Salut!

Getting snappy

Picture: Mr. TRONA

In a comment on my last posting, about Nicolas Sarkozy and French farming, Thomas R rightly praised the quality of the accompanying photograph.

Most bloggers are aware of Yahoo's membership-driven photographic archive, Flickr. I have dipped into the its reserves on countless occasions for suitable pictures to illustrate articles here and at my other sites, Salut! Sunderland and the embryonic Salut! Live.

As I understand the way Flickr works, and the guidance it publishes, it is entirely permissible to select members' photographs for such purposes. Unless the subscriber opts out, each of his or her pictures actually carries a "Blog This" option. Anyone who feels I have got that wrong is invited to say so.

The courteous blogger nevertheless alerts the Flickr photographer when an image has been used. In my case, I unfailingly credit the photographer (even if, as often happens, I have to change the caption) and offer to withdraw the picture if the person objects to my use of it.

Philippe Tarbouriech, who took the superb photograph of cows, not only consented to its appearance on Salut! but was moved to add his comment, disagreeing with my interpretation of Sarko's words.

Presidentially off message already?

Picture: phitar

Throughout, and immediately after, France's presidential election campaign, I mischievously pointed out - here and at the Guardian Comment is Free site - that the infatuation of right-wing English thinkers with Nicolas Sarkozy would not be an especially enduring one.

It would last, I said, about as long as it took Sarkozy to find an issue where defending French interests seemed the only option open to him. And blow everyone else.

Needles and haystacks

You hear a lot of English spoken in the Intermarché at Le Lavandou, mostly from now to the end of summer though it never completely goes away.

And in the car park, the British stick out a mile even with or without GB number plates. They're the ones observing the clearly marked one-way system. Maybe some of them read Salut!, too.

For the purposes of this little competition, France is the haystack and a combination of English speaking customer, Salut! reader and the former petite presse - now much grander presse - at Intermarché is the needle.

The French Thatcher

Out of the blue, appropriately enough, came a message from Sabine Herold, a young woman who achieved more than her 15 minutes of fame after leading a wave of protests against French public service strikes four years ago.

As well as being of the libertarian right, she is fiercely intelligent and highly attractive, and all three qualities, but above all her contempt for le vice français, endeared her to a certain kind of English conservative.

In France, she has found it hard to shake off the Mlle Thatcher tag.

Are you listening, Monsieur le Président?

My faithful readers - I actually have more these days over at Salut! Sunderland, but that's a performance related thing whereas this, I pray, is not - will doubtless want to hear more about the extraordinary tale of the Provençal village café that is two steps too close to God.

If you read the first item, but didn't go back to it later, you may not know that the case was adjourned until Sept 5. The French press caught up this morning with Salut! in reporting as much.

On that date, the appeal court in Aix-en-Provence will theoretically rule on whether the Bar des Cascades in La Motte deserves to be fined and/or closed, permanently or temporarily, for being two metres short of the 40 required, in terms of its distance from the parish church, to conform to local law.

Since the offending route of 38 metres is as a devout but thirsty crow might fly, as opposed to how anyone venturing from pew to pastis would actually negotiate the journey (ie at least 82 metres, via le good old trottoir),we are entitled to ask whether someone, somewhere is not also two metres short of a full helping of commonsense.

Two steps too close to God

There are times, and May with the sun blazing is one of them, when you could happily gather la belle France in your arms and give it a great big hug.

And there are other times, as in the bizarre case of the Bar des Cascades in the beautiful Provençal village of La Motte, on the edge of the Gorges du Verdon, when you want to whack it over the head.
Some bright spark in the French Customs department has decided that the door of the cafe is two metres too close to the door of the parish church and should therefore, presumably, move or close.

A lower court threw out the case, accepting the view as advanced by the owners, Erick and Marion Beruti, that the distance falls below the decreed minumum of 40 metres only if you go from church to bar as the crow flies.
But no one would. People intent on making the journey - and the priest has been known to do it, not only for his cigarettes and paper but also, on one occasion, for some makeshift communion wine - do so by the pavement, which involve routes of 82 or nearly 93 metres.

Judging friendship

Picture: Ronald Hackston

Heard the one about the university drinking pals who went on, respectively, to be a judge and a headmaster, and their mate who didn't?

No, I don't suppose you have.

But one of them has just been to stay in the south of France, while another is coming close enough for us to visit at the end of the month.

Dylan, as I shall call the judge, and I met on holiday in Peru some years ago. We shared an interest in football and, as it turned out later, politics and folk music. This may sound most unjudgelike, but it is wrong to be too judgmental in such matters.

In any event, the four of us, that is including our wives, agreed to meet up back home.

Such "you must come sometime" arrangements usually lead nowhere, in my experience. But a few months later, my team was playing Dylan's team and we were asked to stay.

The invitation was accompanied by a plaintive request that I should be in charge of acquiring the match tickets. It did cross my mind that the whole point of becoming a judge should be that getting football tickets will be a doddle, but such a thought naturally did me no credit.

Cécilia, your break in these parts

That, with apologies to Paul Simon, who perhaps deserved better, is Salut!'s welcome to the first lady of France, Cécilia Sarkozy.

Some of you may know that Mme Sarkozy has begun the family's faire le pont Ascension weekend, making her first use of the official presidential holiday home, the Fort de Brégançon, just down the road from us.

Now she is installed, with her husband due to follow once he has announced and met his cabinet, she could almost certainly do with a local guide.

She will find this a charming stretch of the Var coastline. The fort looks out towards the beautiful Hyeroise islands of Port-Cros and Porquerolles. I have to take the word of others that the third island, Levant, is beautiful, too, since its combined attractions of nudist beaches and military camp have not been sufficient to lure me across.

From rhyme to reason?

Picture: un-interlude-photographique.

Nicolas Sarkozy's announcement, to no surprise, that François Fillon is to be his prime minister, reminded us of the existence of Dominique de Villepin.

De Villepin's gracious exit from the Matignon was easy on the ear, if not quite evocative of his renowned love of poetry, and he was warmly applauded by his successor.

But it would surely be an exaggeration to suggest that he has left his mark on French politics during his two years in the job.

Jacques Chirac's choice to replace the hapless if likeable Jean-Pierre Raffarin after the debacle of the EU constitution referendum in 2005, de Villepin got off to a reasonable enough start.

It all began to go wrong for him after the rioting that tore across France later the same year.

Colin d'Antibes

What, I thought a little unfairly since the poor man hasn't even started his new job yet, is the point of having a right-wing government and president if the trains don't run on time?

Picture: doow.

But then you are not in a mood for being fair when you are stuck on a stationary train for two hours, especially in France where you become so accustomed to a superb and utterly reliable rail service.

There must be lots of ways of enjoying a couple of hours in Antibes. It's a lively resort, and was popular among British expats even before people started opening English pubs and shops there. I am sure Another Colin knows of all kinds of pleasant distractions.

None of its qualities tends to be of much use when you're meant to be passing through, give or take the usual deux minutes d’arrêt, on the train from Ventimiglia to Toulon.

Unfortunately, our two minutes coincided with news from further up the line that there had been an accident. Someone, it was generally assumed though I am not sure it was ever confirmed and Var Matin has let me down, had thrown himself or herself in front of a train. So Antibes was as far, for the time being, as we would be going.

The young teacher next to me would win medals if talking for France became a competitive event. She kept up an amusing non-stop commentary, interpreting the expressions on the faces of station staff as they passed along the platform and occasionally wondering aloud what foreign travellers on board the train would make of their encounter with French public transport.

Then she headed off to speak to someone, returning with news that nothing could be done before the police, rail officials, the public prosecutor and (it was assumed) the mortician had all done their work.

At first, the train controller's announcements offered no estimate as to how long we would be stuck on the westbound platform. After half an hour or more had elapsed, he revealed that we were likely to be there for a further 90 minutes. Cue for a flurry of those "I'm on a train" mobile phone calls.

Naturally, no one dared stray too far from the train for fear of the delay being unexpectedly shortened. A train was laid on for anyone choosing to go back to Nice, but that too sat in the station without sign of movement.

Eventually, the emergency was declared over and we were on our way again, 10 minutes after the other train pulled away to the east.

It had been a mildly disagreeable experience, but hardly the end of the world - except, sadly, for the cause of the hold-up, assuming he or she died.

I have no recollection of suffering comparable delay on French trains in 30 or 40 years of using them, but plenty of uncomfortable memories of disrupted rail travel in Britain, before and especially since privatisation.

Trains will go on being my preferred means of getting around France. Or have I just been lucky on French trains and unlucky with BR?