The obvious question is just how long can it all go one, and by ‘it’ I mean, of course, what might well now be regarded as the ‘phoney war’ in the euro crisis. Superficially, it might all seem to have gone quite, with good ole’ Mario Draghi trying desperately to calm nerves by insisting he and his train set will do everything to make sure the good folk of the island of Sodor will continue to get a rail service second to none - no, look, I’m getting confused: Draghi runs the European Central Bank, not Thomas the Tank Engine and his friends.
It’s all so confusing what with everyone being so brave and insisting the euro is here to stay, you mark their words, and this is all just a glitch, a rite of passage through which the currency will pass from adolescence to adulthood. In years to come they, the bankers and politicians and commentators, will crack open a find bottle of brandy and swap anecdotes and memories, and reflect on the high drama when - well, if the truth be told it did, at times, seem touch and go for the dear little euro (such a sweet little currency, who’d have thought it was capable of potentially bringing such grief when all it was intended to do was to be the cement the great European Union and bring peace and goodwill to all good men and true).
But, of course, I’m rambling (as I am apt to do), a mood brought on by some troubling news. There was a demonstration in Madrid today outside Spain’s parliament by the Occupy Congress movement who feel that the government returned by a large majority at the end of last year hasn’t got a snowball’s chance in hell of solving this crisis or any future crisis. But it wasn’t the demo which rather alarmed me - demos come and go and are largely forgotten within days. What I thought more notable was that the Spanish province of Calalonia (do they call the provinces?) is getting mightily fed up and its government has called a snap election with a view to gaining more independence, both political and financial from Madrid. This is not very good news. You can read about the latest developments here and here.
Ordinarily, such a move could well be pooh-poohed as just so much sabre-rattling, signifying nothing, but these are surely not ordinary times. Is it really conceivable that a part of Spain could declare independence? Isn’t that the kind of thing which happens only in history books and which we debate many years after the event?
More than 20 years ago, the American historian Francis Fukuyama published an essay called The End Of History (and later developed his thesis in a similarly entitled book) in which he argued - if I have got it right - that the world had more or less evolved politically as far as it would ever evolve and the our liberal democratic form of government (in the West, at least) was more or less the end stage of that development. What he had so say was a little more subtle, but the general idea was that ‘lads, this is it’. I remember at the time thinking what a crock of shit the idea was, but at the time I didn’t really know what he was suggesting.
Now I know a little more, I can see the point he is making, and although I no longer think it is total bollocks, I do feel he is being a tad optimistic. My point is, though, that the West generally, which has, despite one or two local wars, most notably in the Balkans in the Nineties, enjoyed a sustained period of peace and prosperity, is finding it increasingly difficult to imagine (and accept) that things will not always be like that. Were I here and now to suggest that, for example, there is a distinct possibility of another civil war in Spain, the consensus would be ‘the chap’s off his head/doesn’t know what he’s talking about/has he been drinking?
Truthfully, I know very little about domestic Spanish politics and affairs, but merely suggest the possibility of a second civil war in Spain as the kind of utterly unexpected development we find it almost impossible to get our heads around. And because we find such things impossible to grasp and thus give credence to, they are deemed to be utterly implausible. Brussels and the rest of the EU wouldn’t allow it, you could say. Or you could argue that Western Europe has become far too civilised to countenance any such action on its soil. All I will say to that is: never count your chickens.
The total disintegration of the Soviet Union and the Soviet bloc was, for almost all of us, a pretty unexpected development, but it happened and it happened pretty damn quickly. We are accustomed to hear of massacres and wholesale slaughter in, say, the Congo or Uganda, or Afghanistan and other points east, but we never expected any such wholesale massacre in Europe. Then several thousands Bosnians were massacred in Srebenica. And, most tellingly, they were massacred while Dutch ‘peacekeepers’ more or less looked on and did nothing because any prevention of that massacre ‘wasn’t in its remit’. That would have seemed impossible just days before it happened. And the total inaction of the Dutch to do anything to stop it would have seemed even more unbelievable.
So when this loudmouth points out that things aren’t looking too healthy in Spain and could even perhaps lead to the kind of violence we haven’t seen in Western Europe for 70 years, jeer at me by all means. But at least be a little more prepared to expect the utterly unexpected.
Tuesday 25 September 2012
Friday 21 September 2012
Hypocrisy comes in many forms - try the variety favoured by (some) Muslims
Forget, if you can, that Peaches Geldoff has recently taken her son Astala and dog Parpy for a stroll and that Kourteny Kardashian has already managed to get back to a ‘fighting fit’ slim figure just ten weeks after giving birth to baby Penelope. Forget even - yes, I know it’s difficult, but, please, just try, even if for just a few minutes - that Kelly Osbourne thinks that Lady Gaga is pregnant, not just getting fat on too many pizzas and that Kim Kardashian has charmed her way into the hearts of police on promotional tour in Australia. (What is she promoting? Kim Karadashian, of course. Silly me). Today, in its customary lighthearted mood, this blog intends to turn its attention to a rather more mundane mattter, that is the Muslim ‘outrage’ the world over.
And what has upset them? Why an extremely badly made film in California which was subsequently overdubbed to insult the prophet Mohammed. In fact, so outraged were Muslims in Libya that they felt it necessary to murder the U.S. ambassador to express their outrage, and since then outraged Muslims have been demonstrating, sometimes violently in other predominantly Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon and Malayasia. Talk about a sense of proportion - it seems these lads don’t give a fig for the latest Lady Gaga, Peaches Geldoff and Kardashian family gossip.
A mob is a mob is a mob anywhere in the world, whether in Cairo, Benghazi, Woking, Galashiels, Peoria or Buenos Aires, and in an odd kind of way a mob seems to become more than just the sum of its parts. So when ‘a mob’ is responsible for the death of one or more people as it expresses its outrage, no one in that mob feels him or herself (though it has to be said it is invariably himself) specifi - ‘the mob’ is to be blamed for the death, not individuals.
Furthermore, mobs can easily be manipulated, a fact which no end of unscrupulous men and women have known for centuries and successfully made use of. We know that once whatever idiot it was who made the film which insulted the Prophet Mohammed had - very badly - overdubbed it to include the insults (apparently the film started life as some kind of D movie about the desert), the film was channelled into Muslim countries - one report I heard was that a fundamentalist Christian group was involved which enlisted the help of Egyptian Coptic Christian. Whoever did that knew exactly what the consequences would be and knew also that unscrupulous Muslim rabble-rousers would gleefully seize upon the film to futher their own agend.
It has been recorded that the outrage of many Muslims was based on the ‘fact’ that apparently ‘U.S. state television’ had broadcast the film. That the U.S. doesn’t have, and has never had, a ‘state television’ is quite irrelevant: the mob believed it to be true, and so it became ’a truth’ and so the mob went on its self-righteous rampage. Yet ironically, however stupid ‘the mob’ is, in a sense it is blameless: it has no mind and its violence is literally mindless. But far, far more disturbing is the attitude of Muslims who should and quite possibly do know better.
Last Monday, four of them were interviewed on Radio 4’s The World Tonight. They were all, three men and a woman, British Asian professionals - they insisted that the programme should highlight that they were professionals: one was an engineer, one a businessman (or woman) and two were doctors. They were articulate and - I assume - intelligent, but they were certainly educated people. Most significant was that they were all members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which likes to describe itself as ‘the Liberation party’ and which organised a demonstration last Sunday outside the US embassy in London. These four, who had all taken part in the demo and who, one imagines, listen to radio and TV news, would most certainly have been aware of the untruths being put about in order to fuel the mobs’ outrage: it is inconceivable that - as intelligent, educated and professional people - they sincerely believed that the US government had indeed brazenly broadcast the insulting film on ‘state TV’. Yet they chose to ignore what they must have known to be untrue and took part in the demo and later agreed to be interviewed on Radio 4’s The World Tonight to justify their actions and the actions of violent mobs in many parts of the Muslim world. You have to ask yourself: why?
Hizb ut-Tahrir’s website has published an open letter to non-Muslims about the film and the ‘insult to the Prophet Mohammed’ (you can read it here) and it has the gall to castigate Western ‘hypocrisy’. The first paragraph of this open letter reads:
'It is a centuries-old Islamic tradition to engage in debate, tolerate criticism and hear the critiques of others. But insults against Islam, such as those in the recent film and cartoons, are unacceptable provocations that cross a red line that no Muslim or decent human being would ever accept. As such we condemn them in the strongest possible terms, as we do any such insults against Islam and the symbols of our religion; especially those against the greatest man ever, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.’
The open letter goes on:
We do not condone the recent violence that has broken out in response, but the blood-stained track record of Western foreign policy and hypocrisy regarding free speech means that all right to take the moral high ground has been forfeited when arguing that violence is an unacceptable response to this provocation, or when arguing that freedom of speech is sacred.
Does Hizb up-Tahrir and its four intelligent, educated and professional members who agreed to be interviewed on Radio 4 really believe that outright murder and innocent deaths are justifiable in defence of imagined insults against the Prophet Mohammed? Well, apparently they do.
I also wonder what Hizb up-Tahrir would have to say about the hypocrisy of its fellow Muslims who are quite happy to hand out awful insults to other faiths and their followers. Because or all the noble talk about not tolerating insults to Islam, many Muslims are far from shy about grossly insulting not only Jews and Christians, but their fellow Muslims. Here is a list (which I have taken from the New York Times website and which appeared here in one of its columns) of exceedingly gross insults made by Muslims (follow links for original source):
ON CHRISTIANS: Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi of the Iranian Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution: Christianity is “a reeking corpse, on which you have to constantly pour eau de cologne and perfume, and wash it in order to keep it clean.” — July 20, 2007.
Sheik Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi: It is permissible to spill the blood of the Iraqi Christians — and a duty to wage jihad against them. — April 14, 2011.
Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, a Saudi professor of Islamic law, calls for “positive hatred” of Christians. Al-Majd TV (Saudi Arabia), — Dec. 16, 2005.
ON SHIITES: The Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub: “Muslim Brotherhood Presidential Candidate Mohamed Morsi told me that the Shiites are more dangerous to Islam than the Jews.” — June 13, 2012.
The Egyptian Cleric Mazen al-Sirsawi: “If Allah had not created the Shiites as human beings, they would have been donkeys.” — Aug. 7, 2011.
The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan video series: “The Shiite is a Nasl [Race/Offspring] of Jews.” http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6208.htm — March 21, 2012.
ON JEWS: Article on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website praises jihad against America and the Jews: “The Descendants of Apes and Pigs.” — Sept. 7, 2012.
The Pakistani cleric Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai: “When the Jews are wiped out, the world would be purified and the sun of peace would rise on the entire world.” — Aug. 1, 2012.
Dr. Ismail Ali Muhammad, a senior Al-Azhar scholar: The Jews, “a source of evil and harm in all human societies.” — Feb. 14, 2012.
ON SUFIS: A shrine venerating a Sufi Muslim saint in Libya has been partly destroyed, the latest in a series of attacks blamed on ultraconservative Salafi Islamists. — Aug. 26, 2012.
It does seem to me that for many of the more fanatical Muslims there is one rule for them and another for everyone else. There is very little quite as unpleasant as the stench of hypocrisy. (All the above references were published in a piece by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. You can read it here.)
. . .
I keep a keen eye on the so-called ‘stats’ provided by Google which tell me not only how many people have chanced up - or even knowingly returned to - this blog in any given day, week, month or year, but also where they live, what browser they use, what computer operating system they use, whether they are using a computer, tablet, iPad or smartphone when visiting and, crucially, whether they loathe hypocrisy as much as I do. The stats also tell me which sites are used to ‘refer’ the searcher to this blog and what are the most visited blog entries.
By far the most popular is one which features one Tony Blair, one Christine Keeler and one Mandy Rice-Davies. It includes a cartoon of Blair and a photo each of Christine and Mandy (my familiarity is gratuitous in that I don’t know either of the two ladies and am highly unlikely to meet either at any time soon.) But it did occur to me that to drum up more visits, I should include in each post a pic of both of them. So that is exactly what I intend to do.
(Incidentally, this second part of this entry has bugger all to do with Muslim, Muslim outrage, the Prophet or anything of that kind. The principle I am working on is that you can, indeed, have too much of a good thing.)
and
And what has upset them? Why an extremely badly made film in California which was subsequently overdubbed to insult the prophet Mohammed. In fact, so outraged were Muslims in Libya that they felt it necessary to murder the U.S. ambassador to express their outrage, and since then outraged Muslims have been demonstrating, sometimes violently in other predominantly Muslim countries such as Pakistan, Egypt, Lebanon and Malayasia. Talk about a sense of proportion - it seems these lads don’t give a fig for the latest Lady Gaga, Peaches Geldoff and Kardashian family gossip.
A mob is a mob is a mob anywhere in the world, whether in Cairo, Benghazi, Woking, Galashiels, Peoria or Buenos Aires, and in an odd kind of way a mob seems to become more than just the sum of its parts. So when ‘a mob’ is responsible for the death of one or more people as it expresses its outrage, no one in that mob feels him or herself (though it has to be said it is invariably himself) specifi - ‘the mob’ is to be blamed for the death, not individuals.
Furthermore, mobs can easily be manipulated, a fact which no end of unscrupulous men and women have known for centuries and successfully made use of. We know that once whatever idiot it was who made the film which insulted the Prophet Mohammed had - very badly - overdubbed it to include the insults (apparently the film started life as some kind of D movie about the desert), the film was channelled into Muslim countries - one report I heard was that a fundamentalist Christian group was involved which enlisted the help of Egyptian Coptic Christian. Whoever did that knew exactly what the consequences would be and knew also that unscrupulous Muslim rabble-rousers would gleefully seize upon the film to futher their own agend.
It has been recorded that the outrage of many Muslims was based on the ‘fact’ that apparently ‘U.S. state television’ had broadcast the film. That the U.S. doesn’t have, and has never had, a ‘state television’ is quite irrelevant: the mob believed it to be true, and so it became ’a truth’ and so the mob went on its self-righteous rampage. Yet ironically, however stupid ‘the mob’ is, in a sense it is blameless: it has no mind and its violence is literally mindless. But far, far more disturbing is the attitude of Muslims who should and quite possibly do know better.
Last Monday, four of them were interviewed on Radio 4’s The World Tonight. They were all, three men and a woman, British Asian professionals - they insisted that the programme should highlight that they were professionals: one was an engineer, one a businessman (or woman) and two were doctors. They were articulate and - I assume - intelligent, but they were certainly educated people. Most significant was that they were all members of Hizb ut-Tahrir, which likes to describe itself as ‘the Liberation party’ and which organised a demonstration last Sunday outside the US embassy in London. These four, who had all taken part in the demo and who, one imagines, listen to radio and TV news, would most certainly have been aware of the untruths being put about in order to fuel the mobs’ outrage: it is inconceivable that - as intelligent, educated and professional people - they sincerely believed that the US government had indeed brazenly broadcast the insulting film on ‘state TV’. Yet they chose to ignore what they must have known to be untrue and took part in the demo and later agreed to be interviewed on Radio 4’s The World Tonight to justify their actions and the actions of violent mobs in many parts of the Muslim world. You have to ask yourself: why?
Hizb ut-Tahrir’s website has published an open letter to non-Muslims about the film and the ‘insult to the Prophet Mohammed’ (you can read it here) and it has the gall to castigate Western ‘hypocrisy’. The first paragraph of this open letter reads:
'It is a centuries-old Islamic tradition to engage in debate, tolerate criticism and hear the critiques of others. But insults against Islam, such as those in the recent film and cartoons, are unacceptable provocations that cross a red line that no Muslim or decent human being would ever accept. As such we condemn them in the strongest possible terms, as we do any such insults against Islam and the symbols of our religion; especially those against the greatest man ever, the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon him.’
The open letter goes on:
We do not condone the recent violence that has broken out in response, but the blood-stained track record of Western foreign policy and hypocrisy regarding free speech means that all right to take the moral high ground has been forfeited when arguing that violence is an unacceptable response to this provocation, or when arguing that freedom of speech is sacred.
Does Hizb up-Tahrir and its four intelligent, educated and professional members who agreed to be interviewed on Radio 4 really believe that outright murder and innocent deaths are justifiable in defence of imagined insults against the Prophet Mohammed? Well, apparently they do.
I also wonder what Hizb up-Tahrir would have to say about the hypocrisy of its fellow Muslims who are quite happy to hand out awful insults to other faiths and their followers. Because or all the noble talk about not tolerating insults to Islam, many Muslims are far from shy about grossly insulting not only Jews and Christians, but their fellow Muslims. Here is a list (which I have taken from the New York Times website and which appeared here in one of its columns) of exceedingly gross insults made by Muslims (follow links for original source):
ON CHRISTIANS: Hasan Rahimpur Azghadi of the Iranian Supreme Council for Cultural Revolution: Christianity is “a reeking corpse, on which you have to constantly pour eau de cologne and perfume, and wash it in order to keep it clean.” — July 20, 2007.
Sheik Al-Khatib al-Baghdadi: It is permissible to spill the blood of the Iraqi Christians — and a duty to wage jihad against them. — April 14, 2011.
Abd al-Aziz Fawzan al-Fawzan, a Saudi professor of Islamic law, calls for “positive hatred” of Christians. Al-Majd TV (Saudi Arabia), — Dec. 16, 2005.
ON SHIITES: The Egyptian Cleric Muhammad Hussein Yaaqub: “Muslim Brotherhood Presidential Candidate Mohamed Morsi told me that the Shiites are more dangerous to Islam than the Jews.” — June 13, 2012.
The Egyptian Cleric Mazen al-Sirsawi: “If Allah had not created the Shiites as human beings, they would have been donkeys.” — Aug. 7, 2011.
The Sipah-e-Sahaba Pakistan video series: “The Shiite is a Nasl [Race/Offspring] of Jews.” http://www.memri.org/report/en/0/0/0/0/0/51/6208.htm — March 21, 2012.
ON JEWS: Article on the Muslim Brotherhood’s website praises jihad against America and the Jews: “The Descendants of Apes and Pigs.” — Sept. 7, 2012.
The Pakistani cleric Muhammad Raza Saqib Mustafai: “When the Jews are wiped out, the world would be purified and the sun of peace would rise on the entire world.” — Aug. 1, 2012.
Dr. Ismail Ali Muhammad, a senior Al-Azhar scholar: The Jews, “a source of evil and harm in all human societies.” — Feb. 14, 2012.
ON SUFIS: A shrine venerating a Sufi Muslim saint in Libya has been partly destroyed, the latest in a series of attacks blamed on ultraconservative Salafi Islamists. — Aug. 26, 2012.
It does seem to me that for many of the more fanatical Muslims there is one rule for them and another for everyone else. There is very little quite as unpleasant as the stench of hypocrisy. (All the above references were published in a piece by Thomas Friedman in the New York Times. You can read it here.)
. . .
I keep a keen eye on the so-called ‘stats’ provided by Google which tell me not only how many people have chanced up - or even knowingly returned to - this blog in any given day, week, month or year, but also where they live, what browser they use, what computer operating system they use, whether they are using a computer, tablet, iPad or smartphone when visiting and, crucially, whether they loathe hypocrisy as much as I do. The stats also tell me which sites are used to ‘refer’ the searcher to this blog and what are the most visited blog entries.
By far the most popular is one which features one Tony Blair, one Christine Keeler and one Mandy Rice-Davies. It includes a cartoon of Blair and a photo each of Christine and Mandy (my familiarity is gratuitous in that I don’t know either of the two ladies and am highly unlikely to meet either at any time soon.) But it did occur to me that to drum up more visits, I should include in each post a pic of both of them. So that is exactly what I intend to do.
(Incidentally, this second part of this entry has bugger all to do with Muslim, Muslim outrage, the Prophet or anything of that kind. The principle I am working on is that you can, indeed, have too much of a good thing.)
Thursday 20 September 2012
Welcome to the new look, as unexpected for you as it was for me — but needs must and I’m making the best of a bad job. Then there’s Disney’s take on a Cathar castle
First things first: You might think ‘oh, what a nice chap, he’s redesigned his blog to make us feel more welcome, more valued, to show us that our ease and comfort is his dearest wish’, but you’d be bloody wrong. It’s all down to my terrible habit of dicking around, and in this instance I noticed that Google are touting some new all-singing, all-dancing ‘dynamic’ template and decided to investigate.
Well, I did investigate, decided I didn’t like it and have spent the best part of an hour trying to get my blog back to what it was. This is the result. Given that I couldn’t totally recreate it, I’ve given it a few tweeks to try and improve things but basically I’m a tad pissed off with Google and a tad more pissed off with myself for again dicking around when a lifetime of coming a cropper dicking around should have taught me to leave well alone.
. . .
Today (yesterday - Ed), the last day of our two weeks, it was off to Carcassonne to visit what at first sight seems a rather spectacular ‘Cathar’ castle. I say seems because although it is truly magnificent to see as you cross the bridge at Carcassonne heading south, then wind your way up through the town up to the visitors’ car park, you get a closer view and bugger me if it doesn’t vaguely and rather disconcertingly remind you of Disneyland.
This was, in fact, our second visit to Carcassonne. The first time it was getting a little late after we had wandered through the narrow alleyways surrounding the castle and we decided to come again. This we did today and went straight to the castle. Quite soon it became quite obvious what had gone wrong and why you expect Mickey Mouse himself suddenly to loom large over the turrets and give you a cheery wave. For although the Romans had built a fort here (and one or two of their towers are still standing) and although some dude called Count Raimond Bernard Trencavel expanded it because he was top dog in the area and needed a court (that was in the 11th century, several centuries before this part of France came under the control of the French throne and even longer before it was actually a part of the French kingdom, and although when he finally got his mitts on the castle the French king had it substantially expanded, what is standing today is, in fact and in my view, a rather failed attempt at renovation by a chap called Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century.
He initially called in to renovate the nearby St Nazaire cathedral, but then decided to have a go at the castle itself. The trouble was that many parts of it had largely fallen into ruin (as castles do) and what was left was a hotch-potch of different styles from different ages. But Viollet-le-Duc was not to be thwarted. He spent a great deal of time trying to work out what had been what and eventually decided to rebuild most of the castle on what it might have looked like in the 16th century. The trouble for us is that when Walt Disney decided to design castles to feature in his various cartoons, he looked to the same age, which explains the rather baffling resemblance Carcassonne castle has to something dreamed up in Hollywood.
It doesn’t help that the alleyways of the ‘village’ within the outside curtain walls (I hope I’ve got the jargon right and if I haven’t, I’m sure some smartarse will email in with a comment setting me straight) are wall-to-wall tat emporiums, ice-cream parlours, overpriced restaurants, twee memoribilia shops and bars, all designed with the same Disney dedication to taste and crammed with tourists.
Two days ago, we went to see the Chateau de Termes, which was something else entirely. This is now wholly in ruins, but must have been truly spectacular in its heyday. It was also held my the Trencavel family, and when the then Pope took against the Cathars who were more or less declaring UDI from Rome (the usual story: they reckoned the Roman Church was corrupt - Lord, what a cheek! - and wanted to live purer lives), the Trencavels protected them and they thrived for a while.
Finally, the word went out that anyone who put down the heresy and its protectors could keep the land won from the protectors, which was an offer far too good for a certain Simon de Montfort to refuse (he is the grandfather of our Simon de Montfort). He besieged that castle and it finally surrendered after many months. Here are two pictures: one is as the ruins look today, and below it is an impression of what it would have looked at when it was still intact.
. . .
That was written yesterday, and this is today, written at my kitchen table at home. To emulate The Economist, ‘so the worst is over. What lessons have we learnt?’ Well, we have learned that despite the British middle-class infatuation with all things French (‘Lord, we could learn a thing or two from them about how to live. And their women - so elegant!), they have just as many chavs as we do; McDonald’s are devastating their country at an alarming rate just as in Britain; yes, on the whole their women are a tad more elegant, mainly because they just try a little harder and have an innate sense of something which apparently eludes British women (except the very rich, but they tend to shop in Paris anyway), and on the whole the French drive more like lunatics than we do, and their womenfolk are especially bad. Can everyone really be in so late over there? I rather doubt it.
But I’m back, can’t say I had two glorious weeks off, for one reason and another, but I did have two weeks off work with a change of scenery, so whose complaining. As I got up at 6.45am to get to Toulouse airport (that’s 5.45am in pounds, shillings and pence) I am bushed so I shall wish you all a bonne nuit (French for good night) and climb the wooden hill.
Well, I did investigate, decided I didn’t like it and have spent the best part of an hour trying to get my blog back to what it was. This is the result. Given that I couldn’t totally recreate it, I’ve given it a few tweeks to try and improve things but basically I’m a tad pissed off with Google and a tad more pissed off with myself for again dicking around when a lifetime of coming a cropper dicking around should have taught me to leave well alone.
. . .
Today (yesterday - Ed), the last day of our two weeks, it was off to Carcassonne to visit what at first sight seems a rather spectacular ‘Cathar’ castle. I say seems because although it is truly magnificent to see as you cross the bridge at Carcassonne heading south, then wind your way up through the town up to the visitors’ car park, you get a closer view and bugger me if it doesn’t vaguely and rather disconcertingly remind you of Disneyland.
This was, in fact, our second visit to Carcassonne. The first time it was getting a little late after we had wandered through the narrow alleyways surrounding the castle and we decided to come again. This we did today and went straight to the castle. Quite soon it became quite obvious what had gone wrong and why you expect Mickey Mouse himself suddenly to loom large over the turrets and give you a cheery wave. For although the Romans had built a fort here (and one or two of their towers are still standing) and although some dude called Count Raimond Bernard Trencavel expanded it because he was top dog in the area and needed a court (that was in the 11th century, several centuries before this part of France came under the control of the French throne and even longer before it was actually a part of the French kingdom, and although when he finally got his mitts on the castle the French king had it substantially expanded, what is standing today is, in fact and in my view, a rather failed attempt at renovation by a chap called Viollet-le-Duc in the 19th century.
He initially called in to renovate the nearby St Nazaire cathedral, but then decided to have a go at the castle itself. The trouble was that many parts of it had largely fallen into ruin (as castles do) and what was left was a hotch-potch of different styles from different ages. But Viollet-le-Duc was not to be thwarted. He spent a great deal of time trying to work out what had been what and eventually decided to rebuild most of the castle on what it might have looked like in the 16th century. The trouble for us is that when Walt Disney decided to design castles to feature in his various cartoons, he looked to the same age, which explains the rather baffling resemblance Carcassonne castle has to something dreamed up in Hollywood.
It doesn’t help that the alleyways of the ‘village’ within the outside curtain walls (I hope I’ve got the jargon right and if I haven’t, I’m sure some smartarse will email in with a comment setting me straight) are wall-to-wall tat emporiums, ice-cream parlours, overpriced restaurants, twee memoribilia shops and bars, all designed with the same Disney dedication to taste and crammed with tourists.
Two days ago, we went to see the Chateau de Termes, which was something else entirely. This is now wholly in ruins, but must have been truly spectacular in its heyday. It was also held my the Trencavel family, and when the then Pope took against the Cathars who were more or less declaring UDI from Rome (the usual story: they reckoned the Roman Church was corrupt - Lord, what a cheek! - and wanted to live purer lives), the Trencavels protected them and they thrived for a while.
Finally, the word went out that anyone who put down the heresy and its protectors could keep the land won from the protectors, which was an offer far too good for a certain Simon de Montfort to refuse (he is the grandfather of our Simon de Montfort). He besieged that castle and it finally surrendered after many months. Here are two pictures: one is as the ruins look today, and below it is an impression of what it would have looked at when it was still intact.
. . .
That was written yesterday, and this is today, written at my kitchen table at home. To emulate The Economist, ‘so the worst is over. What lessons have we learnt?’ Well, we have learned that despite the British middle-class infatuation with all things French (‘Lord, we could learn a thing or two from them about how to live. And their women - so elegant!), they have just as many chavs as we do; McDonald’s are devastating their country at an alarming rate just as in Britain; yes, on the whole their women are a tad more elegant, mainly because they just try a little harder and have an innate sense of something which apparently eludes British women (except the very rich, but they tend to shop in Paris anyway), and on the whole the French drive more like lunatics than we do, and their womenfolk are especially bad. Can everyone really be in so late over there? I rather doubt it.
But I’m back, can’t say I had two glorious weeks off, for one reason and another, but I did have two weeks off work with a change of scenery, so whose complaining. As I got up at 6.45am to get to Toulouse airport (that’s 5.45am in pounds, shillings and pence) I am bushed so I shall wish you all a bonne nuit (French for good night) and climb the wooden hill.
Tuesday 18 September 2012
It’s over far too soon, but at least I can get outraged by greedy opticians, who don’t just want my money, but, apparently, my blood. And a crucial decision must be made: do I move with the times and apply super-duper whizz-bang 3D dynamic styles to this ’ere blog?
Caunes-Minervois, Languedoc (last day but one)
My brother and I visited the nearby Canal Midi lock at Homps the other day, and then drove on to adjacent Olonzac for a beer. (Mark has developed a thing about canal locks and likes to watch them in operation. Or if he hasn’t newly developed it, he has revealed a side to himself with which I was unfamiliar. I don’t mind watching one or two being opened and closed, but after that it all rather loses the element of surprise.) And was the place crawling with Brits? Does the Pope shit in the forest? There were more Brits knocking around (it would be unfair to single them out as the local paunch-carriers as you do get to see one or two fat Frenchmen and women) than on any given day in High St Kensington. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French (‘have French’ I think they say if they are trying to impress each other), so I keep my mouth well and truly shut when out and about locally, and get Mark to do all the talking as he speaks French (‘has French’)
When packing for my trip to Bordeaux in July, I found I had somehow mislaid my spare spectacles for use in just such an emergency, but was lackadaisical in getting a replacement pair and went, the week before leaving for France for this holiday I went to my optician’s to get them to make up a spare set, they refused to do so point-blank on the grounds that it had been more than two years since my last sight-check and that it was ‘illegal’ to provide a set without a new sight-check. As far as that is concerned, that is so much bollocks and I even downloaded and read the relevant paragraph in their professional body’s ‘code of conduct’, but I have to say what they say is as clear as mud and one could equally interpret the body’s guidance as legally binding as mere guidance.
But all that is irrelevant in the optician’s refused to order me another pair using the more than two-year-old prescription. The upshot was that I don’t have spare spectacle with me, but because of the possibility of just such and emergency as has now happened, I dug out three old lenses left over from when I had previously lost a lens or it was damaged and - glory be! – one was an exact match. I then rang my optician’s in Bodmin to order a new pair. ‘No problem,’ they said, ‘that will be £130 for the replacement lens.’ My jaw must have dropped audibly because the very helpful chap at the other end of the phone added: ‘It’s £260 for the pair’ (thus demonstrating that in matters mathematical he is most certainly no slouch).
Well, the truth is out: brother Mark, who had his
early upbringing and education until the age of 13 in France, has uttered the
words I would never have thought I would hear from him: ‘I can’t wait to get
back to Britain.’ For one thing the house we are staying, dating back at least
450 years and which us undoubtedly pokey, is built all wrong and he keeps
banging his head everywhere and finds it difficult to negotiate the steps, of which
there are far too many anyway. Furthermore, ‘France is too big’, this after he
looked up the Cathar Chateau de Mauriac and found it was at least a two-hour
drive away but is still in the same department!
Me? Granted the house is rather pokey in that it is
undoubtedly very cosy in the winter and a haven of cool in the very hot summer
months – cool as in temperature, not as in New York artsy-fartsy attitude – and
granted that ideally I should have liked a terrace or a courtyard to go and sit
in, for me our departure on Thursday, the day after tomorrow, has come around
far, far too soon.
One thing I have learnt these past few weeks is that
I both like being on my own and like having company. In the past, I have gone
on holiday on my own and enjoyed my own company, although I am one of those
kinds who, when enjoying something, seems to enjoy it more if I can share the
experience (and no – stop sniggering at the back – I am not talking about sex).
That goes for food, music, visits to galleries, films and a lot more. On the
other hand, there is a certain joy in solitude once you have overcome the
novelty of relying on yourself for company, and I do suspect many reading this
will be familiar with the occasional quiet desire to be alone. But to do so
here might well have come across as unfriendly, so I didn’t do it.
There are indeed rather a great deal of tourists
hereabouts, and not just in Caunes-Minervois. Now, I know that I am on thin ice
complaining about tourists, especially British tourists, when I am one myself,
but when I go abroad, I do like to be with the people of the country I am
visiting. Many other Brits, indeed, I suspect most other Brits don’t. They get
a little uneasy. What has been very disconcerting is to visit the local
Intermarche, Carrefour, Auchon or Spar and find a substantial section of one of
the food aisles devoted to Marmite, Bovril, Gale’s honey, golden syrup and
various other abominations (or at least I shall deem them abominations for the duration
of my stay here) without which your average Brit really cannot face life. This
in a supermarket where even the cheapest pates are 1,000 better than the slop
sold in British supermarkets and in a country where in a race of cooks it would
have completed the course where the Brit contender was still pulling on his
running shoes. (NB Note the topical allusion there, running? Not too out of
day, given that the Olympic Games finished less than a month ago. Neat, eh?)
. . . My brother and I visited the nearby Canal Midi lock at Homps the other day, and then drove on to adjacent Olonzac for a beer. (Mark has developed a thing about canal locks and likes to watch them in operation. Or if he hasn’t newly developed it, he has revealed a side to himself with which I was unfamiliar. I don’t mind watching one or two being opened and closed, but after that it all rather loses the element of surprise.) And was the place crawling with Brits? Does the Pope shit in the forest? There were more Brits knocking around (it would be unfair to single them out as the local paunch-carriers as you do get to see one or two fat Frenchmen and women) than on any given day in High St Kensington. Unfortunately, I don’t speak French (‘have French’ I think they say if they are trying to impress each other), so I keep my mouth well and truly shut when out and about locally, and get Mark to do all the talking as he speaks French (‘has French’)
. . .
I was somehow careless when taking out my contact
lenses and putting them in their little barrel cannister last night and dropped
one before shutting its relevant compartment. I am usually super careful as I
have lost them in that way in the past, but it nevertheless happened, although
I didn’t find out until this morning when I went to put them in again.When packing for my trip to Bordeaux in July, I found I had somehow mislaid my spare spectacles for use in just such an emergency, but was lackadaisical in getting a replacement pair and went, the week before leaving for France for this holiday I went to my optician’s to get them to make up a spare set, they refused to do so point-blank on the grounds that it had been more than two years since my last sight-check and that it was ‘illegal’ to provide a set without a new sight-check. As far as that is concerned, that is so much bollocks and I even downloaded and read the relevant paragraph in their professional body’s ‘code of conduct’, but I have to say what they say is as clear as mud and one could equally interpret the body’s guidance as legally binding as mere guidance.
But all that is irrelevant in the optician’s refused to order me another pair using the more than two-year-old prescription. The upshot was that I don’t have spare spectacle with me, but because of the possibility of just such and emergency as has now happened, I dug out three old lenses left over from when I had previously lost a lens or it was damaged and - glory be! – one was an exact match. I then rang my optician’s in Bodmin to order a new pair. ‘No problem,’ they said, ‘that will be £130 for the replacement lens.’ My jaw must have dropped audibly because the very helpful chap at the other end of the phone added: ‘It’s £260 for the pair’ (thus demonstrating that in matters mathematical he is most certainly no slouch).
I protested that the last pair I had bought – and I
stressed ‘pair’ – had only cost me £120. ‘Ah,’ said the very helpful chap at other
end of the phone, ‘that was because you were then still in our customer care
scheme. But your membership has since lapsed (and to be fair they did bombard
me with junk mail at the time warning me to renew it). ‘But I can renew your annual membership for
£45 and then the replacement lens will only cost £75.’
So renew I did. But it
all left a very bad taste in my mouth, and the most definite suspicion that
someone is taking the ‘valued customer’ for a very long ride. Given the
original developmental costs involved when coming up with the ‘latest
technology in gas permeable hard lenses’ was underway and given that the cost
has to be reflected in the price a little, and given the production costs
involved for each lens even though physically each lens is just a then circular
piece of bloody plastic about 5mm in diameter, we, the punters, can’t, of
course, expect to get our contact lenses for next to nothing. If we were, it
would surely undermine the very notion of modern capitalism and bring our
Western democracies, for whom it is an essential building block crashing to the
ground, though no doubt one or two entrerprising businessmen would find ways of
making a welcome bob or two out of the ensuing chaos. But here’s the thing (©Siobhan
in Twenty Twelve): whatever I pay for my lenses, those developmental and production costs will be
identical in either case.
So when, not in the ‘customer care scheme’ I am to be
charged £130 for the replacement lens, but only £75 as part of it, someone
somewhere is making a fuck of a profit and taking the piss in spades. And given
that the development and production costs will surely and most certainly be no
more than a fifth of the £75 – around £15, although even that figure is surely
far higher than the real cost – ‘a fuck of a profit’ is certainly a crude but
quite exact description of what is going on.
I feel several letters coming on:
one to Boots, one each to the Telegraph and the Mail, and to the ruling council
of this breed of bloodsuckers and one to the Minister for Health. Oh yes! Never
underestimate the outrage and letter-writing ability of an Englishman when he
feels he is being made to pay through the nose! Oh no! I know, of course, that
my various letters will achieve absolutely nothing at all, but that isn’t the
point is it? It’s something along the lines of ‘not playing the game to win but
just to play the game’ (which might explain why when we win the football and
rugby world cups, the element of fluke should never be discounted.) Now I think
I should move to Tunbridge Wells, (a joke no doubt completely wasted on 99pc of
people reading this, but in my present mood of seething outrage all I can say
is: what the hell!
. . .
Thanks to those clever dicks at Google, I am faced with a dilemma: they have come up with exceptionally, almost obscenely, snazzy new and dynamic - their word, not mine - blog layouts which will allow the reader to decide exactly how they want to view a blog. I’m not too sure any of them really add to a blog, and if a blog is crap, it will still be crap, although in now and modern new clothes.
On the other hand, I tell myself, if I don’t move with the times I am very much in danger of becoming an old buffer for whom any innovation is at best suspicious and at worst the work of the Devil. So I shall investigate further and see what it what. I know, I’ll set up a committee to look into the matter, which should kick any decision either way into the long grass for a while.
LATER: Well, I tried it out and fucked it up. I have tried to revert to what I had before but because Google’s fuckwits can out fuckwit any other fuckwit on the planet - and that would be me - I can’t quite get it back to what it was. Oh well, maybe it was time for a change anyway. I’ll see what I can do overt he next few days. Love and kisses ...
LATER: Well, I tried it out and fucked it up. I have tried to revert to what I had before but because Google’s fuckwits can out fuckwit any other fuckwit on the planet - and that would be me - I can’t quite get it back to what it was. Oh well, maybe it was time for a change anyway. I’ll see what I can do overt he next few days. Love and kisses ...
Sunday 16 September 2012
If the truth be told, I feel a little out of sorts…
Caunes-Minervois, Languedoc
Day whatever it is in the heaven that is the South of France (© the various travel supplements of the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, The Spectator (‘the Speccy’ to various right-of-centre fuckwits) and, perhaps, the News Statesmen on those days when the revolution is on hold and they feel guilt-free enough to acknowledge their middle-class or aspirational middle-class roots (‘I’m working class and proud of it’, a statement which, on only the most superficial analysis, proves itself to be complete bollocks). Day whatever it is and I am curiously out-of–sorts. I don’t really know why. I think it is the result of a number of things which are all conspiring to ensure I am not quite my usual jovial, devil-may-care self.
For one thing, where we are staying – it is a renovated house in a narrow alleyway of the medieval part of Caunes-Minervois – as, for me who is on holiday, one flaw. If it can be made sufficiently warm in the winter, and I imagine the temperature can drop quite a lot in these parts, it would be superbly cosy. But in the summer it is perhaps a little poky and, crucially, there is nowhere to go and sit in comfort, no terrace or courtyard or anything of that sort. And sometimes I should like to do just that, sit outside, perhaps with a drink, perhaps without one, and read or even just sit outside and do nothing. But there is nowhere, and nor is there anywhere nearby which might do the trick.
Then there is my brother who is curiously inert and, to my sheer surprise, tonight announced that he is ‘old’. I have two brothers and as I have never been close to my older brother, I have always felt close to this younger one. We both share an ironical outlook on many things, but whereas my cynicism is to a large extent a pose and at heart I’m just another sweet little pussy cat, his seems to have taken hold rather alarmingly over the past few years and especially this last year. He is an interesting chap and a fount of information – I won’t say knowledge as he, too, can be rather brimful of prejudices – but there is a lack of something there which I have long been aware of, but this year seems to have become more marked. I’ve noticed that he has no small talk, no chat. He can talk at length about many things but I’ve realised he never initiates a conversation of any kind, never asks questions, never talks unless he can talk about something.
Years ago, he told me that as far as he was concerned ‘life is just a question of filling in time’. A day or two ago, I reminded him of that and asked him whether he still thought so. Yes, he said, he did. He’s always been a solitary sort, and that was one reason why I persuaded him to come on holiday with me last year and why I suggested we should go away again together this year. Quite simply I wanted to get him out and about a bit, out of his rut, and I thought I had succeeded last year. But in a strange kind of way this year is different.
There was, for example, his rather startling claim an hour or so ago that he is ‘old’. While we are here and because of the lack of a terrace or courtyard in which we can sit, it has become our habit to prepare two very large gins and sit in the alleyway outside on two concrete bollards (pic to come). This isn’t quite as public as it might sound and is well in keeping with the Mediterranean practice of living more in the open, and as local French pass by as well as a variety of tourists, we wish each other bon soir as is the French habit. Each large gin will be followed by another large gin while whatever meal I am preparing (going on holiday like this is a chance for me to cook which I enjoy very much). Some of time he will scrutinise preloaded tweets on his iPod Touch. Then we might talk a little about this and that. Tonight, I don’t know how or why, he announced that he is ‘old’.
The point is that he is only 54, whereas I am 62, and although I don’t regard myself as a spring chicken, I honestly don’t yet regard myself as ‘old’. But he does regard himself as ‘old’. And this, as well as his otherwise almost totally solitary life, is disconcerting. I told him he should socialise a bit more, but in insists he has socialised in the past and has had enough. I suppose it comes down to how one socialises and with whom one socialises, but how, for heaven’s sake can, one be fed up with socialising.
. . .
The other odd thing is that increasingly I just feel like spending a bit of time on my own. I could happily sit in the sun somewhere for hours on end doing nothing at all but day-dreaming, but I would feel a heel informing him that I want to get away for a day to be on my own. So, of course, I don’t. The trouble is, I still want to. Incidentally, he doesn’t read this blog (as far as I know), and although my sister does, I don’t think there is anything personal I have written here which would upset her.
. . .
There are two other things which have rather unsettled me, one of which has now been resolved, but I shall come to that in a minute. The first was the other night: I drink rather less than I once did, but the other night, my brother Mark and I had three large gins each, then I finished off a rest of the white wine I had used for cooking, and then – it was while writing the blog entry before this one – I had two glasses of pastis. And while we were drinking outside and then while I was writing, I must have smoked at least five, if not six, cigars. It became a very long night and I didn’t get to bed until very late, much later than usual here.
I knew I was not sober when I went to bed, but nor did I feel in any way drunk, although I was aware I had drunk to much. Then, at about, 3am, I woke up. I found I had been waking up at that point every night, but this night was different. I did not feel any chest pain, but I felt a growing, and physical, feeling of unease working it’s way up towards my neck. And my pulse was racing. This is it, I thought, the second heart attack. Sod’s Law, well, at least the French health service is efficient and - thank the Lord - I remembered to bring my NHS health card.
I talked to myself rationally and reminded myself that I was not feeling any chest pain and that a heart attack usually involved chest pain, but it all continued for several minutes until the sensation encroaching my neck abated. I lay quiely in bed for a few minutes, wondering what to do. I knew I had drunk rather too much and smoking cigars does no one any favours (though they do taste good), and then it started all over again. I took my pulse, and registered that it was about 120 beats per minute. I have gone far above that in the gym, but it shouldn’t usually be that when one is lying in bed quietly and then waking up halfway through the night.
Several years ago, in the early 1990s, I suffered rather badly from panic attacks (which can be extraordinarily unpleasant and which, before I actually had a heart attack, always convinced me that one was in progress or, at least, imminent). Bit by bit I persuaded myself that I was not, as I feared, about to suffer a second heart attack, but that is was somehow akin to those earlier panic attacks.
The trouble was that at the same time I was quite aware that I was – and possibly am – rationalising it all. The following evening I didn’t have a cigar and did not drink gin but just one can of lager, and I slept better than I have slept since we arrived. I have not had any gin or pastis since, though I have been back on the cigars. The bottom line is that it all very disconcerted me.
. . .
The third thing which managed to get me out-of-sorts was a text from my 16-year-old daughter asking whether she could go on a ski trip sponsored by her sixth-form college. She said that she would contribute from the money she is earning from her newly started waitressing job, but could the rest be as her Christmas present? The killer was the price: £899 for, what I later discovered, was just a one-week trip. We have funded other school trips for her, but none was anywhere near as expensive.
I spent the night mulling it over and decided that no, she couldn’t and that I would have to tell her. I wrote her an email saying as much, but in the course of it I also told her a few home truths: that she is in the habit of taking just a little too much for granted and that, for example, she has, despite my repeated requests, never bothered to haul herself off her sofa, where she half-watches TV, half-texts her friends and dabbles in a little Facebooking if she has the time, to walk the few hundred feet down the lane to drop in on my stepmother, who is an invalid and very much cherishes little visits. I told her that it might be no skin off her nose, but that old folk are touched by such attention, that even a short 20-minute visit can cheer them up enormously.
I was not unpleasant but not did I pull my punches. I then sent her the email, asking her to text me as soon as she had read it. The trouble was that I felt awful. When she was born, a friend who then had two slightly older children remarked to me that ‘we need our children just as much as they need us’, and boy don’t I know it. Life would be unbearable if I knew my children disliked me. So I feared that my email laying it out straight would achieve something but not least that she would hate me. And until I spoke to her this afternoon on the phone, that has been at the back of my mind ever since. Happily, it seems she has not taken that point of view (and happily my wife agreed with me that £899 for a one-week trip was far too much).
. . .
In some ways the purpose of this entry, mentioning my unexpected thoughts about my brother, my fears of suffering a second heart attack and my fear that I might lose my daughter’s affections, is a strategy of sorts to allay those fears a little more if possible. I’m sure most of you reading this have been there, too. But there again, there’s nothing much wrong with that and very little to loose except readers deeply disappointed that I haven’t rattled on again for the umpteenth time about what a dog’s dinner the euro has become. And on that note . . .
Day whatever it is in the heaven that is the South of France (© the various travel supplements of the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph, The Spectator (‘the Speccy’ to various right-of-centre fuckwits) and, perhaps, the News Statesmen on those days when the revolution is on hold and they feel guilt-free enough to acknowledge their middle-class or aspirational middle-class roots (‘I’m working class and proud of it’, a statement which, on only the most superficial analysis, proves itself to be complete bollocks). Day whatever it is and I am curiously out-of–sorts. I don’t really know why. I think it is the result of a number of things which are all conspiring to ensure I am not quite my usual jovial, devil-may-care self.
For one thing, where we are staying – it is a renovated house in a narrow alleyway of the medieval part of Caunes-Minervois – as, for me who is on holiday, one flaw. If it can be made sufficiently warm in the winter, and I imagine the temperature can drop quite a lot in these parts, it would be superbly cosy. But in the summer it is perhaps a little poky and, crucially, there is nowhere to go and sit in comfort, no terrace or courtyard or anything of that sort. And sometimes I should like to do just that, sit outside, perhaps with a drink, perhaps without one, and read or even just sit outside and do nothing. But there is nowhere, and nor is there anywhere nearby which might do the trick.
Then there is my brother who is curiously inert and, to my sheer surprise, tonight announced that he is ‘old’. I have two brothers and as I have never been close to my older brother, I have always felt close to this younger one. We both share an ironical outlook on many things, but whereas my cynicism is to a large extent a pose and at heart I’m just another sweet little pussy cat, his seems to have taken hold rather alarmingly over the past few years and especially this last year. He is an interesting chap and a fount of information – I won’t say knowledge as he, too, can be rather brimful of prejudices – but there is a lack of something there which I have long been aware of, but this year seems to have become more marked. I’ve noticed that he has no small talk, no chat. He can talk at length about many things but I’ve realised he never initiates a conversation of any kind, never asks questions, never talks unless he can talk about something.
Years ago, he told me that as far as he was concerned ‘life is just a question of filling in time’. A day or two ago, I reminded him of that and asked him whether he still thought so. Yes, he said, he did. He’s always been a solitary sort, and that was one reason why I persuaded him to come on holiday with me last year and why I suggested we should go away again together this year. Quite simply I wanted to get him out and about a bit, out of his rut, and I thought I had succeeded last year. But in a strange kind of way this year is different.
There was, for example, his rather startling claim an hour or so ago that he is ‘old’. While we are here and because of the lack of a terrace or courtyard in which we can sit, it has become our habit to prepare two very large gins and sit in the alleyway outside on two concrete bollards (pic to come). This isn’t quite as public as it might sound and is well in keeping with the Mediterranean practice of living more in the open, and as local French pass by as well as a variety of tourists, we wish each other bon soir as is the French habit. Each large gin will be followed by another large gin while whatever meal I am preparing (going on holiday like this is a chance for me to cook which I enjoy very much). Some of time he will scrutinise preloaded tweets on his iPod Touch. Then we might talk a little about this and that. Tonight, I don’t know how or why, he announced that he is ‘old’.
The point is that he is only 54, whereas I am 62, and although I don’t regard myself as a spring chicken, I honestly don’t yet regard myself as ‘old’. But he does regard himself as ‘old’. And this, as well as his otherwise almost totally solitary life, is disconcerting. I told him he should socialise a bit more, but in insists he has socialised in the past and has had enough. I suppose it comes down to how one socialises and with whom one socialises, but how, for heaven’s sake can, one be fed up with socialising.
. . .
The other odd thing is that increasingly I just feel like spending a bit of time on my own. I could happily sit in the sun somewhere for hours on end doing nothing at all but day-dreaming, but I would feel a heel informing him that I want to get away for a day to be on my own. So, of course, I don’t. The trouble is, I still want to. Incidentally, he doesn’t read this blog (as far as I know), and although my sister does, I don’t think there is anything personal I have written here which would upset her.
. . .
There are two other things which have rather unsettled me, one of which has now been resolved, but I shall come to that in a minute. The first was the other night: I drink rather less than I once did, but the other night, my brother Mark and I had three large gins each, then I finished off a rest of the white wine I had used for cooking, and then – it was while writing the blog entry before this one – I had two glasses of pastis. And while we were drinking outside and then while I was writing, I must have smoked at least five, if not six, cigars. It became a very long night and I didn’t get to bed until very late, much later than usual here.
I knew I was not sober when I went to bed, but nor did I feel in any way drunk, although I was aware I had drunk to much. Then, at about, 3am, I woke up. I found I had been waking up at that point every night, but this night was different. I did not feel any chest pain, but I felt a growing, and physical, feeling of unease working it’s way up towards my neck. And my pulse was racing. This is it, I thought, the second heart attack. Sod’s Law, well, at least the French health service is efficient and - thank the Lord - I remembered to bring my NHS health card.
I talked to myself rationally and reminded myself that I was not feeling any chest pain and that a heart attack usually involved chest pain, but it all continued for several minutes until the sensation encroaching my neck abated. I lay quiely in bed for a few minutes, wondering what to do. I knew I had drunk rather too much and smoking cigars does no one any favours (though they do taste good), and then it started all over again. I took my pulse, and registered that it was about 120 beats per minute. I have gone far above that in the gym, but it shouldn’t usually be that when one is lying in bed quietly and then waking up halfway through the night.
Several years ago, in the early 1990s, I suffered rather badly from panic attacks (which can be extraordinarily unpleasant and which, before I actually had a heart attack, always convinced me that one was in progress or, at least, imminent). Bit by bit I persuaded myself that I was not, as I feared, about to suffer a second heart attack, but that is was somehow akin to those earlier panic attacks.
The trouble was that at the same time I was quite aware that I was – and possibly am – rationalising it all. The following evening I didn’t have a cigar and did not drink gin but just one can of lager, and I slept better than I have slept since we arrived. I have not had any gin or pastis since, though I have been back on the cigars. The bottom line is that it all very disconcerted me.
. . .
The third thing which managed to get me out-of-sorts was a text from my 16-year-old daughter asking whether she could go on a ski trip sponsored by her sixth-form college. She said that she would contribute from the money she is earning from her newly started waitressing job, but could the rest be as her Christmas present? The killer was the price: £899 for, what I later discovered, was just a one-week trip. We have funded other school trips for her, but none was anywhere near as expensive.
I spent the night mulling it over and decided that no, she couldn’t and that I would have to tell her. I wrote her an email saying as much, but in the course of it I also told her a few home truths: that she is in the habit of taking just a little too much for granted and that, for example, she has, despite my repeated requests, never bothered to haul herself off her sofa, where she half-watches TV, half-texts her friends and dabbles in a little Facebooking if she has the time, to walk the few hundred feet down the lane to drop in on my stepmother, who is an invalid and very much cherishes little visits. I told her that it might be no skin off her nose, but that old folk are touched by such attention, that even a short 20-minute visit can cheer them up enormously.
I was not unpleasant but not did I pull my punches. I then sent her the email, asking her to text me as soon as she had read it. The trouble was that I felt awful. When she was born, a friend who then had two slightly older children remarked to me that ‘we need our children just as much as they need us’, and boy don’t I know it. Life would be unbearable if I knew my children disliked me. So I feared that my email laying it out straight would achieve something but not least that she would hate me. And until I spoke to her this afternoon on the phone, that has been at the back of my mind ever since. Happily, it seems she has not taken that point of view (and happily my wife agreed with me that £899 for a one-week trip was far too much).
. . .
In some ways the purpose of this entry, mentioning my unexpected thoughts about my brother, my fears of suffering a second heart attack and my fear that I might lose my daughter’s affections, is a strategy of sorts to allay those fears a little more if possible. I’m sure most of you reading this have been there, too. But there again, there’s nothing much wrong with that and very little to loose except readers deeply disappointed that I haven’t rattled on again for the umpteenth time about what a dog’s dinner the euro has become. And on that note . . .
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