Now, thanks to today’s French online news, we now know that the Duchess has appointed an official bum watcher, whose main job in life will be to see that the hems of Kate Middleton’s dresses stay firmly in place. What a peculiar kind of job, but I suppose someone has to do it and be paid accordingly!
Talking about royal excesses, I also hear from the BBC that King Juan Carlos of Spain, who is now stepping down in favour of his son, may have done his monarchical duty by Spain, especially in his early years, but that he had another talent. When his love life was active, he was supposed to have seduced no fewer than 1,400 women, putting him well ahead of such contemporary competition as Jacques Chirac, the former French president. The Spanish king was even supposed to have tried to seduce Lady Di, but no-one knows yet whether or not he was successful!
With all the gloomy news around at the moment, we need these moments of light comic relief. Certainly, what a former US treasury secretary, Larry Summers, had to say the other day was very pertinent. He said that the politics of austerity in Europe had been a failure and that countries in Europe are paying the price today, with the dramatic rise in support for far right wing parties that are often anti-EU.
Nowhere is this rise in support for the far right more evident in France, where the Front National had dramatic results in the recent contests for seats in the European parliament. Recent financial findings for Europe show that in May, across the eurozone, consumer sentiment improved everywhere, except in France. No wonder Marine Le Pen is finding such fertile electoral ground! Of course, we could be living in the Middle East.
The other day, I met a friend of mine temporarily back home from his three year contract in one of the oil and gas rich Gulf states. The money that expats can earn there is phenomenal, but apart from that, the Emir runs the place in an efficient fashion. If he wants something to be done, it is done, without all the rigmarole we have to go through in this part of the world. They should have had an Emir in Edinburgh to oversee the building of the city’s new tram system. It has just opened, from the city centre to the airport, but it was opened three years behind schedule and more than £200 million over budget, in a whole process that was shambolic.
Staying on electoral matters, Ukip in the UK had an equally dramatic result, but I doubt very much, from what I hear, that they are going to succeed in the Newark by-election this Thursday. It looks very much odds-on that the Tories will retain the seat. So no Ukip upset there! Here in Ireland, the odds against the present government surviving its full term in office are looking shorter and shorter and one of the trends that’s emerging is that independents, who don’t belong to any political party, are going to hold considerable political power after the next general election, not a good sign.2016 sees the centenary of the 1916 Easter Rising and it’s more than likely that the present government in Dublin will have collapsed ignominiously long before then.
Still, it’s hardly surprising that the established three big political parties are doing so badly. As just one example of their incompetence is the current property bubble in Dublin. House prices as well as rents are rising at an astonishing rate because of the severe shortage of housing. So what does the present government do, except sit on its hands? The best part of a decade ago, the then property bubble was to a large extent responsible for the economic crash here in Ireland-now the conditions are being replicated all over again. Quite incredible!
Anyway back to one of my favourite themes, Radio 4. The other morning, I got a surprise, like many other listeners. Radio 4 was supposed to switch from the World Service to the first shipping bulletin of the day, then the news. But due to a technical error, for the first time since the shipping bulletin started in 1924, it failed to be broadcast and the World Service just carried on. But to be fair to the BBC, I must praise the amount of 18th century music that’s broadcast on Radio 3; that’s another of my passions. It’s delightfully stylised, structured and formal besides being soothing to listen to.
This year is also a big year in terms of classical music in the Czech Republic;2014 sees over 60 notable musical anniversaries take place there, not only for celebrated composers such as Dvorak, Janacek, Martinu and Smetana, but for performers and for musical organisations.
But back to France. In the department of the Oise, archaeologists have found the remains of a vast second century Roman building, 70 metres long. It has been dug up beneath a disused football pitch in the village of Pont-Sainte-Maxime, beside the ancient Roman road from Compiegne to Senlis, to the north of Paris. That old Roman road is now a route nationale. The ancient Roman structure is huge, with interesting friezes and bas-reliefs, but it’s a race against time, because work on building a hypermarket on the site is due to start next month.
Which reminds me, the love locks placed on many bridges in Paris look set to disappear. The new mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo, has decreed that the love locks must go, because the sheer weight of them is actually endangered the bridges that they have been placed on. Now work is under way to find somewhere else where lovers will be able to place their love locks without causing any damage. Talking of sex rather than love, reminds me of the latest craze in France, which doesn’t sound very edifying. Apparently, gay sex parties are taking place at many venues across France. Those taking part are injecting a cocktail of illegal drugs as well as indulging in risky sexual practices, without condoms, with multiple partners. On the face of it, the parties sound as if they might be fun, but the reality is a lot more sordid-and dangerous.
Talking of rebuilding brings me to the D Day commemorations in Normandy this week. I always think of the D Day landings in terms of a delightful town not far from Cherbourg, on the Cotentin peninsula. As the allied forces moved inland after the D Day landings, the battles in and around Valognes meant that the town was largely destroyed. Yet if you go there today, it has all been superbly restored and it’s an oasis of peace and calm.
In the 18th century, up until the revolution, about 100 aristocratic families lived in Valognes, so much so that the town was known as the Versailles of Normandy. Nearly all the great mansions were destroyed in the war and today, there’s only one left, the Hotel Beaumont, built in the 18th century and a delightful spot for a musical recital, as we out found for ourselves. The church of St Malo in the centre ville was also destroyed, but it too has long since been restored, as was the Abbaye de Notre-Dame de Protection, a Benedictine foundation, which was completely wrecked in 1944, yet which by the late 1950s,had been completely restored. The famous American philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952), used to say that the human race destroyed in order to rebuild. How right he was!
Today, Valognes is a lovely,peaceful town that’s well worth seeing, with delightful hotels like the big old Hotel L’Agriculture, with its excellent restaurant. It’s all a reminder that even after the most terrible destruction, rebirth is possible.
And before I go, I must just tell you I’ve found a new use for toothpaste. Last night, a vandal scribbled all over the cover on the electricity box at street level here, but thanks to generous dollops of toothpaste, I was able to remove all the marker pen ink leaving very little trace. They’ll have to do a lot more than that, sadly, at the Hill of Tara in eastern Ireland. It’s a wonderful prehistoric site and from it, there’s a clear view right across to the mountains in the west of Ireland, over 150 km away. One of the ancient monuments on the hill is the Stone of Destiny, 5,000 years old. Last week, vandals poured two tins of gloss paint all over the stone and cleaning it is going to be some job. They’ll need much more than just toothpaste!