Tour de force

A British victory in the Tour de France - a bit like a Frenchman scoring a century at Lords. Wiggins does seem to have won over the French public though, with his somewhat crooked sense of humour, quirky personality and willingness to give interviews in reasonably fluent French. And his triumph in what the French see as the ultimate sporting challenge has been welcomed, albeit somewhat grudgingly. Articles I've read have praised the professional, pragmatic way the Sky team controlled the race but at the same time bemoaned the way the spectacle was thus rendered somewhat less exciting than normal. This year's race has been described more than once as one of the most boring ever.

On the other hand, French commentators have also heralded it as a great year, largely due to the French success in winning five stages. In contrast to the boring Brits, the likes of Thomas Voeckler have been hailed for their panache and daring. French flair, quoi…

Key costs

Before three days of almost continuous rain arrived, the last two days of last week were reasonably mild and sunny, which made for a pleasant start to the long Ascension bank holiday weekend. On both days we took advantage of the good weather with afternoon outings on the bicycles. On Thursday we cycled to the Parc de la Tête d'Or, a pleasant little trip, which had an undesirable ending. On returning to the garage the keeper of the keys (he that wears shorts with zip-closing pockets) searched in vain for the key. Only then did he remember that there was a hole in the particular pocket in which the key had been deposited. Oops. In my defence, the garage key is rather large and the hole rather small. Still, it had obviously slipped through somehow, and an hour spent retracing our route scanning the ground carefully was singularly fruitless.

And so the bikes accompanied us back to the apartment and were laboriously lugged up six flights of stairs. The next morning a call to a serrurier produced a reasonably prompt response and by early afternoon the garage was open. The locksmith's method of gaining access: a large screwdriver and a couple of judicious blows with a hammer. Not the most secure of lockups. Total cost of a lost key: 210 euros. Admittedly that included a replacement lock & keys, but apparently Friday counts as the weekend when it's a bridging day, hence weekend callout rates. Hmm…

Anyway, as the weather was still good my disgruntled mood was cured with another pleasant little balade à velo, further upriver this time, as far as the Parc de la Fessine, where la petite adventurière could wander far and wide without need for immediate parental intervention.

Crying foul

Foul weather - 4pm Saturday: rain starts spitting down and doesn't stop for 36 hours. Undeterred by the cold and gloomy conditions, we stroll out and blow a monkey on a new bike and child seat. La petite coquinette charms bystanders and looks cute in a helmet.

Foul match - 11.45pm Saturday: 58 fouls - the total number of free kicks at the French League Cup final. To cap it all, I stay up and watch all 120 dire minutes of the worst match in football history, only to see Lyon contrive to lose the Olympique battle of attrition to an extra time Marseille goal.

Foul odour - 4.30am Sunday: little more than four hours after I've gone to bed, we're woken by the sound of crying from the nursery. Not the normal, brief waking whinge la petite sometimes makes, something more prolonged and serious. I draw the short straw and take the first shift at settling her back down. Half an hour and two abortive attempts to put her back in bed later, I finally catch a smelly whiff and cotton on to the reason for her discomfort. After the nappy change, la bienheureuse takes over to allow me to collapse back into bed. Four hours later, the small bundle of energy finally agrees to go back to sleep, and both exhausted parents snatch another hour or two themselves.

Foul mood - 11pm Monday: the rain finally stops sometime in the early hours, but temperatures fail to climb above 6C the rest of the day. And we thought winter had ended 6 weeks ago. The biting Mistral slices through la petite and I when we venture out late afternoon and the rain starts spotting down again. To put the rotten cherry on the 3 day old cake, les cannoniers blow the chance to consolidate 3rd by losing at home to the 4th bottom team. At least the lowly Latics play decent football.

Foul health - 6.30am Tuesday: new wakeup time, on the dot la petite starts yodelling. Her parents groan, both still afflicted by the colds that have lingered for weeks, fouling the nasal, bronchial, tracheal and, in maman's case, aural passages. La bienheureuse still manages to drag herself out of bed to feed the little munchkin, who fortunately seems to have mostly regained her previous good health and humour.

Sixty new faces

Twenty four new people in eight days, only another thirty six to go, all of them relatives, albeit most in only the loosest of senses. The week in the Lake District assembled la grand-mère, two great aunts, a great uncle, several cousins once removed, and assorted other less easily defined relatives and relatives' hangers-on - something like 29 in total. That's a lot of new faces to take in, but apparently la petite coped admirably despite arriving not long before bed time. An hour after bedtime la bienheureuse collected me from Windermere station following the trip to London notable only for the chance to exchange brief gossip with the McBhoy and the Dove and a slap-up breakfast in the local café. Least said about the main footballing event the better.

Petite famille reunited, Sunday was spent recovering from our respective traumas. Saturday's rain was eventually superseded by some lovely late afternoon sunshine, which encouraged a group outdoor dinner (delicious Mexican cooked by the fiancée-in-waiting of cousin number five) on a table for 30 just beneath baby's window. She slept blissfully on.

The routine for the week soon became established. Quick swim in the petite piscine for la petite after morning nap, excursion after lunch (and progressively shortening lunchtime naps), then dinner and bedtime before grown-ups dinner time. Monday afternoon was taken up by a stroll in the sunshine into Ambleside and the hire-with-purchase-option of a back baby-carrier. Said baby-carrier was duly tested the following day with a minor hike along a groomed path in Grizedale Forest. Carrier received full approval from la petite and load-bearing parents and subsequently purchased.

Wednesday was grand-oncle's birthday, celebrated in fine Lake District style with a mass outing via road, ferry, canoe and sailing dinghy respectively to the visitor centre at Brockhole. As the small boats sailed in, the clouds rolled in and a picnic lunch for thirty was consumed in traditional British style in raincoats and under umbrellas. Refuge was eventually sought in the café, and then everybody drove, paddled or sailed back to Waterhead in the rain. It was however, then only persistent rain of the week.

The next day dawned sunny and bright, perfect weather for a cycle ride along the west bank of Windermere. While the three ladies, one from each generation had a stroll and coffee in Ambleside, le nouveau père hired a bike to join the old-hand fathers and older children for a pleasant jaunt up and down the bridle path that runs alongside the lake. Cocky ginger second cousin distinguished himself by losing control of his mount going down a steep incline and sailing over the handlebars. Pride and one shin sustained the only bruises.

Last full day in the Lakes included another trip into Ambleside and a visit to the youth hostel to watch the various cousins (first, second, once removed, vaguely related), aunts and uncles messing about on the water or wrestling on the wet grass. Three against one didn't really seem fair, but the eldest second cousin just about held his own.

Saturday morning passed in a blur of cleaning and packing, and by eleven we were on the road south once more, arriving in Cheshire via a foolhardy detour through Warrington to avoid a jam on the M6. No matter, we made it back to chez grand-mère without too much screaming from driver, navigator or passengers.

Growth record

Month five, visit to the paediatrician number five. No jabs this time, but plenty of screaming when the nasty man tried to stick his scope in little ears and nostrils. Another measuring session recorded a near doubling in weight and a height increase of 13cm since birth. At this rate la petite will as tall as her mother by the time she's four, and as heavy as her father by the time she's seven.

Of course child growth rates aren't linear, and obsessive that I am, plotting the little munchkin's numbers on the standard (British) curves has her height roughly following the 50th percentile and her weight steadily climbing from about the 60th to the 80th percentile. Hmm, nonetheless Monsieur le Pèdiatre expresses admiration for our treasure's chubby little legs and arms.
"She's not too plump, then?"
"No, not at all. You don't need to worry about obesity until she's two."

That's all right then, we'll continue feeding her 20% more than he recommends. And of course her excess weight could all be put down to her head, measured to be larger than roughly 90 percent of all other babies of the same age. Certainly takes after papa then. Well, we need large heads to fit in all that grey matter.

Daytime entertainment has been more difficult this week. Somehow, it's always raining when it's time for our afternoon stroll along the river. Naps in the cot aren't as much fun. And no more tennis, no more Tour de France on TV. Le Grand Boucle reached its climax on Sunday after three masochistic weeks for the riders that ended in plaudits all round: for the valiant failure of the local hero to hang on to the yellow jersey for the final two days, for the thrilling win at Alpe d'Huez that earned his teammate the white jersey and the burden of being the next great white hope of French cycling, for the attacking ride up the Galibier that earned the eternal runner-up the yellow jersey for one day, for the green jersey won by the greatest sprinter in the Isle of Man and the rest of the world, and finally for the Australian winner. Last year's winner did, after all, pay the price of trying to win the Giro and the Tour in one year.

The saga of cooling the car reached its end (we hope) yesterday. Not that we've needed air-conditioning in the last 2 weeks. Second hand compressor duly purchased (highly efficient online order and delivery, bargain at 100 euros) and fitted by our friendly mechanic. How much will that be then? Billed at 326 euros, with no repair warranty given that it was carried out with a second hand part. Or 250 for cash. Easy choice. Tradesmen are the same the world over.

Two seuls encore

And then there were two. La grand-mère et la mère left yesterday in the morning rain, heading for the airport at different times in separate taxis, the former heading home after two weeks of grandchild entertainment, sundry sewing jobs and jam-making, the latter reluctantly flying off for a meeting in the company mother country. She will be home this evening but meanwhile la petite et son père have just each other for company once more. Teething troubles seem to be the main preoccupation at the moment. Nothing a bit of drugging won't solve.

On Monday we had a visitor (NB arrived despite making few plans), and la petite coquinette awoke from early evening sleep in her most beguiling mood to meet our dinner guest with sleepy smiles and coy flirts aplenty. He left with a belly full of moussaka, crumble and Coteaux de Tricastin, and a phone full of blurred photos to show to Dr C. His mission of finding the hotel at the top of the tallest building in Lyon was eventually accomplished.

Rumours of the demise of Contador may well have been premature. Yesterday's stage, previously assumed to be anodyne, saw him attack on the only climb of the day in driving rain and autumnal temperatures, leaving the man who was runner-up last year trailing in his spray. Lots of complaints about the weather in France at the moment, particularly from the holiday industry. Temperatures for the middle week in July are forecast to be about five degrees lower than those we had in the middle of April. The next three Alpine stages in le Tour could be interesting, including two climbs up the col du Galibier, which on Sunday was under several inches of snow, occasioning the rescue of a number of cycling nuts who were attempting to emulate the professionals in shorts and t-shirts.

Cooling and climbing

Baby travel tale number five, Tuesday: in thirty-five degree heat, la grand-mère, la mère et la fille set off in la voiture with broken air-conditioning to visit a friend and her baby. Short ten minute journey fortunately, and la petite behaves perfectly during the trip there, the visit, and falls asleep in the car on the way back! Hallelujah.

Next day le père takes the car to the garage to get the air-conditioning fixed. Diagnosis: leaking compressor. Cost of repair: 900 euros for a new replacement, or 560 for a repaired one. Plus labour costs. Hmm, trusty (air-con apart) old banger is barely worth that much. Internet search reveals second hand compressors are available for about 100 euros. Wonder if the (franchised) garage will put it in? Quatorze juillet yesterday and bridging day today, garage closed. Have to wait till next week to find out…

There was the usual fireworks show above Fourvière yesterday to celebrate la fête nationale, an event dampened by the deaths of five French soldiers in Afghanistan but not by the torrential rain, which came and went the previous day. La belle-mère et le beau-fils toddled to the end of the road late last night to watch, while la bienheureuse looked after last feed of the day for la petite coquinette. The latter has learned a new trick recently - blowing raspberries. Which she does frequently and with great gusto. Significance? No idea. Any baby behaviour experts out there, answers on a postcard please.

Bastille day also produced minor fireworks yesterday, during the start of the real Tour de France, the first mountain stage. As expected, French cyclists made valiant attempts to win the stage, accompanied by a worthy Welsh gooner, but in the end the favourites all finished more or less together. Main talking point though was the fact that the others gained a few more seconds on Contador. Never seen before.

Up until yesterday the Tour was characterised by the number of falls. Contador alone has tumbled four times. Seems it really isn't his year, but the most spectacular day of chutes was on Sunday, when several riders were severely injured in one major crash, and a car belonging to France Televisions knocked two of the leading group into a barbed wire fence. Both bravely got back on their bikes and finished the stage, but the incident made lots of noise in France. The car driver was excluded from the tour, and there is talk about requiring all drivers and motorbike riders to be former professional cyclists. Most already are, though not the culprit on Sunday.

Summer sport

The first weekend in July marks the real arrival of summer: the schools are on holiday, the city starts emptying, and the Tour de France starts. And that means the first major bouchons on the A7 autoroute between Lyon and Marseille, the first time there might be a small chance of finding a parking space outside the apartment, and the first bit of previous-winner-of-the-TdF baiting by the French public and press. This year, with drug allegations hanging over him, it's Contador's turn again. Booed when the teams were introduced on Thursday, and yesterday caught up in a major pileup, which lost him over a minute on his main rivals. Suggestions in the French press this morning that he may even give up…

Anyway, with Wimbledon almost over, le Tour provides me with afternoon entertainment to supplement that provided by the little sweetheart. Who has been a real dear most of the week, despite apparently starting to teethe. At least, she chews on everything and anything at the moment.

In the wider world, l'affaire DSK is once more dominating the headlines. A poll in one of the newspapers this morning suggests half the French public would like to see him making a political comeback. Assuming of course he is cleared of all charges, as most people here are expecting to happen. The fact that he did have sex with the woman is apparently neither here nor there…

At the other end of the political spectrum, the current president was 'violently attacked' in Agen, which was almost overlooked when the new Strauss-Kahn revelations broke. The attack turned out to be a man grabbing him by the lapels and pulling, which provoked the amusing sight of Sarko ducking a blow which never came. He sportingly let it known he wouldn't file a complaint afterwards, but his aggressor still copped a six-month suspended prison sentence.

Sunshine cousins

Babies: miraculous and demanding. And when baby's aunt and nearly grown-up cousins come to visit, it leaves even less time for the trivialities of life, such as blogging. That's my excuse anyway. La soeur et les nièces arrived 8 days ago and left yesterday. In between early morning trips to the airport at either end, it was perhaps not the most exciting of trips abroad for a pair of teenagers but that wasn't really the point. The main attraction was obviously their six week-old niece and cousin respectively

Activities of various sorts were organised during the course of seven days otherwise crammed with vying with each other to feed baby, leaving the parents to deal with nappy changing, helping with the shopping, and pram-pushing on the daily afternoon walks:

Monday: a walk in the park for everybody in the warm afternoon sunshine.
Tuesday: the rest of us leave la bienheureuse at home with baby while we climb les Pentes de la Croix Rousse, walk back down through town and then have lunch on les Berges du Rhône, where mother and baby join us in the warm afternoon sunshine.
Wednesday: the breastfeeding pair are once again left behind as I lead an expedition on a two-river cruise in the warm afternoon sunshine: down the Saône past the new Confluence development, up the Rhône, and back again.
Thursday: niece number two kindly gives me the evening off cooking duties and prepares finger-licking fajitas.
Friday: back to the touristing as we hire Velo'vs and cycle down the river to Parc Gerland and back in the warm afternoon sunshine. Quite enough exercise for the week for some.
Saturday: finally time for the visitors to do their duty with a bit of gift shopping for friends and family back home. Meet up with mother and baby for a final walk along the river in the warm afternoon sunshine.

And then there were three. La petite has just spent her first night in a room of her own. And carried on the happy recent habit of sleeping through the night. Long may it continue...

A wee spot of bother

The Bettencourt affair was pushed briefly off the front pages yesterday by the mise en examen of two international footballers for sex with an under-age prostitute. The summer of Les Bleus grows ever stormier.
 
It wasn't long, however, before the Bettencourt story was back, rolling along with no sign of grinding to a halt. Government minister Eric Woerth's wife was questioned recently by the procureur investigating illegal political funding and nepotism, and the labour minister himself is due to follow her into the hot seat, as soon as he's finished presenting the government's plans for reform of pensions and retirement to parliament. A busy man, Mr Woerth. Not surprisingly opposition MPs have been asking how he can devote himself fully to his job while defending himself against the Bettencourt bribery allegations. One of his alleged crimes was to ask Liliane Bettencourt's financial manager to give his wife a job, and the task of defending himself against the claim wasn't made any easier when said financial manager told the procureur that Woerth had asked him to 'advise his wife on her career'. Quelle difference?

On a more successful sporting note (what is politics if not sport?), this year's Tour de France is being heralded as one of the best in recent years. There certainly has been a fair amount of excitement, with plenty of twists and turns, but I suspect the French view is tinted a somewhat pinker shade of rose by the success of French riders. Six stage wins so far, the most in any Tour for nearly fifteen years. To top it all, three of them came in successive Pyrenean stages earlier this week. The final mountain stage is taking place today as I write, the final climb up the mythic Col du Tourmalet in damp cloudy weather (much like Lyon today - a break in the hot spell at last) certain to decide the overall winner of the Tour. Somehow, I think a fourth successive French win is unlikely…

Lyon is the subject of a bit of piss-taking in the national news today. Municipal police in the Parc de la Tête d'Or cautioned a man yesterday for allowing his three-year daughter to urinate in public. Authorities say it was on the pavement in front of a restaurant, with public toilets only a short walk away. He says he was on crutches, his daughter was desperate, he couldn't get her to the loo on time, and it was under a tree nowhere near the restaurant. Ho hum. He faces a fine of as much as 450 euros if he can't convince magistrates…

Hells, bells and bicycles

Escaping the heat of the city, we headed into the hills for the weekend, in search of cool, quiet countryside and a travelling circus named the Tour de France. The Jura was the destination. We drove up on Saturday morning, parked in the sleepy village of Les Bouchoux, and set out on a gentle stroll up the hill to find a vantage point from which to view the cyclists whizz past.

It was certainly cooler, it was certainly quieter (for the moment) as we meandered along a pleasant path, fighting off an attack by killer horse flies along the way. At last we reached the quiet fly-free sanctuary of a picturesque waterfall where we paused for a picnic lunch. Thence it was onwards and upwards until we reached the route of the 7th stage of the Tour de France 2010. Finding a shady spot a couple of kilometres downhill from the Col de la Croix de la Serra, we settled down to await the spectacle. The caravane went past first, vehicle after dressed up vehicle spraying the roadside with giveaway caps, cakes, detergent samples and sundry other publicity items. Then at last came the racers, a strung out echappée followed a few minutes later by the peloton, then a few minutes later came the stragglers.

In twenty short minutes it was all over and we walked back down to the car to find our hotel in La Pesse, a neighbouring village. Looking forward to a cool, quiet night we dined in and collapsed into bed. Coolish it may have been, at least with the skylight window in our room open to the night air, quiet it was for a while. Then the clock on the village church struck ten. With the window open and the bell tower fewer than 30 metres away it was ten rather loud bongs.
"I think most church bells only ring up till about ten or eleven in the evening," said la bienheureuse, hopefully.
The clock duly announced eleven pm, then midnight..
Then one, then two, and so on through all through the night, with a few random chimes thrown in for good measure at one o'clock, which temporarily lulled me into the blissful false belief that I might have actually fallen asleep for more than an hour.

Lesson learned. Never book a hotel without checking the whereabouts in relation to the village church. In the morning, dark rims and bags under our eyes, we set off for home, stopping off en route for another pleasant walk, up and down the Crêt au Merle, followed by a short stroll to take in the stunning view at the Belvédère du Cuchet. From there it was downhill all the way, back to the Lyon heat...

Tears and greasy palms

The Sarkozy regime continues to battle allegations of illegal political 'donations'. Yesterday government spokesmen claimed Monsieur le Président had been cleared when the former Bettencourt accountant backtracked on earlier claims that Sarko was among the right wing politicians who regularly received cash from the major shareholder in L'Oréal. However, closer examination of the 'retraction' reveals that she says she told the media site, which broke the story, that Sarkozy only 'may' have been among the beneficiaries of the Bettencourt largesse, rather than claiming she definitely saw him, as was originally reported. She also holds to the claim that the Bettencourt financial manager told her he was giving 150000 euros in cash to the Sarkozy presidential campaign in 2007. A bank official at the branch 50000 euros were allegedly withdrawn from has now categorically denied speaking to the accountant, who claims she told her the money was to fund the Sarko campaign. Is that the sound of UMP thumbscrews being applied?

Elsewhere in the media, the left-wing magazine Marianne claims to have seen the famous account books kept by the accountant, and reports that they show cash withdrawals totalling 380000 euros in the first 3 months of 2007 (compared to about 60000 in the equivalent period the previous year, when there was no presidential election campaign). The Bettencourt lawyers say the cash withdrawals were all to cover the personal expenses of André Bettencourt, but Marianne says that only about 180000 worth of spending is accounted for in the books. All rather surreal. How can anyone need sixty thousand euros worth of petty cash per month, let alone a hundred grand plus, and haven't billionaires heard of credit cards?

Meanwhile the Tour de France reaches the end of a rather eventful first week, characterised by sundry crashes, hot weather, government politicians making a point of comparing the approachability of the cyclists comported to French international footballers, and a lot of fuss surrounding the poor form and behaviour of the British 'bad boy' of sprinting. When Mark Cavendish finally won his first stage of this year's tour yesterday, he promptly burst into floods of tears in the middle of a live interview on French television, and it took a full minute before he managed to recover sufficient composure to continue. Which appears to have rather endeared him to the French media, who love a good bit of high sporting emotion.

And in local news, it's hot in Lyon today. Very hot. And tomorrow, and…