Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts

Saturday, October 18, 2014

France - the supposed hell where we'd love to live

The Daily Mail flashes its richman fangs at strike-hit France - such an awful place, eh? That would explain why the late Sir Stuart Bell MP spent more time there than in the UK, I expect.

Time for some stats:

WHO, 2013 - from Wikipedia
 
World Bank, 2011-2013 (via Wikipedia)

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_income_equality
 
World Bank, 2009-2013

World Bank, 2009-2013
 
Total public and private debt owed to non-residents
Source: Wikipedia

Perhaps that's why, less than five years ago (and, like the temperature of the oceans, things don't change that fast), the Daily Mail was reporting this:

Daily Mail, 7 January 2010

As Slog-blogger John Ward - now based in France - is fond of saying, IABATO - which as he is also a Hellenophile, may be derived from the Greek expression "ιαβατω!" ("I smell bullsh*t!").


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All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Unless indicated otherwise, all internet links accessed at time of writing. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.

Saturday, July 06, 2013

France: John Ward on DIY, "Deliverance" and dog days


We’ve reached that time down here where the very ground beneath you pulsates with heat. Being alone here this year, I’ve taken now and then to dropping into the local Bar Portuguese for a beer. It’s full of swarthy latins – as always cheerful – discussing what they now see as an unavoidable disaster for their homeland. I can walk in and – with my hair and eyes – easily be mistaken for a German. There is an awkwardness, until they realise I’m British – and then everything changes: I am bought obscure Portuguese liquor, and given the sort of welcome usually reserved for Eusebio forty years ago, or Ronaldo today. I mention my passion for Manchester United, and more rounds are bought.

The main problem this consumption could pose is how I get home again. But luckily, there is a short-cut back to the house: I can use it to weave unsteadily back there legally on foot…unless under French law you can be found drunk in charge of yourself. I’d imagine you can’t be.

When it gets this hot and water is in short supply, more make do and mend comes into play. I collect all my bottled water packs and chop off the top and bottom. The main residue is then wrapped around new tree stems, and thus protects them from the attentions of deer…who are buggers for rubbing up against the bark and nibbling at it. If they nibble all the way round, then the young sapling dies in short order.

The top bit of the plastic bottle can be inverted to create a simple channel by the side of herbs and vegetables, and so massively reduce wastage of the water being applied to keep them going. The chopped-off bottom I fill with any stale beer knocking about. Snails are born beerheads and can’t resist it. They get legless, and then drown. Not that they have legs anyway. It’s a figure of speech.

At the top eastern end of the property is the real (as opposed to metaphorical) Slogger’s Roost. There I recycled a couple of pallets from the roof renovation two years ago, using them to create raised beds of flat-leaf parsley the rabbits can’t reach. I’ve also been gradually planting lavender, a rose, and a few shrubs up there. These represent a hopeful attempt to give some fragrance to an area whose main advantage is that first, it’s a long way from the house and offers me peace in which to write; and second, it is sheltered from the wind that can bite in mid-Spring and late Autumn here.

The main point of my little respite is that I achieved an aim in making it: to do so without spending one centime. Everything that went into its creation was recycled and reformed in a new role. But just before midday today, I noticed my least likeable farming neighbours using a crane-grab and chainsaw to slash back the high hedge behind the Roost. To one side of the site I’ve constructed a permanent windbreak out of old tongue and groove we ripped out when renovating the upper floor. In their enthusiasm, the chain saw artists looked about to massacre one of my better creations.

This farming family is, to say the least of it, a bit odd. None of the locals here like them. They have that beaky-nosed, eyes close together appearance of the sinister hillbillies in Deliverance, and there’s a very good reason for this: they’re the product of incest. Try not to be shocked: it’s more common in remote rural areas than you’d imagine. Their mum killed herself five years ago; I remember being horrified when I asked the Mayor why, and he replied with a shrug meant to be self-explanatory, “She drank”.

It’s amazing how often our species thinks that an observation of a symptom is somehow a diagnosis. It didn’t seem to occur to the Mayor that maybe she drank because of depression, or guilt about the incestual sex, or both. But either way, it was with some trepidation that I legged it up to Slogger’s Roost to see if her sons knew of my tongue and groove genius. Yes, they did was the answer…and then five minutes later they demolished the right-hand end of it.

It didn’t take long to fix, so I shouldn’t make a drama out of it. But deepest darkest France consists of far more than the starry-eyed bollocks you see on A Place in the Sun.

Tonight, the Andy Murray syndrome was at work again. The Wimbledon authorities closed the Centre Court roof – after to a lot of Polish whine. It was a fearsome struggle afterwards, but Murray came through in the end. Here by contrast, it is now cooling a little. The fire of late afternoon has dimmed to a mid-evening kissing the skin rather than burning it. The sun makes love to you here in a hundred different ways throughout the day. I’m always grateful for its variety…as every appreciative lover should be.

I may well have to pay in a future life for the good fortune of having a place like this. But as I have grave doubts about reincarnation, I’m not about to get upset about that. I did work very hard to get the house; but then, I know lots of equally talented folks who worked even harder, and didn’t. Humility in such matters is never a bad thing.

By John Ward. Republished by kind permission of the author.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy.

Saturday, March 09, 2013

France: John Ward back up and fighting


Major UK blogger John Ward has just moved from Devon to south-west France, and is bringing the farmhouse up to scratch. But he still finds time to continue his furious examination of the worlds of finance and politics, which are so interlinked, corrupt and disastrous that he reflects on the survivalist advantages of his new home:

Over the last few days, it has become unnecessary here to have the main log-burner on 24/7, while sporting thermal underwear in bed at night. Today I didn’t actually light the fire at all until 7pm, and even now at 10 pm it is bubbling along without bashing out too much heat. The winters here are fierce, but short. This one has been longer than most, but it is at last releasing its frigid grip: buds are budding, winds are warming, and daffodils are flowering. You never know, it just might be Spring.

I’m still fixing things up. The last and most truculent floodlight has finally given up its resistance to my efforts to make it work, and is as I speak shining a light towards the old pig-sties down at the bottom of the front garden. There was an anxious moment when I had to figure out how to chisel a route through the door-jamb minus available chisels, given I lack a three-foot drill to go through the walls. But a steady hand and a hammer applied to a knackered old screwdriver did the trick. There was an even more stressful moment when – having rewired the obstinate little bastard – just prior to screwing it into the external masonry – it decided not to work. But then the kitchen lights flickered back on again, and I realised we’d had a power cut without me noticing. So all is well.

My neighbour Ange came up yesterday. He’d heard the gossip about Jan and I, so was keen to know what was what. One thing that never ceases to stagger me about apparently rigid old French agrarians is how – when you go through the “sh*t happens” explanation of life – far from offering sour disapproval, they seem keen to sympathise, to help, and to discuss the philosophy of marriage, emotions, or indeed anything else you care to bring up. On a day-to-day basis I have very little in c0mmon with the local French farmers, but beyond tractors and seed costs you can (with perseverance) plug into deeper concerns. Ange’s wife Michelle, for instance, is a keen fan of certain French writers. Once I’d discovered her passion for Georges Simenon and Molière, we never looked back. Five years ago an undiscovered Dumas novel was unearthed, and so it was my great pleasure to give Michelle an internet link to the prose. We have also prepared melons together for charity dinners in aid of Mali, but perhaps I should draw a discreet veil over that.

Tomorrow the replacement dishwasher and the serviced/repaired tractor mower are due to make an appearance. I rather fancy that soon after this point, things will return to something approaching normal. Window boxes will be filled and watered, windfall kindling gathered up, water retainers reinstigated, and guests prodded to confirm arrival dates.

Of course, in the macro boulevards of all those financial centres beyond Slogger’s Roost II, things will continue to be perversely abnormal. The Dow will go up instead of down, Gold will go down instead of up, silver up instead of down, the euro up against Sterling and down against the Dollar, and the US, UK and Eurozone debts up and up and up and up. But to the folks down here, none of it really matters. One of the undeniable things about France is that it has the biggest land area per head of population and highest proportion of cultivable in-use land in the entire EU. So if every currency, bond, bank, and bourse goes tits up, the French will still have more than enough to eat.

Should we feel resentful about this? No of course we shouldn’t: rather, we should feel anger about our own UK élites’ inability to understand such basics. With careful thought, Britain could’ve continued to make things and poured investment into those people who wish to grow things. France still makes cars and exports them very profitably. It still plans crops to produce cheap bread – and produces enough milk, meat, fruit and wine to keep everyone cruising along nicely. It still has the best cheeses in the world.

There are major bits of French culture (for example, pharmacy advice and the tax system) that continue to confuse and worry me. But when it comes to the price of lunch, bread, beer, wine, fresh veg, wonderful tomatoes and magret de canard, down here in the South West it is hard to fault the way they live. The sense of community, the familial glue and the lack of crime all bear witness to an achievement which, let’s face it, Britain cannot even begin to imagine.Will the British ever be true Europeans? Within the confines of the EU, I very much doubt it. We are an island seafaring race obsessed with the idea that we might still have some major global role to play.In the banking sector, we do. But is that a role we should want to embrace? I would emphatically say no: the UK’s future prosperity lies in making high-quality items and then knowing how to market them in an equalising world. My instinct is to stay close to Britain, but my insight tells me that Britain has forgotten how to stay close to itself.

This post originally appeared here and is reproduced with the kind permission of the author. John Ward's current blog is here and the archives of his previous one (Not Born Yesterday) are here. Writing since 2006, John is prolific, sparky and always informative.

All original material is copyright of its author. Fair use permitted. Contact via comment. Nothing here should be taken as personal advice, financial or otherwise. No liability is accepted for third-party content, whether incorporated in or linked to this blog; or for unintentional error and inaccuracy. The blog author may have, or intend to change, a personal position in any stock or other kind of investment mentioned.