10/06/00 On visiting the police station and other subjects ...

Thought I'd at least get an early start in on this, even if it does take me three weeks to get finished. Reality has come home and it's only two weeks now before Malyon arrives back in the country, so we're working like mad in what little time we have to get the upstairs kitchen converted into Jeremy's bedroom. The plumber comes round tomorrow or Wednesday to cut off the sink so that we can lug that down to a cellar waiting for us to put it up elsewhere, and I have to organise a couple of healthy friends to give me a hand shifting the wood-burning stove downstairs as well. While waiting, Margo has been having fun with my big jack-hammer drill (and an SDS+ masonry chisel attachment) getting rid of the tiles around the sink and most of the cement under them so that when the sink actually disappears we can plaster over the holes and paint. Be cutting it short, but we should be able to do it, and at least it'll mean that at long last Malyon and Jeremy will have their separate bedrooms. (Don't really know why I say "at long last", 'cos it's been de facto the case for the last 10 months, but there you are ...)

I wasted last night (until about 2am, in fact) reinstalling Windows 98 on my new machine. Trying to find out more about these bloody video cameras I installed the Unibrain software, and when I didn't learn anything new I deinstalled it and discovered that I no longer had any video devices at all.So I grinned, bore it, and reinstalled Win 98 (the English version this time, at least) and after rebooting 5 times (at least) things fell back into place. Then, as this machine is destined to replace the home machine, I thought I'd better at least install the modem and Outlook Express ... you'd think I'd know better. Perhaps I should just reformat and stick NT onto the thing - only then I'd have to pay for fax software. 

Been looking over offers and I've decided to get an Alfa 146 as a work car - as long as I fall in love with it on Friday, when I'll head off to look one over. A Fiat Barchetta would be better (from a fiscal point of view) as I'd be able to claim the GST back (being a two-seater, it's classed as a work car) but it's a bit impractical. A shame. 

05/06 

Well, that's one week lopped off my three-week timetable to get this out. Margo has been busy plastering and tomorrow the last layer goes on and then we can sand it back, put on the undercoat and finish painting. 

Yesterday we had a big BBQ: the English class she taught at Voglans finished up for the year and so we hosted an end-of-course bash: everyone sprang a bit of cash and we bought vast quantities of food and wine and I brought the big BBQ in the paddock out of hibernation. I must have lost about 5 litres sweating in front of it, it must have been about 35° and I'd stuck on at least 20 litres of charcoal, so it was HOT. 

Everyone had a great time, the kids went exploring in the stream (almost dry already, we've had an exceptionally dry spring so far, not really relieved by the small thunderstorm that's just passed over), and we managed to detail the four biggest, hairiest males to get the wood-burner down into the end cellar. Unfortunately - such is the dismal level of male talent in France - I qualified as one of the four. And let me just say that it was bloody heavy! Luckily one of Margo's students was a rugby fullback or something in that line, 2.5m high and built to match and he took the heavy end down while the rest of us nancied around at the other end. No-one was permanently injured, and the thing is now residing in the cellar and if anyone wants to move it from there they're welcome to do so and I will quite happily watch while they rupture themselves. 

Anyway, everyone had a good time and we'll really have to do it again sometime - soon, preferably. But maybe on a Saturday, so that we'll have Sunday to recover. I also have to find some spare time to reorganise the computer situation here. There are currently five machines squatting the place: one for the kids, one for Margo, mine (on which I'm writing this), my office machine, and the new one which is destined to replace this one. When that happens this machine becomes the machine for the kids, the kids machine gets dumped off on friends who don't know an obsolete PC from a paperweight, and Margo hangs on to her machine which, whilst obsolete, is her friend. 

Other than that I should get my nice shiny new car sometime this week: I did go off on Friday to look at it and I did indeed fall in love. Being unreasonably promiscuous I also fell in love with the bright red Spyder pouting in the show-room but once again it's not entirely reasonable. I'd have liked to try one of the models with the gearshift buttons on the wheel (à la F1 racing machines) but that's only on the top-line models - perhaps in a couple of years. Got flashed by a radar on the autoroute on the way home too - I was only doing 140, can't think why it snapped me. Have to wait and see if I get a little note from the gendarmerie in the next week or so. If I do I'll be rather hurt - it's not as though 140 is really breaking the limit. Honestly, we're not even talking 10% over here. And lots of people were going much faster than I.  

06/06 

And after getting photographed on the autoroute last night Margo hauled me out of the shower this morning crying "The gendarmes want to see you!" "What, so soon?" I thought, as I looked about for suitable prison garb (unfortunately the cast-iron codpiece and chastity belt ensemble was at the cleaners) but I needn't have worried, just her sick little joke, yes the gendarmes were in fact hanging around in the street but just to get an appointment to interview me for our request for Frog citizenship. I must say that it's moving quickly. Only three months since I dropped the completed dossier off, and they're already on to the police checkup! (This, for those that don't recognise it, is sarcasm.)  

And Malyon rang - the last phone call before leaving for Kuala Lumpur and then, eventually, Lyon. I must admit that I'm rather wondering what she's like now. Grown a bit, I suppose. And she's getting to an age when music ("French music is crap! You'll have to buy some decent CDs") and fashion ("Should I paint my nails purple?") are becoming Important Things in Life. A big thank-you to Ali & Barry for looking after her and generally putting up with her. Now I suppose we'll have to do the same - after almost a year's leave of absence. I suppose that after a while we'll get back into the swing of things and having two kids again.

I suppose I'd better get this finished and sent off or it really will be three weeks since I started. We've each had our little interview with the commander of the local brigade of the gendarmerie - the "enquête morale" of which the main aim appears to be getting us to say things that we've already written down on the papers that got sent off to the Préfecture. They also try to work out whether or not we've a criminal record, check that the kids aren't maltreated and try to determine if we've "integrated" into French society. With our wine consumption I think the last is pretty much a walkover.

They even asked if I took an interest in politics - I replied that as I wasn't allowed to vote anywhere in the world I didn't actually bother following it that closely. And in France it's too depressing anyway. A Green député just recently claimed that Jacques Chirac (unbelievably president) was, when mayor of Paris, elected partly thanks to the votes of people who turn out to have been technically dead (vitally-challenged? existentially-deprived?) at the time and got slapped on the wrist for revealing Parliamentary secrets. Jacques Tiberi, current mayor of Paris, is standing again ("auto-succession") is the term in French, if anyone cares), despite the mud being flung about his own crowd of loyal-unto-death-and-even-beyond supporters (some 18000 voters being no longer with us) and false billing and make-work jobs for the boys. This against the official mayoral candidate of the (dis)united right, Phillippe Séguin. Séguins' competitors for the post (including Edouard Balladur, ex-prime minister and onetime presidential hopeful - against Chirac) have withdrawn with much noise and bad grace, not perhaps too surprising given that the choice seems to have been made behind closed doors in a game of "Dip dip dip my little ship" by the RPR leadership. Cynical souls are saying that Séguin got the nod to get him out of the way before the next presidential election, as he'd have been a strong challenger to Chirac's bid for a second term: he will either have won, and be running Paris, or have lost, and been exiled to the political wilderness.

It's not just the right that are in disarray, mind you - they're perhaps just more visible. The left have their own problems, with bloody-minded investigators digging into the Mitterand years (back when Elf, the big petrol firm, was Mitterand's personal slush fund) and the rather creative financing of the Socialist party. Roland Dumas (once Minister of Justice) seems headed for jail, Strauss-Kahn maybe, and there are at least two other investigations underway into sitting ministers.

All of which might explain why, when yet another scandal is published with great fanfare on the evening news, people tend to lean back in the sofa and say "Yeah?".

Margo has been busy - not ony getting the bedroom ready but also doing translations for a client of ours in Geneva, Axe Communications. First it was a user's manual for a moulding analysis program from Dupont, then an offer to redevelop the UNDP website. If she can keep doing that she'll be pleased: light work, all done via the net, and pays well. Can't complain.

And I certainly can't, because I picked up my new Alfa yesterday. The first car I've ever owned that is actually technically, verifiably, new - with only 200km on the clock. I'm quite pleased with it, and I must say that I do appreciate the air-conditioning. You lot may laugh, but over here it's very nice to have. So now we will in fact be able to pick up Jeannie & Leigh & Malyon from Satolas on Tuesday and bring them back in reasonable comfort. And as Margo got Jeremy's bedroom finished today (have to move him in tomorrow) everyone will have somewhere to sleep.

28/05/00 And of course, the peasants are SO picturesque ...

Hello again, everyone.

Well, we made it down to the Gers - eventually - with trailer in tow for a nice relaxing four days doing sod-all. We'd planned on leaving Friday 5th to take advantage of the long weekend (Monday being Armistice day) but when I took the Clio down on Thursday to get the towbar fitted it turned out that the towbar in stock wouldn't fit, they could get one in for Friday but there's be no-one to fit it until Tuesday, so we grinned and bore it and left the following Wednesday instead. Probably worked out for the best, given the traffic on the roads on a long weekend: at least we had a calm trip. Slow, too, after Avignon - we ran into the thunderstorms that the met. service had been promising all week.

Reminds me that I now have to buy another car (more to the point, the company has to do that) as Renaud rang up just as we were leaving on Wednesday to say that he'd just blown up the motor in the 205. Not too surprising really, the poor old thing had about 250,000 km on the clock, but it could have come at a better moment. I'll have to get onto various garages to see what their offers are - I must admit that an Alfa 155 is very tempting - but that'll have to wait for a week or so until I have some spare time.

Anyway, we made it down to the backblocks of the Gers and on to the wiggly track that leads up to Jacquy's place, and then had to stop for a peacock to move off. He looked rather insulted at our being there, but eventually scrambled up the bank on the side of the road and then stood there making rather gross noises at us as we headed off.

The Gers, for those of you who care, is in the heart of Gascony, which is Dartagnan country. They eat and drink a lot (and rather well), tend to swash their buckles, and as they're 99% peasant, hate tax inspectors. We went off one afternoon to buy some foie gras - probably illegal in NZ but we love the stuff anyway - and first of all we stopped off to see the farmer that took over Jacquy's beehives. You pull up into a muddy driveway mostly occupied by a tractor and three rusting hulks that may once have been cars, and stop at the open end of a U formed by the farmhouse on the left, a two-storeyed barn in the middle, and a glorified cowshed on the right. On the barbed-wire fence in front of the actual house a couple of overalls are hanging out to dry, the courtyard is full of mud, hay, and dubious byproducts of bovine digestive processes, and the 97-year-old granny is twitching aside the fly-blown curtain and peering suspiciously at us through the kitchen window. It's almost 3rd-world - the place looks like a dump. I wouldn't be surprised if, when not staring suspiciously at strangers, granny didn't go off and haul a bucket of water (with a few frogs in it) from the rather septic looking pond by the cowshed and wash the dishes in it. But Jacquy reckons that, with subsidies and all, they probably manage to bring in 15,000 F/month, plus granny's pension. Not too bad. Maybe it's a lifestyle choice.

Then we got to the foie gras man. Neat house, clean driveway - fair enough, don't want dirty ducks when their livers are worth 300F/kilo - and the usual couple of mongrels looking longingly at the tyres. Jacquy got out, went up to the door and spoke for about 5 minutes (either presenting us or negociating a commission) before we were allowed out. But once you've been accepted as a client - a little "prune" (plums preserved in Armagnac - they plop one or two in your glass and cover them with the Armagnac, and you have to finish it) followed by a coffee and a bit of a chat before the serious part, where a couple of preserving jars apparently full of unappetising yellow scum get pushed across the table in one direction, and a number of banknotes go in the opposite direction. Then it's time to go, as the man has ducks to force-feed, and the little sods don't like it that much.

Apart from that, we did as little as possible, which is pretty much my idea of a holiday. Oh, we went off and bought a couple of feijoa trees just to see if they work in Savoie, and we wandered about a bit in Jacquy's two hectares of forest and frightened a deer, which took off and went crashing back along the path (Jeremy was thrilled) and then found some wild boar tracks (or so Jeremy thought, and he was even more thrilled - if only Margo had thought to bring some plaster of paris along we could have taken casts), but it was too hot really to do much and let's face it, after a little whisky at 11:30 as an apéro before lunch (with its couple of bottles of wine), you don't actually want to do too much before the little whisky at 7pm before dinner (with more wine) in case the appetite gets spoilt.

They've an odd local custom down there too - as you drive around on the back roads you'll come across little metal shields with the tricolor painted on them and a bit of squiggly writing, planted on poles in front of houses or by the roadside. I'd never bothered to read the squiggly writing and had gone through life with the impression that they marked places where someone had heroically died for France, but this time round I became convinced that there can't have been that many Resistance heroes in the whole of France, let alone the Gers. On closer examination, what is actually written is "All honour to our Mayor, Lucien Machin", or "All honour to Councillor Pierre Chose". What it seems happens is that when a new mayor and council get elected (which is not as often as you might think, especially in rural France where, once you get the job, you tend to stay there for life and even at the end of that there's a good chance of handing it on to the kids) they all get together at one of their houses and go on, from councillor to councillor and winding up at the mayor's house, for a monumental day-long meal (copiously washed down with Gascon wine, of course), and at each house they plant one of these poles. Just to remember them by. It seems that it's all a very festive occasion, and I assume that the village gendarme gets told to stay at home on the day, because at the last house on the Nth glass of wine and about to tuck into a half jam-jar of Armagnac I know that I'd be feeling a bit wobbly.


28/05

Sunday evening and just recuperating a bit from last night - Sophie organised a little party which apparently finished up at around 6am this morning, but we piked out around midnight. Then this afternoon we went off to see Jacques and give him a hand unburdening his cherry tree and came back with 4 or 5 kg of cherries which are destined for the freezer.

The weather's been grotty today - been raining steadily (can't complain too much, we need it) and a bit chilly, but otherwise it's been marvellous. The fledglings are learning to fly in the hedge and garden, and Tess spends time down there lying on her back with her mouth wide open, hoping that there a few slow learners in the flock. She's also discovered catnip. She doesn't eat it, but if you give her a leaf she'll sniff it and then pin it down under her chin and rub it across the floor, drooling gallons as she does so. It's a pretty gross sight, and the pool of tepid catspit that's left isn't any better.

Renaud seems concerned that Margo isn't working any longer, and keeps finding her Things To Do. Last week it was the translation of a user's manual for one of our clients, and soon the same client wants some stuff scanned in, tweaked and then posted on the Nestlé breast-feeding site we did. So she should get about 20KF in over the summer, which is nice.

And I am trying to finish off a Windows driver for Sony videocams for a Swiss crown called Gespac. For which I had to buy a shiny new machine so that I could test it under Windows 98, and when I've done it'll become the new home machine and all the other machines shift along a rung. When that gets done I'll find out if they hand me the application development as well, which is quite on the cards, but can't wait for that as I have another website to develop for the Auchan supermarket chain. It's a busy little world.

I'll send this now and free up the machine so that Margo can get onto the serious business of reading her accumulated e-mails, but first here's a letter to the editor from The Economist:

"SIR-I must protest against your portrait of France as an illiberal, self-centred nation. French culture is exceptional and unique.

This has given rise to an efficient education system whose graduates are among the most competent administrators imaginable, endowed with an extraordinary capacity to manage one of the world's best performing economics while remaining close to the nation they rule.

This has led to an exemplary social consensus which spares the country such scourges as industrial action while serving as a shining example to other countries for its free-market, decentralised approach. This is coupled with a traditionally outstanding foreign policy, universally appreciated for its team spirit, openness and flexibility. This is why the world loves France."

I rather think it's tongue in cheek.

02/05/00 A sorry spectacle ... several apologetic glasses

Back again.

I did get around to mowing the lawn on the 9th, promise I did, and I really would have mowed it last weekend too had it not been too wet. So now it's nice and sunny and warm and the grass is back up to knee height, and I am going to have to get back out there Real Soon Now and try to bludgeon it back into submission.

At the moment I'm trying to get a website together in a bit of a rush (like, for in 8 days): the layout is all prepared (read "is in the process of being prepared", which is not what I really want to hear) so all that needs doing really is sticking in the bits that handle database access and stuff like that in order to make the site a "life-style-enhancing experience". Or something like that.

What makes me laugh is that the site is a throwaway - it has to be up for the end of the month, and on the 24th of May it will cease to exist. Its sole porpoise is to let about 100 top managers for a Swiss drug/chemicals firm sign up for a 2000AD pissup in Montreux. The really funny bit is that the company knows the names of the managers that it's inviting to the bash, but it either does not know - or cannot extract from the IS system in place - exactly which country they work in and what their phone number might be. It's not a website that they need. Still, why should I complain? They're paying me to learn how to put up an interactive site with access to an industrial-grade database behind it - I can handle this.

Just being looking over the latest newsletter we got from NZ and saw one item, under a headline of "Neo-Nazi Row" which worried me a bit - a Dr Pratt of Waikato University who seems to be asking why they have not expelled a student who has - I quote "been identified by overseas experts as an anti-Semite". Did Jörg Haider publicly say that he knew the fellow, for god's sake? If the resumé of the article is correct, I have to cringe for academic standards in NZ. If it's not, perhaps I should start worrying about journalistic standards.

22-04-00

Well, mowed the lawn again (fascinating news, that) and as it was lovely and hot today (about 26° in the shade down in the courtyard) I took all the necessary tools down and put together a new bridge for the stream. This involves - at a minimum - the circular saw, small B&D drill (for pre-drilling screw holes), the big Bosch hammer-action drill (for use as as a screwdriver, the battery-operated screwdrivers give out after about three screws in the sort of wood I used), set-square, clamps, assorted hardware ... took about three hours and incidentally served to remind me just how hot it gets down in the courtyard when the sun gets in there.

Tomorrow is Easter Day and, as is traditional, it'll be grot. About 16°, they reckon, persisting down and snow at about 1500m. Might as well be in NZ, really. Jeremy is really looking forward to it and made us promise to leave out a couple of carrots and some water for the Easter Bunny. My idea of a shotgun and buckshot didn't go down at all well. Margo's patissier/chocolatier friend Jean-Luc has already givern him a chocolate dinosaur full of lollies and this morning she picked up his proper Easter egg, so he's likely to overdose tomorrow.

Last week one of the few French documentary programmes that's worth watching - Thalassa - did a special programme on NZ. A number of our friends watched it - either from some warped sense of duty, or just because they've been sensitised to the idea of NZ - and most of them asked us the same question afterwards: "What on earth are you doing in France? You could be in New Zealand!" The only convincing answer I've been able to come up with is that we've been exiled for some crime too heinous to even talk about and are only allowed back (with paper bags on our heads so that we can't see the scenery) every five years or so for a brief visit. I've tried giving the real reasons - that we're actually reasonably happy here, Savoie is - in its own way - quite beautiful too, and I actually quite enjoy - in a twisted masochistic way - trying to run a company here and make some money - but it's not paranoid enough and no-one believes me.

(In fact, we can't leave until we've managed to get Renaud and Sophie over to NZ for a holiday. I will then be able to return happy in the knowledge that they will no longer be content to live in France, knowing what they're missing.)

02-05-00

Got back safely on Friday night from Geneva and installing my little website. I can now put "JSP experience" down on my resumé. Our clients (a reasonably big "communications agency", whatever that maybe) were impressed and so they should be - it actually worked! They now want to buy us - or at least enter into some sort of meaningful relationship going a bit further than us selling them our services from time to time. I'm all in favour of that - especially if it means that I can retire at 50 with an Alfa Spyder in the garage. Unfortunately I don't think it'll come to that, but we'll see what they have to say next Wednesday, when Renaud has a meeting with them to discuss such things.

So it's been a reasonably busy week. Up in Geneva for most of it, but still managed to find time for a BBQ on Tuesday and then Renaud and Sophie came round on Thursday night and we pigged out on foie gras and smoked salmon and drank unreasonable quantities of wine. Rather enjoyable, really.

This coming weekend is yet another long weekend - can't remember exactly why May 8 is a public holiday, but it is - and we're going off to the Gers to see Jacquy and hopefully pick up Malyon's bed and a big dresser. So in the next couple of days I have to work out how we're going to get them back here - it'd be nice to rent a van for a one-way trip, or even better send them off by rail - but this being France it won't be easy.

Jeremy had his two friends Pierre & Florian round for the day - six-year old twins. I wasn't there for most of it, as I had to go off and fix up a few problems with my stock-control system. Nothing particularly dramatic, but as it's the end of the week and, on top of that, the end of the month (and thus billing time), important for the client. So anyway, I missed much of the fun involved in having three five/six year-olds at home on a rainy day. Margo reckons it involves at least five times more mess than just Jeremy multiplied by three. It's probably some sort of boy thing.

By the time I got home they'd been safely delivered back to their parents and I was able to take a Martini down to the garden and watch the grass grow. Which it does, almost audibly. (Except on the bits Margo napalmed the other day.) It really is rather nice. Something a lot of you probably take for granted, but in Europe it's rare. You can almost understand why the French have this sentimental passion for peasant farmers, and why every Parisian dreams of having a patch of land of their own in the country.

Strange, really, as the actual peasant farmers are a dirty old lot that think that government subsidies are a god-given right and that clear running streams are Nature's waste-disposal system. I'll have to go down soon with boots on and clear out the three or four empty oil cans, the seeding cabbages, and general household waste that's currently bobbing around in our stream. Good thing Malyon's not here to see it all, she'd probably give us a lecture on respecting ecosystems and then march off to the Mairie to lay a complaint against person or persons unknown. Morally she's quite right, but I'm patient - I can wait four or five years until they all die off and are replaced by gentrifying "jeunes cadres" trying to escape the city. Who will throw their lawn clippings into the stream. Evolution is a slow process.

... Still trying to plan our trip off to the Gers, and it's not easy. The SNCF actively discourage people from using their services directly - wouldn't even give me a price. I don't really want to rent a van, as that would mean taking the BM and the van down and I, as the happy van driver, would have to go down one night and come back the next day and even at that it'd cost 2300 F or thereabouts (without petrol) which is rather expensive. So Margo had a brilliant idea which involves putting a tow-bar onto the work Clio and taking Sue & Serge's enormous trailer down. As getting a tow-bar fitted costs only 1000 F it's a no-brainer - now I just have to get it done. Can I find a garage that can stick a standard tow-bar on a stock-standard Frog car in the next three days? Does a pope shit in the woods? Is the Bear a Catholic? Answer is no. Bugger! (With feeling.) So we might wind up going down during the week rather than over the weekend.

Which is perhaps not too bad an idea anyway, as it'll give me a little more time to attack some of the work I have to do. Having got my website out of the way I now have a DOS-mode video driver to do in a couple of days and then - if the client I'm off to see at Geneva tomorrow agrees to our exorbitant prices - a Windows 98 driver for a video camera. To be done for the end of the month. And there's always paperwork to get out of the way, and all these strange people who keep sending us bills and who, for some strange reason, expect to get paid. There are times when it'd be nice not to have to worry about any of all that.

Just to supply another good reason why those of you who have no children want to keep things that way - found Jeremy in the shower this evening, lying on his back with the water beating down on what, for the sake of decency, we'll call his "lower abdomen". I asked exactly what he was up to and he replied - rather defensively - "Nothing! I was just giving my willy a drink!".

09/04/00 Spring's Sprung

Spring is officially here - since the 21st or something, the French reckon the seasons based on the equinox or whatever the thing is. Sometime around the ides of March, anyway. And last weekend we slipped into summer time (or daylight saving, to be more accurate) without really noticing - whatever your clocks were set to, we were late up.

While the garden is still in an untamed state now is probably its best time of year - the grass is green but not too long and the clumps of different varieties of daffodils are in flower, along with the primroses, the violets and, just lately, the bluebells. Be a shame to mow it all, but you can't stop progress. Or a maniac with a lawnmower, come to that.

Really have to replace the bridge across the stream, though. The creaky plank that went in over a year ago as a temporary measure is not really adequate. Discussed the matter with the neighbours from up the road, who share the access with us, and decided that we really need a decent bridge, not too heavy, on a solid concrete base each side of the stream. We have the wood, they have the concrete mixer and cement. (The Americans have the technology, but we'll muddle through without.) Almost laid the foundations there and then, actually, but Eric reckoned that it looked as though it might rain and that is apparently not good (how would I know?) so I went off and flew a kite with Jeremy instead.

And as it happens it DID rain, and in fact it snowed - again - not this low down, but not that far above us either. Most annoying because it's got all cold again, and I do not like that. And it's wet. And grey. And basically miserable. A typical European spring, really.

It may or may not have come to your attention that our esteemed PM, Lionel Jospin, has reshuffled the cabinet. Dominique Voynet, the Green minister for the environment (who was guilty either of doing a very bad job or of having a very bad spin doctor) is out, as are Sautter, DSK's successor in finance, and Allègre, in education. Sautter sinned in trying to reform the Finance Ministry without having either the political guile of DSK or Jospin's support at 100%: Allègre - unfortunately for him - told the truth once too often about the teachers' unions. At any other time they'd probably both have been kept on - everyone knows that the (rather modest) reforms they proposed are necessary - but the presidential elections are looming up and nothing must compromise Jospin's chances.

So Laurent Fabius (an ex PM under Mitterand, perhaps best-known in NZ as being PM at the time of Rainbow Warrior but got definitely sullied as far as the French are concerned when implicated - up to his neck - in the business of AIDS-contaminated blood transfusions) takes on finance and Jack Lang, a media-savvy intellectual featherweight, gets education (a match made in heaven). Given that Fabius is an old enemy of Jospin's, and that Lang is unpredictable and extremely ambitious, and that both are potential rivals, it's probably rather a clever move. Neither of the pair will actually do much harm - Fabius might actually do some good - and as Truman (I think) once said of Hoover, "better inside the tent pissing out than outside ..."

And Martine Aubry, daughter of Jacques Delor and architect of the 35-hour working-week in France, is standing for mayor of Lille. (Which is a rather grimy and exceedingly depressing industrial city in the north of France, been controlled by the Socialists for years and is consequently rather a black hole in whatever standard of quality of life you choose to apply.) Much to my surprise, she has declared that if elected, she will resign from her government post (reasonable, but unusual). If at all possible, I'd move to Lille and vote for her. It might be bad for Lille, but could only be good for France.

All of which reminds me of Renaud's disgust last Friday when he tried to ring a supplier on an urgent matter - possible replacement of a touch-screen - to be greeted by a charming taped message along the lines of "Due to current French legislation on the 35-hour working week, we now close at mid-day on Fridays. Thank you for calling, please try again Monday. We value your custom." Had to laugh, personally, but he didn't see the funny side of it. Sourpuss.

It's now Saturday, April 1, and Margo's closed up the shop. Last day yesterday, and a quick swoop in this morning to pick up various bits and tidy up some loose ends, but the key is now under the mat. Well, not quite, they still have to appear before the Tribunal de Commerce on Monday to make it official, but that's more or less a formality. Tomorrow I head off at some ungodly hour in the morning to pick up Neil Potter from Satolas airport before shoving him on a train to Montpellier - I am NOT looking forward to that, as I do like my weekly lie-in.

Sunday 9/4

That wasn't a very long addition, was it? Try to do better this time. Got Potter safely picked up on Sunday - almost didn't, mind you, as he'd neglected to send over his flight number and according to the arrivals board no flights were scheduled to come in at the time he'd specified. I spent a while wandering around Satolas before phoning Gill and getting the flight number from her, when I found that the flight had arrived, but not at 8:45, and that it dumped its cargo into one of the two downstairs arrival zones, when I was hunting around upstairs. On top of that they managed to lose his suitcase. Which was - give them credit where it's due - delivered to our doorstep that afternoon.

A bit too late, unfortunately, for him to take it with him to Montpellier. Luckily he was turning up back here on Tuesday (and duly did, late again - problem with the train this time) and so didn't have to re-kit himself.

The liquidation went according to plan and the court-appointed liquidator wants to speed up the disposal of assets as much as possible. Given that said assets are currently sitting in an uninsured shop with no alarm system in what the French euphemistically call a "quartier populaire", this is probably a good idea. On the other hand, we got registered letters yesterday from the bank: as we personally guaranteed the loans that the company took out, the bank now wants its money back. With any luck the insurance company will advance them that much - in any case it's all in the hands of the lawyer now, so I'm not going to lose any sleep over the matter.

Been income tax time again - probably why the sods went on strike. Ostensibly it was over Sautter's proposed reform of finally bundling the tax assessors in with the tax collectors: the current Byzantine system, whereby the Finance Ministry decides who owes what and the various local Public Treasuries are responsible for collecting it, dates back to Napoleonic days and was originally intended, I think, to combat corruption. This no longer being the problem it was, it seems logical to combine the two functions, but the civil servants swear blue that the public actually LIKE having to deal with two different services, in different buildings at opposite ends of the town. Anyway. Most people were probably cheering the strikers on, happy in the knowledge that it'd put off the evil day when they have to pay, but as I'm owed money I'd rather that my return got looked at ASAP. I suppose I really ought to sit down and calculate just how much they should be paying me, but at the moment I can't be bothered.

Yesterday was lovely and fine, so I finally gritted my teeth as firmly as possible and hauled the lawnmower out from its lurking-place in cellar n° 3. The grass was very lush and must have been up to 20 cm in places, so the poor little mower was labouring a bit and I had to go over twice, but it's now looking a bit more civilised down there. One of those faithful weekend chores has just come out of retirement, and for the next five or six months the buzz of the lawnmower will be loud in the land every Saturday. (And Sunday, in St Pierre. Everyone else mows their lawns on a Saturday, but I do it on Sunday morning 'cos that's when I have time and it's not too hot. It's probably against some municipal bylaw or other.) The leaves are out on the old apple tree, the plum trees have burst into flower and the lime tree has its first buds showing: there's just the acacias to get some leaves on them now.

Come to that, the wood strawberries have their first flowers out, which means that sometime in June I should be able to flop my head over the bank and fill my face with the little darlings.

All this foliage means that next weekend we should be able to napalm the brambles and the ex-vegetable garden with systemic herbicide, which will hopefully bio-degrade in time for us to look at planting in Autumn.

Anyway - I threw Neil out of the car onto the footpath at Satolas this morning, from whence he flies north to Amsterdam and thence south to Madrid. On a return ticket, of which he's using only only one leg. Why? Because it's significantly cheaper than a one-way ticket from Toulouse to Madrid. And why is that? Buggered if I know.

Anne-Laure (remember her? We brought her to NZ with us last time we came over) popped around this evening to give Jeremy a cuddle and talk over career choices with us. She's decided that teaching is perhaps not her real vocation and wants to switch to computer science, specialising in website design. What she'd like to do is a course in Pariswhich specialises in 3-D imaging - she hopes to get an interview in the next few weeks. While her parents are off on holiday in the Middle East. She just thought it'd be a good idea to run the idea by us once before letting Claude & Maryse in on it - preferably at the fait accompli stage. Feels funny, being considered old enough to be acceptable parent substitutes.

I still have work to do and the birds are going to start singing at some ungodly hour tomorrow, so I'll get this off now. Goodnight, all!

06/03/00 Mr. Brain has long since departed ...

As Blackadder remarked to Percy on one occasion, and I know just how he felt.

Just spent the last two days in Switzerland getting things ready for the new supermarket game, which starts on Monday, ie getting the machines back in their housings, checking that printers and modems work, boring little details like that. The game itself is a tired warmover of last year's version which I'd personally have thought would be guaranteed to discourage everyone save complete lackwits (preferably terminally depressed ones) but noone seems to mind and as it's more or less money for jam I'm not going to start worrying about it either.

But I could have done without the trip, especially today as it was the opening of the Geneva car show, which meant traffic jams all around Geneva this morning, and the weather went rapidly downhill so that instead of yesterday's 20° or so I had rain/snow slurry persisting down on the way back home.

Now Sunday 5/3, and I'm trying to catch up a bit before watching Star Trek and then hibernating.

We gather that NZ is still the proud custodian of a rather ugly silver-plated spittoon. Congratulations. After the rugby - and the cricket - it's about time! But I am a bit surprised to find that the event was celebrated with what the Herald-Tribune called "typical Kiwi over-indulgence". I'd always thought we were rather an austere lot, on the whole - apparently not. I must admit that I didn't actually watch any of the races (couldn't avoid 30 seconds on the evening news one night, but that hardly counts) - as a spectator sport yachting comes in with down-hill skiing, marathon running and solo tooth extraction in the excitement department.

Those of you who care will notice that relations between Chirac and Jospin are a little strained at the moment. Small history lesson - unlike any civilised country, France has a President and a Prime Minister, both with executive power. This arrangement was dreamed up by the framers of the constitution to please Charles de Gaulle (don't know why they thought it would make him happy, but apparently they did) and as no-one seems to have noticed that he's been dead for some time it's gone on unquestioned.

Now one of the little unquestioned details was that foreign policy belonged to the President - his own private hunting-ground. As time goes on it's about all that's left to him, really. So it was particularly unappreciated when Jospin, on a visit to Lebanon, called Hesbollah a terrorist organisation. Not only is the remark Chirac's to make (as Pres) but also, historically, France has always claimed an "honest broker" position in the Middle East whilst also claiming to have a unique understanding of the Arab mentality (a claim which, were I Arab, I might well take as a personal insult). It's always come as a disappointment to them that the only outside country with any real influence is the US.

Basically Jospin has chucked that pretence out of the window, and also had the bad taste to remark that he wished that la France would stop dreaming that it was more important than, in fact, it is. Didn't go down very well. And then there was the humourous episode when, on Jospin's arriving back in France on Sunday night he was telephoned by Chirac requesting his presence at the Elysée IMMEDIATELY, to which Jospin cheerily replied that they'd see one another at the usual Wednesday Cabinet meeting.

Been another beautiful day today, so we went down and did some more work in the garden. Margo attacked trees and ivy withh the slasher, and I tried to get some of the rust off the garden gate before repainting it (in pond-scum green). Jeremy went off and played at finding cow-pats to sit in in the paddock behind, and Tess followed to keep him company in case he really did find a cow-pat, and needed help with it. As far as we know he didn't (or if he did the stains came out remarkably easily), but the search kept him busy for hours.

Jeremy, incidentally, has started to miss his sister. Not sure why, but it's the case. It'll probably last all of 30 minutes, when she does actually arrive back (in late June, according to the latest plans). What we do have to do is seriously attack his bedroom - or rather, turn what was Margo's sewing & junk room into his bedroom. This involves shifting out the wood-burning stove and the sink (preferably AFTER cutting off the water), removing tiles from the walls so that it's a bit less like the public baths, then rewiring and repapering.

Rewiring will be fun. The idea is to reuse, as far as possible, the existing wiring ducts so as not to have to use the equivalent of a router on the walls and ceilings. At least I now know how and where the three-phase arrives upstairs, and the monophase does the rounds downstairs before heading off upstairs itself. The trick now is to use this knowledge to rewire room by room without plunging the rest of the house into darkness (or, more pertinently, cutting off power to the PC). This is where I shall have to

• do a little more electrical archaeology and
• call in our friend Bruno Fontanel to tell me what to do.

The other plans for this summer are, more or less in order:

• getting the staircase down from the balcony to the courtyard
• replacing three exterior doors
• finishing work on the living room
• napalming the garden
• bringing peace to the world, ending hunger and converting Saddam Hussein to Judaism.

An ambitious programme, at the end of the year we hope to be able to show some progress on at least the first four items.

Tuesday there's a big meeting at Margo's shop: the court-appointed assessor has ordered everyone to be present so that he can learn exactly what the hell is going on. As the different insurance companies involved are obliged to be present Margo hopes to get a better idea of exactly what they're willing to pay up. And, if the offer's acceptable, to take it straight away. However that works out, the shop should be closed up in the next three months or so.

Paragraphs below this line are intended strictly for a mature programming audience and are designed to induce terminal boredom in normal human beans.

I've found a new hate object for the month and surprisingly enough it's not a Microsoft product, nor is it in any way related to the fairies of Redmond. This month's Bimler Award for the Most Gratuitously Frustrating Useful Software Product (with Special Mention for misuse of Capital Letters) goes to Seagate Software for Crystal Reports V7.x. This is a marvellous product which is probably only appreciated as it deserves by those of us who, some 20 years ago, had to learn about RPG.

Integrated into your software it allows the users to design and run their own reports, thereby reducing your workload and blood pressure, the installation procedure is, once worked out, quite straightforward (provided you don't let Visual Basic's cyber-bloody Install Wizard do it for you and screw it up as usual) and it's royalty-free. It's also, unfortunately, full of bugs. Not major, life-threatening ones, but small, naggy, annoying ones that waste half an hour of your time here, then another half-hour the next day ... the online support is rapid (I sent off a query and got an answer back the next day) if not always the best (the answer was useless) but - another annoying point - the documentation is appalling. Along the lines of (and I am not joking very much)

prototype is function ButterYourToast(toast, butter)

This function causes the specified number of copies of your toast to be buttered. The optional jam parameter, if non-zero, specifies the marmelade to be used. System toast is used by default, unless or even if the Bread.MakeToast() constructor has previously been called to specify wholemeal. NOTE that MakeToast will replace the system toast for the life of your application. You may want to consider making the Bread object of global scope to avoid conflicts. Don't forget to restore system toast to the default value (currently hard-coded in NT 4.0 as white, thick-sliced, although this is subject to change) on exiting.

Next month is time for the Why do I Insist on Beating My Head Against the Wall award for recidivist users of any Microsoft product. The focus will be on ActiveX objects (or whatever they call it these days) and would-be nominees are invited to submit a white paper explaining why the developers of any given Microsoft "technology" should not be put up against a wall and forced to listen to Boy George for three months before being made to develop a useful, portable and useable application using their own tools.

20/02/00 A fête worse than death ...

No, neither a spelling mistake nor some sort of Freudian slip, just that last night was the school dine and dance here at Saint Pierre, and we weren't able to get out of it. Locked into a smoky salle des fêtes for at least four hours, surrounded by demented French-things drinking with abandon and smoking - as far as anyone can tell - silage. Attila the Hun and his mobile disco provide the musical ambiance, which is pretty dire.

Actually it wasn't as bad as all that. It was pretty bad, because our table was right up at the head of the room about 3m from the "orchestra", which rather curtailed conversation. On the other hand it wasn't too smoky, which was a pleasant surprise, and we managed to slope off early - about mid-night. Luckily Jeremy had decided earlier in the day that he wasn't going to enjoy himself and so spent his time sulking, which most people interpreted as tiredness and recommended we take him home.

Reminds me that at some time I really must fill him in on the sordid details of exactly what it is I do for a living. At the moment he seems to have it in mind that I make computers and then give them to people, which isn't exactly right.

The weather at the moment is traditional French for the month, aggravated by the usual influx of Parisians and other simple carbon-based life-forms for the winter holidays. Practically speaking this means a couple of days where you start to think about putting away the winter woollies, followed by a week wondering why on earth we chose to live so close to the North Pole when there are so many warmer places around, like Siberia. And the autoroutes are jammed. And I do not even wish to speak about going to Carrefour to do a simple bit of shopping.

On the other hand the birds have been at it - noisily - for weeks up in the eaves and some of their enthusiasm seems to have communicated itself to the vegetable world, as the primroses are in flower and the daffodils and snowdrops are out, looking for a less boring means of reproduction than just splitting their rhizomes. Which means that soon we'll have to look at spreading grass seed on the balder patches of paddock, look at planting out trees if we're going to get that done this year and perhaps even napalming and then rotary-hoeing the patch where the vegetable garden once was.

Tuesday night now, and I'm trying to recover after a day's diarrhoea - not mine, I hasten to add, Jeremy's. Took the morning off to look after him but had to drop him off with Margo in the afternoon as I had the accountant coming up to the office to play "Let's hunt a hundred thousand!" or however much it is we want to pay out to ourselves this year. Starting to be a pain in the proverbial rude parts now that we have a bit of production going on, which means that we have to keep track (vaguely) of stock in hand at the end of the financial year so that it appears in the credit side of the accounts (as stock) as well as the debit side (something we actually, through gritted teeth, paid for). Because otherwise you look at the balance sheet and see 300KF spent buying components and 310KF coming in from the sale of what we made from those components, and you start to worry seriously where your margin is,until you realise that the 100KF you spent in December and billed at 200KF in January appears on the books for '99 only as an expense. This business of trying to manage a small company isn't all it was made out to be at the beginning. No-one warned me that it might start to get complicated!

On the news front - the European Commission has already threatened France with a slap on the wrist for continuing to ban British beef after the relevant European agencies have found it to be safe - or at least edible - and are seriously considering doing the same with Germany. I must admit that the French have played it very nicely: having just created, by some incredible coincidence, an "independent" organisation somewhat along the lines of the FDA, which duly found reason to doubt that Britain's herds were totally free of BSE, they now claim that there is no way they can override the expression of the peoples' will and let mad cow meat into France. An attitude which goes down well not only in France, because most right-thinking people hold the Brussels bureaucrats in the same esteem as cockroaches.

But one of these days the French will have to accept that they're just a second-rate nation (have been for at least 120 years, but never mind that) and can no longer get away with bullying the Germans from a position of weakness. Back in the 60s both the French and the Germans wanted to lock Germany into a peaceful Europe, with the Germans as the economic motor and the French as the political visionaries. The unwritten agreement was that the French led and the Germans backed them up with their economic clout. Now conditions are, if not reversed, at least a bit more equal, and this lot of Germans sees no need to feel guilty and would rather like to have their own place on the world stage. Which leaves the French wondering exactly where their place is. Unfortunately, unlike the English, France has no experience of voluntarily giving up an empire, and so has no idea of how to decline gracefully. (Off the top of my head, I can think of no other country that feels a need to bribe small, corrupt African states to continue using French as the official language.)

Perhaps, as de Gaulle's myth of the heroic French resistance fades, and Mitterand's generation of techno/bureaucrat collaborators dies out, France will become a normal nation that doesn't have to pretend that it was raped by the Nazis in 1939 but somehow remained pure in spirit. It has started, with the trials of several home-grown war criminals and the reconsideration of the war in Algeria.

Things can only get worse (well, more interesting) as the EU expands to take in the next lot of applicants (six of them, if memory serves, including Cyprus, which is politically delicate) and starts considering the next lot whilst thinking about what to do about Turkey. (Been thinking about Turkey for years. Got nowhere. Blame it on the Greeks.)

Does all that sound a bit dyspeptic? Must be in a bad mood. Probably listened to one ignorant Frog too many, decrying the evils of an "Anglo-Saxon" economy of which he knows sod-all, and moaning about how he doesn't get enough subsidies.

I really am feeling sour. On the bright side, we finally got together all the necessary paperwork and our naturalisation dossier has been sent off to the Préfecture. So in another couple of years we may well become authentic French-persons. While waiting, we have to renew our cartes de résident this year, and as they expire in August I suppose we'd better get a move on, especially as the Préfecture is basically closed for three months starting in June. That gives us three months, which should be enough. Just.

Anyway. For now, it's enought that the Parisians have all gone home (usual traffic jams on the autoroute all day) and the temperature is rising, which can only mean that Spring is coming. Another few months and we can dust off the barbecue!

08/02/00 The brave new dawn of the 3rd millenium?

More like the hung-over awakening of the 2nd millenium's left-overs, but never mind.

Well, three weeks into Y2K we're still here. I'm starting to feel that maybe we can relax a little and venture out of the bunker for an hour a week or so. Although that might be a bit premature, at least until Feb. 30th goes by without a hitch (according to purists it's a double leap-year).

Anyway, time goes by and the primroses are starting to get ready in the garden, and I suppose that in a month or so the daffodils will be poking their heads out as well. Which will be A Sign that the lawnmower needs an oil change if it is to cut grass rather than bludgeon it, and that we'll have to go around spraying fruit trees against mealy-grub, white spot, black spot, greasy patches and mad cow disease (this is France).

But all that's on hold for the moment as it snowed again quite heavily on Saturday and then again last night: 25cm of the stuff this low down at this time of the year isn't bad. Friends came around on Sunday and we all went sledging in the paddock, which the kids loved. Shame the snow was sticky: great for making snowmen, but you wouldn't have wanted to ski on it. Wouldn't have got more than a few metres before bogging down and falling over. Seems that it was good up in the stations - nice snow, if a bit chilly at -15°

26-1-00

The snow is still deep and crisp (soggy, actually, but never mind the details) and even except in those parts where it's been beaten down by the passage of tiny feet, and I've spent all day as one of the great unwashed 'cos there was no hot water this morning. (Central heating was still working, fortunately.) Spent a happy afternoon up in the attic with the hairdryer, thawing out the one pipe that I hadn't bothered to insulate, thinking that there was no point as it wouldn't freeze up there, to wit the cold water pipe into the hot water cylinder. I admit it, I was wrong, on exceedingly cold nights it can in fact freeze up there and it does. Have now insulated absolutely EVERYTHING.

4-2-00

Time does fly, doesn't it? Can't think why, it's not as though anything has actually happened but there you are, it just whips past, some swine hands you the bill and you're left wondering vaguely what the hell you're paying for and rather hoping it was worth it.

But it does feel like the end of winter. Don't know why, there've been no conspicuous signs or even little notices stuffed in the letterbox, just the once-a-year feeling that the worst is over and spring is on its way. The daylight hours are stretching out so it's no longer dark at 16:30, little old ladies come out of hibernation, and the youth of the village commit whistling in public places.

Which reminds me that frightened bats make a noise like someone sucking their teeth. At least, the one I woke up from its hibernating in the woodpile made a noise like that. Of course, it may not have appreciated being tossed into the wood basket and having another couple of logs thrown in on top - luckily it didn't seem to be hurt and scuttled off happily enough into a dark crack when I picked it up.

And of course the winter sales started (almost finished now) and I succumbed to the temptation of a new scanner and bubble-jet printer for only 800F the pair. (Well, I succumbed and Upstart paid, seemed justifiable to me at the time.) I also have no real excuse not to buy the kids a decent computer as I can pick up the necessary bits for about 1500F (that's motherboard with everything integrated, 500MHz Celeron and a bit of RAM) so at some point this year I must get around to doing that.

But before doing that we have to get Jeremy's bedroom ready for him, now that Margo has removed all her sewing junk from there into the playroom. Which is suddenly about a quarter of the size it used to be. There's the old sink to be taken out, tiles to be removed from the walls (we're assuming he doesn't want to sleep in the Municipal Baths) and the electricity to be redone, after which it can be quickly bodged up and wallpapered.

Just at the moment I'm trying to work out just how the electricity gets around in this house. Yes, I know the theory - electrons (about the size of a small pea, but faster) move in wires and when they come to the end of a wire they fall out and, thanks to gravity, make the little paddle-things in electric motors turn around thus generating rotational motion which can be converted to a linear ie useful movement by a gearbox. Which does not completely explain the transistor radio.

But what I am actually trying to do is work out just where in the house the wires go. The old heating system is fairly easy to pick out, being relatively recent, and I think I've found the lighting circuit. But I'm damned if I can work out where the 3-phase goes. I'll find it, there aren't that many places it can hide.

Anyway, I rather think I won't do any more work tonight so before shutting down the machine I'll send this off. Have a happy (late) New Year