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.

Don't Shoot The President--yet!

François Holland is a frightened man. After the mass hissing and booing he received in Place de La Concorde on November 11^th 2013 he privately admitted he fears France is pre-revolutionary. Indeed, the danger of Revolution is a source of fear. A friend I accidentally encountered a few weeks before I transferred myself back to the uk said “There is terror: people are terrified of what may happen.”

Over drinks or dinners in the bars, brasseries and private apartments of central Paris people are likening the situation in France to that existing shortly before the Revolution of 1789. As then, the economy is in poor shape and taxes are rising. In 1789 anger was focused on the king and recipients of royal sinecures. In 2014 there is anger against those who are enriched by Presidential patronage, and by a President who has failed utterly to deliver his promises of May 2012. The quality of French life is declining fast. Unemployment rises. So do taxes: the next to go up is VAT. But still Hollande’s government fails to dent the deficit that alarms even the European Union’s control freak rule makers. The President’s popularity has dropped to 15% in a recent poll—a record low for an incumbent.

Is this why the roads outside the Élysée Palace, Hollande’s office were closed by police one recent night when my Paris based amour was driving home at 1.am. “Are we really so frightening?” my friend asked. Perhaps, yes. This was not the only night on which those roads were closed. A few days later a car driven by the director of a small theatre forced to close by Holland’s cuts in subsidies was rammed against the high iron gates at the back entrance to the Elysee. The man was injured but he made his point. Hollande is destroying French enterprise and also the arts, recipients of State benefits and exemptions. Artists operating on small margins, suffer first. For instance, recent changes to French film labour laws have driven award winning art movie producers such as Francois Ozone and Abdellatif Kechiche (Blue is the warmest Colour) to protest. Other producers claim they cannot afford to produce in France.

At the sharp end of business, Breton lorry drivers are also furious about taxes on heavy transporters that threaten the hitherto successful competitiveness of Breton food producers. Hollande has softened the employment taxes for SME’s but they are still struggling as frightened consumers hold onto their cash in an economy where faith in the future of keeping one’s job has plummeted. Across the board from left to right, Hollande is loathed and despised and seen as the cause of French decline: no wonder Paris seethes with talk of revolution. But it’s not the Underclass, the multi-ethnic denizens of no go suburbs who this time are ready to revolt: it is the middle and professional classes, white collar employers and employees who are most challenged and who worry how to weather three more years of Hollande as President.

Nor is it the Right who hiss and boo wherever he appears. The Bonnets Rouges, historically a Breton anti tax group against Louis 14^th later active in the French Revolution, are prominent protesters.  Freelance footage on November 11^th 2013 showed the Bonnets Rouge were also instigators of disturbances at Place de La Concorde and on the Champs Elysees. Their recorded street protests were not shown on the national TV channels. Nor was the booing Hollande received as he was sped with unseemly haste up the Champs Elysees to the Etoile to lay the wreath for the Unknown Soldier.

I said from the start that Holland was a goof and a dunce. But, no I was told, he is an Enarque, trained in the elite administrative school the Ecole Nationale d’Administration from which many top French state industry leaders have graduated. Alas, trained in orthodoxy but lacking the imagination to create the innovation needed to transform an economy in crisis. Can this dunce be removed from office?

Yes. His failure to declare his own considerable wealth at the outset of his Presidency offers good reason to start proceedings. As I wrote in my blog of November 9th 2012, Hollande did not declare apartments he owns in London to the tax authorities. In 2012 on his election, he declared capital wealth of €3m. Of this he forsook some €900,000 in his separation settlement with Ségolène Royale, mother of his four children. When elected, he claimed to be living in a rented apartment in the dowdy 15^th Arrondissement. Later, photos of two blocks where he owned flats in London were shown on the Internet and discussion of his deception became rife during autumn 2012. He was later shown to be managing his several properties and other wealth via a company: legal avoidance, but evidence of his dishonest claims to being a modest man. It was not widely known to the public that François and his brother inherited millions from their property developer father.

Meanwhile Hollande’s tax hikes drove many rich and some companies to leave France taking €50billion with them in October/November 2012.

Failure to report the true figure for his wealth should have resulted in his dismissal from office. However, during the spring of 2013 the published figure was corrected from €3m to €17m. Was this the result of arm-twisting by officials who would otherwise have forced his resignation? We may never know: much that should appear in the media does not.

So, the dunce Hollande continues to mismanage France and bring about the flight of capital, of talent and of wealth to a wider world. His predecessor, Sarkozy has yet to answer charges against him for misuse of public funds and other law breaking concerning election funding. Copé, leader of the main opposition party has yet to prove himself. But this spring’s elections for local and European seats will offer French voters the opportunity to express their disgust with the incompetent President. But he will remain President, unless...

Under the Fifth Republic constitution brought in by General de Gaulle on October 6^th 1958 the French President was the most powerful in the world and could only be removed from office by high treason or death. But on 19^th February 2007 a Constitutional amendment enacted by the French Parliament made Impeachment of the French President possible. According to the 2007 rules, in case of a "neglect of his duties manifestly incompatible with the exercise of his mandate," a two-thirds majority of either house of Parliament can authorize impeachment proceedings.

The failure to declare his true wealth is one such neglect of duties. The other is failure to govern in a way compatible with the exercise of his mandate.

It would be destructive for the country to go through the President’s dismissal or forced resignation.

But it could be worse still if someone decides to end his tenure by assassination.

No wonder Hollande is a frightened man. 

French Wine, Men and Monet

One July evening a few years ago my lover and I were sitting on the terrace of our hotel restaurant admiring a view, far below, of the Seine valley and the Western edges of the Vexin, the rich agricultural region so much fought over in the Middle Ages. We were in Monet country and Monet’s famous house at Giverny with the bridge over the water lily pool, was just up the road. My lover had chosen the red wine from Chateau Olivier in the Graves region, with care, some extravagance and to suit his own elegant preference, but mine too. I raised a glass to my lips and sipped. “French wine “ I said, “ is too....” and I watched his eyes as he waited for me to make a criticism...”delicious,” I said smiling naughtily. “One cannot get enough of it.” He relaxed visibly.  French people, among the most critical in the world, cannot take criticism.

In this case it was not an issue. Is French wine the best in the world?  I think so. I once told my lover that the French have everything—the climate, soil and geographical location to make their wines the very best, and to give them everything anyone could want in life. It is true about the wines. Lately, the weather has not favoured this wonderful wine making region of the world. Chilly summers have left the grapes of the famous production regions (especially Burgundy, and Bordeaux) low in sugar and tannins. For this reason I have bought young wines from the warmer South West as opposed to those from terroirs further north more noted for the excellence of their production. But, regardless of the weather, the French wine makers do have the expertise of blending their grape varieties into interesting ‘assemblage”. I hate it when the wine producers in France or elsewhere bottle wines of only one cepage (grape). The great skill of French wine making lies in the technique where the juices of several different grapes are combined to make the base of a wine such as a fine Bordeaux from, say, St Emilion. Many Bordeaux wines are based on a fermentation of the juices of three different grapes—Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc and Merlot. It is the proportions of these different grape juices that gives the characteristic touch to the wines of the many privileged chateaux of Bordeaux, positioned as they are on different sides of hills whose soil drainage, soil quality and exposure to sunlight determines the quality and market value of their vintage. Given the skills of ‘assemblage’ in the different wine making regions, one can really only disdain wines based on a single grape. But the habit, coming from the producers of New World wines has been catching on in France, where otherwise the techniques of blending the juices of different grape varieties give the vintage of a producer Chateau its characteristic ‘gout’.

When choosing a wine I usually want to find out the ‘cepage’ by reading the label at the back of the bottle. If I cannot find out the grapes that have gone into the wine I very often will not buy the wine unless I already know it. One of the decisive factors for me of a champagne, for instance, is the proportion of Pinot Noir over Chardonnay. The latter gives the crispy dry quality much admired in white Burgundies and champagnes, but for my taste this dryness also extends to its effect on my skin, which is also so much drier after drinking any chardonnay based wine. But I prefer the Pinot Noir, also in the red wines of Burgundy where it gives the characteristic richness and base notes to the great reds. Otherwise, my love of the Loire valley wines and champagnes is related to my preference for the other pinot grape varieties, in this case pinot gris or blanc.

We can’t have everything and sometimes we can’t have anything. Once in a rather crazy filmed interview in what was still then a Rhodesia under sanctions, with Sir Roy Welensky, the former Prime Minister of the defunct Federation of the two Rhodesias and Nyasaland, Sir Roy, the cameraman and I agreed (as we sipped Rhodesian champagne to much hilarity) that in Purgatory one would surely drink Rhodesian wine and eat American cheese with English bread.

No such problem in France where bread, wine and cheese are of such excellence.

Would the general mass of French people were equal in appreciation of their heritage.

I lift my glass to Chateau Olivier, to the glorious reflections of the Monet country and to my lover then and now.

The Great Paris Knicker Crisis

Recently, I went in search of a supply of lace knickers to take with me to London and was shocked at what I found: a terrible dearth of the right sort of knickers is plaguing the underwear sections of department stores. For some time I have left the selection of my underwear to my lover: he knows what he likes and I like to wear it. But now, the only available underwear turns out to be of a chastity belt type more like a girdle than a saucy pantie. Thanks to most women wearing their leggings daily, knickers are now designed to rise to the waist so as not to leave a wrinkle or a line in the smooth cut of skin tight black lycra or denim. Not only do knickers look like corsets but apparently they are intended to act as corsets, with tough elastic panels over belly and butt. Leggings and tight jeans are a demanding fashion that does not go with fast food habits--also increasing. Bulges abound and the rear view of many a legging wearer on the street is far from titillating. Thus, the underwear racks have been invaded by something that had its genesis in the pantie girdle of the 1950’s.

This has now turned into a big crisis for anyone wanting to cheer up her fella by showing a cute culotte under her skirt. (Culotte is the French word for knickers and really it means something that covers the ass or “cul”. Some of the early revolutionaries were “sans culottes”. Heaven knows what they actually wore to cover their credentials!).

Once upon a time there were “French Knickers” made of silk and lace. More like a dainty pair of shorts they were called ‘French’ because they allowed a naughty hand to slide easily into them. Lycra and the jeans habit put paid to those.

The ass coverings of present day Parisian females being the aforesaid black lycra leggings or sometimes skin tight jeans or jeggins, any kind of naughty knickers seem to have had their day. Even the new long line skirts, also clinging to buttock and thigh must pose a threat to the lace bikini briefs that please our men folk. One solution may be to wear no knickers at all. But men seem to enjoy ripping off their dates’ panties. In fact its almost a ritual with my lover that when we are walking home after dinner he makes sure he pushes me into a doorway and relieves me of my knickers. If one is wearing leggings or tight jeans, this very notion becomes a contortion. But then that may be one of the perverse reasons for the popularity among women for leggings over skirt. The more dangerous suburbs are replete with “types” of the more menacing kind and rape on the way home from a late evening in the city centre is a hazard that leggings and jeans help to prevent.

Parisian business women prefer to wear trouser suits for the same reason: avoidance of desktop seduction. That apart, many French women make a set at their boss in order to keep their job and earn a promotion or turn else him into a husband. The trousers are for keeping the other guys away.

I’m not sure how men are coping. Some bright young feminist should enroll for a PhD on the subject. The French government‘s Minister for female matters would possibly like to get involved. Grants could be offered. The matter requires serious study.

As for the bedroom? The upmarket lingerie specialist Chantal Thomas is still showing seductive lace underwear in her Rue St Honoré boutique. Bras, brief panties and real corsets, boned and provocatively trimmed with swansdown adorn her windows. Even there the panties show a tendency to the more robust designs of the day but they come nowhere near the waist high horrors of those in the budget stores patronized by legging wearing office workers. But, Chantal’s offerings don’t have to be worn under any clothing at all. You just stalk around in them chez toi in five inch heels and lace topped stockings held up by suspenders.

Your lover brings the obligatory bottle of champagne and a gourmet picnic, and for the moment at least you can forget leggings or jeans and the wrong kind of male attention at work. The real Paris knickers have just gone underground until fashions change again: I hope.

Meanwhile I’ve put my lover onto the job of tracking down something worth taking off of an evening after dinner.

Distant Shouting Coming Closer

Walking in the Tuileries on a Sunday evening. Sunshine at last but a blast of cold wind from the north means heavy sweaters and a jacket. Blue iris everywhere, colouring the light, scenting the wind; chestnut trees are cropped into disciplined box shapes. Ducklings are huddled under their mothers’ wings. Tranquility? Alas no.

On the other side of the river, near the Assembly Nationale, raucous voices raised, police whistles blowing. Sirens rend the air where at 7pm church bells should be heard.

This was a march by conservatives, many of them Catholics, against gay marriage. Two bills have been passed and were enacted this week. But that is not all. This week, also, Paris was the focus of European concerns about jobless youth and its consequences for political stability.

Gay marriage protests are just the tip of the iceberg. Daily life is now full of tensions and somber realities. And the man up top who carries the burden is barely up to the task. He stood at a lectern next to David Cameron, in Paris last week, as the latter spoke following the Woolwich attack. The cameras kept returning to shots of Françoise Hollande who could not keep still while his guest spoke. He was flapping papers and twitching, his facial expression that of someone who really needed to go to the lavatory. Perhaps that was his excuse? I think there are other reasons for his nervousness. The pressures on him are domestic, international and personal. And he is only a mediocrity, who fell into the job of Presidential candidate and fell into the job of President, unprepared. He is not capable of dealing with the challenges facing France.

So he has the IMF and Germany telling him what to do. He has an embarrassing legal position regarding his “First Lady”. He has difficult questions to answer concerning his own financial and fiscal declarations. Above all he has insuperable domestic problems, which, according to a book out this week could bring about a revolution in France.

The raucous voices raised over gay marriage would seem dulcet murmurings compared to what might happen if the population snaps out of its torpor and reacts against the failure of Hollande’s government to solve the country’s economic and political problems.

Jaques Attali, distinguished author; founder and first director of the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development, was Mitterand’s youthful advisor who suggested bringing Hollande into the President’s team and who much later played a role in Sarkhozy’s government. He voices the fears expressed for over a year among thinking French people in his new book “Urgences Francaises” (French Urgencies). He is not alone. Yesterday in Paris, (May 28^th) the German Finance minister expressed the growing fears that pervade EU nations. Rising youth unemployment rates, 26 % in France but over 50% in Greece, Spain, Italy and Portugal, are not only among the uneducated but also the qualified children of the executive class. Past failure to stimulate private enterprise, to support the growth of small and medium sized enterprises and the reliance on social benefits instead are the cause of political panic among Eurozone leaders.

Petty little bureaucrat that he is, Hollande’s answer is that the eurozone should work towards a joint economic government with its own budget that could take on specific projects including tackling youth unemployment. The ice age will have arrived before that notion get’s to first base.

Jaques Attali’s book encapsulates the entire frightful scenario with the brilliant logic of a man who has been watching from inside French government for so long that he knows better than anyone what grave problems and un-negotiable obstacles exist in France--a nation always socially and economically divided with few escalators for upward mobility: violent revolution has been the only means of reconstruction historically for a nation unable to gradually reform its rigid administrative and fiscal structures based on its irreconcilable class divide.

Youth unemployment across the eurozone threatens that ‘peace in our time’ that the EU’s idealistic creators imagined would prevent future conflicts on our continent. Even Hollande acknowledges that people are turning away from the European concept. Meanwhile, welfare is the opium of the people. Take it away and the psychological, fiscal and traditionally opposed class conflicts will bring catastrophic revolt. Pass me a parachute.

.

The Joan of Arc Show (or No, No, No!)

May 8^th is the day France commemorates the end of WW2 in 1945. On the Sunday following the 8^th, traffic stops while dignitaries lay wreaths of red white and blue flowers at the foot of the gold statue of Jeanne d’Arc on horseback almost below my window. I’ll be awakened by the tootling of a trumpet playing the Marseillaise. But I have so effectively sound proofed my bedroom that this morning I emerged from my 8 hours to hear shouting.

May 1^st is usually the day when the Front Nationale assembles its members around Jeanne’s statue –a symbol of French national pride--to listen to a speech by its leader Marine Le Pen.  Today, however, extremists who find Marine’s views too moderate were there. The cross roads were blocked in every direction and a relatively small group of militants were being addressed while Police Nationale stood in a line at the entrance to my street. Only a few had riot shields and their posture was relatively relaxed.

Then a more aggressive counter demo erupted. Shouting was emerging from the corner of the Place and cameras were being directed at a spot out of my line of sight and upwards. A large fire engine, ladder ready, maneuvered into position while another stood to the rear of the statue. The building on that corner houses some state offices and left wing union members were occupying its balconies. Police reinforcements now began running around and donning riot helmets. Is this unusual? No. The Joan of Arc Show often turns to riots.

I’m writing about it because a few days ago a former British Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson, and one of the leaders of the plot that removed Margaret Thatcher from office in 1990, publicly recanted on his former pro-European position. In a long article in The Times, hemadvocated that Britain get out of the EU. It is now 23 plus years since the historic moment in the Commons when Lawson’s co-conspirator Geoffrey Howe made his speech accusing Thatcher of breaking the bats with which her side were playing cricket in the negotiations to join the Exchange Rate Mechanism. Thatcher did not want the uk to join that precursor to the creation of the single currency. Her famous speech in which she said “No, no, no” to any concessions that would erode British sovereignty was the cause of her downfall. John Major who took office that same month (November 1990) after being elected as the new Conservative leader continued to follow the dream of the single currency until the UK was thrown out of the ERM by its failure to keep to the conditions. Base rates of 17% were avoided and the country was rescued from the folly propounded by Chancellor Lawson. But so soon after the bells from Thatcher’s funeral have ceased to toll, her so-called “Brilliant” Chancellor (who resigned in November 1989 and was replaced by John Major) has emerged from the closet as an advocate of British exit from the EU.

Does the little scrap at the Joan of Arc statue have any bearing on this? Only too clearly. The extreme right demanding stringent limits on immigration are not only the French Front Nationale. Their sentiments are echoed in other EU countries including the UK. EU policies permit free migration from poorer to richer member states, while failing to prevent illegal immigration. This means the raucous shouts of the extremists will be heard increasingly in every EU capital.

The beautiful floral wreaths that pay tribute to the French and Allied fallen in WW2 and whose touching messages bring thoughts of peace in our time, will not survive the coming conflicts. The Eurozone crisis, the migration crisis, the unemployment crisis, the lack of EU democracy will bring worse than this ritual piece of French street politics.

No no no? But yes, yes, yes, the uk should start dismantling the chains that bind it to a dangerously insolvent, and frighteningly divided European Union.

For more background on the Lawson-Thatcher battle over the ERM see Chapter 1 of my biography of John Major available from Amazon and other Internet bookshops (Macdonald and Futura). And for details of Major’s role in the Black Wednesday crisis when Britain left the ERM in 1991, see the Postscript to the paperback edition (Futura).

Frenchmen and Food!

I simply love the way my lover serves food. Be it a picnic or some dishes I have cooked, it’s the way he arranges it all on the platters and the way he uncorks the champagne and the wines. He’s a heavy weight businessman but that does not diminish his grasp of that French art of dealing with food. He’s French, of course and it seems that Frenchmen know all about cooking and serving food. I don’t mean ‘The French’ entirely. I mean French men. The only two French women who ever cooked anything when they stayed with me in London had one dish each in their repertoire. One did Croque Monsieur when her boyfriend visited. The other did Moule Marinere when I introduced her to a Francophile ex of mine. The moule were superb, as were the bottles of Pouille Fume he brought,  the whole lot, served before a blazing log fire in my Montagu Square salon.  The love affair lasted a few weeks. Perhaps the one dish introduction needed some additions? One should not rest on one’s culinary laurels!

But back to the men, much the best part of the deal. The best French Chefs, in France or abroad, are well known to be creative, temperamental and exacting. But although a few females have been trying to erode their solid ranks, they remain dominant in the kitchen. Two French Chefs were friends of mine in London. They worked at prestigious embassies but moonlighted to make me a three course buffet for a concert and soirée I produced for 100 people. They did a great job and the ticket holders were ecstatic about everything from the ambience to, yes the concert, and of course the food. When, I was asked, would I do another one?

Since then I’ve moved to Paris, where I have to say I find not all French know that much about food or wine. Perhaps they take for granted the fact that even the simplest brasserie or café can rustle up a delicious omelette or steak and frites. Even though the standard is declining as costs rise, these compare favourably with many London equivalents. Some French seem not to expect a foreigner to know anything about food or wine. But I was taught French dining rules as a child. Besides, there is more good wine and more good French cuisine available at good restaurants in London than in France except at the very top establishments. I’m not saying that the food lacks quality at places like Laurent where President Hollande and his First Umbrella Carrier, the Rottweiler, (yes its still raining all the time) dine occasionally--a few steps from the Elysée’s back gate. I simply think that the Michelin star system is over rated: each time I’ve eaten at a Michelin starred place, I find the more the stars, the worse the food. Crème seems to be the main ingredient, plus salt overdose, and vegetables are mere slivers of decoration. One invariable feels sick later.

But eating at top restaurants is not the point. France is acknowledged as the home of great cuisine. Due to this, gourmets from all over the world fly in to discover how to shop, cook and serve great French dishes and wines. Hence, there are cooking schools all over France where these devotees train as adepts. French people also attend cooking schools in Paris, often in the lunch breaks.

French cooking was apparently imported from Italy by the ghastly Catherine de Medici, bride of Henry I (of France) along with high heels. She did a good job on marketing both.

Paris boasts several cooking schools, one of which, ‘Cook’n with Class’ in Montmartre attracts an international clientele who are taught by English speaking Chefs. This school will have a stand at the France Exhibition at Earl’s Court the coming weekend of Jan 18^th-20^th.

Other stands at the Exhibit include estate agencies, financiers and property renovators. Their stands may have been booked before the election of Francois Hollande last May as President for five years and the killer taxes he has since imposed on foreign property owners plus their incomes, or indeed on the wealthy French. One of the latter is Gerard Depardieu the actor who has invested heavily in restaurants, one of which my lover and I patronise for its excellent simplicity. His decision to become a resident of Russia makes him one of the more celebrated examples of a wealth drain of billions that has occurred since Hollande’s anti- wealth policies came into effect last October. In October-November 2012 France’s exchequer suffered a net loss of 53bn euros as individuals and businesses decamped; plus money supply has been falling at an accelerating rate since Hollande’s investiture. Bankruptcies are rising and the private sector is in revolt.

I grieve for French enterprises whose representation at the London Exhibition demonstrates such hope that France with all its wonderful amenities for leisure will attract foreigners as property owners, investors, tourists and foodies. Alas, while the cooking skills will remain, they may reap more profit for their talented cooks and restaurateurs outside France rather than at home.