European show on the Champs Elysées

Most observers of this morning's 14 July parade on the Champs-Elysées will award top marks, I'm sure, to the new producer and director: Nicolas Sarkozy. He had the excellent idea of transforming this French event into an unforgettable and spectacular show dedicated to Europe. While there is not yet any such entity as a united European army, we certainly had a chance of admiring colorful specimens of the various armies of Europe. No less than 27 different European nations had representatives of their forces participating in today's grand parade.

Perhaps the most striking aspect of the super show was its music and its military choreography. It was amazing to discover the variety of different ways in which soldiers can march! A naive observer might imagine that marching is simply a matter of, well, striding along in a stately style. Not at all! There would appear to be countless different ways in which soldiers can move their legs and arms. Marching, for imaginative military choreographers, is much more than simply... marching. In Monty Python talk, you might say it's a matter of doing your particular kind of funny walking. The weirdest thing of all was that everybody, from gallopers to goose-steppers, appeared to be marching to the same music, and advancing at roughly the same rate, even though they seemed to have a whole range of different styles of locomotion. For me, there's some kind of a mathematical enigma there, which I haven't yet solved.

There were three fabulous songs, performed by military choirs assisted by the Little Singers of Paris: the Marseillaise, of course; the haunting Chant des partisans (hymn of the Résistance), which inevitably causes me to burst into tears of emotion every time I hear it performed in such solemn circumstances; and finally Europe's anthem, Beethoven's Ode to Joy, exceptionally with French lyrics.

After such a morning TV show, I was worn out emotionally when the Tour de France came around, later on in the day. At times, living daily in a land such as France can be a really exhausting experience.

PS In France today, even Google got on the Bastille bandwagon:

Poisoned gifts

I don't know whether there's an expression in colloquial English for the French notion of a so-called poisoned gift. In a nutshell, it's a gift with unexpected negative consequences for the receiver. For example, suppose you intend to purchase an iPhone. Then, in a spirit of pure kindness, you decide to give your old portable phone to your cousin, who is most grateful for your generosity. But alas, its battery heats up, catches fire and burns down your cousin's house. [I hasten to admit that I'm so totally ignorant in the portable phone field that I don't know whether such a thing could really happen.] In such a situation, it could be said that you gave your cousin a poisoned gift.

The Australian legal system has just invented the concept of a novel kind of poisoned gift whose dire consequences affect, not the receiver, but the giver. After days and days of police interrogation, the Gold Coast doctor Mohammed Haneef has been charged with "recklessness" as a consequence of having once given a portable telephone to his cousin over in the UK, because this distant cousin has since been arrested on a charge of terrorism. Media reports concerning the accusation brought against the kind cousin in Australia include the following fuzzy comment: "Prosecutors conceded the offense was perhaps at the margins but by no means insignificant, with a maximum penalty of 15 years' jail." I like the elegant expression "at the margins", but they don't say at the margins of what. Injustice? Stupidity? Confusion?

Today, when I heard a French TV journalist introducing this subject, I pricked up my ears, because I was intrigued by the challenge of translating into meaningful French the expression "reckless support of terrorism". In fact, I had underestimated the journalist's linguistic skills. Without blinking an eyelid, he used the adjective inconsidéré, which means "inconsiderate". The dictionary tells me that this means "thoughtlessly causing hurt or inconvenience to others". So, we have a third kind of poisoned gift. It's neither the receiver nor the giver who gets hurt as a consequence of the gift, but... others!

In an earlier post entitled Destruction of computer files [display], I gave advice concerning ways of getting rid of an old computer. Most of those methods would work, too, for destroying an old phone, to avoid the risk of being tempted to give it to your cousin. Ideally, we should hope that manufacturers will soon get around to offering us some kind of high-tech device—let's call it a device terminator—that can instantly destroy things such as old computers and phones. They would get transformed instantly into a tiny invisible puff of dust, which not even the smartest Aussie detectives could ever detect and exploit. The only problem is that this gadget might work just as well on automobiles. Imagine that it got turned on inadvertently when you were driving along the highway. You might suddenly find yourself sliding along the macadam on your buttocks.

Once upon a time in Paris

In the popular image, on 14 July 1789, the people of Paris stormed the huge fortress jail of the wicked Ancien Régime, called the Bastille, and released hordes of innocent political prisoners... who then went on to set in action the celebrated French Revolution.

The reality was somewhat different. When the rioters finally reached the interior of the decrepit prison, they found seven bewildered inmates who were no doubt thrilled to be offered this unexpected opportunity of stepping into planetary history.

Just for the record, I take this opportunity of pointing out that one of the first prisoners to escape from a Parisian jail during that tumultuous week was an Englishman, Clotworthy Skeffington [1743-1805], 2nd Earl of Massereene, head of the Irish branch of our ancestral family. Some twenty years earlier, during a voyage to the European continent, the eccentric lord had been swindled in a crazy project that was supposed to import salt from the Barbary coast into France and Switzerland. Unable to pay his debts, Skeffington was imprisoned for some eighteen years in several nasty Parisian jails, including the notorious Conciergerie and the Grand Châtelet. By the summer of 1789, Skeffington had spent seven years in a jail known as the Grande-Force (since it used to be the Parisian mansion of a nobleman named Force), located just a stone's throw from the Bastille.

On Monday, 13 July 1789 (the eve of Bastille Day), Clotworthy Skeffington and two dozen fellow inmates escaped from this prison, apparently without any assistance whatsoever from the throngs of Parisian rioters who were taking control of the city.

In 1972, Ulster archivist Dr A Malcomson described "the extraordinary career" of Clotworthy Skeffington in a biography published by the Public Record Office of Northern Ireland. Although I don't belong to the same branch of the family as the Earl of Massereene [my early ancestors remained in England], I was sufficiently intrigued by the case of this eccentric aristocrat to research his history in the French national archives and the police museum in Paris, where I obtained a lot of interesting information that had not been available to Malcomson.

I take this opportunity of quoting a couple of documents on the interesting anecdote of Skeffington's escape from jail on the eve of Bastille Day, which does not seem to appear in French history books.

The book Englishmen of the French Revolution by John Alger [London, 1889] quotes a dispatch from the Duke of Dorset [British ambassador to France] sent from Paris on 16 July 1789, three days after Skeffington's liberation:

His Lordship, with twenty-four others in the Hôtel de la Force, forced their way out of prison last Monday morning without the loss of a single life. His Lordship, who has always expressed a great sense of gratitude for the small services I have occasionally rendered him since I first came to Paris in my present character, came directly to my hotel with six or seven of his companions, the rest having gone their different ways. I, however, soon prevailed upon Lord Massereene and the others to go to the Temple, which is a privileged place, and where he may therefore be able to treat with his creditors to some advantage. His Lordship told me that it was his intention to go thither, but that he thought it right to pay me the first visit.

A detailed account of the happenings of 13 July 1789 is supplied in the autobiography of François Richard-Lenoir, a famous Frenchman whose name is now attached to a boulevard at the Place de la Bastille. At the age of 24, Richard-Lenoir was a fellow inmate of Skeffington at the Grande-Force. Later on, Richard-Lenoir became immensely rich as a cotton merchant. Decorated personally by Napoléon Bonaparte, he has often been described as the richest individual of the entire 19th century. In his Mémoires [published in Paris in 1837], Richard-Lenoir speaks of Skeffington as follows:

We had for companion in misfortune an English lord, Massereene, eighteen years a prisoner. He had married in prison the sister of another prisoner, who had since recovered his liberty. Every morning his wife and brother-in-law arrived as soon as the gates were opened, and did not leave till evening. There was something touching in the felicity of this strange household. Through them we knew of everything that was going on in Paris, and could follow, step by step, the Revolution which was beginning. Lord Massereene especially, who had no hope except in a general overturn, was quite absorbed by it, and almost electrified us for liberty, which, indeed, for us poor prisoners, was only natural. We were not ignorant of what had happened at Réveillon's [evening meal] when, on 13 July 1789, just as we were about to assemble after the opening of the doors in a kind of garden or gravelled court, Lord Massereene suggested to us the forcing of our way out. Whether he was beforehand certain of the impassiveness of the jailers and soldiers, or whether he counted much on our daring, he assured us that nothing was easier, and that a resolute will was sufficient for success. We promptly decided. Arms had to be procured. Lord Massereene pointed out the staircase railings, the bars of which could serve as pikes. We immediately set to work; the railings yielded to our efforts, and all of us were soon armed. The commandant, however, was speedily informed of the revolt; but fear was then gradually gaining on officials, and instead of taking strong measures, he contented himself with ordering us to carry the outbreak no further, otherwise he warned us he should be obliged to use force against us. "So much the better," we exclaimed on all sides. "Kill us, and then you will have to pay our creditors." This reply frightening him, we took advantage of his perplexity to attack the first gate, and passed through without much trouble. There were still three others to force. All the turnkeys had joined the soldiers, but several officers and privates seemed to fight with reluctance. One of them on ordering fire had tears in his eyes. However, we seized on the three gates, part of the outer wall was demolished, and we at last issued, victors, from La Force.

There's a funny ending to this story. After being led by Lord Massereene to the British embassy in the Rue du Faubourg Saint Honoré, where the escapees were served refreshments, Richard-Lenoir says that he decided to make a return trip to the prison to pick up his belongings. Once he got back to the Grande-Force, the prison guards informed him that a Parisian mob had seen the gaps in the outer walls [made, as explained above, by Massereene and his fleeing companions], and members of this mob had simply strolled into the prison and stolen everything they could lay their hands on, including the clothes and other belongings of poor Richard-Lenoir!

Personally, even if Skeffington weren't a vague ancestor, I would still consider this delightful description of his escape from a Parisian prison on the eve of Bastille Day as a more authentic and human tale than the official story about the storming of the great fortress.

PS Genealogical information on the Massereene lineage can be found in chapter 4 of my monograph entitled Skeffington — Patronymic research [access].

No need for religious wars in sport

I ignore the circumstances in which the Australian cyclist Robbie McEwan might or might not have said to football folk: "You chase a ball around for 80 minutes. We chase the yellow jersey for 3 weeks." In any case, I think it's a pity that these facetious words are used to promote TV viewing of the Tour de France in Australia.

There's no need to attack great sports such as rugby and soccer in order to boost cycling. It's idiotic to ignite religious wars in the sporting domain. Besides, the silly expression "proper tough guys" evokes the ancient epoch when soccer players were thought of, in Australia, as poofters. The worst idea of all would consist of encouraging soccer fans, if not players, to behave as "tough guys".

Talking about soccer, it's time to take action—maybe through some serious firing and hiring—if the Socceroos team is to survive. The 3-1 defeat by Iraq was truly ignominious. After the Tour de France, in cycling's off season, maybe they might be able to employ Robbie McEwan as a coach.

French cultural heritage

Besides its purely sporting dimensions in the domain of competitive cycling, an aspect of the Tour de France that thrills TV viewers is the opportunity of viewing helicopter footage of the fabulous architectural patrimony and landscapes of provincial France. Yesterday, for example, we saw splendid images of the ancient sanctuary on the hill of Vézelay, which was a departure point for pilgrims setting out for Santiago de Compostela in northwestern Spain.

The density and beauty of these treasures, seen from the sky, leave the viewer speechless. They remind us, if need be, that France is indeed a jewel of civilization. There is no doubt that this TV presentation of the splendors of the land is an essential ingredient in the mythical charm of the Tour de France.

Sophia becomes a video star

This is post #333 in my Antipodes blog, it's Friday 13 [a lucky number for the French cineaste Claude Lelouch... so why not for me too?], and this is my first video [of a simple kind], starring Sophia in a mystery movie. What's the mystery? Simply the fact that neither you nor I nor even Sophia will ever know the nature of the "something" that Sophia has sensed, causing her to look around her and bark. You can hear the birds of Gamone. You can also hear me asking Sophia [with my dog-talk accent]: "Qu'est-ce qu'il y a ?” Click here to see the movie.

Myths

Exactly half a century ago [when I had just started science and philosophy studies at Sydney University, and was about to meet up with computers for the first time], the Parisian intellectual Roland Barthes wrote a book, entitled Mythologies, that made him famous overnight. In it, he analyzed various phenomena that had acquired the status of myths in French society. At that time, a typical example of a mythical object in France was the new Citroën automobile with stylish lines and hydraulic suspension:

It was referred to by a pair of letters, DS, that looked like a trivial codename. But, when these two letters were pronounced in French, they produced the word déesse, meaning "goddess". And that was exactly how French people looked upon this divine automobile. Barthes wrote: "I believe that the automobile, today, is a rather exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals." Barthes spoke too, in his book, of a less mechanical goddess who, at that same time, was being transformed into a myth in France: Brigitte Bardot.

In Mythologies, Barthes described the Tour de France as a cultural event that had attained mythical proportions, whose stars were like heroes in ancient legends, often moving through fairy-tale landscapes with quaint villages, green fields, mountains and castles.

As a longtime Tour de France fanatic, I've often been intrigued by the fact that we are constantly so fascinated by the stage of the race that is actually taking place at the present moment that we often tend to forget that this historical event has always had a legendary allure. Today's Tour makes us forget about yesterday's. To put it bluntly, each time we witness the Tour, it is as if we are seeing its magic for the first time.

Back in Paris, in a different domain, I used to have a personal "theory" to explain why I was capable, from one day to the next, of setting my eyes [no more than my eyes] upon such-and-such a female, encountered in the street or maybe in the métro, whom I would instantly think of as the most magnificent creature in the universe. I got around to believing that I surely had a deficient visual memory. The image of a new goddess would dominate my sensations simply because all the images of previous angels had been erased. Now, this was really a very bad explanation of what was happening: a little like saying that new sexual encounters are significant simply because we've forgotten all the previous ones. An analysis in terms of myths is more to the point. If I see the Tour de France constantly with new eyes, as if I'm gazing for the first time ever at a superb nymph, this is simply because I'm dealing with mythical phenomena. I'm no longer observing reality. I'm seeing extraordinary things that are happening, primarily, in my imagination. And—to borrow a Gaelic utterance—I never think that its like will ever be there again.

New MySpace account

You can click on my name to visit my new MySpace site: William. But there's nothing there yet. However, since everybody seems to have an account at MySpace these days [including the Australian opposition leader Kevin Rudd], I decided to be like everybody else. One of these days, I promise, I'll get around to learning how to use my portable phone. Incidentally, I've been wondering whether the current Aussie PM [God, I can't remember his name] is also, like Rudd, a cyber wiz.

Talking of those folk, the latest Nicholson animation has just come out. It's brilliant, as usual. It features a sad old guy singing Paul McCartney's Yesterday while thinking nostalgically about all the nice things that used to happen to him.

Click on the image to see it.

Catholics v. Protestants

In the part of south-east France where I'm settled, people are still aware of, and indeed sensitive to, bloody conflicts that took place here over four centuries ago. I'm referring to the so-called Wars of Religion between Catholics and Protestants [often referred to as Huguenots].

They lasted on and off for 36 years, from 1562 up until the salutary Edict of Nantes in 1598. Records indicate that the vineyards at Choranche, run by Catholic monks, were totally devastated by Protestant vandals in 1593. Besides, that date enables me to infer that the splendid stone cellar in my house dates from the beginning of the 17th century, when all the monastic installations in the region had to be rebuilt. It is said that, towards the end of the Wars of Religion, the Catholic lord of Pont-en-Royans, Antoine de Sassenage, slaughtered all the Calvinist troops in the village, and that the Bourne (so the story goes) "ran red with their blood".

I'm amazed to learn that Pope Benedict XVI has just approved a document that is likely to revive conflicts between Catholics and Protestants by reasserting naively the universal primacy of the church of Rome. The document affirms that Jesus established only one church on earth. This is total rubbish. Everybody knows today that Jesus, during his brief life, never established anything whatsoever that might be referred to as a church. After the crucifixion of their master, and up until the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, some 40 years later, the followers of Jesus remained Jews [referred to, these days, as Judeo-Christians], and played no part in the foundation of anything that might be thought of as a primitive Christian church. That did not start to happen until Gentiles led by Paul got into action. As far as early links with Rome are concerned, there is no proof whatsoever that the apostle Simon Peter went to Italy, and is buried at the Vatican. It's far more likely that he died in Jerusalem and was buried beneath the chapel of Dominus Flevit on the Mount of Olives, at the place where Jesus wept while contemplating the temple and its future destruction.

As a relatively unconcerned observer, I have the impression that some of the reactionary decisions and declarations of the headstrong former cardinal Joseph Ratzinger will end up annihilating little by little the failing credibility of christianity, and hastening its doom.

The less said, the better

A year ago, I went along to a major store in Valence [the Fnac] to obtain information on a digital camera, and then I actually bought it through the Internet, at a price far below that of the store. I've just behaved in the same way for the purchase of a camcorder. I'm sure that many consumers must be using this same approach. It's a funny situation. It's reassuring to go along to the store, where you can meet up with real human beings and receive their expert evaluations of various products. But, once they've helped you to choose the product you need, you don't actually purchase it from the store. Instead, you return home and order it, at a much lower price, through the Internet. So, I conclude that the store only sells equipment to customers who haven't yet discovered the phenomenon of Internet shopping. In other words, these customers are in fact financing the expert assistance that people like me are receiving from the store. I often wonder how long this kind of situation can last. Maybe, one of these days, the store will decide to refuse to talk to would-be customers who in fact make purchases through the Internet. But how would they enforce such a rule?

Meanwhile, I'm amazed by the improved quality of Internet shopping. I only ordered the Sony camcorder and a Macintosh video software product a few days ago, and they were both delivered this morning.

Inevitably, when the morning silence is broken by two delivery trucks visiting Gamone, I have to reassure my neighbor Madeleine on the phone that no major upheaval is occurring at my place. She hears the vehicles moving up and down the steep road behind her house, and she's justified in imagining that it might be a gang of international bandits who are stealing my kitchen table and chairs, or maybe even my donkey and billy goat. Here in the Bourne valley between Choranche and Châtelus, the people in each house are reasonably well aware of any movements of vehicles [and animals, too] in the vicinity of neighboring houses, and the telephone is often used on such occasions to verify that all is in order.

Madeleine and I are capable of gossiping on the phone for half an hour. Well, jumping from one thing to another, and knowing that my neighbor is a fervent churchgoer, I took this opportunity of asking Madeleine what she thought of the pope's decision to authorize the Latin mass. Her reply was delightfully unexpected: "When I was a girl, I used to sing in the choir at Pont-en-Royans, and all the words of our chants were in Latin. Those are beautiful memories. After Vatican II, we were all shocked to hear the priest talking in everyday language. At first, it sounded silly, and it made us laugh, because we weren't used to hearing ordinary French in the church. But, since then, I've forgotten all my teenage Latin." In other words, it's an upside-down [Antipodean] situation. For Madeleine [and, no doubt, for countless other Catholics of her generation], the move from French back to Latin could never be as upsetting as the initial move from mysterious celestial Latin to everyday French.

Madeleine's explanations remind me of one of my favorite [true] anecdotes, which dates from the time that Christine and I were students in Paris. We had a group of French student friends who were musicians, and one of the girls told us this story: "We first met up with this American guy when he was playing the saxophone in front of a café in the Latin Quarter. He didn't speak a word of French, but we managed to communicate with him, and we ended up inviting him back to our place to play music together. We called him Big Joe. He became a member of our group, and we got on wonderfully well together. I think we communicated mainly through our music, because Big Joe still didn't understand a word of French, and none of us were very fluent in English. Sometimes we would ask him a question, and Big Joe would simply laugh and shrug his shoulders. So, we didn't really know whether he had understood us, or what he was replying. But that didn't really matter, because we were all convinced that Big Joe was a fabulous guy, a great friend. We didn't need words. Then the summer vacation arrived, and Big Joe went back to America for a couple of months. When he returned to Paris in September, Big Joe informed us that he had spent all his time in the States doing intensive French courses at the Alliance Française in Chicago. Sure, there was no doubt about it: we were all amazed to find that Big Joe was now speaking a primitive but acceptable kind of French. But the greatest shock of all, now that Big Joe could speak to us, concerned the things he started to tell us. It was pitiful. We discovered that he was a total asshole, not at all on the same wavelength as the people in our group. Everything he had to say—and Big Joe liked talking a lot—was pure uninteresting bullshit. At times, he would even get around to talking of politics as if he were a fascist bastard. Within a few weeks, we all started to dislike Big Joe intensely, and we ended up throwing him out of our group."

That brings me back to what I was saying, at the beginning of this post, about going along to a store in Valence for expert assistance and then making my purchases through the Internet. Maybe, like Big Joe, I should simply keep my mouth shut.

The man who called God by his right name

A great Franco-Israeli intellectual has just died in the Holy City: 89-year-old André Chouraqui, counselor of David Ben-Gurion, friend of Moshe Dayan, author, translator of the Bible and the Koran, former vice-mayor of Jerusalem.



Born in Algeria and educated at the law school in Paris, Chouraqui was a profound Jew with an ecumenical regard for all the great religious faiths of the planet, including Buddhism. Intrigued, if not irritated, by the countless names that have been invented to designate the divine entity with whom Abraham, Moses and Jesus communicated, Chouraqui proposed a novel typographical solution designed to replace the term "God". In fact, Chouraqui decided to use the two names provided literally in the Pentateuch: on the one hand, the so-called Tetragrammaton composed of four Hebrew letters, often written in English as YHVH (or similar variants), whose pronunciation remains a mystery; on the other hand, the strange plural word Elohim. Chouraqui suggested that, instead of the letters "God", it would be better to use the following formula:

Finally, he has inserted the term adonaï, in small letters, above the Tetragrammaton. This is not a proper name, but merely an easily-pronounceable Hebrew term (which might be translated into English as "master"), used as a substitute for the unpronounceable term YHVH. Simple, no?

In Hebrew today, there is in fact an easy way out of this naming problem. Instead of trying vainly to pronounce or even write the name of God, it's perfectly correct to refer to it simply as HaShem: literally, the Name. In computer programming, naming things is a fundamental task. Maybe my longtime preoccupations in this field have made me sensitive—in a superficial way—to the Jewish question of naming the entity that others call God.

Woman who has paid the price

Cindy Sheehan's 24-year-old son Casey died in Iraq over three years ago. Since then, this lady has become known as an anti-war activist both in the USA and overseas. Her most-publicized action consisted of setting up a protest base, known as Camp Casey, near George Bush's famous ranch in Texas. Two months ago, Cindy Sheehan gave the impression that she was throwing in the sponge, and returning to her ordinary life as a mother. But her pause from militancy did not last long, since she has just announced a challenge to the Democratic speaker Nancy Pelosi. Basically, if Pelosi does not launch impeachment proceedings against Bush within the next fortnight, 50-year-old Sheehan threatens to move into the political arena by attempting to unseat Pelosi in next year's elections.

Cindy Sheehan considered that Bush should be impeached for two major reasons:

— He misled Americans with false justifications for attacking Iraq.

— He condoned the use of torture: a violation of the Geneva Convention.

The incident that brought Sheehan back into the activist arena was Bush's decision to commute the jail sentence imposed upon "Scooter" Libby, whose conviction had been linked to a mediocre affair resulting in the identity of a female CIA agent being leaked deliberately by the Bush administration to the press.

Retrospectively, we cannot compare the pain of a mother who lost her son in a senseless war with the professional harm endured by a woman who has lost her job as a spy. But there's a common denominator in many of the acts perpetrated by Bush and his men. To put it bluntly, they've hurt many people. Does the president himself realize this? Maybe. Be that as it may, Bush doesn't like the idea of his buddy Libby getting hurt by time in the pen. Whatever else we might say about the US president, we have to admit that he's kind to his friends.

Big idiotic events

I can't make up my mind about which of the two big events was the more idiotic: the Live Earth concerts around the world that are supposed to have something to do with protecting the environment, or the new list of Seven Wonders that are supposed to represent the most extraordinary constructions in the world. One moment, I consider that the first event was totally stupid, whereas the second was even stupider still. Then, the next moment, I invert my evaluations. In any case, one thing is certain: Judging big idiotic events is a quite difficult task. I'm glad I don't have to do it too often.

Magic date

I don't know whether or not the world in general has been behaving similarly, but many people here in France are somewhat bewitched by today's date: July 7, 2007. They see 7-7-07 as a magic date. Apparently hordes of couples have planned their marriages for today. Others have simply bought lottery tickets.

Not to be outdone, Pope Benedict XVI chose today to announce the restoration of an ancient and magic ritual referred to as the Latin mass, which is the epitome of ecclesiastic obscurantism, because ordinary parishioners simply don't understand this language any more (if ever they did). In other words, a priest could say anything he liked in Latin, even to the extent of reciting Ovid's Art of Love, and the congregation would still carry on believing that the reverend gentleman was praising God. Moreover, the Latin ritual is performed by a priest who turns his back to the congregation, which means that they wouldn't even see if he happened to be yawning or grinning. Maybe it's preferable that people don't understand the words of the Latin mass, because certain folk might not appreciate the presence of the prayer that implores God to convert Jews to Christianity.

Many Christians in France still have the habit of referring to their nation—without necessarily knowing why—as "the eldest daughter of the Church". [As was often the case in ecclesiastic matters, it was a story, not of peace and love, but of bloodshed. An 8th-century French king fought a battle and gave the spoil to the pope, who promptly thanked the king by inventing the daughter tribute.] Well, the most that can be said today is that the eldest daughter doesn't appear to be particularly concerned by the Holy Father's encouragement of a return to Latin. It wasn't mentioned in the French Google news, whereas US media seemed to handle the subject as a major story. This lack of attention to the papal decision is all the more unusual in that the French Church was even brought to the brink of schism not so long ago because of a renegade ultra-traditionalist archbishop in Paris.

The Pope's decision might be a tempest in a chalice, because the truth of the matter is that few priests today know enough Latin to conjugate the verb amo, amare, amavi, amatum... let alone speak it for an hour.

I must ask my neighbor Madeleine what she thinks of this decision. Not long ago, I happened to tell her that I was unable to find a Latin specialist who was capable of deciphering the 14th-century parchment in medieval Latin that describes the agricultural properties at Choranche. Madeleine advised me to see a priest. I replied laughingly: "Madeleine, village priests don't know medieval Latin." She didn't agree: "Of course they do, William. Everybody knows that every priest speaks Latin." Maybe, on this magic seventh day of the seventh month of the year 2007, Benedict XVI will urge the Holy Spirit to descend upon the heads of village priests, bestowing upon them the magic gift of tongues, so that Madeleine's presumption becomes a reality.

Sarkozy's surprises

In a country such as France, where the political cleavage between the Left and the Right is ancient and profound, Nicolas Sarkozy's ouvertures [openings] towards Opposition personalities have surprised and disturbed many observers. His minister of Foreign Affairs, Bernard Kouchner, has even been labeled a traitor by some of his former Socialist friends. This merely means that the concept of a nonpartisan dimension in politics is not yet easily digestible in France.

A striking new case of Sarkozy's behavior has just emerged, since the president intends to propose and endorse the candidacy of the Socialist personality Dominique Strauss-Kahn for the post of president of the IMF [International Monetary Fund].

It will be difficult for the French Left to criticize either Sarkozy's decision or Strauss-Kahn's acceptance of the arrangement, since it's a matter of a prestigious international role, which is not linked to the everyday political situation in France.

The big loop

That's the nickname in French of the Tour de France: la grande boucle. It's weird but wonderful to think that it'll be starting tomorrow in the streets of London. It's reassuring, too, to know that all 189 riders have signed the famous anti-doping chart imagined by the UCI [Union cycliste internationale]. In signing this draconian chart, a cyclist agrees to provide a DNA sample to the authorities investigating the so-called Puerto scandal. Furthermore, he declares that he's not involved in any ongoing doping affair, and that he doesn't intend to take dope. Finally, if ever he were to be caught cheating, he agrees to pay a fine to the UCI that would represent his total earnings for 2007.

The eyes of French spectators will be turned towards an amazing cyclist named Christophe Moreau, who recently won the prestigious Dauphiné Libéré and went on to become the 2007 road champion of France. He's amazing, above all, because of his age: 36. Many observers are convinced that Christophe's major motivation, which has pushed him to victory, is his first child, born on 23 April 2007. If so, that's certainly a far more healthier stimulus than dope.

Large male deer

An hour ago, Sophia started to bark furiously in the direction of the slopes on the other side of Gamone Creek. Once outside, I could hear this roe deer calling out spasmodically almost as loudly as my dog:

He was using his eerie cry—between a bark and a cough—to let his females know that he was in the vicinity, but he didn't seem to be in a hurry to plunge into the thickets and start searching for them.

Although the animal was quite big, I could hardly see him in the tall weeds, but I managed to get this shot of the hind quarters of the deer with my 300 mm lens.

Destruction of computer files

Clearly, the only efficient tool for trashing computer files is a hammer. The destruction process should of course encompass, not only the computer's internal memory and hard disks, but all the CDs that might have been used for backup. Then, to make doubly sure that nothing whatsoever remains to be read, I would recommend pouring hydrochloric acid over all the smashed-up stuff. Finally, it wouldn't be a bad idea to conclude with petroleum fuel, but be careful not to get burned when you set fire to the debris. Last but not least, you might put all the charred remains in a hessian sack and drop it discreetly into a deep and swiftly-flowing river.

The French general Philippe Rondot did not take these elementary precautions, and that's why a police laboratory has just recovered the data in 39 supposedly-trashed files, still lurking in his computer, containing some thirty thousand pages of notes. Wow, that intelligence specialist was a prolific writer! Meanwhile, we naive outsiders imagined that spies kept most things in their heads, and only rarely resorted to the use of techniques such as invisible ink.

In any case, the outcome of this massive data recovery is that things don't look nice for the former prime minister Dominique de Villepin nor, for that matter, for Jacques Chirac... who has already made it clear that, in keeping with French law, he refuses to be interrogated concerning affairs that took place during his presidency. As I pointed out in my post of 26 May 2007 entitled Chirac has some explaining to do [display], the affair is complicated, but it all boils down to determining whether or not these gentlemen attempted to frame Nicolas Sarkozy with the help of fake documents suggesting that Sarkozy had stashed away money in a foreign bank. Stand by for future installments...

History of my birthplace

My Australian background is linked to a pair of bridges. One, of course, is the Sydney Harbour Bridge. The other is the double-decker road/rail bridge over the Clarence at my birthplace, Grafton.

When it was constructed in 1932, a span at the South Grafton end could be raised to allow shipping to pass. As a youth, I saw this span raised dozens of times. These days, sadly, there is no longer any river traffic on the Clarence. So, the local authorities decided to use the lower level of the bridge as a support for metal pipes, and this means that it can no longer be raised. Last year, when I walked across the lower-level footbridge, I had the impression that our once-splendid bridge was like an aged invalid, doomed to remain constrained forever to his bed. In any case, this bridge is totally antiquated, since it was designed to handle road traffic of 75 years ago. On the afternoon that my sister Jill drove me out of Grafton last year, we got blocked in a traffic jam, at the northern approach to the bridge, which was as bad as peak-hour situations in Paris. Meanwhile, I'm trying to understand why my native Australia—which is supposed to be a wealthy land—doesn't have modern bridges (and trains, too) such as the high-tech marvels we find in France, named Tancarville, Normandie, Millau...

After a lengthy and serious selection process, the municipality of Grafton has just chosen a Sydney-based researcher—described as a professional historian—to write the history of the city, and they've allocated a substantial sum of money to cover the expenses of the writing project. While wishing the winning candidate well, I must say that I've had serious doubts concerning the worthiness of this project, since I've never believed in committee-ordained creativity. Besides, the subject itself is so intrinsically uneventful [little of a profound historical nature has ever happened there since Grafton was first settled, in the middle of the 19th century] that it would take a gifted story-teller to add a little literary luster to the tale of my birthplace. Today, having seen a telling sample of the kind of writing signed by Grafton's future scribe [download], I'm convinced that my birthplace, in a couple of years' time, is going to hatch one of the most boring historical eggs that potential readers could hesitate in purchasing. It is a perfectionist mistake to imagine that a researcher can write the history of a place simply by filling in informational slots associated with a vast typology of themes. In any case, the result is sure to be dull reading.

A priori, Australian history is not however a dull subject. At the start of Australia: Her story, Kylie Tennant [1912-1988] quotes these words from the great US humorist Mark Twain [1835-1910]:

Australian history is almost always picturesque; indeed, it is so curious and strange that it is itself the chiefest novelty the country has to offer, and so it pushes the other novelties into second and third place. It does not read like history, but like the most beautiful lies; and all of a fresh new sort, no mouldy old stale ones. It is full of surprises and adventures, and incongruities, and contradictions, and incredibilities; but they are all true, they all happened.

Talented story-tellers abound in Australia. Islands of Angry Ghosts by Hugh Edwards, the story of the Batavia shipwreck, is a masterpiece. In a different register, I love the style of Les Hiddins, the popular "Bush Tucker Man".

We have, of course, a great and unexpected historian in Australia: Robert Hughes. When we were together at Sydney University, at the end of the 1950s, I recall Bob above all as a talented cartoonist, allegedly studying architecture. He went on to become a Time journalist, then he blossomed magically into a splendid Australian historian. I would even say, in measuring my words, the most eloquent Australian historian ever.

It would take a writer like Hughes to capture the vital past of Grafton. I'm thinking of the pioneering epochs when there was a bustling timber industry and vast pastoral activities. I have a fascinating book here, with data compiled by Tony Morley, that lists no less than 60 pubs in Grafton and its immediate surroundings. I often wonder: Who were the folk who once stayed, dined and drank in all these hotels?

I'm particularly familiar with one of these old-fashioned hotels: an establishment in South Grafton that was purchased in 1881 by my Irish-born Catholic great-great-grandfather from County Clare, Michael O'Keeffe [1831-1910], when it was still known as the Steam Ferry Hotel, because that was how you crossed the Clarence up until the bridge was built. [And don't forget that we're talking of a community whose bridge-building capacities have not exceeded one construction per century.] A century ago, Michael O'Keeffe gave the hotel to one of his daughters, married to a Walker from Braidwood, and it was known as Walker's Hotel for half a century. Once upon a time, it was a hub of affluent society. I stayed there last year. The building still retains a lot of its former charm, but the hotel business is now downgraded [to use a euphemism].

My Irish-born Protestant great-grandfather from County Fermanagh, Isaac Kennedy [1844-1934], used a bullock team on his property named Riverstone, further up the Clarence. This anonymous hand-colored postcard shows the kind of setting in which my Braidwood-born great-grandfather Charles Walker [1851-1918] worked on the Kennedy property as a so-called boy in charge of the bullock team.

Isaac Kennedy was a prosperous pioneer, and his commercial operations often brought him down to South Grafton, where he would stay at the Steam Ferry Hotel. Isaac had five unmarried daughters—one of whom, Mary Jane Kennedy [1888-1966], would become my maternal grandmother—and he never lost a moment in doing his best to find them husbands. At the bar of the Steam Ferry Hotel, after a drink too many, Isaac was capable of taking a handful of golden coins from his coat pocket and spreading them out on the bar for everybody to see, while declaring: "There's a lot more gold of that kind waiting for any eligible young man who wishes to be betrothed to one of my five lovely daughters." A wag responded: "Isaac, if you give me a fair price in gold, I'll take the whole five." If local history is to be readable, I believe it should include authentic anecdotes of that kind.

Annual trim

At high school, our dear old ruffled chemistry teacher Gerald Spring liked to tell his favorite joke about a French barber. Holding up a mirror so that the client could admire his haircut, the barber asked: "Is that OK?" Client: "Make it just a little longer at the back, please."

The road up to Gamone has just received its annual trim. A farmer from a relatively distant village [Chantesse, on the Grenoble side of Vinay] has a permanent contract to carry out this work, not only at Choranche, but in several other places. It's a solid money-making affair for this fellow, and the job is easy, provided that no discarded fencing wire is hidden in the roadside weeds. At Gamone, by the time this annual event takes place, the weeds have grown so tall that they droop over the road, and driving through them is a little like moving along a jungle track. Then, in the space of a day, the road becomes as bald as Billy's head after a visit to the lady barber in St-Jean-en-Royans.

The other day I was chatting with my neighbor Dédé, and he offered to speak to a farmer friend about the idea of cutting the abundant weeds in my paddock with walnut trees. The general idea is that farmers are often prepared to do this work free provided they can keep the cut weeds, which they bundle up to make hay for their farm animals. Dédé himself has such an arrangement with the farmer in question. I started to explain to Dédé that I'm not bothered greatly by the presence of weeds around the walnut trees at this time of the year. Then Dédé used a word that has always amused me in the case of weeds. He said that the main advantage in having the weeds cut is that the paddock would look "cleaner". Over the years, I've heard Dédé using this adjective dozens of times, when talking about everything from grass on the lawn to shrubs on the hillside. I understand that long grass and weeds can appear to be "dirty", or at least unkempt, in much the same way as long straggly hair. If people in general did not have this impression, then the gardens of suburbs and villages would be peaceful havens of a weekend instead of transmitting raucous symphonies of lawnmower cacophony.

Here at Gamone, although I have no aversion to weedy paddocks, I do in fact own a particularly powerful and noisy Japanese weed-cutter, shown in this photo taken by Natacha:

If I were sufficiently motivated, I could spend days and days guiding this machine over the slopes of Gamone... but I see no point in doing so. Not surprisingly, Dédé was the first person who pointed out to me, years ago, the futility of devoting time and energy to clean up land, only to find it just as weedy as ever a year later.

All this talk about weeds and clearing up land takes me back in time to my childhood, when I saw my father constantly obsessed by the challenge of eradicating eucalyptus trees on his bush property. I don't know which of the two phenomena he hated most, trees or rabbits, which were both accused of playing a role in depriving his cherished cattle of their precious grass. In that domain, here's a photo of my mother's ancestral Braidwood region:

I was amused by the terse comments penned on the back of this photo by my cousin Peter Hakewill, the photographer: "Sheep country. Bleak. Over-cleared of trees by dumb cockies." [The word "cocky" is Aussie slang for farmer.]

Obviously, the consequences of not removing weeds and unwanted shrubs are considerably more significant when you're obliged to use your land to earn your living, instead of merely looking at it (as is the case for me). I've often thought that the hordes of suburbanites who spend their weekends mowing the lawn and tending to flower beds are in fact expressing an atavism associated with epochs when our ancestors were primeval crop-growers. Now, this thought makes me feel really bad. Why? Answering this question will provide me with yet another pretext for displaying a hazy photo of my magnificent personal mountain, the Cournouze, on the other side of the Bourne:

Up on top of that sacred mountain [well, it's sacred for me], there's a cavernous site [weird on top of a mountain] called the Pas de la Charmate, shown here:

Archaeologists tell us this site was occupied frequently during the four millennia stretching from 9,800 to 5,800 before the present era. That's a hell of a long duration: twice as long as the time since Jesus up until today. And what did my Cournouze neighbors do with themselves during that time? Well, we know they hunted mountain goats, deers and boars, which was a perfectly normal occupation. Maybe bisons and mammoths, too. Apparently, a more amazing occupation of these ancient residents of Choranche and Chatelus was ceramics. They must have had business links, too, with folk living on the French Riviera and even the distant Adriatic coast, because Cournouze digs have revealed the presence of pierced seashells from these places. It's highly likely, too, that my former Cournouze neighbors had developed the art of sowing a tiny acreage of crops to produce feed for their equally tiny herds of domesticated animals, maybe primeval cattle.

In the course of four millennia, a lot of phantoms must have taken up residence up there on top of the Cournouze, and I can imagine them looking down on Gamone [direct line of sight] and murmuring disparagingly, in ghost language: "What a bloody pity that Aussie guy isn't more enthusiastic about keeping his fucking weeds down."