Dig Hard, Dig Deep (Scoops 2, 3 and 4)

Like my teeth, the follow-up to Scoop 1 has been difficult to get out. However, for your delectation, here, finally, is the sequel.

As I said previously, I was kindly invited back for further investigations, having gone away from the first visit with a temporary filling, which "would hurt, but in a different way", designed to disinfect the site ready for the real work to start. With the filling removed, scoop 2 began. Very kindly, the dentist decided to use anaesthetic for this one. However, he seemed to inject it everywhere in my mouth apart from the dig-site. For several days afterwards my gums were scarred and I am pretty sure they were burnt by this anaesthetic.

During this investigation, he decided that the nerves were beyond repair and that it would need "at least" 3 more sessions in order to deaden them. "After that, we'll talk about your wisdom teeth". "I've put in another temporary filling - I can't understand why the first one didn't work".

However, he very kindly filled the second tooth for me in the meantime. It was only the day after that I realised the filling was not at all adapted to the shape of my mouth and that, when I closed my mouth on one side, on the other side the teeth were not closing - I looked like Popeye; all I needed was a pipe to hang out of this side (and infeasibly large muscles in my arms) and the effect would be complete. Unlike the cartoon violence meted out by Popeye, this situation led to extreme headaches because the muscles on one side of my face were constantly tensed while those on the other side hung loose . Not pleasant.

"OK, let's give this one a chance to work - come back next week and we'll carry on".

Now, I may be a coward, but I knew full well that it would be folly to keep coming - of course, I was never going to tell him to his face. Oh no, run away and hope he doesn't notice. So, it was with a feeling of guilt that I rang him just before the 3rd appointment and told him that I had been delayed overnight on a customer site and would call him when I got back. I then called the dentist where we used to live and who is treating my son. The thing is, they are very popular, so it was another 10-day wait for an appointment, and only then because they gave me preferential treatment - they have already taken 700€ from us for his brace, with the certainty that his story is not finished and my other son will soon need the same treatment. Mouths - who needs them? The phrase "put your money where your mouth is" never rung truer.

Anyway, onto scoop 3...

Entering the surgery here literally made my jaw drop (but, for obvious reasons, only on one side). Everything was clean, new and white. The dentist had an assistant who held the apparatus for him - I didn't have to do it myself! I didn't have to expectorate (great word) from a paper cup into a dry-spit-covered off-white basin - they had a machine to do this too. I had couched the visit as needing a "second opinion" on the original work. The dentist was very diplomatic, but could only express disbelief at the fact that the filling was convex, thus preventing my mouth from closing properly. He had a tiny X-ray machine. A click of the button, a swivel of the head and he could see the results immediately on his iMac screen. These results showed that there was no obvious nerve damage and that a simple filling would suffice. "I will fill it with a white composite" he said, quickly correcting himself, "Well, not white, but matching the colour of the surrounding teeth". Gggrrrr.

So this time he corrected the damage from the filling from scoop 2, gave me another (well-fitting) temporary filling and asked me to wait another week to make sure that there was really no nerve damage before coming back to have the other filling. "And then we can talk about your wisdom teeth..." was the now familiar parting line.

Scoop 4 is a happier tale. I arrive and am led to their X-ray room where they take a full mouth X-ray with a lovely new machine that swivels around your head, takes 2 seconds and flashes the results up immediately on the computer screen. A quick filling and the bill is presented - 64€ for 2 sessions which included 3 X-rays and 2 fillings, all of which is reimbursed by the dramatically over-stretched health service. Funnily enough, I still haven't received any word from the original dentist. My guess is that it will come to more than 64€ though.


Anyway, to finish, a few words on my wisdom teeth. It turns out that, like a drunk driver in a crowded shopping street, they have veered uncontrollably to the right, crashing through the crowd of orderly normal teeth, causing them to scatter in panic. This has had the effect of squashing them together so that the poor tooth in the middle has been isolated. Imagine a police line-up: the victim selects the suspect and he is asked to step forward while the others take a step backwards- that is what my poor centre tooth on the bottom must be going through right now. Unfortunately, the wisdom teeth have defended themselves by wrapping themselves around nerves. "We can take them out, but if we make a mistake you will end up spending the rest of your life with no feeling on one side of your face...". I think I'll put that decision off until after Christmas.

Unfortunately, the story itself, like the blood from my gums, will run and run, but, from now on, I will spare you from the gory details.

Dig Hard, Dig Deep (Scoop 1)

This post relates to my first experience of French dentistry. Prepare to wince (if you don't, I have failed in my goal). It is a long, ongoing story, so I split it into a few parts in order to stop you getting too bored and speed-reading to the bottom to see if there is anything interesting.

Anyway, to get underway, I should say that, like the French medical service, I assumed that French dentists would be of a high quality, with immediate availability - kind of like a high class call-girl (I would imagine).

As we have just moved house (did I already mention that :-) ), I didn't have any recommendations, so chose the one closest to our house (one dentist is pretty much like another, no?). First surprise: a 2 week wait for an appointment. So, as a proper man, I had spent several months moaning to my wife about the excruciating pain, and, like a proper Englishman, I waited several months before doing anything about it. OK, 2 more weeks, but the wheels were in motion.

Come the big day, I headed off down to the surgery. The signs were good: the surgery was in the courtyard of a beautiful bourgeois house; the waiting room was full of antiques; basically, it was not like any dentists I had ever visited before. Also, unlike any I have ever visited, I was welcomed at the door by the dentist himself - an austere man befitting of his surgery's waiting room, obviously close to retirement, but seemingly steady of hand with a pleasant manner and obviously lots of experience - I should have seen it coming...

I never asked myself, "where is the receptionist? Where is the dental assistant? How much is this going to cost?" as I was waved straight into the surgery. Second surprise: the surgery was also full of antiques, starting with the chair that he beckoned me to sit in. Think imitation beige leather, worn out and patched together with cellotape and you get the idea. OK, it's just a chair - he had comforting high-tech gadgets after all. Look at that Sony monitor in the corner - no idea what it does, but at least it's beige. It looked like one of the oscilloscopes we used at university 20 years ago - actually, maybe not so comforting...

So, napkin on, and in he goes. "Where does it hurt?". Strangely, that day, it didn't hurt at all. He soon fixed that though. With something too closely resembling a fish-hook, he pulled and pushed my teeth in the general area where I said it hurt. Soon enough he found the problem, and like a dodgy garage mechanic (aren't they all?), he gave a sharp intake of breath and told me that I had 2 cavities, both below the gum, one of which had dug a secret passage from one tooth to another. Of course, the problem was down to the previous dentist who had badly filled the teeth.

So he decided to have a closer look. He went off to get his drill bit from one of his antique cupboards, uttering, "Hhhmm, I only seem to have one left but that'll do". He didn't want to use anaesthetic, so in he went, asking me to raise my hand if it hurt. It was OK for a bit, but sure enough he got far enough down to hit the nerve causing my hand to raise, but not under any control. "Hhhmm, even worse than I thought. It'll need at least another four sessions. I'll have to deaden the nerve, do this, do that...come back tomorrow".

At this point, the alarm bells and my gums were ringing. No price ("we'll discuss that at the end of the consultation"), no details, no waiting list - this was the big one; the one that would pay for the new tyres on his Jaguar. Still, as the good Englishman, I didn't dare to kick up a fuss and agreed to come back in tomorrow, which was incidentally a Saturday.

I'll tell you next time about anaesthetic that left my gums burnt, deeper digging (with non-functioning anaesthetic that was obviously past its sell-by date), a filling on the other tooth that left me unable to get my teeth to close on one side of my mouth causing headaches and a final realisation that I needed to see a real dentist...

Competitive Dad

In this post, I am first going to blow my own trumpet, then mute it and draw a parallel with something I saw last weekend. Here we go.

Between the ages of about 7 and 17, I was probably the best footballer in the county in my age group (that's me blowing my trumpet - I can do this because nobody can corroborate it and I have "moderate comments" activated :-)).
However, I come from one of the sparsest populated counties in the country, so it doesn't say too much (that's me muting my trumpet). We would often travel to Manchester or Liverpool to play against teams with 11 snarling Wayne Rooney lookalikes, or to Newcastle to be humiliated by teams with 11 chirpy Gazza play-a-likes. So, I was the best player in the county which had the worst football team - does that count for anything?

Anyway, I played simultaneously for many teams at different levels (school, club, region, county) which explains why my knees are knackered). At the local level, we often used to play in competitions where there would be several teams, each playing the other and a winner emerging (as they do), and we usually won. Not surprisingly given that statement, we often played against teams that were far inferior. This seemed to infuriate several watching parents, many of whom would berate their offspring for pulling out of a tackle or missing a rare chance to score. I have seen children in tears because dad actually threw his coat to the floor before jumping up and down on it and swearing loudly.

Once, on an icy pitch, I slid the ball past a player, and swerved round him, keeping the ball and myself just on the touchline leaving him standing. However, a parent of a player from the opposition was having none of that and nonchalantly stuck out his foot and tripped me up. I think he got a red card for that.

This weekend, with my youngest son, we were walking past the local pitch when we saw the same sort of competition in progress. It was as if I had been transported back: teams of weaklings with players 2 years younger than others that had accumulated all the best players from the area. I watched coaches shouting at the group of players before their next match, trying to get them motivated, fathers jumping up and down on their coats, loudly swearing '"putain, c'est quoi ce bordel", quietly proud mums and even one child leave the field in tears as another goal went in.

My 8-year old is football-obsessed and he is showing all the signs of being an excellent sportsman and wanted to get involved. However, I don't want to turn into one of these parents who live their dreams through their children and trip up any child who gets in their way. I should be OK, but time will tell!

Maybe I'll force him to play piano 3 hours a day instead - at least his knees won't be worn out by the time he's 20...

An Apostrophe Too Far

Last night I was watching Sky News (again): "All the news and sport in 15 minutes, every 15 minutes" gives you an idea of the depth of their coverage. I presume that in the UK, they have adverts between their 15 minute slots, because, in France, they show headlines with a few words about each story (usually what David Beckham or Robbie Williams are up to, that sort of thing).

The people who write these "stories" are often either stuck for inspiration (I know that feeling) or have trouble spelling (I know that problem too). Last night one of the headlines intrigued me:

"Red Hot Chilli Peppers Bassist Flea's House Destroyed by Malibu Fire".

I had 2 interpretations of this headline:

1. A mis-spelling of "flees" with an unnecessary apostrophe which probably should have appeared earlier in the headline, or,
   
2. An unfortunate victim of the recent fires at the Malibu house where the bass player kept his collection of fleas.

I like the Red Hot Chilli Peppers, but can't claim to know the names of any of the band members. However, on further reading, it became apparent that their bass player is actually called "Flea". Reading on, all became apparent.

It just goes to show that you shouldn't judge before reading to the end. My apologies to the Sky News headline writers. Laziness and pre-judgement on my part rather than yours in this case.

Wii? Oui!

When my parents visited in September, they left some money in order to buy a Wii for the kids for Christmas. Ever since, roughly about once a week, I have received calls telling me that I've got to hurry to the shops and buy it because, pretty soon, there won't be any left! This came as a surprise to me because they are everywhere (even our local mini-supermarket is selling them).

A friend of my aunties (long story) works in Asda and informed my sister that that evening they would be receiving 10 (that's "ten") Wiis and that they would be quickly gone. My brother-in-law therefore went and queued outside Asda from 7:30am in order to be there at 8:30am when the store opened. He did this and got the last one! Now they tell me that they need a remote control but they are impossible to come by...how can this be? I explained this to the guy in the shop where I bought one a couple of weeks ago and he was surprised because, as far as he was concerned, they are everywhere.

Are Nintendo creating a demand by limiting their availability, or are they simply unable to keep up with demand in the UK? I found it amazing to hear such panic in my mother's voice when I told her that I'll wander down there and get one just before Christmas (it's only November for god's sake). So much so, that I bought one early because I started to get tense about it myself (because it was her money I was spending and she would have been upset if I screwed up).

Anyway, we bought said Wii while the kids were at my father-in-law's house during the school holiday's (oh, what bliss). After bringing it home, we wanted to try it out (well who wouldn't). It comes pre-packaged with a set of sports games (I'm not going to go into all the details of how you play them).

Needless to say me and my wife loved it, and what a couple of prats we must have looked, moving aside the furniture, essentially to play "air-tennis" on a console with child-like graphics that reminded me of my old ZX Spectrum days.

I was one of the first people to get a Spectrum (I never had a ZX 80 or 81). It was September 82 and my parents had to send back 3 of them (you could only get them by mail order) before we got one that worked. However, once I was up and running (or sitting down in this case), the games were simple and really addictive (try getting emulations of Hungry Horace, Manic Miner or Jumping Jack if you don't believe me). You bought them on cassettes and downloaded them onto your Spectrum with a tape recorder. Bliss. Oh what fun we had staying inside on rare sunny days instead of playing outside.

Anyway, you felt like you were on the front of a wave when you were playing games with your Spectrum - you knew that everyone (well, geeky teenagers anyway) wanted one and the games would just get better and better (especially when you could get versions with 48K memory).

I should mention that I have never played on a Playstation or an Xbox, so my game console knowledge is pretty sketchy. However, playing on the Wii with its fun games and dodgy graphics made me feel like I was on the crest of a similar wave that would change the way people used their consoles and that things could only get better (cue dodgy song).

I can't wait for Christmas to see what a "real" Wii game looks like...from a geeky 14-year old to a geeky 40-year old in the space of only 26 years!

A Wedding Present

We live in a small French town which has an excellent library and a good CD/DVD section. I have been really surprised that they have many CDs that cover my musical tastes really well. I am there pretty much every week in order to borrow the latest stuff (last week, The Klaxons, The Rakes and The Hives (Interpol, Royksopp and all that gubbins for you John - Kate Bush and Dolly Parton for you Kenny)). However, they also have older stuff that I had mostly forgotten about (randomly, from memory: The Ramones, Stiff Little Fingers, Echo and the Bunnymen...the list went on and on - not all great music, but evocative).

Last week, when I took back my CDs and the DVD I had borrowed, "24-hour Party People", the guy behind the counter asked me what I thought of it ("average, but great music from the time I was a student in Manchester"). He then went on to tell me about the film, Control, which touches on some of the subjects in this film and he assured me that as soon as it was released on DVD, he would be ordering it for the library. This seemed to be a curious choice of DVD for what I imagine is a fairly conservative, and in any case, non-northern-working-class-English population (not that you need to be English and working-class to enjoy them, just that they seem quite incongruous).

We then got talking and it turns out that he had been to Grenoble the previous evening to see "The Wedding Present" reprising their "George Best" album. I explained to him that I had seen them twice, 20 years ago, and still have the bruises to prove it. Blah, blah, blah, we bored the pants off everyone else in the queue who was there for the latest Claude François or Johnny Hallyday CD. Actually, give Claude François a listen - kitsch personified and quite catchy at times.

Anyway, this guy (not Claude François - he's dead) is responsible for the library's CD budget and seems to indulge himself by buying CDs that only he likes. He has now asked me for any suggestions and will order them for me -basically, we are now using the local taxes to build the CD library together, ordering music that probably only us will listen to - should I feel guilty or pleased? I'll let you guess.

To bring this Côte du Rhone-induced nonsense to a laboured close: to think that somebody actually thinks my opinion on "popular culture" is of value has been quite astounding to me (OK, maybe not astounding, but pleasantly surprising). Now, if that's not a Wedding Present, I don't know what is (erm, apart from a present bought for a wedding, that is).

An imperfect storm

I thought this blog would be a view of French life through the eyes of an Englishman. However, more and more of the stuff I want to write about is England viewed through the eyes of an estranged Englishman. I have to admit before continuing that my view is becoming narrower and narrower and is mostly formed through friend and family visits and TV, so I am likely to be more and more out of touch -please forgive me in advance.

That said, I saw an excellent piece on Sky News the other day (there's a phrase you won't often read: a perfect example of an oxymoron). There was a set of meteorological conditions that meant that high winds came down the east coast of the UK and into northern France and excessively high tides were expected. The news reports said that whole towns had been evacuated and the main roads blocked off by police the night before the storm in order to avoid a repeat of a similar incident in the 50's that caused hundreds of deaths. This is all very well, but to an ignorant Englishman abroad, seemed to be an over-reaction given that nothing had been mentioned on any news programs I had seen in France.

In the end, the "perfect storm" never really materialised. However, there was one part of the Sky report that made me realise how there is a heart of Englishness that seems to be unique and that I miss; one that would never be seen in France and is probably dying out in England with the older generations. One small town had been mostly evacuated into a school gym for the night and they interviewed an elderly guy: "How are they treating you?" the journalist asked. His reply was priceless: "Ooh, just great - we want for nothing - they give us all the tea we need."

There have been whole books written on Englishness, but my brief analysis of his reply is that it was a stoicism that came from years of hardship suffered by his generation, when events such as the wartime air-raids meant that people often spent evenings in shelters with only a "nice cup of tea" to keep them warm (note that there is no such thing as a "cup of tea", it must always be prefixed with "nice"). Of course, I must add my "but I might be wrong" cover-your-ass caveat here.

The French suffered in the war too, but I reckon that subjected to an evacuation like this, both French people and post-war English generations would not accept it with such good grace.
I should also add that I don't even know if his was a typical reaction, but what a great old boy - I hope he got a good night's sleep and has many more.

Nature vs Nurture: a positive outlook

I mailed my uncle recently (not the one from one of my earlier posts) and one of my comments about hitting 40 was how, in my youth, it took me a long time to realise that I wouldn't be a professional footballer, citing at one point, "it takes some people longer than others to come to terms with their mediocrity". (I am not having a mid-life crisis by the way - at least, I don't think so :-/).

My uncle was a journalist for many years and has had a novel published, and I really appreciated the wisdom and sentiment in his reply, so put it on the web because there are some words that I thought might be interesting to others (you never know!). Here is the abridged version of his reply. I hope it isn't too cloying :

Glad you got the birthday card. With the Post Office strike (then) entering its second week we were wondering if it would ever be received.

...

Come to terms with mediocrity....it's a feeling often felt as you grow older. I was sure I was going to be the youngest editor of a national newspaper in Fleet St, believing that I was the best reporter that ever walked the hallowed streets of London;
...

Alas it never was to be but I have still lived (and hope to extend it) an incredible life full of excitement, tragedy and stacks and stacks of fun and enjoyment.

Now in retirement it doesn't move at the same pace but is still there to be lived and four grandchildren have opened up a new vista. Life does go on.

...

I thought of writing on and started another book but a voice was constantly saying to me that there's much to do; you spent your life writing to earn a living; why spend days indoors pounding away on the typewriter (ooops! word processor) get out and enjoy life.

...

Take care and whatever happens be happy and be lucky. You don't need anything else.

I really liked his reply and I hope you did too.

Some people say you make your own luck, but luck, by its very nature, is uncontrollable.

Being happy though, is something we should be able to have some control on. That's the premise I'm working on in any case, but I'm lucky (sic) that this hasn't really been put to the test as of yet.

Unchained Metaphor

OK, after reflection, I changed the title of the last post so that it has the more pretentious title that I decided not to use. Sorry - if you already read it, then you don't need to re-read, unless you didn't get the obscure message...

There is a thriving set of "associations" in our town (An association in France is a publicly-funded organisation that makes no money (a .org)). Last weekend was an exhibition organised by the local ornithological society. Now, I am fond of birds- I have bird boxes and feeding boxes ready to help them through the winter and give them a home in the spring. However, what I hate is to see caged birds. I have an almost overwhelming urge to open the cages and set them free. Pet shops are a nightmare for me as seeing caged parrots hopping from perch to perch makes me sad and angry - I have seen them in the wild and that is where they belong.

Visiting the exhibition last week brought this urge to new heights. Picture the scene: You walk into a room and are confronted with 6 rows of cages, each row with 4 cages piled on each other, and each row containing 40 cages: 480 bird cages. Each cage is 50 x 50 x 50 cm and there is a single tiny bird in each, all of them singing and generating a reverberating cacophony in such a small room. It was an impressive sight!

Each bird was beautiful, especially from someone who comes from a place where there is a constant screech of seagulls and the only colour is provided by blue-tits and robins if you are lucky (although pigeons do have an impressive chest when puffed-up during the mating season).

I have never seen such shapes and colours in birds. Tiny birds with striking purple, yellow and red intertwined, pale yellow, bright pink birds, birds with crests, feathers pointing in all directions and many more. My kids were fascinated: a beautiful sight when viewed individually.

However, the ensemble, to me, was depressing - these birds did not belong here, neither free-flying or caged. Although I could never have acted on it, the urge to set them all free was overwhelming. I imagined a lever which would open all the cages at the same time and set them all free to fill the hall with their noise and colours before flying, as one, through the door to freedom. It would have been like the explosions of colour that Sony put together for their TV ad recently (the one with the explosions of paint from tower blocks) - maybe they should consider it for a future version.

It could never have happened, but what a sight it would have been!

Heisenberg's Bicycle

I saw a quote from Oscar Wilde yesterday: "Only the shallow know themselves" which I thought was a nice one. I definitely can't claim to be an expert on me: in the past I have been called shallow, deep, smart-arsed, stupid, intelligent, a leader, a follower, brave, cowardly...all of this is completely subjective and depends on the relationships and circumstances. I definitely don't really know the real me, so cannot, by his definition, be shallow.

So, can shallowness be measured? Probably not, but that doesn't stop me from having a go and writing the following nonsense. Bear with me, if you have time on your hands.
The treatise of this scientific investigation is this:

"The shallowness index: Just how shallow is a person and can it be measured?"

Is everyone else as "shallow" as me? Are my thoughts on the same level as a goldfish, or did Einstein need such thoughts before he came up with E=MC2? Maybe my shallowness will lead to the realisation that Einstein was wrong and that E is actually equal to MC3, or that E stands for Elephant and not Energy.

The first thing to do is to remove the other parties - they are the ones that label you: the subjective parameters. This means that only I can measure my own shallowness and likewise for anybody else.

Have you ever heard of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle? Forget the dry explanation: it goes something like this: "the very act of measuring something changes its behaviour and therefore affects the measurement".

I cycle to and from work. It's about 7km and takes about 30 minutes. I like to think that I can use this time alone to plan my day and then, in the evening, review what actually happened and modify for the following day. However, I have noticed over recent weeks that this is not actually what happens. The truth is that, during the ride my thoughts are so banal that, written down, they seem ridiculous.

As a trained scientist (no, really?), I decided, over the course of a bicycle ride, to try to list the random thoughts and write them down in order to measure their shallowness index and come up with an aggregate score. However, as I stored them for later retrieval, I realised that Heisenberg had caught me out. By thinking about what I was thinking, my thoughts were altered. Confused? Let's see if you can work out at which point Heisenberg kicks in.

1. That truck looks like it's from Finland. I wonder what it is doing here?
2. There's a BMW with tinted windows: probably a drug dealer...
3. If I fall off now, it'll be a 10 metre drop, straight onto the motorway and instant death. Will my kids miss me?
4. I'd better cycle on the pavement here 'cos it's a bit narrow. Oh no, back on the road, there's a cyclist coming the other way on the same pavement. But wait a minute, she looks quite nice...no, wait, she's as old as me - back onto the road.
5. Is this saddle too low? I've got a sore backside
6. I wonder what we'll be eating tonight?
7. Bloody hell, it's cold enough to freeze the nuts off a brass monkey - I wonder where that expression comes from?
   
8. How am I going to get over my Snickers addiction? Why don't they call them Marathons any more? Tomorrow, I will eat only fruit. Opal Fruits? Oh no, they call them Starbursts now. I wonder why that is?
   
9. The light is red, but I can cross because there is no-one and I don't see a policeman.
10. I wonder if that hedgehog is still in the garden?
11. What can I think of next?
12. Come on, there must be one amusing thought...
13. Could I kill a tiger, armed only with a biro? No, I can't use that - it's straight out of The Office.
14. Doh. And that one comes from The Simpsons.
    

Yes, Heisenberg caught me out at #11. Up until that point, banal and trivial, yes, but spontaneous, no; afterwards, they were laboured, searching actively for banality.

So what have we learned from this exercise? What is my shallowness index? It is impossible to measure is the conclusion: objectivity doesn't come into it.

I'll have to think about the deep implications of this investigation when I'm cycling to work tomorrow and when the wine that led me to write this nonsense wears off.

Trouble down the line

There is an interesting political situation brewing in France at the moment. Let me try to explain my take on it...

The perceived impression of the French is that they like nothing better than a good strike (as in stopping work rather than in a sporting sense). There is some truth in this and they generally seem to happen around summertime (just to piss off the holidaymakers, avoid picketing in the rain, or just pure coincidence...you decide).

You probably know that France recently elected a new president (if you don't, read the newspapers and not blogs). "Sarko", the new incumbent, is a long way right of centre. His policies were described as "almost Thatcherite" during the run up to the elections - he soon distanced himself from this - that would be political suicide!

France is by generally considered to be a socialist country. Until recently, transport infrastructures, utilities etc. were nationalised and the government highly centralised. The country is crippled with debt, there is high unemployment and it is top-heavy with civil servants. I can tell you from bitter experience that waiting 1/2 a day and trailing from one person to another in the town hall just to fill in a form that could be done in 1 minute is not the most pleasant activity. I recently had a training course, "Finance for non-Financiers". It was all balance sheets and P&L. We had the Anglo-American versions of balance sheets compared to the French versions. 2 pages for the Anglo-version, 200 for the French (permit me to exaggerate).

One of the bug-bears of French employees in the private sector is that the said civil servants get to retire before them (us) at 55 years old - except, that is, for the train drivers. They have a special dispensation to retire at 50. I don't know the exact reasons for this discrepancy, but one of the factors is due to the danger associated with pointing a metal tube down a straight line at 300km/hour. Personally, I have already written about how I feel that getting into your car is a far more dangerous activity, but there you go.

The unions in France are very strong (CGT and FO notably) and they seem to have taken this situation as their opportunity to stand up to Sarko and let him know who is boss. Last week was the first of what I suspect will be many strikes - no trains ran at all last Thursday, and things are still not back to normal. The unions are currently discussing how to proceed, but it is probably with more strikes.

However, Sarko is a strong leader if nothing else. He has clearly defined a program to "trim" the civil service and I am pretty sure he will not capitulate without a fight. I also think he has the public largely on his side at the moment, although that could change.

I am reminded of two (extremely loosely-related) precedents:

1. Margaret Thatcher's fight with the miner's unions in the mid-eighties. I am afraid that my political interests were limited at the time - I was more interested in girls and football (erm, actually, not much has changed - nature 1, nurture 0)
2. The 9/11 terrorist attack. It was on this day that a British government civil servant suggested in a leaked email that because of the attack, that would be a good day to publish all the current bad news (job figures etc). Sarko also chose this day to publish the fact that he and his wife were divorcing and this took many of the headlines - OK, it's not same magnitude, but I am sure it was a spoiling tactic anyway.
   

In any case, like the TGV (arf arf) this one could go a long way...or, because I lack the courage of my convictions and full knowledge of the facts, I could be completely wrong.

40 - Love

John predicted I would write something like the following entry:

I work in a company where there are around 40 people - I am the only English person. The rest are French apart from one Dutch guy.

If you follow rugby, you will know that it is the World Cup and that England play France tomorrow in the semi-finals - I am being constantly taunted about how we will lose (I actually agree with them, but would never admit it). The Dutch guy has regressed 300 years and become a South African for the weekend (not that the Dutch or English have anything to be proud about with their colonies, but that's another story).

In the style of Kevin Keegan (see the last 3 seconds of this video), I would love it if we beat the French by 40 points tomorrow. If we lose, I have to bring 40 croissants to work; 1 for everyone.

Oh yeah, and I am 40 years old today...

Everything's gone green

I have a 9-year-old son. We just moved house to a small town just outside Lyon and he started a new school. The local council have a policy of electing schoolkids to their committees to push forward the ideas that are dear to them. In order to choose which children to elect (there are 2 from each school), they hold elections and each candidate must present a manifesto. I was immensely surprised that my son decided that he would like to stand - he's not one of these over-earnest kids and is in fact, quite shy - maybe because he was the new boy, he didn't know any better.

Anyway, his manifesto was a simple, "green manifesto":

• All street-lights to use low energy bulbs
• Larger recycling bins for all residents
  

As simple as that! Guess what?: he was elected and tomorrow gets his mayoral sash and takes part in an official ceremony. This is undoubtedly a"stunt", but I like the idea of trying to get children interested in local politics and it warms the cockles of my heart; proud father and all that.

However, I am pretty sure that I won't be seeing local council employees replacing the bulbs any time soon. But he's as pleased as hell! The trouble is that, if he is as pleased as hell, he is making my life hell. I am now required to:

• Replace all light bulbs in the house with low-energy versions.
• Stop the tap running while brushing my teeth
• Stop the shower while applying soap!
• Recycle the smallest scrap of paper.
• All leftover food to be placed on the compost heap (not sure what this achieves, but I do it anyway - I will tell you in 1 year when I have my first "harvest").

I have had to draw the line with his request that I install solar panels on the roof to heat the house (if you are reading this in the north of England, don't worry, it won't be an issue for you).

He doesn't realise that I am years ahead of him: when I was was a lad, every Friday was fish-and-chips night, and it was always wrapped in recycled newspaper. We were way ahead of our time and we didn't even know it! Funnily enough, my French friends look at me incredulously when I tell them that:

1. We eat fish and chips, smothered in animal fat.
   
2. It is wrapped in yesterday's newspaper.

Who said the British don't have a deep culinary culture? Funnily enough, my British friends look at me incredulously when I tell them that:

1. I have French friends
2. They don't eat fish and chips in France (unless it's at McD*****ds)
   

Wow, that post didn't end up where it started!

PS: Kenny, you are not the only one to use obscure song quotes in your post titles.

Lazy Teaching Leads to Lazy Blogging?

I wrote once that I try to avoid blogs that are simply diaries. However, something triggered off some memories of Junior school and it brought other memories to the surface, so thought I'd add one last one...can it be considered a diary even if it happened 30 years ago?

It relates back to Junior school again (where we had the dancing lessons). How about this for a school holiday assignment:

"Construct as many words as possible from the word, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious".

Two rules:

1. There must be more than 2 letters in each word,
2. Don't use a dictionary.

What a crappy, waste of time to ask kids to work on this during their holidays. I don't think that test would make it onto the National Curriculum today.

To cap it all, I only came second with 800 words. Darren came an easy first with 1200, but I maintain to this day that he got help from his parents...

The 3rd placed kid came in at about 50: evidently the other class members were less competitive and preferred to play, use their imagination and just be kids as you are supposed to be at that age.

We need to talk about Kevin

When I was young, a convoluted set of events led my uncle from the far north-west of England to the far south-east. My uncle was a tough guy and apparently an excellent footballer. In fact he was so good, that Manchester City invited him to go for a trial with them. Unfortunately, he was a big Manchester United fan, so decided against it (I suspect that, with hindsight, he regrets that decision).

I should say that my dad and I never really got on with my uncle. I remember it coming to a head many years later just as my parents announced proudly to him that I would be going to university. He started off on a self-righteous "Students, waste of taxpayer's money..." etc. rants. My dad's reply stopped him dead in his tracks: "We can't all be bus drivers you know". If you know my dad (and you will if you read another of my posts), you will know that this was completely out-of-character, and, as far as I am concerned, the put down of the year - I don't think they have spoken to each other since (I am assuming that you realise from this that my uncle was a bus driver).

Anyway, a couple of times before this incident, we went down to the deepest south-east to stay with him and his family for our holidays: "Drive towards Skipton, turn right at Scotch Corner and keep going south" were all the directions you needed. So off we went in my dad's mini-van, kitted out with cushions in the back for me and my sister to sit on. Seat belts, pah, who needs them? On arriving in the south, the differences for a young boy from deepest Cumbria were striking:

1. It was flat
2. The people spoke with a strange accent
3. The bricks were a different colour
4. There was sunshine!
   
5. The roads were not paved with gold; rather, they were large slabs of concrete joined by tarmac that melted in the said sun.

Like most young kids, I was a big football fan. It was during one of these holidays that I went to see the "local" team play; at the time they were one of the best teams in Europe. I saw them beat Anderlecht in a pre-season friendly and then Newcastle 3-0 on the first day of the season (I still have the pre-match programme and can remember where I stood (under the 'M' on the large "Portman Road" that was displayed on the stand roof).

The team had a player called Kevin. He was a young player breaking into the England team and was described as having the potential to become one of the best ever English players since, erm, the last one who would become the next best English player.

The most amazing thing though (for me), was that Kevin was my uncle's friend. Imagine saying that your uncle's best mate is David Beckham or Tiger Woods and you are not quite there, but you get the idea. "Why don't you come with me round to his house?" my uncle asked me one day. I was completely flabbergasted - my uncle taking me to one of the country's best footballer's house! Just like that. I grabbed my autograph book and off we went.

I imagined driving up a long drive to a huge house, indoor swimming pool etc - you get the picture...but your picture, like mine, would be wrong: this was well before the days of big, big money in sport. In fact, we didn't drive there, he lived just round the corner in a semi-detached house, not dissimilar to the one in the picture. Kevin himself answered the door and invited us in for a cup of tea after my uncle explained that I wanted his autograph (I didn't really, but it would have been churlish to say so). I was too overwhelmed to speak: I just held out my autograph book (i.e. and old exercise book) for him to sign. On the walls were pennants and his England caps - yes, they really are caps. I put one on, and had my picture taken with him (sadly, it's been lost).

Now, as far as I know, it may have been a top-of-the-range semi-detached house. However, when you see pictures of the houses of the likes of David Beckham, it doesn't really match up.

The big money came into football in the early 90's: this was the late 70's. Kevin's star shone brightly for a brief period, but too soon as far as sports super-stardom is concerned. He finally retired after injuries at 27. That's life, but I bet there are a lot of 70's and 80's footballers who rue just missing out on the Sky Sports windfall!

Unfortunately, the story doesn't seem to have ended too well (no gig as a TV football pundit unlike many others from his era for example). From what I can find out from Google, things haven't changed too much, but articles from the web can't give the full picture (this one being a perfect example), so let's hope he's happy with his lot.

Unfortunately, my dad's put-down means that I don't get to speak to my uncle too much these days, so, even if they are still friends, I'll never get the real details...

Saturday "Night-Fever"

In my bit of England, when I were a lad, we had infant, junior, secondary schools, 6th form college; and if you were lucky, university.

I was reminded the other day of an "incident" at junior school (7-11 years old) that still sends shivers of embarrassment down my spine when I think about it 30 years later!

Every year we had a "prize-giving" day - in those days, being labelled as a winner or a loser was still acceptable (I've got some other stuff about this that I will write about later).
We had a young female teacher, who, in the minds of 10 year olds, was a goddess: I guess we must have been approaching puberty. Ma Wilson (all female teachers were prefixed with "Ma" by the pupils) kept a rubbish bin under her desk. Something that kept us busy one day was the rumour that you could look up her skirt and see her knickers if you diverted your eyes while pretending to be looking in the bin. It just so happened that we sharpened our pencils into that bin. Like the 25 other boys (it was an all boy school), I had a good look, but all was dark. All I can tell you is that everybody's pencil was shorter at the end of the day than it was at the beginning.

Anyway, Ma Wilson, was a cosmopolitan girl: she was into Disco music and instigated dance lessons - dance lessons at an all-boys school! We must have been really infatuated, because quite a few of us went along. You've got to picture the scene: in England, kids wear school uniforms - we were all in grey shirts and trousers with burgundy ties and Doc Marten boots (the number of lace-holes was a measure of how "hard" you were). A bunch of pre-pubescent kids, identically and inadequately dressed, lined up before a young, beautiful female teacher, following dance lessons. Because it's always good to have a goal in life (apparently), she decided that we were going to learn the steps to "Night-Fever", the Bee-Gees standard from Saturday Night Fever. Not only were we going to learn the steps, we were then going to perform them in front of the whole school at the said prize-giving, including the ageing group of school governors who were wheeled out for the occasion.

When the moment arrived, she duly rolled out her record-player (if you don't know what a "record" is, refer to one of my earlier articles), lined up the aspiring disco-dancers and set us off: 3 steps to the left, point left-hand towards the ceiling at an angle of approximately 60° to the vertical, 3 steps to the right, with corresponding arm movement. Now walk forward towards aligned seated septuagenarian school governors whilst twiddling arms in the same way that football coaches do when they want to substitute a player. And so it went on. And on. And on.
The embarrassment was palpable and it takes my breath away even now, 30 years later. I can't remember how many of us did the dance, but I would love to know if I am the only one who:

1. remembers it
2. feels the same physical feeling of embarrassment just by thinking about it.

Poor old Ma Wilson; I wonder what happened to her? I'm sure she was a good teacher, but I am pretty sure she steered clear of dance lessons at all-boy schools. And I don't think many of the governors will have got out of their bath chairs to copy the moves.

If you want to see how it should be done so you can see just how deeply this marked me, here is John Travolata in the original film, dancing pretty much the same moves, albeit in a slightly different style.

Epilepsy: it's all in the mind

I thought it might be interesting to write down a bunch of random facts about epilepsy as I realised that people don't know much about it and feel uncomfortable even talking about it. Don't worry, I'm here to help.

At this end of this (if you get that far), you won't be much the wiser, but you'll know a bit (if you're not even the slightest bit interested in reading this, just have a look at the anecdote at the end, it made me laugh...). Maybe you'll want to go further and learn more, but even if you don't, you'll be able to fire off a few facts and sound knowledgeable...I find that, in life, a few facts, well-placed, can get you a long way. Anyway, here is a highly non-scientific list of unordered titbits:

• Normally, electrical signals pass between the neurons in your brain; they control your thoughts and movements - everything you know or do, that's all. In normal situations, this is a fairly ordered process. Stop signals are respected (unlike in France) etc. Epilepsy is a temporary malfunction of this process and is often described as a "storm" of electrical signals firing off abnormally.
  
• The part of the brain where this occurs determines the type of epilepsy you have: some are generalised (the whole brain is effected), some are localised (just a bit of the brain -always the same - is involved). Mine are localised in the temporal lobe (not very important, just heavily involved in memory, speech and vision, gulp!) and are called "complex partial seizures". Not surprisingly therefore, my seizures often result in changes to my speech and rekindle strange, long-forgotten memories...
  
• A seizure can last between a couple of seconds or several hours. Even a 1 second seizure is a pain. I've been in the middle of a presentation to customers, had a seizure, which basically had the effect of making me lose my train of thought and my audience feel uncomfortable...anyway, where was I?
  
• Between 0.5% and 1% of the population suffer from epilepsy; it's difficult to know exactly how many - some simply don't realise and others don't admit to it because of the stigma attached to it or the associated annoyances (loss of driving licence, difficulty in finding jobs in some sectors...). You probably know somebody who has epilepsy (especially if you know me).
• There are innumerable triggers for epilepsy: some common ones are:
• Stress (definitely one of my triggers). On an otherwise excellent site about epilepsy, I read the following useful advice about how to reduce stress-related seizures: "try to avoid stressful situations". Amusing, but actually, using it as a kind of mantra might actually make sense.
• Alcohol abuse (although I recently read that it is stopping drinking that can trigger the seizures, at least that's the way I understood it - don't contradict me, you don't want me getting stressed),
  
• Sleep deprivation ("stop writing this blog entry and go to bed")
• Not taking your medication. Duh.
  
• Some other stuff.
  
• All sorts of things have been been attributed to epilepsy and have been the focus of serious scientific study:
• Enhanced creativity (although there are some exceptions - take this blog...)
• Extreme religious belief. I guess that part of my brain didn't get affected - hallelujah! D'oh! Could it be that religious belief is just a bunch of electrical signals fired off in the wrong order in a particular bit of your brain? Richard Dawkins would have something to say about that...
  

OK, so that's enough random snippets. Epilepsy is not really a laughing matter, but this made me chortle:

A friend of mine told me that his company had sent a memo to all staff looking for a replacement phrase for "brainstorming" because they thought that this word might be offensive to people with epilepsy. They came up with "thought-shower". Brilliant - a thought-shower to replace the word brainstorm!

Looks can be deceptive

This is not one of those numerous posts about genealogy. Actually, it is in a way, although I will try to put a different slant on it - even though you might want to skip to the end to see the slanty bit...


The photo that you see here was given to me by my grandmother just before she died (or "passed away after a long fight against illness" as they would say on the BBC if she was a celebrity). I have this picture on the wall at home and every day I look at it wishing I had more than a few scant details about it.

Like the words in "A Brian Dialogue", the image comes from a different era. Apparently, in Victorian days, people were told not to smile while photographs were taken. I assume this is why they look so serious, otherwise, I wouldn't fancy going round to their place for a beer and curry to watch the rugby world cup.

So here is what I do know about the faces behind the picture:

The lady to the bottom left is my grandmother's aunty (who apparently looks like me), and her, I knew: she lived over the road from us. When I was young , my parents deemed me mature enough to leave me on my own while they went somewhere or other (the shops I think, rather than a 2 week holiday). My parents thought they had me fooled by hiding the "Breakaway" biscuits on the top shelf of the kitchen cupboard. Oh, the fools: a chair to stand on was all that was needed to reach up and sneak one. Unfortunately, my family are not known for their DIY skills (a tradition I uphold), and as I held onto the cupboard for balance, it came off the wall and landed on top of me. This, of course, as a small child, alone in the house, posed a bit of a problem - especially as the bottle of beetroot fell on top of me and smashed, giving the impression of me having been involved in a serious car crash. My solution was to cross the road to "Aunty Mary's" house, covered in beetroot juice. After her initial panic (she was already an old lady) she helped me clean up the mess and explain it away to my parents. Problem solved. Great lady.

Mary never married, and lived all her adult life with her brother (one of the guys at the back). The other guy at the back is called Sam, and is recorded in the 1901 population census as a "coal porter". Perhaps life would have been different if he had been Cole Porter rather than the guy who carried the sacks from the cart to the coal cellars (does anyone remember them? All the houses in my parents street have a (now filled in) space where the coal was poured when the coal-man delivered).

Here's the slant; I hope it was worth waiting for:

The matriarch in the centre of the photo fascinates me and I look at her each time I pass. Frankly, she looks extremely austere and a bit scary. She is my great, great grandmother. However, the two fascinating details about her are:

1. She married twice (I don't know how common this was at the end of the 19th century), outliving two husbands (maybe they died in a war, or maybe after a "long fight against illness"). What you see is therefore a re-constructed family.
   
2. She adopted one of the young boys in the photograph. All I know is that his nickname was Jub. What makes me sad is that I don't know why she adopted him and I know that I never will.

However, it pleases me to think that it could have been an act of pure kindness on her part that is in direct contrast to the image that is presented in the photo.

As the title says: looks can be deceptive.

Quality and the Rugby World Cup

France is holding the Rugby World Cup at the moment. Interest is waning after a poor start, but that is not the point of this article. Each time the rugby world cup comes around, I am reminded of the 1991 edition, a period which shaped me for many reasons.

At the time, I had been in my first job after graduation for a year or so. I was working in the research labs for a multi-national company, mainly involved in developing techniques for analysing satellite images. I have mixed feelings about the 2.5 years I spent there. On the negative side, I felt that most of the people were waiting for retirement and it was not the most dynamic working environment. On the positive side, it helped me develop my rebellious side, as I rallied against apathy and cynicism (traits that have now seeped into my own personality, but which I try hard to suppress. But, as usual, I digress).

The 1991 World Cup coincided with a no-doubt fascinating event at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham (i.e., it was big). The project I had been working on was deemed interesting enough to warrant a poster in the exhibition hall (it was something to do with detecting ships from the patterns left in images by their wakes - I could tell you more, but the secret services may pay me a visit).

I spent a long time working on that poster. I was quite proud of it. The project was interesting and to top it all, it had nice pictures in it - who could ask for more? I was in the days before Photoshop, so I had to glue all the pieces of text and image directly onto an A3 piece of paper before sending it to the "Turn-pieces of-paper-into-posters" department. Well, the day before the conference started, I was told that the poster wouldn't be ready until the second, and last, day of the exhibition. Did I say it wasn't a dynamic environment?

However, the hotel was booked, train tickets bought and space in the conference hall reserved. What to do? My reaction today would be different to my reaction at the time. My reaction then was to say, "For Christ's sake, if you haven't got the time, I'll just take the mock-up and use that instead of the poster. What I've done here is interesting and other people will be interested in finding out more". This proved to be a monumental and professional-life-shaping mistake.

It was an industry event and several top "dignitaries" were there. Unfortunately, the dignitary from our company saw the "poster" of the project of which I was so proud and complained loudly to my boss that it was amateurish and reflected badly on the company. Not surprisingly, I was told to take it down. This felt like I had received a very heavy tackle from one of the All Blacks. The boss was right: I should have waited - showing something professional for one day was better than showing something amateurish for 2 days even if I thought it needed to be "out there".

Why do I mention this during the rugby world cup? Well, I spent the evening after the first day watching a match in the window of a TV shop in Solihull, near Birmingham - no sound, just pictures. It couldn't get much worse. I was alone, too shy to go to a pub or restaurant alone and felt utterly miserable. Boo-hoo, poor me.

I work in the software industry and am nowadays mostly involved in project management. There are lots of blogs out there about the importance of getting version 1.0 of a piece of software out of the door and into the customer's hands. In many cases, this is undoubtedly the best course of action, particularly if you need to be the first into the market and I have worked on this sort of project before and, indeed, it can be a good way to get early feedback if you find the right partners.

However, in an established discipline, such as the one I worked in at that time and the one I work in now where the software is used in mission-critical installations, quality counts - involve the customer from the beginning and right through the project, but take whatever time it needs to get it right (within the business constraints) and be prepared to defend this position - don't throw it out there because you are proud of it and want it to be seen as soon as possible - it will fly back in your face like an, ahem, disgruntled All-Black forward (to keep the laboured analogy going).
I don't pretend to be any kind of guru, but it's become my mantra and a lesson I learnt the hard way.

The good news is that the French rugby team's over-confidence has been dented, and that the English rugby team's under-confidence might pull us through as far as a sound beating by a team from the southern-hemisphere which is not so bad - quality counts, but let's be realistic!

Ca plane pour moi...

French language music has never made it in the UK. Can you think of any? Sacha Distel's "Thank Heavens for Little Girls" was a translation and is probably best not spoken about in polite circles. Apart from that, I can think of three others:

1. Serge Gainsbourg's and Jane Birkin's "Je t'aime, moi non plus",
   
2. Vanessa Paradis' "Joe le Taxi", and,
3. Plastic Bertrand's "Ca Plane pour Moi". This song was really popular at the end of the 70's, surfing on the back-end of the punk wave. Unfortunately, I was pre-pubescent at the time, so by the time my face was covered in spots, it was New Romantic rather than New Wave (although, Wham were seriously under-rated :-) ). However, Plastic's song stuck in the mind of lots of people (at least I think so: maybe I'm the only one who's heard of it?).

It was the "Village Fête" this weekend and imagine my surprise when I saw that Plastic was doing a show in a marquee on the local football pitch! It seems he is doing the rounds with a couple of other singers from the same era. As it's a village (well, OK, a small town), the football pitches are only a few hundred metres from our house and we could hear the music from the garden. It was a lovely afternoon, and we had just finished the annual "City Mountain Biking" tour - up and down the hills of Lyon with the traffic stopped for the cyclists - an excellent day out (but if you've ever been to Lyon you'll know that there are some killer hills).

So a bunch of us are sat in the garden with a beer, and guess what comes on? Oh yes, you've guessed it, Plastic was knocking out his old standard. It was more cabaret than punk, but he got a standing ovation from us at the end. Thanks Plastic, you made my day.
I'm sure he was playing huge venues in the early 80's, and a village fête is not be in the same bracket, but hey, 30 years later and he's still out there, doing what he loves. Not many people can say that about their lives.

Unless of course, he is absolutely sick of being remembered for one song, a stupid name, playing "provincial tent gigs" and is doing it because it because he is broke. Damn, that spoiled my upbeat ending!

A Brian Monologue

This little anecdote from my father made me laugh and I wanted to record it for posterity for my own amusement. It came from his 80-year-old neighbour (who, for the record, hasn't lost his marbles).

I suspect you have to know a bit about the character to find it amusing, but if I ever write a novel, this little monologue will slip in. It's language and style from another era (but firmly rooted in northern England). As an exercise in style, I tried to write it phonetically to capture the accent. Not sure it works, but here goes:

"Y'alright Dave?"
"If thez one thing ah carn't bloody stand, it's cheats"
"Ar've bin watching that program, "The Weakest Link" an' y'know what? The strongest link always gets t'end and then t'others vote 'em off and thee never win!"
"People t'day ave no scruples!"

"An another thing ah can't bloody stand is liars"
"Ah bought these trousers las' week and thee said thee were non-crease"
"Bloody creases everywhere, the lying buggers. Med in Britain too!"
"Y'know whats t'worst in all that Dave? Ah can't bloody stand ironing".

And off he went.

I hope it doesn't come over as mockery, because I know and love the guy (I have known him all my life) and he's never short of an off-the-wall comment. I hope he has many years left if only so I can get some more for the novel...

Customer Service à la Zidane

I love it when a sweeping generalisation is backed up with evidence (Global Warming? Polar ice-caps melting? Hhhmm, might be something in that piece of evidence...)

Anyway, the following relates to my "infamous"article, "3 Things I Dislike About France". Although it didn't figure in the "list of 3", I wrote that the French like "nothing more than a good-old stand-up argument in public". As above, it was a sweeping generalisation, but sometimes there is a grain of truth that leads to the generalisation...

Last Friday lunchtime, I went to the restaurant with a colleague. We work close to the supermarket mentioned in a previous article. They have several restaurants surrounding them and one of them we go to on a regular basis. It's popular: I estimate that there are over 100 people there at any one time every lunchtime: it's not a dodgy backstreet boozer; the food is OK and, until Friday, I thought that the service was good too...

Today, something was different - there was a guy, in his 40's, not the brightest looking to be honest, but so what, a customer all the same. Anyway, I didn't see how it started, but evidently he wasn't happy with the plate of cheese that had been served to him and was rather vociferously "explaining" this to the serving staff. He entered into a bit of an argument with the manager. Eventually, the manager took off his apron before wandering off into the kitchen. During this time, the guy kept pointing at his cheese (sorry, I really don't know what he was complaining about - it was loud and I was looking over someone's shoulder).

He made his final point by picking up the plate, pointing at it once more for effect, before throwing it on the floor, smashing it and evoking cries of "eh, ô,ô" from the customers (I don't know what effect an ^ has on an ordinary 'o', but it makes it look foreign). At this point, the manager, having removed his apron, returned from the kitchen. He arrived behind the indignant customer who was still remonstrating with the waiters. He calmly tapped the man on the back of the shoulder, and, as he turned round, gave him a swift head-butt. Silence. Problem solved, no ugly shoving out onto the street, no calling the police.

"Got a problem customer? No sweat, a swift smack on the head will soon sort that out".

Nobody, including the buttee knew what to make of this (is buttee a word?- if not, remember that you saw it here first! "buttee" = "one who has been butted". We use "butty" in the north of England to signify "sandwich". A double-butty is far more appetising than a double-buttee. But I digress.).

After a few seconds, he regained his indignation and continued to insult everybody, all the while retreating towards the door as he saw that he might receive another for his troubles. He left, the mess was cleared, and the boss continued to collect orders as before. Problem solved...

Not for me though. We had only just started our meal and I think it shows how paranoid we are because for the rest of the meal, I expected the guy to come back, maybe, god forbid, with a weapon. I am sure that I am not the only one in there that was thinking this, even though there were nervous laughs all round. As Morrissey said "I can laugh about it now, but at the time it was terrible. Oh mamma, let me go". Actually the "Oh mamma let me go" is nothing to do with this article and is a story in itself.

Anyway, my original point that there are very few places in the world where you would see something like this happen, especially in a family restaurant. I checked this story with my French colleagues this morning, who were equally as shocked as me, so my "evidence-of-a-grain-of-truth-in-a-sweeping-generalisation" theory is not exactly vindicated, but its an interesting little interlude in itself.

What doe all this mean though?

1. I will never go there again, and probably neither will many of the other customers present
2. If I do go there again, I won't order the cheese
3. If I don't like the service, I will be very careful about how I complain.
   

I wondered what I would do if I had been the owner watching this? I can't go into French employment law because there is only a limited amount of disk-space in the world. However, putting that aside, I would think I would take one of four options:

1. Send the boss home for the day to keep him out of sight of the remaining customers and then give him a written warning when he comes back, or,
2. Send him on a course on how to treat customers
   
3. Sack him on the spot
4. Recommend him as a bouncer to any night-club-owning /debt-collecting friends.
   

To me, it doesn't seem to be something you should allow your staff to do, even with the most difficult customers...what would you do? Comments welcome.


As a complete aside
In case you don't understand the title of this article. Zinedine Zidane is the 2nd best player I have ever seen (after Maradona). My kids are young and love playing football, but, if you mention Zidane, they follow it up with a "coup de boule" gesture (see the video). If they grow up as football/soccer fans, then it would be a great shame if this is all he is remembered for.

Like the paint, I cracked...

The article I am most proud of on this site was written about my dad. Writing it allowed me to express something that I hope one day, before it is too late, I will be able to say (to him!) out loud (or let him read, as we would probably both die of embarrassment).

As I mentioned in the article, he was coming to visit us. Well, now he's here. We've been through the ice-breaking Manchester City performance conversation (surprisingly good) and the weather (surprisingly bad - did I say he'd had a run of bad luck?).

However, there was something hanging in the air between us...we both knew what it was (reading the original article will give you a clue if you can't wait for another line or so), but neither of us could bring ourselves to mention it.

After 2 days we cracked: I dropped in references to the difficulty of painting the fascia around the outside of the house before winter set in, and he pointed out that the walls were a bit dirty above the radiators and where the paintings of the previous owner had hung.

I swore (in writing to a whole community of readers - I know of at least 3 now!) that I would never, ever, under any circumstances ask him to do any decorating for me - after 45 years he deserved a break.

But he offered, honestly, I swear, I never asked. OK, I dropped subtle hints: I bought a pot of paint and some brushes, looked at the price of ladders (damned expensive) and left the catalogues lying around, but surely he would never pick up on this? You don't believe me? You know me too well already...

I'm selfish, lazy, exploitative and currently feeling extremely guilty, but, on the bright side, I have a very nicely painted interior.

Now, I just need to get that fascia painted before winter sets in...

Organised-Panic buying

Like any country, the French have some laws that may appear stupid viewed from outside. For example, 70% of the music played on French radio must be in French (an edict from l'Académie Française which aims to protect the purity of the French language - which anyway they are currently losing because of the pace of expansion of the web and IT technology in general). Another one I like is that it is forbidden to wear shorts in public swimming pools. No, you cannot go naked before you ask; you must wear "correct attire", or, as we say in the north of England, "skimpers" or "Speedos". Apparently this was because too many young scamps were diving in with cut-off jeans.

Anyway, at the weekend, I learnt a new silly law. Apparently, the law stipulates that there cannot be more than a given number of supermarkets per capita (i.e. you can't have a town with 1000 inhabitants with, say, 10 supermarkets). Unfortunately, the law doesn't stipulate the size of the supermarkets, which has led to the concept of hyper-markets. You just don't have supermarkets this big in the UK and you can buy anything in them (last week, my "local" supermarket was selling motor-bikes).

Last weekend, this supermarket had what they call a braderie; literally, a clearance sale - except that it wasn't quite that: it was an well-planned exercise in marketing and selling and gave me an excellent opportunity to observe mass hysteria.

What they did was set up a huge tent in front of the shop. Everything in there was piled into roughly arranged bins and sellers with loudspeakers were continually announcing "Only 1 minute left for the knock-down price of 2€ instead of the marked 10€ for any old crap" (Actually, I added the "any old crap" bit myself). And the people lapped it up. The loudspeaker bearers moved around the tent. Anything that looked like it wasn't shifting fast enough was put on a 2 minute "flash sale". People were following the loud-speaking loudspeakers around the tent from "bargain to bargain". The noise, the carefully organised impression of anarchy, all served to raise the excitement and stress level of the people who no doubt already regret buying most of the stuff they bought. Perfect selling.

Once, a long time ago, I was on Oxford Street in London, and went into a "shop" that, on the face of it, was an auction. Interest was garnered by projecting the voice of the auctioneer onto the street outside and having human gorillas limiting entry to the room. The place was crowded and the "bargains" were flowing from the auctioneer. It shows how long ago it was, because he was selling the original Nintendo GameBoys for £1 or whatever. However, I stood at the back and watched. I noticed after a while that the people getting the bargains were actually part of the scam (because that is what it was) as they invariably headed out of the shop, only to re-appear a few minutes later to make their way back to the front of the crowd. The thing worked perfectly because I watched people being cajoled into buying "lucky-dip" bags, with the promise that they may have the said GameBoys inside. These bags cost £50 because there was "much, much more" inside. However, my guess is that those bags contained nothing but a load of tat (and no, it wasn't me who bought any of the lucky-dip bags - it is pure supposition on my part).

This scam was a revelation to me at the time as I know I am naive, but it was nowhere near the scale of hysteria that I witnessed this weekend - people fighting to get the last low-voltage light-bulb or whatever. I didn't buy anything inside the tent - I couldn't stand more than a few minutes and went into the relatively calm shop where I bought a desk-lamp for 5€, reduced from 10€ - a bargain (and for the record, I was actually planning to buy one before I went there).

The thought hit me that maybe I could have got it for 2€ in the braderie, so, out of interest, I went back to look for it. Sure enough, there it was, at the bargain, knock-down price of...5€. Maybe I should have followed the loudspeaker people around, hoping to get it for 4€ or something?

The outcome of all this? I got home, plugged it in and the damned thing doesn't work. So I guess I'll be back there next week. At least the braderie has finished.

Some things I love about France

One of my first posts on this site was to list 3 things that annoy me about living in France. I also enabled Google Analytics. I noticed that some small-minded idiot found this post by typing "i hate french people" into the search box (presumably (s)he was, however, a big fan of "freedom fries").

I didn't want to become some kind of dropping-off spot for jingoists, so given that I've lived in France for a few years, I thought I should complete the story and write about what I like about France.

However, when I started to think about it, I started to panic: what I disliked was easy, but I really struggled to list the positive things - the reasons I am here (not in an existential sense) and why I don't plan to leave! Could it be that there is no reason to stay?

France is just like any other country - it has its own social and economic problems, and when it comes down to it, the things I like are fairly nebulous: I like eating outside, I like the open spaces, I like the sense of history, I like the love of food, I like the climate, I like the language.

The thing is, you can say this about many places in the world (I once said it of Australia - apart from the language bit). When it comes down to it then, it's not where you are, but who you are with that matters. France just happens to provide the framework, and a damn fine one at that!

God, I sound like Dorothy in "The Wizard of Oz", or James Stewart at the end of "It's a Wonderful Life".

What is a paper clip?

I work in the software industry and interview lots of candidates for software engineering posts. I have a section on Google Reader which on a pretty much weekly basis argues the pros and cons of asking programmer-type questions for programmers during interviews. I'm pretty much of the view that you should ask these types of questions, albeit in my case in a standardised form which allows for direct comparison and doesn't penalise syntactic errors.
Anyway, many more intelligent people than me have debated this subject to death and this is not entirely my point.

What I wanted to mention briefly here is a question that I was asked many years ago, and I often wish that I had kept my answer just to see how I got on.

After finishing a degree in Physics, I drifted for some time, not knowing which way to turn, but at least grateful that I had options. One of the options was to become a "technical patent attorney". This would basically have involved protecting the intellectual property of engineering developments. Maybe it would have been interesting, maybe not - fate took me elsewhere. However, I will never forget being asked the following question, with an A4 sheet of paper placed in front of me for the answer:

"Describe a paper clip"

If I asked this question of most people with simply a pencil and paper in front of them, they would be an amazing range of answers - some just completely missing the point altogether. If you have some time, don't try it and don't expect me to be trying it either.

However, with an internet connection and a basic knowledge of search syntax (i.e. the ability to type "paper clip" into a search box, every possible detail, most of which you have no desire to know about, will be available to you...

This is great, but long live pen, paper, scientific analysis and imagination! And paper-clips.

The Bryan Robson Experience

Have you ever had an MRI? I had one today; it was part my why-am-I-having-epileptic-seizures-all-the-time saga? See my older posts for more details.

I should explain that I have had lots of MRI scans in the past (in a previous professional incarnation I studied MRI images of people's knees in order to try to calculate whether their arthritis treatment was working or not).

As I already said, my epilepsy first showed itself in around 1994 when I working with the radiologists looking at the said pictures of knees. It seems crazy now, but it wasn't taken too seriously at the time and I had a colleague take an image of my brain with the result "yeah, no tumour there". Fast, professional and re-assuring.

Times and locations have moved on; today, I felt small, weak and frankly, a bit scared. The French medical system is notoriously protracted, and it was only after a visit to a GP, who referred me to a neurologist (for medication), who referred me to a neurologist (for an EEG) who referred me to another neurologist (for the MRI), that I finally arrived at the clinic.

An MRI is not dangerous in itself. It's very ingenious in fact, but that's for you to find out- if you are ever given the choice between an X-ray and an MRI - take the MRI. If you are claustrophobic, are sensitive to loud noise or have a nervous tic, keep away unless absolutely necessary.

After having a drip inserted in your arm, your head is clamped, headphones placed (obviously) on your head, a panic button placed in one hand and you are slid into the machine. With suitably funereal music, you could almost imagine being sent into the fires for your own cremation. Unfortunately, I was not treated to funereal music - I had "An Englishman in New York" by Sting. Why, I don't know, but there you go.

I once watched a friend playing Counterstrike, a ridiculously violent shoot-em-up game. The sounds from that game reminded me of what I heard for 15 minutes. Repetitive banging with tonal changes for interest (all of course with Sting crooning in the background - although I don't remember songs about Quentin Crisp featuring in Counterstrike).

Anyway, the good news is that I don't have a tumour (God, I hadn't even considered that before the neurologist informed me) and I don't have any dead bits of brain (apart from the bits that I killed this evening with a very nice 2006 Chardonnay.

So now it's back to the old routine of trying different combinations of medicines that might reduce the seizure rate to around 1 per 3 months (according to neurologist 2). I guess I should be relieved by all that, but I feel a little shaken up by it all really.

A little aside:

The funniest thing about all this epilepsy stuff is that I am pretty sure I remember when it was triggered. I was playing for Writtle FC (oh yes, those heady days of amateur football in the Chelmsford area). We had a corner, I was positioned just outside the box and said to myself (wait for it), if this gets flicked on at the near post, I'm gonna make a late run "just like Bryan Robson" and head it in. Sure enough, near post. Sure enough, not quite as good a player as Bryan, a head butt to the side of the head and a somersault that left most people thinking I had broken my neck rather than induced epilepsy. So you see, every cloud has a silver lining - I am not Bryan Robson!

Don't try this at home

You haven't read "Lord of the Flies"!!! A truly great and disturbing novel. You probably don't know me, but trust me, read it.

That said, this week I have been off work and looking after my two sons. One is pre-disposed to cutting wit and the other is pre-disposed to upper-cutting. Chaos theory reigns in our house. A moment of sibling harmony can degenerate into violence for no apparent reason. Those who know us know that this is only slightly exaggerated. I realised that the only way to get through the week with my sanity still hanging on by a thread was to keep them on the brink of extreme fatigue and therefore too tired to wind each other up. Hence, daily visits to the swimming pool.

Anyway, this set me thinking about the above-mentioned classic. I wondered what would happen if the two of them were left alone in the house with no other company (or possibility thereof)? Would they find a balance that would see them co-operate and get through it as a team? Or would it spiral out of control as in the novel? An interesting thought experiment, but one the social services would not look too favourably upon "I'm a scientist conducting a serious experiment..."

I suspect that sibling rivalry lies at the heart of it all and that when it comes down to it, brotherly-acceptance (I wouldn't go as far as saying "brotherly love") would overcome and I would return to find them hopping from one leg to the other in the manner of "Lord of the Dance" rather than hopping from one leg to the other after some kind of knee-capping attempt.

On the bright side, my breast-stroke has come along nicely this week - there is a hint of tautness in my pectoral sagginess...

Mon Père, Ce Héros

So yeah, I've already said loads of times that we just moved house. I've also said that I've been doing some painting and catching up on some dodgy old music. I also did a lot of thinking. One of my recurring thoughts was that "painting and decorating is extremely dull".

I also thought about a comment I made recently on another website. This guy had a full blown argument with his father over a trivial matter. My response was that the real reason for the argument may have deeper roots; all very "Marjorie Proops". I also said that, in general, my conversations with my father didn't get past the fortunes of Manchester City (which are never good) and the weather (not very often good either).

Bear with me, there's a link coming here...

My dad was a painter and decorator for 45 years. 40 of which he spent painting hospital walls! I can't imagine how that can have been. I cannot face any more after 3 days. How could he stand it? Do you know what: I've never even asked him. It's so obvious that he hated his work and couldn't wait to retire. Even more, 1 month after retiring - 1 month - he is diagnosed with prostate cancer.

To summarise: My dad left school at 14, got a job as an apprentice painter, was bullied so much that I can tell it still hurts and left him painfully shy, then painted hospital walls for 40 years, before retiring and being told he had cancer 1 month later.

Through all that time, he never seemed outwardly depressed and was the model father - school plays, football matches, he was there for the rest of his family. But what did I do to thank him? Sod all.
Worse, I "grow up" and buy a house and what's the first thing I say on the phone (after the opening gambits of Manchester City and weather): "Can you come around this weekend and wallpaper the living room..?". I am even now fighting the urge to ask him to do a spot of painting when he comes over to see us in September.

He deserves better, much better - I've got to find a way to pay him back - maybe a Manchester City scarf or one of those flashy weather stations?

Or maybe one day I'll tell him he's my hero...

Long live King Elvis!

One of the good things about moving house is that you discover things you'd forgotten about (photo albums, dodgy shirts etc.). One of the bad things about moving house is that you invariably end up decorating it. However, why not combine the good, the bad (and the ugly (me)?) to relieve the boredom? I came across my CD collection that I haven't been listening to for a while since I got an iPod (thanks John ). My first choice was obvious...

I remember a drunken conversation circa 1994 when we had to choose the CD we would take for "company" on a deserted island. Compilations (and CD players with unlimited battery life) were obviously allowed, so my choice was "The Man: The Best of Elvis Costello" - crap title, great album. I listened to it last night and remembered every word. My favourite line, "They call her Natasha, but she looks like Elsie// I don't want to go to Chelsea". I still manage to feel slightly uneasy singing along to "Oliver's Army" but can't help it. I don't have an ex-girlfriend called Alison, but if I did, lost her and had an inkling of talent, I would write this song.

Elvis Presley is Dead, Costello is apparently soldiering on, and I'd prefer the latter any day.

Now I just need to rig up my record player (it's a machine with a, get this, "needle" that runs along grooves in a circular piece of vinyl and music comes out!). Once that 's done, the next compilation will be "Squeeze, 45s and Under"..."Up the Junction" anyone?