September: Tomorrow is Not Guaranteed

 

Once you get to 'a certain age', you start to look back on your time on this earth and think about 'life's great lessons'. A major one, I find, is that you can never rest on your laurels. Just when you think that things are ticking along nicely, along comes something or someone to drop you right in the thick of it. Things have been ticking along quite nicely, thank you: it has been a summer made glorious by an occasional sun that hasn't been too hot, and watered frequently by rain reminiscent of all those wet summers back home. Apart from an irritating ticklish cough, which I put down to an airborne allergy rather than emphysema on better days, I haven't been too troubled by thoughts of premature death. But then suddenly... I found myself the potential hero, or rather protagonist, of a Kafkaesque novel.

I was just about to shut down the computer to watch the cricket highlights and took a last look at the e-mails in one of the three accounts that overwhelm me. Just in case there was anything urgent to attend to before the evening's relaxation. I noticed something that I would normally ignore as a scam. It appeared to come from someone who worked in the office for the protection of minors. The return address looked plausible, there were no dodgy links to click on and there was a pdf attachment that I could scan before opening. The body of the message, in French of course and therefore slightly impenetrable, seemed to suggest that I had been found guilty of some kind of child pornography. What the...?!? My weary heart skipped several beats.

So I took a look at the pdf, as I still had a couple of minutes before the cricket. It was in French and couched in official language and therefore yet more impenetrable, but it appeared to come from the head of an office linked to Interpol. It had what looked like a genuine watermark, and it outlined my transgression: either I had downloaded images of child pornography or I'd been engaged in online conversations with impressionable minors or some such heinous act. Now of course I knew that there had to be some mistake, that someone somehow must have stolen my e-mail address and used it in the course of these vile goings-on, but I'd read too many novels and seen too many films of the type where the protagonist suddenly finds himself accused of something he hasn't done and must somehow prove his innocence to overturn a guilty verdict. It's never easy.

Feeling too discombobulated to fully enjoy the rare pleasure of watching cricket on the telly, I decided to record them for my later delectation when my head was a little clearer, and I joined the girls for a crepuscular walk with our dog. Just to the communal bins and back. It was a glorious evening, calm and free, a holy time quiet as a nun (to paraphrase old Bill Wordsworth's words) and the bats were flitting about just above our heads. My head was full of the accusation. How was I going to approach this? Apparently I had 48 hours in which to state my case. My daughter wondered why I was quieter than usual. I smiled at her bravely and started composing an e-mail response. I was an Anglo-Français old enough to know better, I lived a good and reasonably useful life with the woman to whom I'd been married for over 30 years, I was the father of one female adult child and the whole idea of child pornography was abhorrent to my nature. So shurely shome mishtake. 'May I assure you, sir or madam, of the sincerity of my distinguished greetings'... blah blah blah. Well, it might not constitute the kind of jury-swaying address delivered by someone of the gravitas of, say, Jason Robards jr. or Charles Laughton, but it would do for a start.

Notwithstanding this sudden tectonic ontological shift, I slept well that night because I nearly always sleep well, and I was convinced of my innocence. I had no reason to feel guilty. Did I? No, surely not. I hadn't yet mislaid my marbles. Nevertheless, I awoke next morning with trouble on my mind. I went to the market in Martel, wondering what would happen to me if I didn't reply within 48 hours. After all, I really should do a little research into these supposed prosecutors before I risked any personal domestic information falling into the wrong hands.

So, once I got back with our vegetables and cheese from the cheese man and assorted groceries for the week ahead from Intermarché, I turned on the computer and did some rudimentary research on the government site indicated in the correspondence. Each time I typed in the name of the various officers involved, all kinds of stuff came up, but mainly apparently triggered by the individual's first name. That I didn't find anything about any one of them didn't necessarily reassure me, as their names would surely not be in the public domain given the sensitivity of the subject matter and the potential danger of reprisals.

Further research revealed a telephone number available to the public – but would there be anyone there on a Saturday? If I waited till Monday, my 48 hours would be up and then what...? Would they send a car for me? Would they come in plain clothes or some kind of uniform? What would I say to my wife and child as I was led away in handcuffs? How would I reassure our barking dog that it was all right, that daddy would be back soon? And I would, wouldn't I? As soon as they interrogated me in whichever office they were taking me to, and as soon as they realised that I was essentially a good, responsible citizen even if I was against enforced vaccination and I'd built a structure to capture rainwater without declaring it to the authorities. Yes, they'd soon know that it was all just shome sherious mishtake.

Then, I stumbled upon some French newspaper article thrown up by a 'search with substance' on the Lilo search engine. It appears that the switchboard of this mysterious government office has been jammed by the wrongly accused. I read that if I'd replied to the e-mail I received, I would have received a follow-up plea-bargain proposal: if I paid something like €18,000 euros, then charges would be dropped and they'd forget all about it. Now, you'd really have to have something bad on your conscience to agree to that kind of deal. 

With my private drama now concluded, I told the Good Wife what had been troubling me for the last 36 hours or so. 'Oh that!' she said. 'I got one of those. I deleted it straight away.' You live and you learn. I should add it to my list of life's enduring lessons. Delete all dodgy e-mails as scams. So... I could  get back to deleting the hundreds and thousands clogging up my in-boxes. I can laugh about such idiocy now, but of course here in the privileged West, such potential miscarriages of justice happen only rarely. Which is why I'm a fully paid-up member of Amnesty International. People are languishing in jails the world over, guilty until proven innocent, but with no opportunity even to prove their innocence. Perhaps that's my number one lesson of life, my Top of the Pops: tomorrow is not guaranteed, so' just be thankful for what you got.' Others aren't quite so lucky.

August: Puffed But Chuffed

It seems sometimes that my life is becoming increasingly governed by the whims of our dog (cue heavenly pre-pubescent choir: Oh for the whims, for the whims of a dog...). Give 'em an inch and they'll take a mile. Admittedly, the morning walk – or bike ride – is good for my constitution too, nevertheless she should be more grateful that I'm prepared to take her out before breakfast, when the day is but young. Yet, there are days when she just looks at me and refuses to budge, no matter how much I cajole and beg. And there are other days when we get to the top of our track and I head left in the customary manner, only to find that she's not there beside me. When I double-back to see what the matter is, she's sitting by the roadside at the top of the track because she fancies going right rather than left on that particular morning.

I wonder whether this behaviour has anything to do with her change of diet. We've recently bought some croquettes with protein derived from insects rather than animal by-products. It's a recognition of the future, I suppose, when we'll all be chomping on insects. It's our ever-so-'umble equivalent of owning an electric or hydrogen-fuelled car. After first sniffing suspiciously at her new food, she seems now to be a fan of pulped larvae and maggots. The Good Wife performed a taste-test the other day: in one hand, a croquette from her customary supply; in the other, a new-fangled crunchy treat from the insect world. Reader, she went for the latter. Since she has a talent for taking out flies and wasps in mid air, she clearly has an innate taste for such irritating creatures.

Maybe this helps to explain her annoying whims, although really who can blame her for a little canine caprice? There's not a lot of excitement in a routine of sleep, eat, walk, sleep, bark, play, eat, play, walk, bark, sleep. I tell her that she's much luckier than the vast majority of dogs in this benighted world of ours – in the same way that our mother used to remind us of the unfortunate children in Hong Kong and Biafra when trying to get us to eat our yummy overcooked vegetables and fatty mince. The latter I could understand, given the hideous civil war that raged in Nigeria at the time, but I never really got the hang of Hong Kong. It seemed to me that children there, no doubt engaged in the manufacture of the cheap plastic toys that derived then from that bastion of Empire, probably had just about enough to eat. And at least they didn't have to eat overcooked veg and fatty mince.

Anyway, one good thing about turning right rather than left at the top is that it forces me to climb the steep, slippery chemin that leads up to Monsieur Delpy's sheep sheds. A decade or so back, I used to do it more often to test my physical mettle. These days, with everything else in inexorable decline – eyes, ears, back et cetera – I'm a little more reticent. However, thanks to the whims of our dog, I discovered that I can still do it. Still get to the top of a very steep and awkward gradient on my bike without having to get off. On reporting this revelation to the women of the household, I was asked how it made me feel. 'Puffed but chuffed,' I revealed.

It got me thinking about how lucky I was to be born in a country where they speak English: the universal Esperanto. How much more difficult life might be to be saddled with a language that no one else in the world can speak, like Finnish or Hungarian. Even French is only mainly understood in north and west Africa. And the thing about French is that you generally need so many more words to express a simple sentiment like 'puffed but chuffed'. Consider its wonderful simplicity. So much is revealed in those three words. Had I been born a French speaker, I would have struggled to pack so much meaning into so pithy a phrase. It might come out as the equivalent of 'I feel quite contented despite the difficulty of respiration.'

Once at the top, the rest of my anti-clockwise morning constitutional is a piece of piss. Another glorious expression. Un morceau d'urine means nothing at all and I know of no equivalent other than fastoche, which is argot for facile or easy. Which is fine, of course, if a little prosaic and much less colourful.

Daphne understands English, but not French. When I explain this to locals, they find it curious. Surely we should be talking to her in the prevalent language. But whenever we've tried it, she thinks something's up and makes a bee-line for the door in order to bark at whatever's wrong. Yet, give her a word like 'walkies?' or 'supper?' or even a whole sentence, such as 'put the ball down please' or 'no, you stay here and look after the house', and she knows exactly what's expected of her and responds accordingly.

Given the fact that there are as many etymological similarities as there are differences between the two languages, it's surprising that the English and the French have never understood each other. We are at war once again. This time the post-Brexit fall-out is at the root of the travel turmoil. There doesn't seem to be any other reason why the U.K. should put France on its red or amber or whatever other colour the list is that keeps pesky French travellers out of their green and pleasant land. And just to compound matters and further obfuscate potential travellers, Boritz & co. change the rules from one day to the next. Had the friends who returned early from France to avoid pay-back for their stay here waited a while, they would have found that there's now no obligation to self-isolate for however long it is – or was. When spoken by persons in office, the English language can be very confusing.

Certainly the Good Wife and I are not yet thinking of travel, despite the needs of our surviving ageing Ps, as Dickens called them. My mother-in-law's needs are much more pressing than my father's, whose social calendar is far fuller than my own. Debs does her mother's shopping for her online and ensures that the poor old isolated dear has enough gin to keep her going until the day when she can go and relieve Mafeking. That may not be far away. There's still the issue of obligatory and very costly tests, but at least the prospect of self-isolation in a claustrophobic and worryingly unhygienic house seems to have diminished.

Some friends of hers in Brive got back from Bordeaux recently and brought the Delta variant with them. With the passeport sanitaire coming into effect, we both feel tempted to go and visit the friends in order to catch the disease – in much the same way that our parents' generation would send their children to parties to catch measles so that they could get it all over and done with and build their immunity for the future. The only thing that's stopping me is that, for all my faith in my immune system, nurtured steadily over the last two decades or so of clean-living, there's a niggling fear that it might lead to my demise. Despite the daily assault of dire news from all around the world, I don't wish to push up daisies just yet. Another fine phrase you've got me into! How could you translate that one into French in less than 10 words?

I'll leave you with the conundrum. Right now, there's weeding to be done. And while pulling rather than pushing things out of the ground, I shall be debating whether to opt for that 20% off the price of a pizza or whatever other inducement is on offer and submit to the needle. Anything for a quiet life.

 

July: Strange Days of Summer

Yesterday was the quatorze juillet. We were cordially invited to join the ceremony down at the mairie. A fellow communard delivered it the other day in a white van. The mutt did her nut because there must have been another dog in the van, presumably of the hunting genus. Although I didn't know the man from Adam, I recognised his beard and have probably spotted him in these parts, dressed in camouflage gear and sporting a rifle. We didn't go. It's just another excuse to drink a verre d'amitié (a glass of alcoholic friendship) and we wouldn't have been honouring any dead other than those who stormed the Bastille over two centuries again.

What happened to all that revolutionary spirit? On Monday evening, the nation was addressed by President Micron in his customary suit from Man at C&A. Despite his reassurance some months ago that vaccinations would not, he repeated not, be obligatory, he announced swingeing new measures that will 'encourage' mass inoculation. He and his medical advisors are introducing a new passeport sanitaire to be shown in cafes, restaurants, cinemas and even trains. So anyone who exercises their right to refuse a vaccination for whatever reason will effectively be forced to wear the equivalent of a Star of David to mark him- or herself off from the rest of society.

As the screw is turned and our civil liberties are gradually removed, you would hope that mobs of angry revolutionaries would storm the presidential palace. Instead, within hours of the announcement, people have been queuing up in their thousands to book appointments with the needle. Who can blame them really? Living in a city, you'd be excluded from public transport and unable to get to work, let alone from drinking your sorrows away in a bar or chatting with a friend over a coffee and croissant on some boulevard of broken dreams.

Nevertheless, when the Good Wife read out the gist of the address on her phone, the three of us felt angry and frustrated enough for our own private revolution. We were at the local cinema to see Nomadland, which was every bit as good as claimed: a film, also, about society's excluded ones, not by dint of health, but by an economic system that continues to tolerate the acquisition of billions by the tiny but powerful few. Without so much as a murmur, it often seems. Frances McDormand was fantastic. Good luck to the wandering kind that she portrayed so poignantly.

That was Monday evening, the glorious 12^th July. New friends from Ulster with whom we passed a splendid afternoon recently told us that the hard-line Prods of the province were busy building bonfires to light that same evening. One in particular in East Belfast, a poor area where the Protestant and Catholic communities live on top of each other in uneasy acquiescence, was apparently several storeys high, big enough to create a conflagration that could easily turn into an urban wildfire. The police felt powerless to do anything about it lest their intervention opened up a can of worms. The worms are still there, though, writhing and wriggling just beneath the surface.

Just as, in fact, the old attitudes on the mainland still prevail. The ignorant few – or are they really so few? – are still trying to deny the obvious, that modern British society is a multi-racial one. 'No Blacks, No Irish, No Dogs.' My heart sank on Sunday night, watching the final of the European Championships go to extra time and then to the inevitable penalties. Then, after Rashford and Sancho missed their penalties, the final chance was handed to the 19-year old Bukayo Saka, a lovely lad who plays, what's more, for my team, Arsenal. Of course his shot would be saved. I didn't mind so much that England lost to Italy, not after all the media hype and the national nonsense about football coming home, what hurt was the certainty that Saka and his other two team mates would receive messages of hate on social media. And so it inevitably came to pass. Sure, we shouldn't get so hung up about social media and sure, there were many more messages of sympathy and support, but how distressing that anyone courageous enough to take on such a burden of responsibility should be abused for the colour of their skin.

Earlier in the day, just to compound the misery, our daughter's good looking Italian contender with the massive serve lost in four sets to Djokovic in the Wimbledon men's final. None of us bothered watching because the inevitability of a Serbian victory far outweighed the faint possibility of an Italian upset. I keep telling myself that he's a decent enough human being, but I just can't help disliking the man. Is it the fact that his haircut makes him look like a human Action Man? Is it the robotic nature of his game, which transforms him into a Yul Bryner character from Westworld? No matter how hard and how often you attempt to stop him in his tracks, he just keeps on getting up. John McEnroe did a little piece about how someone who will never be a crowd favourite should nevertheless be respected for his brilliance. Bugger that. Given his 'wolf energy' and his attentive team of fitness trainers, he will probably dominate proceedings for at least another three years and end up with 25 or more Grand Slams. He'll be the chosen GOAT, but give me an artist like Federer rather than a machine any day of the Wimbledon fortnight.

We've had so much Monsoon rain of late, no doubt diverted by global warming from the west coast of the U.S.A. and Canada, that the woods are full of wild mushrooms. Country folk emerge from the trees with carrier bags full of girolles and cêpes. Like billionaires, they jealousy guard their secrets and never dream of sharing their haul with anyone. The three of us walked the dog late one morning, walking very, very slowly through the damp woods in an effort to spot edible mushrooms among the undergrowth. We found some girolles and a faux cêpe and made an omelette for our lunch. On the whole, I'd rather eat mushrooms than insects. The day must come, but not yet – although we are considering changing Daphne's croquettes to a new French brand made with insect protein.

That same day, the Daughter spotted an enormous caterpillar just before lunch. It was green and the size of a pea pod, and probably the equivalent of a T-bone steak in terms of its protein count. Since it was wriggling its way over to the flower bed and seemingly intent on a feast, I went to fetch the dustpan and brush with the idea of moving the beast to the middle of the field. When I came back, it had gone, nowhere to be found. It could reappear in a few days as the kind of king-size butterfly you might find in the Costa Rican rainforest. Or some flower-devouring superbug. Strange Days, as the Doors once entitled an album of theirs.

 

June: Very Important Visitor

 

I did myself a mischief again. This time it was pulling ivy off a wall. She's a big girl and I tried to talk her down, but she wasn't having it... LOL, as The Daughter would say. Laugh or lollipop? Arf, arf, as the Viz comic characters might put it. When our neighbour confronted my wife about our ivy across the wall at the clinic in Brive, she was apparently taken aback by The Good Wife's sheer reasonableness. Of course we'll get rid of the ivy, she volunteered. You will? the woman asked, quite taken aback by the lack of resistance. Well yes, I'll ask my husband to come and do it as soon as possible. And of course, I was as happy to oblige as indeed I was when I last pulled ivy off the wall some six or seven years ago. Since then the re-growth has been phenomenal. Ivy had covered the entire wall.

In actual fact, it wasn't so much the act of pulling ivy off our neighbour's wall, more the constant bending down to pick up the pieces and stack them temporarily on the flower beds. Thus, for a good week I was shuffling around painfully like a very old man. That's what you get for trying to be a good citizen.

Talking of whom, our president came to Martel one Thursday morning with his very important and very expensive entourage as part of his fact-finding tour of our neck of the woods. Or was it simply to glad-hand the new mayor of Martel, a dentist by trade, who is I'm told a committed Macronista. Macron in Martel, I ask you! En route for Cressensac to see her accountant for her annual review, Debs noticed all the gendarmes milling around our little town and figured that it was a little excessive for the customary stop-check-and-fine traffic exercise.

I didn't go to line the streets and cheer and wave my mask, or indeed slap our president's face and incur a four-month prison sentence. There was no need. El presidente popped in to see me before the official business of the day. He'd heard of this local-radio DJ, living in a house of straw, who was taking his name in vain. So he dropped by to check me out and make sure that I wasn't a dangerous free-radical.

'Hello, Monsieur Président,' I greeted him.
'Bonjour Prézident Markon,' he retorted with a glint in his eye.

We didn't shake hands and we remained masked, for the sake of political protocol. I ushered him inside while two substantial bodyguards waited outside on the front porch. Daphne barked them a broadside, but they were unmoved, standing stoically on the qui vivre in their dark suits and dark glasses. I offered Monsieur Macron some muesli, but he'd had a breakfast fit for a dignitary earlier in Saint-Cirq Lapopie. But he wasn't averse to another coffee.

'Oo la! You've done your back in,' he observed, as I shuffled over to fetch the kettle.
'Yes, pulling ivy off the wall. Actually, more the constant bending to pick up the pieces.'
'Ah, Average White Band, n'est ce pas?'
'That's right! The white album. I didn't know you liked them.'
'Oh yes,' he smiled. 'My wife and I often dance around the Palais d'Elysée ensemble to the Average White Band or Earth Wind and Fire.'
'That reminds me. Must play 'Let's Groove' on my show sometime. I could dedicate it to you, if you'd grant me the honour.'
There was a sharp intake of presidential breath. 'Not sure. Better not. I think I'd rather you kept our little meeting a secret entre nous. And while on the subject...I don't know that I'm entirely happy about you employing a corruption of my name.'
'Oh, nothing disrespectful,' I assured him. 'Just a little gentle irony. A bit of that celebrated Breeteesh humeur.'
'Ah yes, I know it well. You like your sense of irony. It's not something that we French understand too well.'
'Yes, well, I've lived here for more than 25 years now. It's something I've come to appreciate.'
He chortled in a Gallic way. 'Mon-tee Pytton, typical Breeteesh n'est ce pas?'
'Arguably. But no,' I reiterated, 'Certainly nothing disrespectful – even if I would care to take issue with certain policies of yours.'
He knocked back the last of his coffee and stood up suddenly, as if summoned by an alarm signal. 'Another day, peut être. I must arise and go now and go to the town of Martel. Merci pour le café. I hope your back gets better soon.'

With that, he patted our dog's head and signalled to the pair at the door, who accompanied him to the limousine parked beside my 107 on the drive. They turned with some difficulty on our somewhat restricted turning spot and Daphne and I watched them head up the drive. Give my regards to the dentist! I cried, but I don't think he heard me.

Shame he couldn't stay longer, but I guess the affairs of state are more pressing than a little tête à tête with an impostor. I'd have liked to ask him if he'd seen My Octopus Teacher, which we'd all watched a couple of nights before. One of the most beautiful and astonishing films I've ever seen. A worthy Oscar winner. It's all about the relationship between an octopus and a world-weary, burnt-out South African film maker, who would go scuba-diving  every morning in the cold rough waters somewhere by the Cape of Good Hope. Over the course of a year, he created a bond with a solitary octopus based on mutual fascination and burgeoning trust. The most moving and tender relationship you could ever imagine between a man and what was essentially an aquatic mollusc.

I would dearly love to have an octopus living under our spreading sumac tree rather than the resident brambles. If not an octopus, then a family of hedgehogs or even a toad. But the brambles have it once more, even though at the end of winter I got down on my back – in a sounder state at the time – with the secateurs and cut those hoary old weeds right down to the ground. Begone, brambles! And for a couple of misleading weeks, a battle seemed won. But not the war. Never the war. Cometh the spring, cometh the new shoots. Brambles are like bad neighbours. They never go away and can make your life a misery if you allow them to upset you.

I am not now nor ever have been a gardener. Nor am I much of a political theorist. But it strikes me, as I think about the tenacity and proliferation of ivy and brambles, bindweed and dandelions, all those relentless weeds that constantly threaten to choke the life from the beautiful, transient flowers that my wife plants with customary optimism on our barren soil here, all those weeds are like the lowest politicians throughout the ages. All those ruthless, ambitious, self-interested men (and it's almost always men) who keep on cropping up to overrun any flowering dissidents, reformers and prophets intent on leaving a legacy.

Maybe I'm stretching a point here. Perhaps I'd better just stick to strimming (once my back is back to normal) – taming those flaming weeds for another week or two. Still, it was nice to have a very important visitor, even a stiff one in a formal government-issue suit. I don't get around much any more.