It was a well-researched, gutsy and very detailed piece about the joys of this little known appellation from the south of France. Bandol reds show the true colours and tastes of Provencal wine and the article gave a definitive run through on all the variations of Bandol wine, red as well as white, and the best-known makers. It was a mouthwatering piece and a welcome change from the absolute mayhem that’s the general news coverage in any media outlet these days.
It certainly beat the story about the Paris smog, which has been hitting the headlines in recent days. Cool nights and warm days have helped produce all the recent pollution in Paris and now, some experts say that the fine particulates in the atmosphere that are causing the problems aren’t French at all, but are coming from industrial production in Germany. The smog warning has been extended in recent days to 30 departments in northern and north-east France and the problem has extended as far south as Geneva. At least people in Paris have been able to benefit from free public transport, surprise, surprise, just days before the elections for the mayor of Paris!
More of the usual, too, in Paris. On Monday morning, it was announced that a luxury jewellers in the rue Saint-Honoré, close to the place Vendome, had been robbed of an undisclosed amount of stock. These jewellery robberies in Paris and in Cannes have been happening so often that they are almost routine by now! In another strange story from France, a TGV train travelling through Alsace last Sunday hit and killed a 48 year old man on a bicycle who was trying to get across a level crossing. The TGV driver didn’t even know what had happened until the TGV pulled into Mulhouse station,40km down the line, with the body of the cyclist still stuck to the front ‘nose’ of the train.
In times like this, it’s little wonder that much is being made of the statue of the Virgin Mary in a house in a remote corner of the Ardennes in Belgium. Hundreds of people are said to have visited the house in recent weeks and to have seen for themselves how the statue lights itself up at night. All kinds of expert solutions have been offered, none of them entirely convincing.
Talking of French unhappiness, Closer magazine seems to have done it again. It’s now suggesting that the big affair between Francois Hollande and Julie Gayet is at the point of rupture. Who is going to be the next hapless partner of Hollande? The president himself has now received death threats from jihadists, which is a very worrying development. But the French public has long since abandoned its support for Hollande while along comes 85 year Jean Marie Le Pen, who is now suggesting that his daughter Marine, who now leads the Front National, will top the presidential poll in 2017.Before then, in two months’ time, we’ll have the European parliament elections, and it looks as if the Front National in France and UKIP in the UK, are going to sweep all before them. A strong right wing movement has sprung to life across Europe, with an emphasis on local loyalties. Just look at the recent poll in the Venice region of northern Italy, which showed that most inhabitants wanted to say ‘ciao’ to Italy. It’s hardly surprising that George Soros, the US investor and financial guru, who is rarely wrong with his economic predictions, says that unless positive action is taken, Europe now faces 25 years of Japanese style stagnation.
This resurgence of right-wing nationalism is nowhere more evident than in Russia, where it now resembles the fascist fervour that swept up nearly everyone in Germany in the last years of the 1930s. The similarities between Hitler and Putin are all too obvious, as Hilary Clinton pointed out the other day. With Russian nationalism now in very aggressive mode, Russia has become a very dangerous and unpredictable place, where political and military decisions are likely to made not on a rational basis, but in the heat of the moment. Exceedingly dangerous times lie ahead, but that’s not to say that the present crisis doesn’t owe much to the inept way in which the US handled the situation in Ukraine in recent months. The US tackled the Arab Spring in a totally inept fashion and it’s repeating the process in the Ukraine. Between American ineptitude and Russian hot headheadness, we’re in for some scary times!
Talking of scary times, will the missing Malaysian flight number MH 370 ever be found? On present indications, it seems as if this aviation mystery will never be solved. It all makes one crank theory, that the aircraft was abducted by UFOs, look positively respectable!
But at least, Paris as always has loads of interesting things for people to do. At the end of this month, in the Grand Palais,140 art galleries from 20 countries will be showing an outstanding selection of contemporary art. Then on April 6, the Paris marathon takes place, along the traditional (English) measurement of 26 miles and 385 yards. Competitors will start in the Champs-Elysées and go through such areas as the Bois de Vincennes and the Bois de Boulogne, which I presume will be devoid of transsexual ladies of the night for the occasion. For anyone with the puff to do it, the marathon is a great way of seeing plenty of Paris!
And there’s innovation in the air down in the far south-west, in Montpellier, where architects have designed a very striking block of flats called L’Arbre Blanc. It will be 17 storeys high, or 56 metres, and the balconies of the 120 luxury apartments will be designed in such a way to make it look as if the whole structure has been thrown together in totally random order, almost like piles of sculptured paper in the Japanese style. The architectural design is certainly very inventive, in the best French style, and this €50 million development is due to be ready in 2017.
Two examples came up this week of the long standing French tradition of innovation. March 18 was the anniversary of the introduction of the first bus service in Paris, brought in on March 18, 1662, and horse drawn of course! Then on March 18, 1891, the first telephone links were established between London and Paris.
Here in Ireland, a Russian commentator said something the other day that was totally on the ball. He said that Ireland was fucked, brainwashed by the EU. He’s quite right and it’s extraordinary how none of the Irish political parties have the slightest criticism of how the EU is being run, or whether it’s right for Ireland to stick with the euro, which has caused so much financial mayhem since 2008. This unquestioning attitude towards the status quo is quite extraordinary and marks Ireland out from most other European countries, including its nearest neighbour, the UK.
A very succinct comment on the current state of affairs in Ireland came from a well-known newspaper columnist the other day, who said,quite simply, that the Irish government was riding her sideways with taxes. Perfectly true! Something I noticed the other day is indicative of the way the country is changing, becoming more bureaucratic, more uniform by the day.
One of the great attributes of Ireland has always been its individuality. Each town and village had its own individuals, who had their own distinctive way of doing things. All that of course is totally against the ethos of the EU! Over the past five years, a designer called Trevor Finnegan has been travelling the country taking photographs of old shops in towns and villages. Very often, they had very distinctive shopfronts, complete with very unusual typefaces for the name above the door. But sadly, over the past five years, nearly all of them have closed down. Many of them have been replaced by Spar, Centra and other mass market store groups, so that great individuality has been replaced by an utterly boring sameness. You go could to Centra shops in totally different parts of the country and find them exactly the same. How utterly boring! I think I’ll stick to a glass or two of Bandol, knowing that it represents a little of the great old style originality of Provence!