Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
I must come clean and admit that I have an itch to write as alcoholics have an itch to drink and kleptomaniacs have an itch to steal. The problem is, and it’s a very big problem indeed, is that I have absolutely nothing ‘to say’. Nothing whatsoever. And I am really not joking.
All right, then, you might ask, why not simply write to entertain? But that brings another huge problem: I am not a natural storyteller. Certainly I can make things up - can’t we all, especially those suffering from jealousy when they can invent without even trying. But there are those who are referred to as ‘natural storytellers’ and I am most certainly not one of those. And at the grand old age of 61 years, ten months and 24 days I have just one real principle: never, ever, bullshit yourself. Doesn’t really matter who else you bullshit, but leave yourself out. Even you do the most outrageously nasty thing, at least admit to yourself that you are doing something outrageously nasty. You don’t have to tell anyone else - in fact, it’s advisedly best not to, especially if what you have done is very unpleasant - but at least be straight with yourself.
This illusion I have had for the past 44 years, albeit ‘a writer’ who has written virtually fuck all, is ridiculous. I once explained in these pages how it came about. At school I had written a poem, which as I recall was very conventional, although that’s all I can recall. I showed it to Mr Hinds, an English teacher at the Oratory (known as C.T.S. Hinds for his enthusiasm for distributing tracts from the Catholis Truth Society) who diplomatically advised me to carry one. I now know, and have known for many years that he was merely doing what so many good teachers do: he was encouraging me. But in a stupid, though understandably teenaged way, I interpreted his encouragement rather severely. I imagined that he was telling me: you’re good, Powell. And so the illusion was born. It both helps and irritates me supremely that I share my illusion with, quite probably, one million other men and women the world over. It helps because I am not alone it being such a complete fool. But it irritates me because each of us, every last man jack of use, like to think we are unique. The liberals among you will no doubt cry: but you are unique. True, but then in that sense so is fly, worm, traffic bollard and grain of sand. As I said: don’t bullshit yourself.
So what of the plus side? Well, I have no difficulty with words, I feel at ease with them because of my long association with them as a hack, and when I read some of the abortions presented as prose, I thank God that, at least, I have that. But I don’t have a mind. And as I pointed out yesterday, there is far more to ‘writing’ than just getting words down on paper.
My brother Mark claimed earlier today that he had read somewhere that more women read novels than men. Who knows? And does it matter? Then there is the question of what kind of novel do they read. Off the top of my head I can list chick lit, macho lit (Zero Minus One, or something, and all that hard-drinking I’m a man bollocks SAS/memoirs of a SEAL crap), thrillers, sci-fi, ‘literature’ (you know, the kind of stuff which wins prizes), children’s fiction, ‘adult fiction’, pornography and ‘the classics’. The list can go on, but I have run out. Some of its is good, despite the critics, and some of it is crap, again despite the critics. When I first moved to London, suffering from depression, which wasn’t as deep as afflicts some but deep enough for me, I made an effort, conscious that I was pretty badly read for a chap who wanted to be ‘a writer’ to read, read, read. And I did. I read haphazardly, and even if a novel didn’t grab me, with only one exception - which I can’t now remember - I would finish it.
Some of what I read stood out: Lolita, which was better written by a Russian and many a book written by a Brit or a Yank was a special favourite. At the other extreme I read a novel by Jonathan Coe, who was a big noise then, though it wasn’t one of his famous ones. And I thought it was crap. I read Der Untertan by Heinrich Mann in German, which I thought was excellent, and I read, again in German Der Steppenwolf (which made a great deal more sense in its original language). I had previously - that is not as part of my somewhat pathetic period of auto-didactism - attempted Martin Amis and Will Self and thought both bollocks. But who was I to judge? They had a body of work behind them. I hadn’t. I read an utterly bizarre late-Victorian novel called Lilith and I read some Trollope. I read Darkness At Noon, which was OK, and I read A Streetcar Name Desire (which taught me that plays are meant to be performed, not read). I read several other novels whose titles and authors I can’t now recall. Two of those I can’t recall were by two other contemporary big noises, and I was not impressed but either.
I read Oscar Wilde. He could write, and write well, but what stayed with me was how little attention so many ‘good writers’ paid to language. I read, again in German Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum by Heinrich Böll and Ungeduld Des Herzens by Stefan Zweig (whose title in English translation is Beware Of Pity, not a very good title but I must admit I would be hard-pushed to come up with anything better. I enjoyed and admired the latter a great deal.
I was the archetypical Tube commute, novel in hand on my journey to and from wherever I was working a shift. Then, in December 1995, I moved to Cornwall, married two months later and my period of autodidacticism ended. (I have just looked up ‘autodidacticism’ in a dictionary, and apparently it doesn’t exist. Well, it does now.)
Finally - finally - in late 1994 I started writing and eventually completed ‘a novel’. It wasn’t the first, but the third, but it was the first which I felt, while writing it, I knew what I was doing and which I had control over. That is Love: A fiction (which yesterday I urged you to buy). The previous two efforts for which I have no title - well, I can’t judge them, although with the first I was simply happy to complete it and I was quite happy with the second, although, being a little short, it would be classed as a novella.
Not much to crow about, eh?
But still I have this itch to write. And still I have nothing ‘to say’. What is there ‘to say’? That the world can, at turns, be a shitty place and a glorious place? That people can, at turns, be evil and altruistic? What? All of us at 61 know that. Perhaps you don’t at 16 or 26 or 36 - although, unfortunately, far too many do, but by the time your limbs creak in the morning, when getting a hard-on is something of a fond memory, when rudely you end sooner rather than later a conversation you know full well is going to be very dull and chock-a-block with platitude there are rather fewer insights. Or so it would seem. The liberal in me - he does still clamour a little, dear reader, despite my best efforts to get him to shut the fuck up - warns that I might still be surprised, that a chance encounter might bring a fresh insight. The problem is that the insight will not in the slightest be original and that by articulating it as though it were fresh I shall do nothing but make a complete tit of myself. Groucho Marx once remarked that he would never want to belong to a club which would have him as a member. Similarly, I would never crave the respect and admiration of anyone who felt respect and admiration for me.
. . .
My working solution is this: try to write engagingly and try, by writing engagingly, try to entertain and put the reader off the scent: that this joe knows fuck all. And that what he does know is about as original as that revealing that pain hurts. So what am I talking about? Well, nothing. But if I have managed to get you to read as far as this, it can’t be all bad. And by the way, in case you missed it the first time, here’s the link. Buy it and make me happy. Your pleasure is my pleasure.
. . .
For the more prosaic among you who can’t be doing with all this angst, I shall record that it is six minutes past midnight on September 15, I am sitting on the balcony of the apartment Mark and I are staying at drinking - in moderation remarkable - yet more pastis, smoking yet another cigar, which I sholdn’t but what the hell. I spend the evening in Le Petit Auberge in Essert-Romand watching Manchester United hold Benfica to a 1-1 draw in a Champions League fixture in the first round, group, round of the championships.
United were playing away from home so a score draw is no bad thing. The bar was almost empty except for a slightly drunk local who had come for a drink and his supper, and a family of Americans - elderly couple, their daughter and son-in-law. The man was 68 and from Texas and had spent his life working ‘in retail’ for, I think he said, J H Pinney. Four months ago, he and his wife had taken a 15-day cruise from the Texas coast to Lisbon and then stayed at a place his son-in-law owns in the Provence. They were spending a week or two down the road here in Essert-Romand at, I gather, another place his son-in-law owns before, in the next few weeks, embarking on their cruise back home. His son-in-law is based in London and works as a consultant in the ‘supply industry’.
Having just finished reading a spy novel and finished watching two spy films, I like to think that he is, in fact, employed by the CIA station in London. But, actually, I’m pretty bloody certain he is a consultant in the ‘supply industry’. I mean someone has to be, although he must be pretty well paid if he and his wife can afford a property in the Provence where, according to his father-in-law, they spend ‘most weekends’. I chatted briefly in my dog French and he in his dog English to the local who bought me a drink and was engaged in taking part in Maitre de Jeu, a lottery in which a draw takes places every five minutes apparently. He did win - which is probably why he bought be a drink - but he spent a great deal more on the tickets he bought than the measly 62 euros he won overall. And there was me, who has nothing ‘to say’, glad that Manchester United scored a crucial away goal and will undoubtedly win in the return match when Benfica visit Old Trafford.
. . .
I am rambling on now because I still have a little pastis left in my glass and started another cigar a while ago which I am loth to waste. I chatted to my daughter Elsie on Skype, a video call, and yet again was struck by had pretty she is. Unfortunately, she takes after me rather than her mother physiologically and puts weight on easily. But as she is only 15 she is by no means fat and I should imagine that she has a good few years ahead of her before she marries, has children and then gets rather broad in the beam.
Wes was there, too, but at 12 he still hasn’t really started puberty and is still, again rather like me - who has not only started but also completed puberty - was more inclined to play the fool. Mark went to bed when I went across to the bar to watch a film on the internet. I would give you the link to the very useful site on which one can watch full-length, recent, films completely free-of-charge, but as I am certain it is completely illegal I shan’. Oh, and one last thing before I end and post this on my blog: one of the very best things I have done in these past few years was to teach myself to touch-type. It is great to think, compose and type almost simultaneously. Good night, and God bless.
Wednesday 14 September 2011
Essert-Romand. Day four - surrounded by clouds so I use the opportunity to plug my novel (which ain't half bad, even though I say so myself)
Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
Our fourth day here in the Haute-Savoie and the clouds have arrived. That sounds worse than it really is, in that it’s not some kind of cloud-covered gloomy day you get all-too-often in Frinton or Chapel St Leonards, simply that as we are more or less up in the mountains - thought they do get higher - the clouds have simply come lower and as I write are drifting past my bedroom window. But there is also plenty of autumnal sunshine, which make it all very pleasant. But I wouldn’t care if it were raining. I finished John le Carre’s The Russia House on Monday and have now started a biography of Stalin when he was just a young shaver playing practical jokes on local chaps in Tblisi involving Mausers, bombs, and general violence. It reads very well but, I’m glad to say, is not a potboiler.
The le Carre was a good read, too, although I was puzzled by its structure: it is sort of kind of kind of sort of (and in-joke that, which only I share) written in the first person, yet there are very detailed descriptions of situations where the ‘first person’ could not have been present. A solution to this conundrum is given in the final page where the ‘hero’ tells his story to the ‘first-person narrator’ or, rather, fills in details the narrator could not have know, but I have to say it is all rather unconvincing.
Another problem (well, a problem for me as I still have my literary pretensions and think about these matters) is that I feel any first-person narration should have a justification i.e. exactly why is this man or this woman telling his or her story? And his or her justification for doing so should be an intricate element of that story. I realise that many might feel I am not seeing the wood for the trees, but it does bother me. The example I always give is this: Consider a man who decides to go for a Chinese meal at his local Chinese restaurant. He arrives, sits at a table and orders, when suddenly a cook appears from the kitchen carrying one of those very large and sharp knives one finds in Chinese kitchens, attacks the front of staff and manages to decapitate one of the.
Now if our customer were to give a first-person account to a friend later that night, surely he would say: Bloody hell, you won’t believe what I’ve witnessed tonight. A cook in the chinkie I went to went berserk and chopped of the manager’s head, or something like that. What he wouldn’t do, at that first encounter, is begin: Well, it was a peaceful, barlmy night, and after I had looked in the fridge and discovered there was nothing in it which grabbed my fancy, I decided to visit my local Chinese restaurant. I didn’t use a coat because . . . Well, he wouldn’t would he? Yet that is what happens all-too-often in first-person narrations, and usually the narrator has no reason to write down (in novel form) what he is recounting.
Yes, I know I’m getting a little bit anal about it. But at least in my novel (more or less my first and only novel so far, if you ignore one or two earlier and not very good efforts - details of how to get a copy below) at least the first-person narrations (there are two) and the third-person narration are ‘built into’ the structure of the novel and I like to think they make logical sense. I mean that is the problem: I don’t find writing, as in getting words down on paper, at all difficult. But there’s obviously far more to ‘writing’ than simply getting the words down on paper: there is though, internal coherence and cohesion, ensuring that characters speak and behave in character. If a first-person narrator simply tells his story and there is no apparent reason just why he should tell his story, well, I find that rather unconvincing. Precious? Moi?
. . .
Here are details as to where you can get my novel, neatly bound and printed courtesy of Lulu.com. If you visit this address, you might see two novels on offer. Don’t be fooled: they are one and the same except that I changed the title and the blurb on the back to make it more attractive to anyone considering buying it, which, to date, seems to be exactly no one. But I boy can dream. I have also been through it once or twice and added or removed a comma here and there, and the most recent is Love: A fiction.
Dig those gorgeous roses - aren't they just so romantic! Granted that this is an unashamed plug, but my view is that a cook doesn’t cook a meal and then throw it away - if he has no guests, he will invite strangers to eat it. His pleasure comes from the cooking and then the pleasure of feeding other in the hope that they enjoy what they are eating. If you get my drift. If you do consider buying it, do remember the old saw of never judging a book by its cover. All is not what it appears to be, although (and several people have read it) absolutely no one so far has cottoned on to what I attempted and, I like to feel, more or less succeeded in doing. Try here to visit Lulu and buy a copy if you have a few spare shekels.
Now I’m off to read all about young Stalin.
. . .
Incidentally, I know I joke about commas, but they are important. The add to the clarity of a piece by indication where in a sentence we should pause. Often they can even change the meaning of a sentence entirely. For example: these two sentences are not the same and what happens varies in both.
1) The police rounded up the doctors who had been dealing drugs and jailed them.
2) The police rounded up the doctors, who had been dealing drugs, and jailed them.
In example number one, the police round up only those doctors who had been dealing drugs. In example number two, the police round up all doctors, because they had all been dealing drugs. So this talk of adding and removing commas is not at all precious (although I’ll stick with my joke). There an anecdote about Oscar Wilde once being asked what he had done all day. He replied that he had spent all the morning considering whether to add a comma to a certain sentence to make it read better. After lunch he had spent all afternoon considering whether to remove it again, and had finally decided to do so. And talking of Oscar Wilde, I once came across a quote from him which no one else seems to have heard. Many know his dictum (which I believe, in fact, he cribbed from someone else - naughty, Oscar): A cynic know the price of everything and the value of nothing. But he also said about cynics (and this explains one aspect of the Nazis): Sentimentality is a bank holiday from cynicism, which in my view hits the nail on the head.
Talking about Oscar cribbing dictums and saying, there is also the story of the American painter James Whistler who settled in England and made it his home. He had a rather sharp tongue and was very witty, but was annoyed that Oscar Wilde would often steal his witticisms and pass them off as his own. One day when Oscar was still up at Oxford, he was sitting at Whistler’s feet at some soiree or other and Whistler made a witty comment.
Oh, I wish I had said that, said Oscar.
You will, Oscar, you will, Whistler replied.
. . .
For years I had it in my head that the plural of comma was commata. It’s not, it’s commas. Well!
Our fourth day here in the Haute-Savoie and the clouds have arrived. That sounds worse than it really is, in that it’s not some kind of cloud-covered gloomy day you get all-too-often in Frinton or Chapel St Leonards, simply that as we are more or less up in the mountains - thought they do get higher - the clouds have simply come lower and as I write are drifting past my bedroom window. But there is also plenty of autumnal sunshine, which make it all very pleasant. But I wouldn’t care if it were raining. I finished John le Carre’s The Russia House on Monday and have now started a biography of Stalin when he was just a young shaver playing practical jokes on local chaps in Tblisi involving Mausers, bombs, and general violence. It reads very well but, I’m glad to say, is not a potboiler.
The le Carre was a good read, too, although I was puzzled by its structure: it is sort of kind of kind of sort of (and in-joke that, which only I share) written in the first person, yet there are very detailed descriptions of situations where the ‘first person’ could not have been present. A solution to this conundrum is given in the final page where the ‘hero’ tells his story to the ‘first-person narrator’ or, rather, fills in details the narrator could not have know, but I have to say it is all rather unconvincing.
Another problem (well, a problem for me as I still have my literary pretensions and think about these matters) is that I feel any first-person narration should have a justification i.e. exactly why is this man or this woman telling his or her story? And his or her justification for doing so should be an intricate element of that story. I realise that many might feel I am not seeing the wood for the trees, but it does bother me. The example I always give is this: Consider a man who decides to go for a Chinese meal at his local Chinese restaurant. He arrives, sits at a table and orders, when suddenly a cook appears from the kitchen carrying one of those very large and sharp knives one finds in Chinese kitchens, attacks the front of staff and manages to decapitate one of the.
Now if our customer were to give a first-person account to a friend later that night, surely he would say: Bloody hell, you won’t believe what I’ve witnessed tonight. A cook in the chinkie I went to went berserk and chopped of the manager’s head, or something like that. What he wouldn’t do, at that first encounter, is begin: Well, it was a peaceful, barlmy night, and after I had looked in the fridge and discovered there was nothing in it which grabbed my fancy, I decided to visit my local Chinese restaurant. I didn’t use a coat because . . . Well, he wouldn’t would he? Yet that is what happens all-too-often in first-person narrations, and usually the narrator has no reason to write down (in novel form) what he is recounting.
Yes, I know I’m getting a little bit anal about it. But at least in my novel (more or less my first and only novel so far, if you ignore one or two earlier and not very good efforts - details of how to get a copy below) at least the first-person narrations (there are two) and the third-person narration are ‘built into’ the structure of the novel and I like to think they make logical sense. I mean that is the problem: I don’t find writing, as in getting words down on paper, at all difficult. But there’s obviously far more to ‘writing’ than simply getting the words down on paper: there is though, internal coherence and cohesion, ensuring that characters speak and behave in character. If a first-person narrator simply tells his story and there is no apparent reason just why he should tell his story, well, I find that rather unconvincing. Precious? Moi?
. . .
Here are details as to where you can get my novel, neatly bound and printed courtesy of Lulu.com. If you visit this address, you might see two novels on offer. Don’t be fooled: they are one and the same except that I changed the title and the blurb on the back to make it more attractive to anyone considering buying it, which, to date, seems to be exactly no one. But I boy can dream. I have also been through it once or twice and added or removed a comma here and there, and the most recent is Love: A fiction.
Now I’m off to read all about young Stalin.
. . .
Incidentally, I know I joke about commas, but they are important. The add to the clarity of a piece by indication where in a sentence we should pause. Often they can even change the meaning of a sentence entirely. For example: these two sentences are not the same and what happens varies in both.
1) The police rounded up the doctors who had been dealing drugs and jailed them.
2) The police rounded up the doctors, who had been dealing drugs, and jailed them.
In example number one, the police round up only those doctors who had been dealing drugs. In example number two, the police round up all doctors, because they had all been dealing drugs. So this talk of adding and removing commas is not at all precious (although I’ll stick with my joke). There an anecdote about Oscar Wilde once being asked what he had done all day. He replied that he had spent all the morning considering whether to add a comma to a certain sentence to make it read better. After lunch he had spent all afternoon considering whether to remove it again, and had finally decided to do so. And talking of Oscar Wilde, I once came across a quote from him which no one else seems to have heard. Many know his dictum (which I believe, in fact, he cribbed from someone else - naughty, Oscar): A cynic know the price of everything and the value of nothing. But he also said about cynics (and this explains one aspect of the Nazis): Sentimentality is a bank holiday from cynicism, which in my view hits the nail on the head.
Talking about Oscar cribbing dictums and saying, there is also the story of the American painter James Whistler who settled in England and made it his home. He had a rather sharp tongue and was very witty, but was annoyed that Oscar Wilde would often steal his witticisms and pass them off as his own. One day when Oscar was still up at Oxford, he was sitting at Whistler’s feet at some soiree or other and Whistler made a witty comment.
Oh, I wish I had said that, said Oscar.
You will, Oscar, you will, Whistler replied.
. . .
For years I had it in my head that the plural of comma was commata. It’s not, it’s commas. Well!
Tuesday 13 September 2011
Essert-Romand. Day three - an insight
Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
Those who might be craving an additional insight into brother Mark's character (brother Mark, my favourite of two brothers, is the one who lost his passport within seconds of arriving at Geneva airport but refused categorically to return to chase up the loss when, just ten minutes drive away he discovered what had happened) might be interested in this, an exchange which took place less than three minutes ago.
The scene: we are just three days into our holiday with another 11 days of blissless nothing to do - no obligations, no work to go to, nothing - settled into a very comfortable ski apartment in Essert-Romand, sitting on the balcony overlooking a very pleasant valley, a large glass of pastis at our elbows, the temperature falling a little but still comfortable. I am feeling contented and ask:
Are you enjoying yourself, Mark?
He:
Why do you ask?
Why indeed? Just thought I would pass the time of day. Why on earth did I bother?
Supper is Piedmont tomatoes (Delia's recipe) prepard by me, and chicory salad, prepared by Mark. Why did I ask? I do wonder.
Those who might be craving an additional insight into brother Mark's character (brother Mark, my favourite of two brothers, is the one who lost his passport within seconds of arriving at Geneva airport but refused categorically to return to chase up the loss when, just ten minutes drive away he discovered what had happened) might be interested in this, an exchange which took place less than three minutes ago.
The scene: we are just three days into our holiday with another 11 days of blissless nothing to do - no obligations, no work to go to, nothing - settled into a very comfortable ski apartment in Essert-Romand, sitting on the balcony overlooking a very pleasant valley, a large glass of pastis at our elbows, the temperature falling a little but still comfortable. I am feeling contented and ask:
Are you enjoying yourself, Mark?
He:
Why do you ask?
Why indeed? Just thought I would pass the time of day. Why on earth did I bother?
Supper is Piedmont tomatoes (Delia's recipe) prepard by me, and chicory salad, prepared by Mark. Why did I ask? I do wonder.
Monday 12 September 2011
Essert-Romand. Day two. And to use a cliche: Greek default and the euro - the endgame
Essert-Romand, Haute-Savoie, France.
Second day here in the Rhone Alps, so I thought I might dribble on a bit and keep whoever is bloody interested up to speed (Sid and Doris Bonkers for anyone who cares to pick up on the allusion, not that it is in any way significant. But I am keen to get underway a literary tradition of ‘insignificant significance’ - see further dribblings, as yet unpublished, for greater insight, although I should warn you that an essential element in the new literary philosophy of ‘insignificant singificance’ is the notion of ‘pointless insight’)
After a train ride to Gatwick Airport, the highlight of which was being buttonholed by a divorced Russian journalist (her claim) who was on her way to Sicily for alone for a 20-day sojourn and who didn’t stop talking about herself from Clapham Junction to Gatwick, Mark and I flew to Geneva Airport where we encountered our first hiccup.
I am vacationing with my younger brother Mark who I have finally managed to winkle out of his hole for what I believe is a much-needed holiday. For two months earlier this year, he was bedridden with an awful case of shingles and, I think, that persuaded him to give in and come with me. I get on well with Mark, and although I am now almost 62 and he turned 53 in June, I still regard him as ‘my little brother’. Older siblings might know what I am talking about.
But Mark can be quiet particular, and that first hiccup - for him at least, I didn’t give a flying fuck - was that instead of the VW Polo hire car he reckons we were promised by Budget, we ended up with a Skoda Fabia. He was rather put out and suggested, whether seriously or not, that we should complain and insist on a Polo. As, as far as I am concerned, I’ll put up with more or less any car as long as it has four wheels, a working engine and keeps me dry, I didn’t encourage him. So the Skoda it was, and is, and, as you will gather I have no complaints.
A slightly bigger hiccup occurred when we approached the Swiss/French border and Mark went to take out his passport in case the border police of either stripe demanded to see it. He could find it. We pulled in and he searched is jacket high and low, then his bag, then the car, but he still couldn’t find it. He last had it, as must be pretty obvious, when we went through immigration at the airport just 30 minutes earlier but between then and now it had mysteriously gone missing. I offered to turn around and drive back to the airport as we were no more than 10 minutes away, but in that stubborn way he was, he would hear none of it (which for me is a subsidiary mystery - returning to the airport and trying to track it down seemed to me the obvious thing to do).
Then is was the winding schlepp through sunny Alpine road to this little hamlet. It is just on the outskirts of Morzine, but we took a wrong turning somewhere and drove right into the town, arriving after dark when everything was lit up and made it all look like a Hollywood Alpine film set designed by someone with more money than taste. After I had finally persuaded him to ask directions to Essert-Romand (he was brought up in France and is bilingual in English and French but is oddly pathologically averse to bothering people by way of asking directions) we reached the little hamlet. There was one last diversion when instead of taking a turning just 30m up a steep hill off the main road, we carried on for anther few kilometres deep into the mountains. We then came across a gang of young men from whom, again at my urging, Mark solicited directions and finally arrived at our apartment.
It is very nice and comfortable. The first day, yesterday, we spent doing absolutely nothing - which is as it should be - and today we visited the local Carrefour to stock up on gin and tonic and all the things that go with gin and tonic (moussaka, kitchen towels, red peppers, crisps etc.)
. . .
What is quite noticeable is how expensive ordinary goods are here in France. Given that the pound is trading 1 to 1.13 euros, prices seem to have gone up quite remarkable in these past few years. I was in France last July, but I didn’t do very much shopping. But my brother and I went out today for a general shop-up and for pretty much very few goods I parted with 46.40 euros. That’s more than £41. Ironcially, the most expensive item - a 75cl - was still cheaper than I could have bought it in England, so the other goods - red peppers, jar of anchovies, milk, break, garlic, nuts and crisps (and one or two other things I can’t be arsed to record at this point) were up in price. This on the day when the shares in French banks are plummeting, given that far too many of them hold Greek bonds. I wonder whether all the futures bods in the City have now laid their bets as to how soon the Greece will default?
The panic started when spokesmen for both coalition parties in Germany talked of ‘an orderly default by Greece’ no longer being out of the question. And bearing in mind the old saw that one should never believe anything until it’s officially denied, a default be Greece in now a racing certainty. About the only game in town is which one of the German government’s tame banks and cronies should be shielded from the fallout. That’s what will be getting hearts racing in Berlin and Frankfurt. Oddly enough, I was also on holiday in September when Britain was turfed out of the ERM (which, in hindsight, was a blessing in disguise).
Second day here in the Rhone Alps, so I thought I might dribble on a bit and keep whoever is bloody interested up to speed (Sid and Doris Bonkers for anyone who cares to pick up on the allusion, not that it is in any way significant. But I am keen to get underway a literary tradition of ‘insignificant significance’ - see further dribblings, as yet unpublished, for greater insight, although I should warn you that an essential element in the new literary philosophy of ‘insignificant singificance’ is the notion of ‘pointless insight’)
After a train ride to Gatwick Airport, the highlight of which was being buttonholed by a divorced Russian journalist (her claim) who was on her way to Sicily for alone for a 20-day sojourn and who didn’t stop talking about herself from Clapham Junction to Gatwick, Mark and I flew to Geneva Airport where we encountered our first hiccup.
I am vacationing with my younger brother Mark who I have finally managed to winkle out of his hole for what I believe is a much-needed holiday. For two months earlier this year, he was bedridden with an awful case of shingles and, I think, that persuaded him to give in and come with me. I get on well with Mark, and although I am now almost 62 and he turned 53 in June, I still regard him as ‘my little brother’. Older siblings might know what I am talking about.
But Mark can be quiet particular, and that first hiccup - for him at least, I didn’t give a flying fuck - was that instead of the VW Polo hire car he reckons we were promised by Budget, we ended up with a Skoda Fabia. He was rather put out and suggested, whether seriously or not, that we should complain and insist on a Polo. As, as far as I am concerned, I’ll put up with more or less any car as long as it has four wheels, a working engine and keeps me dry, I didn’t encourage him. So the Skoda it was, and is, and, as you will gather I have no complaints.
A slightly bigger hiccup occurred when we approached the Swiss/French border and Mark went to take out his passport in case the border police of either stripe demanded to see it. He could find it. We pulled in and he searched is jacket high and low, then his bag, then the car, but he still couldn’t find it. He last had it, as must be pretty obvious, when we went through immigration at the airport just 30 minutes earlier but between then and now it had mysteriously gone missing. I offered to turn around and drive back to the airport as we were no more than 10 minutes away, but in that stubborn way he was, he would hear none of it (which for me is a subsidiary mystery - returning to the airport and trying to track it down seemed to me the obvious thing to do).
Then is was the winding schlepp through sunny Alpine road to this little hamlet. It is just on the outskirts of Morzine, but we took a wrong turning somewhere and drove right into the town, arriving after dark when everything was lit up and made it all look like a Hollywood Alpine film set designed by someone with more money than taste. After I had finally persuaded him to ask directions to Essert-Romand (he was brought up in France and is bilingual in English and French but is oddly pathologically averse to bothering people by way of asking directions) we reached the little hamlet. There was one last diversion when instead of taking a turning just 30m up a steep hill off the main road, we carried on for anther few kilometres deep into the mountains. We then came across a gang of young men from whom, again at my urging, Mark solicited directions and finally arrived at our apartment.
It is very nice and comfortable. The first day, yesterday, we spent doing absolutely nothing - which is as it should be - and today we visited the local Carrefour to stock up on gin and tonic and all the things that go with gin and tonic (moussaka, kitchen towels, red peppers, crisps etc.)
. . .
What is quite noticeable is how expensive ordinary goods are here in France. Given that the pound is trading 1 to 1.13 euros, prices seem to have gone up quite remarkable in these past few years. I was in France last July, but I didn’t do very much shopping. But my brother and I went out today for a general shop-up and for pretty much very few goods I parted with 46.40 euros. That’s more than £41. Ironcially, the most expensive item - a 75cl - was still cheaper than I could have bought it in England, so the other goods - red peppers, jar of anchovies, milk, break, garlic, nuts and crisps (and one or two other things I can’t be arsed to record at this point) were up in price. This on the day when the shares in French banks are plummeting, given that far too many of them hold Greek bonds. I wonder whether all the futures bods in the City have now laid their bets as to how soon the Greece will default?
The panic started when spokesmen for both coalition parties in Germany talked of ‘an orderly default by Greece’ no longer being out of the question. And bearing in mind the old saw that one should never believe anything until it’s officially denied, a default be Greece in now a racing certainty. About the only game in town is which one of the German government’s tame banks and cronies should be shielded from the fallout. That’s what will be getting hearts racing in Berlin and Frankfurt. Oddly enough, I was also on holiday in September when Britain was turfed out of the ERM (which, in hindsight, was a blessing in disguise).
Saturday 3 September 2011
CIA and MI6 not above doing business with whoever if the results are right
A while ago, I trawled the net for whatever pictures I could find of various world leaders schmoozing the Gaddafi. I came across several and published them. In view of today’s lead news on the BBC News website, I thought it might be worth publishing them again. What was that news? Well, despite our ostensible distaste for the various cutthroats around the world we choose to label as dictators, we are not above getting into bed with them when and if. And it seems that’s just what America’s CIA and Britain’s MI6 were doing for several years before Gaddafi’s recent difficulties. You can read more here.
In the meantime, here again are thoses piccies:
Blair greets his old mucker Muammar - God, I've missed you - no, I don’t have a gun in my pocket
Anything Tony can do - well, so can Barak. He manages to look sincere - go team Obama
... and don't forget good ol' Nicolas - can't let those bloody roast beefs steal all the glory
When it comes to reformed characters guys like Putin will yield to no one. How's it going, my old mate Muammar?
Finally, of course, Brown might have come late to the office of Prime Minister - or later than he demanded - but he was just as willing to kiss arse as his predecessor
. . .
Off to France in seven days for a well-earned break, in the Haut Savoie just south of the Swiss border, where loads and load and loads of folk go skiing, but as in the middle two weeks of September there should be no snow whatsoever, I hope to God I don’t bump into any Brits. I don’t know what it is – perhaps it is my German blood – but I do find a great many Brits I meet abroad a complete embarrassment. The middle-class ones get very pretentious as the food and wine, and treat almost everything French as though it were manna from Heaven. ‘Lord, the French know how to live, could teach us a thing or two’. Er, no, actually, if we Brits regarded food as one of life’s pleasures rather than as mere sustenance and if, consequently, we gave a little more care and attention to its preparation, we, too, could eat like the French. As for the wine, there is as much bad wine around in France as in England. The main difference as far as wine is concerned between the French (and Italians and Spanish) and we Brits is that they will drink a glass or two and leave it at that, but we feel obliged to drink the whole bottle, start a second and see just how fast and far we can get off our faces with – the usual Brit touch – for the minimum outlay.
As for – well, I am too delicate to lay myself open to a charge of snobbery beyond the call of duty so I shall restrict myself to referring to this next group as the ‘not middle-class’, all they seem to want to do is to get as pissed as possible as fast as possible. ‘But didn’t you just say that about the middle-classes’ I hear you ask? No, not quite. The crucial difference is that the ‘not middle-class’ don’t get all hoity-toity about drinking wine whereas the middle-class like to imbue it with some kind of spurious cultural significance. ‘Lord, isn’t it great to live a little, I mean really live properly, you know the French could teach us a thing or two.’
I shall carry on doing my puzzles work while on holiday which means I had to dig out a chalet with wireless internet access. So, if I take any nice piccies, I shall post them here on this blog. Oh, and I am going with my younger brother who attended French schools for five years as a lad and speaks French. I , on the other hand, don’t.
. . .
And just for the craic, a picture of my son taken nine years ago which I have been dicking around with.
In the meantime, here again are thoses piccies:
. . .
Off to France in seven days for a well-earned break, in the Haut Savoie just south of the Swiss border, where loads and load and loads of folk go skiing, but as in the middle two weeks of September there should be no snow whatsoever, I hope to God I don’t bump into any Brits. I don’t know what it is – perhaps it is my German blood – but I do find a great many Brits I meet abroad a complete embarrassment. The middle-class ones get very pretentious as the food and wine, and treat almost everything French as though it were manna from Heaven. ‘Lord, the French know how to live, could teach us a thing or two’. Er, no, actually, if we Brits regarded food as one of life’s pleasures rather than as mere sustenance and if, consequently, we gave a little more care and attention to its preparation, we, too, could eat like the French. As for the wine, there is as much bad wine around in France as in England. The main difference as far as wine is concerned between the French (and Italians and Spanish) and we Brits is that they will drink a glass or two and leave it at that, but we feel obliged to drink the whole bottle, start a second and see just how fast and far we can get off our faces with – the usual Brit touch – for the minimum outlay.
As for – well, I am too delicate to lay myself open to a charge of snobbery beyond the call of duty so I shall restrict myself to referring to this next group as the ‘not middle-class’, all they seem to want to do is to get as pissed as possible as fast as possible. ‘But didn’t you just say that about the middle-classes’ I hear you ask? No, not quite. The crucial difference is that the ‘not middle-class’ don’t get all hoity-toity about drinking wine whereas the middle-class like to imbue it with some kind of spurious cultural significance. ‘Lord, isn’t it great to live a little, I mean really live properly, you know the French could teach us a thing or two.’
I shall carry on doing my puzzles work while on holiday which means I had to dig out a chalet with wireless internet access. So, if I take any nice piccies, I shall post them here on this blog. Oh, and I am going with my younger brother who attended French schools for five years as a lad and speaks French. I , on the other hand, don’t.
. . .
And just for the craic, a picture of my son taken nine years ago which I have been dicking around with.
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