The whole episode seems incredibly stupid, but officials stopped a man boarding a Eurostar train bound for London because he had a wartime shell in his back pack. No- one is quite sure whether the shell came from the first or the second world war, but it was still ‘live’ and capable of exploding. The whole station had to be evacuated while the shell was made safe.
Crime, too, has been making the news, as always, with a couple of spectacular robberies in Provence in the past few days. The other night, a Russian businessman was returning home from a meeting on the Croisette in Cannes; he was followed by two thieves on a scooter. When the businessman arrived at his home in Cap d’ Antibes, he was robbed of a watch said to have been worth $1 million. Cannes also saw a spectacular robbery from the Cartier boutique in the seaside city; it’ s said that they got away with jewellery worth €20 million. Similar large scale heists in the past year or two have gone unsolved; the culprits have never been caught.
While we’ re on the subject of money, a villa at Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferret has become the most expensive property in the world, surpassing anything in Manhattan or Hong Kong. This particular villa was sold for €216, 500 per square metre, which worked out at a total sale price of €130 million, quite extraordinary.
Someone who brought a great deal of money to both Paris and the Riviera last week was a Chinese billionaire, Li Jinyuan. His Tiens Group has interests that vary from biotechnology to property, and he is China’ s 24th wealthiest person. To celebrate his group’ s 20th anniversary, he brought 6, 400 employees, about half the total in the group, to France to celebrate. They were greeted on arrival by no less than Laurent Fabius, the foreign minister. Such ministerial fawning was considered very much in order, as the group’ s trip to France put €13 million into the economy.
The employees stayed in 140 hotels in Paris, enjoyed dinners in the Golden Triangle, the most expensive restaurant district of Paris, went up the Eiffel Tower and even had the Louvre all to themselves one day last week. Then they took trains to the south of France, staying in 4, 700 hotel rooms in Monaco and Cannes. In Nice, they formed the world’ s longest human chain, saw a fly past by historic fighter planes and witnessed a procession of 70 classic motor cars.
But other stories from the South were more tragic. In the small village of St-Laurent- sur-Var, a 38 year old woman was shot dead with a hunting rifle and her husband was promptly arrested on suspicion of murder. Another story had a happier ending. The Train des Merveilles does a two hour journey from Nice to Tende, taking in some of the most spectacular valley and mountain scenery in the Alpes Maritime. The other evening, an 85 year old woman lost control of her car, which plunged four metres down onto the train tracks along the route of the railway, but astonishingly, she emerged unscathed.
Another and even more heart warming story also emerged from the South, to be precise, the village of Saint- Paul- en- Foret. There, a family had bought a house about six months ago. The 40 year old husband had planned to do all the renovations himself, but five months ago, he dropped dead. Now, local volunteers, working with materials supplied free by local businesses, have completed all the renovations and have handed the house back to the grieving family.
Monaco also saw a joyous occasion on Sunday, when the royal twins, Jacques and Gabriella, were baptised in the cathedral, amid general festivities. Monaco was also in the news in the past few days, in an update on the unsolved murder in Nice of Helen Pastor, a woman who was enormously wealthy from property interests and who lived in Monaco. Just over a year ago, she was murdered when she stopped at a hospital in Nice; she had been planning to visit her sick son there. The murder remains unsolved, but the son, Gildo, has now sufficiently recovered from two strokes to have been appointed Monaco’ s consul- general in the US.
Another new arrival literally jetted in the other day. A passenger on an Air France flight from Dakar in west Africa to Paris gave birth to a boy while the plane was still en route to Paris; fortunately, there was a doctor on board and the birth happened without most of the passengers knowing of the drama. One consequence of the birth on board the French plane is that the baby who has just arrived automatically has French citizenship, a greatly prized outcome for many people living in Africa.
On the political front, the centre- right UMP party headed by former president Nicolas Sarkozy, is in the middle of changing its name to the Republican party. The move still has to be approved by ballot of rank and file members, but seems likely to go through. Sarkozy himself said the other day that every single promise made by the present president, Francois Hollande, elected three years ago, has now been broken. Also in politics, Jean- Marie Le Pen, who had been having furious rows with his daughter Marine over the future direction of the Front National, is now forming his own political grouping, although it won’ t be a new party. Considering the apoplectic row just a fortnight ago between father and daughter, it’s even more astonishing that Jean-Marie is now full of praise for his daughter. Now he says that she is a stand-up character of great ability, someone who happily shoulders immense responsibilities.
More ecological news from the city authorities in Paris; they are now planning to spend €8 million turning part of the right bank of the River Seine, from the area of the place de la Bastille, as far as opposite the Eiffel Tower, into a pedestrianised greenway. It’s an excellent idea, but there’s one group who won’ t be placated, motorists. But why anyone still wants to drive in Paris, I’ m not quite sure.
Paris is also getting a very modernistic Palais de Justice; the foundation stone for the new building, in the 17th., was laid the other day and it is due to be completed in 2017. But no doubt, cost overruns and delays will dog its completion. But at least it should be a big improvement on the antiquated Palais de Justice beside Notre Dame. But something else in Paris badly needs a makeover, the dozen pedestrian bridges in central Paris, including the Pont des Arts, that have been plagued with love locks. Even the canal bridges in the 10th, immortalised in the film Amelie, over a decade go, have suffered. The panels have put a stop to much of the lock placing, but graffiti artists have stepped in and covered the panels. Added to all this is the general lack of maintenance on the bridges, so the net result is that the bridges now look perilously run- down and delapidated. The city authorities have promised drastic action by the end of this year, but whether that will happen is anyone’ s guess.
A very important anniversary was commemorated in Paris on Friday of last week, the 70th anniversary of the end of the second world war. President Hollande laid a wreath at the tomb of the unknown soldier at the Arc de Triomphe and so too did John Kerry, the relentlessly travelling US Secretary of State, whose mother was born in France.
Two small changes of use have been observed down south. In the 1980s, an undersea reef was created in the Mediterranean, between Cannes and Antibes, using discarded car tyres. Now, it been decided that the tyres are environmentally unsuitable and are all being removed. And in Toulon, a former gay bar called the Texas Bar, has been taken over by local monks, who are serving Trappist beer in what is now the Holy Grail bar.
This week of course sees the opening of this year’ s Cannes film festival. It’s great to see that Agnes Varda has become the first female director to be awarded an honorary Palme d’ Or. Woody Allen got one in 2002, Clint Eastwood in 2009 and Bernardo Bertolucci in 2011. A 1965 film directed by Varda, Le Bonheur, was the first mainstream film to show bare breasts and what a sensation it caused at the time. These days of course, it’s decidedly vieux chapeau! Varda herself will be 87 at the end of this month.
In international news over the past few days, President Hollande has made headlines by going to Cuba and meeting the Castro brothers; he was the first international figure to go to Cuba since the recent thaw in Cuban- US relations. In the UK, the opinion polls were very much at sea; none of them forecast that the Tories were going to win an absolute majority. People should put their faith in the bookies, especially Paddy Power, which was taking bets for weeks beforehand on the Tories doing what they did. But the opinion polls were right in forecasting the dramatic wins of the SNP in Scotland, which now has 56 MPs at Westminster. No doubt the Tories will try to ignore the SNP, so how long before a big political clash looms?
And in New York the other day, a world record for a painting sold at auction was realised when the Picasso painting of women in Algiers fetched the ridiculous sum of $179 million. It and the latest property sale record in the Riviera are just two examples of glaring global wealth inequalities.