We had to laugh when I came back from our letter box up
the track with a little slip of paper on which our existing post woman
introduced us to our new factrice.
She's moving on, it would seem, to another round. You can't stay too long in
one place or you risk over-familiarity with the clients. On the slip of paper,
she made it very clear that we would be buying our calendar this Christmas from
her and her alone, not her replacement.
She's a very nice woman, always personable, always a
smile, but it's clear that she has little sense of just how privileged a post
person is in this day and age of zero-hours contracts. My wife and I are
delighted to buy calendars from the pompiers,
because the fire people are brave and voluntary. But both of us object to the
custom that someone with a job for life and a nice index-linked pension at the
end of it should supplement his or her income come Christmas time with some
tax-free gratuities. There's just a sense of menace about it all. If you don't buy my poxy calendar for a few
dollars more than it's worth, you'll find your correspondence next year dumped
in a ditch.
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| My little bird of paradise |
Our 'frank discussion' triggered a rant from The
Daughter. She went back to Paris late on Tuesday afternoon and, apart from the
protracted showers and the gloomy looks when asked if she wouldn't mind walking
the dog, I'm certainly going to miss her company. She can be very funny, particularly
when she's in mid-rant (often about her peers and contemporary culture). I
can't remember exactly why, but she was ranting this time about the baccalaureate's
idiosyncratic marking system. Everything's marked out of 20 and then multiplied
by a coefficient assigned to a certain subject. Why is it, for example, that
philosophy – a subject studied only during your last year of school – should have
the highest co-efficient?
Why indeed? She's right; it's madness. Is it, I
suggested, because the French like to see themselves still as a nation of
philosophers? Apart from Sartre and Camus, who are more three parts novelists
to one part philosophers, the last truly global French philosophers – one might
argue – were les philosophes of the
Enlightenment, which happened more than 200 years ago. By that reckoning, why
not encourage final-year students to study impressionist art, slap a dirty
great co-efficient on it and wait for French art once more to rule the cultural
world? I should just mention that this rant had nothing to do with our girl's
underwhelming four-hour philosophy exam result, which demoted her from a mention très bien to a mere mention bien. Maddening.
Now that the girl's back in her metropolitan digs, the
Good Wife of La Poujade Basse and I were able to watch Lincoln on DVD the other night. It probably qualifies as a
'quinoia' choice in our daughter's book. This is a category she invented after sitting
through – and thoroughly enjoying – Le
Havre, a marvellous film by the wacky Finnish director, Aki Kaurismaki.
'It's like eating quinoia,' she suggested afterwards. 'You don't particularly
fancy it at the time, but once you've eaten it, you feel really clean and
healthy, like it's done you a lot of good.'
Lincoln did us
both a power of good. It's beautifully staged and feels utterly authentic, but
what sucks you in is the sheer brilliance of the acting. Sally Field, Tommy Lee
Jones (who can never do any wrong, because my wife would have married him if I
hadn't got there first) and, above all, Daniel Day Lewis. His performance, un-showy
and compassionate, was mesmerising. If there's a better leading male out there,
I've not yet seen him.
Earlier in the week, my wife brought back the sad news
from her cabinet, that one of her
most delightful clients had finally lost his long and wretched battle with
cancer. Every time that he and his wife came to see her, they insisted on
bringing half a dozen or more eggs: not from their own chickens, but purchased from
the old man next door. Sometimes, if they happened to be in Brive, they would drop
off some reinforcements in the waiting room. A truly charming couple, they both
re-married late in life and experienced 20 years or so of marital bliss. I
wonder how his widow will manage without him – and I wonder how we will manage
without the richest eggs in Christendom.
Sad news is often balanced by good. Skimming through the
home page of The Grauniad the other
morning, I was delighted to read that Wilko Johnson's apparently terminal
pancreatic cancer is in remission. During his farewell tour, it seems that a
surgeon contacted him to suggest that he visit his hospital in Cambridge. An
operation removed a tumour weighing three kilos. Imagine! That's more than your
average bag of potatoes. So Wilko's still with us, which is wonderful, because
he's one of the most entertaining human beings on the planet. Dr. Feelgood worked
a miracle.
This beautiful autumnal weather is still holding. But our
heat pump whirred into life the other night for the first time since about
April. Gloves are now de rigeur for
my matutinal dog-walks. My shorts are hung and I'm back in longs and I have even
at moments shod my feet in slippers. What with the clocks going back on Sunday,
there's only one thing to deduce: we're slipping irredeemably and inexorably
into winter. My God, Holmes, you're a
genius!
