Woe is me in that there I was writing about the ability of those with the equipment to interfere with electronic communications whenever and wherever and the shortcoming of Microsoft and other software when it becomes intermeshed in a layered way, especially Vista with its millions of codes and 50 levels of layering and I cannot get an internet connection in any shape or form except that my laptop is still showing a wireless link with my house circuit and the wireless modem is working correctly. Well I did say my intention was to focus on electronic issues as well as other about the house practical matters. I did spend another half an hour or so clearing and replacing two more hanging baskets with bulbs. This involved sorting through the earth which was not only wet but icy cold.
After writing and thinking and trying to wind down playing games against the computer I was not just in the mood to sleep so stayed up until 6 am and then slept until eleven so it was nearly time for the Politics show and Prime Minister's Question time. Another low level Conservative faced Andrew Neil who asked all the question I posed yesterday and more and my suspicion that this is just the tip of the iceberg came with the news that the New Statesman has been exploring all £50000 upward donations given to the Tory Party and that overseas nationals in this era of the Global economy in which individuals who are not resident in the UK or entitled to vote even if they are can indirectly provide British political parties with funds. Their UK based companies can make political donations of their boards discuss the matter and do so according to the agreed procedure. Thus it is the Board and the company that is making the donation and not the controlling individual financier. There is technically nothing illegal about this except rather like tax evasion it defeats the intentions of the law, of Parliament and the likes of you and me. However if the Tories have thought of this, so has Labour so if so then neither Party will want to go down this route who exposes the gulf between the appearance of what Parties say to win and maintain public support and how they function in practice.
However the reality is that we all cannot be involved in political matters especially all at the same time, except for General and Local Elections otherwise it would be impossible to agree on anything and for governments to take decisions which are required on a day to day basis. It is also true that there are no policies or ideologies which can legislate for every eventuality and therefore there will always be gainers and losers and outcomes which it is difficult to predict. This is difficult at a local level hence the problems which local authorities face when no political party has overall control and they cannot agree for fear of giving political advantage to each other and the offices have to find compromises which usually results in a lack of leadership, decision taking and the system slows down into a half, although sometimes the offices take over if they are clever enough to ensure the politicians feel they are overall charge; mind you this can also happen when there is one dominant party. One of the reason I lasted so long is that I worked for one of the few authorities, because is was small, where the politicians did run things and officers knew their place. Moreover the politicians were response to public needs and opinions 14/7 which created problems for officers, especially when the local view clashed with the money bags and power men down in London, although we were successful most of the time in getting our share which was used in what local politicians in touch with the local population was needed as well as wanted. Jobs creation was to the fore although it was difficult under the Tories because they were all about cutting back on local authority and public service jobs in general . Fortunately Cameron lots have faced the reality of the British economic situation in the world and realise we depend on public service provision for our economic survival and both parties have swallowed their natural opposition to this, for very different reasons by moving from directly provided public service jobs to work being put to private business without understanding that this results in greater costs for less work and for less control over quality and dealing with complaints. The Tory solution which was then taken up by Labour was to essentially grow the economy through money, loans and investments and trading in currencies,, commodities and stocks and shares as our productive capacity, where in the manufacturing of goods or producing food moved from self sufficiency and exporting to the world to dependency on the rest of the world, including on countries whose political systems and ways of life were not only different but hostile to our own, as they were able to start the process of serious industrialization and manufacturing and do so at significantly less costs than ourselves by having the kind of slave labour we UK and USA used 100 years ago. Our problem was twofold through improvements in living standards and the development of education from basic through to higher, what people wanted and were able to do significantly changed, but also what they were not. During the great manufacturing boom it should not be forgotten that the use of domestic help spread from the aristocratic and upper middle classes to the widening middle classes and that it was only after world war two that the decline in domestic service commenced and then shifted from working in private homes to working in institutions and establishments as people were warehoused rather than cared for by wives and mothers who themselves wanted heir rightful share in the new world, and then latterly because the post war baby boom moved through to into old age and with better diets and health care into longer and longer lives so that we now feel cheated if we only survive until three score years and ten. This also had major implications for government expenditure, and for pensions both public and private. I was open thing to have a situation where people paid in throughout their working lives and then drew out for a limited period of say five to ten years but what of the majority continued to drew out for ten and then twenty more years?
The approach of David Cameron at Prime Ministers Question Time was come out on the offensive, aggressive and as political nasty as he could be on the economy attacking the Prime Minister for saying he had banished the boom and bust tactics of the Tory Party years of power. With Labour Members clearly having other matters on their minds and the House with an electric supercharged atmosphere and George Osborn looking serious and badly shaken instead of his usual grin which is sometimes more of smirk, the Prime Minister confidently stuck to the issues raised by David Cameron, in the sense that he pressed home the previous statements and approaches of the opposition and its shadow Chancellor and accused his political opponents of attempted opportunism, changing positions and having no effective policies to tackle the situation, hence not being able to oppose government measures on the Banks and the financial mechanisms. A serious man for serious times and not prepared to directly get into the major political and media event of the past couple of days, and since the return of Mandelson to the front bench of the House of Lords.
Cameron knows and this is where he is being politically wicked that of course the British economy has increasingly become prey to world wide changes because of our switch from production to services, especially financial services. We had not alternative in this respect. The hypocrisy of their present position is to suggest that the government was wrong to direct a fair percentage of the output and economic growth back into public services for the benefit of the middle classes and the poor and did not store this up to ensure the very rich continued to prosper if times became bad. We must keep out villa in the Med and our yacht going must we not as well as our penthouses in New York, London, Rome or Paris? The rich aspect about the Cameron position at the moment is that recognising this was how to manage the economy and keep the population at large content with what the government was doing overall, especially at election times, the Tories had to adopt the approach which including devoting a fair chunk of the output and growth into public and well as private services.
Back to Prime Ministers Questions for as the House began to show its disappointment as the issue was not being raised of the Shadow Finance Minister staying as guest at a holiday villa and a billionaire's boat and discussing how he might be persuaded to come on board as Tory funder through his UK based company, despite the information that the US State department won't let him into the USA, up stepped Denis Skinner who has made his reputation by giving Ministers of all parties a roasting at any and every opportunity, called by the Speaker who did not have need to have done so, and the asked the Prime Minister for an assurance that whatever the state of the economy he would never go off on a yacht with a Russian soliciting financial help.
Mr Brown's response was equally revealing that it was a serious matter to be investigated by the proper authorities. This was clever because he showed the present financial and economic situation was to serious a one to engage in inter political party knock about and that anyway the matter was of a sufficiently serious nature to require official investigation and if so the less now said the better, even if in fact this was unlikely to happen. I got the message as did the Politics show, as did My Osborne and Mr Cameron. However as he day progressed there was a closing of ranks and Rothschild did not issue any further briefing and there was much losing of ranks. The way Cameron enjoyed the Denis Skinner intervention suggested that he though that is this was the best Labour could produce then there was nothing to fear. No one has yet complained to the Electoral Commission and they will not investigate without some substantiation of allegations. Michael Heseltine did a dismissive appearance on the Paxman show but Norman Tebbit echoes what many are saying in private that what he did was unwise and demonstrated his inexperience and poor judgement. He has become damaged goods and the Commons will not let him forget. How soon Cameron acts will be depend on the opinion polls. There will be further discussion tomorrow night on Question Time and the Late Night Politics Show and then over the weekend the Sunday Papers will have their go. For the moment there is a bold aggressive front, you know attack is the best form of defence.
It was time for a cuppa soup, a slice of bread and a pasta pot, for sorting where the paperwork for this and that and which I have been meaning to do and not got round to for months but keeping one eye of 24/7 news from time. It was ten minutes past 2 and my work day was about to begin. First there were a few more games over lunch, The great achievement of the past week has been to concentrate on Freecell neglected since the time several years back in the late 1990's when systematically completed 10000 games numbered 1 to 10000, averaging a success rate of around 75%. Now I am more interested in success rate although raising the level from the initial 94% has been a challenge taking another 100 games to get to 96% with a further loss and then a further 100 before reaching the magic 98% last night and then for reason I can now remember I closed a game before it finished thus registering a loss returning tot eh 97% rate and I assume having to play another 47 or so games before getting back to the same percentage level. For Hearts where the margin early on was awful the rate remains at 44% 674 of 1508 games and at Spider Solitaire at 92% and where the current target is to reach a thousand games from 967 at present and 893 wins. I have left chess for a while having reached streaks of 101 at levels one and three, left level two having reached a run of 96 and found I needed to concentrate on level four more than I am prepared to do so at the present time having lost two if not three game and drawn 2 or may be even 1 out of the first 45 with a 91% of success.
After watching the 3pm news I tried to connect again and let the computer resolve the problem and bingo I am on line again. Very puzzling. I was able to send in comments to the BBC news programme. I did a Google check yesterday on my birth name and that following the discovery of who my father had been, One search takes to Myspace and the other has an interesting section of reference to film reviews, local media comments on Newcastle United and the publication of one of the coast photos that of Marsden Rock. It is interesting how many of the photos used are similar to those now available on MySpace photo albums. There are also reference to the latter days of my managerial career although some that appeared in overseas media are longer found in the first pages which are many overall given that there at least a dozen with the same Christian and Surname combined.
I then went to MySpace and found that Fyodor Dostoevsky has become a friend. I have a two volume edition of the Brothers Karamazov and I also the enjoyed the Hollywood film; The Idiot; Poor Folk and the Gambler; Crime and Punishment and at last two film versions; The Possessed- a two volume edition; Letters from the Underworld and The House of the Dead.
It was a good new Friend Day because the amazing
Carletto di San Giovanni has agreed to be on my list and goes into top friends so that casual visitors and old friends can enjoy his extraordinary number of sites about films, film makers and actors. I also suspect that the ladies of all ages will note his good looks and heterosexuality, particularly those who also live in either New York or Rome two of the great cities of the modern world along with Paris and London
This evening I returned to Paris, at least through Griff Rhys Jones in his series of twenty hour visits to Great cities. You can see a lot of a city in one day and in my first week there I was exhausted on the third of fourth day. I have driven into Paris from a ferry crossing to get on an overnight train going south twice, I have driven and stayed in a motel on the south side before going south, and stayed for a few nights at the beginning or end of a holiday going on to the south of the country or into North Spain.
Once I camped in a Fiat car outside a campsite making use of the shower, toilets and food facilities.
On the programme this evening Rhys showed the seven and half kilometres from the Louvre along the Champ Elyse to the Arc de Triomphe where I have watched the evening ceremony remembering the fallen. On the first visit and again when camping near Le Tourquet Paris Plage, a visit was made to the Centre National d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou once uniquely designed massive building of glass with external moving stairways and visible service structure work. However brief a visit I always came back with Pariscope, une semaine de paris. This visit coincided with La romance de Charles et Diana sur A2 the front page to the Tele Journal du 3 au 9 Aout prior to the wedding which was watched on a TV
Rhys did show the river and that most impressive Cathedral pf Notre Dame and I did travel the river on the bateaux mouches cruise then costing 10 francs. The hotel was called San Francisco 32 rue Henri Monnier. Rhys Jones also popped into Momartre but bypassed the Basilique du Sacre-Couer to look at the vineyard which produced 2000 half bottles of red whereas I visited the Cathedral Dome.
His odd visit was the underground catacombs where the bones of some six million medieval Parisian's are stored in some sort of order. But we both went to one the cemeteries on the outskirts although I also visited the second. The most well known is Pere Lachaise where in its 106 acres are the remains of Moliere, Chopin, Colette, Modigliani, Proust, Rossini, Bizet, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan and Oscar Wilde but the most visited is the grave of Edith Piaf. One of the first visits was to the cemetery of Momartre where lays Degas, Dumas, Zola, Offenbach Stendhal, Delibes and Berlioz.
Jones also served at late a night restaurant when the last orders can be made until 1 am and you can sit over tour coffee until you want to leave.. The prices are just as astronomical in a city where only the rich live in the inside the city, and he poor were pushed out to build the boulevards and when a coffee on les Champ Elyse makes the eyes water, I was initially directed to an inexpensive self service restaurant called Panorama, 20 rue Gerando Paris 9 taking the Metro to Anvers Soups bread simple rice and bean dishes, fruit, Pepsi and coffee.
However I then discovered another similar place where the range was better and the location convenient via the metro but the mainstay became alfresco meals of fresh bread, pates and salami, olives and prawns, fresh fruit, crème caramels wine and chocolates was eaten on the hotel bed on some bench. One needs to take a spread knife, tin and bottle opener, picnic plate and a tea towel and paper serviettes. Talking of bread Griff got up early to bake bread, 70% of which is hand made in France compared to 3% in the UK. Going for bread is something of a religion in France and has to be done once or twice a day as there are no preservatives and therefore does last.
Griff missed out on the free and traditional night life. On the first free evening I went to a free concert at the Eglise of St Thomas d'Aquin, in rue du bac where the Orchestre des Jeunes de Belgique performed Mozart's Horn Concerto and a Mozart Symphony, Schumann and Berlioz. Supper at midnight was bread and jam and cake! There was also another free concert at the grande auditorium of Radio France with the Nouvel Orchestre Philarmonique although this took place during the day, recorded for subsequent radio broadcast.. I also bought tickets for both the Casino de Paris and the Follies Bergere for 60 and 75 Frances for the show from the balcony, avoiding the 250 francs for the illuminations brief visit to Parisian cabaret before one show at the Moulin Rouge or Lido dancing and champagne packed into a five hour package returning to hotels at 2am.
In addition to the usual sightseeing up the Eifel Tower,(been twice), perhaps the most visited attraction in the world, to the Tuilleries, the Opera House, the Pantheon, the Sorbonne and the rest one often missed treat, is the Galeries Lafayette and Printemps stores with their dome roof skylights. I remember recommending this to a colleague who came back delighted having followed my suggestion. It may have even been a honeymoon visit. However one of most memorable moments was on another visit was when I went to see the film Reds, on a hot Summer afternoon.
Last night I also watched a potentially disturbing and questionable serious film about under age sexuality which won awards at Berlin and Cannes. It is a believable and protracted depiction of how an Italian law student seduces a reluctant teenager using a ring stolen from his mother as a token of engagement and from this viewpoint it is good cautionary tale for teenage girls and their mothers. It is also good portrayal of the relationship between two sisters one who is slim and pretty and the other fat and pretty and how their discussion and enquiries about sex leads one into trouble. However some of the scenes are gratuitous and the ending is shocking horror where mother and eldest daughter are murdered on camera by a crazed stranger and the younger raped off screen but claims it was consensual, as the three return to Paris early from the family holiday to join the husband who has left even earlier for business reason following mother's discovery of the activities of the elder daughter.. James Berardinelli in his review is right when he says that what must be described as hard core sex scenes are not titillating or likely to attract the wrong audience although I am nor sure what is the right audience? The reviewer argues that the ending while the blackest of ironies may be unnecessarily sensationalistic to which I must add, may be? I agree that it is an honest and unvarnished look at the hard side of being a teenage girl but he could have also stressed that it shows the ruthless exploitation of young men whose parents have failed to instil the basic of how treat the opposite sex. Fredericke and Catherine Breillat, whose reviews for Spirituality and Practice usually have a liberal and tolerant quality are uncompromising in their conclusion that while the film does draw out the tensions and rivalries between the sisters, the director does go well over the line, especially with his shocking and gratuitously violent finale. I was pleased to learn that while it was shown at the 39th New York Film Festival it did not win any prize.
After writing and thinking and trying to wind down playing games against the computer I was not just in the mood to sleep so stayed up until 6 am and then slept until eleven so it was nearly time for the Politics show and Prime Minister's Question time. Another low level Conservative faced Andrew Neil who asked all the question I posed yesterday and more and my suspicion that this is just the tip of the iceberg came with the news that the New Statesman has been exploring all £50000 upward donations given to the Tory Party and that overseas nationals in this era of the Global economy in which individuals who are not resident in the UK or entitled to vote even if they are can indirectly provide British political parties with funds. Their UK based companies can make political donations of their boards discuss the matter and do so according to the agreed procedure. Thus it is the Board and the company that is making the donation and not the controlling individual financier. There is technically nothing illegal about this except rather like tax evasion it defeats the intentions of the law, of Parliament and the likes of you and me. However if the Tories have thought of this, so has Labour so if so then neither Party will want to go down this route who exposes the gulf between the appearance of what Parties say to win and maintain public support and how they function in practice.
However the reality is that we all cannot be involved in political matters especially all at the same time, except for General and Local Elections otherwise it would be impossible to agree on anything and for governments to take decisions which are required on a day to day basis. It is also true that there are no policies or ideologies which can legislate for every eventuality and therefore there will always be gainers and losers and outcomes which it is difficult to predict. This is difficult at a local level hence the problems which local authorities face when no political party has overall control and they cannot agree for fear of giving political advantage to each other and the offices have to find compromises which usually results in a lack of leadership, decision taking and the system slows down into a half, although sometimes the offices take over if they are clever enough to ensure the politicians feel they are overall charge; mind you this can also happen when there is one dominant party. One of the reason I lasted so long is that I worked for one of the few authorities, because is was small, where the politicians did run things and officers knew their place. Moreover the politicians were response to public needs and opinions 14/7 which created problems for officers, especially when the local view clashed with the money bags and power men down in London, although we were successful most of the time in getting our share which was used in what local politicians in touch with the local population was needed as well as wanted. Jobs creation was to the fore although it was difficult under the Tories because they were all about cutting back on local authority and public service jobs in general . Fortunately Cameron lots have faced the reality of the British economic situation in the world and realise we depend on public service provision for our economic survival and both parties have swallowed their natural opposition to this, for very different reasons by moving from directly provided public service jobs to work being put to private business without understanding that this results in greater costs for less work and for less control over quality and dealing with complaints. The Tory solution which was then taken up by Labour was to essentially grow the economy through money, loans and investments and trading in currencies,, commodities and stocks and shares as our productive capacity, where in the manufacturing of goods or producing food moved from self sufficiency and exporting to the world to dependency on the rest of the world, including on countries whose political systems and ways of life were not only different but hostile to our own, as they were able to start the process of serious industrialization and manufacturing and do so at significantly less costs than ourselves by having the kind of slave labour we UK and USA used 100 years ago. Our problem was twofold through improvements in living standards and the development of education from basic through to higher, what people wanted and were able to do significantly changed, but also what they were not. During the great manufacturing boom it should not be forgotten that the use of domestic help spread from the aristocratic and upper middle classes to the widening middle classes and that it was only after world war two that the decline in domestic service commenced and then shifted from working in private homes to working in institutions and establishments as people were warehoused rather than cared for by wives and mothers who themselves wanted heir rightful share in the new world, and then latterly because the post war baby boom moved through to into old age and with better diets and health care into longer and longer lives so that we now feel cheated if we only survive until three score years and ten. This also had major implications for government expenditure, and for pensions both public and private. I was open thing to have a situation where people paid in throughout their working lives and then drew out for a limited period of say five to ten years but what of the majority continued to drew out for ten and then twenty more years?
The approach of David Cameron at Prime Ministers Question Time was come out on the offensive, aggressive and as political nasty as he could be on the economy attacking the Prime Minister for saying he had banished the boom and bust tactics of the Tory Party years of power. With Labour Members clearly having other matters on their minds and the House with an electric supercharged atmosphere and George Osborn looking serious and badly shaken instead of his usual grin which is sometimes more of smirk, the Prime Minister confidently stuck to the issues raised by David Cameron, in the sense that he pressed home the previous statements and approaches of the opposition and its shadow Chancellor and accused his political opponents of attempted opportunism, changing positions and having no effective policies to tackle the situation, hence not being able to oppose government measures on the Banks and the financial mechanisms. A serious man for serious times and not prepared to directly get into the major political and media event of the past couple of days, and since the return of Mandelson to the front bench of the House of Lords.
Cameron knows and this is where he is being politically wicked that of course the British economy has increasingly become prey to world wide changes because of our switch from production to services, especially financial services. We had not alternative in this respect. The hypocrisy of their present position is to suggest that the government was wrong to direct a fair percentage of the output and economic growth back into public services for the benefit of the middle classes and the poor and did not store this up to ensure the very rich continued to prosper if times became bad. We must keep out villa in the Med and our yacht going must we not as well as our penthouses in New York, London, Rome or Paris? The rich aspect about the Cameron position at the moment is that recognising this was how to manage the economy and keep the population at large content with what the government was doing overall, especially at election times, the Tories had to adopt the approach which including devoting a fair chunk of the output and growth into public and well as private services.
Back to Prime Ministers Questions for as the House began to show its disappointment as the issue was not being raised of the Shadow Finance Minister staying as guest at a holiday villa and a billionaire's boat and discussing how he might be persuaded to come on board as Tory funder through his UK based company, despite the information that the US State department won't let him into the USA, up stepped Denis Skinner who has made his reputation by giving Ministers of all parties a roasting at any and every opportunity, called by the Speaker who did not have need to have done so, and the asked the Prime Minister for an assurance that whatever the state of the economy he would never go off on a yacht with a Russian soliciting financial help.
Mr Brown's response was equally revealing that it was a serious matter to be investigated by the proper authorities. This was clever because he showed the present financial and economic situation was to serious a one to engage in inter political party knock about and that anyway the matter was of a sufficiently serious nature to require official investigation and if so the less now said the better, even if in fact this was unlikely to happen. I got the message as did the Politics show, as did My Osborne and Mr Cameron. However as he day progressed there was a closing of ranks and Rothschild did not issue any further briefing and there was much losing of ranks. The way Cameron enjoyed the Denis Skinner intervention suggested that he though that is this was the best Labour could produce then there was nothing to fear. No one has yet complained to the Electoral Commission and they will not investigate without some substantiation of allegations. Michael Heseltine did a dismissive appearance on the Paxman show but Norman Tebbit echoes what many are saying in private that what he did was unwise and demonstrated his inexperience and poor judgement. He has become damaged goods and the Commons will not let him forget. How soon Cameron acts will be depend on the opinion polls. There will be further discussion tomorrow night on Question Time and the Late Night Politics Show and then over the weekend the Sunday Papers will have their go. For the moment there is a bold aggressive front, you know attack is the best form of defence.
It was time for a cuppa soup, a slice of bread and a pasta pot, for sorting where the paperwork for this and that and which I have been meaning to do and not got round to for months but keeping one eye of 24/7 news from time. It was ten minutes past 2 and my work day was about to begin. First there were a few more games over lunch, The great achievement of the past week has been to concentrate on Freecell neglected since the time several years back in the late 1990's when systematically completed 10000 games numbered 1 to 10000, averaging a success rate of around 75%. Now I am more interested in success rate although raising the level from the initial 94% has been a challenge taking another 100 games to get to 96% with a further loss and then a further 100 before reaching the magic 98% last night and then for reason I can now remember I closed a game before it finished thus registering a loss returning tot eh 97% rate and I assume having to play another 47 or so games before getting back to the same percentage level. For Hearts where the margin early on was awful the rate remains at 44% 674 of 1508 games and at Spider Solitaire at 92% and where the current target is to reach a thousand games from 967 at present and 893 wins. I have left chess for a while having reached streaks of 101 at levels one and three, left level two having reached a run of 96 and found I needed to concentrate on level four more than I am prepared to do so at the present time having lost two if not three game and drawn 2 or may be even 1 out of the first 45 with a 91% of success.
After watching the 3pm news I tried to connect again and let the computer resolve the problem and bingo I am on line again. Very puzzling. I was able to send in comments to the BBC news programme. I did a Google check yesterday on my birth name and that following the discovery of who my father had been, One search takes to Myspace and the other has an interesting section of reference to film reviews, local media comments on Newcastle United and the publication of one of the coast photos that of Marsden Rock. It is interesting how many of the photos used are similar to those now available on MySpace photo albums. There are also reference to the latter days of my managerial career although some that appeared in overseas media are longer found in the first pages which are many overall given that there at least a dozen with the same Christian and Surname combined.
I then went to MySpace and found that Fyodor Dostoevsky has become a friend. I have a two volume edition of the Brothers Karamazov and I also the enjoyed the Hollywood film; The Idiot; Poor Folk and the Gambler; Crime and Punishment and at last two film versions; The Possessed- a two volume edition; Letters from the Underworld and The House of the Dead.
It was a good new Friend Day because the amazing
Carletto di San Giovanni has agreed to be on my list and goes into top friends so that casual visitors and old friends can enjoy his extraordinary number of sites about films, film makers and actors. I also suspect that the ladies of all ages will note his good looks and heterosexuality, particularly those who also live in either New York or Rome two of the great cities of the modern world along with Paris and London
This evening I returned to Paris, at least through Griff Rhys Jones in his series of twenty hour visits to Great cities. You can see a lot of a city in one day and in my first week there I was exhausted on the third of fourth day. I have driven into Paris from a ferry crossing to get on an overnight train going south twice, I have driven and stayed in a motel on the south side before going south, and stayed for a few nights at the beginning or end of a holiday going on to the south of the country or into North Spain.
Once I camped in a Fiat car outside a campsite making use of the shower, toilets and food facilities.
On the programme this evening Rhys showed the seven and half kilometres from the Louvre along the Champ Elyse to the Arc de Triomphe where I have watched the evening ceremony remembering the fallen. On the first visit and again when camping near Le Tourquet Paris Plage, a visit was made to the Centre National d'art et de culture Georges Pompidou once uniquely designed massive building of glass with external moving stairways and visible service structure work. However brief a visit I always came back with Pariscope, une semaine de paris. This visit coincided with La romance de Charles et Diana sur A2 the front page to the Tele Journal du 3 au 9 Aout prior to the wedding which was watched on a TV
Rhys did show the river and that most impressive Cathedral pf Notre Dame and I did travel the river on the bateaux mouches cruise then costing 10 francs. The hotel was called San Francisco 32 rue Henri Monnier. Rhys Jones also popped into Momartre but bypassed the Basilique du Sacre-Couer to look at the vineyard which produced 2000 half bottles of red whereas I visited the Cathedral Dome.
His odd visit was the underground catacombs where the bones of some six million medieval Parisian's are stored in some sort of order. But we both went to one the cemeteries on the outskirts although I also visited the second. The most well known is Pere Lachaise where in its 106 acres are the remains of Moliere, Chopin, Colette, Modigliani, Proust, Rossini, Bizet, Sarah Bernhardt, Isadora Duncan and Oscar Wilde but the most visited is the grave of Edith Piaf. One of the first visits was to the cemetery of Momartre where lays Degas, Dumas, Zola, Offenbach Stendhal, Delibes and Berlioz.
Jones also served at late a night restaurant when the last orders can be made until 1 am and you can sit over tour coffee until you want to leave.. The prices are just as astronomical in a city where only the rich live in the inside the city, and he poor were pushed out to build the boulevards and when a coffee on les Champ Elyse makes the eyes water, I was initially directed to an inexpensive self service restaurant called Panorama, 20 rue Gerando Paris 9 taking the Metro to Anvers Soups bread simple rice and bean dishes, fruit, Pepsi and coffee.
However I then discovered another similar place where the range was better and the location convenient via the metro but the mainstay became alfresco meals of fresh bread, pates and salami, olives and prawns, fresh fruit, crème caramels wine and chocolates was eaten on the hotel bed on some bench. One needs to take a spread knife, tin and bottle opener, picnic plate and a tea towel and paper serviettes. Talking of bread Griff got up early to bake bread, 70% of which is hand made in France compared to 3% in the UK. Going for bread is something of a religion in France and has to be done once or twice a day as there are no preservatives and therefore does last.
Griff missed out on the free and traditional night life. On the first free evening I went to a free concert at the Eglise of St Thomas d'Aquin, in rue du bac where the Orchestre des Jeunes de Belgique performed Mozart's Horn Concerto and a Mozart Symphony, Schumann and Berlioz. Supper at midnight was bread and jam and cake! There was also another free concert at the grande auditorium of Radio France with the Nouvel Orchestre Philarmonique although this took place during the day, recorded for subsequent radio broadcast.. I also bought tickets for both the Casino de Paris and the Follies Bergere for 60 and 75 Frances for the show from the balcony, avoiding the 250 francs for the illuminations brief visit to Parisian cabaret before one show at the Moulin Rouge or Lido dancing and champagne packed into a five hour package returning to hotels at 2am.
In addition to the usual sightseeing up the Eifel Tower,(been twice), perhaps the most visited attraction in the world, to the Tuilleries, the Opera House, the Pantheon, the Sorbonne and the rest one often missed treat, is the Galeries Lafayette and Printemps stores with their dome roof skylights. I remember recommending this to a colleague who came back delighted having followed my suggestion. It may have even been a honeymoon visit. However one of most memorable moments was on another visit was when I went to see the film Reds, on a hot Summer afternoon.
Last night I also watched a potentially disturbing and questionable serious film about under age sexuality which won awards at Berlin and Cannes. It is a believable and protracted depiction of how an Italian law student seduces a reluctant teenager using a ring stolen from his mother as a token of engagement and from this viewpoint it is good cautionary tale for teenage girls and their mothers. It is also good portrayal of the relationship between two sisters one who is slim and pretty and the other fat and pretty and how their discussion and enquiries about sex leads one into trouble. However some of the scenes are gratuitous and the ending is shocking horror where mother and eldest daughter are murdered on camera by a crazed stranger and the younger raped off screen but claims it was consensual, as the three return to Paris early from the family holiday to join the husband who has left even earlier for business reason following mother's discovery of the activities of the elder daughter.. James Berardinelli in his review is right when he says that what must be described as hard core sex scenes are not titillating or likely to attract the wrong audience although I am nor sure what is the right audience? The reviewer argues that the ending while the blackest of ironies may be unnecessarily sensationalistic to which I must add, may be? I agree that it is an honest and unvarnished look at the hard side of being a teenage girl but he could have also stressed that it shows the ruthless exploitation of young men whose parents have failed to instil the basic of how treat the opposite sex. Fredericke and Catherine Breillat, whose reviews for Spirituality and Practice usually have a liberal and tolerant quality are uncompromising in their conclusion that while the film does draw out the tensions and rivalries between the sisters, the director does go well over the line, especially with his shocking and gratuitously violent finale. I was pleased to learn that while it was shown at the 39th New York Film Festival it did not win any prize.
