Three years ago, it moved just around the corner, to the rue de l' Abbaye, but even its new location couldn’t save it. La Hune was famed for its collections of books on art and literature and among the many notables of the Left Bank who frequented it, Simone de Beauvoir and Jean- Paul Sartre were among the best- known.
The new mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, is certainly forcing change when it comes to environmentally friendly acts. Her latest scheme is to reclaim some of the most historic squares in Paris from traffic and parking and make them pedestrian and child- friendly places. Among the squares set to benefit from this makeover are the place de la Bastille, at the heart of the French revolution over 200 years ago.
Somewhere else that looks set to benefit from a makeover is the former department store of La Samaritaine, with its very distinctive looking facade. It closed down 10 years ago, in 2005, and years of wrangling followed over attempts to reconstruct it, but at long last, the green light has been given to plans to make over the whole site. Hopefully, elements of the distinctive design will be retained in whatever new uses the site is given.
But as always in France, bureaucracy gets in the way. In this particular story, it's not the state or local government that's the culprit, but the Catholic church. André Abbas and Audrey Schinetti are a couple living in Toulon; what they wanted to do was get married and have their daughter baptised all on the same day. They booked the church and the restaurant for the reception to follow, but their local parish in Toulon then told them that they couldn't be married less than a month before the baptism. Their plans were thrown into disarray; it' s hard to see what the point is of separating marriage and baptism like that, just proving that Church rules can be every bit as unbending and pointless as state- enforced rules.
Maybe they should follow President Hollande' s example. He has lived with various women but has managed to avoid matrimony. For years, he was living with Segolene Royale, who is the mother of his four children. The couple parted after her failed bid for the presidency in 2007, but by that time, he was already in a relationship with Valérie Trierweiler, from whom he separated last year. Since then, he has been involved with Julie Gayet, who is 20 years his junior. Recently, she made an appearance as his official partner at a function in France, but despite this, rumours abound in France that Hollande and Royale are an item once again, following a series of joint appearances they' ve made. Talk about playing the field!
Hollande himself, despite his abysmal poll ratings, is already preparing for the 2017 presidential race, where former president Nicolas Sarkozy looks less than impressive and Marine Le Pen of the Front National is waiting in the wings to cause a real political upset. The latest economic figures show that the French economy is starting to rebound from the slump, although this isn't having any effect on the close on 3. 5 million people out of work. New jobs just aren' t being created to plug the gap and any serious decline in the unemployment levels may be too late to help Hollande in two years' time.
It was hardly surprising that the French declined to get involved in the commemorations for the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo earlier this month. It wasn't France' s finest hour, so naturally, the official emphasis was on celebrating on the same day, June 18, the anniversary of General de Gaulle's famous speech to the French people in 1940, courtesy of the BBC. The first transmission of the speech was marred by technical problems, so that few people in France heard it, so it had to be retransmitted. It's funny how de Gaulle still has a hold over so many older people in France and just yesterday, a 73 year old pensioner, who's a political activist, climbed a 50 metre high electricity pylon near Narbonne in the south- west. His actions meant that some power supplies for Spain had to be cut off, although there wasn't any actual interruption to services. But what was intriguing was that the pensioner, once he was atop the pylon, unveiled a poster calling for de Gaulle to be re- elected president. This is what one might call an impossible proposition, since the great general (France, c' est moi) has been dead for over 40 years. Next thing will be the illiberal lobby, anti- immigration and anti- everything else, calling for the reinstatement of the Nazi collaborator Maréchal Pétain and his Vichy government.
As for the anti-migrant lobby, Sarkozy caused a storm of protest the other day when he likened the flood of migrants into Europe from the Middle East and Africa to water gushing out of a pipe. Someone else who was making a lot of noise ended up in court, a fate that won' t befall Sarkozy. The woman in question runs a market stall in Amiens in northern France and she was making so much noise shouting her wares that she ended up with a court conviction and fine. Politicians will never be similarly harrassed!
One of the news highlights of the year has been going on, the Baccalaureate exams, which this year have been sat by over 680, 000 students. The youngest was 13 and the oldest 93; in the latter case, the candidate failed them last year, so he decided to persevere this year. Hopefully, he'll have better results this time round.
Someone who is undertaking a massive exercise in the name of charity is an Irishwoman called Liz Ryan, who has lived in the Algarve for years. To celebrate her upcoming 50th birthday, she's going to do a charity cycle race from Paris to Nice in September, then an equally arduous cycle trek in Portugal the following month. She aims to raise funds for the Portuguese branch of the Make- a- Wish foundation, which grants wishes to seriously ill children aged between three and 18.
But another cycling run could be in for trouble. The annual Tour de France is coming up soon; one of its most famous stretches is the Alpes de Huez, with their incredible hairpin bends. This year, these bends were designated as the penultimate stage of the race, but there' s a slight snag. It seems that 250, 000 tonnes of rock are poised to crash down on the road, loosened by all the recent wet weather.
Another piece of encouraging news emerged from the St- Nazaire shipyard in north- west France. The STX shipyard there is building the world' s biggest cruise liner, Harmony of the Seas, for the Royal Caribbean Line. The ship has just taken to the water for the first time, while fitting out will continue until the spring of next year. She is due to do her first passenger- carrying cruises in the late spring of next year. The new ship is so large that she will have seven distinct neighbourhood themes.
One piece of real estate news has really caught everyone' s imagination, the 11 hectare estate owned by actor Johnny Depp near St- Tropez, which he' s selling. He bought the place in 2001 but now wants to sell it for EUR27 million, three times what he originally paid for it. The estate is so complex that it's almost like a small village. When he was in a 14 year partnership with the French star Vanesse Paradis, this was home, but that relationship ended and Depp is now married to Amber Heard, so he wants to get rid of the estate.
Another death linked to a reality TV show has rocked France. A young acrobat fell to her death during the filming at Cap Ferret lighthouse, on the west coast of France, near Bordeaux, for the show, France's Favourite Monument. It' s only three months since 10 people were killed in a helicopter crash in Argentina during filming of another reality TV show. Those who died then included Camille Muffat, one of France' s best ever swimmers and Florence Arthaud, a top French sailor.
The anniversary of another death was marked in the village of Opio, just outside Grasse in Provence, the other day. In 1986, Coluche, one of France' s greatest ever humorists and comedians, was killed in Opio in a motorbike crash. He was only 41 when he died. Coluche was very popular, especially as he was so irreverent towards politicians. His real name was Michel Colucci. What a pity he isn' t around today- he'd have a vast amount of fun at the expense of the current bunch of decrepit international politicians. In Opio the other day, 4, 000 motor cyclists as well as several thousand other spectators, gathered to honour the memory of Coluche.
But someone else from Provence has been given the chance of a normal life. Three year old Léa Baba from the village of Le Puy, between Draguignan and Fréjus, was born with various heart deformities. But a few days ago, she underwent extensive heart surgery that will hopefully mean that the little girl has a normal life ahead of her.
Today, June 24, is the anniversary of a notable event in the world of art, for it was on this day, way back in 1909, that a 19 year old Spanish painter called Picasso, opened the first exhibition of his work, in Paris. Soon afterwards, he began work in what has become known as his Blue Period, leading to immense fame and fortune.
A new book that has just come out will intrigue all who love France, the French people and their way of life. It's How the French Think: An Affectionate Portrait of an Intellectual People. It's by Sudhir Hazareesingh, who comes from Mauritius and who is now a politics fellow at Balliol College, Oxford. He elaborates on all the intellectual movements in France, like the structuralist movement, the last big idea in French thinking to have had a dramatic impact on Anglo- Saxon thinking, back in thr 1970s and 1980s. He also highlights intellectual gullibility, such as that shown by Jean- Paul Sartre when he returned from a trip to the USSR in 1954 and made an utterly ridiculous statement: "Freedom of expression in the Soviet Union is total". The exact opposite was of course the case.
Hazareesingh also quantifies another typically French idea, that of an utopian community promulgated in the earlier 19th century by Charles Fourier. When he set up his community, one of its benefits was abundant access to sexual pleasure, in which women could enjoy complete sexual liberation. Definitely one of those French ideas that deserves to be more widely promoted!
On the international front, Greece' s economic woes seem to be slipping out of the headlines a bit, as hopefully, a deal will be struck. But in Armenia, protests continue unabated against the huge rises in the cost of electricity. Armenia is closely allied to Russia and is suffering from the latter country's economic woes, but that hasn't stopped ferocious protests taking place in Yerevan, the Armenian capital.
Also on the international front, the biography of Richard Desmond, the owner of Express Newspapers in London, has been getting faint praise. The London Times said that his method of doing business has been to fuck everyone else, before they fucked him. Desmond has made countless millions out of his media interests, which over the years have included top shelf magazines with such hilarious titles as The Home Organist. But that wealth hasn't extended to giving the newspaper journalists who work for him proper pay rises.
I'm also indebted to the London Times for a lovely literal the other day. It meant to refer to a "think tank". Instead, it talked about a "think thank". Tanks for the memories!
Sad anniversaries in Ireland have been compounded by the dreadful balcony collapse in Berkeley, California, last week, which killed six third level students from Ireland- five were from Dublin, while another was an Irish- American woman. It has caused outpourings of grief. This week has seen the 30th anniversary of the crash of the Air India plane 300 km off the south- west coast of Ireland, while earlier this month, the anniversary of the 1972 plane crash near Heathrow that killed a dozen Irish business leaders going to Brussels has merited little general recall.
And then in the midst of everything, the price of alcohol, which is 70 per cent dearer in Ireland than the EU average, is set to rise again. In a bid to discourage binge drinking, the government is being urged to make the minimum cost of a bottle of wine close to EUR10. We can't drink to that!