Green yo-yo dreams

It's unseasonably cool in Lyon today. Not exactly warm over the weekend either, though I might just about still describe it as shorts and t-shirt weather. Since the hot spell ended ten days before the end of July, temperatures have been up and down like a yo-yo. Up at 36C on Thursday, back down to 24 by Saturday, a mere 20 today, but forecast to be back in the upper twenties by Thursday.

A pleasant weekend started on Friday evening with a cinema trip to watch a film about the manipulation of dreams. No, not a political documentary but a clever thriller. We followed it with dinner at the Place des Sens, which despite the name is not a massage parlour but an organic restaurant. A very nice meal it was too, though slightly on the bland side. We kept up the green theme of the weekend yesterday with an amble along the river and through the park to the garden centre in vain search of citronella candles.

Saturday required a ritual visit to the pub to watch a gratifying victory for the guardians of good football against the kick and lump disciples of Big Fat Sam. In the evening, the debut of the new lyonnais messiah failed to prevent les gones stumbling to another defeat in Bretagne. Gourcuff senior 2, Gourcuff junior 0. Four games, four points, fourth from bottom. Things can only get better.

Doctoring the news

They thought it was all over. Maybe it soon will be, but it ain't yet. Earlier in the week, three wise old men of French football (including the coach of the glorious team of 98) wrote an open letter to the French football federation suggesting that the match bans placed on the Knysna rebels be replaced with some sort of football community service - helping youth clubs, amateur teams, etc. An idea not without merit but rejected out of hand by the FFF, mindful of public opinion no doubt. Meanwhile Coach Laurent Blanc is quietly going about turning over a new leaf for the national team. Yesterday he selected a squad for the upcoming European championship qualifier that included only nine of the WC squad.

Elsewhere, others are less inclined to let sleeping dogs lie. The team doctor during the Domenech era has just published a book in which he describes the complete lack of authority the coach had over the team, dating from before the 2008 European championships. However, that's old news and what has made the headlines here are the comments he made about 'abnormal blood tests' amongst the 1998 heroes, particularly those who played their club football in Italy at the time. Tweak the tail of a sleeping tiger. A flurry of protest and denials followed. Just a means of selling his book of course. Which may be true. He's not exactly speaking from a position of authority - he only became team doctor in 2006.

Locally, things are looking up football-wise. Aulas finally got his man earlier this week, with the 22m Euro capture of the golden boy of French football, Yoann Gourcuff. The signing has been greeted with great enthusiasm by a Lyon public starved of consistent entertainment in recent years. 15000 fans turned up at the stadium to welcome the new arrival. The rest of the team were introduced as well, but that was almost by the by…

Meanwhile, it's the rentrée. Politically speaking. Schools don't go back for another week, but Sarko and co returned from their holidays earlier in the week to face the storm of criticism and condemnation of the government's 'security' policy. More particularly the xenophobic nature of said policy. The government spin doctors are working overtime while the expulsion of the Roma continues unabated. They've got a lot of work to do. A recent opinion poll suggested 55% of the French population want a left wing president next time round...

A lot of buts

Summer disappeared last week. But reappeared over the weekend. Monday last week the thermometer barely reached 18C. But yesterday it was back up at 35. The hot weather dissuaded us from any activity on Sunday. But Saturday was a little less hot, which allowed us to get out for a football afternoon and evening. First stop the Wallace, where les canoniers blasted six balls into the tangerine newcomers' net. But less entertainment on offer at Gerland, where les gones squeezed a single but out of les Brestois. But it was a first win of the season, so one shouldn't be goal greedy. But hot rumour of the day is that entertainment value may be on the increase chez les lyonnais, with Yoann Gourcuff apparently on his way for a cool 20M euros. But I'm not holding my breath…

Statistical insignificance

Le Grand Frère is watching. Our number came up in the computers of INSEE, the government institute that compiles statistics on all that is life in France, and as of Wednesday we are now a French statistic. The surveyor was delighted to find me home. Compiling a survey in the middle of August is a thankless task - only one of our neighbours is here at the moment, and the two buildings next door are undergoing renovation and thus completely empty. Funnily enough, the survey was all about work and unemployment. We decided in the end that I was an 'homme au foyer'. You'd have thought that a survey of an idle man wouldn't take long, but it also covered past work and educational history of both me and la bienheureuse. And it's not over yet. I can expect follow up phone calls every 3 months until the end of next year to check on changing circumstances, and another interview at the end.

Meanwhile, the French government continues its campaign to rid the country of undesirable foreigners. Hundreds of Roma have been forcibly flown back to Romania and Bulgaria. Unwanted and discriminated against here, unwanted and discriminated against in their countries of origin. A mere 300 euros won't help much. Hope Sarko doesn't decide layabout English wannabe authors are next…

Hotheads and Pissheads

First game, first trip of the season to the pub. Frustrating afternoon in Scouseland for the not so glorious yellows. Lovely though it was to see the opposition keeper throwing the ball into his own net for a change, it was two points lost rather than one gained. And just to add to the enjoyment I had to put up with a drunk, who invited himself into the spare chair next to me and proceeded to bend my ear about everything and nothing, including the opinion that Mancunians and Liverpudlians were 'voyous', and a bizarre obsession with how close each London club was to the Thames. Still, at least his allegiance switched from Scouser to Gooner in the space of twenty minutes. Perhaps it was my glowering that did the trick...

Elsewhere, the epilogue to les Bleus World Cup debacle is taking place this afternoon in Paris. Result: 15 match ban for the hotheaded catalyst, and 5, 3 and 1 match bans for the strike ringleaders. May that be the last of it.

Apart from the afternoon in the pub, the only activity of note over the weekend: a stroll along the river for lunch on Saturday, and a sortie to Les Halles by la bienheureuse in the midst of a cooking frenzy on a cool and rainy Sunday. The resulting fish pie, crumble and carrot cake are going down very nicely. Must try and do some more exercise…

Swimming against the tide

There's a French phrase used to describe being very happy - 'nager dans le bonheur'. They have literally been swimming in happiness this week with a flood of medals for French swimmers in Budapest, even outdoing the athletes. Cue the sounds of cocks crowing and the fanfare of vainglorious trumpets…

Elsewhere France has fared less well on the international stage. Earlier in the week the UN committee on the elimination of racial discrimination slated Sarko and the French government for showing a 'lack of willingness' to combat the rise in racial violence and discrimination. Committee members all but pointed the finger directly at Sarkozy and government ministers for contributing to racism in France, citing the recent speech by Sarko threatening to strip citizenship from convicted criminals 'of foreign origin', and the forcible clearing of travelling community camps in the last fortnight. About time someone called a racist a racist…

Closer to home, barely a kilometre from here, the body of a 70 year-old man was discovered in a chest freezer in the apartment he shared with his wife, 20 years his junior. Neighbours talked of 'violent arguments' between the couple, but nobody had seen or heard the old man for 18 months. All goes to show how easy it is to live a totally secretive and isolated life in an apartment building…

Marmite and Marmottes

The theme of this summer continues - another trip to the mountains over the weekend. This time however, we couldn't claim to be escaping the oppressive heat of the city. It was a mere 20C when we left Lyon early on Thursday evening, the journey east and upwards was through a succession of heavy showers, and it was positively chilly on arrival in Meribel. A friend of la bienheureuse had kindly loaned us an apartment for the weekend, and that night we had the unaccustomed experience of needing to sleep beneath a duvet.

The skies had mostly cleared the following morning. Wrapped up in sweatshirts we set off for a stroll through the Lac de Tueda reserve. A pleasant amble up through the forest above the lake, following a botanical trail, preceded some traditional Savoyard winter fare - tartiflette, eaten indoors to shelter from the biting breeze. After lunch, a highlight of the day - a trio of marmottes sunning and grazing on the grassy slope just above the lake. Another gentle walk up and along what is the Ours piste in winter took us back to the car park. Back at the apartment the opportunity for a swim was shunned in favour of a lazy evening, despite the sunshine and a heated pool.

Wall to wall sunshine and somewhat warmer temperatures accompanied us on our walk on Saturday. This time we set out from Meribel, heading up through the woods towards Altiport. The path took us across the Petit Lapin piste and through the golf course for a picnic lunch in the forest, accompanied by the sound of aircraft taking off and landing a short distance away. Refreshed we carried on upwards, under the lift towards Col de la Loze and then across towards the top of the Rhodos lift. From there it was back down into Meribel for a drink in one of the pubs before tidying and packing up to head home. A pleasant weekend in the mountains which confirmed that Meribel in the summer is much like Meribel in the winter - an English enclave (witness Marmite on sale in the Petit Casino and inefficient teenage English waitresses in the pub) which is twice as expensive as anywhere else. Lucky the accommodation was free.

We returned to Lyon on Saturday evening to find the warm weather reinstalled, and to witness the start of the French football season at Gerland. Plus ça change. OL struggled to a goalless draw against Monaco, which while not completely lacking in entertainment will have done little to attract back the thousands of season-ticket holders that have supposedly deserted the club this year…

Yesterday the sun shone, the thermometer climbed, and we restricted exercise to a short fruit shopping expedition to the market on the banks of the Saône in the morning. Delicious apple pie was the result, and la bienheureuse has today left me the enviable task of eating it all on my own as she jets off for a couple of days acting as bodyguard and babysitter to a colleague giving a presentation in the UK.

Woerthy causes

The flow of accusations against Eric Woerth continues undammed. Yesterday Liberation published a letter allegedly sent by Woerth while he was Budget Minister, which purportedly showed he had intervened to get a 27 million Euro tax rebate paid to the estate of the late sculptor César. Allegedly at the behest of the executor of César's will, who by pure coincidence is a major donator to the ruling party, UMP. Which, by the way, had one Eric Woerth as treasurer at the time. Of course Woerth has said it was the tax office who decided on the rebate, and the executor in question, Alain-Dominique Perrin, has denounced the letter as fake. This morning Liberation is standing by its story, the most extraordinary part of which I find to be that a sculptor I've never heard of can be worth so much money that he has to pay enough tax to even consider a 27 million Euro rebate. Though I've since learned that I'm very familiar with one of his works - le Patineur, next to the opera house in Lyon. Hmm…

Meanwhile the World Cup debacle is reaching its final phase. Bad boy Anelka has been giving his version, chiming in with the general player chorus - it was all Domenech's fault. This morning the new coach, Laurent Blanc, announced the squad for Les Bleus' first game since the World Cup, a friendly against Norway. He'd already decided not to pick any of the 23 grèvistes for this game, so the next French football team to take the field will have a decidedly unfamiliar look.

Gold and dangerous

It's been quite instructive watching the athletics on TV over the last week. With the French team hugely exceeding expectations, commentators, competitors, pundits, and politicians alike have been cock-a-hoop, their jingoistic pride in the national team inflated by a sense of redemption after the World Cup debacle. It's reached a point where the constant harping on about the fantastic team spirit in the French camp and the lauding of the down-to-earth, approachable athletes in comparison to the egotistical footballers has become downright nauseating. Normally I tend to regard any sports event not involving 11 men in red and white kicking a football with a somewhat detached air, but over the last couple of days I've found myself cheering on the Brits with uncharacteristic nationalistic fervour. French television has a lot to answer for…

The rejoicing over sporting success has contrasted rather sharply with the polemic on the political and social field recently. The recent attacks on police by the travelling community in northern-western France, and by disaffected youths in Grenoble provoked Monsieur le Président into another rabble-rousing speech this week, in which he declared war on delinquents, and announced plans to strip criminals 'of foreign origin' of French nationality. The implicit linking of delinquency to immigration has understandably unleashed a storm of debate, not least because under the sacrosanct principles of the French constitution, a French citizen is a French citizen, regardless. And quite how he defines someone 'of foreign origin' is unclear. Most of his targets in the banlieues were born in France and Sarko himself is the son of an immigrant. It's somewhat ironic that most of the athletic heroes in Barcelona would be fingered as 'of foreign origin' if they had been throwing rocks at in the recent violent confrontations.

Meanwhile, life on the home front remains quiet, apart from the deafening sound of thunder and pouring rain outside the window as I type and a pleasant midweek barbecue chez une collègue-amie de la bienheureuse. Custom made caipirinha and boudin noir on the BBQ, and a small Armagnac to finish. Lovely. Fortunately ma bien-aimée drove home.

Since I ferried la belle-mère to the airport last Tuesday (on time despite a massive traffic jam en route - summer in Lyon is open season for road works), I've been getting down to work again, strangely heartened by a couple of rejections I've received recently from literary agents. Encouraging words are inevitably concluded with the final letdown, but encouraging words nonetheless. Common themes - well-written, good story, doesn't get going quickly enough. Another rewrite (of the first three chapters, at least) beckons…