Out of Hibernation

Something very strange happened this evening: I checked this diary (or blog, whatever) and found that someone had actually read my inane, nocturnal ramblings and had written about them on A Taste of Garlic, another Frogblog. Not only that, but someone else had taken the bait and left a comment on my last post (sometime in April, 2010), hoping I'd start up, again. I'm really very touched and thank you both, Keith and Sarah. Here's a post in your honour; let's hope I don't come over all self-conscious now there are people peering in through our ill-fitting, antiquated shutters. Seeing as I've already published a few articles in the Telegraph and The Connexion (the last, admittedly, about two years ago) this should be child's play, but they were actually destined for public consumption, whereas this wasn't...

Anyhow, here's trying to remind myself what has happened since I last logged in. Business as usual - working in Germany all summer, concerts in Austria and the mother of all autumns at work back here in France, topped off by a hazardous trip back to England for Christmas with the family. The first two days of the holiday were spent at Toulouse Airport, guessing whether or not Easy Jet had bribed the authorities enough to be able to take off at all, until finally they did: at 1.30am. Our driver at Gatwick was asleep in his taxi, so we endured the stomach-churning sensation of looking round an empty arrivals hall at 2am BST, three days before Christmas, with two small children in tow. He eventually turned up - no apology forthcoming - and dropped us off at my mother's place at 6am. It dutifully started snowing while we were having brunch at around 11am, so the rest of the day was devoted to building snowmen, snowball fights and generally being happy about being together in England over the festive period, the first time in fourteen years.

School strikes don't enrage me the way they once did. They exist, they will happen, and that's it. There's an awful lot in this fine country you'll never change, and that's half its charm. Still, there's one element which still baffles my northern European pragmatic sensibility, and that's the fact that it's not what you say but how you say it that counts. The argument is won not by the most informed, but the most eloquent. Here's an example:

Radio Host: Monsieur le Ministre, your department has been criticised as corrupt, wasteful, nepotistic and of having financially supported the slaughter of seal cubs. In fact, three of your staff were actually filmed murdering said creatures in front of Galeries Lafayette yesterday afternoon.

Minister: VoltaireBlahRacineBlahMolièreBlahInsubstantiatedSlanderBlahChateauD'Yquem.

Radio Host: I want you to have my children.

You think I'm joking, don't you? No; seeing as you live in France you know I'm not. The argument is closed by the most skilful wordsmith, and so it will remain. At least until David Beckham becomes President.

Keith pointed out that I've written a lot about illness. Maybe it was the inspiration behind some posts, as we've all enjoyed excellent health since I last wrote. Fingernail II, since coming out of nappies, has been in training for her dotage: she gets up twice a night to go to the loo. That's something I'm not hoping to match for a few years, yet. Her schoolteacher finds her advanced, but five going on eighty is a bit much.

We're going to get a car. This, you might say, is not news. And you'd be right. Only it is for us, as it's the first step towards selling up and going somewhere where grass is underfoot and not something sold on street corners. A couple of years ago, French number plates lost their departmental cachet and became drab successions of numbers and letters. There was an outcry: "We want to keep our departmental numbers! It's the only way we can identify other people from our region when we're on holiday". As legal reasoning goes, the argument was pretty flimsy, but cary-shary Matignon bent its benevolent ear to the marauding hordes and found a wonderful compromise: people could have a cuddly little sticker stuck on the extreme right of their new plate, bearing the number of any department they want. Naturally, everyone plumps for the department which charges them through the nose for water, rubbish removal and town hall hot lines which never answer your call! Genius! It was to be called the 'département du coeur', would be purely symbolic and have no legal significance.

Now, I've been in this département for six years. It's nice, yes, but I feel no more attachment to it than I do to Bedford. So, I asked our local, friendly Tabac/Presse/Number Plate seller if it were possible to have one of these plates with no number on the end. His answer summed up what happens if you listen to the people in this country:

"Non. Unless you want to be fined €75".

Hang on, I said. This was meant to be optional, and now it's compulsory? And it doesn't even have to be the department where you live? What's the point of that?

"That's France, monsieur".

So I'm going to start looking at all of those sweet little stickers and find the one I could live with best. Maybe the aesthetically-pleasing chopped Corsican head or the number 69, just for the hell of it, seeing as that gives me more pleasure than a number plate ever could. And I hope I'm not alone in that.

Time to head off to bed. Tomorrow is all about the wonderful market in the morning and Rossini in the afternoon. Wish it were Wagner, but you'll never find me complaining about my work.

Thanks for the prod, Keith and Sarah. I'll keep writing, even if no-one falls ill.

Nothing particularly new to tell myself.

That concert last Friday evening was fun, if a little long. Having vowed not to do all the commentary and introductions for the abysmal fee they were paying I caved in when I saw the expectant faces in the audience. They'd come to enjoy themselves and a bit of chit-chat does make the evening go with a swing, so away I chatted. They want us back again next year, but they'll have to double my fee for all the work I do.

Another one tomorrow night, this time conducting my choir in a neighbourhood church. They've done a very good job learning a lot of music in a short time but the fact remains I don't have the forces available at Easter to match their ambition. We have nearly thirty at Christmas and just trot out three short numbers; around Easter we have just over half that and they want to sing oratorios. They sound good, but it could all be so much better if he had another ten in the ranks.

Let's not forget the day job; that's a taxing one at the moment...

Anybody watching what's going on in Gordon's Britain?

You can be ripped off, taken for a fool, abused and berated for some unspecified act and most of the time those with something better to do than channel-surf daytime TV will just shrug and get on with more pressing matters. However, there's one area of our lives where the above acts upon our person cannot and must not go unpunished: when they are perpetrated by the Government.

I don't mean Sarkozy and his not-so-merry-men; I mean Gormless Brown and his collection of fellow liars, cheats, traitors and wannabe-Marxists. I left England for the second time in 1997, just after His Tonyness got the keys to the trough. The country I find when I go back to visit is now a nightmare of vacuous nanny-like supervision, protection and invasion. The fifteen-year rule allows me to vote this time round and it's something I shall do with the utmost pleasure, despite the three main parties being practically indistinguishable from one another on certain key issues. Democracy in the UK currently appears to be a joke, Labour having socially engineered and gerrymandered their way into contention for a 'historic' fourth term. 'Historic' it certainly will be if this band of thieves and incompetents are returned to office, for it shall herald the day that democracy well and truly died in the United Kingdom.

Sorry about that, but it makes me livid when I see my mother still having to work at 78 and paying income tax out of her pension so that the likes of Anjem Choudary can sit on his fat arse and declare war on the country. I'd better not go on...

Thanks for the comment, Elaine; it was delightful to see that little '1' in the box. Doesn't happen often on my online diary. Hope my reply was useful. I had to stick it under 'Anonymous' as I hadn't signed in at that stage.

It's late, again, and the last day of school before the holidays beckons for the Fingernails. Fingernail 1 has now been learning the violin for six months and she's actually really rather good. She also loves standing up in front of people and performing, so she must get that from her dad, even though I'm wearying of the ritual of getting togged up: 3000 concerts later, you do get a bit jaded. Anyhow, she wants to play a couple of pieces in front of her classmates, tomorrow, rounding off the recital with a dip in the sweety bag she just so happens to be bringing along. Having let off a tirade at the headmaster the other day for the school's lacksadaisical (does that look right to you? I can't be bothered to check) approach to their class's education this year (four different supply teachers since September 2009), I'm now going to go in and stick a flower in the barrel of their gun. Politics is all around us, wherever we look, and all we do is try to steer our own course through the muck without getting too dirty.

A Winter's, er, Post...

Despite the fact we're only about ninety minutes' drive from a major European mountain range, this city practically never gets snow. Winters oscillate around 0° centigrade and it drizzles consistently from December to March. This year, though, has seen a cold snap that has even got the old guard chattering: two lots of snow (including one bout that settled for three days) in December, another lot in January and a sprinkling just the other day. I'd like to ascribe it man-made global warming, but that theory seems to be under major scrutiny, right now.

Following my abortive attempts to get French citizenship with a view to voting in the 2005 Presidential Elections, here, I'd resigned myself to being voiceless for the duration of my prolonged expatriation. However, I learned the other day that you can still get a postal vote if you register within 15 years of leaving Britain. I left Highgate for Los Angeles in 1997 so that gave me two years to get myself mobilised. Off went a filled-out registration form to Haringey Council, oh they of the Loony Left, promptly followed by another this morning when I realised I hadn't put enough postage on the first one. It might still get through, but I'm not so sure La Poste will not shrug, say 'bof' and just chuck it in the nearest bin when they see it's 14 cents short. I looked at the candidates that stood in 2005 and, apart from getting a nice, warm fuzzy feeling when I saw that Labour had been ousted in Hornsey and Wood Green in favour of the LibDems, realised I wasn't getting excited about any of the candidates, least of all the less-than-zero chance the least noxious parties have of getting elected.

What result will 2010 bring? Dave, the re-suited Blair? Gormless Brown and his ragtag- and-bobtail assortment of liars, freeloaders, patronising social engineers and morally and intellectually bankrupt cheats? Sadly, it's going to be one of those two charlatans, so the best we can do is vote strategically. Compared to their German counterparts, the Greens are a joke, UKIP appears to be a one-policy stand-up act, the LibDems wouldn't know what to do with power if it came up and abused their Human Rights and the BNP still turn too many people off, though I'm sure many will vote for them in secret. It's impossible to guage how much support they're likely to have: those who express themselves on the internet are either hard-line anti or worshippers at the shrine. Now that the party has chosen the path of least resistance and opened itself up to ethnic minorities some of the stigma attached to their image may dissolve, particularly if they capitalise on Mr. Singh, the 78-year-old retired maths teacher from Northamptonshire, who has been an unconditional fan of Griffin's party since 2001.