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Saturday 24 October 2009

Wilkommen, Bienvenue, Welcome

I had thought that enough had been written in response to Jan Moir's disgraceful homophobic rant in last Tuesday's 'Daily Mail' and that, anyway, it probably wasn't the stuff of a blog from Bardies. As someone who would rather eat wild toad droppings than buy a copy of the loathesome 'Daily Mail', I must confess that I have only just downloaded the offending article. My reason for doing so is simple. When I opened my emails this morning, there were two from my closest, and gay, friends here in France, lamenting their shock and horror at the implications of Jan Moir's article.

Their request that we all boycott the newspaper is easy enough to deal with in my case, but their emails instantly prompted me to discover for myself just what she had said. It is, indeed, a shocking piece of 'kneejerk' journalism and one that must have broken the heart of poor Stephen Gately's mother. To use the story of his sad demise, of which to date none of us knows the exact cause, to legitimise in some perverse way, the consequences of being gay is media fodder for all homophobes. At a time when we know from police figures that homophobic crime is on the increase, such irresponsible journalism merely serves to stoke the fires of hatred.

Those who abbhor the idea that two people of the same sex can not only love each other but can also consolidate their union through a civil partnership ceremony, must have opened their paper of choice and rejoiced at Moir's statement that "Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships." Excuse me! How? Why? A young man dies tragically in the home he shares with his same sex partner and the whole legal edifice of civil partnerships can be doubted? What sort of distorted logic is this?

My friend Giovanni, quite rightly, is beside himself with anger at the implication that Stephen Grately must have died as the result of drug-taking and a sleazy gay lifestyle. How easy it is for right wing homophobes to link drug taking with sleaze and being gay! It reminded me of something that Rabbi Lionel Blue once said. "Just because you're in the gay world doesn't mean you go to orgies. You've also got to deal with relationships." In a heterosexual world, with a great deal of drug taking, pornography, prostitution and child sexual abuse, we don't question the legitimacy of marriage, do we?

It is the last line of Moir's article, though, which is the most shocking. In a chilling line, which Josef Goebbels himself could have written, she says, "For once again, under the carapace of glittering, hedonistic celebrity, the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see." In a week when the BBC, wrongly in my view, gave Nick Griffin of the BNP a voice on the 'Question Time' panel, my thoughts turned to parallels with 1930's Weimar. The similarity is clear: gay equals deviant, and therefore dangerous.

Alan Cumming, the Scottish actor, who has played Emcee in Kander and Ebb's stage version of 'Cabaret' and is himself gay, presented a fabulous documentary on BBC 4 this week called 'The Real Cabaret'. It followed a showing on the same channel of Bob Fosse's 1972 film with Liza Minelli and Michael York, one of my all time favourite movies [thank goodness for satellite TV!]. The real cabarets were often run by Jewish impressarios, many of whom finished up in the gas chambers. What the 1972 film didn't show, was that the likes of the fictional Emcee and his coterie of homosexual and sexually ambivalent musicians and dancers would have finished up in the gas chambers too.

Not so long ago, we went to see Julian Clary in Rufus Norris's revival of the stage version. Norris, bravely, took Fosse's narrative all the way to its logical conclusion. In the film version, Emcee closes the curtains with the camera panning round the Kit Kat Klub to show swastika armbands on many of the visitors. In Norris's revival, Clary and the other performers slowly and subtly remove their clothes, turn round with their backs to the audience and huddle together at the back of the stage. As the light shines on them, the shower above them rains down. No one leaving that show would have been under any illusion about what happened to many of Berlin's homosexuals under Nazism.

Of course, this may sound a little over dramatic in the context of a second rate piece of journalism in a right wing 'red top'. We live in liberal times, don't we? Nick Griffin, thank heavens, has none of the misplaced abilities and political canniness of Jean-Marie Le Pen. But both Jan Moir and Nick Griffin have become major players this week in a debate about the sort of society we all want to live in. We have fought hard for our freedoms, for the right of all human beings not to live in fear of their lives for their race, their religious beliefs or their sexual orientation. Why does anyone care what two consenting adults do in the privacy of their own homes? Sadly, for all of us, it appears that fascists and fundamentalists still do.

In December 2007, on a bitterly cold, damp, grey day we went 'en famille' from Oskar Schindler's factory in the majestic city of Krackow to Auschwitz-Birkenau, less than an hour's drive away. The museum at Auschwitz is a true and fitting memorial to its lonely ghosts, but it is at nearby Birkenau that their souls speak to you. As we stood in the watchtower, alone, looking through the wintry mist at the forked railway line where Rabbi Hugo Gryn had waved 'goodbye' to his little brother, where Irene Nemirovsky and countless others were herded to their deaths, and Jacob Bronowski wept into the red earth for the failings of mankind, I knew why we were there. I said to the children, "This is what happened when people stood by and let injustice take hold. We must never let it happen again."

........... 'Auf Wiedersehen........ auf Weidersehen........ auf Weidersehen...........'



Photos by Peter Vardigans, Auschwitz-Birkenau, December 2007

Monday 19 October 2009

A Week in the Garden

I woke up to a glorious autumnal morning at Bardies – the first frost of the season and a herald of the Pyrenean winter to come. Because we have had no significant rainfall, the vast spread of the Pyrenees looms, still snowless, to the south of us. I feel my energy levels rise. I love this time of year, just as I do Spring, because the air has been cleared of summer haze. It seers through my nostrils and clears my head of summer clutter, the endless meal plans and day trips mentally packed away until next year. Now, 'sans invitees', I can speak French again!

The garden is full of leaves, but not those on the stubborn lime trees in front of the house, which hover defiantly high above me. It will take more than a solitary frost to shift them. These two majestic trees, planted in 1912 and 1913 respectively, to celebrate the births of Germaine and Simone Henry, have seen much in their long existence and time is of no consequence in the rhythm of their lives.

Their crooked, wild sibling, however, who hides in their shadow, is destined for the chop in December. Pascal is already sharpening his tools. We are loathe to cut down trees but this one is cramping the style of her bigger sister and becoming seriously deformed herself in the process. Pascal brought the tree man round for a second opinion and it was a ‘no brainer’. As soon as all the leaves are off, it will be no more. There are mounds of mistletoe on it to harvest into the bargain, as well as a lot of chopping work for Pascal afterwards.

Another benefit from this summary execution, will be the climbing roses, stunted below her shady boughs by lack of sunlight. The old yellow climber on the dilapidated metal pergola has barely flowered in ten years and the recently planted St Swithun variety pink ones have sulked ever since they were dug in. Quelle sacrifice! One life for three more. Sydney Carton, eat your heart out!

We have had a labour intensive week at Bardies, jollied along by the heavenly weather. I say “we”, when really I mean Laurent, our ‘jardinier’. Actually, his name is Lawrence and he is English but I didn’t want you thinking ‘Mellors’! He is a genius and he comes to help me re-design bits of the garden twice a year. I have big plans, courtesy of a lifelong passion for Christopher Lloyd, and Lawrence interjects a note of practicality into my rantings. He listens to me patiently, with no hint of horror or disapproval on his face, then does exactly what he thinks is right, regardless.

Whilst I ferried the winter flowering pansies for the pots on the terrace and hauled bags of potting compost, Lawrence dug out masses of hypericum and re-seeded the lawn, lugged 18 barrowloads of horse shit from the stable to feed the shrub roses, pulled out the summer bedding plants from the veritable army of terracotta pots, untangled the borders and rockery, and planted 140 alliums, 200 ‘tete a tete’, 120 English, not Spanish, bluebells, as well as uncounted numbers of snowdrops, crocuses and tulips. He also scattered masses of aquilegia and poppy seeds scavenged from a friend's garden. That’s next year sorted then!

He chopped up a huge mound of smaller logs for the ‘salon’ woodburner for Christmas as well. Good man! Thank goodness we blew the budget on two of them last year, because with 12 young people in the house over Christmas, ranged in age between 13 and 21, the ‘salon’ will be a no-go zone. At least now the electricity meter won't be in freefall. Whilst the kids are welded to whatever celebrity game show final is scheduled for the festive period, the adults can be getting suitably squiffy in the ‘biblioteque’. We can meet in the middle for meals and the annual fracas that is present opening chez nous. Meantime, I must start searching the woods for a suitable Christmas tree. It will be fun!

Having cleared up the debris from the flue installation, I was suddenly inspired to wax all the oak floorboards and doors. Mad or what? We have enormous armoire doors from floor to ceiling on either side of the fireplace and they were so dry, it took a tin of ‘cire liquide’ for each one. I must have significantly reduced our fire risk! Rattling old edifices like this really need an army of servants, as I’m sure they once had, not just me and the occasional help of a ‘femme de menage. It’s a long time since I have been down on my knees for so long!

In between times, as ever, the kitchen beckoned and I had great fun being creative. Amazingly, there was still some basil growing in its large pot outside the kitchen door [a sign of global warming?] as well as tarragon, chives, parsley, marjoram and verveine. I made a plum and thyme jam to go with magret of duck, which seemed to work quite well. The basil, gently sweated with shallot, freshly chopped tomatoes and garlic, made a great coulis for a vegetable lasagne and a Chicken Basque. With Halloween around the corner, the ‘potirons’ are in season so we had a risotto one night and a pumpkin and cumin soup for lunch. I added a tin of chopped tomatoes and half a chorizo, together with a good dollop of smoked paprika, to the leftovers to make a really hearty Spanish style peasant soup, very Allegra McEvedy!

I also managed to find some lovely girolles in Cazeres, because we still don’t have any in our woods. There has been nothing, so far, to forage for this year. We desperately need some serious autumn rainfall. Apart from asparagus omelettes in Spring, mushroom omelettes in autumn are my favourite lunchtime treat. In the garden, the figs are finished [indeed, this year they never really got started] so instead I poached our windfall pears in red wine for desert. I still have some of last year’s bumper crop of figs marinating in ‘Absolut’ vodka in the fridge, which will make for some merry post-prandial activity at Christmas!

Meanwhile, my Facebook journey continues. It may seem to be a virtual world, but so far I have caught up with many old friends with whom we’ve agreed meetings in real time. There is definitely something so much more personal about Facebook, which makes you want to reply immediately. With regular e-mail, the temptation is always to leave it until after the gym, or supper or a good night’s sleep with the inevitable forgetfulness that follows. Is it the visual stimulus of a photo image, I wonder? Anyway, I’m loving it. It makes being in France like being next door, which may, or may not, be a good thing after all.

Friday 9 October 2009

Family, Friends and Facebook

My metamorphosis is now complete! Not only have I become a compulsive blogger over these last months, but I have also finally decided to throw all notions of a secluded and isolated old age pottering around my 'potager' to the wind. My initial paranoia about privacy has turned into an amazing sense of liberation. Methinks, as well, that I have Twitter in my sights, despite the inevitable limitations on one's pretentiousness, creativity and poetic licence with a measly 140 characters! The world really is becoming a smaller place by the minute.

If people keep talking to each other, they are less likely to blow a gasket and hit each other, that's for sure. Whole family networks can be maintained with a quick posting on a 'wall', and everybody is happy to know that they are part of one big virtual happy family. It's so much better than the real thing in so many ways, because you don't have to fight for the bathroom, argue over the washing up, or sulk because one of your number nicked the last yoghurt that you had carefully positioned in the fridge behind the confitures and old pots of honey.

In the last 48 hours, since I signed up on Facebook, I have been amazed that not one of my many nieces and nephews has rejected me as a 'friend'. All I can say is that they must have total confidence in my broadmindedness, or else they know so much more about the technology than I do and can successfully hide or edit out any references to sex, drugs and rock and roll. My devoutly Catholic Irish mother would have grounded me for months had she worked out that my secret diary was hidden behind an air brick. Now, my own Catholic guilt has the reverse effect, for I cannot bring myself to overly intrude into the very precious private lives of my young relatives.

I am flattered that they show such a high degree of trust in me. It makes organising 'Noel' so much easier, when there will be 19 of us at Bardies. These semi- virtual friendships will be put to the test then, that's for sure, but Christmas 'en famille' in our rambling old chateau will be a first. The Heidlberg and Chiswick contingents are used to our ways, but the San Franciscans will have to cope with the double whammy of jet lag and traditional French Christmas fayre. No turkey this Christmas, I'm afraid. We're going for a brace of capons and a 'buche de Noel', and all objections will be smartly over ruled!

The kids are all excited and have been communicating endlessly with each other, I am told. Facebook really is amazing. Sophie, one of my nieces in Germany, immediately sent me a message saying, "Welcome, Auntie, to this amaaaaazing communication system", and that perfectly sums it up. I would never in a million years have bothered to email each of them, so I'm seeing at first hand just how effective it is. It makes the daunting prospect of all the preparations so much more enjoyable for everyone, when we each have a vested interest in the whole project.

The only person who is missing out is Grandma, which is sad because she is the person that we are all doing it for. She is a hugely entertaining and lively 85 year old, but despite being an ex-teacher and brilliant mathematician, she remains one of the many members of her generation who has failed to embrace new technology. It would be such a wonderful thing for her to be able to communicate with all her grandchildren, and we are all at a loss as to understanding why such an intelligent woman has run shy of such a life changing opportunity. We have offered to buy her a computer, set it up and coach her in its applications, all, to date, to no avail.

I have puzzled much over this conundrum. Why is it that older people run so scared of the internet? Is it the fear of failure? Surely not, especially when I know that my mother-in-law could out think and out perform many youngsters a quarter of her age. Is it that life already seems to go so fast for them, they just don't feel that they have enough time to invest in something so new and all-absorbing? Is it because they fear exposure to 'sharks' and 'shisters', made even more terrifying by tabloid horror stories? Is it because they wish to protect their privacy from prying eyes, a throwback from the war years for so many of them? Is it a gender issue, I wonder, with so many elderly widowed women convinced that technical matters are somehow not for them? I wish I knew the answer, because it is a real issue that we must address urgently, for ever-increasing life expectancy threatens to isolate this generation even further.

We know that communication is the essence of being human. I don't buy into the notion that Facebook is bad, per se, or that the new so-called 'Facebook generation' are inarticulate idiots. I know many, many young people [and I'm proud to say that quite a few of them have just accepted me as a 'friend'!] and they all seem to me to be better communicators than we ever were. After we'd done our homework, we used to flop in front of the TV or read racy books by Dennis Wheatley to alleviate the interminable boredom of termtime evenings. Sunday afternoons, with shops closed, churches open and friends grounded, was a weekly nightmare only to be escaped by talk of sharing homework with a friend.

Today's youngsters, in contrast, are planning everything, from their next party to changing the world on Facebook. Good on them! They are reading and writing too, and if writing is essentially about communication, then they will learn these skills prettily speedily on Facebook, or face a blank 'wall'. We moan that youngsters are apolitical, because they have no faith in our devalued party political system, but fail to see that they are highly motivated when driven by single, relevant issues. When they want to do something, they reach more people with a single posting than any party political broadcast could ever hope to do.

They have a lot to teach us, and we need to listen to them more, not less. In the meantime, I shall treasure my young Facebook friends, and indeed the older ones too. They can come and see us at Bardies anytime. After all, it's so much easier to organise now.

Tuesday 6 October 2009

Here We Go Again......

Last week, for my sins, I was at the Labour Party Conference, a rather funereal experience this year to say the least. Gone are the joys of drinks parties and fringe events, packed full of tipsy people desperate to hang onto the coat tails of aspiring, or as often as not, actual members of the government and their many acolytes. After May 1997, the skies really did seem bluer and the sun more benevolent to us lifelong Labour groupies. A new dawn had broken, or so we thought, but that was before 9/11, the Iraq war, 7/7, financial meltdown and Gordon Brown's dystopian grimaces. Now we are nearing the end of the road, I fear.

As I wandered aimlessly about, despondently looking for friends who have apparently jumped ship, I thought, not for the first time, 'Bring back Tony!' Now I know that not many people will agree with me, for obvious reasons, but I still think that he was the greatest asset we ever had [unlike poor Gordon who, with his rictus grin and vacuous promises, remains an electoral liability!]. The sun still shone in Brighton, but somehow it seemed a pale apology. The only good thing that remained was the seafront fish and chips.

There I was thinking, with a heavy heart, that there was so little to divide Big Gord from the Boy Dave, I might consider voting Green instead. Never in my life have I not voted Labour in a General Election, so this was betrayal indeed on my part. But, in Harold Macmillan's immortal phrase, a week is a long time in politics or, in this case, more like a couple of days. My maternal relatives, and their fellow Irish countrymen and women, have put Europe well and truly back on the electoral map. The spectre of the European Constitution being ratified before next May's general election has well and truly galvinised the 'castrati' of the Euro-sceptic Tory right.

Never have so many hitherto strangulated voices sung in such perfect harmony. Their moment has come and, mon Dieu, they are determined to have it. Hold onto your seatbelts, fellow Francophiles and Europhiles, for the road ahead will be rocky and deeply unpleasant. Already, Angela Merkel has expressed her discontent with Cameron and Co. by downgrading Tory relations in Europe, because of their unfathomable decision to ally themselves with the swivel eyed homophobes and Holocaust dissemblers already in the European parliament. Boris Johnson, the irascible blonde bombshell, is ready to take the helm and ride out with the Valkyries.

In yesterday's Daily Telegraph, Boris nailed his colours to the wall. In an amusing and offensive rant, he balked at the very real prospect of Tony Blair being thrust back into our lives as the first President of Europe, the one-man incarnation of the wishes of 500 million people and 27 countries. "Can you really imagine," he writes, "Nicolas Sarkozy being willing to share the international limelight with our Tony, when Blair is British, charismatic, and not remotely frightened of appearing in photocalls with people of more than five foot five inches in height?" If he thinks little of Tony Blair, he thinks even less of Nicolas Sarkozy and is 'heightist' into the bargain!

Why, oh why, do us Brits persist in the notion that somehow we still rule the world? For how long can the delusion remain that we are somehow, as a result of our DNA, superior to the French or the Germans, never mind the Italians, Spanish, Greeks and former east Europeans? When are we going to learn that we are now just little people ourselves, stranded on islands way to the west of Brussels and Strasbourg. We may have misguidedly thought that the USA would altruistically act in our best interests, but from Maynard Keynes to Tony Blair, the lessons have been hard ones to stomach. Our future must be in Europe and we fail to engage at our peril.

The failed referendum promise of Labour's 2005 Manifesto certainly leaves a sour taste in the mouth but this cannot be justification for retreat. We must move the debate forward, not backwards. In any event, the genie has been let out of the bottle and at least now a real election issue has been unceremoniously slapped on to the table. Here we go again........