Last weekend saw the final farewell to another legendary figure, Florence Arthaud, the long distance sailor who was killed during the making of a reality TV series in Argentina. An escort of boats, all sounding their sirens, accompanied her ashes to their final resting place last Sunday, on the island of Saint- Honorat, off Cannes. Sailors on board the boats threw loads of white flowers into the sea.
Then there was the fatal shooting in Marseilles early on Sunday morning. One of the two men shot dead when they were trying to hold up an all- night shop turned out to have been one of the people who stormed a hospital in Toulon back in 2002, trying to rescue an accomplice who had been injured during a failed robbery.
A man who did something really daft over the weekend had to be rescued by fire brigade crews. The man was stociously drunk, yet despite that, managed to climb to the top of a construction crane on a building site in Juan- les- Pins in Provence. It took the firemen five hours to get the drunk down to ground level and they took him to the police station in Antibes to sleep it off.
The law also caught up with someone else in Provence the other day. A motorist had managed to avoid paying motorway tolls on the A8 motorway in the region on 57 occasions by tailgating other motorists as they drove through the toll plazas. But he was eventually found out and a judge in Grasse the other day fined him €1, 000 and ordered him to compensate the motorway company for loss of revenue.
Another extraordinary event happened at 6am the other morning at the main railway station in Toulouse. A naked man was seen chasing an African woman, before finally cornering her in the station. It turned out she was a prostitute from Madagascar, who had been in the man’ s hotel room. He claimed that she stole his bag containing his ID and €500 in cash, so when she fled the hotel, he followed in hot pursuit, oblivious to the fact that he had no clothes on. Both ended up being arrested.
There was more nudity on Monday evening, this time on television. It was the big theatrical awards presentation of the year, the Nuit des Molieres. A leading comedian, Sébastien Thierry, decided to devote his speech, in front of culture minister Fleur Pelerin, to the fact that out of the entire theatrical profession, the only people who can’ t go on the dole if they fall on hard times are playwrights. But Thierry came out to the podium to make his speech stark naked. It brought the house down, while the culture minister hid her face in her hands. What was even more amazing was that the television channel showing the event just carried on as normal, so viewers at home got excellent views of Thierry’ s birthday suit. Can you imagine the uproar if something similar happened on British television? The Mrs Grundys would have a field day.
The French prime minister, Manuel Valls, was in Dublin for two days at the end of last week. While there, he opened the new French Embassy just off Merrion Square in the city centre. He also praised Ireland’s economic recovery and said that the many steps Ireland had taken to improve its economy held lessons for France. But at least he can take some comfort from the fact the consumer confidence in France is at a five year high, even if unemployment remains stubbornly high at 3. 5 million.
Typically acerbic words came from Michael O’ Leary, the ceo of Ryanair. He said the other day, in an interview with Journal du Dimanche, that while he loved France and the French people, he didn’ t love the French political class. He accused them of destroying the French economy and driving it towards bankruptcy with all its protectionist policies. But the ruling Socialist Party soon turned the tables on the Ryanair man, accusing the airline of “ borderline fraud” .
More surprise was expressed over rail services in France; many travellers and commuters were surprised to see that for 2014, France had the fourth best rail network in Europe, in terms of punctuality and service. Many in France would rate the service far worse than that. The worst punctuality record was for regional trains in the Alpes Maritime/ Var region of south- east France, where last year, 20 per cent of trains were late.
A new express road route in Paris is also promising more than it is delivering. On the A1 motorway linking Paris and Charles de Gaulle airport, a new express lane is being opened, for buses and taxis. But there’ s a big snag- this new fast lane will run from the airport to Paris but there are no plans to open one in the opposite direction.
Another infrastructural project is the upcoming investment of €170 million in three new underground electricity lines in the Alpes Maritime/Var region. The combined length of the cables will be 107km, with the longest cable, 65km long, destined to become the longest high voltage cable in the world. All this is needed because the region only produces 10 per cent of the electricity it consumes.A
n interesting tourism development is on the horizon in the west of France. The 107 metre high sand dune known as either Pyla or Pilat, on the west coast, near Bordeaux, is the largest sand dune in Europe. It attracts close to two million visitors a year. The State has now started the process of buying out the 250 landowners who own the dune, at a cost of €5. 5 million, so that facilities can be improved. One likely improvement will be a stairway to the top of the dune. But it’ s all going to take a while as the buy out process will take at least three years.
On the political front, Jean-Marie Le Pen of the Front National, has managed to get himself into more trouble, by stashing away €2. 2 million in a secret account in Switzerland. A total of €1. 7million of the hoard was accounted for by ingots and gold bullion.
The name of the most illustrious French politician of the 20th century came up the other day. April 28 was the anniversary of the resignation of General de Gaulle as the French president in 1969, after he lost a referendum on creating more decentralisation. That summer, he came to Ireland on holiday, but his respite from politics was brief, as he died in November the following year, 1970. Few presidents since have come close to his towering presence. He had brought France through the turmoil of Algeria, then the 1968 student uprising.
More slippage too in the world of wine. Spain has the largest area of land used for cultivating grapes of any wine producing country in the world, but France has now been ousted from second spot by China. However, despite this, France still produces the biggest quantity of wine anywhere in the world.
A legendary French figure, Brigitte Bardot, who these days devotes herself to animal welfare, has up to now collected the fruit being thrown out by the Monoprix supermarket in St Tropez, and used it to help feed the 50 or so animals she keeps at home. But now, a new manager at the store has stopped the practice, so everyone in the town is keen to know what she’ s going to do now.
I happened to tune in the other day to some wonderful Baroque music written by a once legendary French composer, Michel Richard Delalande, who was born in Paris in 1657 and who died in Versailles in 1726. He was for long the composer and organist at the court of King Louis XIV. Married twice, the name of Delalande’ s first wife was unusual- Anne Rebel. He may have written music for the royal court, but these days, it still has magnifence in its melodies.
Here in Ireland, more odd news. Declan Ryan owns and runs Arbutus Bread in Cork, a renowned artisan bakery. He recently wrote to the minister in charge of job creation about the need for bakery apprenticeships in Ireland, and got a letter back, written by the minister’ s private secretary, addressed to: Dear Mr Bread.
In Germany,its legendary reputation for efficiency is coming unstuck. Last July, a Malaysian Airlines plane flying over eastern Ukraine was shot down, probably by rebels armed by Russia. Several days before this happened, the German government knew exactly how dangerous the airspace over eastern Ukraine was becoming, yet did nothing to make sure this was widely known, including in the aviation industry. And in eastern Ukraine today, the west seems to be ignoring the fact that the rebels are now more heavily armed than ever, thanks to Russia, and a big flare- up seems certain in the very near future.
The UK general election boring campaign, thankfully drawing to a close, has seemed remarkably petty minded and parochial. I can’ t remember even seeing or hearing any references to the deteriorating situation in eastern Europe,but the way things are going, no doubt on Friday morning of next week, we will wake up to find David Cameron still in Number 10.