The Ricardo Memorial Lecture ...

Having better things to do the other day, I found myself - as one will - up at the bar, getting some vitamin supplements. Magali clambered down from her precarious perch, trying to hang a disco light up for the next weekend's festivities (because it'll be the bar's birthday), for the obligatory exchange of smacks on each cheek, and once I'd shaken hands with Lionel and the three or four elderly guys seated at the bar and got my drink, life went back to normal - that old tradition of redoing the world. (No, I am not joking, the French phrase is "refaire le monde" and it is a game best practiced when a) you have no idea what you're on about and b) you are slightly lubricated, thanks to pastis ...)

And of course talk turned to the eye-watering amounts that the French must pay in social security charges, and taxes. You really shouldn't get me on to that one, because having been self-employed for the past 25 years or so I have actually lived with it for most of my adult life: suffice it to say that the word "entrepreneur", for all that it is in fact French, is almost universally employed in a pejorative sense. Because the French are, at heart, a very conservative people, with statist ideas dating back at least to Colbert and his ilk, and their idea of a magnificent career is that of an uncivil servant. If you can make it through the exams and become a fonctionnaire (aka "petty bureaucrat"), then you have reached apotheosis - a job for life. Hell, I have heard people speaking admiringly of some distant nephew or something that managed to get employed by the police nationale ... these are the ones that follow the Fred Colon school of policing, and tend to avoid going anywhere that policing might actually be necessary.

Anyways, as a member - these days - of the professions libérales I do have a bit of the respect grudgingly afforded to the sort of semi-official people with whom one must deal - like notaires, avocats and - horrors - huissiers: but still there is a certain wariness. Not to say, disdain. Because if you're not employed by the state, or failing that a state-owned business, or even just employed by someone else, you are obviously gaming the system and screwing honest hard-working employees out of money that really belongs to them, in some hazy and ill-defined fashion. (Of course, if you're not employed by the state then your boss is doing exactly the same thing but that's OK, when you get too annoyed you can always go on strike and smear dogshit all over his 40-year old Renault Fuego, which is all he can afford ...) But from the point of view of the smug, self-satisfied 40% with secure government jobs, the self-employed are somehow grinding the faces of the poor.

Which is probably fair enough. It's a harder job than you might think (the grinding bit, that is), and no-one thanks you for doing it - certainly not the poor, whom you'd think would be used to it by now. Dirty work, but someone has to do it.

Where were we? Redoing the world, that's right. So the old guy at the end of the bar piped up and said "What we need is a decent war. A proper one!" Then, apparently, everything gets blown to bits and at the end the state will step in and dish out enormous amounts of cash for reconstruction and we'll have yet another trente glorieuses. Yep. Simple as that. Lionel has his own ideas, and as he said, "I am not an economist" which is a) true and b) probably a bloody good thing for all the rest of us, but his concept - mind-boggling in its elegant simplicity - is that if, like Renault, say - you have replaced people on the assembly lines with robots, you should have to pay 3000€ per month in tax per robot.

This figure being arrived at quite simply, because you'd pay about 1000€ for a human bean working an 8-hour shift, so a that for a robot that works 24/7 you should pay at least three times more ... Some obstreperous bastard at the other end of the bar pointed out that the prices of cars would automatically go up, but apparently the answer to that is price controls. I'd not thought of that, mind obviously not stellar enough, I shall forget all about that Nobel for economics.

So I finished my glass, said "goodbye" all round, and was kind of glad to walk out into the sunlight under a bright blue sky - because I don't get paid for nodding when people say stupid shit.

Of course it went downhill from then on anyway, because it does: I was just topping up the oil in Sarah's power steering circuit when Neville spotted me and came by for a decent moan. Or a whinge, whatever. But more of a moan, I think. Whatever, can't call it communication because it's strictly one-way, but ...

Now don't get me wrong. Despite being, to all appearances, constructed entirely of sticks, string, spit and chewing-gum, Neville is a warm and generous man, and I actually rather like him. In small doses. For his emotional ground-state is one of paranoia, perpetual anguish, and a vague feeling of ineffectiveness.

Maybe it's something to do with coming from northern England? Or maybe he's actually a reincarnation of Goethe? He is totally convinced that, no matter what he does it will a) be wrong, b) be useless, and c) The Man will stick it to him anyway. (I'm not entirely sure exactly which man, but it may be an entire class.) He might actually be right about the first two, but it doesn't matter because he will go and do it anyway ... and don't get me onto the subject of that ageing VW combi that he fell in love with and bought despite everyone from whom he asked advice saying "Don't go near it with a bargepole or any other kitchen implement" ...

Still, with the incompetent cluster-fuck that is Brexit looming ever closer, he really should stop talking to other Brits. It only makes him worry even more. Last night he and Reet had dinner with a couple of other ex-pats who foolishly mentioned that they were looking at getting cartes de résidence, and then mumbled something about their health insurance, and of course that went straight to his brain.

Never mind that, in preparation for the Doomsday scenario, the French are putting legislation in place to ensure (if the UK is willing to do the same) that Brits in France will continue to be covered by the extremely generous French social security system, never mind that he doesn't actually have a top-up private health insurance scheme (unlike about 95% of the French) and so is unlikely to see any major changes there, never mind that he's not paid income tax in either country for the last ten years (but still moans bitterly about the fact that he might have to) ... that bloody Man is still, somehow, sticking it to him.

(Actually, I tell a lie. About three years back he did in fact get a tax bill - I remember the wailing and lamentations at the time - for the princely sum of 340€. Which, by a strange coincidence, happened to be just about the amount of money he had lying about in an undeclared bank account in the UK - to this day he is convinced that The Man found about it, and decided out of spite to confiscate it. Yep, that Man is an evil, shafting bastard.)

I listened with half an ear as this litany of woe washed over me (and FFS Neville, ten years in France and you still don't know that "au" can mean "until", or "up to"? WTF?) then closed the bottle of oil, wiped my hands and said "Sorry, Nev. Can't help you with that one." Which was, oddly enough, completely true. And sent him off to see Rory, who might know more about such things than I (and there's another thing: an English ex-pat who lives in France and yet positively loathes the EU, to the point where FU EU is spray-painted on one of the unfinished walls. Godnose how he deals with the cognitive dissonance in that one ... luckily, not my problem), and then, to clear my head, headed off for a walk in the hills, which are just starting to smell like gin again.

Also, this weekend's theme is - apparently - the 80's. Which makes me shiver with anticipation (not) at the thought of the music we'll be listening to ... but now I must head off into the wardrobe and find some authentically 80's clothes. I know, most of my wardrobe does in fact date from the 80's - all those pure wool slacks and the business shirts I paid good money for back in the day when we were working and had disposable income, and which followed us over to furrin parts - but sadly, at some point (possibly when I developed colour vision) the banana-yellow cord trousers which were, god help us, in fashion at one time, and the paisley shirt in tasteful muted browns both disappeared. Probably a good thing, really.

Fecking Frigid ...

I've said it before but it's worth repeating: anyone who thinks that the south of France is uniformly warm and sunny really needs to check into one of those secluded resorts where the staff talk in cheerful but hushed voices, and the amenities include rubber cutlery, padded walls and those stylish shirts that do up down the back ... Today the sky is light, bright blue and the sun is shining valiantly: a few clouds are scudding high above for the simple reason that our lazy wind, the Cers, is gusting up to 80 kph. Let it be admitted that it's an absolutely brilliant day, ambient temperature's about 5, maybe 6° - the wind-chill, of course, knocks 10° off that.

And in but a short while I shall don the armour of righteousness ie sunglasses, scarf, closely-buttoned jacket, overcoat and gloves and go out to find a few bay leaves (some things have to be done, noblesse oblige and all that) to accompany a bit of slow-roasted pig towards its apotheosis along with yams (yay!) and kumara and stuff like that: but it will be a short walk, as short as I can make it, and I will stick to the more sheltered paths. Not that that's saying much, but you sometimes get at least the illusion of some respite from the breeze.

As an aside, I really don't know why it should be only the Brits who get such a bad press for - supposedly - always talking about the weather. Assuming that you yourself are foolhardy enough to go out for a walk, and that someone else is stupid enough to be out with the same goal, and that you should happen to meet, I rather think I've got the ensuing conversation scripted.

As such things will, the washing machine chose an Inconvenient Time to stop working: made even more inconvenient by the fact that the thing puts itself into lockdown - ie the door is actually physically locked - while it is running, or when it feels that there is an error. (For those of you not familiar with these things, I should perhaps explain that about 99% of European washing machines are in fact front-loaders, with a sort of porthole thingy at the front into which you feed any foul linen that is to be cleaned, with the drum mounted directly on the horizontal motor axis at the back. Although there is a subset, destined for tiny Parisian apartments, wherein the drum turns about a horizontal axis anchored at both ends and driven by a complex system of cogs and pulley-belts, and access is via a sort of trap-door. This latter sort do, I admit, have the advantage of not requiring a 20kg counter-weight on the axis, but are otherwise small, cheap and completely shite.)

So as opposed to a washing machine made the way that God intended, with the drum rotating about a vertical axis and - crucially - top-loading, once you start a wash cycle in one of these the door locks and stays that way until it ends, because otherwise you might open the door by accident and wind up with water all over the floor, and that would not be nice, now would it?

By sacrificing mice (I think) Margo managed to persuade it that there was not any water in it, and it reluctantly let us extract the washed but sopping load: then I went off and called the local service-person to organise a house call.

How to feel like a bloody idiot: the first thing he did, of course, was to wrestle the beast into an inclined position and then open the cap on the pump filter, from whence he extracted the half-eaten toe-end of a sock, and a toothpick. I honestly have absolutely no idea how these things came to be in there: as Jeremy is no longer with us missing socks are not an issue any more, and as a general rule we do not wash toothpicks. Still, I now know - for next time - and I suppose we shall have to start calling it the Eater Of Socks or some other cutesy name.

Once again it's the occasion for one of the occasional Health & Safety hints from The Shamblings™: this time, it's just to say that you should not pick up an ouch! burny! ramequin one-handed, from above, and try to deposit it elegantly on a plate. This is because it will slip from the oven glove's tenuous hold, fall (bouncing off a chair en route) to the floor and shatter, and then send food-splatter all over the tiles. Not to mention the chair.

Unusually, we have a solution for you: quite simply put, get at least one dog and invite it (or them, in our case) in to take a look at the problem. In about five minutes the floor will be completely innocent of any traces of scallops, shrimp, and creamy sauce (the exact details will, of course, depend on what exactly you had in your ramequin), and the cane chair seat will never have been so clean. So now you know.

So anyways, last night was that peculiarly French ceremony, les voeux du maire et du conseil municipal. For those of you who came in late and thus missed the beginning, this is a little ceremony sometime in January where (the mayor's idiot nephew having been shut in an outhouse for the duration) the mayor gets up and gives a speech telling all and sundry what happened last year and what is planned for this one; assorted dignitaries do the same; then after the obligatory wishes for health and happiness for the new year it's open season on the tables laden with crisps, pizza, and Label 5 paintstripper whisky. Usually there are lots of kids in attendance, because they're bloody expensive to feed and this one evening you can stuff them on pizza and soggy-bottomed quiche ...

I usually manage to go but this year it was cold and dank and windy, and besides I had something cooking that really needed some attention, so I missed out - but as will happen in a small village, I got the blow-by-blow account later. I was not the only one to be AWOL, apparently: our Dear Leader has managed to sufficiently piss off enough people that attendance was particularly sparse, and the speechifying was over and done with in a mere ten minutes - which has to be some sort of record.

Still, there was one thing of interest to me, namely that fibre is to be rolled out to the home in 2020. This will be a Good Thing: do you know just how frustrating it is to know that all that lovely fibre-optic cable is running under the main street (with a branch off north to Montbrun), and to think that it is dark, and that I am not connected to it? It doesn't help, either, that Orange and Bouygues and Free keep rubbing it in by sending me emails to suggest that maybe, as a professional, I should upgrade to their Fibre Pro contract: of course, when I check up as to eligibility on the appropriate website (for hope springs eternal) the brutal reply is always "No!". I has sads.

It is very true that one of the most difficult things to do in a foreign language is to use obscenities correctly. I mean, you really have to be expert ... so why do the French persist? I can still remember when we first turned up here, in Brittany, coming across a huge black-on-yellow poster for a tour by some particularly obscure English pub band which screamed "THE FRENCH FUCKING TOUR!!!", but that was a long time ago, thought that just maybe they'd got it out of their systems.

Sadly, this turns out not to be the case. The little Moux newsletter turned up at the door the other day and as one will I read it avidly, checking out births, deaths and marriages (no, I am not joking, I do that), a brief summary of some guy's master's thesis in archaeology, studying the Castrum de Moux (this being the ruin half-way up the Alaric), and turned eagerly to the announcements of the summer events. From which I learn that the vaguely Irish music at the beer festival towards the end of April will be provided by a French group calling themselves "Fucking Vintage". Gods help us all.

Whatever, time goes on - as it will - and the days are getting longer: the almond trees have their startlingly pink blossoms and soon enough it will again be Spring. Also, we seem to have missed out on the snow that was half-promised for last night ... point is, if I want to get this out the door before March I should probably hit the post button now. Mind how you go.