All very strange, but then France has lots of wolves. A lot of them are to be found in Paris, where they masquerade as big cheeses in the worlds of finance and politics. And no- one ever fires any shots to disperse them!
One member of the upper class elite in Paris came to a sticky end last Sunday afternoon. Charles Luthi was the general secretary of the French Automobile Club, an exclusive all- male venue with 2, 200 members who are nearly all some of the richest and most influential men in France. Luthi and his wife lived in an eighth floor luxury apartment on the boulevard Flanderin in the very posh 16th arrondissement. Last Sunday afternoon, Luthi hurled himself out of a window of his apartment and fell to his death on the pavement below; shortly afterwards, his wife was found stabbed to death inside the apartment.
Then there was the tragic car crash near Beziers in the south of France around 04. 30 last Friday morning. Former New Zealand rugby star, Jerry Collins, and his wife Alana- they had only married last December- were returning home from a function. Alana was driving the car and they’d stopped on a motorway for a break. When they were pulling out to resume their journey, the car was hit by a coach full of Portuguese tourists. Both Jerry and Alana were killed instantly. Their young daughter Alya, who is a mere three months old, survived but is in a critical condition in hospital.
Last week, also in the south, near La Celle in the Var department, another spectacular road accident didn’t have the same tragic consequences. A car driven by a serving soldier left the road, hit a concrete telegraph pole, then a tree, before bursting into flames. But the driver managed to escape, although he had serious injuries. A motorist following behind crashed into the telegraph pole lying on the road, but he escaped without injury.
But in northern France, a truly tragic story unfolded at the end of last week. A man living in Dieppe works for an engineering firm in Rennes in Brittany. He set off for work last week, taking his young son with him to leave him off at a nearby creche. He completely forgot his son in the back of the car, drove all the way to Rennes, did a day’s work, then drove back to Dieppe, only to find that his young son had died in the car from heat exhaustion.
Near Orleans last Friday morning, a vintage Citroen GS car, from the 1970s, had four Spanish men in it, heading to a vintage car rally. The car burst a tyre and crashed, killing two of the men and leaving the other two seriously injured.
However, to take people’ s minds off all these tragedies, the fake gendarme in St Tropez will soon be back on the beat. He’s Patrick Chagnaud and all his buffoonery amuses tourists in the town every summer. Patrick has been off the beat recently, due to a health scare, but he’s due back at “work” on June 20.
Meanwhile, to coincide with the big conference of the Socialist Party in Poitiers, the Journal du Dimanche last Sunday had the results of a poll that showed prime minister Manuel Valls inspired far more confidence in people and was much better placed to represent the French people than current president Francois Hollande. Valls was supported by over 60 per cent of those questioned, while Hollande got a mere 26 per cent.
Sarkozy leaves quite a legacy trail in his wake as he tries to bring his party, now called Les Républicains, into a fit position for the next president election. Jean- Francois Copé used to be the head of that party but had to step down just over a year ago after a funding scandal in Sarkozy’s failed 2012 presidential election bid. So Copé returned to local politics, as mayor of Meaux, near Paris. Last week, a parking meter in Meaux started spewing out tickets that had been over-printed with the words that read, in translation “ Copé is a bastard and a thieving mayor” .
A more minor infringement has also come to light concerning Agnes Saal, who was the director of the Pompidou Centre in Paris from 2007 until last year. It now turns out that during her term in office, she spent a king’ s ransom on taxi fares, far more than was either necessary or permitted. C’est la vie Parisienne!
Something else that’ s been irritating people is being banned in some schools, where pupils have got into the habit of masking ‘ le tchip’ sound, made by sucking air through the teeth while lips remain pursed. It’ s a common practice in Afro- Caribbean cultures, but many white students have picked it up as a very effective way of annoying their teachers. But while the practice is being supposedly banned, another aspect of French ‘ Culture’ is for the chop. Bull fighting, still practised in such southern strongholds as Nimes, is being removed from the French heritage list. Many people question why bullfighting was there in the first place.
Now, two items that are causing much controversy and some amusement in France. In the grounds of Versailles, controversial British sculptor has put up a work that he has called the ‘queen’s vagina’ . He hasn’ t said which queen, but everyone presumes it is Marie Antoinette.
An even more amusing photograph came to light on the planet. fr news website, which made hay with it. Back in 2004, when Queen Elizabeth II was visiting Scotland, she posed for a photograph with officers from a Scottish regiment. One of the officers, Colonel Simon West, who was sitting on the right- hand side of the Queen, was dressed in full Scottish regalia, along with all his colleagues. But he decided, and perhaps for a dare, to illustrate the old joke about what’ s worn under a kilt- nothing, it’ s all in perfect working order. So the bold colonel wore nothing under his kilt and sat next to the Queen with his legs open, showing his genitals. This was very much a case of privates on parade and the poor Queen is sitting there, all innocent and blissfully unaware of what was happening next to her. The photograph has caused much hilarity in France but needless to remark it won’ t be appearing in British media any time soon!
Talking about the British media, I was very surprised at the tone and content of a feature piece on the Daily Telegraph website. The writer had just returning from a motoring holiday that had taken him as far as Provence and the theme of his piece was that while so many people in Britain love to knock everything French, in actual fact, so many more facets of everyday life in France are so much better organised that they are in present day Britain, which he said was often tatty and run- down by comparison.
If he said that Britain was badly off compared to France, where does that leave Ireland? Struggling to catch up with a lack lustre Britain. Recently, the head of the Irish Human Rights and Equality Commission, Emily Logan, addressed a UN committee in Geneva. She said that Ireland was falling far short of the norms on human rights, in many aspects, and had much work to do in shoring up proper human rights for all Irish citizens. It was pretty damning stuff and the Irish government’ s response the same UN committee was pretty lame, saying that many of the shortcomings were due to budgetary cutbacks during the recent recession.
But things aren’t all rosy in France, either. A UNICEF report that has just come out says that an astonishing three million children in France are living in poverty, hardly the mark of a civilised country.
Another difference in France also came to light within the last few days, the cost of shopping. A survey found that the average family spent around €5, 000 on groceries and other household items each year. If the family lives in the Charente in western France,the cheapest department in France in which to live, they will spend €4, 000 a year, but if they live in one of the dearest areas, like the Alpes-Maritime, they’ll have to spend about 20 per cent more.
Temperatures have been rising in France over the past week, up to around 35 degrees C in some areas, followed by the inevitable storms. So at long last, summer is on its way. One odd thing happened yesterday on the Riviera; a group of German tourists were enjoying drinks when a seagull swooped and made off with their smartphone!
Since it’s summer, there are also loads of things to do around France. In Bordeaux, the giant Vinexpo wine fair is on from June 14 to 18, with some 2, 350 exhibitors from 42 countries, although France has two- thirds of the display space. In Bordeaux, a truly sensational heritage centre for wine is being built, the Cité des Civilisations du Vin. But in true French style, it’s running late. It was meant to be open this year but the official opening date has been put back to 2016. Just to be on the safe side, make that 2017!
June 21 sees the Festival of Music take place right across the country, street performances of music from every genre. Then on June 24, the big festival at Nimes opens in the ampitheatre there. June 26 sees the start of the Vienne jazz festival, while in Paris on June 27, the Paris Pride Festival, for the LGBT community, takes place. Up to half a million people are expected to take part in the march. Then the following day, June 27, the annual tropical carnival kicks off in Paris. And don’t forget, in little over a month’ s time, on July 14, Bastille Day.
A real blast from the past came in the post the other day. Last week, someone in Crozon in Finistere in Brittany posted a letter to an address in Loiret, a department in north central France. The only trouble was that the letter had stamps with the likeness of Marshal Pétain, who ran the collaborationist government in Vichy during the earlier part of the second world war. These stamps were issued between 1941 and 1943 but after the liberation of France, the use of them was banned.
Another blast from the past came on RTÉ radio this week, when Lost in France by Bonnie Tyler, first issued in 1976, was played. “Lost in France in Love” - what an idyllic prospect! When Bonnie Tyler sang the song, she had a mass of blonde hair- great seeing the replay of her performance of it on You Tube- but time moves on and this week, Bonnie Tyler celebrated her 62nd birthday. I turned to a You Tube video of another great song from that era, The Rivers of Babylon by Boney M, released in 1984. When Boney M performed in Dublin, my wife and I went to the concert and like everyone else, we ended up dancing on the seats. Couldn’t do that now, at least I couldn’t - the seat would collapse!
In international terms, all eyes are on Greece. I wouldn’t put very much money on Greece doing a deal with its creditors, before its June 30 deadline for making a €1. 6 billion repayment to the IMF. Politicians like Jean- Claude Juncker, president of the European Commission, and Wolfgang Schaueble, the German finance minister, have been losing their tempers and started name calling Greece, which is hardly the most sensible thing to do. And the international creditors, the IMF, the EU and the European Central Bank, have been making all kinds of truly stupid and petty demands from Greece, like demanding an increase in the tax on medicines, more on the tax on electricity and removing the special VAT rate for the Greek islands, so dependent on tourism. And if Greece doesn’ t make that payment at the end of the month, expect to start seeing the eurozone begin to unzip. What Greece really needs, despite its gargantuan debts, is a policy that will restart its economic growth, but that seems totally beyond its short- sided international creditors. And another facet of this story is President Putin of Russia, waiting in the wings to be very friendly towards Greece, perhaps even providing it with some of the cash it needs.
Meanwhile here in Ireland, a jokey story. Last Sunday afternoon, a Flybe flight had just taken off from Southampton bound for Dublin, when a bee was discovered in the cockpit instruments. The plane had to return to base; the bee didn’t survive, but at least it had picked a Flybe flight!
It’s often said that builders are the thickest of the thick and I saw an excellent example of this a couple of days ago, when workmen were doing some building work nearby. I saw for myself one of the builders using a power drill on some masonry. He was generating huge clouds of stone dust, which engulfed him from head to toe and he wasn’t wearing any protective clothing. It was so utterly stupid that I was totally disbelieving.
Something else I saw in our neighbourhood the other day, a car with CD diplomatic plates crashing a red light. It simply drove straight through the lights, at speed. Just suppose there had been a bad accident - the driver and the embassy involved would have got off scott-free thanks to diplomatic immunity. I suspect that all the perks for diplomats, not least their immunity from prosecution, hides an amazing network of corruption and wrong doing in certain parts of the world, FIFA all over again.
Then there were more scandals in the public hospital sector in Ireland, a 101 year old woman with a heart condition kept waiting on a trolley in a Dublin hospital and a diabetic woman with a heart condition waiting for some 14 hours on a chair at another Dublin hospital before diagnosis began, then an elderly man waiting on a trolley for a bed, for nearly three days, at hospital in Galway. Needless to remark the official apologies eventually came, but as usual were utterly meaningless.
Something else daft I saw here the other day. Panda, a refuse collection company, has gone into the renewable electricity market and to announce its move, did a pr photo shoot showing a pretty model perched on top of one of its rubbish bins. Not only incredibly sexist, but very stupid looking as well.
In Adare, Co Limerick, last weekend, some thatched cottages went on fire, accidentally. Adare is a wonderfully picturesque village with quite a lot of thatched cottages. But in recent years, the place has become clogged with traffic, partly because parking is in such short supply. And the question of building a by- pass has dragged on for years without resolution. With all the messing about that goes on in such situations, I’ d put money on someone coming back to Adare in five years’ time and finding that the cottages were still in ruins and hadn’t been reinstated. It’ s tragic for the people who lost all their personal possessions in the fire, but it’ s just as bad for a village so dependent on tourism to have this eyesore being left for years.
It’ s a good job that the Dublin- based Arts Club isn’ t responsible for rebuilding those cottages, because in that case, you’ d probably come back in a century’ s time and find the ruins still there. In my own experience, the Arts Club is totally incompetent. Mind you, it does have quite a pleasant bar, and in a cynical city, it’ s often said that one of the main purposes of the whole enterprise is to provide somewhere its members can drink until the small hours of the morning. It’s often remarked that maybe the bar is in fact the main attraction of the club. It’ s also widely said in Dublin that the Arts Club is so disorganised that it would be constitutionally incapable of organising a piss- up in the Guinness brewery.
As we end this week, a really standout interview with Sir James Galway, the renowned flautist, on the BBC Northern Ireland website. Born into a working class Protestant home in Belfast, he has long lived in Switzerland. But in his interview with the BBC, he said that he regarded himself as Irish. He also said that if anyone asks how he came to get a knighthood from the Queen, he tells them that he comes from the British- occupied part of Ireland. He also had a go at the late Rev Ian Paisley, saying that Paisley was anything but a man of God and that he had been indirectly responsible for many murders in Northern Ireland. Paisley’s family responded by saying that they were taking legal advice, forgetting obviously that one thing you can’t do in law in this part of the world is sue over allegedly defamatory comments made against someone no longer in the lands of the living.
And in final conclusion, I noted two rather strange death notices published in Dublin today. A woman called Gráinne Fannon died in Salthill, Galway, last Saturday. On the same day, June 6, her brother Maurice died in Portland, Oregon, on the west coast of the US, on the other side of the world. It was a very odd coincidence.