etnobofin

Sometimes I just love France. The official national 2008 unemployment figures are supposed to be released tomorrow. But they won’t be released on Thursday as scheduled because the public statistics agency is going on strike.

In fact tomorrow, most of France will be largely immobilised as millions of workers participate in a country-wide strike called by all the major unions. It’s not going to be fun for anyone trying to travel by public transport (or private car, for that matter, because everyone’s going to be on the road).

Image: Sijeka*

French strikes are nothing if not thorough. 70% of flights from French airports tomorrow are cancelled. Schools are closed, and government agencies will be operating with skeleton staffing. And don’t try listening to the radio for news: Radio France is on strike too, so will be playing Beethoven on loop all day.

For the most part, the unions aren’t demanding anything in particular this time around. They’re just expressing general disgust with President Sarkozy’s economic policies. I can’t really disagree with the unions right to strike, so I guess it’s just a matter of grinning and bearing it.

From Le Canard Enchainé - Black Thursday in the Southwest:

Radio: “No transport, no school,  no electricity…”

Wife: “This is still the storm?”

Husband: “No – the strike!”

Tomorrow, most people in France tomorrow will be getting on with things as best they can – the famous “plan débrouille“. I’m going to take the opportunity to find a walking route into the centre of town.

Some people can find some humour in the situation, however. Yesterday morning on Radio France Inter, Stéphane Guillon noted how lucky humourists have been in France since Sarkozy’s election: “We’ve never had so much work… every day, something happens! Sarkozy is Road Runner, with Wile E Coyote’s gun.”

Here’s the video (sorry in French without subtitles):

Here’s a blog that could be worth following during the year: the Grauniad‘s jazz writer John Fordham has started writing a weekly ‘episode’ that will eventually span “50 Great Moments of Jazz”. Fuel for education, debate and controversy no doubt.

It’s likely that Fordham’s perspective will encompass a ‘British’ view of the music, and I guess he’ll include at least a couple of moments that will relate to the local UK  scene (will we hear from Nat Gonella, Humphrey Lyttleton, Mike Westbrook or Courtney Pine?).  And it’s very possible that Fordham will avoid some of the classicist/progressive debates (Stanley Crouch vs Dave Douglas for example) that have so concerned US jazz cognoscenti since the 1980s.

Anyway, this week he starts with the Original Dixieland Jazz Band, (illustrated above) which is probably the only place to start if you want to post a recording each week.  By the end of February I’m guessing we’ll have cruised past King Oliver and Louis Armstrong‘s Chicago recordings, and hopefully have paid tribute to Paul Whiteman and Bix on the way through…

PS. Observant listeners/readers may notice that the version of Livery Stable Blues included in this post is NOT the 1917 ODJB version, but a much more swinging 1945 version by Muggsy Spanier‘s band.

On a clear mediterranean day, Montpellier becomes a bichrome city like Oxford – yellow sandstone and deep blue sky. Taking photos of architecture becomes a question of finding the right proportion of blue and yellow in the frame. Maybe it’s Montpellier’s winter outfit – there’s very little green at this time of year. Or maybe after living here a little while you start to see other colours, too.

After a few days on the ground here, first impressions are positive: public transport (€40 a month for unlimited travel) is very easy to use, with sexy trams like in Grenoble and Strasbourg.  A relative paucity of supermarkets is made up for by épiceries and boulangeries absolutely everywhere (as one might expect in France I suppose).

Importantly, (in terms of future employment/business prospects), Montpellier has a fairly strong entrepreneurial base, with emphasis on technology and healthcare.  Hopefully, having already done the “settling-in” process once before in Oxford, some earlier mistakes can be avoided and I can start to build a network more quickly.

Speaking French again is like stumbling half-blind through a demolition yard, and it feels like I’m massacring the language every time I open my mouth (an excess of university-level French means that I wince as I hear myself groping for the correct grammar and vocabulary), but I’m sure it’ll get better.

So far, so good.  But one mystery has arisen.  I’ve never smoked in my life, so why does EVERYONE in this country ask me for cigarettes or a light?

Excusez-moi monsieur, vous avez une petite cigarette/un feu?

The question is asked at least three times a day. I’m getting very good at saying non.

Yeah, so you know that stuff I wrote yesterday about humanity and its frailty, and the work that still needs to be done? Jay Smooth at illdoctrine.com says it so much better:

Hat-tip to Mike at Pie & Coffee.

(I promise this will be the last Obama-related post for a while.)

Let’s redefine the concept of “lame”. Lame is me.

I was in Paris on Tuesday afternoon: but rather than wandering down to the Marais for a brioche, I bought a sandwich poulet fermier at the station, stayed in my hotel room and took photos of CNN’s coverage of Obama’s inauguration.

Even from a distance, watching the events on a small TV and brushing baguette crumbs from the bedspread, one got a real sense of The Inauguration as a Historic Moment.  But perhaps in anticipation of the day, we had reimagined too much the gilded,  selective memories of ceremonies past – the investitures of Lincoln, FDR, JFK .  Obama’s speech was good, but it wasn’t great. George Kenney thought it “underwhelming” – a little harsh perhaps, but George’s reservations about Obama are healthy and justified.

If Obama’s speech didn’t quite reach the heights we had hoped, there has been some other political poetry floating about this week that’s quite cute.  Matt (the amigo formerly known as  DJ durutti)  composed a haiku on the news that Karl Rove (no, he hasn’t yet been beamed back to the Planet Zorgon) is alive and twittering:

It really is him
Foxtard tweeps rejoice. Just don’t
follow me @KarlRove!

I haven’t any clue why anyone would choose to follow Karl Rove when you can follow Darth Vader instead: much funnier, slightly less evil and more skilled in the ways of the force.  (When I started following Vader, I un-followed MC Hammer: somehow fictional Sith-power won out over knowing irony).

Anyway, although the Bush era is finished, and we will probably continue to laugh at W’s malapropisms for many years to come, a moment should be taken to salute the true Poet Laureate of the Bush presidency – Donald Henry Rumseld. His masterpiece “The Unknown” formed part of a Finance lecture on my MBA course last term as we contemplated where the credit crunch might lead:

The Unknown
(composed at a Department of Defense news briefing, Feb. 12, 2002)

As we know,
There are known knowns.
There are things we know we know.
We also know
There are known unknowns.
That is to say
We know there are some things
We do not know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
The ones we don’t know
We don’t know.

Obama’s cabinet would do well to remember Rumsfeld’s wise words as they plan their programmes for the coming years. Even in the most powerful political office in the world, it is not possible to know or forsee everything. Human beings are vain to think they can control or anticipate all eventualities. At the centre of power in America is just a regular human being. And that is the most scary, and yet the most hopeful thing of all.

…just a perfect YouTube moment (hat tip to Benjaminbrum)

One day, (probably quite soon), Tom Milsom will be seriously famous.  Multi-tentacled talent such as his will not remain undiscovered (or unsigned) for long.

This 19 year-old “from south London” writes songs, plays ukelele, drums and Casiotone AND he makes films, draws cartoons and runs one of the most popular YouTube channels in the world.  His Internet Love Song (singalong chorus, everybody now: “BRB, OMG, LOL. ROFLMAO“) has already been a hit on the web – and would make a great case study for Dubber’s New Music Strategies.

Here’s a song about a dead cat, and yes, Tom did the animation and played and wrote all the music:

Tom’s début album, Awkward Ballads for the Easily Pleased is 100% geeky and self-knowing.   Songs like Watching Paint Dry (about, er, home decoration) are infused with enough late-teen weltschmerz to hint that there’s more depth to Milsom’s music than first meets the ear. The disc glories in painstakingly-wrought rhymes and the sort of internal lyrical logic that only comes from writing and recording alone in your  bedroom. Really quite special.

It’s very possible that I am, indeed, easily pleased.  At the moment I haven’t quite decided whether Tom Milson is the Spike Milligan for the Millenial Kids, or the Ivor Cutler for the New Century. Either/or/neither, he’s one to watch.

Buy Tom’s album as mp3s on emusic, or the CD via his website. You can even follow Tom on Twitter.

Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire

I could talk about all the wonderful people I’ve met in England who I’ll miss when I leave, but that wouldn’t be very English, would it? One must control one’s emotions and remain self-deprecating in all social situations, including when blogging.

So here are five of the best THINGS about the UK that have made my time here unique and enjoyable.  Who knows, maybe I’ll miss these things so much that I’ll come back?

BBC Radio 4 – the best English-language spoken word radio station in the world? Some people accuse Radio 4 of being too white, middle-class, and biased towards the Home Counties.  But nowhere else can you hear John Humphries mercilessly grill  Gordon Brown, follow Sandi Toksvig up the Amazon or get advice on which side of the house to plant your camellia bushes.  Oh, and every night at 7pm Tom Archer will be worrying about feeding his cows.

Beer - more specifically, ale and bitter, which I learned to love through many visits to venerable Oxford establishments such as The Turf and the Lamb and Flag. People must be truly mad to buy Amstel or Fosters when in Oxford. To drink lager in historic and well-oiled pubs such as these would surely be sacrilege. Bottoms up!

Comedy – Like beer, comedy makes life in Britain tolerable.   The best British comedy and humour relies on self-deprecation, wit and a dose of surreal silliness, and there is so much of it to enjoy in the UK.  Personal favourites include Peep Show, the ubiquitous Paul Merton, Never Mind the Buzzcocks, Private Eye and of course I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue.

Choral music - I wrote about the long English tradition of choral singing in a recent post.  Even if most English people don’t realise it, English choirs are the envy of the world. Whether you believe the theology behind it or not, sung Evensong must be one of the greatest pieces of English art ever devised.

Sandwich shops – Nowhere else in the world has sandwich shops quite like Britain. I’m not talking about Subway, Greggs or Pret. I mean the little independent shops squeezed into alleyways off high streets, where a husband and wife team (or their Polish assistant) will customise your favourite tuna and sweetcorn sandwich while you wait. Personal favourites include A Patch of Blue in Calne, Wiltshire and the Oxford Sandwich Co in the Covered Markets.

Next week, I’m moving myself and the blog to France. The big plan is to make it a semi-permanent move: I’m doing the second part of my course in Montpellier, but after that I hope to get a job and live in France for a while. It’s neither a plan to solve world hunger, nor a particularly ambitious plan, but it’s a plan.

Attentive readers may know that I lived in France before – albeit briefly, before Bush II was President. Some of my writing from that period is on the blog.   My time in France knocked a few rough edges off me, but it obviously didn’t put me off the country, and now I can’t wait to go back. If I don’t go now, I’ll never go.

France is no paradise. Believe me, if I wanted to preserve my francophilic tendencies, I’d restrict my contact with the country to a couple of weeks holiday each year. As a place to live, France is no better or no worse than any other country in western Europe. But France has quirks. These are my confident predictions for the first month:

• I speak good French, but I will make a complete fool of myself at least once a day with something I say
• I will nearly be run over at least once, because I’m not used to cars driving on the right
• I’ll say I understand 80% of what’s being said, when I really understand 50%
• There will be AT LEAST one enfuriating Catch-22 involving a missing document, a bank or a bureaucrat
• Somebody will ask me if I’m German or English or American.  And when I tell them “Nouvelle-Zélande“, they’ll think I’m from Denmark.

Place de la Comédie, Montpellier. Image: Wolfgang Staudt

I’m also going to be doing all my coursework in French: I’m less worried about the classes than about writing assignments.  It’s going to be a challenge, but worth it.  Either I’ll crash and burn spectacularly, or I wont.

It’ll take a few months of pain to acclimatise. But over time, things will get better.  The language will come back.  I’ll get more assertive in queues and start drinking Volvic.  I’ll make some friends and start talking with my hands (no, really, it will happen). I’ll get up to speed again with current affairs so I can laugh at the jokes in Charlie Hebdo.

And of course, France and I may fall out of love. I may hate living there. I may give up and go home. But I hope not.

So, over the next few months I guess I’ll be blogging about different aspects of life in a “new” country. There’ll definitely still be posts about non-French things, but if etnobofin seems a little, well, préoccupé, please forgive me.

Image: mcaretaker

Our friend* Stephen Fry is filming for the BBC at the the moment in New Zealand. Here’s what he twittered today after a helicopter flight over Fiordland:

“Bloody hell!!! Fjordland [sic] ladies and gentlemen. What a spectacle. Earth Destination Number One. To throw words at it would be like throwing meringues at a charging rhinoceros. Fruitless. (Unless it’s banana pavlova). No but really. Stunningly dramatic. Best helicopter flight I’ve ever had. And we engaged with some kea too. I’m the luckiest devil alive. “

Kea, contemplating engagement with Stephen Fry (Image: Jared Kelly)

*Friend, as in “he follows me on Twitter”, which pretty much counts as friendship these days, right?