Five minute nightmare

Well, that was a largely forgettable week. Cold, wet and miserable. Particularly on Wednesday. What was otherwise a good trip over to Blighty (flights on time, survived encounter with the law) was completely spoiled by the cauchemardesque ending to the norf london derby. One of the great premiership games, they're calling it. Great if you're not of the red & white persuasion.

A warning not to loiter with intent around airports. Was waiting for my chauffeur at Stansted on Wednesday evening, at a place not officially designated for picking up, when a car with yellow & blue livery pulls up. Polite policeman rolls down the window, asks what I'm doing, and asks to see ID. Radioing my name through evidently produces the information that I'm not on the most wanted list, and he kindly tells me he hopes I don't have to wait in the cold for my lift much longer. I'd thought I was out of view of any of the sundry CCTV cameras as well...

And so on to this weekend. Hopefully I'll have finished sulking by this evening, when guests JeB and Dr S arrive for the weekend winefest. The annual Salon des Vignerons Indépendants takes place over the next few days. Perfect for sorrows, the drowning of...

The dark nights close in...

Last week diversion was supplied mostly by the world of French politics, voodoo dolls and all, while domestically the main event was the heating finally going on, and staying on. A couple of mild days early in the week were followed by a ten degree plunge in maximum temperature. The sunshine returned over the weekend, but temperatures stayed around the seasonal average. Can't claim we did a lot to take advantage of the nice weather. A walk in the morning sunshine on Saturday was cut short because of an over-optimistic clothing choice on the part of one of us. La bienheureuse went home while I went and bought some wood for a minor projet de bricolage.

Sunday I set about putting up a couple shelves, filling the apartment with sawdust in the process, while la bienheureuse caught up on some work, necessary because she's never in the office these days. Oh yes, she's off on her travels again this week, in Germany until Thursday. My first trip in a month comes up on Wednesday, a vitriolic local derby in prospect...

L'espionnage, l'escroquerie et la diffamation

Plenty of entertainment in the murky world of French politics at the moment, dirty tricks popping up everywhere you look: a former premier ministre facing prosecution, the current president suing a former secret service boss, a left wing politician being spied on by the MD of a weapons company, who in turn is suing the former for defamation, and last but not least, the French president's personal bank account being hacked by a couple of petty thieves, who apparently only took small amounts to try and avoid detection. Personally, I'd have cleaned him out and published the details.

The Clearstream affair rumbles on in the background. Former PM Dominic de Villepin is facing prosecution for turning a blind eye to what he supposedly knew was the falsified list of accounts holding bribe money. De Villepin in turn talks darkly of policital pressure on the judiciary. Meanwhile, his bête noir, Monsieur Le Président himself is suing a former boss of the French Secret services for libel and invasion of privacy after extracts from the latter's personal notebooks were published in a French magazine. Precise details of the dirt he has on Sarko are glossed over in the media...

Sarkozy seems to be developing a taste for using the courts in his private life. A few months ago he became the first sitting President for 30 years to do so when he sued a journalist who published details of an alleged SMS message from Sarkozy to his now ex-wife. He later dropped the case when the journalist backtracked and apologised. And now he's threatening to sue a company which has produced a voodoo doll in his image. About time someone stuck pins in him...

Another, unrelated side show at the moment is the attempt by the boss of the French branch of Taser, the company that produces the 'non-lethal' Taser gun to squash Olivier Besançenot, the leader of one of the numerous left-wing political parties in France. Last week Besançenot reported an attempt to bug his house to the police, and 10 people were subsequently arrested during the investigation, including the head of Taser France, 2 private detectives and several policeman (presumably off-duty at the time). All this preceded the start of a court case in which the Taser France boss (who admits having asked for 'checks' on Besançenot) is suing Besançenot for defamation after he suggested in his blog that Tasers were probably responsible for the deaths of as many as 150 people in the US. Meanwhile the latter is threatening to sue the former following the break-in and bugging of his house. Who said the US was the most litigation-loving country in the world?

Guinness, pizza and football

L'été indien clings on. A brief interruption late last week for a couple of cool, cloudier days, but le soleil returned for the weekend. Witness the photo below of the Passerelle du College reflected in the calm Rhone this afternoon.
Yesterday we took advantage of the nice weather by spending the afternoon in the pub. Though finding a pub showing the appropriate match did necessitate a long walk in the sunshine. Eventually persuaded an American barman in an Irish pub to show the English game on a French channel. And le club londonien le plus français eventually obliged with a win.

Afterwards we meandered to Gerland to watch a live game, stopping on the way for a pizza. Just complete the cosmopolitan day. Les gones, still smarting from an inhabitual 3-0 thrashing in their last game struggled for form again, and we slightly lucky in the end to fight back for a 2-2 draw against Lille. Reasonably entertaining game, particularly listening to the moans and complaints from our season-ticket holding neighbours.

Another quiet week ahead. La bienheureuse is travelling again, though a routine overnight trip to Germany this time. And I inch closer to the finale of oeuvre numéro 3...

Whistle a tune...

Another quiet few days on the domestic front. La bienheureuse returned tired but unscathed from her encounter with the European bureaucrats in Brussels, I've been plugging laboriously away at my chosen metier by carrying out another minor rewrite.

Elsewhere, while the financial world continues to fall apart, the football world carries on regardless. I passed up the opportunity to watch OL ladies beat Arsenal ladies 3-0 on Tuesday night in favour of watching l'équipe masculine de France play Tunisia in a friendly. Les bleus continued where they left off in the previous couple of games - a minor resurgence in attacking form balanced by a continued disorganisation in defence.

The perceived return of a semblance of team spirit and cohesive play has been enough for the Fédération de Football Français to confirm Domenech in his position as coach on Wednesday. However, that decision was overshadowed by the fact that the large Tunisian support (outnumbering the home team fans) in the Stade de France loudly whistled the singing of La Marseillaise (by a singer of Tunisian origin). Much outrage amongst politicians and media the next day led to Sarkozy summoning the president of the FFF to the Palais de l'Elysée for a dressing down.

A subsequent announcement that any similar future incidents would result in the game being abandoned has been somewhat derided in the cold light of day this morning as being in the heat of the moment, with the impracticalities of such a move being pointed out. UEFA have said only they and the referee have the power to abandon a game. Others have questioned the effect of turfing eighty thousand disgruntled fans out on the streets of Paris. Unlikely to be peaceful, I venture...

La musique et la litterature

A momentous week in France (quite apart from the global spiral towards financial chaos), which saw the 30th anniversary of the death of Jacques Brel, perhaps France's most famous singer-songwriter, and the announcement of the farewell tour of the man who is perhaps France's most famous living singer, the man they simply call Johnny. In fact both of them are Belgian by birth, but we'll ignore that - the French often do, in the case of les belges wallons.

If Hallyday is best described as a French Elvis who didn't (quite) kill himself young, Brel is much less easily characterised. Newsreel of his stage performances invariably show him alone in a spotlight, dressed in a dark suit and tie, his face covered in a sheen of sweat. He seems to be loved mainly for his lyrics and astute commentary on life. As much a poet as a singer.

Which leads us neatly on to the other big news in the French cultural world - the French author JMG Le Clezio winning the Nobel prize for literature. The news had been widely acclaimed despite the fact that he's half-British.

Flying deer and cultural dynamite

A momentous week in France. And that's ignoring the fact the world's financial system in on the brink of total collapse. I'm talking about something far more important - culture, namely popular music and high literature. There were three big events in France: the announcement of Johnny Hallyday's imminent retirement from live performances; the 30th anniversary of Jacques Brel's death; and the awarding of the Nobel prize for literature to another Frenchman, JMG Le Clezio.

On the domestic front it's been a quiet week. We took advantage of the mini-Indian summer yesterday to have a stroll round town, where there was a bit of a party in Place Bellecour, laid on to celebrate the 40th edition of Le Petit Paumé, a free guide to Lyon produced each year by a team of students. Bands, jugglers, acrobats, tigers in cages, a hot air balloon, and a kite-flying demonstration were all squeezed into the second largest square in France.

Still nice today, but la bienheureuse has just left for the airport to spend 3 days in Brussels, learning how the European Union functions. Guess someone has to...

Physical crisis

Dunno about the credit crisis, my body seems to be in the throes of a mid-life crisis. Knackered my neck last week (whilst rather foolishly attempting to do some press-ups in a vain attempt to maintain some semblance of physical condition), and then discovered a chipped tooth at the weekend. I thus had to pluck up courage yesterday for a first visit to the dentist in six years, and experience the joys of the chair with a stiff neck. That said, it all turned out fine, tooth repaired (though he told me it really needed a crown). Neck still stiff though, think I may have suffered a prolapse relapse, so to speak...

Otherwise it was a quiet weekend. Ritual pub trip on Saturday to watch les gunners struggle once more to breach a packed defence. Enjoyed the last minute if little else of the game. Sunday we were intending to go out for walk, then to the cinema then to the restaurant. However, the nice morning weather had disappeared by the afternoon, I realised there was a particular episode of an american cop show I wanted to watch on TV (a sad indictment, I know, but it's one of the few programs we can watch with an English soundtrack), so good intentions swiftly disappeared.

Today the good weather is back and la bienheureuse is off to Germany again. Only one night trip this time though.

Autumn follows

A much more successful trip across La Manche on Tuesday - four goals that could have been eight, and two flights that arrived early. Left a chilly, blustery Blighty on Wednesday afternoon to find late summer still clinging on back home, while la bienheureuse left an even windier, colder Berlin to arrive back in a still fairly mild Lyon yesterday. This morning, however, l'automne seems to have arrived. Cool, occasional showers, with an even colder forecast for tomorrow. Might even have to turn the central heating on, even if the forecast is for a return of sunshine and warmer weather on Sunday...