this particular exercise for exactly a year, often good fun and always
enlightening. It’s so informative keeping up with the news as it’s reported from within mainland Europe, since so often, the media in this part of the world, Ireland and Britain, shows little interest in what’s happening in the rest of Europe.
To find out what’s happening on a day-by-day basis, especially in
France, is always rewarding. But this week is also time for
anniversaries, especially that on Friday, the 50th anniversary of the assassination of President Kennedy in Dallas on November 22, 1963. It’s quite true, everyone of a certain age remembers exactly where they were when they heard the news. As for myself, I was a third level student at university in the north of Ireland - I found the whole university business totally tedious and unproductive and couldn’t wait to escape into the real world. Being at university created some of the most boring years of my life! Yuk.
Anyway, to cut a long story short, that Friday night had seen the usual debate taking place in the main building of the university, a boring enough affair, but one way of passing the time. About eight o’clock, the debate finished and everyone wandered out into the main hall. All of a sudden, rumours began to fly that Kennedy had been shot and killed in Dallas. I had to wait until 10pm that night, when I got back to my digs and turned on the Radio 4 news to find out the whole story.
For my wife, Bernadette Quinn, it was even more dramatic and shocking, because she had met him during his visit to Ireland in June, 1963. She was then working in the foreign ministry in Dublin and one night during his visit, the ministry staged an elaborate reception and dinner for the US president. It was there that she met Kennedy, who was so smitten with her that he wanted to take her back to Washington with him. We all know what he had in mind! Her boss overheard the conversation; he had been enjoying the refreshments as had everyone else and he told the US president that no way was he going to take away the young woman working in his department. Not the short of thing you normally tell a US president! A short time later, an ominous sign happened, a portent of what was to come in Dallas. Bernadette was at a cocktail reception in the ministry she worked for when one of the diplomats, a little worse for wear, accidentally spilled a glass of red wine, which drenched her white cocktail dress. An ominous omen indeed.
On a more personal note, the present is also time for remembering a good friend in France, Francois Bonal, who died exactly 10 years ago, in November, 2003, aged 89. He was a remarkable man, born in 1914, the year the Great War started. His father had been a great military man, who was killed in that war. Francois himself went to the French military academy, St Cyr, from 1933 to 1935 then completed his training at the
cavalry school in Saumur, from 1935 to 1936. His military career ended 30 years later, in 1967, when he retired from the French army. Then he found a new vocation, in Champagne, to where he moved when he left military service. He went on to become the head of public relations for the CIVC, the body based in
Épernay that represents both the wine growers and the Champagne houses.
It was a role custom made for him; he travelled the world many times over, promoting the cause of Champagne and had friends of all ages, nationalities and religions on a global basis. My wife and I became great friends with him during our various trips to Champagne. He was fascinated with my wife’s bottom and any time we met, he couldn’t resist feeling its contours for himself! Everyone took this in good part, just part of the French way of life! If the same thing had happened today’s politically correct world, he could have got himself into trouble!
I always remember one of our trips to Champagne, when he organised for us to stay in the marvellous Royal Champagne hotel, which is six km outside Épernay. The rooms there are like self-contained apartments, looking out on the gardens and the vineyards. The first night we were there, Francois told us to settle in and enjoy ourselves; we could have whatever we wanted food and drinkwise in the restaurant. The third person on the trip was a very pleasant journalist from a drinks publication based in Glasgow and the three of us had a very animated and enjoyable time over dinner. It turned out that between the three of us, we had managed to consume nine bottles of Champagne, followed up by a generous night cap of cognac. Yet amazingly, we were all out in the vineyards with Francois next
morning at 9am, as right as rain, close to the famous windmill that’s such an icon for Champagne.
Francois was extremely knowledgeable on every aspect of Champagne, so much so that he wrote 11 books on the subject, including his gold covered book of Champagne, which is an encyclopaedia on the subject. It’s a vast book and has so much detail that since it was published, no-one has thought of trying to better it. Francois was such a wonderful host and he introduced us to the Champagne industry at all levels, from the poshest of the big Champagne houses to the small workaday firms that are so down-to-earth. It was a marvellous education in the history of this particular aspect of the French wine business and it’s a sign of the respect in which Francois was held that after his death, one of the streets near the CIVC in Épernay was renamed in his honour. So if you ever see the rue Francois Bonal in that delightful town, the story behind it is well worth exploring!
On a more sombre note, I saw that last Friday, Libération, the left wing daily had decided to do an issue without photographs, to highlight the importance of photography in the media and to help promote the great photo exhibition that’s currently on at the Grand Palais in Paris. That same day, last Friday, a gunman tried to shoot up a local TV station in Paris, then on Monday of this week, it became much more serious when the gunman stormed into the reception area of Libération in Paris and shot a 23 year old photographer, seriously injuring him. The poor guy had been working as a freelance and he was literally on the first morning of his new staff job at the paper. The gunman then escaped and went on to shoot up the headquarters of the Societé Génerale bank at La Défense. As of Wednesday morning, the gunman is still
on the loose.
Meanwhile, in Nice, all kinds of awful things have been happening. Early last Friday morning, many parts of the Cote d’Azur were hit by winds of 100 kph as well as by a massive storm of hailstones. Then early
last Friday morning, a gang of 20 very drunk male teenagers burst into a bakery in Nice and trashed the place, injuring a lot of people in the process, including the woman manager and five policemen, one of whom suffered serious hand injuries. Another frightful incident took place on Saturday in the north of
Nice, when a 24 year old woman fell to her death from the window of a fourth floor apartment. After she died, the police were unable to say whether she fell out accidentally or had been pushed. It just shows, behind all the glitz and glamour of Nice and the Cote d’Azur, there’s an awful lot of crime.
Dreadful weather events have been happening everywhere, not just in the Philippines and in Sardinia. Last week, an Air France flight took off from Rio de Janeiro bound for Paris, but it hadn’t got far when it ran into a ferocious hail storm and had to return to Rio. Fortunately, no-one was hurt, but the amount of damage the hailstones did to the plane was unbelievable. Back in June, 2009, an Air France plane on the same route wasn’t so fortunate and came down in the south Atlantic during bad weather conditions.
Amid all these stories, the mood in France gets worse by the day. One secret report drawn up for the French Interior Ministry, but no longer secret, since it was leaked to Le Figaro, said that such was the level of
anger and frustration in France that the country was now in an insurrectionary mood. One centre right leader, Francois Bayrou, said openly on radio the other day that France is on the verge of insurrection. At the same time, President Hollande’s ratings have fallen to an all time low, with a mere 15 per cent
approval rating. Will we see a rerun of 1968 or even 1789? We’ll have to wait and see, but the present political situation in France and across much of mainland Europe is now so febrile that nothing can be ruled out, including insurrections, even political assassinations. No wonder that the Front National in France has teamed up with its equivalent in the Netherlands, the Freedom Party, and that they seem set to make lots of hay in both countries in the European elections next May. It’s hardly surprising France has returned to recession and the tax burden is getting ever worse.
In one recent case, a woman in the small town of Peyrac in the Lot has seen her property tax increase from €411 last year to €6,050 this year. People in France have to pay two local taxes, one on their property and another to fund the municipality they live in, the taxe d’habitation. The mere fact that the government has suspended the very unpopular ecotax on heavy lorries will have little impact on the general bad mood. Meanwhile, lots of totally false stories are circulating on the Internet, all against the left. One false story is that the justice minister has a son who’s doing time for murder, while another is that President Hollande has a secret daughter by the Socialist candidate for the mayor of Paris. These rumours are typical of the fractious spirit of unrest that’s sweeping the country. But I was very amused by a photomontage in Le
Monde’s magazine the other day which showed Hollande and Angela Merkel apparently enjoying croissants, bretzels and orange juice while they were having breakfast together in bed!
One of the latest controversies in France could only happen there. The government is planning to bring in legislation that will penalise people who make use of sex workers. There’s been an outcry against this and many celebrities have come out against this proposed new law, including Catherine Deneuve and Charles Aznavour. One of the petitions against what’s planned is headed "Ne touche pas ma pute" - "Don’t touch my whore"! It could only happen in France! And talking of odd things, the other night in Toulouse, about
midnight, a young man called Sébastien Bousquet was out having a look at the night sky when he saw three very strange bright objects. He concluded that they weren’t aircraft, helicopters, Chinese fire lanterns or meteorological balloons, they had to be be OVNIs, the French word for ufos. So this has become the latest OVNI sighting in France.
At least, there was one piece of pleasant news from nearby Switzerland. The Belle Époque steamer that has long plied on Lac Léman (Lake Geneva) has been well restored after 18 months' work that has brought the steamer back to its original state, although it now has some very modern navigational equipment. She makes a lovely sight sailing to and fro on the lake!
Meanwhile, back at the ranch here in Dublin, the other day I met someone I hadn’t seen for a good while. He worked as one of the local street cleaners and binmen until nearly five years ago, when he reached
retirement age with the city council. Since then, he was telling me, he has been driven demented because he has nothing to do all day. And he explained all this to me within earshot of his wife! It just shows, the old concept of retirement age is totally outdated, yet no-one is coming up with any solutions, so that people who thanks to modern medicine, have many years of productive life left in them, can continue making a useful contribution to society.
Also in Dublin, I see the latest example of indolence in the Obama administration in Washington. The last US ambassador to Ireland retired last December and hasn’t been replaced. That means it could be well over a year before a new one is appointed. Since Irish-US diplomatic relations were initiated in 1927, there’s
never been such a gap between ambassadors, until now. Just shows. On his two visits to Ireland, Obama was full of enthusiasm for the country and its people; the reality is slightly different, as this ambassadorial delay shows what the US really thinks of Ireland.
I also saw for myself in Dublin this week the last incident of pavement pissing, which has become so prevalent here. I was walking past one of the top luxury hotels in the city centre when I saw someone behaving oddly. It was a young down and out, sprawled out on a bench, penis in hand, gaily pissing onto the pavement, creating his own equivalent of the fountain in the lake at Geneva. Really disgusting, but then, Dublin city centre is overrun with homeless down and outs and no-one in authority seems the slightest bit interested in helping them and in the process, solving the problem. Typical! It’s just as bad in the UK, of course, where so many errors are being made in processing benefits to people who genuinely need them that if it weren’t for all the food banks that have been set up, they would go hungry.
The JKF anniversary this week is taking up a lot of media time and space, but while we should honour the sudden end of a remarkable US President, we shouldn’t forget the very pressing problems of the present!