Business and pleasure

Combining these two is, as we know, a risky thing to do. I had the opportunity to book a gîte and whisk Mrs. F and the Fingernails off out of Shitworld for a week, so I took it. The only condition was that I come back three times during that time to monitor the production currently in performance. OK, no problem. We left yesterday morning, half expecting a nice little house half way up a good solid, mountain road but what we eventually found exceeded our expectations. The house was lovely and well-appointed, but getting there was terrifying. It's literally the last house in France at the end of a road which climbs steeply from Melles, just north of the Spanish border and the path there is frighteningly narrow with a sheer drop on one side, often not fenced off. We woke this morning to find it had snowed all night; the fields were covered in a white blanket and the clouds were so low we couldn't even see the surrounding mountains. Talk about nervous; I was terrified of not being able to get back to Toulouse to work and thus incurring the wrath of my employers. As it turned out, the road was pretty much clear but I understand why everyone who lives around there drives a 4x4. I'm just now back at Château Fingers before going off to the show and will leave again immediately after it finishes. It's been quite a week for travelling: pony lessons in the country, fetching Fignernail I from the Dordogne and now high up in the Pyrenees; our little Audi A3 probably thinks it's Christmas, so little has it been used since I bought it in Germany last summer.

Oh well, off to work.

Samantha Brick

Well, why not? Let's contribute to her blatant self-publicity. After all, she lives about an hour up the road from Château Fingers, is, like my wife, married to a troglodyte and publishes in the English-speaking French press, just like I do from time to time, so we're connected by more than just self-delusion.

Samantha Brick is not bad-looking. In fact, she looks like the kind of girl I used to see down the pub of a Friday evening, retching in the gutter whilst waiting for a taxi home. I'm not not being malicious, just truthful about English urban life in the seventies and eighties. Juicy, pert titties abound in French cities, but in rural Lot they probably do not, hence my compatriot's apparently high opinion of her appearance. Bottle-blonde Tracys and Sharons do not abound in Saint-Cirq-Lapopie the way they do in Coventry city centre, so our Sam is probably not lying when she says she's the object of continual male attention. In fact, the whole episode reminds me of the time I was watching Howard Stern in the USA and this girl came on, claiming she was better-looking than Pamela Anderson. She was quite blatantly not and came in for what we could politely call a bit of ribbing from the shock jock show host. In the end, I wasn't sure what the point of the exercise was. The girl didn't get her point across, she remained plainer than Pamela and had to hear a lot of abuse to boot. Why do women do this to themselves?

All became clear a few days later. Our Sam may not be a great journalist, but people are now looking for her work in the press, which I'm damned sure they weren't before last week. Well played, Ms Brick, and kudos to you for having the courage to flaunt yourself with a surname like that, too…

You can read the original article here

Côte Pavée...

Just got back from a lovely little event in Côte Pavée, Toulouse's Bel Air etc blah blah. Fingernail I took part in a concert of her violin teacher's students. It was super, and took place in a hall in the grounds of one of the neighbourhood churches. The windows were open, there was a slight breeze blowing through the trees and the air was full of string music, some of it actually quite pleasant to listen to. The courtyard/garden outside was large and allowed all the children to play in peace until the time came to play and the early evening sun made our idle, post-concert chatter pass pleasantly. The strange thing was that the street right opposite this one is called rue du Sergent Vigné, where a certain monster was recently involved in a shoot-out in his flat. We saw the place as we cycled off home but didn't go near enough to see the state it's in. It really makes you wonder. You believe you're protected and safe but evil can be anywhere. I know this sounds brainlessly dramatic but there you go. Live and love while you can, for there are no guarantees. Still don't feel like posting a picture, sorry.

Before the event.

France in general and Toulouse in particular are strange places to be at the moment. Another under-age, cold-blooded murder this morning in the news - this time in the north, in Dieppe - and ever more hand-wringing, criticism of video games and the usual section of society believed to have been responsible. There is so much mistrust and it's very, very worrying, for it only seems to be getting worse. You read reactions in the press and it's all 'Round up the usual suspects', even though no-one has the courage to say so overtly. At the same time, Sarkozy continues to climb in the polls, Hollande loses ground and the candidates' manoeuvring continues. This election is going to be very tight, at least in the first round. French society is provoking public opinion in the manner of Napoleon's army's border occupations a couple of hundred years ago: they would amass at a border and wait for the other nation to attack in panic, opening the way for generous reparations once the (almost) inevitable victory over the 'agressor' was in the bag. Will the French public react like an unsettled, nervous army? We'll see. If they do panic, the price may be high. Or maybe not; maybe they'll finally get the president they secretly really want...