christianizing the wild Alpine Yeti in the vicinity of Choranche and Châtelus. Not at all! On the other hand, I do tend to think of this blog, from a communications viewpoint, as a kind of mission of an unspecified nature...
Getting around on the slopes
I've decided to invest in a new vehicle: a little red four-wheel-drive thing that will make it easy for me to scamper around on the mountain slopes and shuffle through the narrow cobblestone streets of picturesque villages. And when I turn up in this hot rod at local Saturday dance evenings, girls are going to get knocked off their feet, maybe literally.
No, those are mere dream words. In reality, the local firemen came around to check out the neighborhood, to determine whether they would be able to maneuver their vehicle comfortably if they happened to be called here for a fire. It took them no more than five minutes to realize that, not only would they not be able to maneuver their huge firetruck in any way whatsoever in the vicinity of my place (because the roads are too narrow, steep and twisty), but they wouldn't even be able to approach the residences of neighbors further up the road, because the bitumen stops about fifty meters beyond my place, and is replaced by a dirt track full of potholes. So, the firepersons (there was a female in the group) left their truck at my place and went off in their small red van to inspect the two properties further up the track.
I don't think I'm being over-optimistic in affirming that the fire danger at my place is minimal, since my ancient house is henceforth composed of little more than stones, bound together by two (invisible) gigantic slabs of reinforced concrete that stretch from one end of the house to the other, at two levels. One of the architects working on the restoration of the house, a dozen years ago, said jokingly: "William, in years to come, archaeologists are going to be truly mystified when they come upon the ruins of your house. There'll be a heap of crumbling old stones of the kind used by peasants to build their mountain cabins back in the Napoleonic era. And, in the middle of all this dusty building material, there'll be two splendid slabs of 20th-century reinforced concrete, with hardly a chip in them. The archaeologists are likely to wonder if the slabs were maybe transported here by aliens, to set up a landing platform for their spaceships..." [One of the reasons I'm writing this blog, as you might have guessed, is to lend a hand to these future archaeologists, by leaving electronic explanations of the original situation at Gamone.]
For the moment, I'm a little disturbed by a theoretically embarrassing situation that's likely to arise soon. You see, my neighbor further up the track is selling his property, and potential buyers will soon be coming up here, no doubt, to take a look at the place. For their initial visit, they'll be accompanied by the real-estate agent, who's likely to dissuade his clients from talking to Gamone neighbors. But people who are truly interested in the property for sale will inevitably come back here on their own and ask me for low-down information about the local situation. [If not, they would be idiots.] And that puts me in a delicate situation. On the one hand, I could tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is: (1) dirt track with potholes and no immediate municipal plans to lay down macadam; (2) present impossibility of fire service; and (3) impossibility of driving up to the house after heavy winter snowfalls. On the other hand, I could refrain from providing potential customers with negative facts of this kind, in which case they might have reasons to hate me later on, when a sick or injured person can't receive the visit of a doctor in winter, or when a fire breaks out.
Happily, there's a way out: a convenient personal technique for avoiding this kind of dilemma. Faced with questions that I don't really want to answer, I simply apply my skills as a storyteller and start rambling on non-stop about the beauties and hardships of this splendid region back in the 14th century, when monks were creating vineyards on the rocky slopes. A lot of what I have to say is more or less true, but I invent things if necessary. I generally find that, after twenty minutes or so of my complicated unworldly tales, most normal urban people start coughing and fidgeting, or looking around to make sure that their automobile is correctly parked, or indicating by gestures (since they can't get a word in edgewise) that their kids and their dog are impatient to carry on walking. So, they give me a friendly smile and leave, swearing to themselves (I imagine) that they'll never again get caught up with this crazy talkative Aussie hermit...
Thank goodness my blogs are not like that.
No, those are mere dream words. In reality, the local firemen came around to check out the neighborhood, to determine whether they would be able to maneuver their vehicle comfortably if they happened to be called here for a fire. It took them no more than five minutes to realize that, not only would they not be able to maneuver their huge firetruck in any way whatsoever in the vicinity of my place (because the roads are too narrow, steep and twisty), but they wouldn't even be able to approach the residences of neighbors further up the road, because the bitumen stops about fifty meters beyond my place, and is replaced by a dirt track full of potholes. So, the firepersons (there was a female in the group) left their truck at my place and went off in their small red van to inspect the two properties further up the track.
I don't think I'm being over-optimistic in affirming that the fire danger at my place is minimal, since my ancient house is henceforth composed of little more than stones, bound together by two (invisible) gigantic slabs of reinforced concrete that stretch from one end of the house to the other, at two levels. One of the architects working on the restoration of the house, a dozen years ago, said jokingly: "William, in years to come, archaeologists are going to be truly mystified when they come upon the ruins of your house. There'll be a heap of crumbling old stones of the kind used by peasants to build their mountain cabins back in the Napoleonic era. And, in the middle of all this dusty building material, there'll be two splendid slabs of 20th-century reinforced concrete, with hardly a chip in them. The archaeologists are likely to wonder if the slabs were maybe transported here by aliens, to set up a landing platform for their spaceships..." [One of the reasons I'm writing this blog, as you might have guessed, is to lend a hand to these future archaeologists, by leaving electronic explanations of the original situation at Gamone.]
For the moment, I'm a little disturbed by a theoretically embarrassing situation that's likely to arise soon. You see, my neighbor further up the track is selling his property, and potential buyers will soon be coming up here, no doubt, to take a look at the place. For their initial visit, they'll be accompanied by the real-estate agent, who's likely to dissuade his clients from talking to Gamone neighbors. But people who are truly interested in the property for sale will inevitably come back here on their own and ask me for low-down information about the local situation. [If not, they would be idiots.] And that puts me in a delicate situation. On the one hand, I could tell them the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. That is: (1) dirt track with potholes and no immediate municipal plans to lay down macadam; (2) present impossibility of fire service; and (3) impossibility of driving up to the house after heavy winter snowfalls. On the other hand, I could refrain from providing potential customers with negative facts of this kind, in which case they might have reasons to hate me later on, when a sick or injured person can't receive the visit of a doctor in winter, or when a fire breaks out.
Happily, there's a way out: a convenient personal technique for avoiding this kind of dilemma. Faced with questions that I don't really want to answer, I simply apply my skills as a storyteller and start rambling on non-stop about the beauties and hardships of this splendid region back in the 14th century, when monks were creating vineyards on the rocky slopes. A lot of what I have to say is more or less true, but I invent things if necessary. I generally find that, after twenty minutes or so of my complicated unworldly tales, most normal urban people start coughing and fidgeting, or looking around to make sure that their automobile is correctly parked, or indicating by gestures (since they can't get a word in edgewise) that their kids and their dog are impatient to carry on walking. So, they give me a friendly smile and leave, swearing to themselves (I imagine) that they'll never again get caught up with this crazy talkative Aussie hermit...
Thank goodness my blogs are not like that.
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Islanders
I've often wondered whether certain aspects of my character might be "explained" (let's leave those inverted commas in place, since I don't wish to tackle the possible meanings of that fuzzy term) by the fact that I grew up on an island. A big island, certainly, but an island all the same... "girt by sea", as our national anthem Advance Australia Fair puts it. French people are always asking me about how big Australia is, and I usually say "fourteen times as big as France"... which is not a particularly eloquent explanation. The following image from Margaret Nicholson's excellent Little Aussie Fact Book (Penguin) provides a better idea of the size of the huge island:
Islander characteristics, to my mind, are such things as a love of autonomous seclusion, a constant anguish of being invaded by outsiders, and a vague underlying curiosity about what might be taking place in the remote and ill-defined "outside world". Many islands have an associated mainland. In the case of my treasured island of Rottnest, for example, the mainland is Western Australia. But the island continent of Australia, taken as a whole, is an exception in that this island knows no mainland. You might think of Australia as a super island that is its own mainland. We Australians may have inherited this way of looking upon the universe from Great Britain, whose peoples think of their native island in that way. But we might just as well have inherited an island mentality from our Irish ancestors, for they too see their birthplace—at least symbolically—as the heart of the universe.
We islanders used to be united by our respect of the Robinson Crusoe myth. Knowing that our homeland can be lashed by terrible tempests and subjected to all kinds of possible disasters, we would strive to fortify our abode, to be able to defend ourselves, because we knew that we couldn't count upon help from the outside world. Today, of course, this is no longer the case in Australia, which has placed herself under the protective cloak of the USA.
Even though I now live far away from the sea, I still have an islander's awe of big ships, which was a childhood image that soothed me whenever I was upset. I have always thought that this is a remnant of our collective memory of ancestors who came to the Antipodes in ships.
Last night on French TV, the weekly maritime magazine called Thalassa (sea in Greek) dealt with several islands, including the fabulous feudal domain of Sark in the English Channel, which I visited long ago when I was writing my guide book Great Britain Today (Jeune Afrique, 1978). The French documentary then turned its attention to a quite different island, in the Pacific, whose name I had almost forgotten: Nauru.
I recall that, when I was a youth in Australia, the magical name of this island was a synonym of dizzy riches obtained through the sale of phosphate. Up until its independence in 1968, Nauru was a trust territory administered by Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Since then, all the immense wealth acquired from the sale of its phosphate appears to have dissolved into thin air (?)... leaving the island's small population more or less destitute. And the island itself, from an environmental viewpoint, is a total catastrophe. In fact, one of Nauru's only sources of revenue today is the rent paid by the Australian government for a detention center holding asylum-seekers who have tried to enter Australia. Between islanders, that kind of basic collaboration is normal. N'est-ce pas?
Islander characteristics, to my mind, are such things as a love of autonomous seclusion, a constant anguish of being invaded by outsiders, and a vague underlying curiosity about what might be taking place in the remote and ill-defined "outside world". Many islands have an associated mainland. In the case of my treasured island of Rottnest, for example, the mainland is Western Australia. But the island continent of Australia, taken as a whole, is an exception in that this island knows no mainland. You might think of Australia as a super island that is its own mainland. We Australians may have inherited this way of looking upon the universe from Great Britain, whose peoples think of their native island in that way. But we might just as well have inherited an island mentality from our Irish ancestors, for they too see their birthplace—at least symbolically—as the heart of the universe.
We islanders used to be united by our respect of the Robinson Crusoe myth. Knowing that our homeland can be lashed by terrible tempests and subjected to all kinds of possible disasters, we would strive to fortify our abode, to be able to defend ourselves, because we knew that we couldn't count upon help from the outside world. Today, of course, this is no longer the case in Australia, which has placed herself under the protective cloak of the USA.
Even though I now live far away from the sea, I still have an islander's awe of big ships, which was a childhood image that soothed me whenever I was upset. I have always thought that this is a remnant of our collective memory of ancestors who came to the Antipodes in ships.
Last night on French TV, the weekly maritime magazine called Thalassa (sea in Greek) dealt with several islands, including the fabulous feudal domain of Sark in the English Channel, which I visited long ago when I was writing my guide book Great Britain Today (Jeune Afrique, 1978). The French documentary then turned its attention to a quite different island, in the Pacific, whose name I had almost forgotten: Nauru.
I recall that, when I was a youth in Australia, the magical name of this island was a synonym of dizzy riches obtained through the sale of phosphate. Up until its independence in 1968, Nauru was a trust territory administered by Australia, New Zealand and the UK. Since then, all the immense wealth acquired from the sale of its phosphate appears to have dissolved into thin air (?)... leaving the island's small population more or less destitute. And the island itself, from an environmental viewpoint, is a total catastrophe. In fact, one of Nauru's only sources of revenue today is the rent paid by the Australian government for a detention center holding asylum-seekers who have tried to enter Australia. Between islanders, that kind of basic collaboration is normal. N'est-ce pas?
Friday, January 12, 2007
Virtualities
I must add my voice to the chorus of admiration that sounded all over the planet when the magician Steve Jobs unveiled his iPhone a few days ago. When Jean-Louis Gassée handed me my first Apple computer back in the early '80s, he said prophetically: "William, this little machine is going to change your life." Retrospectively, we could paraphrase his vision: "Apple's little machines are going to change the life of the planet."
There's a problem in deciding what the future iPhone is, and what it isn't. René Magritte's painting of a pipe bears an intriguing caption: This is not a pipe. Similarly, the iPhone should probably have a caption: This is not a phone. Not an ordinary cell phone, that's for sure, because conventional phoning is merely one element in a rich set of functions, one of which is familiar to people through the iPod.Funnily enough, Steve Jobs himself preferred a different kind of negative affirmation: This is not a computer. He doesn't want to find small businessmen complaining one day, for example, that they can't use their iPhone to print out the company payroll. And Jobs's warning is understandable in that certain observers have already started to express their concern that they might not be able to run Microsoft Word on their future device. Maybe they will, maybe they won't. Who knows? Who cares? Anything seems to be possible.
A week or so ago, a futuristic electric automobile called the Chevy Volt was presented at Detroit, but the manufacturer insisted upon the fact that this vehicle was not yet a reality, nor even a short-term feasibility, but rather a pure concept.I find it exciting that we have moved so rapidly into a virtual-reality era in which we define future objects in terms of what they are not. As I grow older, I am more and more convinced that I am not going to turn into a blasé old man. Old man, maybe, surely, but not blasé.
On the net
In everyday conversations, the term "Internet" is likely to be replaced by the expression "on the net". Instead of saying "I saw it on TV", people will have more and more opportunities of saying "I saw it on the net" or "I saw you on the net" or even "Did you hear the latest news? William is back on the net!"
Yesterday afternoon I dropped in for my regular three-monthly visit to the local GP. Since I have no apparent health problems, the strictly medical part of our encounter took no more than five minutes, and then we got around to talking about the doctor's latest discovery on the net: a luxury men's shoe shop named Bexley at http://www.bexley.fr. It certainly looks good. Personally, though, I would not be keen about buying shoes on the net. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the net. On the contrary, the problem is my big feet...
Somebody emailed me a remark about the procedure for sending a comment to this blog. At the bottom of each of my articles, there's a button with the word "comments":
If you click this, Google (my blog provider) asks the visitor to identify him/herself, and this means that you must have a so-called Google account. If you don't already have such a free and simple thing, there's a button that enables you to create one:
Why does Google ask visitors to identify themselves before making comments? If they didn't, hordes of vandals would spend their time infecting the blog with four-letter words and other nonsense. The general idea of correct behavior on the net is that you're perfectly free to use nasty words such as "fuck" and "Bush" as long as you first state your identity... which is fair enough.
Besides vandals, there's another category of net visitors that need to be controlled. I'm talking of robots: that's to say, software gadgets that wander around non-stop on the net looking for opportunities of spreading havoc. To prevent robots from opening Google accounts and then sending in blog comments, the sign-up procedure incorporates a robot trap... in the same spirit as those ingenious metal bars set in the road to prevent animals straying through gates on Australian farms. You're asked to look at a graphic thing of the following kind:
You're expected to recognize the term that's displayed, and type in the same series of letters: here, stonimp. The general idea is that it would be highly difficult (but not impossible) for a robot to perform this simple act as successfully as a human being. So, if you get the letters right, Google assumes that it's dealing with a genuine human being who wants to establish an account so that he/she can send in blog comments. And that's about all you have to do. [Well, there's another tiny but essential thing that you should do, whenever you create an Internet account of any kind. Write down your Google sign-in details in a personal logbook that you keep alongside of your computer.]
In later articles, I'll get back to the question of why, in spite of the barrage of negative feedback I received a few days ago from several female friends (within a span of 24 hours), I believe that I must carry on with this blog... maybe with fewer direct references to real-world human beings. For example, you might have noticed that, although I'm fully aware of the stuff my GP purchased on the net in the way of shoes, I'm not going to tell you anything whatsoever: neither the number of shoes he bought (I'll give you a hint though: it was an even number greater than zero), nor their color. All of this vital information will be kept strictly private, as an affair between the doctor and me. So, there's no sense in flooding my blog with tons of comments pleading with me to release this private stuff. I ain't gonna tell yuh nothin... not even the size of my GP's feet.
Yesterday afternoon I dropped in for my regular three-monthly visit to the local GP. Since I have no apparent health problems, the strictly medical part of our encounter took no more than five minutes, and then we got around to talking about the doctor's latest discovery on the net: a luxury men's shoe shop named Bexley at http://www.bexley.fr. It certainly looks good. Personally, though, I would not be keen about buying shoes on the net. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with the net. On the contrary, the problem is my big feet...
Somebody emailed me a remark about the procedure for sending a comment to this blog. At the bottom of each of my articles, there's a button with the word "comments":
If you click this, Google (my blog provider) asks the visitor to identify him/herself, and this means that you must have a so-called Google account. If you don't already have such a free and simple thing, there's a button that enables you to create one:
Why does Google ask visitors to identify themselves before making comments? If they didn't, hordes of vandals would spend their time infecting the blog with four-letter words and other nonsense. The general idea of correct behavior on the net is that you're perfectly free to use nasty words such as "fuck" and "Bush" as long as you first state your identity... which is fair enough.
Besides vandals, there's another category of net visitors that need to be controlled. I'm talking of robots: that's to say, software gadgets that wander around non-stop on the net looking for opportunities of spreading havoc. To prevent robots from opening Google accounts and then sending in blog comments, the sign-up procedure incorporates a robot trap... in the same spirit as those ingenious metal bars set in the road to prevent animals straying through gates on Australian farms. You're asked to look at a graphic thing of the following kind:
You're expected to recognize the term that's displayed, and type in the same series of letters: here, stonimp. The general idea is that it would be highly difficult (but not impossible) for a robot to perform this simple act as successfully as a human being. So, if you get the letters right, Google assumes that it's dealing with a genuine human being who wants to establish an account so that he/she can send in blog comments. And that's about all you have to do. [Well, there's another tiny but essential thing that you should do, whenever you create an Internet account of any kind. Write down your Google sign-in details in a personal logbook that you keep alongside of your computer.]
In later articles, I'll get back to the question of why, in spite of the barrage of negative feedback I received a few days ago from several female friends (within a span of 24 hours), I believe that I must carry on with this blog... maybe with fewer direct references to real-world human beings. For example, you might have noticed that, although I'm fully aware of the stuff my GP purchased on the net in the way of shoes, I'm not going to tell you anything whatsoever: neither the number of shoes he bought (I'll give you a hint though: it was an even number greater than zero), nor their color. All of this vital information will be kept strictly private, as an affair between the doctor and me. So, there's no sense in flooding my blog with tons of comments pleading with me to release this private stuff. I ain't gonna tell yuh nothin... not even the size of my GP's feet.
Wednesday, January 10, 2007
Halt
I've been happy to carry on with this blog over the last few weeks, and I've even had the pleasant feeling that something that might be termed a "style" was emerging and evolving. But I've been disappointed by certain negative reactions expressed by individuals (in France) who are relatively close to me and who should normally know me well enough to respect the integrity of my motivations. One person started the ball rolling by saying that she was shocked by my shamelessness (lack of pudeur) in displaying a medical image of my head and describing a minor health problem that occurred over a year ago. Another person suggested that it's not correct for me to talk about neighbors, and show images of them. That person even went on to state that I didn't have the right to display an image of my daughter in bed. A little later, another person hinted politely at the same kind of criticism, suggesting that my blog style might be acceptable in America or Australia, but not in France. It was suggested that I might use initials to refer to real individuals, and refrain from showing photos of them... unless, of course, they had formally authorized me to do so. The person who made this suggestion added that, as far as she herself was concerned, it was entirely out of the question that I should ever refer to her in my blog by her real name.
Meanwhile, as far as Australian readers are concerned (for whom I first imagined this blog), there hasn't been much feedback, neither as incorporated comments, nor as e-mail. So, it's a little like speaking in an empty room. Incidentally, somebody suggested that the only reason why I have often criticized Bush and his catastrophe in Iraq (based upon lies and stupidity) was merely... to irritate my Australian aunt and uncle! Needless to say, this totally absurd interpretation of my motivations, disregarding my moral convictions on themes such as warfare and torture, sickened me.
For these reasons, I've decided to halt my blog for the time being. Later on, I'll decide whether this halt should be transformed into a definitive termination of the blog and the deletion of existing messages.
Meanwhile, as far as Australian readers are concerned (for whom I first imagined this blog), there hasn't been much feedback, neither as incorporated comments, nor as e-mail. So, it's a little like speaking in an empty room. Incidentally, somebody suggested that the only reason why I have often criticized Bush and his catastrophe in Iraq (based upon lies and stupidity) was merely... to irritate my Australian aunt and uncle! Needless to say, this totally absurd interpretation of my motivations, disregarding my moral convictions on themes such as warfare and torture, sickened me.
For these reasons, I've decided to halt my blog for the time being. Later on, I'll decide whether this halt should be transformed into a definitive termination of the blog and the deletion of existing messages.
Tuesday, January 9, 2007
Clouds in the wrong place
Often, if I'm quick enough, I can grab my camera and obtain interesting images from my bathroom window or the front yard of my house, as the attached shots show.This morning, as soon as I noticed spectacular ground-level cloud formations nestled against the cliffs at the end of the valley, I dashed out with my camera and headed up the slopes on foot, with Sophia jogging along beside me. On the way, we ran into the small white Choranche van driven by Pierrot, the municipal employee who looks after all the practical aspects of the commune. Pierrot knows almost everything about almost everybody in Choranche, so I never fail to ask questions whenever I meet up with him. I'm a curious citizen, in all the senses of that adjective.
Me: "Sold your house yet?" After his wife moved on to greener pastures, Pierrot decided to change residences.
Pierrot: "No." I've often told Pierrot that I might be able to help him sell his ideally-located village house through the Internet, but I have the impression that he's in no hurry to find a buyer.
Me: "Has the hotel been sold?"
Pierrot (grinning): "No, we would have heard of any such deal. Whenever they sell their place, they throw a party." That's Pierrot's wry sense of humor. Apparently, when I was out in Australia, the owners of the local hotel-restaurant thought they'd found a buyer. Rashly, they immediately sold a lot of their equipment and invited the village folk along for a farewell drink. Then they learnt that the would-be buyer couldn't get a bank loan. So, the deal fell through.
Me: "I'm on my way up to the top of the ridge to take photos of those fabulous low-lying clouds at the end of the valley. Before I moved here to the mountains, I always imagined that clouds float high in the sky. But here the clouds are often in the wrong place. You can even find them, like today, at ground level. Tell me, Pierrot: Is there a special expression in French for those low-lying clouds?"
Pierrot: "Yes. They're called low clouds." There's no doubt about it: You learn new stuff when you're least expecting it.
Meanwhile, I had lost time through this lofty discussion with Pierrot, and the low clouds had dissolved into the atmosphere, like steam escaping from an oven when you take out a pizza or a cake. So, not wishing to return home empty-handed, I turned my gaze towards my isolated house, which I love so dearly, and took yet another photo of it.Years ago, when my son and I first discovered the magnificent cloud phenomena at Choranche, we developed a trivial comic routine, inventing remarks as if we were seasoned travelers who had appreciated every square kilometer of China.
Me: "I remember seeing fabulous clouds like that back in the province of Kuang-tung."
François: "No, I would have said that the clouds of Choranche look more like those around Fu-kien."
These days, of course, China has become such an ordinary place for visitors that our cloud jokes would fall flat. François himself went there a month or so ago, merely to take photos for his next book. At present, there's another French visitor in China: presidential candidate Ségolène Royal. Seeing all the media accounts of her trip and encounters with Chinese politicians, one of Ségolène's French opponents made a sour-grapes comment yesterday: "I've never seen so many media people trailing after a tourist."On Xmas Day, friends in the village of Pont-en-Royans invited me down for a family dinner, followed by the presentation of a video made by two of their children who had recently visited China. Today, faced with images of Ségolène in the context of the Great Wall and the imperial compounds, it's true that I feel I'm watching the same touristic shots I saw at my friends' place the other day. But I'm convinced that this vision of the charming Socialist candidate provides a powerful media message, which will be received perfectly by many French voters. Ségolène is indeed—as her sour-grapes opponent suggested—an ordinary tourist, a normal woman, rather than a baby-kissing vote-collecting political monster. And that image combines with her alacrity, intelligence and political intuition to make her exceptionally attractive... to her Chinese hosts as well as French voters.
In any case, I'm convinced that, for Ségolène Royal, the clouds are floating in exactly the right place. And she too is floating up on them.
Monday, January 8, 2007
Dangers and my dog
On cold damp mornings like today, I'm always amused by Sophia's behavior. She has to make a choice between staying outside in front of the house, where her paws are likely to get wet by raindrops, or remaining on the warm kitchen floor. We humans see this choice solely as a matter of bodily comfort, and so does Sophia to a certain extent. But the huge advantage of staying out in the cold is that Sophia is in direct contact with the universe. From her vantage point in front of the stone wall of the house, Sophia can look out over the valley, towards the slopes and cliffs. In this position, she can instantly detect events such as the return of Hannibal's troops and their elephants from the Italian Alps, or the landing of Martians on the Vercors plateau. Sophia realizes that, inside the kitchen, these happenings could occur and she might not notice them fast enough to take action. Outside, her smell and vision are unimpaired, and Sophia can start barking and spring into action as soon as she detects a danger. So, the cold raindrops really don't matter all that much.Sophia has never forgotten a terrible wintry evening, a year or so ago, when the Master (that's me) happened to be sitting in front of a log fire and watching a TV show about dinosaurs. As soon as Sophia started to become alarmed by the weird beastly noises filling the living room, I tried to calm her down by explaining that everything was purely virtual, but my dog appeared to disagree with me. She was convinced that there were herds of terrible creatures storming through the valley in the direction of our house, and she barked madly until I opened the door and let her race out into the cold dark night. But a rapid circumnavigation of the house confirmed Sophia's worst fears. The beasts were surely already inside our dwelling, because she could still clearly hear their howls. So, she carried on barking, and I had to take control of the situation by turning off the TV.
Now, did Sophia realize that I had succeeded in eliminating a herd of dinosaurs at the flick of a switch, merely by using my zapper? Of course not. On the contrary, she was convinced that her barking tour of the house had been sufficiently threatening to frighten away the awesome invaders. Basically, as Sophia later explained to me, dinosaurs are cowards. But one must remain constantly vigilant, even on cold damp mornings like today.
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Farmers and bandits
As I've pointed out in an earlier blog, I'm a particularly small-time (and unofficial) sheep farmer, even by French standards. If my animals were to wander back to Gamone from my neighbor's slopes (where nobody has sighted them for a fortnight), I believe that my current flock would normally be five head. So Aussie and Kiwi lamb exporters shouldn't see me as a threat to their commerce.
I like sheep, both in the fields and on my dinner table, and I've always been amused by the simple explanation about why the meat of a sheep is called mutton. After the Normans invaded England in 1066, they established a new social order that was reflected in the language of the land. Out in the fields, animals were still looked after by the defeated Saxon shepherds, whose word sceap gave rise to the term sheep. But, at the dinner tables of the Norman landlords, the French word mouton ended up being pronounced as mutton.
I mentioned the confusion that can arise in the minds of Australians when they hear the word farm. From an etymological viewpoint, farm looks like a simple Saxon-based word of the same kind as sheep, ox or pig, but this is an illusion. The sense of our English verb to farm, meaning to grow crops or raise animals, hardly even existed yet in the English language, for example, when my ancestor Charles Walker [1807-1860] arrived in Australia as a steward aboard the vessel Caroline, in 1833, with vague hopes of becoming a sheep farmer. He might have said that he wanted to graze sheep (an old English verb derived from grass), but he probably wouldn't have spoken of farming his land.
The origins of this far-from-simple word farm are in fact French, and they're linked to our English adjective firm, meaning fixed. As early as the Middle Ages, there was a system in France that enabled rural folk to rent land from the local lord at a fixed annual rent, and this came to be known as the ferme (firm) system. Later, in the decades preceding the French Revolution, the men whose job consisted of collecting such annual rents were known as fermiers (farmers). In other words, the original farmers were not at all the men and women who toiled on the land, but a body of immensely wealthy rent collectors.
It was in this context that a flamboyant bandit named Louis Mandrin, of the Robin Hood kind, became a hero in the Dauphiné region of France where I now live. He was born in 1725 in the village of Saint-Étienne de Geoirs, which is now the site of Grenoble's airport. As a young man, he signed a lucrative contract with the tax collectors of the so-called General Farm, which consisted of crossing the Alps with a convoy of about a hundred mules carrying supplies for French troops fighting in Italy. On the return journey, most of Mandrin's mules died, and then the General Farm refused to pay him. To add insult to injury, the General Farmers had Mandrin's brother arrested for a minor matter of counterfeit coins. He himself got mixed up in a bloody brawl and had to go into hiding to avoid being executed. And that was how Louis Mandrin came to declare war upon the General Farmers and became France's most illustrious outlaw.
He recruited hundreds of brigands, forming a band of mounted soldiers, and he organized military campaigns throughout the region in order to acquire tobacco and other merchandise which he then sold to the rural folk in what might be termed "duty free" conditions, thereby making a lot of money, which he then distributed generously.
Alas, in 1755, thirty-year-old Mandrin was cornered by the authorities, and rapidly executed in public in nearby Valence. The bones of his body and members were broken by an executioner with a steel crowbar, and then Mandrin was tied to a coach wheel and hoisted up into the warm May air, so that the crowds of onlookers could witness his agony.
Overnight, Louis Mandrin became a posthumous hero for all the French people who suffered at the hands of the ruthless tax collectors of the General Farm, and this dashing outlaw is considered as a forerunner of the French revolutionaries of 1789.
Today, two and a half centuries after his execution, Louis Mandrin remains an immensely popular figure, and there are touristic references to his tale from one end of the vast Dauphiné region to the other. There's a restaurant up the road from my place called Mandrin's Tavern, and even my neighbor's donkey is named Mandrin. (Mine is Moses.) To compare Mandrin's case with that of Australian bushrangers (such as my ancestor William Hickey), the French bandit is generally considered as an intelligent fighter for a noble political cause rather than as an egoistic and brutal delinquent.
Back in Paris in the '70s and '80s, when I used to play guitar and sing in bars in the Marais, the traditional highlight of a rowdy beer evening was the moment at which we would all break into the celebrated dirge known as Mandrin's Lament (often led by the raucous voice of the poet André Laude), whose nostalgic words—addressed to his companions—are supposed to flow from the scaffold as he is about to be executed.
It sounds silly to say so (and maybe it is), but I get a thrill out of thinking that I live here in the land of Louis Mandrin. When I was out in Australia a few months ago, I would have liked to compare this sentiment with the possible excitement of visiting the ancestral bushranger territory of Braidwood, but I didn't manage to get that far, since the train doesn't stop there yet.
I like sheep, both in the fields and on my dinner table, and I've always been amused by the simple explanation about why the meat of a sheep is called mutton. After the Normans invaded England in 1066, they established a new social order that was reflected in the language of the land. Out in the fields, animals were still looked after by the defeated Saxon shepherds, whose word sceap gave rise to the term sheep. But, at the dinner tables of the Norman landlords, the French word mouton ended up being pronounced as mutton.
I mentioned the confusion that can arise in the minds of Australians when they hear the word farm. From an etymological viewpoint, farm looks like a simple Saxon-based word of the same kind as sheep, ox or pig, but this is an illusion. The sense of our English verb to farm, meaning to grow crops or raise animals, hardly even existed yet in the English language, for example, when my ancestor Charles Walker [1807-1860] arrived in Australia as a steward aboard the vessel Caroline, in 1833, with vague hopes of becoming a sheep farmer. He might have said that he wanted to graze sheep (an old English verb derived from grass), but he probably wouldn't have spoken of farming his land.
The origins of this far-from-simple word farm are in fact French, and they're linked to our English adjective firm, meaning fixed. As early as the Middle Ages, there was a system in France that enabled rural folk to rent land from the local lord at a fixed annual rent, and this came to be known as the ferme (firm) system. Later, in the decades preceding the French Revolution, the men whose job consisted of collecting such annual rents were known as fermiers (farmers). In other words, the original farmers were not at all the men and women who toiled on the land, but a body of immensely wealthy rent collectors.
It was in this context that a flamboyant bandit named Louis Mandrin, of the Robin Hood kind, became a hero in the Dauphiné region of France where I now live. He was born in 1725 in the village of Saint-Étienne de Geoirs, which is now the site of Grenoble's airport. As a young man, he signed a lucrative contract with the tax collectors of the so-called General Farm, which consisted of crossing the Alps with a convoy of about a hundred mules carrying supplies for French troops fighting in Italy. On the return journey, most of Mandrin's mules died, and then the General Farm refused to pay him. To add insult to injury, the General Farmers had Mandrin's brother arrested for a minor matter of counterfeit coins. He himself got mixed up in a bloody brawl and had to go into hiding to avoid being executed. And that was how Louis Mandrin came to declare war upon the General Farmers and became France's most illustrious outlaw.
He recruited hundreds of brigands, forming a band of mounted soldiers, and he organized military campaigns throughout the region in order to acquire tobacco and other merchandise which he then sold to the rural folk in what might be termed "duty free" conditions, thereby making a lot of money, which he then distributed generously.
Alas, in 1755, thirty-year-old Mandrin was cornered by the authorities, and rapidly executed in public in nearby Valence. The bones of his body and members were broken by an executioner with a steel crowbar, and then Mandrin was tied to a coach wheel and hoisted up into the warm May air, so that the crowds of onlookers could witness his agony.
Overnight, Louis Mandrin became a posthumous hero for all the French people who suffered at the hands of the ruthless tax collectors of the General Farm, and this dashing outlaw is considered as a forerunner of the French revolutionaries of 1789.
Today, two and a half centuries after his execution, Louis Mandrin remains an immensely popular figure, and there are touristic references to his tale from one end of the vast Dauphiné region to the other. There's a restaurant up the road from my place called Mandrin's Tavern, and even my neighbor's donkey is named Mandrin. (Mine is Moses.) To compare Mandrin's case with that of Australian bushrangers (such as my ancestor William Hickey), the French bandit is generally considered as an intelligent fighter for a noble political cause rather than as an egoistic and brutal delinquent.
Back in Paris in the '70s and '80s, when I used to play guitar and sing in bars in the Marais, the traditional highlight of a rowdy beer evening was the moment at which we would all break into the celebrated dirge known as Mandrin's Lament (often led by the raucous voice of the poet André Laude), whose nostalgic words—addressed to his companions—are supposed to flow from the scaffold as he is about to be executed.
It sounds silly to say so (and maybe it is), but I get a thrill out of thinking that I live here in the land of Louis Mandrin. When I was out in Australia a few months ago, I would have liked to compare this sentiment with the possible excitement of visiting the ancestral bushranger territory of Braidwood, but I didn't manage to get that far, since the train doesn't stop there yet.
Saturday, January 6, 2007
Good winds in Washington
It’s reassuring to see a female Democrat of Italian origins in charge of the US Congress. As soon as she took her stand on Capitol Hill, Nancy Pelosi reminded George W Bush that "it is the responsibility of the president to articulate a new plan for Iraq that makes it clear to the Iraqis that they must defend their own streets and their own security". It was nice too, from a folkloric viewpoint, to see a converted Muslim congressman taking the oath on a copy of the Koran that once belonged to Thomas Jefferson... although I feel that this swearing-in rite, performed using an allegedly sacred document, is a ridiculous concept in the context of US politicians, many of whom have proved themselves to be outright liars.Yesterday in Paris, speaking to foreign diplomats, Jacques Chirac used exceptionally strong language in his criticism of US policy in Iraq. He referred to the war as "an adventure started in March 2003 by the USA", and he affirmed: "As France foresaw and feared, the war in Iraq has sparked major changes that have not yet unfolded all their effects." In particular, according to Chirac, that war has "offered terrorism a new field for expansion". In simple words that echoed those of Nancy Pelosi, the French president concluded that "the priority, more than ever, is to give back to Iraqis their total responsibility".
In the light of the current situation in Iraq, I look back with interest upon a small satirical website that I started to build in May 2003, at the beginning of the conflict in Iraq. Back in those days, Bush and his friends were talking nonstop about mythical things referred to as WMD (weapons of mass destruction), and this empty talk reminded me of medieval Christian knights in their perpetual search for the Holy Grail. So, I tried to create a modern version of this quest. The website is still sitting there where I started to build it, at http://st.antoine.free.fr/grail, but it wasn't particularly funny (and not even very meaningful unless you happened to be familiar with the legends of the Holy Grail). So, I never publicized it. And today, it probably belongs to the category referred to by a nice-sounding Internet expression: legacy sites.In the near future, it will be interesting to see how the term "legacy" is applied to events of the Bush era. While awaiting the main dishes, which countless journalists and intellectuals are no doubt starting to cook up, I love the following cocktail item (complete with pretzels): http://st.antoine.free.fr/bush.swf.
Thursday, January 4, 2007
Best wishes for eternal health
While I was in Australia a few months ago, my aunt Nancy happened to tell some lady friends that she had a visitor, her nephew (me), who lived on an old farm in south-eastern France. Immediately, the friends asked: “What’s he farming?” Nancy replied naively: “William has four or five sheep.” And everybody burst out laughing. In everyday Down Under thinking, people who live on farms are necessarily serious farmers, and they have huge herds. Consequently, Nancy's nice suburban friends could not possibly imagine spontaneously the case of somebody like me, who has never been a professional farmer, living in an exotic antipodean mountainous setting on an Old-World farm with a few beasts to keep him company and, above all, to eat the weeds.
At Gamone, my sheep-farming activities came to a symbolic end over a year ago when my herd of a dozen animals happened to be terrified by a glorious dog named Gamone [whose name derives from the fact that this splendid animal was born here: Sophia's daughter, seen in my arms in this photo], who then chased the sheep along the road to my neighbor’s place at Sirouza. Since then, the sheep situation at Gamone has never been quite the same. I exerted a lot of energy in attempting to dislodge my superb Merino ram named Oz from the precarious position into which he had fallen, under a bridge over the Bourne. To do this, I had to place a rope around the animal's neck and topple him down into the swiftly-running river, then paddle/swim alongside him over a distance of twenty or so meters, and finally drag him up onto dry land. A few days later, back at Gamone, the ram died from festering wounds received when he fell. Meanwhile, I tried to coax the remaining members of the flock down from my neighbor’s mountain, which meant my groping around dangerously on a sloping surface of moving pebbles where the sheep had decided to settle.
A day or so after all this excitement, I suffered a mild cerebral attack, for reasons that are fairly easy to imagine. Mechanics would say that I had blown a valve. Now, this is a pretext for publishing an image to which I’m very attached: my skull. I would have liked to show this photo a few days ago, when I was evoking Hamlet and company, but that would have been a bit pretentious. Today, I’m hoping that I can show you my brain in total modesty.
You might be wondering why I’m bringing up all this trivial old stuff...
Well, after being examined by all kinds of brilliant French medical specialists, and sitting (well, lying) for that delightful portrait of my skull [all of which was carried out more-or-less free of charge, because the French Republic has a great public health system], I was invited to take part in a big medical experiment conducted by a government body called Inserm: Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale [National Institute for Health and Medical Research]. My job as a guinea pig consists essentially of consuming, every morning, a first capsule that might be composed of folate vitamins and a second capsule that might be composed of omega-3 stuff. The word “might” indicates, as all guinea pigs know, that we can’t be sure of what our medical masters are feeding us. For all I know, I might have drawn a placebo card, which would mean that I’m consuming every morning, not vitamins and fish, but inert flour. And this daily diet will go on theoretically for the next five years, unless I happen to die before then of a cerebral accident or some such thing. So, it's like a kind of carefree lottery in which the tickets are free, and there are no obvious prizes. Maybe, one day, an Inserm scientist will say to me: "William, you're a nice cooperative guy, and you seem to be in great health, but I'm obliged to reveal that we've been feeding you flour for the last five years." Or maybe, rather: "William, your case disturbs us, because you should normally be dead." Conclusion: We guinea pigs don't really know what's in store for us, but we can't complain, because there's nothing to complain about.
Voilà the circumstances [those who don’t know what the word voilà means might consult a French doctor, or maybe use Google] in which I've just received a friendly New Year’s message from Inserm, which I can’t refrain from publishing here in my blog, because it’s simply so nice and medically charming. It's in French, of course (since it emanates from an official government department), and you might not therefore understand its subtleties. But I can assure you that these best New Year wishes to guinea pigs are nice and colorful and surely sincere, but really nice and colorful above all:
Conclusion: Either they're behaving deceitfully, or they're scientifically dim-witted! The Inserm guys and gals know perfectly well that their famous experiment won’t have any sense whatsoever if all of us guinea pigs remain eternally in perfect health, as they wish us falsely from the corner of their mouth [as they say in French]. If these Inserm folk are good scientists [as they surely are], the first thing they hope [if their huge experiment is to achieve anything at all] is that some of us guinea pigs [in particular, those that are eating flour] are going to die miserably in the scientific gutter as soon as possible. So, the public-relations specialists of Inserm should not really be sending us global wishes of eternal health... which would be equivalent to stating that their experiment is doomed to failure.
Naturally, I would like to send my best New Year wishes for longevity to all the wonderful Inserm folk. If any of these researchers happened to be knocked down by a bus or a lightning strike, the whole future of French medical research could be thrown into jeopardy. So, it's me who should be wishing them a long life, not the inverse.
At Gamone, my sheep-farming activities came to a symbolic end over a year ago when my herd of a dozen animals happened to be terrified by a glorious dog named Gamone [whose name derives from the fact that this splendid animal was born here: Sophia's daughter, seen in my arms in this photo], who then chased the sheep along the road to my neighbor’s place at Sirouza. Since then, the sheep situation at Gamone has never been quite the same. I exerted a lot of energy in attempting to dislodge my superb Merino ram named Oz from the precarious position into which he had fallen, under a bridge over the Bourne. To do this, I had to place a rope around the animal's neck and topple him down into the swiftly-running river, then paddle/swim alongside him over a distance of twenty or so meters, and finally drag him up onto dry land. A few days later, back at Gamone, the ram died from festering wounds received when he fell. Meanwhile, I tried to coax the remaining members of the flock down from my neighbor’s mountain, which meant my groping around dangerously on a sloping surface of moving pebbles where the sheep had decided to settle.
A day or so after all this excitement, I suffered a mild cerebral attack, for reasons that are fairly easy to imagine. Mechanics would say that I had blown a valve. Now, this is a pretext for publishing an image to which I’m very attached: my skull. I would have liked to show this photo a few days ago, when I was evoking Hamlet and company, but that would have been a bit pretentious. Today, I’m hoping that I can show you my brain in total modesty.You might be wondering why I’m bringing up all this trivial old stuff...
Well, after being examined by all kinds of brilliant French medical specialists, and sitting (well, lying) for that delightful portrait of my skull [all of which was carried out more-or-less free of charge, because the French Republic has a great public health system], I was invited to take part in a big medical experiment conducted by a government body called Inserm: Institut national de la santé et de la recherche médicale [National Institute for Health and Medical Research]. My job as a guinea pig consists essentially of consuming, every morning, a first capsule that might be composed of folate vitamins and a second capsule that might be composed of omega-3 stuff. The word “might” indicates, as all guinea pigs know, that we can’t be sure of what our medical masters are feeding us. For all I know, I might have drawn a placebo card, which would mean that I’m consuming every morning, not vitamins and fish, but inert flour. And this daily diet will go on theoretically for the next five years, unless I happen to die before then of a cerebral accident or some such thing. So, it's like a kind of carefree lottery in which the tickets are free, and there are no obvious prizes. Maybe, one day, an Inserm scientist will say to me: "William, you're a nice cooperative guy, and you seem to be in great health, but I'm obliged to reveal that we've been feeding you flour for the last five years." Or maybe, rather: "William, your case disturbs us, because you should normally be dead." Conclusion: We guinea pigs don't really know what's in store for us, but we can't complain, because there's nothing to complain about.
Voilà the circumstances [those who don’t know what the word voilà means might consult a French doctor, or maybe use Google] in which I've just received a friendly New Year’s message from Inserm, which I can’t refrain from publishing here in my blog, because it’s simply so nice and medically charming. It's in French, of course (since it emanates from an official government department), and you might not therefore understand its subtleties. But I can assure you that these best New Year wishes to guinea pigs are nice and colorful and surely sincere, but really nice and colorful above all:
Conclusion: Either they're behaving deceitfully, or they're scientifically dim-witted! The Inserm guys and gals know perfectly well that their famous experiment won’t have any sense whatsoever if all of us guinea pigs remain eternally in perfect health, as they wish us falsely from the corner of their mouth [as they say in French]. If these Inserm folk are good scientists [as they surely are], the first thing they hope [if their huge experiment is to achieve anything at all] is that some of us guinea pigs [in particular, those that are eating flour] are going to die miserably in the scientific gutter as soon as possible. So, the public-relations specialists of Inserm should not really be sending us global wishes of eternal health... which would be equivalent to stating that their experiment is doomed to failure.
Naturally, I would like to send my best New Year wishes for longevity to all the wonderful Inserm folk. If any of these researchers happened to be knocked down by a bus or a lightning strike, the whole future of French medical research could be thrown into jeopardy. So, it's me who should be wishing them a long life, not the inverse.
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Fault
Don’t count upon me to praise unduly French presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy, because I’ve already made it clear that I’m a 100% fan of Ségolène Royal. But I admire Sarko (as his friends call him) for designating the ugly execution of Saddam Hussein as a fault. Based upon a Latin verb evoking deception, faute (fault) is is a tiny but powerful word in French. Sarkozy said:Even though Saddam Hussein was one of history’s greatest criminals, I believe that Iraq would have made herself greater by refraining from executing the man who made her suffer so much.
Those are the sentiments of a wise statesman. Bravo, Sarko!
Echoes of the past
Everybody who knows me should be aware that I’m especially attracted to history. Not only large-scale History with a capital H, such as the true story of the Bible, or the rise and fall of the Roman empire, but small-time stuff such as legends and anecdotes (along with a few rare facts) about my ancestors. Often, I’m so attracted by the past that I end up tackling history that doesn’t really concern me, such as Christine’s genealogy or olden times in the Royans (my adopted homeplace).
Yesterday morning, I phoned up Madeleine because I’m still obsessed (the word is not too strong) by the question of why there seem to be several legendary castles floating around in the air, as it were, above the neighboring medieval village of Pont-en-Royans... in the style of the celebrated celestial city of Jerusalem, which is thought of as hovering above the real-world place. To account for various references to alleged castles in the vicinity of Pont-en-Royans, I’m constructing a theory (to put it pompously) that involves no less than six or seven former local entities that might have been designated, rightly or wrongly, as castles (including those I mentioned in a previous message on this topic).
When I phoned Madeleine, she was preparing a traditional New Year’s Day contact with her neighbors Bernadette and Dédé (same given name as Madeleine’s own husband), who live on the opposite side of the Bourne. As a consequence of my phone call, I was promptly invited. Social events of this kind, among old-timers, are both simple and rapid, but they often provide me with rare opportunities of getting the lowdown on various happenings, past and present, in the commune. And these facts, too, are local history of a special kind...
For example, I didn’t know until yesterday that the father of a dynamic village personality lost his life many years ago in a terrible fashion. As a foreman in the unique local factory, which manufactured electrical devices, he had developed a bad relationship with a hot-tempered worker. One day, after a violent discussion in the factory, the worker picked up his foreman and dumped him into a bath of acid, where he was promptly dissolved into Eternity. How’s that for local history?
Madeleine also told me a gentler but spicy tale concerning a traditional phenomenon: marriages (arranged through agencies, if I understand correctly) between local rural gentlemen and ladies from the French West Indies. Sometimes, such a union can be highly successful, giving rise to a large family whose members behave as if their ancestors had lived here on the edge of the French Alps since the dawn of time. (After all, for their paternal ancestors, this is more or less true.) But there have been a certain number of notorious cases in which arranged marriages of this kind simply did not work out, since it was an impossible leap for the female partner to abandon the balmy atmosphere of the Antilles and merge into her husband’s damp and cold cow-dung environment, which was a little like basic poverty without the sunshine and the sea. If the worst came to the worst, the lady might even decide that it would surely be preferable for her to return to her distant birthplace. In the eyes of her husband, this was not necessarily an acceptable hypothesis, since he had—as it were—gone to the trouble of acquiring his exotic spouse (a money-based process that might be likened vaguely to the purchase of a valuable farm animal for breeding purpose), and he was determined to prevent her from escaping from the farm compound. Consequently, for a woman in this predicament, escaping necessitated imagination and inventiveness...
In the case of fair-haired Gaston and dark-skinned Flora (those names are fictitious, whereas the real people once existed), their union was fortunately a catastrophe... where the unexpected adverb “fortunately” simply indicates that they had not succeeded in producing offspring, whose presence would have surely complicated Flora’s escape. Gaston was not unduly disturbed when Flora announced that she would be receiving the visit of family friends from Guadeloupe, who were keen on viewing the picturesque setting in which she was now living. Indeed, a car drew up at Gaston’s farm, and several compatriots of Flora (in fact, Parisians) got out, hugged her as if they were old friends, and visited the miserable house and muddy yards. Gaston was surprised that they didn’t stay for long, pretexting that they had other friends in the region whom they wished to see. Now, the rest of this trivial tale is a transcription of Gaston’s shocked account of the ensuing events...
Five minutes after the departure of the West Indians, Gaston heard a vehicle drawing up at the farm. Flora told her husband that her friends had surely forgotten something, and she dashed off to see them. Yes, they had indeed forgotten a key element: Flora herself! Gaston never saw his West Indian wife again. And the real Gaston himself is now dead and gone.
Funnily enough, Madeleine sees me as a goldmine of information about the history of her birthplace. One future day, when I evoke the tale of Flora’s escape from Gaston, Madeleine is going to wonder out loud how I could have ever learnt so many precious stories about her region. She forgets that much of my old-time data comes from Madeleine herself, and the written material she gives me. She thinks that I’m the historical voice of the commune. In fact, I’m merely the echo.
Yesterday morning, I phoned up Madeleine because I’m still obsessed (the word is not too strong) by the question of why there seem to be several legendary castles floating around in the air, as it were, above the neighboring medieval village of Pont-en-Royans... in the style of the celebrated celestial city of Jerusalem, which is thought of as hovering above the real-world place. To account for various references to alleged castles in the vicinity of Pont-en-Royans, I’m constructing a theory (to put it pompously) that involves no less than six or seven former local entities that might have been designated, rightly or wrongly, as castles (including those I mentioned in a previous message on this topic).
When I phoned Madeleine, she was preparing a traditional New Year’s Day contact with her neighbors Bernadette and Dédé (same given name as Madeleine’s own husband), who live on the opposite side of the Bourne. As a consequence of my phone call, I was promptly invited. Social events of this kind, among old-timers, are both simple and rapid, but they often provide me with rare opportunities of getting the lowdown on various happenings, past and present, in the commune. And these facts, too, are local history of a special kind...For example, I didn’t know until yesterday that the father of a dynamic village personality lost his life many years ago in a terrible fashion. As a foreman in the unique local factory, which manufactured electrical devices, he had developed a bad relationship with a hot-tempered worker. One day, after a violent discussion in the factory, the worker picked up his foreman and dumped him into a bath of acid, where he was promptly dissolved into Eternity. How’s that for local history?
Madeleine also told me a gentler but spicy tale concerning a traditional phenomenon: marriages (arranged through agencies, if I understand correctly) between local rural gentlemen and ladies from the French West Indies. Sometimes, such a union can be highly successful, giving rise to a large family whose members behave as if their ancestors had lived here on the edge of the French Alps since the dawn of time. (After all, for their paternal ancestors, this is more or less true.) But there have been a certain number of notorious cases in which arranged marriages of this kind simply did not work out, since it was an impossible leap for the female partner to abandon the balmy atmosphere of the Antilles and merge into her husband’s damp and cold cow-dung environment, which was a little like basic poverty without the sunshine and the sea. If the worst came to the worst, the lady might even decide that it would surely be preferable for her to return to her distant birthplace. In the eyes of her husband, this was not necessarily an acceptable hypothesis, since he had—as it were—gone to the trouble of acquiring his exotic spouse (a money-based process that might be likened vaguely to the purchase of a valuable farm animal for breeding purpose), and he was determined to prevent her from escaping from the farm compound. Consequently, for a woman in this predicament, escaping necessitated imagination and inventiveness...
In the case of fair-haired Gaston and dark-skinned Flora (those names are fictitious, whereas the real people once existed), their union was fortunately a catastrophe... where the unexpected adverb “fortunately” simply indicates that they had not succeeded in producing offspring, whose presence would have surely complicated Flora’s escape. Gaston was not unduly disturbed when Flora announced that she would be receiving the visit of family friends from Guadeloupe, who were keen on viewing the picturesque setting in which she was now living. Indeed, a car drew up at Gaston’s farm, and several compatriots of Flora (in fact, Parisians) got out, hugged her as if they were old friends, and visited the miserable house and muddy yards. Gaston was surprised that they didn’t stay for long, pretexting that they had other friends in the region whom they wished to see. Now, the rest of this trivial tale is a transcription of Gaston’s shocked account of the ensuing events...
Five minutes after the departure of the West Indians, Gaston heard a vehicle drawing up at the farm. Flora told her husband that her friends had surely forgotten something, and she dashed off to see them. Yes, they had indeed forgotten a key element: Flora herself! Gaston never saw his West Indian wife again. And the real Gaston himself is now dead and gone.
Funnily enough, Madeleine sees me as a goldmine of information about the history of her birthplace. One future day, when I evoke the tale of Flora’s escape from Gaston, Madeleine is going to wonder out loud how I could have ever learnt so many precious stories about her region. She forgets that much of my old-time data comes from Madeleine herself, and the written material she gives me. She thinks that I’m the historical voice of the commune. In fact, I’m merely the echo.
Monday, January 1, 2007
Talking animals
Old school friends from Grafton sent me a photo of wallabies on their lawn. And I promptly took the liberty of transforming their photo into an imaginary conversation.The great French author Victor Hugo wrote a lengthy poem about an encounter between the philosopher Kant and a talking donkey. It's a known fact—n’est-ce pas?—that donkeys are wise. The tale I like best concerns a little country girl named Bernadette who ran into a friendly talking donkey with whom she struck up a lengthy conversation. Back home in the village, Bernadette related joyfully to her parents and neighbors the story of her encounter with the talking donkey, but nobody believed her tale. Offended by their suggestion that she might have invented this story of a talking donkey, Bernadette said that she would lead everybody out into the country to meet up with her donkey friend, so that they should see for themselves that her story was authentic. They soon came upon the animal, and Bernadette begged it to say a few words, to prove to everybody that it could speak. But the donkey remained stubbornly silent, in spite of Bernadette’s continued pleading. Bernadette’s parents and the bystanders then scolded the little girl, saying that she was crazy to imagine that animals could speak. They were irritated that Bernadette had led them all out into the country on such a senseless mission: to meet up with a talking donkey.
Left all alone with the donkey, Bernadette was heartbroken, and she in turn scolded the animal: “You’ve let me down, and made a fool of me in front of everybody in the village. I thought we were friends, but I now see that you’re a nasty donkey, and you must surely hate me.”
“No, not at all,” replied the donkey. “You’re an exceptional little girl, Bernadette, and I love you very much. And we shall carry on talking to each other whenever you wish. But there was no point in my saying anything whatsoever to your parents and the village people. They are stupid folk, who would never be prepared to imagine that a donkey might be capable of talking. So, why should I waste time in trying to communicate with them?”
Rejoicing
There’s a great annual event in which my antipodean motherland has always starred as the all-time world champion. I’m talking, of course, of New Year festivities. One of my sisters recently took offense at my irritating habit—Mea culpa!—of systematically suggesting that France and the French do most things better than anywhere else in the world. Well, Susan will be pleased to learn that, as far as New Year festivities are concerned, I’m prepared to take off my hat [that is, my French beret] to Australia. In fact, I’ll replace it by my recently-purchased Akubra. No matter what we do here in France with a view to making sure that our ushering in the New Year will be performed lavishly in a spectacular French style, with a little help from such famous friends as the Eiffel Tower and the Champs-Elysées, we always learn—on the evening TV news, when countless French citizens are taking steaming pavlovas or lamingtons out of their kitchen ovens [ask my daughter about that], and preparing for the imminent celebrations—that we’ve been licked by the folk Down Under, who are already dancing around on the warm sand of balmy beaches and watching the pagan dawn-bringer Lucifer in the sky with diamonds.
Rejoicing? What a weird festive season! Besides the Jewish Hanukkah, the Christian Xmas and the Islamic Eid ul-Adha, the planet was treated to three other morbid more-or-less unplanned happenings: the passing of a dull US president named Ford, the barbaric US-orchestrated hanging of an Iraqi tyrant and—last but not least—the three-thousandth death of an American soldier in the grotesque conflict initiated by a god-fearing Texan moron (also God-hearing and execution-loving), George Walker Bush, assisted by lapdog buddies named Blair and Howard.
In such circumstances, should we rejoice at the start of this New Year? Or should we rather meditate upon the tragedy of the specimen of Darwinian Nature named Homo Sapiens? For me, the pavlova is flat, and the coconut on the chocolate lamingtons reminds me obscurely—in an inverted (antipodean) sense, meaningful here in my wintry Gamone abode—of fiery drops of dark blood upon the snow.
Rejoicing? What a weird festive season! Besides the Jewish Hanukkah, the Christian Xmas and the Islamic Eid ul-Adha, the planet was treated to three other morbid more-or-less unplanned happenings: the passing of a dull US president named Ford, the barbaric US-orchestrated hanging of an Iraqi tyrant and—last but not least—the three-thousandth death of an American soldier in the grotesque conflict initiated by a god-fearing Texan moron (also God-hearing and execution-loving), George Walker Bush, assisted by lapdog buddies named Blair and Howard.In such circumstances, should we rejoice at the start of this New Year? Or should we rather meditate upon the tragedy of the specimen of Darwinian Nature named Homo Sapiens? For me, the pavlova is flat, and the coconut on the chocolate lamingtons reminds me obscurely—in an inverted (antipodean) sense, meaningful here in my wintry Gamone abode—of fiery drops of dark blood upon the snow.
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