Alas, my hopes were short lived. I tuned into the first show and found Carla’s family reminiscences as boring as hell. The whole programme sounded diabolical; to use an Irish vernacular phrase, it was “pure shite”. I didn’t even bother to listen to parts two and three.
There’s something on in the Paris region at the moment that is due to run until July 6 and sounds a hell of a sight more interesting. The Vexin regional park covers a vast area to the west of Paris and is so big that it runs into Normandy. The Festival du Vexin offers 21 classical music recitals in villages through the region over the coming weeks and if you’re in that part of France, it’s sounds as if it could be worthwhile dropping in, the complete opposite of the Carla Bruni experience on Radio 2.
Something else that could be very useful in the immediate future is SNCF’s cut price sale on rail travel. It’s running until June 6 and applies to travel to over 300 destinations throughout France not just from Paris but such regional stations as Bordeaux, Deauville, Montpellier and Nice. You can do a day trip for as little as €10,while a second class overnight sleeper is just €40.Just don’t ask whether all the trains will fit the stations they’re going to! SNCF will take a long time to live down the fiasco of all the new regional trains that are being built according to incorrect measurements, meaning that many older station platforms have to have 20 cm shaved off them so the new trains will fit.
While we’re still on the subject of good news, Charles Aznavour is currently celebrating his 90th birthday and he is still performing. He’s the last surviving big name of the traditional chanson francaise and this summer, he’s performing in a whole lot of venues, including London and Warsaw, while this autumn, he’s due to perform in Moscow and Antwerp. He has recently performed in Armenia-his parents were Armenians.
Another piece of pleasant news came from Lac Leman or Lake Geneva at the weekend. At Vevey, there was a parade of steamers used on the lake by the Compagnie Generale de Navigation and all the old boats looked remarkably sprightly and shipshape. More than 10,000 spectators turned out to see them.
I was also intrigued by the English couple who moved to France and opened an hotel in the style of the late 1930s.Barry and Caroline Selwood opened La Belle Époque hotel in a small village near Limoges, in south-western France. When they saw the hotel for the first time, four years ago, it was in a very derelict state, but since then they have invested much labour, love and cash into recreating the exact style of 80 years ago. They found that France is a wonderful country for sourcing old furniture and artefacts and now, since February, the whole place is up and running for anyone who wants to do a trip back in time. The couple are so devoted to everything old that they even go to the supermarket dressed in the style of yesteryear, driving their 1939 Sunbeam Talbot Ten car.
Now for the not so good news. Mystery surrounds the assassination of Helene Pastor, the Monagesque property heiress and her driver, who were both shot dead recently in Nice. No motive for the attack has been found. Mme Pastor was so well liked in Monaco that she was regarded as an honorary member of the royal family. The whole family had steered clear of any scandals, so why a suspected Italian mafia gang carried out the killings remains an utter mystery.
Another strange murder happened a few days ago in the little village of Breteville-le-Robet, just south-east of Caen in Normandy. It’s a sleepy little place, like many another Normandy village, but the mayor, a former insurance salesman, Dominique Le Boucher, was castrated and murdered by someone who suspected him of having an affair with his wife. The supposed murderer later killed himself. What you might call a typical French crime of passion.
In Belgium,the other day, a man was killed when his scarf caught in an escalator at a railway station: just shows how careful you have to be with machinery like that.
But at least on a joyous note, Sophie Loren turned up at the Cannes film festival, looking magnificent at the age of 79.She was welcomed like a true queen of the screen. And talking of the screen, I see that Netflix is going to start in France in September. It has commissioned an epic series, set in Marseilles, but this won’t be ready in time for the launch.
There was mayhem of a different kind in the Mid-Pyrénées and Aquitaine a few days ago. Ferocious winds and rain killed three people and brought down many trees and power lines. On the breathtaking Millau viaduct, gusts of 124 kph were recorded. Let’s hope this isn’t a portent for the summer!
More mayhem came the other day with the big fire at the Glasgow School of Art. It was designed just over a century ago in the Art Nouveau style by perhaps the most renowned architect Scotland has ever produced, Charles Rennie Macintosh. Fortunately, much of the fabric of the building was saved and about 70 per cent of its artefacts ,but even though a massive restoration is promised, sadly,I don’t think the iconic building will ever be quite the same again.
Then I noted the death,at the age of 90,of General Wojciech Jaruzelski, the last communist ruler of Poland. When democracy came to Poland in 1989,he managed to be the country’s first “free” president, having previously ordered onslaughts on anyone who supported the Solidarity movement. We were in Poland while the communist regime was still in full flight. We found the shops often half empty with people suddenly forming vast queues on the rumour of some consumer product in short supply suddenly becoming available. We also found that it was perfectly possible to wander round late at night in perfect safety-not a sign of any trouble at all. That trip had some bizarre moments, too. One skyscraper hotel we had been booked into was a perfect example-we took the lift up to the 10th floor, to our supposed room, only to find that when we got out of the lift,there was only a platform there. The room had yet to be built!
Finally, we’ve had the euro elections and Marine Le Pen of the Front National in France and Nigel Farage of Ukip in England, have both done exactly what they promised to do. What happens now in Europe is anyone’s guess. Here in Ireland, the electorate delivered a devastating blow to the Irish Labour Party, which may well prove terminal. The coalition government has another two years left, but few people believe now it will survive anything like that. It’s a Chinese curse, to live in interesting times and we certainly do now after the euro elections.
Maybe Anne Hidalgo is right; she is the new mayor of Paris and she wants to introduce a permanent 30 kph speed limit in the city, to help cut down pollution. There’s a lot to be said for going slow and taking it easy! And just to finish on a comic note. I mentioned last week about the brilliant graffiti about Enda Kenny, the taoiseach (prime minister) in Ireland. It was clean and clever and brought to mind the graffiti, not clean but very clever, I saw years ago in a pub loo in the Scottish borders. Below a drawing of two cubes entwined was the description “Picasso’s balls”!