Bliss all Day

Of course some people are grumpy and others are not. I think much of it has to do with upbringing. If, for example you were born in a smoke filled pub, reeking of unemptied ash trays and stale beer then obviously your outlook on life is going to be pretty jaded. Especially if you still smell like a stubbed out fag end.

I on the other hand feel on the top of the world. I had a really good day. Colinb whingeing about my kindnesses and saying that I had destroyed his perspectives for being a Telegraph guest blogger. I am truly, wholeheartedly, sincerely and honestly (or at least to the extent that those adjectives can apply to a Brit) sorry Colin. See where being kind can get you. Anyway it was an enjoyable read over the muesli.

On to visit a new customer. He is a police inspector. Offered me an aperitif at 11 am. A bit early, but it was in the line of duty. So we had a good chat about the difficulties of policing in today’s world. He said how difficult it is to be a patron (good man, will go far) Of course the Gare du nord incident came up. His wife is Malgache, so I then had a good reminisce about my time working in Antananarivo. Sitting by the pool eating gorgeous salads, the wonderful steaks, the visits to Nossé Baie and the scuba diving in the coral reefs. The journeys into the bush. Lovely people, lovely country.

Then to cap a nice day there is the news from Iran. Doesn’t Faye Turney look nice in her headscarf. Great improvement on the previous photos of her toting a machine gun. Apparently the British soldiers are refusing to go back to their barracks; they say the food is so much better in Iran as well as the medical treatment. Blair is of course furious. Looks like his term in government will finish up much like that of Carter. I smell humiliation on the horizon and it is most enjoyable. Hope the Iranians play their hand well, so far so good. You’ve been bad boys so Faye doesn’t get her freedom, beautiful.

GUESS WHERE THIS RESTAURANT IS

29/3/2007 The Colin of Antibes has now commented on his blog 'that he is livid' at being proposed as a guest blogger on the Telegraph. Strange people these Brit's, I don't think we are going to manage any meeting of minds. Anyway with all his different colours, pictures and styles his blog looks like a kids bazaar.Or should that be a Neopolitan ice cream. No taste, no elegance.



28/3/2007 The incorrigible Colinb sent this post to the Telegraph:


"I see the incorrigible Richard of Orléans is still trying to use other people's blogs, in this case Shane Richmond's, as his kangaroo court.


Comment: I supported his attempt to become a guest blogger. I'm not sure I'll do that again


It's the same old story: trumped up charges, and 'R of O' acting as prosecution, judge and jury, all conveniently rolled into one.



Comment: This he pinched directly from one of my posts

It's easy to do that, Richard, when you hide behind a pseudonym, but unfair and irresponsible when your target blogs under his real name.


Comment:same old blah, blah blah. Nothing stops him calling himself Colin Of Antibes

Sorry, Richard, but I don't wish to participate in your warped little game. Kindly give it a rest, and do please stop misrepresenting the facts. For the record (sigh) I rarely comment on world politics, but can assure folk that I do not fit Richard's stereotype. I am broadly pro-EU, but anti-federalist and against Britain joining the single currency. I strongly opposed the Iraq war, believing that Saddam had no WMD to hide - that he was just playing cat-and-mouse with the inspectors, to wind up GWB/TB, and that bilateral US/UK action was premature and probably illegal.


Comment What I said was that his blogging would appeal to supporters of the Iraq war, I never said he supported it. So who is misrepresenting? It is Colinb straight up. I make the argument that he would appeal to the core beliefs of a significant segment of the Telegraph readership. Afterall a sound argument to support his cause. He turns it into a personal attack. Unbelievable narcissism.

Thank you Louise for correcting Richard on that absurd claim about no longer accepting comments. That is yet another instance of Richard misrepresenting the facts, just so he could work in his little joke about Stalin.

Comment:He has disabled the 'comment' facilty so in blogger jargon he does not accept 'comments' E-mails oblige the poster to disclose their address so it's clearly a different animal and hinders free speech.

I think this is the point to stop, but if anyone wants clarification on any of the matters raised here, by BT, 'R of O' or Louise then I shall be only too happy to oblige. (BTW, Louise, thank you for the clarification re emails)"


Comment having made a number of fallacious statements Mr Berry as usual, wants to stop.So anyway no more support from me for his guest blogger ambitions




Yes in order to win a big, big prize all you have to do is guess in which well known town or city you can find this restaurant.
In case of a tie, the tie breaker will be guessing what I consumed today in this restaurant. How long it took, how much I paid and what the lady behind the bar said to me.

Here's a clue.

The Canal Builders

In the days before railways, shipping wine from Bordeaux to Paris took a while. It would be loaded on a ship in Bordeaux and brought up to Nantes. There it would be transferred onto a special flat bottomed river boat to ascend the Loire. The Loire was always a nightmare for boats because it is shallow and extremely variable, now a raging torrent difficult to navigate, then a trickle of water barely enough to wet the boat.

On reaching Orléans not a few barrels were no longer drinkable. These were converted into vinegar, a traditional industry of Orléans. The last manufacturer of vinegar finally disappeared only in the 1970’s.

But the wine was still 150 km from Paris. The rich bourgeois was impatient awaiting his fine wine. The last stage was the canal, the Orléans canal, which after a roundabout route connects with the Seine and hence to gay Paris.

The railways destroyed canals probably faster than the internet is killing papers. Before the railways, passengers would travel from Paris to Orléans in a stage coach then take the boat down to Nantes, a journey of a few days. Overnight it was Paris Nantes within the day. The trains travelled at the stupendous speed of 30 km per hour. Our local newspaper recently reprinted its aticle describing the inaugaral journey Paris Orléans.The same thing happened to the wine from Bordeaux to Paris. So it was bye bye river boats and bye bye canals.

The Orléans canal is still there, to the east of Orléans, though not navigable at the present time. If you look at the picture above you can see the Orléans canal to the left of the Loire. This picture is taken about a kilometre from the starting point of the canal in downtown Orléans. In the early 1950’s that last kilometre was filled with soil and rubble and the space used for parking and the vegetable market.

The picture above is taken from a bridge looking east. What if I look west?




Yes it’s a massive building site. That first kilometre of the canal is being rebuilt. The parking spaces have been suppressed and the market moved. In Orléans we are building: fast trains, autoroutes, internet superhighways and……….canals.

Please somebody stand up to the Thugs

Updated 27/3/07

So far the Iranians are doing well, they are holding on to the English spies and resisting all pressure. I have nothing against the individuals involved but it is important that the Iranians show the British to be powerless and to put them in their place. The decison of the Brits to put out some fake GPS coordinates to 'prove' they did not encroach on Iranian territory is pathetic and laughable.Do they really think people still fall for these old tricks.



This week end we celebrated 50 years of the European Union. Those 50 years have brought peace and wealth to our continent. Is it not worth asking why Britain has been opposed to this project throughout?

Let us look to the Middle East to see why. It’s obvious; the Anglo Saxons are war mongering nations that don’t find their economic return from peaceful coexistence.

So now we start the Iran war. Isn’t the run up similar to the Iraq war. We had the over flights and bombing in Iraq, now we have the spying and violations of sovereignty with Iran. Exaggerations on WMD with Iraq, same again with Iran.

I don’t blame the Anglo Saxons; we know who they are and what they want. We are well aware that they won’t change. I do blame the European Union, Canada, Mexico, China, India, Brazil, and the UN for not standing up to these thugs once and for all.

The Simple Life

When I was a young man and wanted to visit London I would drive up to Hyde Park and find a convenient parking spot not far from the Serpentine where I could leave the car all day for nothing, not far from a tube station.

No, you can’t do that any more. But what you can do is drive up to the Bois de Boulogne and park near Le Pavillon Dauphin (photo above) close to the métro station Place Dauphine. It’s not as good as my wife’s maternal grandfather who told us about parking for free in the rue de Rivoli but it’s not bad and perfectly free. So that’s what I did on Tuesday. Actually rather than take the métro I walked up avenue Bugeaud to Place Victor Hugo,where I had my first meeting.

Later I went over to rue de la Boetie where someone kindly invited me to lunch, and was generous enough to let me choose the wine, Savennières 2003. It was gorgeous, lovely yellow colour, dry and mature. That and the delightful meal convinced me that I should enjoy life to the full. I walked up the Champs Elysées and back down Avenue Foch (below) Ah the simple pleasures in life is what I like.

Back to cabbage leaves

I see there is some discussion on the blogs of environmental issues. As a lover of nature I am always interested in preserving the health and beauties of our planet. The problem is that there is often as much subjectivity as objectivity in our discussions. Man after all is part of nature; we are none other than one of the numerous species living on earth. Is an elephant knocking down a tree OK and a man cutting it down not OK?

Look again at your favourite landscape, are there not a few old stone cottages carefully nestled somewhere in the scene? But surely not a copper mine nor a gravel pit. Somehow we have decided certain human activities are OK and others not OK. But surely, unsightly as they may be, a pit or a mine do little real damage to our planet. The grand canyon is considerably bigger than most mines. Should we fill in the Grand Canyon?

On my journeys to Paris I cross the Beauce. It is the largest cereal growing area in Europe. Huge flat, treeless, hedgeless fields growing wheat, barley, sugar beet, maize. Each time I travel there are a few more eoliens powerfully turning their mighty blades. With about 30 so far, from a distance, they look majestic. I wouldn’t like to live next to one though. Just as the farmers are finally getting taken to task and required to reduce the nitrate pollution so that the villagers can again drink the water from their taps, so they wake up in the morning with these enormous noisy behemoths on their doorsteps. So is this the way to keep the Maldives above water? One country’s saving grace is another man’s polluted doorstep.

Well no it’s not actually. The thing about the environment is that we do what we want, not what we need to do. Sarah is courageously seeking to recycle her vegetable waste. To what gain? Filling a landfill with carrots and turnips is no big deal. The vegetable matter quickly decomposes and mixes with the soil. Yes there is the transportation to the tip but there is also the plastic bin to be manufactured and transported. Wouldn’t it be better for Sarah to cut out her frequent trips back to the UK? There we really do have CO2 and noise pollution with some NOX and SO2(3) as well. The massive cement runways at the airport with the inevitably polluted water runoff.

When I came to France in 1973 almost all journeys by plane arrived at Orly Sud, and you went to Orly West for onward travel. In 1974 the Camembert, Roissy 1 was opened and Orly Sud largely closed. Since then we have had Roissy 2 A,B,C,D,E,F,G. Many regional airports take international flights and are growing rapidly. And if you return to Orly Sud, what do you find? It’s chock a block with flights and being expanded.

Oh yes I know we all deserve a holiday. But when I raised recently on Shane Richmond’s blog the issue of the wasteful and abusive use of airplanes I received a solid round of insults with nobody supporting my opinion. Suddenly the consensus opinion that we should do something about the environment had disappeared. Is it really more important to recycle a few cabbage leaves than fight the ridiculous culture of excessive air travel?

For I know something about the ridiculous excesses to which air travel has gone. Having for two years arrived at Roissy airport at 6 am each Monday morning to start my weekly visit of an average of three countries. I was not alone in my exhausting Odysseys; at 6 am there is no problem of traffic on the péripherique, but there is a massive jam at Roissy as all the international managers take their early morning flights. Yes, with globalisation there has developed a business model of heavy centralisation which requires endless travel. An international group is run as if it is just one firm. But instead of simply walking down to the sales department you now take a flight to wherever.

Hand in hand with the evolution of this business model of centralisation has arrived the mainly English phenomenon of second homes in the sun with the frequent Ryanair flights to do the weeding and pick up some wine.

So if we are really serious about the environment shouldn’t we do something about this air travel? Hiking the cost of car travel is going to cause many problems for poor people but eliminating a lot of air travel is just going to slow down equity buyouts and restructuring as well as reducing the number of English in France. Not many downsides? Not for me, but for the readership of the Telegraph we would be attacking their very way of life. Back to recycling cabbage leaves.

Free lunch man

As usual I spent nearly all week end working on my little company. Actually it’s now a little group with the welcome of a new Eurl. Yes that’s Entreprise unipersonelle de résponsabilité limitée. In this highly bureaucratic country you can set up a new company with 1 Euro capital, 1 shareholder, i.e. yourself, in half an hour. (well that’s a slight exaggeration let’s say a couple of days). Everybody is helpful and cooperative. The Chambre de Commerce explains exactly what you have to do and keeps all the different departments informed (greffe de commerce, fisc, and social security). I made a couple of mistakes, but of course they helped me to correct both of them with no trouble. The one thing that was a bit difficult was HSBC, that well known British bank, who acquired a marvellous French bank called CCF, changed the name, fired the employees and sent the service in a heavy southerly direction. So the only thing I don’t have is my cheque book. I ‘ve already partly left HSBC, I may well go further in the coming months.

It was a good weekend in many ways. First off, the company got a new customer. A French telecom manager who spends all his time working next to Paddington station!!! Goes to London for the week and comes back to Orléans weekends. He didn’t volunteer to speak English, enough is enough. The local vet did though, fed up with talking to horses.

Between making drawings, preparing quotes, making invoices, calculating a P&L I have been checking on the news. Of course a better weekend for rugby with France winning the 6 nations for the 4th time in six years. Maybe time for France to join up with the southern hemisphere, I fear we are not being sufficiently tested up north. Though I’m not too much in favour of excessive travel and the concomitant pollution. An alternative would be to convince the Germans to play the sport and fold the Brits into one team, rather than all these teeny peeny teams they come up with. The Italians are improving, so with the Germans, French and Italians we could look forward to some competition. The Brits could hold our track suits.

There were just three opinion polls on the Presidential election. Overall they showed Bayrou stalling just short of Ségo and Sarko gaining a slightly larger overall lead. We are now into the heavy slugging part of the election, with each team going for the others’ jugular. It’s nice watching.

Bayrou, like all our politicians has been around a long time without ever setting any houses alight. In fact his greatest achievement was writing a good book on Henry IV. (He was an important figure in our history since he closed out the wars of religion. It was bit like modern day Iraq before he came along.) Bayrou was education minister back in 93, 94 and didn’t do too well with reform. He got everybody into the street because he wanted local authorities to be free to put money into private schools as well as public schools. Bit like Windsor council pouring the rates into Eton (slight exaggeration there). Didn’t go down well and was withdrawn.

The line of attack against Bayrou, from left and right are ‘no programme’ and ‘will create a constitutional crisis”. The latter comment harks back to the fourth republique (1945 to 1958)in which the president had little power and the unstable governments were being continually made and broken. Not a very pleasing period in French history. I think the electorate is attracted to Bayrou simply because he is not one of the previous two governing parties. Both UMP and the Socialists are in fact talking in reasonably responsible tones and not promising too many handouts. So everybody hopes it will be UDF’s turn to come up with a free lunch.