Strikes seem embedded in the French dna and whatever government is in power, left, right or centre, it doesn’t seem likely that the propensity to strike will ever be curtailed.
Another long running strike hasn’t garnered quite so much public attention, for the simple reason it has had little effect on the public. Radio France, in other words, public broadcasting in France, has been in a strike situation for close on three weeks now. Journalists and technicians are on strike over proposed budget cuts that they say will mean more job cuts and more outsourcing. At this stage, it has become the longest strike in the history of Radio France and even though many programmes have disappeared from the airwaves, the concern of the public at the loss of so many shows seems negligible. It sounds like the BBC all over again!
Incidentally, another daft cost cutting idea is starting to take hold in France. There’ s a current plan being put forward by officialdom to close up to 7,000 post offices around the country and transfer them all to local supermarkets.
A very personalised protest took place in Nice the other day. Two women spent six hours high up on a crane on a construction site in the boulevard de l’ Armée des Alpes in the city, as a protest against their social housing entitlements. Someone else in Provence had a lucky escape the other day. A woman who was jogging along the beach in Cannes early the other morning, fell under rocks that had been placed there to protect the shoreline. She got covered in sand and as the tide started coming in, her life was in danger. But two officials found her and firemen completed the awkward task of rescuing her.
Today, April 8, is another memorable date in French history; it’ s when the Entente Cordiale between France and Britain was signed in 1904, bringing to a close centuries of suspicion that often ended in open warfare. In the intervening years, relations between the two countries have often been extremely cordial and for many people living in Britain, their idea of an ideal bolthole is some idyllic cottage deep in the French countryside, France profonde. Similarly, vast numbers of French people idealise working and living conditions in Britain, so much so that in terms of the number of French people living there, London is the sixth largest city of France. Over the past decade or so, I’ve met many French people who are not only well qualified but also speak perfect English and are more than happy to live away from all the restrictions of their own country. Collectively, they seem to have little desire to go back permanently to the country of their birth.
Yesterday, April 7, was another memorable date in history. It was on that date in 1795 that revolutionary France decided to go metric and adopt the metre as the standard measurement of length. It was actually a very sensible decision as metric has lots of advantages over the traditional methods of measuring distances. Who these days remembers inches, feet and yards?
This day, April 8, is likely to be memorable for another reason. Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, is meeting President Putin in Moscow. Whether Russia, whose economy is in free fall, will be able to help Greece financially is a very good question, but it’ s another opportunity for Putin to display his extraordinary ability to divide and conquer, by helping Greece split away from mainstream Europe. Also on a Russian theme, Marine Le Pen has got herself into hot water over accepting millions in loans from a Russian bank to fund her Front National, allegedly in return for saying nothing against Putin and Russia over that country’ s annexation of Crimea last year. Extreme politics can mean cosying up with some strange bedfellows!
Meanwhile in Paris, legislators are concerned with much weightier matters. A law has just been passed banning the use of ultra thin models in the fashion industry. It will become illegal for any model whose body mass index is below a certain level to work in the industry and agencies that use such models face a fine of up to €75, 000 and six months in prison. It’s estimated that about 40, 000 people in France suffer from anorexia, 90 per cent of whom are women.
While all this has been going on, real life in France continues unabated. The latest traffic congestion figures show that last year, Bordeaux was the most congested city in France, followed by Paris, Marseilles and Nice. For anyone who’s tried to drive in any of the big French cities, they have my sympathy- it’ s generally a very unpleasant experience and certainly one I’ ve never tried to put into practice!
One celebrity death in Paris last week passed almost unnoticed, that of Christina, the only daughter of Oleg Cassini, the American fashion designer of Russian origin. He was the man who dressed Jacqueline Kennedy and he went on to much further fame and fortune. Christina was the daughter of Cassini and a previous wife of his, a movie star called Gene Tierney. His wife at the time of his death was Marianne Nestor Cassini and after Cassini’ s death, he left wealth estimated at $60 million, with $1 million due to go to Christina. She had been living in Paris for years and
she died last week from ovarian cancer; her stepmother had resolutely refused to release any of the money due to her from Cassini’ s estate and she died in poverty, a truly sad ending to a fairy tale story.
Someone else who died last week was Manoel de Oliveira, the Portuguese film maker, who was 106. He was lucky; he came from a wealthy family and was able to work in the family business for years before he was able to begin his first love, film making. Over the past 30 years and indeed up to last year, made many memorable films, even if they weren’t widely available or box office hits.
Even though it’ s a week since April Fool’ s Day, I can’ t let a good gag on RTÉ television in Ireland pass without comment. On an afternoon chat show on April 1, as well-known antiques dealer called George Stacpoole was discussing the provenance of a teapot said to have been worth €14,500. He and one of the presenters concocted a little ‘joke’ which they didn’t tell the second presenter about. George Stacpoole presented the tea pot to the presenter who was in the know; he promptly dropped it and it shattered into pieces on the studio floor. The other presenter, who knew nothing of what was planned, was so shocked that the expression on her face was a sight to behold. Then it turned out that the teapot was far from an antique, but a run of the mill specimen that cost all of €15! No wonder that the clip has become so popular on YouTube!
When I heard the news last Wednesday that Center Parcs, the big UK resort holiday company, was going to build a forest resort in the heart of Co Longford in the Irish Midlands, it smelled a little too much like another April Fool’ s gag but it turned out to be for real, with the prospect of creating thousands of jobs in the region. As for Longford town itself, county town, it has become one of Ireland’ s ‘forgotten’ places. No- one has made much effort to brighten the place up and people passing through the place as quickly as they can say that it looks really drab. So hopefully, the new Center Parcs development in the county will make a big difference to a place that has been overlooked for far too long.
But back to France, as if we could ever keep away for long from thoughts of France! The long promised Eurostar service from London direct to Avignon and Marseilles, is due to start on May 1. As for Avignon, don’t stay there- it’s crammed with tourists. Instead, there’s a lovely small town just to the west, called Villeneuve les Avignons, that is wholly delightful with some excellent restaurants and hotels. It has a population of about 10, 000 and is only five km from Avignon and much more manageable as a tourist destination.
Another service that’ s about to restart in Marseilles for the tourist season is the Batobus service, a fantastic waterbus that costs a mere €3 per trip. It’ll bring you to Pointe- Rouge, a wonderful beach resort just west of Marseilles, if you’ re into beach holidays. The Batobus also goes to a small fishing village called L’ Estaque, which is also just west of Marseilles. It’s still a very pretty place and hasn’t been too spoiled by development. The great painter Cézanne first went there in the 1860s, then others followed, such as Georges Braque, who painted a splendid picture of the railway viaduct there, in 1908. Yet another renowned painter who favoured the place was Pierre- Auguste Renoir, who died in Provence in 1919. Such is the painterly provenance of L’ Estaque that it is now considered one of the birthplaces of modern painting.
Happy holidays, despite the French air traffic controllers!