Autumn colours

The mild sunny weather has returned and we took advantage yesterday, with a stroll around the park, broken up by a pleasant outdoor lunch in the Musée d'Art Contemporain café. Lovely colours, lovely food.

Minor downside of the weekend was provided by football. Lyon crashed to defeat in Nice, and a late Sunday afternoon in the pub watching the English version of the game was spoilt by the final fifteen minutes at Upton Park. Ah well, still three quarters of the season to go.

The big game of the weekend in France between sworn enemies Marseille and PSG was postponed because of an outbreak of swine flu amongst the Parisian players. Much polemic today, invoked by the late decision which meant several hundred PSG fans arrived in Marseille with no match to watch. Result: running battles with rival hooligans and police.

No action

The end of a rather quiet week, at home and abroad in the wider world. One benefit of la bienheureuse being away is guilt-free TV football in the evenings. Tuesday I watched mon équipe de cœur amble complacently in second gear through 92 minutes of the match against Dutch opponents, only to concede an equaliser in the 93rd. No real damage done. OL played the same night, on a subscription channel, and drove another nail into the Scouse coffin. Let's hope there's a resurrection on Sunday...

Elsewhere, Les Bleus drew Ireland in the World Cup playoffs. Les hommes en vert are seen as tough opponents, typically British.

In the more trivial, non-sporting world, Jean Sarkozy has renounced his candidature for the presidency of Epad, bowing to the general opinion that a 23 year-old law student lacks the experience and know-how to direct the billion euro budget of the public body in charge of developing France's largest business district. Shame nobody dared tell his father what a bad idea it was. Sarko fils can console himself with a mere seat on the board...

And finally, the Clearstream trial nears an end, with three days of summing up by prosecution and defence expected to end today. The prosecution has asked for an 18 month suspended sentence for de Villepin, with heavier sentences for his co-defendants. They seem to have accepted they can't prove that he took an active role in the conspiracy, but claim he's guilty of doing nothing to stop it. A decision in the case is expected to be deliberated at the start of 2010. The wheels of French justice grind slowly...

Brief encounters

Ma bien-aimée et moi aren't seeing much of each other at the moment. She was in Germany Tuesday to Thursday last week, I gallivanted off early on Saturday for an overnight trip to the holy ground, she was up early this morning to jet off to Prague for a four day meeting with marketing colleagues from around Europe.


It was a routine flying trip to London - morning flight to Gatwick, train to London, meet JW in the pub for a pre-match beer or two, comfortable if slightly laboured victory over the blue Brummies, lift back to Cambridge, usual overnight board and lodging chez generous hosts J&C, then morning train to Stansted for flight home. My fellow passengers stayed dry this time, but the trip wouldn't have been complete without a by now habitual gaffe. I managed to collect passport, credit cards, AFC season ticket and OL season ticket off the bedside table before I left. Spot the error - the latter item should have stayed behind so that la bienheureuse could go to Gerland on Saturday evening with a colleague. Oops. As it turned out OL lost, so they didn't miss too much...

A chill wind...

Autumn was brief. A week last Wednesday the maximum temperature in Lyon was 26C. Yesterday there was a morning frost and the thermometer failed to make it into double figures. And there's a biting north wind howling down the river. Brr, even if the sun has shone continuously. The heating finally went on yesterday.

As you can tell from the chat about the weather, it's been a quiet week. La bienheureuse spent three days in Germany, where it was even colder, leaving me to fiddle and faddle as usual at home. My days were an exciting mixture of grocery shopping, completing the latest rewrite, and spending time up a ladder doing a bit of ceiling cleaning.

In the wider world, the Sarkozy fils affair rumbles on with little sign of letting up. Sarkozy père gave an interview to Le Figaro saying that it was him, not his son, who was the main target of the snipers. Monsieur Le Président is seen as being under some pressure at the moment. A left-wing politician rather aptly paraphrased his Le Figaro interview as "I, Nicolas Sarkozy, singlehandedly beat the credit crisis, moralized capitalsm, and the whole world is obviously following my example. All these other trifles like mass unemployment, personal debt, huge public deficits, they're the fault of others and the crisis. It's not me who needs to change, it's others."

Meanwhile, this morning farmers blocked the Champs-Elysées and dumped a thousand cubic metres of soil in the centre of Poitiers in protest about their plight; the fugitive accused of a high profile murder is still on the run and thumbing his nose at the police six weeks after escaping from prison; and the Clearstream trial rumbles on...

Gourmet dining

Autumn has arrived in Lyon. Mild, rainy weather at the end of last week has been followed by cooler, sunnier times. On Saturday the clouds clung on, the upside of which was that la bienheureuse spent most of the day dans la cuisine. Magret de canard stuffed with fruit stewed in wine & port, salmon cakes, sweet potato soup and chicken in milk was ample recompense for a weekend without proper football.

Internationull football never grips in quite the same way, but I forced myself to watch France coast to a 5-0 win against the group minnows, the Faroe Islands. The game was rendered truly null and void by Serbia's 5-0 thrashing of Romania, which condemns France to the playoffs. Sunday was the cusp between summer and autumn, sunny but with temperatures still approaching 20C. We took advantage in the morning with our habitual 20km cycle ride, along the river to Parc Gerland, back down to Parc Feyssine, and then home again.

In Lyon the public transport strike petered out a week ago without agreement between unions and management. The former threaten to time future action to coincide with popular events, such as the Fêtes des Lumières or the Christmas period...

In the wider France, Frédéric Mitterrand seems to have weathered the storm (a poll says 2/3 of people want him to keep his job), though the National Front are still trying to stir up trouble by claiming he intervened in a court case of two brothers accused of rape in Italy while he was principal of the prestigious French Academy in Rome a year ago. Meanwhile Sarkozy's 23 year old son looks likely to become head of the government agency in charge of developing La Défense, the main business district of Paris. Accusations of nepotism are inevitable...

Crime and non-punishment

Plenty of news and noise in France over the last few days. Making the headlines at the moment is Frédéric Mitterrand, the Minister of Culture who made waves a few weeks ago over his denunciation of the arrest of Roman Polanski, and is now struggling to fend off a storm of criticism over a book he wrote ('neither novel nor memoire') four years ago describing his experiences with 'garçons' in Thailand. Last night he was interviewed live on the main French TV news and defended himself in lively, if somewhat rambling and confused fashion. He condemned sexual tourism and paedophilia, which he had never indulged in, but admitted sexual relations in Thailand with 'men of his own age'. He didn't help his own case by continuing to refer to 'boys' though, and the polemic continues this morning.

Earlier in the week Le Monde made waves in the cycling world by publishing extracts from a report by the French agency against drugs in sport (AFLD), which apparently criticised the international cycling union (UCI) for giving Astana (the team of Contador and Armstrong) 'privileged treatment' during the Tour de France, allowing them extra time between the end of a stage and the drugs test, among other things. The implication of the report is that the UCI did what they could to ensure a Tour without positive tests, which the organisers of this year's Tour congratulated themselves for achieving. The AFLD however say they are working on new tests to detect the latest generation of EPO and the whisper is that 20 odd cyclists in this year's Tour are under suspicion...

Meanwhile in Lyon a couple of tragic but slightly curious cases made the national news. The first involved an unsolved murder from 34 years ago, which was apparently cleared up when a suspect confessed. The bizarre thing is that he can't be tried for the crime because the statute of limitations in France is a mere 10 years. The second case was an abandoned new born baby who was subsequently discovered to have a rare genetic disease, so doctors have appealed for the mother to come forward...

It's been a quiet week on the home front, apart from having a commuting English colleague of la bienheureuse (the witness to my earlier in-flight misdemeanors) round to dinner on Wednesday. Ma bien-aimée has a rare week without travel and I've been slogging away at re-write 4 of book 3. Not much incentive to get out of the apartment anyway - the weather has finally broken. It started raining on Weds night and has barely stopped since...

Goals galore

Another Saturday, another flight across the Channel to follow an obsession. This time, an evening flight got me to Cambridge in time to interrupt a well-watered Killers head-banging session and down a swift G&T before falling into bed after midnight. Late breakfast the following morning, and then once more we beat a well-worn track towards the holy turf in anticipation of entertainment by the red and white heroes. And what entertainment. Eight goals that could have been eighteen in a stunning display of attacking football by the best attacking team in the world. Defence? Defence is for boring teams.

So a contented trio headed home, in my case via another excellent dinner and stopover chez J&C, hospitality in its usual generous abundance. Even got a lift to the railway station in the morning. More interesting flight home than usual, due in part to the company of one of la bienheureuse's colleagues, but mostly due to my inadvertent attempt at installing a new aircraft sprinkler system.

Nice to arrive back in Lyon to find the weather still warm and sunny. Today, it's even warmer - mid 20s C - but cloudy and blustery due a strong reverse Mistral blowing up the Rhône valley. As I write, there are even a few drops of rain spattering against the window - the first in about three weeks.

Conflicts, conflagrations and conflabs

La grève continues. And hardens. Tuesday night there was a fire in a depot at one of the main bus stations. 34 vehicles were damaged by what later proved to be arson. Meanwhile, the mayor of Lyon was moved to pronounce that the strike had gone on too long. Yesterday, 70% of services were reportedly running, but the strike retains enough support to seriously inconvenience most commuters. There are union meetings today to decide on the next move. On verra...

Given that my own commuting consists of twenty paces from bedroom to 'study' (a cause for minor regret on a day like today - the spell of warm, sunny weather continues), it's only going to the football where the strike causes problems. La bienheureuse is still walking to work, though yesterday she took the car, but that was because of a meeting in a hotel on the outskirts of town followed by a social evening learning about wine in the Beaujolais. Left at home alone, I contented myself with watching overpaid galacticos fluke a 3-0 win over les marseillais. The previous evening we hadn't needed to budge from the sofa as for once I got the chance to watch the glorious Gunners at home, in both senses. Domination brought eventual reward. Meanwhile, on the subscription channel we don't get OL were strolling in a Hungarian park.

Earlier on Tuesday evening we had a co-owners meeting in the apartment of one of our neighbours, which not uncharacteristically went on long enough to leave me sweating about dinner burning in the oven and missing the start of the big match. Typical meeting - lots of talking at high speed, most of it by two stereotypical French madames: nineteen words to the dozen, two dozen words used where half a dozen would have sufficed; atypical outcome - decisions were reached. Perhaps because we have a new neighbour who is unusually calm and decisive. And she doesn't talk too fast to understand.

The first concerned the syndic - the company charged with administering the building. Our own syndic is singularly inefficient, not to say inactive. For five years we've talking about changing, and finally we all agreed to do so. At least those present at the meeting did. And we still have to decide who to replace them with...

The main reason for the meeting however, was to discuss the rubbish bins. Yes, a subject of much concern, believe it or not. A lot of protocol is involved in the use of poubelles in French apartment blocks. Our particular bone of contention is with the restaurant that occupies the ground floor. According to building and city council rules, restaurants are required to make use of specialized outside companies to dispose of waste generated by the kitchen, rather than using the daily rubbish bin collections. Of course this costs money, and not surprisingly le resto downstairs prefers not to cough up and just uses the bins.

Our bins.

They do apparently have one normal rubbish bin, and one recycling bin allocated to them, but of course a busy kitchen generates much more detritus than two small wheelie bins can hold, and so they stuff all of our bins every day, leaving us poor inhabitants nowhere to dump our rubbish. Quelle horreur! Not only that, but their bin has a large crack in the bottom through which kitchen waste often leaks, leaving a smelly, slimey mess all over the floor, which then gets trailed out through the lobby when the bins are emptied.

Another thing about the restaurant that gets our neighbours' backs up is the noise at night. The restaurant often hosts parties of one sort and another, sometimes involving loud music, which keep our first floor neighbours in particular awake. Music they don't have a license for. All these issues (there's another, involving deliveries, which I won't go into), have at one time or another been taken up with the restaurant management by one of our neighbours or another, with varying degrees of politeness. Much is always promised, nothing is ever done. So, it was decided to send them a polite but firm letter, pointing listing all these points, pointing out all the rules, and informing them that if it's not taken, the next time we will be forced to have recourse to the law. On verra...