Paris city council had a brilliant idea 10 years when it developed the first urban summer beach, on the banks of the River Seine, near the Louvre, and subsequently extended it to the Basin de la Villette in the 10th. Many other places around the world have since copied the Paris idea.
All the sand has been shipped in, all the deckchairs made ready, and all the other trappings needed for a summer beach holiday are in place, together with an extensive programme of events. These include concerts, classes and concerts. One of the best sounding ideas is the nightly dance party, to be held every evening between 17. 00 hrs and 20. 00 hrs in the Tunnel des Tuileries close to the Louvre. All in all, it’s a brilliant idea, for anyone who can’ t make it out of Paris this summer for the real beaches around the coastline.
While all these preparations have been going, an accident affecting a French government minister has taken on allegorical meaning for many, in the midst of the current fractured chaos in the eurozone and indeed the EU. Michel Sapin, the finance minister, was filling his car with petrol at a service station in the Indre department on Monday of this week when he managed to fall and break an arm. He then ended up spending Monday night in hospital in Paris before being discharged the following day, warning everyone that the small matter of a bone fracture wouldn’t impede his work.
Much of the recent blame for the eurozone chaos, following the latest efforts to bail out Greece, has focussed on Germany. That country’ s government has been seen as incredibly divisive, so much so that #BoycottGermany hashtag has become incredibly popular around the world. Another German organisation, this time Lufthansa, has also managed to make itself extremely unpopular. Following the crash of the germanwings aircraft in the French Alps at the end of March, when the co- pilot deliberately crashed it, Lufthansa has now proposed to pay the families of the victims a mere €25, 000 each. The offer has been rejected angrily as totally insulting; the relatives say that €100, 000 per family would be more adequate compensation for an ‘ accident’ that should never have happened in the first place in Lufthansa had been awake to the necessity of monitoring its flying crews for psychological problems.
No wonder then, in current circumstances, that on Bastille Day last week, 300 protesters outside the national assembly in the 7th called on the military to join them in staging a coup. Nearby soldiers refrained from joining in and the protesters all found themselves arrested for marching without a permit. It’ s a long time since Paris had a successful coup, 1851 in fact, when Prince Louis- Napoléon Bonaparte staged a self- coup to stay in office and push through his planned reforms. But given the present state of public opinion in France, it’s not beyond the bounds of possibility that something similarly successful might happen all over again.
Once again, French farmers have led the way. In recent days, they have had massive protests- manure all over the place- especially in Brittany, against the low prices they’ ve been getting for their meat and dairy production, prices that don’ t remotely cover the cost of production. It always pay to protest; now the government in Paris says it is going to put in place emergency measures to help the farmers.
No wonder that given all the current chaos and confusion that a well-known French psychic is predicting that over the next few weeks there are going to be dramatic upheavals that will determine not just the future of France and of Europe, but of the world itself. That sounds a pretty dramatic prediction to say the least!
At least, there was one sign of honesty on Bastille Day. In the small town of Lesquin, near Lille, in north- eastern France, a supermarket was due to shut for the afternoon of Bastille Day. But the member of staff who should have turned the lights off and turned the key in the door forgot to do so. Members of the public came in during the afternoon, then found no- one at the checkouts. The matter was reported to the local gendarmes who arrived promptly and found that not a single item had been stolen from the supermarket. Such honesty!
While all this has been going on, a recent report has highlighted the problems of pollution in France, now estimated to be costing the country €100 billion a year. Much of the damage is coming from traffic pollution and this summer, as always, is seeing some stupendous traffic jams on the motorways around the country, especially the A6 to the South.
But when it comes to driving, it seems that all the speed cameras in France are catching about 4. 5 million foreign drivers a year, or 21 per cent of the total. The worst culprits are Belgians, Germans and Italians, with British drivers way down the list. Most continental culprits are caught and fined, but not motorists from Ireland, Britain and Denmark, who benefit for an exemption to inter- state information swapping that was agreed in 2011.
However, rural towns around France can now improve how they look. A law was passed in 2010 that allowed such towns to remove ugly advertising billboards from the entrances to those towns but it has only come into operation now.
The recent heatwaves have made matters worse; the first of them, between June 29 and July 5 killed 700 people, according to the French Ministry of Health but that figure is nowhere near as bad as what happened during the great heatwave of 2003, which killed 15, 000 people, mostly elderly. But during the first heatwave this summer, some 3,500 people had to be hospitalised, while a further 1, 500 or more people had to go and see their GP.
One strange phenomenon related to the heat happened in the early hours of last Friday morning, in the city of Troyes, not far from Paris. In the middle of the night, it got a sudden heat burst that pushed the temperature up nine degrees to 33 degrees C. Such night time heat bursts are very rare in France, although they are commonplace in the midwest plains of the US, caused by decaying thunderstorms, strong winds and low humidity.
Another big weather event early last Saturday morning ruined a European scout and guide camp just outside Strasbourg, when the absolute downpours of rain and strong winds meant that 15, 000 people had to be evacuated to safety.
Yet another summer casualty was even more unusual. A six year old girl was playing by the banks of a river in the Var department in the South when she touched the leaves of a fig tree. Those leaves gave her second degree burns and the poor kid ended up in hospital being treated for her burns.
Another summer casualty was entirely self-inflicted. A 48 year German tourist was arrested on the beach in Antibes in the south of France. He’ d been busy filming topless women on the beach and the police found more than 400 compromising images that he’d filed.
Then there was the strange case of the three pilgrims dressed as apostles were heading towards Santiago del Compostela when they decided to take a spiritual break at a church in the small town of Anse, near Lyon. They saw a wedding taking place and decided to stay and watch. Such is the unending sense of panic in France these days over possible terrorist outrages that someone in the congregation decided the three pilgrims were wearing djellabas and called the police. All was soon sorted and the pilgrims were allowed to go on their way in peace.
Summer being summer, travel chaos has been evident in many places. At Charles de Gaulle airport the other day, a technical glitch meant that passengers in terminals 2E and 2F took off without their luggage safely stowed in aircraft holds. Presumably in due course, people were reunited with their luggage at their destinations. But since CDG handles 80,000 pieces of luggage a day, it’s almost inevitable that something is going to go wrong at some stage.
Another air travel glitch, this time with Air France, was down to sheer human error. One of its flights was due to depart Kuala Lumpur for Paris when there was no sign of the flight crew. They had decided to head off on a surfing expedition and couldn’ t make it back to the airport in time, which meant that the flight was delayed for 24 hours.
A freak accident on the TGV line between Gare Montparnasse in Paris and Bordeaux meant horrendous delays at the end of last week. A 66 year old car driver had managed to crash into one of the railside pylons that hold up the overhead electric lines powering the trains. His car overturned, but he escaped serious injury. The accident happened near Bordeaux but affected all TGV trains on the route and the problems were compounded by a number of fires that broke out beside the rail track on the same route.
This week has seen the funeral in his home city of Nice of French Formula 1 racing driver Jules Bianchi, who crashed during the Japanese Grand Prix last autumn. He suffered such serious head injuries that he never recovered, despite being brought back to hospital in Nice. His was the first fatality in Formula 1 racing for 21 years and his racing number, 17, is now being retired from use as a mark of respect.
I also noticed this week that Netflix has been such a success in France that planned competition has now been abandoned. It now has 500, 000 customers in France and is predicted to have two million by 2019. Three television channels, together with the Orange mobile network, had planned to combine their video- on- demand services into one package. But then they found out it would take so long to make it profitable that the idea was abandoned.
But one anniversary really appealed to me. July 19 was the 115th anniversary of the opening of the first line of the Paris Métro in 1900, in time for the great exposition that year. Line 1 ran from Porte de Vincennes to Porte Maillot, although it has long since been extended from Chateau de Vincennes to La Défense. Amazingly, the first carriages were made of wood. Today, the Métro has 16 lines running for a total of 213 km, with 3, 553 cars in service and a total of 303 stations. Six million people a day use it.
I’ve always much preferred the Métro to the London Underground. No matter that when the Paris system started, some wags called it the Nécropolitain! But many of the stations are distinctive and decorative, while many of the station names are positively poetic. I often think of Montparnasse Bienvenue, which in fact is named after Fulgence Bienvenue, the engineer in charge of the project when it started. I often think longingly of the Solférino station, because that has always been our entrance point to the 7th. And over the years, hearing the klaxon of the departing Métro trains has always been an essential part of the atmosphere of Paris. And Paris, I discovered this week, is to be found in the title of 3,000 songs written over the decades. Paris has the power!
Here in Ireland, as the government prepares to go on its summer break, two areas that were promised attention earlier in the year still go unattended. Homelessness is a growing and very serious problem in Ireland, especially in Dublin, and a related problem, the need to impose rent controls, also deserves serious remedial attention. Yet the lethargy with which these twin problems are being addressed is mind boggling!
It seems to be the case that if you ignore a problem long enough, it will go away of its own accord!
I was also very interested to hear the comments the other day of a Ukrainian writer, who said that Ukraine suffered from an overwhelming near neighbour, Russia. He pointed out that Ireland had the same problem, with its next door island, Britain. He also said that both Russia and Britain had effectively engineered massive famines in their neighbours, creating many problems that still exist today. Certainly, much food for thought, and especially here in Ireland, if this country stays in the EU and Britain decides to leave.