Michael Schofield

I have never watched the American series "Prison Break", being more of a "Lost" man myself. However I do know that the lead character of PB goes by the name of Michael Schofield, and for this I am eternally grateful. A full 12 years I have spent in this country, and never once has a person acknowledged my surname as being anything other than a god-awful unpronounceable Anglo-Saxon atrocity. It's been misread, misspelt, and flung back in my face. But now -- thanks to Michael -- all has changed. Suddenly it is: "Ah, oui!!! Schofield, comme Michael!!!" Judging by the frequency of this reaction, the number of people in France who watch "Prison Break" must be absolutely enormous. So thank you, the devisers of PB. Next - can someone at "Lost" create a character called Hugh, please.

Bikes are not always welcome in Paris

Following up on my last rant, here is the latest in the saga about how in the supposedly "green" 14th arrondissement things conspire against us bikers. You may recall that I was served with a notice from the "syndic" that looks after our building that I was required to move my bicycle from the courtyard and put in on the street (where it will certainly be damaged or nicked). Apparently my keeping it in the courtyard is against the rules, and they have the right to call in the "pompiers" to throw it out. I have steadfastly refused the pressure, and a few days ago we had a house meeting: all the "proprietaires" getting together to see if we could work out a compromise. Luckily it turned out that nearly all of my neighbours are reasonable people, who cannot understand what the fuss is about. My bike -- and there are a few others too -- do no harm to anyone. They just lean against the wall, making the place look agreeably like an Oxford college. Every day we cycle them to work, thereby contributing strictly zilch to global warming and the clouds of Paris car-smog. Good arguments, I thought. But of course, I had counted without Mademoiselle X, who I am now convinced is the villain of the piece. She must be the one who has been anonymous writing letters to the "syndic", even though she's never dared to confront me directly. For her, it is simply inconceivable that there be a debate about the matter. The rules are the rules, so the bikes have to go. But her sense of indignation is purely abstract. She cannot possibly mind the bikes per se. It is the fact that technically they should not be there that bothers her so. Dare I say it, it is a deeply unpleasant frame of mind, reminiscent of certain less happy periods of French history. Thank God she is a minority of one.

I really do want to shoot the whole month down. November is hell in Paris. Every year it is the same. The mood changes, and all the petty-minded, semi-fascistic, ungenerous instincts of this strange, scared, buttoned-up people come out. November is strike time of course, with all the tedious union fanfare re-enacted on ths streets, and everyone bleating the same old cliches about how yes we're inconvenienced but after all it's their right and if I was them I'd do exactly the same etc etc instead of getting seriously angry. And then there's the weather. Foul. And this November I have two particular bugbears to shoulder (yes, you can shoulder bugbears, so don't interrupt). First, there is an old soixante-retard in an office near mine who smokes at work. He is not allowed under the law, but he does it nonetheless. When he is accosted over it by co-workers, he shouts abuse. How does he get away with it? Because he is in the unions. A union bully-boy of a type that disappeared from Britain 30 years ago. Untouchable in other words. Only in France. AAAARRGGH. Second. A notice goes up in my block of flats saying bicycles must be left on the street rather than in the courtyard. Why? Because they leave marks on the walls. Our flats -- including the courtyard -- are private property. If the bikes go on the street, they get stolen. Cars have destroyed our cities, and bikes mark the only sane and responsible response. And yet STILL, in this benighted semi-fascistic, semi-communistic country there are people who will send anonymous letters denouncing us for untidying their "parties communes". If I could swear on a blog, I would. Very loudly. Only in effin Paris.

A recent personal experience helps explain what I perceive to be a major problem in modern French society: a lack of creativity, a fear of taking risks, a reluctance to innovate. At my eight year-old son's school, they hired a "theatre" group to coach his class over the academic year -- with the goal an end-of-term play before the parents. Rarely have I been so angered. The poor mites were pathetic pawns in the hands of these imagination-less cretins, who made them memorise screeds of text. The play was "The Nutcracker Suite" -- which one would have thought would have afforded endless chance for fun, playing it up, music, song, dance etc etc. It was a dreary 90 minutes of hell. It was as much as the children could manage to recite -- inaudibly -- their hundreds of lines. Acting didn't come in to it, let alone any semblance of enjoyment. What got me was that it was not the school itself that was responsible. That I could have handled, knowing that the staff are not exactly avant-garde (fine by me). But the organisers were a group of young thespians in their 20s! The sheer lack of imagination, the way they killed what should have been a joyous experience -- and all at the hands of a group of supposedly free-thinking students!! I was spitting.
Contrast that with the week I have just spent in Dublin, where I enrolled my 11 year-old daughter in a "music and drama camp" for a week. On Friday they put on a show: songs, recitals on the piano, finishing off with a 15 minute version of "School of Rock". All it took was a creative mind, someone to play the piano and lots of energy. And it was fantastic. Everyone had a rip-roaring time, the cast as well as the audience. Why is it possible to do that in Ireland, or Britain, and not in France? Why is it that every secondary school in Ireland or Britain will have at least one group of spotty teenagers who think they are the next rock sensation and annoy their parents practising in a garage, while in France the phenomenon barely exists. Why do the French feel happiest following well-travelled paths? Why do they fear stepping out of line? In the Anglo-Saxon educational system, the end-goal is to get children to think for themselves. Here it's to cram them from without. Hateful.

The Star Ac team

A family crisis has led me to change my view of the television show Star Academy. A week ago, I would have spat on the father and mother of this televisual excrescence. Today I kneel in grateful homage. What happened in between was that my 13 year-old son Louis was rushed to hospital for an emergency operation. Severe peritonitis, and a terrible scare. On day two of his recovery in intensive care, a hushed excitement came over the nursing staff. We were getting a visit from the "Star Ac". (Before I go on, let me explain that Star Ac is France's pop talent show, soon to launch its 6th season and an immense success). Anyway into the ward come Magali (last year's winner) and three other young ex-competitors -- clearly doing some hospital voluntary work, visiting sick children. They could not have been more charming. Unaffected, unpompous, kind, well-spoken. They stayed a few minutes in each ward, posing for photos and chatting with the children. Maybe it's that the milk of my human kindness is extra creamy at the moment thanks to my not-dying son, but I was somehow deeply moved. What good people, I thought -- and still do. So no more Star Ac bashing, please. Ils sont top!

More bad news - the wife just got the sack!! The Daily Telegraph -- where she worked as office assistant/fixer -- is shutting its Paris bureau. Her boss Colin Randall is also out. See the news on his own blog. Let us leave aside our personal interest, but what does this say about the future of journalism? The BBC, I note, is also axing one of its two correspondents' jobs in Paris -- this at a time when demand for "product" has never been greater, what with the proliferation of tv and radio outlets, plus online. What is happening is that technology is allowing more to be done from "hubs". If you can access the French newspapers, radio and TV by Internet from head-office and get the news-wires as well, you'll have a fairish picture of what is going on -- and you'll save a fortune in housing costs and other expenses for an expat. correspondent. The objections to this trend seem to me to be so glaring that I am dumbstruck. Everything is going to be reduced to cliché. There'll be no-one challenging the "accepted version" of a story, because no one will have the on-the-ground authority or knowledge to have an opinion. You can see how this will effect stories like the riots in the banlieues. Political correctness and cant will rule. Independent thought will go out the window.

The longer I live here, the more I cherish the French art of the holiday. This surely is their truest gift to civilisation at the start of the 21st century : the notion that not all boils down to grubbing your way up to the next pay bracket. I say that -- and in the next breath i will be the first to agree with all the right-wing liberals who say that France's biggest problem at the moment is the "devalorisation" of labour. Go figure. For most families with working parents, July and August are a challenge that is resolved in the first instance by the dispatch of children chez mamie et papi (grandparents) -- ideally in some nice rural retreat. Then in the second half of the vacances scolaires, the parents take their month, yes month, off. In France working adults are either juilletistes or aoutiens -- no measly fortnights here. The Schofield family is having to perform its annual scheduling jig. No grandparents anywhere near, so wife and I have to share out our holidays to look after offspring. Not ideal - but it means the children get out of paris for the whole two months, and we'll all be together in the second half of August -- Roll on!

It's arrived. Five years after the first inkling of doom, the letter came from the syndic. Ravalement, refection de balcons, peinture etc etc: total bill -- 14,000 euros. Welcome to the joys of property ownership in Paris. The system works like this: everyone lives in blocks of flats and in addition to your own apartment, you get a share in the building as a whole. To avoid the inevitable rows that would ensue if you tried to manage the building independently, you consign the task to a syndic . These people charge a vast three-monthly sum for doing not very much as far as I can see. Every year there is an AGM, in which the syndic tries to browbeat you into new expenditure on the building's upkeep. In my case the building dates from around 1880, and much of the exterior wood- and iron-work is original -- ie delapidated. In addition experts have told the syndic that without urgent work, bits will start falling off and hitting people. Then we'll all be sued for millions, go to jail and be forced to say goodbye to our children. On top of that there is a legal requirement to have a ravalement or repointing every ten years. We haven't had one since 1980. That's the background. Now comes the crunch. The scaffolding goes up in September and I have till next Feb to find 14 thousand smackeroos. Contributions willingly accepted. I shall probably manage somehow, but I feel sorrier for some of our elderly neighbours. Like a lot of older buildings, ours contains several flats inhabited by pensioners who have been there since the war of before. They haven't a hope of finding the money.

To my 12 year-old son's school -- Notre-Dame-de-Sion in the 6th arrondissement -- to judge an English-speaking competition by lyceens (17 year-olds). They chose as their theme the London blitz, and put on a series of sketches. One brave girl even got herself kitted up as Churchill. Some of them then made short speeches in English about aspects of life under the bombing. The level -- I was pleased to note -- was high. Too many young French people have poor or non-existent English. I have helped coach neighbours' children who are studying George Eliot at university but can barely string a sentence together. These girls -- and it was almost exclusively girls who took part I am afraid to say -- were in the main excellent. Top prize went to Lorraine Saint-Remy, who delivered a beautiful speechlet on wartine britian. She wins a month on an exchange in Cambridge.

After an appalling long winter, spring has finally arrived. Just back from a blissful two weeks in our maison de week-end in the Sancerrois. The garden is burgeoning and if I am not mistaken we are having a record number of birds passing through. A nightingale has settled in a hedgerow across the road, and his evening chorus is delightful.. French bird book in hand, I have been ploughing through the Internet trying to match French names with the English ones I learned as a boy. I now know that bouvreuil is bullfinch (not that we have any), pinson des arbres is chaffinch (too many of them) and chardonneret is my favourite, the goldfinch (not enough). We also have grimpereau (nuthatch), patre (stonechat) and rouge-queue (redstart). We also have a cat, which is not such good news -- but as i always say: cats may be a bain for local birdlife, but they are a boon to budding ornithologists. Without a close-up look at the specimens, I'd have no idea there was such variety! Next nature instalment -- the local beavers. Yes, they are thriving a short bike ride away!