Adjusting

La petite coquinette seems to have adjusted to winter time. Seven am alarm call this morning, but the previous two it was closer to 7:30. As the season changes so it seems do her habits. Perhaps understandably, as the days shorten, she seems to think she has to take advantage of every available daylight hour. And sleeping during the day earlier this week was not part of that agenda. Actually she did eventually, but usually only after lengthy and vociferous protest. Maybe it was just a phase, with tooth number two on the way. Hopefully the reversion to a former favourite pastime - raspberry blowing during mealtime - is also a passing phase. If not we'll soon have rather fetching spatter-effect wallpaper and furniture...

The weather in Lyon remains mild, though not quite as mild as a week ago, when the minimum nighttime temperature was a couple of degrees higher than the average maximum daytime temperature for this time of year. It was looking a lot more like autumn though, with the sunshine of the previous week making way for overcast skies. Which tended to make our habitual afternoon riverside promenades rather gloomy affairs before the sunshine returned yesterday.

La petite famille was reunited again yesterday, after several days apart. Last Saturday I caught an early flight to Blighty for another pilgrimage to the blessed ground. For a change the game was comfortable, as was the habitual overnight welcome chez le grand chef et la petite beaucoup. La bienheureuse and I then briefly crossed in Lyon on Sunday night before she flew to the teutonic north for a couple of days of meetings.

Economic belt tightening is the adjustment apparently required in France to reduce the deficit and retain the sacred triple A rating handed out by the same American based agencies who gave AAA+ rating to Freddie & Fannie Lehman right up to their respective financial deaths. And yesterday one of them 'erroneously' downrated France. Hmm, reliable these ratings then. Anyway, a second austerity plan in two months (still judged insufficient by the EC) resulted in a two per cent rise in lower rate VAT, a bringing forward by a year of the increase in retirement age and linking some social security payments to growth rather than inflation. Economic 'experts' in France and Europe are full of doom and gloom, but then not so long ago most of the same experts were forecasting full recovery by next year…

Elsewhere, belt-loosening is more in the news. A top hotel in Lille has been exposed as the centre of a prostitution ring, with the hotel manager and a high-up policeman among the chief suspects for running it. And another name heavily linked to the affair is none other than Dominic Strauss-Kahn, the man with seemingly the biggest libido in France. Texts from him have been found on the phone of a local businessman also involved in the whole business talking about parties and 'young ladies' in Lille, Barcelona and New York.

Another policeman in trouble is the former number two in the Lyon Police Judiciare (rough equivalent of the CID), who is in prison while under investigation for corruption and links to organised crime. The man once fêted as Lyon's top crime-busting cop allegedly used drugs seized by the police to keep a supposed informer sweet, supplied copies of police files  to, and accepted expensive holidays from, individuals known to be part of Lyon's criminal underworld…