Yesterday and today

These two images are separated by some three quarters of a century:


Hippolyte Gerin has been dead for over half a century, but the overall look of his house hasn't evolved a lot. Worse, it has gone backwards, in that the pair of wooden shutters have disappeared from the kitchen window.. which remains just as vertically out-of-line today as it was in Hippolyte's time.

On a wet morning such as today, I can understand why Hippolyte would have appreciated being able to stroll around on a stony surface in front of his house. Besides, at that time, there weren't only humans in the old stone building. Those doors behind Hippolyte were the entrance to a large shed (my present living-room) that housed a herd of goats. In 1994, when my son François and I started to clean up the place I had just bought, we set out to remove a vast sloping pile of animal dung that filled that entire corner of the building. When our picks broke through the hard dry crust of the dung, a gush of escaping methane forced us to flee outside. Finally, to carry out the task, I called upon René Uzel with a small earth-moving machine.

Better buzz than die with an axe in your head

TV spectators of the World Cup have been alarmed by disturbing noises emitted by South Africa. Is the TV broken? Is there some strange transmission interference at the level of the TV signal? Is South Africa maybe inhabited by noisy wasps or cicadas? No, the answer is simple. South Africa is inhabited by South Africans who get a kick out of making a hell of a lot of audio pollution, when they're watching soccer matches, by blowing non-stop into a crude "musical" instrument known as a vuvuzela… which creates an ugly buzz.

I don't have statistics on hand, but I'm led to believe that South African soccer spectators, physically preoccupied by blowing into these contraptions, simply don't have enough determination and energy left to envisage taking out axes and knives with the intention of eliminating supporters of the opposite team. So, the vuvuzela is undoubtedly a life-saving instrument, whose presence and role in the stadiums must be respected, indeed encouraged. One might say that the noise is less obnoxious than blood and guts. Fair enough…

Meanwhile, my ears won't let me watch that shit for any length of time. The audio pollution drives me mad. I feel like assassinating a South African vuvuzela blower, or maybe even a whole fucking grandstand of such noisy vermin. Let me return calmly to my quiet computer...

Singularities

In a landscape context, I like to apply the term "singularity" to any kind of more-or-less unique phenomenon that is either exceptional or indeed vaguely inexplicable. OK, my criteria for singularity are not exactly rigorous rocket science, but I like my word… so please don't knock it. For example, the ghostly appearance of the neighboring Mount Barret in a certain late-afternoon light (seen from my bedroom window) is a kind of singularity.

The other day, a specialist in local history dropped in at Gamone, to ask me for an article on the Royans for their journal, whose title includes a strange regional term: peuil. When I asked him the meaning of this word, he explained that a peuil is any kind of eye-catching singularity in the landscape. Since we were seated in front of my house, facing up towards the Cournouze, he pointed up in that direction and exclaimed: "There you have a perfect example of a peuil."

He was designating the curious little mound in the middle of the saddle-back crest between the Cournouze and the Barret. I've always said that its smooth tapering rounded shape reminds me of a young woman's mons pubis (pubic mound, often designated as her "mound of Venus"), particularly when it's covered in sparse early-Spring vegetation (I'm speaking of the landscape entity). I guess I must be imagining the Cournouze and the Barret as a pair of mountainous thighs. In any case, at last, I could associate that exotic and erotic tuft with a dialectical name. The personage Malte of Rilke exclaimed with joy, while reading Verlaine in the great library in Paris: "I have a poet!" As of yesterday, at Gamone, I could cry out: "I have a peuil!"

Long ago, when I first observed this most noticeable peuil at Châtelus, I wondered whether it might even be a man-made Roman earthwork… since the village was designated in 1260 as a "castrum" (evoking the possible existence of a Roman fortification). I once mentioned this hypothesis to a member of the farming family installed up there. A young guy, imbued with the oral culture of his birthplace, told me: "No, the mound's surely not a man-made construction. Our great-great-grandparents settled here in the early 19th century, when the entire area was deserted. If the mound had been a man-made thing, they would have noticed it." Fair enough. In the early decades of the 19th century, it's a fact that there were no longer any Ancient Romans strolling around on the slopes of Châtelus. To my mind, though, the question still remains open: Is my Châtelus peuil a virginal affair, resulting from Nature. Or was it fashioned by Man? Only an archeological dig could answer that interesting question…

Vicious web danger: tabnabbing

Most often, I use Firefox as my web browser, mainly because I've grown accustomed to it, and I've developed a big set of bookmarks. These days, I've been saying to myself regularly that I really must get into the habit of using Apple's Safari as my standard browser, because it's making an effort to start to integrate various HTML5 devices.

Meanwhile, no matter which browser we use, a new danger has arisen for web users who (like myself) have become accustomed to jumping between tabs. It's called tabnabbing, because an evil site you visit is capable, as it were, of stealing (or, more precisely, corrupting) a tab of your browser and leading you astray. Let me show you a demo of how it works. I strongly advise you to pay close attention to this demo (which is easy to follow), so that you'll be aware of the way in which tabnabbing does its dirty work.

For the moment, you're reading the Antipodes blog. Now, open another tab (I'm assuming you know how to do that) and open Google. Here's the new situation:

On the left, there's the tab associated with Antipodes. On the right, there's the newly-opened tab with Google, whose address appears at the top. Note the Blogger favicon in the left tab, and the multicolored Google favicon in the second (active) tab. Now, give Google the simple word "tabnabbing". Normally, at the top of the list of Google results, you'll find the following link:

Now, let me explain (so that you won't be worried) that this website belongs to a 26-year-old fellow named Aza Raskin (son of the late Macintosh pioneer Jeff Raskin).

Not only is Aza a "good guy". Above all, he's a brilliant interface guru who holds the current post of creative lead for Firefox at the Mozilla Corporation. And he's the fellow who actually unearthed the existence of the tabnabbing trap. Well, Aza has deliberately installed the evil tabnabbing bug in the above-mentioned website, so that we can see how it works. Now, there's no possibility whatsoever of your being harmed by pursuing this demo. On the contrary, you'll see how the evil strikes, and you'll be all the more capable of avoiding it in a potentially harmful web environment. So, let's pursue the demo.

If you click the reference supplied by Google, you'll see Aza Raskin's elegant website, in which he provides useful information about this problem, which belongs to the category of evil operations known as "phishing". Here's the current appearance of the tabs:

Notice that the second tab now mentions Aza's website, whose address appears at the top. Now return to the Antipodes blog by clicking the left-hand tab. You'll return, as expected, to my blog. But look at the tabs:

The right-hand tab no longer mentions Aza's website, as it did ten seconds ago. It seems to refer to the Gmail website. In fact, we're faced with a tabnabbing trap. It's not really an authentic Gmail website, but rather a fake site designed to extract vital data from you. You can switch to this fake website, harmlessly, to see what it looks like.

It certainly looks like a harmless Gmail page, asking you to sign in. But don't be fooled into thinking that it's really the authentic Gmail website that's requesting data from you. As you can see from the address up at the top, it's still actually a page of Aza's website. So, simply destroy this obnoxious tab.

Conclusion: If ever you click on a tab and discover what seems to be a familiar website, asking you for information, disregard the request, and remove that tab immediately! In other words, whenever you click on a tab, be wary of its authenticity.

POST SCRIPTUM: If readers still have doubts about the trap I've been trying to explain, they can ask me questions through the comments device. Some readers might say: "Oh, I never use tabs." That's simply not true. In Firefox, new tabs often get created automatically when you're clicking around. So, everybody is at the mercy of suddenly having his/her attention attracted by a tab with a familiar favicon and reference, which turns out to be an evil tabnabbing thing.

Cousins of all kinds

In 1987, when I was lecturing in computing out at the Curtin University in Perth, I once told my students (who knew I'd been living in France for most of my adult life) that I'd never knowingly met up with a genuine Tasmanian… let alone visited that southern island. I imagined that certain members of my audience would be surprised by this declaration… but not at all. Just like me, apparently, none of those young people had ever been in contact with that out-of-the-way place.

In an article entitled Tasmanians [display], I evoked Truganina, the queen of the Tasmanian Aborigines. In another article, entitled Ray of hope for our devils [display], I mentioned the terrible cancer epidemic that could possibly wipe out these exotic creatures.

Over the last few years, because of my non-stop intellectual diet of the extraordinary words of Richard Dawkins, I realize that my entire attitude towards Life (with a capital L) has been changing—evolving, you might say—in an unexpected but colossal manner. As a "born-again atheist" with the pretentious conviction that I understand vaguely, at last, what Existence is all about (at least the parts that a human brain can tackle), I'm aware that I've become a totally changed individual over the last few years. The aspect of life that amazes me most is the idea that all creatures—animals, plants, bacteria, etc—can be thought of as "cousins" of varying degrees of remoteness. For any pair of specific creatures—say Truganina and me… or even a Tasmanian Devil and me—we can imagine that we once shared a specific couple of N-great-grandparents, where N represents the number of times you would need to repeat the term "great" in order to ascend to this ancestral couple. In the case of Truganina and me, this couple would have surely looked a little bit like Truganina, a little bit like me, and a big bit like countless folk who were still living over in Africa some 50 millennia ago. On the other hand, in the case of the Tasmanian Devil and me, it would be vastly more difficult to imagine seriously what our last common ancestors might have looked like.

Talking of Tasmanian cousins, I'm particularly fond of this pretty fellow, some ten centimeters long, who apparently still exists today:

Known as a handfish, and located in the waters of Hobart, it uses its fins, not to swim, but to stroll around on the ocean floor. Concerning our common ancestors, I would imagine that, one day long ago, they happened to walk up onto an African beach or river bank, where they were totally charmed by the new environment. So, hand over hand (maybe hand in hand, if we wished to give this tale a romantic touch), they just kept on walking…

Rose update

When preparing the front of my house for the restoration of the façade in the autumn of 2007, I was saddened by the obligation to cut away a splendid rose bush of the Pierre de Ronsard variety (named after a 16th-century poet). Today, I am thrilled to discover that it is flowering (timidly) once again:

This French variety, created in 1986 by the Meilland family dynasty in Provence, was voted the most popular rose in the world at the Osaka convention of the World Federation of Rose Societies in 2006.

Last summer, when I was planning my rose garden at Gamone, Christine advised me wisely to avoid glaring colors, particularly those that clash with one another. Well, since I didn't know a lot about roses, I'm not sure I respected this challenge when I selected the two dozen bushes that I wished to plant. But today, I'm finally happy with the outcome. My choice of varieties did, however, include a few particularly flamboyant specimens, such as this Limoux, whose bright ocher-yellow is said to be in harmony with the celebrated sparkling white wines of this region of south-west France.

At another spot in the garden, there's this brilliant Bicolette, which is supposed to have touches of cream on the outer edges:

No rose could be simpler or purer in its form than this lovely Bernadette, whose heart will shortly turn to light cream:

And here's another Meilland specimen, André le Nôtre (named in honor of the chief gardener of King Louis XIV):

The juxtaposition of the delicate flowers of a shrub of a similar hue is most successful.

Besides the visual scene, there is the magnificent aroma that the garden exudes towards the end of warm afternoons. I find that the flowers have a similar soothing effect to staring into an aquarium. There are differences, of course. You don't have to remove weeds from an aquarium. And you don't have to build a vast staircase to get down into an aquarium. (I promise photos as soon as it's completed.)

Ebook version of a genealogical document

Yesterday, I decided to carry out a hands-on test concerning the idea of distributing genealogical stuff in ebook format. So, instead of wasting my time witnessing the fact that "there's nothing like the Socceroos", I spent my evening building an ebook version of chapter 7 of my monograph entitled They Sought the Last of Lands. Click the following image to download it:

I believe that you should be able to transfer the downloaded file to an iPad, but I haven't tested this possibility (because I don't yet own an iPad). Otherwise, you can click the following banner to obtain a free copy of the Adobe Digital Editions software tool, which will enable you to read my file comfortably:

Unfortunately my test was not exactly conclusive. Indeed it was disappointing in the sense that the challenge of creating such an ebook turns out to be quite messy and time-consuming from a layout point of view. I had to readjust the sizes of many of the images and genealogical charts, and attempt to implement all kinds of vertical spacing tricks, but I'm still not satisfied with the aesthetic results. Worse still, after all these messy operations, I'm left with an ugly set of complicated code files, which would not be easy to update.

My conclusion? For the time being, I think it's preferable for me to stick to the conventional method of distributing my genealogical chapters in the form of .pdf files.

Does Australia cheat a bit?

I was recently intrigued by a front-page article, with a lovely photo, about the participation of Australia at the prestigious Chelsea Flower Show in London. Mystified, I asked myself how Australian horticulturalists might be capable of organizing and creating such a splendid show on the opposite side of the planet. Well, the answer was simple. All the plants in the "Australian" exhibit at Chelsea were Mediterranean specimens, imported from gardens in Italy! Maybe Australia was awarded some kind of a Chelsea prize (?) for counterfeit.

Recently, I wrote an article entitled Nothing like Sam [display] whose over-optimistic title was belied by the fact that our Gold Coast Samantha finally met her match. At the start of that article, I mentioned an Aussie video designed to promote tourism, which you're encouraged to examine [display]. Now, I don't wish to waste time in analyzing this outrageous production. I merely draw attention to the fact that it introduces a credibility gap, right from the start. It begins by an image of a guy seated at a white piano on a sandy beach.

Hey! Do viewers (including those who've seen the magnificent movie of Jane Campion) still believe in this kind of romantic publicity shit? We then see a pair of would-be surfers on an idle sea, awaiting "the first wave of the day". Do these dumb guys really imagine that waves are about to roll over this flat sea? Lo and behold: Two dolphins jump into the air, on the horizon, backed by the rising sun.

Sorry, mate. I don't buy one iota of all that video shit. You Aussie tourist folk are cheating ridiculously. One only has to analyze the shadows in the above absurd image to realize immediately that it's a fake video montage. You should be ashamed of yourselves.

Only one thing is true. As far as video cheating is concerned, there's nothing like Australia. This raises a more general question. Can outsiders believe anything about Australia that's related by Aussie tourist authorities. My answer to that question is a firm NO. Those folk spend their time (and financial resources) inventing a fairy-tale land—right down to details such as cute friendly Aboriginal kids swimming in billabongs—that simply doesn't exist!

Now, if you happen to be a Florida widow or an aged Japanese couple, with surplus dollars or yens dropping out of your pockets, please disregard anything I've just said.

Moving finger mauls

No, my pretty Benny, it's not good enough to simply ask for pardon for the sins of the past, and pray that they won't reoccur.

The moving finger of a priestly pedophile mauls an innocent child and, having mauled, moves on, maybe to other children. And all your pardons won't rub out an iota of the damage done. It's your entire system of prelates, priests and nuns that's rotten at the core, and the world wants no more of it. There's no longer any room for you and your mates, Benny, on the stage of enlightened humanity! We're not interested in your pleas for pardon. We just want you and your church to leave the current scene, as rapidly as possible, and be relegated to history books… where your posterity, in any case, is assured.

Self-publishing

Ever since I've been living in France, and writing in English (and also, at times, in hesitant French), I've discovered that attempts to get stuff published—either in the US or the UK (let's forget about my native Australia)—are a brick-wall affair.

Why? Well, publishing traditions in those Anglo-Saxon nations exploit exclusively the concept of literary agents. In other words, I can't simply propose a typescript to such-and-such a publishing house. I first have to find a literary agency, and it becomes their job to look for a publisher. Fair enough. Well then, why don't I simply link my existence as an English-language writer (residing in France) to such-and-such a US or UK literary agent? That's a good question. The truth of the matter is that I've never succeeded in convincing any serious US or UK literary agent that it might be worthwhile establishing a professional contact with me. Why not? Well, I don't know… apart from saying that they all reply that they're not interested, without taking the slightest look at anything that I've written (apart from my inquiry letter). I have the impression that there's some kind of credibility gap. Prospective agencies look at my address, "overseas", "on the European Continent", and they say to themselves: Shit, no… Or else I'm mistaken. Maybe they judge my literary nullity from the absence of subtle vocabulary and exotic forms of speech in my inquiry letter… I don't think so.

No, there's no doubt. We English-speaking writers residing on the European continent are living in the context of a giant English-language publishing system that has little or no place for individuals who don't reside in the "right" place, who don't pay income taxes either in the US or the UK. Needless to say, the system has litle to do with an author's writing talents.

For an English-writing European such as myself, interested in several kinds of writing (blog, novels, genealogy, local history, etc), the concept of self-publishing is a potentially exciting but subtle affair… which I'm exploring intensely, particularly in the context of electronic books. In any case, I must break out of the present stalemate.

Branch removal

A few days ago, with no prior warning, the electric power was cut off at 9 o'clock in the morning. Unable to work at the computer or even make a cup of coffee, I drove down the road to see what was happening.

As I expected, electricity technicians told me that they had turned off the power so that a team of three tree-climbers could move through the zone in order to lop off branches that might touch the medium-voltage cables. For several weeks, they had been waiting for fine weather, to perform this overdue operation. Later on in the day, the woodmen turned up at Gamone and got into action at the level of my walnut trees.

They were good at climbing trees, and they operated rapidly on my young walnut trees.

What's more, they were friendly fellows, doing a job they liked, in a great outdoor environment. So, when I asked the boss whether he might possibly cut down three old dead walnut trees, he was happy to render this service… with the help of a ladder that I dragged down the slopes from my house.

Now that the three dead trees are no longer there, I have a clearer and wider view, from my front lawn, of the river Bourne and the Cournouze mountain.

Global view of Gamone

This amusing photo of the Gamone valley, taken a few days ago from the other side of the Bourne, reveals that I'm not exactly hemmed in by neighbors. To the left of the blue circle, the relatively bare zone that slopes gently upwards to the crest is the paddock of my donkeys Moshé and Mandrin.

Submerged in roses

That pompous title sounds as if I'm dead and about to be buried. Not quite. I'm still kicking, more than ever...

I've often evoked my longstanding and intense admiration of the Austrian poet Rainer Maria Rilke, author of The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge… which I've recently adapted for a movie (project being currently examined by a French producer).

Roses were a refrain in the words and the life of Rilke. Towards the end of his life, he was living in Muzot, Switzerland.


Here, the great poet cultivated his roses.

Finally, a prick from the thorn of a rose poisoned the poet.

The poet himself wrote the mysterious lines that are engraved in German on his tombstone:

Rose, oh reiner Widerspruch, Lust,

Niemandes Schlaf zu sein unter soviel Lidern.

Rose, oh pure contradiction, desire,
To be no one's sleep under so many eyelids.

My friend Tineke Bot brought back this marvelous winter photo of Rilke's Muzot "castle" at Raron in the Valais canton of Switzerland:

Altering the view angle for her next photo, the artist Tineke captured the tortured soul of the poet, pricked to death by a rose thorn:

Today, at Gamone, I'm surrounded by flowers, including many roses.

The following blood-red specimen is certainly moving, in that it bears the name of Coluche [1944-1986], the great French comic who was killed in a motor-cycle accident when I was out in Australia for the America's Cup.

I have the abrupt impression that one doesn't grow roses innocently, just for fun. There's surely method in the rose-grower's madness. But there's no doubt a bit of pure madness, too. Look at this delightfully schizophrenic specimen labeled New Year. The rose bush is totally incapable of deciding what color it might adopt.

There are more familiar specimens, such as this Albertine (the treasured rose of Christine), which has had a rough time recovering from the exceptionally wet spring of Gamone:

Believe me, though, that I'm in no way obsessed by the task of identifying each rose, as if they were objects. Here, for example, is a splendid rose, in my Gamone garden, that deserves to be designated simply as "pure Rilke":

Having said this, I owe my Antipodes readers a few explanations (in fact, three), because I tend to be somewhat lazy at times.

1. The first reason why the Antipodes blog exudes an aura of drowsiness, from time to time, is that I've been devoting a huge amount of time and effort to the construction of a staircase down into my rose and peony garden. I've been imposing upon myself an information blackout concerning this staircase, which exploits an experimental construction approach! No images will be published before the completion of the project… which has been one of my major recent outdoor efforts at Gamone.

2. The second reason behind my drowsiness is that I've been devoting a lot of energy to the project of starting a legal association, to be named ROYANENSIS, to handle the publication of ancient texts concerning my adopted Royans homeland.

3. The third reason for my other-worldliness is that I've become addicted to the concept of electronic books. It's a huge subject. Basically, inspired by the arrival of the iPad, and the strong words of Steve Jobs on these questions, I've decided to focus upon this kind of software construction, at all levels (including genealogical documents).

For the moment, let's admire quietly the voluptuous roses...

Tranquil but treacherous

This delightful stretch of the Bourne lies below the Trois-Châteaux mountain, which separates Choranche from Pont-en-Royans.

The mountain was so-named because because medieval sentinels, posted on its slopes, could keep watch over three impressive feudal domains down in the Royans: the Bâtie fortress of the powerful Bérenger lords, the Flandaines castle erected on clifftops (reputedly inviolable, and consequently razed to the ground, in a fit of jealousy, by king Louis XI) and the exotic castle of Rochechinard, whose ruins are still perfectly visible today.

At this spot, the Bourne emerges from beneath the Rouillard Bridge, near the ancient mill of my neighbor Jack Oyhancabal, and flows just twenty meters down from the road, alongside a convenient parking zone for vehicles.

As everywhere in the Bourne, there are huge fragments of limestone—some as big as a house—that have tumbled down from the slopes in remote eras.

This is an ideal place for sunbathers and trout fishermen.


But the river, so tranquil most of the time, can become abruptly treacherous. Passers-by who have the privilege of being able to read French would do well to take notice of warning signs put up at this spot, and elsewhere alongside the Bourne between Choranche and Pont-en-Royans.

The meaning of this pair of signs can only be grasped, however, by local people who are already fully aware of the situation.

—The top sign, of an old-fashioned and straightforward appearance, has been pasted over an earlier version in which the phrase "Il est dangereux" was not yet in upper-case characters. We're told that it's dangerous to wander around in the river or on the banks of gravel (?) because the water level can change abruptly as a result of the presence of hydroelectric works and dams upstream.

— The lower sign is inextricably complicated. First, it's funny to discover that the sign has been installed by two quite different partners, who apparently combined their efforts in order to design this warning message: the national EDF authority (in charge of French electricity), and the local AAPPMA (fishing association). Maybe the presence of the latter partner is due to the fact that trout fishermen are the most vulnerable potential victims of surges in the level of the river. Instead of saying this, though, the fishing folk have terminated the sign by a couple of lines of banal propaganda, in red letters: "The river is a fragile environment. Thanks for avoiding all pollution." Then they've inserted their big colorful logo. But the most intriguing part of this sign, by far, is the small print about a so-called "warning wave". Truly, few passers-by could be expected to imagine what this might be. I myself, having lived here for 17 years, have never actually seen such a "warning wave", but local folk have told me about this phenomenon. To understand the situation, you have to go upstream a few kilometers. Unknown to most of the tourists who drive past on a road up on the slopes, there is a dam on the Bourne, just upstream from the village of Choranche, and it backs up a big lake.

From time to time, after high rainfall up on the Vercors plateau, or following the melting of snow, the EDF authorities realize that they'll be obliged to release a lot of the water that has been accumulating in the lake. Now, they've invented the notion of a "warning wave" as a way of letting people know, between Choranche and Pont-en-Royans, that the river is about to evolve into a roaring torrent. That's to say, five minutes before opening the valves completely, they release a relatively small quantity of water: just enough to let sunbathers and fishermen know that they should immediately scramble out of the water and up the banks to safety, before the massive overflow reaches them. Those EDF people are thoughtful, aren't they…

Not long after my arrival in Choranche, I recall a sunny afternoon when I was having a beer at the Jorjane in the village of Choranche, and chatting with Georges. We were annoyed by the repeated shouting of what sounded like a few boisterous youths wandering around in the woods alongside the Bourne. It took us about twenty minutes to realize that the cries came from stranded fishermen. Meanwhile, fortunately, village folk who were more alert than Georges and me had called the local firemen, who rapidly got the fishermen out of trouble.

Incidentally, the fly-fisherman seen in the above photos is in a particularly dangerous situation, because there's a vertical cliff behind him, and he would have to wade across the river to get to safety.

Bunyip still protecting lizards

In my article of 15 April 2010 entitled My bunyip has broken a leg [display], I explained that temperature variations had split a stone that has been lying in front of the house for ages. But this fracture hasn't prevented my bunyip from persevering in its protection of lizards, much to the disgust of Sophia.

I'm always amazed to realize that the dog's sense of smell is sufficient to inform her whether or not there's a lizard hiding behind the bunyip. A universe in which even tiny lizards have a distinctive odor must be a fabulous place.

After waiting impatiently for the lizard to reappear (which it never does, because I would suppose that the reptile senses the presence of a predator), Sophia resorts to barking… which provides the lizard with an additional motivation to lie low. At that stage, to break the vicious circle, I often intervene by moving the bunyip a little, which gives the lizard an opportunity of dashing to a more tranquil shelter. Sometimes, though, the lizard makes the fatal mistake of moving too close to Sophia, who instantly breaks the reptile's spine.

Bob's shoulder

My ex-neighbor Bob (who has become one of my regular visitors at Gamone) has just dropped in to pick up his mail.

During his career as a top-grade rugby player, Bob received a lot of knocks. But none of those rugby incidents ever did him as much damage as his recent bicycle collision with a tractor. During the last month or so, while his fractured collarbone was mending, Bob has been constantly in pain, and he's still unable to move his right arm freely. His doctor has just learned from a scan that Bob's shoulder joint was smashed in the accident, and will necessitate surgery. Fortunately, an orthopedic specialist in nearby Romans was able to put Bob in contact with one of the leading European surgeons in this field, and he'll no doubt be undergoing an operation in the near future.

Knowing that he'll be out of action for a couple of months, Bob has asked me to search the Internet for information about computer tools in the domain of landscape gardening (akin to the computerized design tools used by architects). This was Bob's initial profession, many years ago, until his firm folded up. So, he's wondering whether his forthcoming convalescence might provide him with an unexpected opportunity of moving back into this kind of work. I'll do my best to provide Bob with useful information, because I've come to appreciate the rude but sympathetic common sense of this friendly guy.

Intellectually, it's a fact that we agree about almost nothing. Bob seems to believe in the antiquated biology of Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck, rather than that of Charles Darwin. Besides, he has always believed in various miraculous cures for rugby injuries. But our disagreements have become a regular pretext for splendid friendly debates, of an uplifting nature, on the sunny terrace in front of Gamone.

Mosques

Whenever my donkey Moshé sees me approaching, he leaves his companion Mandrin and dashes over towards me. I think his eagerness has something to do with the ingrained hope that I might be bearing oats or apples. Be that as it may, it's clear that my donkeys are not exactly starving.

The reason I've mentioned my friend Moshé is because of the name I gave him, which (as I've often explained in my blog) is the Hebrew version of Moses. It's a good name. I've always felt that my dear Provençal donkey—with a dark cross on his back—would be perfectly capable of wandering around in the wilderness for 40 years in an attempt to lead God's chosen children into a land where milk and honey were flowing. That's the sort of straightforward challenge that my donkey would adore. The only problem with this name is that my neighbor Madeleine got it wrong, right from the start. She called my donkey Mosquée, which is the French word for a Muslim mosque. My lovable beast was transformed overnight into an ecumenical symbol of the three great monotheistic belief systems… which, for an atheist such as me, was truly an unexpected gift from God.

Pat Condell is a 60-year-old English intellectual and stand-up comedian. Richard Dawkins said of him: "Pat Condell is unique. Nobody can match his extraordinary blend of suavity and savagery. With his articulate intelligence he runs rings around the religious wingnuts that are the targets of his merciless humour. Thank goodness he is on our side." I found this excellent video on the website of the RDFRS [Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason and Science]:



It's weird, indeed alarming, that certain religions are in fact power systems whose purpose consists of seeking to dominate humanity. It's good that we realize this, in order to remain constantly vigilant.

POST SCRIPTUM: I'm dismayed to find my intellectual hero Dawkins using the American slang term "wingnuts" to designate folk who are already the object of nice epithets such as "loonies", "fuckwits", etc. I belong to the generation of former cyclists who used real-life wingnuts to secure their wheels. So, for me, these devices evoke tender joyful memories. As a substitute for the derogatory use of "wingnut", I quite like "arsehole" (with British spelling), but Moshé (alias Mosquée) and I reject unequivocally, for obvious reasons, the US spelling "asshole". For similar reasons, I once sent an email complaint to a fellow who dared to designate Bill Clinton disparagingly as a "donkey dick". Insults are fine, and I approve of them wholeheartedly, but they need to be conceived with a blend of rigor and finesse.

Nothing like Sam

To sense the spirit of Australia, you might like to look at a ridiculous antiseptic touristic video, entitled There's nothing like Australia, in which the name of our nation is screamed out, unnaturally, as Aus-stray-lee-YAH:



To my mind, a better way of envisaging Australia would consist of watching tomorrow's tennis female final at Roland-Garros.


I'm convinced that our Samantha Stosur will win, because she's a fabulous Aussie freak, of the kind we all love and admire. Have you seen her muscles? Have you read about how she escaped from death after being bitten by French ticks? Truly, there's nothing like Sam.

BREAKING NEWS: Sam jammed! She left Roland-Garros with a silver plate, not the coveted cup. An Italian publication, admiring her muscles, said that Sam looked like a colored illustration in an anatomy textbook. Fair enough. I have the impression that the reasons for her defeat this afternoon might be found rather in psychology textbooks. At the time of Ernest Hemingway, aficionadas of bullfighting used to say that a potentially successful matador had to be hungry... meaning, not only that his origins had to be humble, near the poverty borderline, but that he had to be inspired by a voracious desire to kill bulls, be applauded and be paid muchas pesetas. If you weren't hungry enough, you would never succeed in tauromachy. Better stick to repairing bikes, working at a meat abattoir, or selling peanuts at the entrance of the arena. As I watched TV images of the finalists about to enter into the arena of Roland-Garros, I had the clear impression that Sam simply wasn't hungry enough. She looked like a politely serious and muscular Brisbane lady about to spend an enjoyable afternoon outdoors, whereas Francesca Schiavone, from the moment we saw her in the dressing room, was like a hungry warrior. And the hungry warrior won.