March: At the Seaside with Ray Davies

Now that her six-month Parisian purgatory has come to a blessed end, our daughter has returned to the parental fold. Her land of soya milk and Manuka honey. We celebrated her homecoming with a week-long seaside holiday. But the subtext was our dog's pleasure. After four years of life on earth, we felt it was time to introduce her to sea and sand. Since she loves swimming in the Dordogne, she'd surely love the Atlantic.

I took with me a weighty biography of Ray Davies that I picked up in the Oxfam bookshop during a recent short stay in Romsey, Hants. A trip to see the Old One – who's still ticking along very nicely at nearly 92. A Complicated Life by Johnny Rogan. I'll say it's complicated. Like many an artist before and since, Ray Davies is clearly a complex character. I always liked him, right from the early days. I must have done, to stand up in front of the class in primary school and sing an unaccompanied version of 'You Really Got Me'. Or was it 'All Day and All of the Night'? I caught them live in concert as a student at Exeter university, performing the Schoolboys In Disgrace album. I remember nothing much about it, which probably means that I was stoned or the music – like much of the Kinks' music after their late-flowering 'Lola'  – was rather forgettable. Even my mother was seduced by his gap-toothed smirk into wanting to paint his portrait (as she was by Charlie Watts' egregious bone structure). Latterly, I've liked to think of Ray sitting quietly and largely unrecognised in his favourite north London café, busy watching the world go by and penning songs for his occasional solo albums. 

But reading biographies can be fraught if you're looking for validation of your esteem. It's a compelling read and, although I'm quite a slow reader, with time on my hand I devoured hundreds of pages. For 'complex character', read moody, spiteful, callous, controlling, thoughtless, vindictive, provocative, capricious, bloody-minded and so tight-fisted that, as the author suggests, he made Rod Stewart look like a philanthropist. And this, I hasten to add, is not a character-assassination, but a balanced account based on the words of witnesses. The cheeky chappie who wrote some of the most endearing songs of the Sixties has morphed into a cantankerous miser. As for brother Dave, far from being a harmless mischief-maker, he appears to have been at the time a violent, hedonistic lout. 

There would appear to be certain similarities with Our Kid's former boss. She it was who mainly made her six-month internship such a purgatorial affair. It was, she described, a case of The Devil Wears Prada to the power of three. Clearly, it's a toxic industry. Stress rules the catwalks. Stress is no doubt the reason why her boss behaved so abominably, and why the minions in her department behaved so sneakily in turn. Stress begets stress. Significantly, when the boss was away on a buying trip, everyone else relaxed a little and even showed signs of consideration towards their fellows. 

Like Ray Davies, she is doubtless very good at what she does, but when it comes to running a team, she's a disaster. Spiteful, personal and hurtful to her underlings, she has probably had no training in (wo)man-management and her own bosses presumably believe that subject-matter expertise predicates emotional intelligence. The progeny's perfectionism can be infuriating and I can imagine that there might be certain issues around working with her under pressure, but she's a sensitive soul and her boss's behaviour was very upsetting. In her regular telephone updates around 8.30pm – when her chief's departure meant that finally the minions could finally pack up and go – she described how the woman would pace around the office with a cigarette, muttering to herself and ranting at her charges in a way that suggested that her work/life balance was so far out of kilter that her health could be at risk. So just as Ray Davies turned The Kinks into the sickest 'beat group' in swinging London, Our Kid's boss turned her office into a kind of war zone – which puts me in mind of that wonderful line from Dr. Strangelove: 'Gentlemen, you can't fight here; this is the war room!' Or words to that effect.

Anyway, she survived the ordeal – thanks partly to her mother's patient coaching on the telephone. I passed on my own parental advice founded on the years of living dangerously in an office, observing how human nature can be perverted in such an unnatural environment. 'Try not to take it personally. They take it out on you because they can and because it makes them feel better about themselves.' Life-lesson #1: Everyone looks for someone weaker to kick in order to feel better about him- or herself.

It's a lesson that you have to learn for yourself, and the fact that the final few weeks of her tenure got a little better suggests that she was beginning to assume it. Helped by her boss's more frequent business excursions, she began to experience something akin to enjoyment. The satisfaction of a role, routine and (modest) reward. So much so that her mother's counselling sessions became more concerned with 'closure'. While not necessarily hoping to leave with a hullabaloo, Our Kid didn't want to go off like a damp squib. Some kind of acknowledgement that she'd served her time with fortitude and done a pretty good job in spite of everything would suffice.

My therapeutic wife would have got her banishing negative thoughts and focusing instead on some kind of positive outcome. And so, perhaps consequently, it came to pass that the team sprang a surprise party for her on the Wednesday evening. The champagne normally reserved for end-of-show jollies flowed liberally and she was presented with an enormous bouquet of flowers and a gold necklace from an in-house collection. The colleague who frequently pulled rank on Tilley even promised her a good reference whenever the time came. So she wasn't so useless; they loved her after all. 

Which only goes to demonstrate that you shouldn't necessarily take those slings and arrows personally. I wonder whether Pete Quaife, the bass-playing Kink, was able to rise above the fact that his employer was the only member of the group, the road crew and the management who didn't come to visit him in hospital after a severe car accident when returning from a gig. No wonder he was the first of the original four to quit.

While I raced through my book, the 'girls' enjoyed some much needed R&R beside the seaside, beside the sea. Royan is quite a featureless place, but it does boast some beautiful coves or conches, where Daphne soon revelled in the phenomenon of waves. On the first of our maritime walks, I spotted a monument to the 'Cockleshell Heroes' of Operation Frankton, who set off from there in the dead of a winter's night in folding kayaks on their perilous mission of sabotage. They rowed down the Gironde estuary and planted limpet mines on cargo ships moored in Bordeaux. Only two of the commandos returned and I believe that Trevor Howard was not one of them. Don't take this for gospel, as it is the product of my suspect French translation and hazy recollections of José Ferrer's adventure film. 

Royan was bombed by the Allies at the end of the war in Europe: a tragic and disastrous misunderstanding that cost hundreds of human lives and flattened the old town. Appropriately, perhaps, the blunder is commemorated by one of the most brutal pieces of modern architecture that I've ever seen: a concrete cathedral built in the approximate shape of a sailing ship. Maybe it looks better from afar than it does from close up. Royan today is an unlovely hotchpotch of styles. The best houses tend to be the very white and very modern flat-roofed affairs with stainless steel balcony rails that overlook the sea and betray the influence of Frank Lloyd Wright. (Probably cost a fortune.) 

As do the vets. It's a well-heeled and aging populace, and many a retiree seems to have a pampered pet or two – so the vets charge accordingly. On Day 2, our Terrierdor came down with another dose of bloody diarrhoea – awkwardly as we were crossing the promenade towards the biggest and no doubt busiest of the beaches. Try scooping that up with a plastic doggy-bag. We did the pragmatic thing and scarpered. The vet was a nice man, who charged roughly double what they do in Martel. He prescribed some medication, which Daphne took stoically several times a day for the rest of our holiday. Daily examination of her stools proved the efficacy of the prescription and the value of the innocuous butternut squash that I prepared for her meals.

Our dog recovered quickly and derived maximum enjoyment from sun, sea and sand. So that was the main thing. And oh! how we laughed to see her gambol on the shore and retrieve sticks thrown into the surf. I laughed until the final full day of our stay, when I 'did my back in'. It hasn't happened during the three or four years since I've been doing yoga. Now my pride is severely dented. I put it down to the dog. I reckon I took her out too early that morning to throw tennis balls on the grassy knoll. The weather was beautiful all week and people were out sunning themselves on the beach – in March, for God's sake. But at least the mornings and evenings were suitably bracing. Perhaps I should have been wearing a brace. All that bending down to pick up retrieved tennis balls before my body had warmed up properly.

 

Or stress. The stress of being away and visualising all those jobs that awaited my return. One theory, too, was that Daphne's intestinal turmoil was due to the stress of seeing us pack our bags on the day we went on holiday. Unless it was something that the arch scavenger scavenged. Stress has a funny way of affecting dogs and humans. With a hundred or so pages of my book to go, I'm hoping that Ray Davies will rise above his apparent stress and redeem himself somewhat in old age. For the next few days, I'll have little more to do than read. The meadow may be overgrown, but this man cannot mow it. Pardon the culinary pun, but I am for now a crocked Monsieur.

February: Done Fishin'

The man with the Panama hat and the telescopic rod is my friend and fellow golfer, Steve. That's me, looking on anxiously – a permanent state of mind – while he fishes for the ball that I sliced into one of the ponds that dot the first hole at our local course. Steve extended his egregious rod and fished out my ball. I hung onto it for all nine holes of that particular round, but still managed to play disastrously. It's a depressing thing when you realise that you're not progressing, you're regressing. The first time I played, back in early January, I played so well because I was loose and relaxed and had no expectations. That set up expectations, which bring the mind into play. On every subsequent occasion, I've played like a cretin. I can't even remember to keep my eye on the ball. Next time, I shall try repeating the words of the wonderful W.C. Fields in a priceless scene from You're Telling Me: 'Stand back and keep your eye on this ball'.

On the subject of fishing, the month of February was notable for the death of a fishmonger. We've been nominally vegetarian now for getting on 30 years, but have succumbed for about the last ten to a periodic temptation from the deep blue sea. It's not really regular enough to warrant the term 'pescatarian' – although card-carrying members of the Vegan Party would insist that we were just that (and probably be technically correct) – but The Good Wife does, or did, from time to time bring home something fishy from Brive of a Friday evening. Whenever we considered that we needed a good shot of protein.

She hasn't done so since Christmas. Every time she has gone past the fishmonger's stall, in the little pedestrian-only street that runs down from the inner ring road to the big church at the town's core, it has been closed. She figured that he and his wife must have gone to the Caribbean for a bit of R&R in the sun after his busy Christmas period. Then the absence grew increasingly longer until the other day, when she noticed some flowers laid to rest. On making her enquiries, she discovered that he was dead. The fishmonger had a massive heart attack on the eve of his second-busiest day of the year: New Year's Eve. So anyone who had ordered fish for the réveillon dinner would have been bitterly disappointed.

In the summer months, he would put out a few tables and chairs and serve mussels and chips and other delicacies – whatever was fresh – to the town's professionals and shop keepers during the two-hour lunch break. He did a roaring trade, so his clientele will be lost without him and the small body of staff he employed will find themselves without a patron and a livelihood. 

His fish was the best. He sold only what was in season, so there wasn't much choice, but you always knew that what you were getting would be good and responsibly caught. We used to eat our occasional fish with a reasonably clear conscience. The fishmonger had an eye (a bit of a wall-eye at that) for the ladies. He was particularly gracious towards my wife and would make sure that she had the prime cuts and plenty of them. His wife runs a camp site and he asked my wife once if she wouldn't mind translating his wife's brochure. My wife, being a generous and spontaneous soul, said of course she wouldn't mind doing it – though she found the request a little unorthodox. For all her propensity to exaggerate, she tends to underestimate effort and expense, so she found that it took much longer than anticipated. Instead of paying her for the service, her fishy beau gave her a little of what she fancied. And what she fancied were coquilles St. Jacques. 

Now, the flirting's over. Perhaps our occasional fish is off the menu, too. We're not sure what will happen to the shop. Maybe there'll be the equivalent of a management buy-out, but I somehow doubt it. For one thing, once the Administration becomes involved, everything slows down to the speed of an event that I remember from my primary school in Belfast: the slow bicycle race. Participants would try to be last across the finishing line without wobbling out of their lane. I never took part myself, because I was ashamed of my bike and because I'm an inveterate non-joiner. But occasionally I find myself trying it these days while waiting for Daphne to catch me up if she's been distracted by something in a field (like horse-do felafels). It's not easy.

February's going fast and will probably prove the hottest February since records began. The bulbs are shooting and the fruit trees budding – all in readiness for the inevitable hard frost that will come riding in at some unseasonable moment like a meteorological horseman of the Apocalypse. Meanwhile, there's fishing all over the world. In the Disunited Kingdom, the soft Brexiteers are fishing around for a last-minute deal, while the hard Brexiteers are being obdurate, obstreperous and obstinate. Both the main political parties are busy rending themselves asunder in step with the rest of the nation. In America, the Democrats are fishing around for ways to get rid of the flaxen-haired dictator or at least to limit the damage he is wreaking. In Europe, the EU is fishing for ideas in the face of rampant nationalism and impending break-up.

Here in these parts, the traditional hard-nosed men of the community are preparing to put away their guns and bring out their rods. I went fishing once in my life, at the insistence of a persistent Parisian who used to holiday in our old village. Fortunately, I didn't catch anything, but I've never been so bored in my life. Gone fishing, I quipped on my departure. Done fishing, I quipped on my return. My aim for the month ahead is to improve my golf game. Keep my balls on the fairway and out of the ponds, for a start.

January: On The Agenda

The coming of another new year brings certain responsibilities. Not to waste as much time in the year ahead, for example, as during the year gone by. Particularly not with the sands running out so rapidly. Why is it that they appear to speed up nearer the end, do you suppose? Even Albert Einstein would have struggled to explain it. Figuring out the speed of light was a doddle in comparison. I believe it has something to do with perception, but that's about as far as I'm prepared to go. 

I deal in stuff like metaphors rather than theories. The SPV, for example. That's a Spectrum Pursuit Vehicle, for those who were never attuned to the wonderful miniature world of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Captain Scarlet, Lieutenant Blue and the other uniformed puppets would travel around the papier mâché landscape of Supermarionation in their SPVs, moving rapidly forward yet sitting at the controls facing the road receding into the distance. I think that's marvellous. The Andersons certainly nailed the visual part of life's complex equation. 

Anyway, I'm frittering away more valuable time, so I'll leave the philosophical dilemmas to others. Let's just reiterate that, for whatever reason, time passes more quickly the older you get. So, at New Year, the pressure is increasingly on to do something with life before it drains away, not with a bang but a gurgle. The decorations are down and the warm glow of Christmas is consigned to the bank of happy memories. The serious stuff of living has started all over again. 

Resolutions are again on the agenda. This year, I resolve to... I resolve to... What exactly? Keep my desk tidier? Good luck with that one. No, that's an impossibility and I learnt from a programme the other evening that by exerting willpower on something that you don't necessarily want to do dissipates the willpower needed for something dearer to your heart. 

It was a programme about keeping fit, actually. A subject that's germane at my time of life. A staggering amount of money annually is squandered on subscriptions for gyms that are either unclaimed or seriously under-used. The message was that one should not waste time and willpower on activities (like lifting weights or running on a treadmill) that you simply don't enjoy – particularly when new research shows that there are just as effective and far less time-consuming ways of keeping fit.  

I'm not sure that playing more golf counts, but since I've verified that I can sit down and stand up without the use of my arms 10 times in under 18 seconds, I feel that I've passed a test of sorts and can therefore sign up for a sport that's not that physically demanding (no matter how mentally taxing). That said, after playing with my pals Tim and Steve on Monday afternoon, I sat down with a book and promptly fell asleep for half an hour. I think I've spent too much time watching the domestics. Their propensity for sleep is amazing. Too much petting pets makes Mark a dull and dozy boy.

As I hadn't played the merciless game since late summer and I was feeling roughly like the Burton Albion players must have felt travelling to the Ethiad Stadium to face a Manchester City team (that would put nine past them), I was quite relaxed and resigned to defeat. Besides, I don't generally do sport to win, I do it to battle my demons. Nevertheless, my shoulders were loose and my swing, such as it is, was fluid. I made a point of keeping my eye on the ball, which I've found always helps, and consequently played well enough to confirm that I'm not a cretin. Flushed with success, I've resolved to sign up for an annual membership and to look for some golf shoes in the sales. Yes, this year, I shall play more golf. Other retirees do it, so why shouldn't I?

Last year, I fully intended to buy less music, but it just didn't work. My heart wasn't in it. With retailers and junk shops virtually throwing away CDs now, it's like trying to resist an open treasure chest. Anyway, I can kid myself into believing that they're also an investment. One day, they will be valued again – as LPs are once more. Besides, I've already subjected myself to the sales. I was there bright-eyed and bespectacled soon after opening time on the second Wednesday of the month to plunder the bins. Given bargains like a double-orange-vinyl-with-free-CD set of Amadou & Mariam's Dimanche à Bamako for six euros or a seven-CD set of John Coltrane's 1961 European tour for the same price, what can a compulsive collector do? My wife understands me, even if she can't quite see the worth of seven different versions of Coltrane's transformation of 'My Favourite Things'. The first interpretation, at the Paris Olympia, has already transported me into the kind of ecstatic state normally reserved for whirling dervishes, so I don't see it as over-egging the pudding – which may sound a little tragic to those who are only familiar with the Julie Andrews version from The Sound of Music.

So, no. E'en if the hills be alive with the sound of it, I won't resolve to buy less music. As a youth, I used to smuggle my vinyl purchases into the house to avoid Checkpoint Mother, but now I'm past shame. After all, I spend far less than a smoker does on tobacco or a drinker does on alcohol and it's cheaper than a life-support system. Instead, I shall resolve instead to do something that doesn't come naturally to a hoarder: to get rid of some old things to make way for the new.

Where does that leave me? If there's any time left from all this hunting music in bargain bins and gadding about golf courses, then I shall resolve to do more writing. Now that the French government is paying me 90 bucks a month to be old, I can concentrate on writing for pleasure rather than writing for gain. It's high time I knuckled down to the business of writing something of substance. And since I generally do my best work in bed, nor should it matter too much my quest to get a little fitter fails in the process.

And with that in mind, I must be off – for five minutes of brisk star-jumping, squatting and running on the spot. Who needs to go to a gym, anyway?

December: Among the Yellow Vests

The final month of the year, a time when one is traditionally slipping into the lead-up to Christmas, has been dominated by the yellow vests. The infamous revolting gilets jaunes have been burnin' and a-lootin' in Paris, and stopping traffic in the provinces and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Christmas can't come too soon.

The Good Wife of La Poujade Basse is out on the road more often than her house-bound house-husband, travelling back and forth to Brive four days a week. So she was the first one to notice the cars driving about with their fluorescent yellow security vests (an obligatory part of every motorist's kit for a number of years) folded or scrunched up above the dashboard. When I started spotting them myself, I realised there was something more going on than the breakdown-drill of a few over-zealous motorists.

Now I spot them everywhere I go. There's a couple in the nearby hamlet who have hung one on their front gate. I would say that one in every three cars now wears its yellow heart (as it were) on its sleeve. Maybe more. The drivers are a motley crew to look at: ranging from old people to brawny white-van-men to serious-looking young urban professionals. It's depressing. For some reason, I feel most down-hearted when I pass female yellow vests. It depresses me to think that the involvement of womankind is a sign that things have really escalated. I live with this touching faith that women generally know better than men and it's perturbing to realise that they can be just as dumb. It's only good manners that stops me giving them the finger, too.

Not that there's anything necessarily stupid about protest. It's high time for a revolution. We all wanna change the world. But I question whether the impulse for demonstration in this case has anything to do with a desire to change the world in the kind of truly radical way it needs to be changed. It seems much more about preserving the comfortable status quo. Being charitable, you could say that the yellow vests are doing what the Peter Finch character did at the end of Network, bellowing to the world that they're as mad as hell and they're not going to take it anymore. God knows, we have enough to be mad about in France. After Denmark, it must be the most taxed country in Europe. Over 50% of your income disappears without even seeing it. So the rise in diesel prices can of course be seen as the straw that breaks the camel's back. And yet...

On my way to the local supermarket last Saturday morning, a whole bevy of yellow vests had occupied one of Martel's fistful of roundabouts. They were handing out leaflets and proclaiming themselves on makeshift banners as citoyens en colère. I drove past one such angry citizen before he could thrust a leaflet at the car, employing the tactic I use for hunters: denying eye contact. Fairly tame, I know, but a little more ambiguous than flipping the bird, which could end up in the kind of scuffle that would leave me significantly worse off than my opponent. 

 

Yeah, mate, I snarled from the safety of my car, I'm angry too. I am angry that Macron is revoking the wealth tax that will make the rich even richer. I am angry that the deputies of parliament have, I believe, voted themselves a nice fat pay rise. But I'm also angry that it takes a rise in the price of the filthy pollutant that fuels our cars and fouls our air to get people off their arses and out on the street to demonstrate their displeasure. And how telling it is that they employ the traditional French tactic of setting fire to old car tyres, just to confirm how little they are concerned by what's happening to the planet. Many of them, too, will no doubt come out with the Trumptonian angle that climate change is just a big hoax, anyway, and has nothing to do with the way we go about our daily business on this fragile over-populated planet of ours. It's just the media and liberal bleeding hearts trying to push an inconvenient truth down our throats.

I'm angry that my ungovernable compatriots seem happy to fiddle while the world burns, voting every four years for someone espousing much-needed change only to take to the streets each time he tries to enforce it. I'm angry that they will go on repeating the pattern until finally they put their faith in some strong and charismatic leader who persuades them that life will be better if they get rid of Jews, blacks, migrants, homosexuals and anyone else who doesn't conform to the norm.

I'm angry that instead of lobbying their representatives and the Fat Cats of big business, they take to the street and make life doubly difficult for the ordinary people they purport to represent. Brive was like a ghost town on Saturday morning when I went to buy some pipes for our imminent new water cisterns. Admittedly, I went early to avoid yellow militants, but I can imagine that shoppers are staying away in droves. And how's that going to help the small shopkeepers who are already feeling the pinch of online trade at the one time of year when they can normally rely on a bit of human traffic?

I'm angry, too, about all the Frexit posters popping up all around town. Instead of trying to reform the institution that has managed to keep Europe war-free for decades at a stretch, the gilets jaunes are just the very people to bring it down by voting instead for a trip down memory lane. Ah yes, the glory days of insular self-interested nation states. I remember them well.

Of course, when you talk to the folks at the barricades they'll tell you that some of their best friends are 'coloured' Jewish homosexual migrants, that they've got nothing against them on a personal level, but when you get them en masse... At which point, I should stress that I've got nothing personal against individual gilets jaunes. The couple down the road who wear their vests on their gate, for example, are good people. They walk their dog instead of letting her run wild, they've adopted two orphans from somewhere like the Reunion Isles, and Monsieur once gave me a whole basket of girolles he found in the woods. I know some of these people and appreciate how marginalised they feel here in the Styx, far from the capitalists of the capital. No, it's the thought of them gathered together in a mob that feeds my ire.

I fear the mob, even bearing legitimate grievances. The gilets jaunes could be the 21^st century reincarnations of the sans culottes. They'll be there cheering at the guillotines when it's time to round up the scapegoats and despatch swift and summary justice. Every day in every way we reinforce our ignorance of what history teaches us. The next financial crisis is just around the corner now. The big one is coming to push us over the edge. Then we'll see how many of the good citizens of France, the ordinary people, swap their yellow vests for brown shirts. Be afraid; be very afraid.