L'Heure Bleue

L'Heure Bleue

The light changes in a moment. Usually the sky turns lavender with an eerie glow. Early October in the Quartier St Honore with the afterglow of the sunset lingering over the Tuileries brings this light. Walking in the Place du Marche, the market closing, the cafe terraces crowded and lit with candles, one breathes the warmth of Indian Summer. Women in summer clothes with light wraps on their shoulders; waiters ready to light the terrace heaters as aperetifs are served. Yet that light glimmers from a translucent sky that hints of mysteries beyond human ken: a moment seen as if through a crystal.

L'Heure Bleue by Guerlain formulated by Jaques Guerlain in 1012 is a famous scent that hints at forces beyond reality. That moment which tells us we are not in control. This breathtaking moment that can begin a love affair or turn order into calamity, peace into war:

It hints at time suspended, even as that lilac sky is suspended above the Paris  rooftops.

Jaques Guerlain said that one day l'heure bleue brought him a premonition of an imminent catastrophe which was to be World War I. L'Heure Bleue, the scent which he created symbolizes the Belle Epocque : as he recalled that moment where the leisured strolled between afternoon and evening at the hour when dusk after a warm afternoon brings this atmospheric light.

In the present day, that light continues in the moment between sunset and night. Before the lights come on in the streets and apartments, the sky glows as if lit through a pale amethyst.

I sit outside in my English garden, sipping a cocktail. I have never seen L'heure blue here until now. I know it from Paris where that moment of early evening after sunset in early October inspires one with mystical alertness.  Is it the hot summer or the imminence of great changes, portending some elusive future? Something is suspended, waiting: a moment that portends a new world. Mingled scents of wood smoke, fallen leaves, lingering roses reassure one that there is continuity or a sort. Stars and bats appear from opal fragments of light caught among dark branches. L'heure bleue is gone, leaving only faint disquiet for what may come.

Capital of The Vanities

When I left London for Paris in 2000 I was in love with the City of Lights. Relationships with two Frenchmen, the arrival of other French friends in my life and a sudden discovery that I had a good singing voice, followed by a wave of song writing led me to take an all French show to the Edinburgh Fringe. I produced cocktail and dinner cabarets at London venues and my zest to take my shows to Paris, gradually became a serious plan. I moved, leaving my entire possessions, including hundreds of books, furniture and designer clothing, in storage. I took only my piano, a new laptop and a few essentials such as my big iron cooking pot--the one from which, for 15 years, I had served fish stew and aubergine compote to eager guests before the glowing fireplace at my Montagu Square apartment. I abandoned my celebrity as an author and my constant media appearances: I had had enough of vulgar distortions of my image. Back in England, I now have another fireplace; and the black pot is already in use once more. But Paris is still my hometown, more familiar and personal to me than the London I no longer recognise as 'my town'.

Paris satisfied my many yearnings: architectural beauty, chic bars and restaurants, well designed clothes, the language of song, and finally, the man of my dreams.

For many reasons, practical and political, I moved back to the uk after 13 years.  I am an alien in my own land even though I feel passionately about its true character and its democratic values, which I would defend to my last breath. As for Paris, I feel more at home there, certainly my stomach is happier there, as is my emotional heart. I have been visiting for longer or shorter stays, and I have advanced my production of a feature film laced with my songs, a story set mainly in central Paris where the winter light on the streets and bridges will bring alive the melancholy emotions of a complicated love story. (Already selling as a novel, 'Three Days In September." on Amazon Kindle.)

When I returned to Paris for a few days last week at my lover's invitation I entered an inferno of July heat. I was staying in the Rue Faubourg St Honoré, a few yards from the British Embassy--my lover mischievously pretended his choice of hotel was "in case I had trouble after Brexit,".

While I was there, on July 21st, a few hundred yards up the street the Elysée Palace was welcoming Theresa May on her first visit as PM. I had meetings myself that day, most of them on the roof terrace of my hotel room; but I saw and heard nothing of any diplomatic traffic up the street.

The heat beat down. But around me once I descended to the street, I found only elegance and high cost boutiques: a ghetto of designer shops--Hermès, Lanvin, St Laurent, Dior. The Rue Faubourg St Honoré was totally taken over by these great names, shoulder to shoulder along the street as if castelling (chess style) against reality. The shops lacked customers. Dark suited, dark skinned security guards hovered, yawning, near their doors; bored vendeuses sat inside. But in the last half of July most potential clients were surely sunning themselves somewhere less trying than a 33 degree Paris.

Yet, nearby Boulevard Haussmann, (Galleries Lafayette a prime destination) were jammed with wildly shopping Far Easterners. In my old home quartier of St Honoré, the cafés of the Place du Marché St Honoré, Parisians were chic despite the heat. Subtle jump suits with elegant sandals and costume jewellery were prevalent. Well cut black trousers with white shirts were another option favoured by working French women. Sometime an exceptional Japanese lady (there is a large Japanese population in the 2nd Arrondissement) in haute designer dress with perennial shady hat crossed one's path. Of American tourists in shorts, T's and flip-flops there were few examples. Paris was, as always, on show. Alas, behind the mask, all is not well and delusions of elegance and opulence indulged on a very hot day during a painful foot blistering stroll through superbly window dressed Haussmannian streets belie the horrors of a country in economic distress. Twelve per cent unemployed, falling GDP, mounting assaults from Islamic lunatics plus Presidential elections, with a rising nationalist threat, to come next year are worries to cloud the brow of the most deluded sybarite. I felt I was walking through the streets of Pompeii just before the catastrophe.

In case one forgot the violence, on the corner of rue Boissy d'Anglais, heavily armed gendarmes leaped alertly into the street where nearby bastions of power were easily identifiable. But where, one could not avoid asking, would calamity strike next?

Back on the breeze cooled roof terrace, sipping champagne with my amour, such grim thoughts faded. The hemi-circular view from the eighth floor stretching from L' Academy Francais's gold plated dome across the rooftops to the Sacre Coeur swept one into a lighter mood.

Yet we were living our pleasure on the edge of a nightmare. Throughout my three-day stay in this paradise of shopping and promenading, violent unrest was taking place in a North Eastern suburb where a young man had died during arrest.

Can one really rest easily in one's bed when the poverty and rage of suburban ghettoes threaten the delicious depravity of wealth and luxury, however cushioned by the forces of law and order?

This civilised quartier, eloquent with elegance where the designer boutiques attract the rich is still one where few people now live: signs of real commercial life such as supermarkets or pharmacies are absent. Indeed, this is not the true Paris but a fantasy of Parisian life combining the worlds of diplomacy and fashion.

A short step away, the newly opened, freshly refurbished Ritz Hotel in Place Vendome, a haven, as ever, stands as yet almost empty. One hardly dare sit on the freshly upholstered royal blue cut velvet chairs. Evidence of real life is in short supply. But vanity, glorious vanity, is everywhere.

Can A Woman Scorned Bring Down a President?

  

Valerie Trierweiler's memoir "Thank You for the Moment" is clearly the enraged cry of a woman scorned. But, this is not simply a matter of a switch in the bedroom. Trierweiler is no empty headed arm ornament but a political woman and a commentator of some force. It should not be forgotten that Trierweiler, with her journalistic contacts, helped the goof Hollande to be elected as President of France. No woman would call Francois Hollande a seductive figure or even a political brain, but evidently he had attractions for some women even before he was elected.  One would wonder why this backroom functionary who became the Socialist Party's candidate for the Presidency after Dominic Strauss Khan's fall from grace managed to be elected as President of France. So politically inept that he did not realise that he could be elected--until after his debate with Sarkhozy, he was genuinely surprised at the result that took him into the Élysée. And it was a close run thing. But Valerie, forever behind him holding the umbrella (It rained a lot during the election and after--so much so that I Christened him 'President Noah' and her, 'The First Umbrella Carrier') was more than simply the 'First Girl Friend' to be. She had groomed him, guided him in his media appearances and helped to influence the press in his favour.

No wonder she's as mad as hell about the sneaky way he cheated on her. Apart from the joke he made of himself in his crash helmet riding pillion on a motor scooter to the rendezvous with his new mistress, the appalling revelations of his remarks concerning poor people--the 'sans dents' (without teeth) and Valerie's accusations that he instructed her doctors to keep her drugged so that she would not join the media furor following revelations of his infidelity in Closer Magazine, help to damn him in the eyes of the French public. Now she is enjoying her revenge as her best seller in France is published in English and several other languages; and as she appears on the Andrew Marr show and interviewed in the Times.

Of course, Trierweiler, aptly nicknamed the Rottweiler, is reviled, especially by French males for her revelations, the more so since sales figures released by her French publishers indicate several million euros accruing to her in royalties. Should she have remained loyally silent? She was not married to Hollande, so she attracts disrespect:considered by many (men) to be a 'put,' a prostitute. When Cecilia Sarkozy and Nicolas divorced soon after his election in 2007, her departure (for New York with her new journalist husband--exile is the most discreet solution on these occasions) was beautifully stage managed with divine photo shoots for Madame Figaro and other right wing media. Her book about her marriage to Nicolas was published five years after the divorce and failed to reveal much other than that Nicolas was difficult to live with.

Valerie, on the other hand was dumped and left to fend for herself. No discreet exile or highly paid job was arranged for her. No secret pay offs from her official Presidential lover apparently passed into her accounts. Shall we blame her therefore for gaining millions from her tell all?

Clearly the man is so stupid that he cannot even ensure the silence of his former companion. I must say that I hoped she would write her book and get something in return for her loyalty.

Do these revelations serve any useful purpose? Yes, they do. Francois Hollande who in 2012 omitted to tell the French tax authorities about his multi million-property investments in London should by now have been dismissed by the French Senate. Unless they take prompt action, he has until 2017 to continue his ruination of France. Only his recently appointed real-politician Prime Minister, Manuel Valls, has begun to save the day--in rhetoric if not in actuality.

But rumours of revolution abound in France and it seems that the reaction to the 'Sans Dents' quote is stirring deep wounds in the French soul that go back to the Revolution of the late Eighteenth Century. French commentators liken Hollande to Louis XVI, the incompetent king who with his controversial wife Marie Antoinette, was guillotined in 1793. There are many in France who fear the ancient revolutionary spirit has been re-ignited. Trierweiler is no Marie Antoinette but her revelations may be dangerous to the President and to the Republic itself. The best that can happen is that the Centre Right UMP, formerly led by Nicolas Sarkozy will find new leadership. Otherwise, Marine Le Pen and her Front National could take power in 2017 or at least dominate membership of the Assembly National. The worst alternative is that the Republic will be confronted increasingly with violent insurrections as Hollande and his government flounder in the conflict between socialist ideology and economic reality. The 'Sans Dents' may yet find a new set of teeth. Thank you, Valerie.

French Perfectionism and Vichy White Wash about Jewish Deportations

The French are perfectionist--mainly about themselves. They carry self-criticism to extremes but anyone else attempting to criticise them will suffer from French refusal to accept that they can be perceived as imperfect. The most popular TV programmes are those depicting the Resistance in their heroic fight against the Nazis, but anything as shameful as French collaboration with the Nazis or as ugly as anti Semitism is unpopular. The popularity of a new book by Eric Zemmour is due to its claims that deportation of Jews by the Vichy regime is not so nasty as history would have us believe.

The French endured much in WW2 and Resistance fighters were not the only heroes: private citizens sheltered Jewish families. De Gaulle was also a hero. But his is the stern mask that fits over the face of an earlier history, of those who refused to understand and listen to his warnings so that when war came, France was unprepared. As was England, thanks to Chamberlain's pacifist policies and his failure to understand Hitler's intentions.

When Germany invaded France, Antoine St Exupery, another hero of French legend, then flying with fighter squadrons against German air attacks, wrote, "We were throwing a glass of water on a forest fire." France had no chance. De Gaulle fled. The failure to arm was not only that of France: only the English Channel helped Britain buy time.

In February 2004, sixtieth year since the Allied invasion, I stayed in a friend's Normandy farmhouse and walked among tiny hamlets scattered throughout nearby farmland. Each had its tragic war memorial where long lists of WW1 casualties told of the loss of young manhood in the trenches. When WW2 threatened, there had to be avoidance of repetition. The French, with Germans already rolling their tanks towards Paris, bought time by compromise. There would not be war on French soil.

The Vichy regime was a typically French compromise. To avoid war, the destruction of historic Paris, the loss of young manhood, surrender was given an acceptable face. The Vichy Regime preserved the illusion that there was a France still in control of its own destiny. That suited the German occupiers perfectly.

Atrocities could be perpetrated under the guise of being lawful enactments by French government. Officials in French uniforms knocked on doors of Jewish houses, or did Nazi dirty work of loading Jews into trains, and German perfectionism, an even more potent weapon than that of French perfectionism, preserved the Nazi self-image of a purifying and perfecting force.

Now that history, and historic guilt, are being revised by Zemmour, in a climate where anti-Semitism is rife again and openly so at bourgeois dinner parties, that dirty work is presented as not being so dirty, nor so French. And it suits French perfectionist mentality. It is a strain that runs through French society, that denial of anything that besmirches the notion of French civilization. Elegant clothes, exquisite food, beautiful architecture, gracious manners, mistresses hidden under the correct choreography of la famille, that is part of French civilization, and it is indeed beautiful. But as Carl Jung described in his works on the human psyche, the more one pretends that all is perfect, the more the dark forces of the psyche accumulate below ground and the more likely they are to burst forth in violent expression of hideous barbarity.

A French best seller that white washes the Vichy regime is not only a distortion of history but a warning of historical repetition. The Thirties brought just such a violent expression of repressed dark forces of the Collective Unconscious, and conditions are building to be just right for a repetition. While liberal organs such as Le Monde find his views unacceptable, Eric Zemour's denials of French anti-Semitic crimes and their enthusiastic embrace by the French public may be the warning of danger around the corner.

The Sad Demise of the Hotel de la Tamise

The only light I could see was on the reception booth facing the front door. I pushed the Belle Epoque glass door with its old green painted metalwork and crossed the tiled parquet to the desk. A wizened little Indian man paled by Parisian winters sat in this box like a goblin, spotlighted yellow in the gloom. I began my request, “Je demande le disponibilite des chambers pour...”

“The hotel is closed, Madame,” he barked at me in English, with the rudeness of a born Parisian.

I had surmised that but I don’t know why he was sitting there like a one headed Cereberus at the gates of Hell, as if the place was still open, because it was otherwise a graveyard. Several years ago I had visited it to reserve a room for the friend of a friend. I had been enchanted by this reservoir of old France. Clotted lace curtains were swagged back from the courtyard windows; a very old lady, perhaps a permanent resident, perhaps the proprietor, sat in the corner by the fireplace crocheting. The dimly lit room had the patina of history. It would have served well for a film set in World War 2. (The old lady would of course have been in the Resistance and awaiting the arrival of a brave young courier from Normandy). Now it was the set for the epitaph of La France.

If an epitaph is needed it is because all that remains of Paris as you think you may know it, is a shell provided by the stupendous architecture of earlier days. Modern Paris is a building site, whose psychologically distressed inhabitants swirl in bewildered spirals, bumping into each other on the devastated streets. Vast cranes darken the skyline. Place Vendome is covered with hoardings concealing apparent demolition works. The Ritz is one of these, closed for two years. Scaffolding punctuates the rue St Honoré, the Faubourg St Honoré, and the Avenue d’Opera and surrounding streets including my own, have been dug up for work on underground networks of pipes and cables. The Tuileries was partitioned by fences for months while its paths were renewed—but then the State always has the money to spend thanks to grotesqe taxation.

Meanwhile, in the private sector, long established shops stand empty. Gourmet lunch traiteurs are being replaced by fast food joints or chain boutiques whose windows are lined by dreary rows of dummies clad in droopy garments. Gone are the artistic window displays of snazzy must haves. Everywhere, the old stylishness is giving way to the new dreariness. Even the Tabac on the corner of Rue St Roche where haughty service for postage stamps and phone cards has been a staple alongside cigarettes is being gutted to make way for, who knows what, alongside the likes of the Kooples or Sandro.

All this demolition is a sign of how Parisian life has changed, alas, for the worse.

The legendary grumpiness still abounds. But the snap and crackle of Parisian chic that made it tolerable has vanished. We might as well be in Birmingham.

Now as Paris Fashion Week fills the Tuileries with temporary pavilions and the fashonistas flocked into the local supermarkets, one might have been forgiven for wondering if the word “Fashion” means anything any more. Despite the biting cold I hardly glimpsed a gorgeous fur coat or a pair of boots to die for. The fashion buyers were barely distinguishable from the going home crowd of office workers in their flat shoes, leggings and puffa jackets. Even the smokers who relinquish their glasses of champagne in the interior of the trendy Collette on rue St Honoré to puff on the trottoir outside its windows, are no better dressed than the rest who trundle home with their grocery bags.

As the flood of fashionistas ebbed and the streets quietened, the empty Tom Ford gift bag on the corner of my street said it all. Goodbye to all that was of Paris fashion in the city whose name is still synonymous with fashion. The legend lives on for the moment but banal reality is not far behind. In the wake of spring fashion week, there remain only the copy-cat chains with their too high prices that will be slashed by 50% when the sales come. 

But, behind closed doors in the private dressmaking establishments and the higher priced designer boutiques, the foreign rich are still shopping for a lifestyle invisible to ordinary mortals. The couture houses have sold their souls for profits from perfumes and cosmetics but true Paris fashion is still there, hidden behind the skilled cutting and cunning originality of a world available only to the discerning who can afford true style and individuality. Or to those rare beings who can twist a scarf into a true accessory or add a silk flower to a perfectly cut chemise.

For those who cant--either afford it or create it -- Paris fashion is no more. Like the Hotel de la Tamise it has had its demise.

What's a Second Hand First Lady Worth on the Open Market?

The deal to set the mark for all First Lady transfers was that of Jackie Kennedy, the tragic widow, to Jackie O, purchaser of 200 pairs of shoes at a shot. From then on no used First Lady has counted for as much in cash terms.

In France they don’t measure their First Ladies for any future outside that of being an arm ornament for a male President. But in recent years a disturbing trend has taken over: the brides of Presidents are career women bent on their own rise. As a hint of the forthcoming nightmare, the uk experienced Cheryl, ‘Cheri’ to her pals, Blair whose consultations with astrologers enabled Tony to get out at the right moment and dump Gordon into the oncoming mess.

Women have often been manipulators of their male counterpart’s success. Today, such women use their connections to politically powerful males as a career move. One perfect example is Carla Bruni, a manipulator par excellence whose career at the time she met Sarkozy, desperately needed a lift. Having lost her footing on the New York catwalks and failed to find a new sponsor among the rock musicians and property tycoons of Manhattan, she turned to singing sour songs about past failed loves. By now a pariah among the arts aristocracy of Paris and the subject of a devastatingly catty Roman à Clé, she went in for drastic facial reconstruction and wangled a marriage deal with the new President. Her confession that she knows nothing about politics has not stopped her from urging Sarkozy to make a come back--because she desperately wants another career push. It wont happen: the market for second hand French Presidents is also sluggish. Even Sarko’s own party don’t want him back as leader. Enough is enough and especially enough of the pushy wife who lost him the election by her appalling publicity gaffes.

Sarko’s previous wife, Cecilia, was shunted off to New York with the journalist for whom she had left Sarko before his election. She had returned to be at his side for the victory but was chatting to someone else on the platform while he made his victory speech. The ‘rupture’ which had happened years before, was soon celebrated with a number of magazine covers with Cecilia beautifully photographed in designer clothes, before her new husband was found a job in New York to keep the pair out of French gossip mags. Cecilia returned during 2013 to publish her memoir of their life together (which she had agreed to keep quiet until he lost the election). She appeared on numerous TV shows but always said the same thing: Sarko was difficult to live with. Really?

Now we have had the Rottweiler, another career woman, but one who at least knows something about politics: she was not there as ‘First Umbrella Carrier’ to the man I nicknamed President Noah, thanks to the coming Deluge as well as actual rainfall during his election and inauguration, to promote her own career. How could she live at the Elysée with the ‘Premier Homme’ and continue to work for Paris Match? She sacrificed her career and remains devoted to this dodo. Alas she couldn’t keep the lid on the cauldron of her jealousy for Ségolène Royal, Hollande’s previous concubine.

I have always loathed the term First Lady, so patronizing for unelected bedmates of elected leaders and which has no counterpart in the description of male partners of elected female leaders such as Thatcher or Merkel. Why should these helpmeets of the private life have any political or opinion forming ‘role’ to play? Even Jackie Kennedy never opened her mouth or sponsored a charity and I doubt if her husband needed her as anything more than a glam mother of his children while he played the field and made a mess of US Cuba relations.

A recent poll of the French public reveals that 54% don’t want a “First Lady” with a role. Their preferred Presidents’ wife from recent years is Bernadette Chirac who never did anything more likely to gain attention than have afternoon tea at Angelina’s, the rue de Rivoli Salon de Thé, fashionable with Bourgeoise wives.

Only 8 % of respondents to the same poll said they ‘liked’ Valerie Trierweiler as against 92% who did not. Which only goes to show that a lady should first of all have a ring on her finger and secondly never comment on or interfere in matters political or personal that are the province of her elected husband.

Alas, it seems that Valerie, as manifested by her disgraceful treatment in the separation bulletin from the Elysée was no lady and not even the President’s wife. She was treated in the manner of a Mistress who despite being supplanted by a second Mistress (somewhat in the manner of Louis XIV’s replacement of the Marquise de Montespan by Madame de Maintenon) remained a ‘slut’ rather than a legitimately married woman. However, I suspect that while her chances of being picked up as a Trophy by some billionaire are slender, her presence at the side of the dumpy dunce who, for the moment, is still President of France, will be sorely missed by the man himself. The Rottweiler’s feisty character was an inestimable force that helped to drive this piece of fudge into the Presidency.
He needs to pay her off with a few million of his secret fund to guarantee her silence. 

So What Now, First Concubine?

Valerie Trierweiler has been humiliated by the Closer piece about Francois Hollande’s affair with an actress. Will she stay in her gorgeous Elysée Palace residence with her fabulously furnished private rooms in the East Wing, her staff of six and her expense account? Or will she leave her gilded cage and return to ‘normal’ life, which means earning her living again in the world of journalism, and possibly of ‘tell all’ books.

Her problem is that she is not an official ‘wife’ but rather an official ‘concubine.’

French law recognizes concubines as having similar rights within a relationship to a wife. Hence, Ségolène Royale, Hollande’s former concubine with whom he has four grown up children, made a settlement with him for €900,000 in 2012. But the civil laws on Concubinage do not extend to matters of State. For Trierweiler, nicknamed the Rottweiler (thanks to her ferocious attacks on colleagues at Paris Match before Hollande’s election and her promotion to First Girlfriend, and others since) must now face a dilemma. Does she swallow her ire and stay in her rather uncertain position or push François Hollande for a settlement and get out of the Elysée? 

She may not have the choice. The past several months have seen a legal attempt to prove that Trierweiler has no right whatsoever to her residence in the Elysée paid for by the French taxpayer. She is neither the legal spouse of the President, nor elected to any position, nor an official paid employee and there is therefore no justification for her expenses of €19,000 per month that pays her staff, her clothes and her living costs.

So what now? She has been superceded as First Concubine by a younger model and indeed it is doubtful if after this embarrassment and no doubt furious rows with Hollande, that she will be functioning as a concubine at all.

There will, as she moves about the Elysée be hushed silences and downcast eyes when she meets her staff, thinly veiled disrespect from the uniformed functionaries, and hardly veiled sneers from those whom she has lashed with her barbed tongue.

Outside, in the streets and watering holes of Paris she will, if she dares go out at all be laughed at, for this woman who has been so arrogant and vicious to others, including to Ségolène Royale (both in person and in print) is now cast out of favour.

As for appearing in public on the President’s arm or shadowing him with a raised umbrella (the pose that caused me to nickname her “First Umbrella Carrier”) her official visits have been canceled. Hollande frequently went on his state visits alone. One reason for not marrying his companion was in order to be able to choose to represent his country without a spouse if he chose. (No doubt Sarkozy wishes he had made the same choice rather than be saddled with a woman who was trying to steal the show everywhere they went.).

So now all that remains is for her friends in TV or print journalism to find Valerie a job. Then she can leave François and the taxpayer funded sinecure of the expenses paid Elysée.

Will Hollande then move his new woman into the Elysée’s East Wing and offer her bed, board, clothing allowance and a staff paid for by the State? Or has that little actress already ruined her chances by appearing on TV and bbbling about her relationship with Hollande.

This show has a long way yet to run. Well, at least until Hollande’s Parliamentary colleagues decide that enough is enough. The carnage to follow may include further devastating falls in Hollande’s public support. A snap poll taken after the Closer publication showed 78% of respondents think the affair’s disclosure will harm the President. The local elections in March and the European Elections in June may finally force his party to admit that he must be asked to resign or else be Impeached for his failure to run the country properly.

His secret overnight absences at the actress mistress’s Paris studio left his Presidential responsibilities on those occasions in limbo. The Commander in Chief, who has sent French troops to Africa has put his own security at risk and that of his nation while absent from the shop. One security guard only knew of his whereabouts on these occasions. Never mind the risk of a scooter crash or worse. These careless adolescent escapades that put the nation at risk must surely be added to the list of misdemeanours including the failure to report his true wealth in 2012 and his mismanagement of the French economy that justify a vote by one third of either house of representatives for his Impeachment.

The alternative must be the election of the Front Nationale to power with the consequent shambolic retreat of France from the EU, the Euro and civilization.

For the full story on Hollande’s concealment of his wealth of €17 million in 2012 see my previous article “Don’t Shoot The President—yet!” at nesta-wyninparis.blogspot.com dated January 5^th 2014.