Fœtal attraction

There’s a story in today’s paper about a woman who is about to become the UK record-holder in surrogate motherhood. She planned to get out of the womb-rental business after number seven, but has now decided she doesn’t like not being pregnant, so is going for the record. Phil Wallis, chairman of something called the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Committee said, “We have to make sure women are not psychologically damaged as a result of surrogacy.” The mass-producing Mum, who doesn’t want children but charges £12,000 a pop to hatch them, said, “I wish I was ten years younger so I could fit more in”. Looks like it’s too late, Mr Wallis.

It’s crisis time in Jones Towers. No, I’m not blogging again, honest. I just had to publish this while it’s still true: after their win at Wigan yesterday, Everton are now FOURTH. More importantly, that puts them above Liverpool! You’ll appreciate the urgency when I tell you that Liverpool play Aston Villa in 2½ hours’ time. So what’s the crisis, you ask.
The crisis is that the DG supports Liverpool.

Hello, goodbye

It hasn’t been a good year so far: Everton were put out of the FA Cup yesterday – by a team 62 places below them.

The more perceptive will have noticed – but don’t feel inadequate if you didn't - that the word ‘photograph’ in the previous post is the 100,000th word of this blog. It’s a milestone of sorts: it also marks the second anniversary of the start of the blog – on Twelfth Night, 2006. More significantly, it’s about the length of the average novel, which means that if I had decided two years ago to put the same amount of effort into a book, it would be ready to go right now – whereas in fact I don't have a book, and have made negative progress on the one I was working on. By “negative” I don’t mean zilch; I mean worse than zilch: I’m further away than I was two years ago because a lot of the earlier research has gone stale and will have to be done again.
The review of my 2006 resolutions to see how actual performance compared hasn't exactly been cheering either. I make it 100%: 100% failure. Failed to improve on score rate against the formidable Moll at Scrabble; didn’t get weight down (though it isn’t up either); but the most abject failure of all was Resolution One: to produce 2,500 usable, sellable words a week. I didn’t reach that many in the year. Hence the goodbye – but I hope it’s au revoir as I’ve made the same resolution for 2008, and if I make it, I'll be back.
So this New Year’s Resolution One is to have another try at giving up the blog. If, after 100,653 words, 6,537 visits and 10,096 page views, I had had anything blogworthy to say and still haven’t said it, then it isn’t worth saying. So that’s it – cold turkey. Finish. Regrets? (I’ve had a few, but then again too few to mention.) Yes, lots of them – it has been great fun and I’ve met some wonderful people. Do I hear you say, "dilettante bloggers, they never last - but he'll be back?" I hope you're right. Till then have a great year.

No such thing as a free lunch

It’s nearly time to say farewell to Wiltshire. It’s such a beautiful part of the country that I feel like a traitor, but let’s face it, we’re fair weather Wiltshirians and in just two weeks we’re out of here. As a young airman I spent the coldest winter of the last century just a few miles from here more than six decades ago - the camp’s entire plumbing system (with the fortunate exception of the cookhouse) froze solid and no-one washed for 10 days. It’s no place to spend a winter.
But, as you may recall from previous posts, we’ll have many happy memories of this county. We’ll miss the cottage, the cosy fireplace, country walks, the changing seasons, the pubs, the wild life, and above all the quiet – despite the occasional crunch of heavy artillery practising on Salisbury Plain.
Not all the memories will be happy ones: the Wiltshire Police, for example. We set off one day in late summer to meet with former father-in-law and dear step-mother-in-law in Winchester. We had a very pleasant lunch in that fascinating city with its beautiful cathedral – inspiration to Keats and Austen. (Did you know that Winchester is the home of England’s first library, cricket club, and lawn mower racing circuit? Neither did I.)
We had a very pleasant day before going our separate ways – they back to Spain and we to France. It was only marred about two weeks later when in the mail came a photo of the back of my car, with some numbers on the bottom saying I was accused of speeding in a 30mph zone, and if convicted could be fined up to £1000 or go to jail.
However, if I cared to give them £60 and take three points on my license, they would forget the whole thing.
I explained politely that, although I may have been distracted because I was on a strange, badly-signposted country road trying to find a cross-country route to Winchester, I would be surprised to have missed a speed limit sign,(adding the usual stuff: 50 years accident-free driving blah blah blah). They informed me that a speed limit sign is not necessary if the street lamp poles are closer together than 200 metres!
I resisted the temptation to point out that I don't normally carry a 200-metre tape measure, or to make the cheque payable to Winchester Police Revenue Enhancement Scam, but it probably wouldn’t have made a difference – they’re so awash with money that they haven’t bothered to present it yet. The most galling part of it all is that I’ve never seen Wiltshire Police doing anything that police are supposed to do. They’re probably too busy buying more cameras.
I'm sure we'll be back in the spring – but perhaps not in a Jag.

I've been quiet about Everton lately for fear of putting a jinx on them, but this headline from last week's Sunday Times says it all: ten games without defeat. It's out of date. It's now eleven.

5.15pm West Ham 0, Everton 2. Better make that twelve.

Remember Pearl Bailey

It's the day on which, on 1787, Delaware became the first state to ratify the Constitution. Did it call itself the United State?
The date also reminds me of a story Ronnie Scott used to tell about a Japanese racist who, every 7th December, attacked Pearl Bailey. Jazzmen can be funny. Humphrey Lyttelton, at 86, still chairs one of the funniest quiz shows on radio. Benny Green, who used often to play alongside Ronnie, said he knew an Indian cloakroom attendant named Mahatma Coat. Benny used to do a Sunday afternoon record programme, in which he was known to talk about my late brother Walter. That’s fame for you - I had a brother who was mentioned by Benny Green on a radio show. You can’t get much more famous than that: they’ll probably want me on I’m a Celebrity now. It was also Benny who said, bemoaning the disappearance of live jazz clubs, "Now is the winter of our discotheque". They're not writing them like that any more.

Reservoir Gods

After the success of Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion, which has spent many months in the best-seller lists and has elicited so far no fewer than 657 customer reviews on Amazon, I thought it might be a good idea to piggyback on his theme and write a book about dog worship: The Dog Delusion.
The thought came on after a few months in Nice, where it seems that every sweet old lady sitting opposite you on the bus has, peering from a basket on her knee, the face of a tiny ferret-like creature.
Doggy faces on the bus and doggy faeces in the streets. The dogs of Nice are the least continent in the continent. Paul Theroux got excited about them in Pillars of Hercules. The municipal powers place plastic bags and special containers in the streets so that the animal on one end of the lead can collect the droppings of the animal on the other. In some villages the residents hang brightly-painted brushes and shovels on their walls as a hint – but sadly too high for the dogs to reach.
There are many parallels between the two forms of worship: the anthropomorphism, or the way even some non-believers think there’s nothing wrong with belief because it gave us great works of art and, well, it doesn’t do anyone any harm. (Try telling that to someone in Belfast, Iraq or Palestine.)
I know this guy who’s a magazine editor. Lovely chap, but he is to dogs what I am to cheese, (as my cardiologist once wrote to my GP: "This man’s problem is that he is inordinately fond of cheese".)
Well this guy is inordinately fond of dogs. No matter how hard you try to divert his attention, conversations with him will inevitably get around to dogs. If they don’t, he brings the subject into focus with some subtle, oblique reference – like "Do you have a dog?"
He did it the other day. I said, "Why do you ask?"
He said, "It’s just that I find that people who like dogs tend to be nicer people than those who don’t".
I said, "I guess I fail then, I just don’t like them."
He frowned. So I said, "But Hitler did".
He’ll never plug my book now.

Last weekend Nice celebrated the return of the tram after 50 years’ absence. They called it a Fête du Tramway and it was great fun. The “new” mode of transport was free for the weekend and – such is the public passion for freebies – packed. The streets were equally packed and there was a genuine air of celebration.
You bet there was – we’ve had four years of traffic chaos for this.

It’s launched!

Exclamation marks and sighs all around. The signings up and down the Riviera – from Cannes to Monaco - were fun, with the occasional funny moment. Like the American lady who came across me signing books in a Valbonne store and said, “What’s it about?” Drawing myself up to the full 1.70, I said it was about the lives of writers.
“I’ll take one”, she said, “I love trivia.”
Five years of research encapsulated in three words.

Curried pronoun We’re expecting guests for lunch and she’s in the shower. The oven timer goes off. So I shout “The timer’s gone off”.
“Just turn it off”, shouts shimmering shape from shower.
So I turn off the timer.
Some time later, there’s a scream from the kitchen. “Eeeek! You didn’t turn it off. The lunch is ruined!”
“Yes I did,” I say.
Things were tense. My attempts to point out that according to such distinguished authorities as Strunk and White, Lynn Truss and Fowler, a pronoun always replaces its most adjacent noun, did nothing to calm the situation. We got ready in chilly silence.

Among the many great curries that she has made, I would have to say that this was by far the most memorable. Jamie Oliver would slaver in envy. Michael Winner would have called it ‘historic’.
I swear it was those few extra minutes cooking time...

White lies, damn lies… Statistics - you either love them or hate them. I’m addicted. I don’t mean statistics the way politicians use them: Tony Blair’s famous ’45 minutes’, for example. Or the way they use them to get out of embarrassing corners, adding in a decimal point or two to give them an air of authenticity.
No, statistics can be used for useful things, like proving that the signs of the zodiac are a load of cobblers – or that John Terry passes back to the goalie 3.6 times more frequently when playing for England than he does when playing for Chelsea - or that Alan Shearer shouldn’t be a candidate for England manager just because he scored a lot of goals, since 62.4% of them were from the penalty spot.
Or the fact that the percentage of left-handed people being born in the world increases every year and if it continues we’ll eventually all be left-handed. Or that the percentage of boys to girls being born to Inuit mothers is decreasing every year, so that there’ll soon be no male Inuits.
Yesterday, The Times, as if to prove my point, ran a story about a Mr Beane who has taken some hickie baseball team, Oakland A, to victory against major league teams – with statistics. They’re the new steroids – and they’re legal.

Into each life...

A message to all of you Schadenfreudsters out there: it’s been wet and windy on the French Riviera for three days now and shows no sign of abating. You can barely see across the bay. Not torrential tropical stuff, no thunder and writing, but English type rain: dull, dark and interminable. DG and I, claustrophobic after three days of watching the stuff go past the windows, decided to venture out this afternoon. Kitted out like Captain Scott in the gear we bought for the transit of Cape Horn, we got as far as the gate. We’ll try again tomorrow.

I know graffiti is an Italian word, but until Naples I didn’t realise how widespread a practice it was here. Very few vertical surfaces remain un-tagged. This is the railway station at Herculaneum, the town that was buried under 21 metres of ash by the eruption of Vesuvius in AD79, and not found until nearly 20 centuries later. The Romans left their graffiti, too. After all, it’s only leaving your mark to show you came through.
Like blogging in fact.

See Naples...

There are many fine churches in Naples. In fact the old part of the city is just a whole lot of churches with a few houses stuck in between. The churches have beautiful chapels containing poignant works of religious art. But the saddest altar of them all is dedicated, not to the Madonna, but to a Maradonna.
Diego Maradonna is an Argentinian footballer who played for Napoli in the 80’s – and helped them to win Serie A, Italy’s top championship, in 1987.
(In the World Cup of 1986 in Mexico, he scored two of the goals that eliminated England, the first by punching the ball past Peter Shilton, the England goalie, and the second – often called ‘the goal of the Century’ - after weaving past six England players. When accused of cheating by scoring a goal with his hand, he said it was "The Hand of God".)
The altar stands near the Piazza Nilo. It is painted in the colours of Napoli football club and bears such touching memorabilia as a plaque saying “Miraculous Chapel to Diego Amando Maradonna: Holy Year, 1987”; a bottle said to contain the tears of the Neapolitans when he left – and a notice saying that if you didn’t buy a drink [in the adjacent bar] you can’t take a photograph. I did both.

I name this book… Yes, it’s launched at last. It wasn’t exactly à la Harry Potter. First there was a rail strike, which prevented some people from getting there; others couldn't get in because of the traffic blockage that resulted - but phoned in orders. Finally, the main post office building - in the same street - started to drop masonry so the police closed the street. (We were wondering if a jealous J K Rowling had put a curse on us.) But apart from that Mrs Lincoln, the more determined fans got through and it was a qualified success

We have books

Why, you may ask, is he sitting there with a beatific look on his face and a glass of champagne in his hand? Is it because it’s November 15, the Feast of St Albert the Great, philosopher, theologian and 13th century Wikipedia, who spent his whole life writing down ALL the knowledge that there was in the world at the time? (I’d like to see you do it today Bert.) No, he’s rejoicing because he arrived in Villefranche, switched on his answering machine, and heard an unmistakeable Australian voice saying that his books had arrived.
So for the benefit of those who were as worried as we were that we might have to hold a book signing without books, I’m breaking with tradition and posting on consecutive days. Thanks Indian Ocean, Rosie, DHL and Wells Fargo – I don’t have to sign pages of sticky labels after all. Cheers.

B-day-minus-three

No, it’s not a small item of bathroom furniture: it's just that there are three days to go to Book-launch day. No, I’m going to go on about it today except to say that we (the bookstore owner and I) are getting nail-bitingly close to the launch – and the books haven’t arrived yet! They’re saying they’ve been delayed by monsoons in the Indian Ocean, but should be in the UK warehouse in precisely one hour from now. If they are, they’ve then got to get to Cannes by Saturday afternoon.
Worried - who’s worried?

Back from a week-end in Naples with a group of friends I first met in Padua almost eleven years ago. That was in February 1997, and most of us were in our last year of a course at the Open University, at the time doing 13th and 14th century Italian art. On that trip we also went to Venice, Florence, and Sienna – and in the course of our travels became very good friends – so much so that we resolved to continue our trips after graduation, and every year since then we have made similar trips to some European city. This year we went back to Italy for the first time.
It seems crazy now to have gone to Florence and Sienna, strictly avoiding anything to do with the Renaissance, but we did. We would lead each other firmly away from the Botticellis, Donatellos and Michaelangelos: they were ‘not our period’.
Ten years on, our artistic horizons have – like our shapes – widened, and we can now enjoy it all, from ancient Greek to Roman to medieval - to art deco.
Naples has all that and more. You go down a filthy, narrow street, able almost to touch both sides at once, dodging speeding scooters with wheezy horns. Washing - covered with plastic to protect it from the dirt - festoons the walls like political banners. You come to yet another Baroque church, encrusted with centuries of grime, open the door, and there in front of you stands a Caravaggio.

Better red...

than dead? There aren’t many things that the French Riviera doesn’t have. Even snow has been known. But it does lack sunsets: unless you’re very high up, the sun will disappear behind a mountain long before it reddens the evening sky. But the Atlantic coast has crepuscular views like this every evening across the Bordeaux Lake.

The Riviera comes good in the mornings: this was the sun this morning as it peeped over Cap Ferrat:

Our beloved PM, Gordon Brown, is supporting a Bill to prevent criminals from making profit from their crimes by publishing books about them. “Are there no lengths Brown will not go to,” said Matthew Parris in yesterday’s Times, “to prevent Tony Blair from publishing his memoirs?”

It’s Toussaint – All Saints Day - the long holiday weekend in which everyone buys chrysanths and goes to the cemetery to visit defunct relatives. A morbid way to spend a beautiful autumn day - if not as ghoulish as the Mexican dia del muerte, when the kids eat skull- and coffin-shaped candy - but a good excuse for a long weekend. The UK’s the only place I know where they don’t have any hols between August and Christmas - no Toussaint, no Yom Kippur, no Labour Day, no Armistice Day, no Thanksgiving. But there’s a lot of people not visiting necropoli - they’re here enjoying the sunshine; some are even swimming.

You heard it here first

You did indeed: remember this?

BREAKING NEWS!!! This just in.
The Book – you remember the book? – will release on November 1, and launch in Cannes on November 17, followed by other events along the coast: in Antibes, Valbonne, Nice, Monaco and maybe Fayence, in the following week or so. Details later.

Well, it wasn’t true. I know I told you that today was the expected release date, but I just heard that my books are sitting on a wharf somewhere, and are not, as we speak, leaving the warehouse by the truckload on their way to eager readers throughout the English-speaking world.
So please do not queue outside Wally Storer’s bookshop in Cannes on November 16 in anticipation of his doors being thrown open at midnight, because unless someone extracts their digit very soon, the book won’t be there.
It’s difficult, once someone has broken a promise, to place any credibility on what they say next, but, as you might expect, it was: “But we can guarantee that they will definitely be there by the xth”. So I won’t say anything until I’ve seen them myself - except that I hope you’ll be patient and not accept substitutes. It does exist, (I have an advance copy), and it will be at any good bookshop near you – soon.

Nothing to lose but your chains Yes, Marx – Karl, not Groucho – was right – there’s a world to win. But not the way the book market’s going. I went to town the other day to do a bit of book-plugging in the two remaining bookshops – and found there was only one! A year or so ago, Windsor used to have four good bookshops – WH Smith’s, one small chain shop – small chain, not small shop - and two independents. Now, WHS has pulled out of the serious book market, and there remains only the mighty Waterstone’s. They took over the small chain and the others gave up and left. It’s not all big W’s fault: not only were the independents squeezed by Amazon, but then the supermarkets moved in on the best-seller end of the market, which was what paid the independents’ rent and enabled them to stock the less fashionable titles. You might be saying, “How hypocritical – he didn’t complain when the same thing happened to the town’s small family bakers, butchers, pet food shops etc. - 'good for the consumer', he said”.
Yes, true, but we weren’t talking about books then – this is about Choice. Fight book globalization, support your local independent – all you have to do is find one.

Franglais Over lunch with a French friend yesterday, she asked what, in English, you would say to someone who was holding you up, to show them that you were getting impatient. We told her: she wrote it down and asked us to check it, then decided she should try it out. A former teacher, she is fairly unreserved, and soon the whole restaurant could hear her stentorian voice saying, repeatedly: “What ze fuck do you seenk you are doing?”

What’s an ostréiculteur?

It’s the French name for a guy or woman who farms oysters – obvious when you know, of course. Not exactly a bird-puller, but it does roll smoothly off the tongue: “I’m an ostréiculteur actually – only in a small way of course. What do you do?”. You can ask me anything you want to know about oysters – but surprisingly no one ever does.
As you’ll remember from yesterday’s lesson, as you go north along the Médoc peninsula, on the eastern, or River Gironde, side, are vineyards. On the left or western side is the Atlantic Ocean, and the bay of Arcachon (pic), where 60% of the oysters eaten in France come from. As with Bordeaux wines, the initial consumers were the English –it was much easier to ship to England than to Paris. Parisians got their oysters from Britanny.

Oyster farming, or as we in the know call it, "ostréiculture", is labour-intensive and wet work, and it takes an average three years per oyster. (They are rumoured to improve one’s prowess in the boudoir - Louis XIV ate 150 at every meal.) Of course we had to partake of this delicacy, but for a different reason, along with the odd glass of Entre Deux Mers. The DG decided she didn't like oysters, so we did a trade. They were delicious.

What’s in a name? Plenty. What chance have I got with a name like mine when there are writers around with names like Peregrine Worsthorne, Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall and Simon Sebag Montefiore? Imagine them in your class at school: "Where’s Simon Sebag Montefiore?" "I saw him in the bike shed with Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall, Sir." "Thank you, Jones."

BREAKING NEWS!!!

This just in. The Book – you remember the book? – will release on November 1, and launch in Cannes on November 17, followed by other events along the coast: in Antibes, Valbonne, Nice, Monaco and maybe Fayence, in the following week or so. Details later.



Route Nationale 1215, which runs north from Bordeaux, through Médoc on the left bank of the Gironde, is the most mouth-watering road in the world.
Its road signs should be bottled – and often are. Haut-Médoc, Moulis, St. Julien, and Châteaux like Beychevelle, Lynch-Bages, (where the DG bought me a ’98 in the hope it will mature in time for a special birthday next year), St. Estèphe, Château Lafite (pic), Ch. Margaux, Ch. Latour, Ch. Mouton Rothschild...
At Lamarque there’s a ferry across the river which at high tide you can drive on (that's the boat, not the river - important) and come back up on the other bank: Côte de Blaye, Côte de Bourg, St. Emilion, Pomerol, (a bottle of whose Château Petrus can set you back $8000)...
We return full-stomached, but, apart from that single Lynch-Bages, empty-handed. And as I’m dreaming of what might have been, she says “Red or white?” – and I’m down to earth, with a plonk.

Sick Transit
My words are vines, the grapes they bear
Nurtured and harvested with care
Hence, then, my rage
When, on the page
The vintage is vin ordinaire

Two Cities

Bordeaux, the capital of the French wine industry - not the plural of bordel - reminds me of Liverpool in many ways. Unlike the cities of southern France, which face the Med, it looks onto a river that was once its life-blood, and it has a skyline.
Another link is the Celtic connection: many of the vineyards carry Irish names, like Château Lynch-Bages and the Châteaux Palmer, Phelan, Parker, Barton, Brown – mostly descendants of supporters of James II, who hoped, with the help of the Irish Catholics, to regain the English throne. Like most Scouses, I had forbears of both faiths: Irish Catholic ones in Drogheda, who used to take me to the site of the Battle of the Boyne and tell me sad stories of how James was defeated by William of Orange in 1690 - while in Liverpool my Uncle Bill would strut his Protestant stuff in bowler hat and orange sash every July 12 to celebrate his namesake’s proud victory.

Speaking in Tongues Why Bordeaux? I mentioned how we like to take French bus tours as a means of immersing ourselves in the language. The mistake we made on our previous “Total Immersion” was to take a French tour - of Sicily. As the guides were Italian, by the time the brain had unscrambled heavily Sicilian-accented French into something translatable into English, it had missed the next bit.
While it raised difficulties with the guides, the fellow-passengers, being French, presented no such problem, so it worked out well in the end. We learned a lot about the people, not much about Sicily. Still, we decided our next trip would again be a French one – but in France. Which was how we settled on Bordeaux, (starting from Marseilles: a pleasant 2½ hour train trip from Nice followed by a slurp of the local specialty – bouillabaisse). After living in Nice, the southern accent shouldn’t prove a problem, we thought.
It was. French as spoken in Marseilles is not just another accent – it’s almost another language. Those lovely people on the trip might as well have been speaking Martian as Marseillais. What’s worse was that although they could understand our French, we couldn’t understand theirs. So after struggling through meal-time chat three times a day, we finally started missing meals to spare them the embarrassment. Bad for our French, but good for the weight.
Once again it worked out OK in the end because unlike Sicily, the guides, being from Bordeaux, spoke understandable French, so we learned a lot about Bordeaux, but not much about our fellow-travellers.

In the middle of this confusion, England played France in the semi-final of the Rugby World Cup – and, to our surprise and embarrassment, won. Unlike the French press - with headlines like “England’s Vain Hope” etc., these people could not have been more gracious, and we parted with everyone wishing us bon courage for the Final on Saturday. We’ll need it.

Ah yes! Didn't mention the other kind of immersion: Wine. Next time.

Days of wine...

Won’t be posting this weekend because we’re going to Bordeaux. Which reminds me of an old joke:
Man: We’re going to Bordeaux
Friend: I’ve heard good things about Bordocks.
Man: No, Bordeaux – like Bord-oh?
Friend: Boll-oh.
(‘Er indoors hates that joke.)
It’s about the right time of the year – the wine harvest – but that’s not the main reason we’re going. It’s about French. French coach tours are the only enjoyable way we know of ensuring total immersion in French - and wine. No sensible English couple would think of doing anything so stupid, so it's more French than tour – wall-to-wall French from morn ‘till nightie. Does wonders for your French conversation and is disastrous for your self-esteem. There'll be more on Bordeaux.

I have this long-time Oz mate – we go back to January 1960 so a golden reunion isn’t far off. He’s quite normal in most ways, but, like most Aussies, has a blind spot where sport is concerned. I, on the other hand, have a perfectly normal, healthy attitude to sport: I am always happy when the better team wins – so long as it’s England.
About 25 years ago, friend and I did a tour of the Burgundy vineyards – a thoroughly enjoyable experience - in the course of which we made the acquaintance of the Châteaux Meursault, which produces one of the best white Burgundies you can buy.
In memory of that trip to Burgundy, whenever friend and I have a bet, the prize is usually a bottle of Meursault. Last Saturday’s quarter-final of the Rugby World Cup, was such an occasion. Although my brain was saying don’t be so stupid, my heart said take the bet because you owe it to your country. We now play France in the semi-final, so wherever we are at 8.50pm. on Saturday, we’ll find somewhere to watch the match to see if England are in the final of the Rugby World Cup – and, more importantly, to see if I’ve won another bottle of Châteaux Meursault.
Actually, result of all our bets when averaged out over the years, is about 50/50, so in fact the same bottle travels between Villefranche and Cannes several times a year. Burgundy not being a good traveller (which is why the English drink Bordeaux), when the CM is eventually opened it will probably be undrinkable

This is no book…

…Who touches this touches a man.
Yes, old Walt knew a thing or two. And it’s right here! A man on a motor-bike wearing a black helmet – not the bike, the man – just delivered it. It sits on the desk in front of me in its cellophane wrapper, unopened, (well, I know what’s inside) and pristine, and I can’t take my eyes off it. It’s beautiful. Excuse the self-indulgence, but the advance copies of my book just arrived. Bulk supplies won’t be in the shops until November 27 and the police are not expecting undignified midnight scrambles outside Waterstones. Neither have I (yet) been asked for an interview by John Humphrys or Jay Leno. But who cares? It’s here...

I’m trying to judge a short story competition. You can’t help but wonder at the number of people who want to write but who don’t read. I remember Gordon Ramsay saying once – he’s the TV chef who can only be seen after the 9pm kiddies-bedtime watershed because he’s so foul-mouthed. (Guess I should have wondered this before, but how do you have an evening watershed in the US with its different time-zones? It wasn’t a problem when I was raising kids there because in the US, TV obscenity is a relatively recent phenomenon.)
Oh yes, Gordon Ramsay. He said that lots of people want to be top chefs but they’re not interested in food. It’s the same with writing. Lots of people want be famous writers but they aren’t interested in books. It won’t work – it’s not what you get out of it that’s fun – it’s what you put in. It seems pretty obvious: after all, painters look at pictures all the time. Virginia said it right: “Books read us”.
But I digress – again: back to the judging. There is, as you’d expect, a wide quality range. It’s not just that some people write better: they may have been writing for longer, be better read (see above) or realised at the last minute that the deadline was almost upon them. But they all merit roughly the same amount of attention and comment, right?
You’d think this would mean that the better stories would be harder to critique, and that it would be easy to comment on a story that you didn’t like. It’s not what I’ve found. I could go on for pages about the bad ones, because I want to tell them where they went wrong, how I think things could be improved. Then I have to go over it all again to check I haven’t committed the sin that uncaring editors do dozens of times a day: discouragement.
So if you got a long critique, it probably means you didn’t win. But that’s not the point. I just hope it was, at worst, positive and encouraging, and at best inspirational. And that you’ll try again next time.

I've been coming to France a fair number of years - a fair number of decades actually - but there's one habit I can't break. This is, before I go into a DIY shop, doctor's surgery, anywhere, I do a little check to see if I've got all the vocabulary I need. Wall plug - cheville - biopsy - biopsie - OK, let's go. It's silly I know. When the phone rings you can't race through the dictionary to check you know every word they may use. You just wing it. But I still do it.
The other day I wanted a jubilee clip. It wasn't in the dictionary so I had to wing it.
Me: (in French) "I'm looking for this ring-like thing that has little ridges on the outside that you tighten up with a screwdriver." As I go into my impersonation of Marcel Marceau with screwdriver, the man interrupts.
Man: "Juibeelee cleep?"

Equinoxial joy

It is post number 201 – there's a harvest moon and it's a time to make some new-century resolutions. I will try to be more positive. Henceforth I will not get annoyed when my book’s release date is postponed yet again – this time to November 1. (After all, some people do buy Xmas presents in January.) Even when my expensive anti-itch cream – please don’t ask – lists among its side-effects ‘may cause itching’, I shall not rant.
Neither will I complain that today’s Times, (printed on toilet paper in Marseilles), and costing three times more than the London one for a shadow of the original, does not contain a word about England’s spectacular win last night against Tonga in the Rugby World Cup, thus proving not only that it is extortionately over-priced and abridged, but out of date.
I will look on the bright side: there is some good news. Manchester United lost 2-0 to lowly Coventry; a kind Mr. Song of Hong Kong (reminds me that I once had a friend called Morris Boris Dorris) has promised to send me $7 million and all I have to do is send him my bank details. Like Candide, I will believe that this is the best of all possible worlds. Last night I called into the boulangerie for a slice of a tasty Provençal delicacy called pissaladière – a kind of onion tart. Nothing unusual there – it goes very well with Jack Daniel’s and would be a knock-out in Kentucky. Not quite hearing what the salesperson said, (she was very busy at the time, telling her colleague about the previous night’s date), I glanced at the cash register. It read ‘Piss: 2 Euros’.
That’s what you get for being optimistic - no more Pollyanna – curmudgeondom calls.

Bicentennial Blues

It’s great to be back (pic by the Mairie). Funny how, after only a few weeks away, you forget how much smaller things are in France. How, when you make coffee for two average-size Brits, you have to fill the machine up to the “6 cups” mark or you get short measure. And garages: how pleased we were when the car rental company gave us a free upgrade to an Espace, only to find that once it’s squeezed into the garage, you can’t get out of the car. Still, makes for an early start next morning.
This was to be the post of posts: the climax, the masterpiece – for this is Post No. 200. But I'm not making a fuss because what was to be the pride of posts was almost the post mortem. Not blogger’s block – I just got too busy, and the blog found itself at the back of the queue. But I've been stung into action by the DG posting...
Never think that once you’ve written a book you can re-sharpen your pencils – 2B or not 2B – and get on with the next. Hemingway did, John Grisham does, because publishers are waiting eagerly to grab their drafts and to set the vast marketing machine in motion. But like 97% of writers, I do my own PR, ads, promo etc. What Emerson said about “If a man write a better book…” and the world beating a path to his door, “tho’ he build his house in the woods”, is crap. The to-do list just gets longer, that's all. (Or maybe it isn't a "better book").
But for today, it has been turned upside down. Today’s priority list goes: 1. lunch on the terrace at Chez Michel, our favoritest restaurant in Villefranche – or anywhere - probably on Dorade Royale, (grilled sea bream); 2. Sunday Times – a Marseilles reprint that’s a shadow of the UK version at three times the price but still addictive; 3. a post-prandial nap; and 4. the post. It’s a little reward for 200 posts and 94,000 words. Coming, Michel.
Tomorrow it’s back to the to-do list and things like setting up a wireless router (called a “livebox” here because they don’t like “English”? words – “My computer” is Poste de travail) using a French instruction book. A great start for the 3rd century.

HTML Blues

I thought it was about time I updated my web site. In a flush of independence, I thought I could do it without troubling my good friend Mike, who built it and has done all the previous updates. I must confess that I never managed to come to terms with ms/dos, and am far from comfortable with WORD, (how do you get rid of that stupid paper clip?), so to kid myself that I would be able to master web design was straining my nerd-dom beyond its limits. Still, ever the optimist, I bought Microsoft’s FrontPage because, according to the sales literature, a five-year-old with learning difficulties would get the hang of it in ten minutes. The name Microsoft should have been a warning. The job security of the Seattle billionaires depends on their ability to write instructional material using a vocabulary that the purchaser cannot possibly understand. (Yes, even if he/she hits the Help button, since it is equally incomprehensible. What I need is a Help button to the Help button.) So I bought a book called FrontPage 2003 for Absolute Beginners, but it might have been in Swahili for all the use it was. So then I bought FrontPage 2003 for Dummies - with the same result. A Dummie, it seems, is a hirsute, leather-elbowed goon with a PhD in Comp Sci. What I’m waiting for now is the one titled FrontPage 2003 for Dyslexic Gorillas who are Absolute Dummies. Meanwhile, the web site stays as it is.

Q: Who led the Pedants' Revolt?* The question is prompted by the fact that the Times said someone's body "was laying on the ground". The pedants are revolting.

Talking about Seattle, I’ve had a lot of sleepless nights and the eyes are barely functioning. (Whatever its claims, Photoshop does not remove red-eye.) Blame Nice-but-Tim Henman. Having heard him say, after his great performance in beating Tersunov in the US Open, that if he played as well as he did in the first round, he would have no trouble against Tsonga in the second, we decided it would be worth staying up to watch. Well, he didn’t and it wasn’t, but by the time we knew that – New York being five hours behind - it was 1.30am. To be fair, Tim's opponent was irresistible. His second serve was faster than Tim’s first – not that we saw it very often: because at one stage Tsonga was getting 90% of his first serves in.
Watching Tim’s departure took me back to the time about ten years ago at the French Open, when we went to some remote back court to watch a skinny English kid get thrashed. And about five tears later, a bodyguard of the by then famous Tim pushed me roughly aside at the Monaco Open so that Mr Adidas could sail through the crowd unsullied by contact with the public who had paid to see him.
The only crumb of comfort is that this was Tim’s last Grand Slam, so no more red-eye.

Good news – Everton are second in the Premiership table.
Bad news – Liverpool are top.

* A: Which Tyler.