Stolen computers of Parisian journalists

Recently, there has been a spate of cases of Parisian journalists having their computers stolen in mysterious circumstances. It's all the more alarming in that the victims are generally engaged in writing about the world of politics.

Now, it goes without saying that this world of politics is so noble and free of malice that it's hard to imagine why on earth any political figure would stoop so low as to deprive a journalist deliberately of one of his everyday tools of trade.

It so happens that I'm working at present on a powerful iPhone app that should normally make the theft of computers a Thing of the Past. To be called Crook Zapper, my app will necessitate the insertion of a tiny element of vicious hardware alongside your built-in webcam (located just above the screen of an iMac). As soon as an iMac is removed unlawfully, the owner merely uses his iPhone (assuming that it has not been stolen also) to activate the Crook Zapper system, which then operates automatically in a series of several well-defined steps.

— First, the webcam takes photos of the thief and sends them back to the iPhone of the rightful owner of the stolen iMac.

— Next, the Crook Zapper app uses a straightforward GPS technique to determine the exact geographical location of the stolen iMac, and this information is promptly forwarded to the rightful owner.

— Finally, the third step necessitates an OK that can only be delivered by the iPhone of the rightful owner. You'll forgive me if I don't provide you with an exact technical description of the ensuing events, because my invention needs to be protected. Basically, the tiny hardware device installed alongside the iMac's built-in webcam uses an artificial intelligence approach to focus upon a spot between the thief's eyes, whereupon it fires what might be described as an offensive nanodart, which is so small that its point of impact could not be seen (in a mirror) by any part of the thief's visual system that might have survived intact… if you see what I mean. All that remains is for the Crook Zapper app to send a "mission accomplished" message to the rightful owner… who can then accompany police and an ambulance vehicle to the place where the brave iMac is waiting to be retrieved.

Will Steve Jobs accept my Crook Zapper app when it's finished and tested, and market it through iTunes? I can't imagine why not.

Good news in Benedict's book

The book entitled Light of the World: The Pope, the Church and the Sign of the Times (what a heavy-handed and uninspired title, no doubt due to the German language in which it was produced) is coming out today.

I don't intend to purchase it, but I've been reading excerpts in the French and British press, and I must say that some of Ratzinger's words are encouraging. I like particularly his candid remarks about the church being constantly under attack, and the idea of his resigning from the papacy. He is quoted as saying: "When the danger is great you should not run away. That's why […] it is certainly not the time to retire. You can resign in a moment of peace or when you can no longer carry on but you must not run away from danger. If a pope comes to realize that he is no longer capable physically, psychologically and spiritually of continuing in office, then he has the right, the obligation, to resign."

If only the pressure on the Vatican were so intense that it finally drove Benny up the wall and forced him to back down (for personal reasons), his resignation would be a great victory for enlightened humanity in our combat against the archaic forces of religious obscurity. So, it's our duty to try to discourage and exhaust him morally—day in, day out—until the holy chief of the church is as worn out and useless as a holey condom.

Keep up the prayer pressure!

Tonight's the big night on TV for the lovely Palin family. US voters, with the help of our prayers, will elevate Bristol (on the right in the following photo) to the status she deserves: one of the most brilliant dancers in the world.

So, for Christ's sake, keep up the prayer pressure, even if it hurts you… which is healthy suffering when you're doing it for a Good Cause. If only Bristol can get over this dancing hurdle (which isn't impossible for such an athletic artist), Sarah's chances of winning the presidency will be multiplied like loaves and fishes on the shores of the Sea of Galilee. And the Republican voters of the United States of America will get the fucking leader they deserve. A great tidal wave of clarity would envelop the land, and lots of things would then fall or float into place.

BREAKING NEWS: Admittedly, glorious Bristol only finished Dancing with the stars in third place.

But the big news is that she has mentioned explicitly the major role played by prayer in Monday night's finale. "It is faith that got me through this and just praying all the time and just relying on God and knowing that He is on our side and we'll get through this." What better proof could we imagine? Clearly, God exists. He loves beautiful Bristol, and He's fond of dancing in general, and dancing competitions in particular. This implies—for those who have eyes to see and ears to hear—that He's also keen on the idea that Bristol's lovely mother is destined to rise, as it is written, to the highest imaginable level in the US political sphere. Holy shit! Hallelujah!

Kate Middleton's future dad-in-law

These 18 photos are most revealing. What a great pity that the chances of Charles ever becoming king are evaporating like morning mists when the sun rises over Loch Ness.

Rear view of Fitzroy

This has become a frequent view of Fitzroy. You see, I place his food dish just inside the door of his kennel, in the front left corner. There are several advantages to this technique:

— The food won't get wet when it rains.

— Sophia will be less tempted to gulp down Fitzroy's food (in the wink of a dog's eye) when she just happens to be strolling around in the vicinity of his kennel. In other words, Sophia seems to realize that the interior of the kennel is definitely out of bounds for her, since it's Fitzroy's territory.

— In this position, with his head in the semi-darkness, Fitzroy is less likely to get distracted in the middle of his meal. In the outside world, he jumps constantly from one preoccupation to another. And, if he runs out of plausible preoccupations, he resorts to racing around furiously, like a greyhound, in a big figure-of-eight trail.

In any case, Fitzroy eats heartily, as expected: warmed-up pasta of a morning, and croquettes later on in the day.

His body is a solid mass of muscles. I realize that he's a very physical dog, who rarely calms down. In fact, the only time he's totally calm is when I pick him up of an evening, bring him into the living-room and let him lie on my knees in front of the fireplace (for ten minutes or so) while I'm watching TV. His presence at Gamone has brought me a lot of joy, and I'm convinced too that his nonstop jostling with Sophia, when she's outside for a walk, has done her a lot of good from a physical health viewpoint. She needs all that exercise. In a way, Fitzroy has become Sophia's aerobics instructor.

Recently, during our frequent walks up the road beyond the house, the dogs inevitably discover a large male ring-necked pheasant that beds down overnight in the weeds of Gamone. The bird only darts off when the dogs are right alongside him, and he flies rapidly in a straight line to the opposite side of the creek, making a weird clicking noise like a motor. Of an evening, the dogs start barking as soon as they pick up the scent of the pheasant who has returned to roost in his usual corner of the weeds. I'm starting to look upon this bird, reared to be shot by hunters, as a new member of our Gamone family. But I wouldn't bet on his lengthy survival.

Funny French website

This hilarious and expertly-engineered website proposes the Sarkophone: that's to say, a personalized version of Sarko's iPhone. And the amazing thing is that it seems to work like a real iPhone… except that you probably can't actually phone up anybody. The YouTube videos featuring Sarko and Berlusconi talking with the Romanian fellow are brilliant.

There is a new wave of reason

I often think back with embarrassment to the rubbish I lapped up, as a child, in the way of Anglican hymns. I realize retrospectively that I was totally brainwashed—maybe "earwashed" is a better word—in that I found them quite pleasant to listen to, and even sing. The most appalling specimen of all, I think, was a vulgar military march entitled Onward Christian soldiers! Richard Dawkins alludes to another nonsensical hymn in The Greatest Show on Earth:

When children sing, 'He made their glowing colours / He made their tiny wings', they are uttering a childishly obvious falsehood. Whatever else God does, he certainly doesn't make glowing colours and tiny wings. If he did anything at all, it would be to supervise the embryonic development of things, for example by splicing together sequences of genes that direct a process of automated development. Wings are not made, they grow—progressively from limb buds inside an egg.

A footnote by Dawkins amuses me, suggesting that we were members of similar congregations:

I have been warned that 'All things bright and beautiful' will not necessarily strike my readers as nostalgically as it does me.

Today, I quite like the sound of this new kind of hymn, where the great Dawkins has been transformed into a disco choirboy… by a process called auto-tuning.



I was pleased to see and hear Bertrand Russell appearing at the beginning and the end of this fine composition.

He seems to be a starter

Certain observers expressed their conviction, today, that Dominique Strauss-Kahn has produced firm signals that he intends to be a presidential candidate in 2012. I hope so. I'm convinced that France needs the ideas, outlook and experience of this man.

Wine of a kind

In my post of October 2010 entitled History of wine at Choranche [display], I explained that I was working on an updated version of my article in French concerning the former vineyards of Choranche. An anecdote that I related in this article concerns my discovery, a few years ago, of a row of grapevines on the slopes just up behind my house. I collected leaves from one of the vines, and set about trying to determine the name of the grape variety.

My Macaire neighbors told me that my reemergent vines were surely a row of Herbemont planted over half-a-century ago by Hippolyte Gerin, seen here—with a nephew (wearing a cap) and a farm hand—in front of the house.

Now, Herbemont is a hybrid of the American species Vitis bourquiniana or maybe Vitis aestivalis (as opposed to authentic European wine-making grapes of the Vitis vinifera species), and it is one of the phylloxera-resistant plants imported into France from the USA towards the end of the 19th century as a means of recreating the devastated vineyards. The other varieties of American "grape weeds" (as I call them disparagingly) were Noah, Othello, Isabelle, Jacquez and Clinton. Well, a week or so ago, I received an email from a major French agricultural organization in charge of grape varieties, saying that they needed information about the Herbemont variety for their database. I had no idea that this variety had become rare in France. I was embarrassed to have to admit that all I could offer them, for the moment, were my samples of dried Herbemont leaves and my notes concerning this variety. As I explained, the Herbemont vines at Gamone are located in my donkey paddock, and I have every reason to suppose that the animals, in spring, appreciate fresh grapevines emerging from the soil. In any case, I promised the fellow who contacted me that I would erect a fence around the row of Herbemont vines, to protect them from the donkeys. So, he plans to get back in contact with me next summer, in the hope that there'll be some actual specimens of grapes.

As I explain in my article on the vineyards of Choranche, the six above-mentioned varieties of American "grape weeds" (Vitis americana as I call them) were meant to be used in France as phylloxera-resistant rootstocks for the grafting of the vulnerable European grape varieties. In Choranche, alas, some farmers didn't bother grafting anything whatsoever onto the Vitis americana plants. They simply picked the American grapes and made wine with them! Somebody once said, about the beverage called Canada Dry: "It looks like whiskey, and it tastes like whiskey… but it just ain't whiskey." One could make a similar criticism about wine made from the six US varieties of Vitis. But the peasants whose lives had been ruined by the phylloxera pandemic were content to discover that this easily-made liquor inebriated them to such an extent that they tended to forget their misery.

I should point out that, today, all the six above-mentioned varieties of the notorious American "grape weeds" are strictly banned by European wine authorities, and apparently banned also, now, even in Texas, where a few quaint old-style vineyards were experimenting with them a few years ago. It's not merely a matter of their giving rise to poor-quality wine. The particular kinds of alcohol produced by pressing and fermenting Vitis americana grapes are toxic.

Following my email correspondence with the fellow who was interested in Herbemont, I dropped in on a retired farmer and amateur wine-producer on the edge of the nearby village of St-Jean-en-Royans, to see if he was aware that living specimens of the old American "grape weeds" had apparently become collectors' items. We got involved in an interesting discussion on this theme. Basically, he claimed that the European wine authorities have surely made a mistake in denigrating the wine produced from Vitis americana. If it really poisoned drinkers, and damaged their brains, then how come that most of the local farmers seem to have survived? It goes without saying that I wouldn't dare attempt to answer such a question…

One thing led to another, and my farmer friend said: "It so happens that I've got a small stock of rich-red Clinton that I produced a month or so ago. Would you like to taste it?" I could hardly chicken out, as if I were a scared chemist working for the European Union. In view of its young age, the fruity product could have been confused with Beaujolais Nouveau. I limited myself to a single glass, and I seem to have survived with most of my brain and senses intact.

There's a funny twist to this whole story about the wine of Choranche and the neighboring region. The authentic old wine that existed up until the phylloxera invasion had an excellent reputation, particularly since it was used as the standard house wine in all the French pilgrim taverns (equivalent to our modern hotels) operated by the Chartreux monks. Today, it is impossible to say whether this Choranche wine was really as good as it was made out to be, because so many factors have changed completely in the wine industry since that epoch. Maybe people said it was excellent wine merely because they'd never had many opportunities of comparing it with other French wines. The toxic beverages produced more recently from the Vitis americana rootstocks have also acquired a good reputation among local farmers, and I'm starting to understand why. Essentially, it's because the local toxic "wine" doesn't taste like any other genuine wine you've ever encountered (for the simple reason that it isn't really wine), and it no doubt puts the drinker into a rather special state. So, why wouldn't the local farmers have spread the rumor that the wines of Choranche are extraordinary? But the local people also state naively that the Noah variety "sends you mad". And so it probably does, in a clinical sense. So, as I say in my title, the Choranche product is best thought of as "wine of a kind".

Never been hugged

OK, I'm a frustrated outsider. How can I possibly lead a happy life when I've never been hugged by 57-year-old Mata Amritanandamayi, aka Amma, the Mahatma (honorific title once applied to Ghandi)?

[Click the photo to access a Wiki article.]

She was in France for a week in October, and it's said that she hugged 38,000 individuals. That's a massive amount of cuddling, and one hopes that the results justified such a mammoth grizzly act. And what exactly is the fallout that Amma seeks to produce by means of her powerful arms? Somebody said that she's a saint who's capable of fending off evil. That suits me fine as an explanation, because me, too, I've never liked evil, and anybody who's good at fending it off will get my votes all the time. But an underlying question remains to be answered. Is this lady truly good at fending off evil with her hugs?

In my article of 4 March 2010 entitled Autosuggestion [display], I spoke of the necessity of using a well-organized double-blind trial to settle questions of this nature. We would only need to gather together a few hundred subjects who feel that they're beset by some kind of evil. These days, that shouldn't be too hard, particularly since the global financial crisis. As I explained in the above-mentioned article, they would be split into an experimental group, who would be hugged by the authentic Mahatma, and a control group, who would be hugged by a plausible but inauthentic Indian guru of the following kind:

We must, of course, anticipate the possibility that various hot-blooded male subjects might be exhilarated by the placebo effect of being cuddled by the fake guru. These deluded individuals might be led to believe momentarily that the Devil had indeed abandoned them. But a statistical analysis would soon reveal where truth lies, and the outcome of this trial would surely cast light upon Amma's marvelous powers.

Amazing bicycle artist

The Scotsman Danny MacAskill looks like any ordinary cyclist... but, in fact, he's a quite extraordinary man on a bike.

He succeeds in riding his bike along unexpected trails that were surely never intended for cycling.



Sorry, kids, if your parents have just watched this video, and they now refuse to buy you a bike for your forthcoming holiday in Scotland.

Victims of bad water and sanitation

At a first rapid glance, this spectacular photo seems to depict a military cemetery, but it's probably simply a manufacturer's storage yard.

I found this image on the following website:

Now, it's my sister Anne who might not feel happy about the choice of this date, because it's her birthday. Be that as it may, the organizers of this celebration (?) have chosen the above photo to highlight the fact that—as they point out on their website—"the water and sanitation crisis has claimed more lives than all the wars of the 20th century". And this is no laughing matter… although they might have invented a more solemn name for their day. On the other hand, their chosen name and their photo certainly attract attention.

Hedgehog talk

I've always admired the cat of English animator Simon Tofield. I just came across this brilliant little specimen of hedgehog talk.



I love the way the cautious cat uses a single leaf to test the possibility that it could stick to a bristle on a hedgehog's back. The test is positive. So the cat performs a full-size operation. I have the impression that Simon's cat doesn't really respect that serious and talkative hedgehog.

Cinderella

"The time has come," the Walrus said,
"To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—
And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings."

— Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass

In past ages, man and society needed gods and kings to put order into their existence. Then the 19th and 20th centuries gave us the illusion that these bastions of belief might be replaced effectively by warfare and capitalism. Today, objective and intelligent observers know (or should know) that it's time for all the antiquated stuff to give way to science and a healthy dose of socialism.

Suppose that it's true (as The Telegraph suggests) that the impending royal marriage will possibly cheer up the British people. Does a nation need to distribute that kind of expensive opium? Is it the purpose of a modern kingdom to offer its citizens fairy-tale illusions of what life might be like if they were princes and princesses? The case of a commoner such as Kate shocks me in that she's inevitably imagined as the lucky young lady who has won the super lottery. So, there's a constant hint of a dream that could come true. If Kate has managed to get the guy, then maybe there's a similar chance for ordinary folk such as yourselves. In donkey terms, it's a social carrot.

Prayers are needed urgently

In the context that concerns me, the US TV competition Dancing with the Stars, several individuals need, if not deserve, our prayers. This creates a problem. I'm not sure where we should start our praying.

Personally, I decided to get into action this morning by starting to pray energetically and intensely for Bristol Palin, because logically she's the person who probably needs our prayers most of all. There she is, competing in a great nation-wide dancing competition, and she dances—as somebody said—like a dog. [I shouldn't repeat that, because my dogs Sophia and Fitzroy would surely be offended if they got around to reading my blog, since they dance quite expertly. They've never seen my blog up until now, but I must be careful. Somebody might give them an iPhone.]

I also intend to exploit at least 20 percent of my stock of prayers for Bristol's mother, Sarah Palin. She is surely devoting a huge proportion of her limited resources to the promotion of her daughter's dancing career. So, with assistance from Jesus, I feel we should all dig in to help Sarah. This brave little God-fearing woman is doing a great job to keep her lovely child dancing with the stars. And her actions are going to pay off one day when the Almighty finally decides that her time has come... to sit on the Savior's right hand as his personal US delegate on the planet Earth.

I now learn that there's another individual who needs our prayers urgently. I'm talking of a 67-year-old Wisconsin gentleman named Steven Cowan who apparently took out a shotgun and blasted his TV set as soon as Bristol Palin appeared on the dancing stage. My personal theory is that this passionate fan of Bristol was so emotionally aroused (maybe sexually stimulated) when he caught sight of his darling dancer that he immediately called upon the only tangible means at hand to vent his hot blood: his shotgun.

Lastly, if you happen to have a few prayers left over, you might use them for the dumb US viewers who apparently watch this shit.

Royal rubbish

William is a docile blob, like his father. I find this photo hideous:

What a witch! That Kate Middleton commoner (I love to have an opportunity of slinging around that shitty term) is straight out of a Harry Potter remake. Her regard is no less topsy-turvy than her crazy hat. When I observe the physical features of this potential future queen, I fear that the kingdom is in danger. But what can you expect from the mad Windsors? I find it terribly sad that many of my Anglo-Saxon brethren still seem to take this royal farce seriously. What a fucking ridiculous phenomenon. It's high time that the British people as a (w)hole—I resisted the temptation of saying asshole—pulled its finger out. Why must this royal comedy endure?

Sadly, there are many ready answers to that rhetorical question:

• Hordes of dumb English-speaking folk, from one end of the planet to the other (including my native land), seem to get a kick out of watching the antics of these so-called Royals, as if they were exotic animals in a zoo (which they are, in fact).

• In a sociopolitical context, certain serious specialists would argue—for obscure obsolete reasons—that royalty is the best, if not ideal, solution to the challenge of national guidance.

• Many lazy apathetic bastards say: Why change something that has been working for ages?

• Certain powerful individuals say to detractors (well, they don't actually say it explicitly, but rather make it known): Hey, fuck off, old chap! The existence of royalty guarantees me my privileges.

• Countless individuals don't give a fuck.

Do you want to know what I think? Well, I reckon that the antiquated phenomenon of British royalty will soon fizzle out for reasons that are not evoked, in any way whatsoever, in the above arguments. They will disappear suddenly and mysteriously, almost overnight, like the dinosaurs many eons ago, or like the Soviet Union in 1991.

We should not waste our time and energy running in circles, screaming and shouting about the absurdity of British royalty. Things will change inevitably, no matter how much or how often we scream and shout. We should give Time its due time. And that limited time is written already in the ugly face of "Queen Kate".

Magic musical moment of torrid romance

On 19 November 2010, I changed slightly the content of this post so that it points to an operational copy of the video. The initial YouTube presentation of this masterpiece disappeared overnight.

Warning: If you have any underage children looking over your shoulder, shoo them away before playing the following sexy French video entitled Je t'aime, which can be translated into the language of Shakespeare as "I love you".

Maybe I should have warned you to turn down the volume before blasting your neighbors with that powerful suburban disco stuff.

These young artists apparently refer to themselves as Darkan and Demeter. These were the names, respectively, of a Celtic rock group and a Greek goddess. A French journalist referred to them by a quaint expression: a pair of gherkins.

Rich role

At first sight, this sounds a bit like a joke. A rich joke. In a future movie, the role of the aging French female billionaire Liliane Bettencourt would be played by the great male actor Jean Rochefort.

Superficially, I can't see how this could be done convincingly, since Madame Bettencourt has a protruding broad and short lower face like a Cro-Magnon, whereas Rochefort looks like a lean-faced British lord. But makeup (with Oréal products, of course) might do the trick in creating an illusion of similarity. Ever since James Cameron's Avatar, we know that anything is possible.

BREAKING NEWS: The French legal system has just announced that it intends to examine a request by Françoise Meyers-Bettencourt to have her mother placed in the care and supervision of a guardian. Jeez, I wish I had so much money that my daughter would seek to take out a court order preventing me from spending it on wine, women and song… or rather—as they say nowadays—on beer and sex and drugs and rock-and-roll. No, I'm joking. I prefer by far being penniless yet sufficiently lucid to have found a nasty way of describing (above) the lovely face of that nice old lady. It goes without saying that, if the future caretaker of Madame Oréal were to ask me to remove my Cro-Magnon remark, I would gladly do so immediately... without even insisting upon a small cash fee (which could be paid into my account out in Australia).

Eureka

Living all alone here at Gamone, I'm obviously concerned by the risk of stepping out of my shower and slipping like an idiot. So, I use a pile of bath mats. Besides, I refrain systematically from removing light bulbs by perching myself upon a swivel chair (like my dear departed grandfather Ernest, at the age of 93). I hardly need to add that, when I have great ideas (an almost daily occurrence), I never dart out of my non-existent bathtub shouting Eurêka like an idiot.

Really, you would have to be as dumb as an Ancient Greek to behave like that. Instead, dry as a bone, I pen calmly a blog post…

In a recent post [display], I complained about the fact that it's annoying to hear people claiming that their minds boggle when it's merely a matter of evoking phenomena that can be explained explicitly by science. But I added that I'm still awed by aspects of our real world, which I evoke from time to time in my Antipodes blog. To replace the worn-out boggle, I needed a verb capable of designating my regular blog-oriented attempts at evoking the awe of existence. The needed verb is bloggle. From now on, whenever you find me calling upon the writings of Richard Dawkins and his ilk (not elk) to clarify and celebrate our earthly existence, you'll understand that William's mind is simply bloggling.

French food

It's funny but understandable (indeed predictable) that Unesco should choose to honor French cooking by considering it as part of the cultural heritage of humanity. This morning, downing my humble breakfast (South American coffee, English muffins and French butter and jam), I felt as if I were eating inside a great museum. But I wonder why France was chosen… rather than, say, England.

I've always been impressed by Hogarth's depiction of a grossly overweight monk caressing simultaneously the hunk of beef and his own fat tummy, while salivating around his protruding tongue. Meanwhile, behind him, a priest is officiating at a burial: maybe (we wonder) that of an underfed laborer or child. Besides, the lean man clothed in white (like the priest at the burial), carrying the weighty beef, could surely do with a decent feed. Clearly, between the corpse being buried and the carcass being carried, the fat monk has made his spiritual choice.

Yesterday afternoon, I phoned Madeleine (as I often do) to inquire about a former inhabitant of Pont-en-Royans whose name had just been revealed to me, by chance, in the course of my conversation with another old-timer in a neighboring village. The man about whom I sought information had been a grocer in Pont-en-Royans, like Madeleine herself, for many years. So I figured that she would surely be able to supply me with some interesting facts. (Readers will have gathered, quite correctly, that my dear neighbor Madeleine is my living encyclopedia concerning the people of Pont-en-Royans.) Well, that's where my trivial anecdote takes on, as it were, a universal dimension. In a nutshell: How does somebody (like Madeleine) suddenly describe, in a few spontaneous words, a personage from the past who had probably almost disappeared from her everyday memory? Isn't this the ultimate challenge of human Memory (with a capital M)? What in fact do we recall immediately about an ordinary individual who was once alongside us, in flesh and blood? Personally, when I meditate upon this rhetorical question, I find myself in the same kind of situation as all those zealous well-intentioned Mormon researchers who seek data about ancient births, marriages and deaths in order to attribute entry passes to the Kingdom of Heaven. Except that there's nothing abstract in my operations, since I'm talking with real folk such as Madeleine and the above-mentioned old-timer, who were once in contact with the ghost.

Madeleine talked to me about food. French food. About a certain craving for good old-fashioned French food. Madeleine's grocer colleague was a certain Lucien. He was excessively fat, which was not necessarily an obstacle for a grocer. Madeleine, on the other hand, has always been rather slim. Well, Lucien and his wife Lucette happened to be strolling around in Pont-en-Royans on a Sunday afternoon when they decided to drop in on Madeleine, at home, just to say hello. A sort of contact between business colleagues, you might say. Now, it so happened that Madeleine had spent the morning cooking a delicious regional delicacy called bugnes (pronounced boon-yeuh), which earn the cook cholesterol-based Brownie points in Heaven.

You make a mixture of flour, yeast, eggs and sugar. Then you spread it out thin, cut it up into moon-shaped slices, and fry them in oil. Getting back to Madeleine, and the Sunday-afternoon visit of Lucien and Lucette, the bugnes were accompanied by hot chocolate, in fine cups.

The fat grocer Lucien devoured those bugnes with hot chocolate as if his survival as a mortal on the planet Earth might depend upon this subsistence. The summit of Madeleine's recollection of this Sunday-afternoon encounter was the moment of their separation.

LUCETTE: We really must get going, Madeleine. Thanks so much for those bugnes and the hot chocolate. Lucien and I hadn't intended to disturb you this afternoon.

LUCIEN: Yes, Lucette has to prepare dinner. Then the gluttonous grocer turned towards his wife Lucette. What do think, my dear, about a dish of fried sardines and turnips?

After all those bugnes and hot chocolate on a sunny Sunday afternoon at Pont-en-Royans, and the gastronomical promise of an evening meal of sardines and turnips for Lucien, Madeleine has remained a little disgusted (maybe a milder word would be appropriate) for the last half-century. Meanwhile, we are the champions of the world of food.