The postcard was delivered a few days ago to Theresa Pailla, the great- grand- daughter of the person to whom it had been addressed. The writing on the card is still perfectly legible; it referred to an order of yarn for a spinning mill owned by Theresa’s ancestor, who died in 1898.
As usual, disasters have been happening a’ plenty in France. At the start of this week, the basilica of Saint- Donatien in Nantes in north- western France, caught fire. Apparently, workmen had been waterproofing the roof of the basilica, built between 1872 and 1879, when the roof went on fire. The blaze was indeed spectacular and it’s a sign of changing media times that the most dramatic photos of it were captured on Twitter, photos which newspapers ended up using.
Matters were made worse because a crane was being dismantled near the church, hampering access for fire fighters. But they eventually brought the blaze under control and saved precious objects inside the building, including the organ.
Then following last week’s heatwave, stormy weather broke across many areas of the country. In Provence last weekend, the beach at Carros near Nice had to be closed because of the high winds. In Antibes last Sunday morning, a month’ s worth of rain fell in just half an hour, while in Nice, also on Sunday morning, the city had hundreds of lightning strikes. The other day, the town of Gap, high up in the Alps, was suffering from much flooding; in places, the water was two metres deep.
By the start of this week, orange storm alerts were in place in 24 departments, mainly in the south- west. Just to add to the general misery, the mosquito season is in full swing in the south of France.
Before the storms came, parents who had children at an elementary school in Marseilles locked the doors shut in protect. A lack of air conditioning and the glass roof had meant an interior temperature in the building of 55 degrees C.
More bad news came in the form of a shooting in the small town of Marly, in the Nord department, near the Belgian border. A wedding party was driving along a street when someone in one of the cars fired a hunting gun; bullets hit a 19 year old woman who was minding her own business, walking along the pavement, killing her.
Then also at the weekend, three teenagers aged between 14 and 16, were mixing chemicals to make smoke grenades for some ridiculous war game called Airsoft, when the chemicals exploded, killing them. Another teenager was critically injured. The accident happened in a derelict house in the small hamlet of Bas- en- Basset in the Haute- Loire department.
In Corsica, bad weather resulted in four hikers being killed by a landslide. They were hiking the famed GR trail, which stretches for 180 km, when they were swept away by the landslide. A 63 year old Spanish hiker was hit by lightning, but miraculously survived.
Then near Béziers in the south, the other day, five former New Zealand rugby players did a touching haka style tribute to a former fellow player, Jerry Collins and his wife Alana, at the spot on the motorway where the pair were killed recently. Their young daughter, Ayla, is still in a critical condition in hospital.
At least, there was one piece of good news from Menton the other day. An 80 year old Italian man was swimming 150 metres offshore when he got into difficulties. He was spotted by a fellow swimmer and the rescue services were alerted. When they reached the elderly swimmer, he was unconscious, but was brought ashore and is expected to make a full recovery.
Despite a controversial law put into effect last January 1, effectively banning the Uber app taxi service, it has now announced plans to extend to three more French cities, Marseilles, Nantes and Strasbourg. The law was brought in to help protect existing taxi services, but like so much else in France, what looks like the law in theory doesn’t always work out in practice.
Transavia, the low cost airline owned by the Air France- KLM group, has started its new service between Orly in Paris and Dublin. Fares are reasonable, from as little as €40 one way, including all taxes.Transavia is busy rolling out lots of new routes this summer, from Orly as well as regional airports such as Lyon, Nantes and Strasbourg. Meanwhile, its parent, Air France looks like having to do a lot of slimming down to stay on an even financial keel.
But if you want a real bargain, go to the small town of Berrien in Finistere in Brittany, where the mayor, in a bid to halt its depopulation, has put eight plots of land, each of 800 square metres, on sale for €1 per square metre. He wants new people to come and live in the town, which has 987 inhabitants, but successful applicants have to commit to building a house on their land within two years. Over 300 applications came in from all over the world and about 10 per cent of them are being taken seriously. A couple of months ago, in April, the mayor of a village in Normandy, Champ- du-Boult, made an identical offer for selling land, which also had an enthusiastic response.
While all this is going on, the sculpture at Versailles called the queen’ s vagina, by British- Indian sculptor Anish Kapoor, is still hitting the headlines. A native of Mumbai in India, but based in England, he’s one of the world’s leading sculptors of his generation, although under- represented in France. But his piece in the gardens of Versailles has really created shock waves; perhaps it’s question of Marie- Antoinette telling the plebs to eat her out, rather than settling for mere cake!
Dominique Strauss- Kahn also created lots of headlines for his trial on charges of aggravated pimping, for which he was formally cleared last week. But this might open a new problem for him. His current partner is a former TV presenter of Moroccan origin, as is DSK himself; the two of them spend most of their time these days in Morocco. But some time ago, DSK said that if he was acquitted, he would make an honest woman of his current partner, which would make Myriam L’ Aouffir his fourth wife.
Despite all these calamities and shenanigans, France is putting a lot more money into tourism. It may be the most popular tourist destination in the world, with well over 80 million visitors a year, but often services are poor quality, while many French people are indifferent to say the least to the guests in their midst. The French government hopes to improve matters, so that by 2020, the country will be getting 100 million visitors annually.
One incident within the past few days at Charles de Gaulle airport didn’t help matters. A six year old, who was born in Paris, but who arrived at CDG on a flight from Cameroon, was detained for three days by airport police. They thought that her passport was forged, when it wasn’ t anything of the sort. And a group of African migrants, some 250 in all, have been stuck on the Italian border at Ventimiglia, trying to get into France, which has resolutely stopped them from crossing the frontier into France. No doubt Marine Le Pen of the Front National approves, even though she and the party she leads are being sued by her father for suspending his membership of the party.
Still, despite all the bureaucracy, a French entrepreneur has come up with a unique device that tells bikini wearers when they should put on more suncream. The bikini connecté has a waterproof UV sensor that sends a message to the wearer’ s smartphone. Marie Spinali of Spinali Design said the idea came to her when she saw someone getting sunburned on the beach.
A couple of striking anniversaries came up in the past few days. June 14 was the day on which the Nazis invaded Paris in 1940, a day of total shame in French history. But by the time the Nazi tanks were rolling through central Paris, two million Parisiens had already fled. Then more recently, on June 16 in 1961, the great Russian dancer Rudolf Nureyev fled from the Kirov Ballet group when it was on a visit to France. He disappeared at Le Bourget airport and promptly claimed asylum.
Another big anniversary is coming up tomorrow, June 18, the 200th anniversary of the Battle of Waterloo, which marked the end of Napoleon’s ambitions. The French would rather no- one mentioned a subject that’s still very touchy even after all this time, while the British have exactly the opposite point of view, not being able to get enough of all the commemorative stuff. Some historical sources say that if the battle, which was fought on a Sunday, had begun at 4 am rather than at 11 am, Napoleon would have been the victor.
As for French pm Manuel Valls, he has been all over the place in recent days. He visited Mayotte in the Indian Ocean, near Madagascar. It is a French overseas department and is one of the outermost regions of the EU; it also uses euro currency. Interestingly, its 200,000 inhabitants are mainly Muslim. They are determined to maintain their French connections. But Valls was no sooner back from Mayotte when he made a slip-up with Réunion, putting it in the Pacific Ocean, rather than the Indian Ocean!
On the international front, the astonishing inflexibility of the German system has been evident in the Germanwings air crash last March. The co- pilot, who crashed the plane, had been to see something like 40 doctors all of whom decided that he was unfit to fly. But because of German privacy laws, those doctors couldn’t communicate their findings to the co- pilot’ s employers, which seems little short of ludicrous.
Also on the international front, Christopher Lee, who made a name for himself in horror movies, died at the grand old age of 93. I remember one occasion when we were changing planes at Heathrow and saw that a scene from a Hammer Horror movie was being shot inside the airport. We got roped in as very temporary unpaid extras and a few months later, when the film was released, we duly went to the Dublin cinema where it was showing to get the briefest of brief movie appearances by ourselves. Blink and you’ d have missed it!
In the UK, too, Radio 4 gets more dreary by the day. These days, there seems little if anything of interest on this network apart from news bulletins, and even while they are a primary source of news, it’ s amazing how much they leave out. Only a couple of years ago,I remember a good friend here in Dublin saying to me that if he ever got laid up in hospital, he would quite happily listen to Radio 4 all day long. You wouldn’t want to try the same trick nowadays!
Here in Dublin, the iconic Clery’ s department store in central Dublin has closed down, putting nearly 500 people out of work. The government keeps telling people how wonderfully the economy is doing, but many suspect a high degree of pr hype. Clery’ s is right opposite the GPO in O’ Connell Street, the centre of the 1916 Easter Rising. Next year is the centenary and it would be suitably ironic if, come those celebrations, that the former Clery’ s store is a derelict wreck. And talking about the state of the Irish economy, I see that the price of stamps is going up yet again, from July 1. It’ s one way of ensuring accelerated decline in an already declining market- put up prices. These days, just how many people send a letter, unless it’s for business?
The other day in Dublin, a desperately ill man, fed- up with the many shortcomings of the mental health services in Ireland, tried to hang himself on the railings outside the Irish parliament. He was saved by a member of that parliament, and others, with just 20 seconds to spare. Also in Ireland, the huge volume of protest against the new water charges rumbles on, although you’ d never guess it from most of the mainstream media. Last weekend saw many events around the country where water bills were ceremoniously burned, yet all this went largely unreported.
The comments of a Glasgow- based sex worker on RTÉ Radio 1 a couple of days ago created a right stir, but her remarks on a previous job went almost unnoticed. She said that previously, she had worked in banking for nine years, which she said was as horrific as the sex trade, describing banking as corporate prostitution. Proper order!
The perilous situation in Greece is also making waves in Ireland. Professor Ray Kinsella, a distinguished economist in Ireland, has accused the EU of acting in a short- sighted way towards Greece, displaying neither vision nor commonsense. He singled out German politicians for particular criticism. And a letter writer to the Irish Times had a neat summing up. He pointed out that Ukraine was in the same economic position as Greece but wasn’t getting dumped on with the same scorn for the simple reason that Ukraine is a key element in the American power play against Russia. On the other hand, the Greeks are being denied the chance to set the anti- austerity agenda for the rest of Europe.
I can’t end this week’ s missive without mentioning the demise of Mary Mulvihill in Dublin at the young age of 55. She was a real dynamo, a journalist, author and broadcaster who cared passionately about encouraging women in science and revealing the history of Irish science, especially the part played by women. She was full of passion and energy and was due to take part in a big conference in Dublin within the next few days on the subject. Until a few weeks ago, she was still in full flight, before she was stilled by a sudden illness, which ended in her death at the end of last week. I had worked with her on occasion, so I was well aware of just how good she was at her job; she will be sadly missed.
And to conclude, have you ever thought how big a part seemingly random events play in catastrophes? Yesterday, a tragic balcony collapse in Berkeley, California, killed six young Irish students. Now it turns out that three- quarters of an hour before the balcony collapsed, a resident in the apartment block had called the police because of the noise levels from a 21st birthday party. The police got diverted to the scene of a nearby shooting and never followed up the first call.