Cathedrals

It seems that some people would beg to differ on my analysis of the relative merits of Lincoln and the cathedrals of Northern France.

Actually there was no begging involved. Just the "You are totally wrong" approach, as favoured by Newish Labour.

So, in the spirit of fairness I enclose some pictures of the buildings in question and some more besides. In no particular order!

Lincoln - the finest

 Amiens

Beauvais

Caen

Chartres

Rouen

I stick to my opinion.

Removing road signs in the UK to confuse invaders was a good idea, but installing a British phone box outside Caen cathedral was a stroke of genius.

 Back to June 1940

Heinz:         Also, wir haben Canterbury schneller als erwartet. Und unsere Stiefel sind noch trocken.

Fritz:           Ich denke, wir sind etwas fehlen sollte hier.

Heinz:         Sie haben eine britische Geld? Ich möchte Telefon meine Mutter in München.

County flags - How did we let it happen?

When I was at school in the 1960s, we had a large printed poster on the classroom wall. The poster was entitled Flags of the World.

There were the local ones, the Commonwealth (the pink bits), Europe and worldwide. A strange way to classify things, but probably just as good as alphabetical.

Even at that early age, I got the idea in my head that people liked to have some common symbol of belonging and this was true both for civilians and the military.




I was educated in an ancient establishment in Kent. Occasionally we would go to watch the county cricket matches in Canterbury. This was probably the only time that I saw the Kent county flag, or Invicta as it was known.



Well, I've clearly been on a different planet for the last 45 years. In Lincoln this week I noticed county flags on shops and other buildings too. Rows of them. The same must be true in other counties too - I'll be looking now.

I had assumed that there must have been a national strategy that followed the resurgance of regional identity. For example, through heritage trails, those awful brown road signs and perhaps county councils wanting to increase car parking revenue.

Not a bit of it. I've found to my horror that some of the county flags were developed following some sort of missionary zeal in local radio stations. It seems that the BBC featured too.

It gets worse. It appears that the scourge of the highway, the caravan fraternity feel let down if they haven't a local flag to hoist at rallies. Poor souls.






So I've looked into this a bit more. I've found a company that sells county flags and displays the whole range. There are some real horrors. Here's my list of the tackiest.

3rd is Derbyshire





2nd is Sussex





1st is The Isle of Wight





Guess what? Two of those seem to have been influenced by BBC local radio.





Alan Partridge lives. Following on from those memorable jumpers, you can now buy something regional and tacky in polyester for £4.99






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Lincoln Green - But I'm learning

I've just spent a few days in Lincoln. I stayed up the hill, beside the cathedral. It's one of the finest in Europe - far more elegant than Chartres or Caen.

While taking tea in Woodthorpe Spa with my friend of some 45 years, I saw the remains of one of Barnes Wallis' bouncing bombs. And for the first time I tasted Lincolnshire plum bread. It has in my opinion a better taste and texture than our local bara brith or speckled bread.

So this is how my little experience unfolded. 


During the last world war, we tried to confuse any potential invaders by removing all the road signs, on the assumption that Johnny Foreigner couldn't read maps. Well it seems that the same process continues through the naming of local food delicacies. For example we have:-

• Yorkshire pudding - It's not a pudding
• Laverbread - Not cooked on hot lava and not Icelandic either
• Stilton cheese - Though Stilton is in Cambridgeshire, the EU says that Stilton may only be made in Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire
• Welsh rarebit - Nothing to do with Wales
• And finally Syringed Fritters - Also known as Nuns' Farts

(You may want to look that one up, but it does exist and it's a bit like Spanish Churros).

I was very impressed with the local plum bread and before leaving I called into a well known tea shop to buy a plum bread to take back to Wales.


I asked about the plums and from then on I was on a roll. The nice lady behind the counter explained that “plumming” refers to the process of drying soft fruits for later use during the winter months. There are no plums in Lincolnshire plum bread.


So I nodded my understanding and I pointed out that it was the same with figging. That's got nothing to do with figs either.


The other lady behind the counter gave out a little squeak, started to giggle and suddenly felt the need to do something under the counter. In theatrical circles this is known as corpsing. 


I could still hear her as I left the shop and she was still down there. 
Clearly she'd read the Wikipedia article too*.

Then there's the flag. Another saga.


*Figging reference - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figging

Saints Preserve Us - The Re-branding of Saint Patrick

The Southern Irish tiger economy is a thing of the past thanks to people believing that the bubble would never burst and spending, building and expanding beyond their means. Lean times are ahead and this is affecting Northern Ireland too. In fact the North saw it coming.





The late JF Kennedy, United States president and supreme womaniser had spotted this one. He said "If you ride on the back of a tiger, you will end up between the tiger's teeth." And he'd ridden more than most.

What do you do in these difficult times? The answer seems to be to hope for external cash - from tourism.

The Northern Ireland Tourism Board has grasped the nettle. I can imagine the focus group set up for this.

"What can we flog to the visitors?"

A silence follows, before the usual suspects are trotted out. Rugged coastline, whiskey, tweed, Ulster cuisine. Then the brainwave.

"Let's get some mileage out of Saint Patrick. he's not the exclusive property of the South."

Well done lads. Doubles all round.





Thus was born the St Patrick's Trail. A consultancy group was commissioned and then it dawned on them. If we are going to extract some money from our visitors, preferably US dollars, then they're going to want facts. Most of the history of the saint reads more like a fairy tale, like the driving snakes out of Ireland bit. The piece about the shamrock representing the Holy Trinity is a nice touch though. Provenance is a different and far more difficult matter.

Did this lack of facts put them off? Not a bit of it.




After all, even the English had spotted a similar trick hundreds of years before. The Pilgrims' Way, to Canterbury for a glimpse of the shrine of Thomas Beckett was well trodden. The Church of Rome had a winning formula. The three Ps.

Pilgrims + Penance = Profit

So The St Patrick's Trail is now an up and running concern.

The initial consultation document makes good reading, especially the bit about a desk-based assessment of facts about the saint. What does that mean?



Have a look for yourself. www.nitb.com/file handler.ash?id=280

If you'll forgive the pun:-

Never mind the saints - just bring on the profits.



One final problem. There seems to be some evidence that St Patrick is buried in Glastonbury. Sorry to mention this.





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<<Sans Blague!>> - "No Shit!"

Why do French girls wear All Stars?

You can travel to France by Eurostar. The idea is that you step off the train into a world of gastronomy, shopping and if you're in Lille, even more shopping.

The first thing that I nearly stepped into was a little mound of dog shit, just outside the station. There was more. Every few hundred metres, especially on corners from a variety of calibres, as far as I could see.

Lille is a lovely city and the old part has a real warmth, in both its architecture and its people. But it's a shame that a visitor can't fully appreciate the varied skyline, as the eyes need to be about six or seven paces ahead of the body scouring the pavement for the next little land-mine.













The pavements in the old town are cobbled and this adds to the problem as they provide a perfect camouflage for the dog shit. It blends in so well that it's often just a pace away before the raised profile becomes visible.

But Lille is not Paris. France has the seventh highest dog population in the world. There are over 8,000,000 in France and judging from my last trip to Paris, a high proportion must have at least a second home in the city of lights.

A particularly evil variant of the usual neatly laid pile, is the smudger.












Despite the egality bit, dog ownership is still a bourgeois characteristic. The worst areas for dog shit in Paris are the 7th, 16th and 17th. Things are getting better thanks to the Je Ramasse campaign. But many are too posh to pick up.

The French slang for All Stars means shit-crushers - for a reason.

Better to wear those than something more elegant. Best to avoid that je ne sais quoi between the toes.












And today's title? An abrupt if inaccurate translation that I recall from a French/Australian love match that faltered in and around my flat in Oxford in the 1980s. No kidding.

Where are they now?













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Bienvenue à la grève de cette semaine - Welcome to this week's strike

The current strikes in France remind me of the old days of industrial unrest in the UK, but with Gallic enthusiasm. The recent London Tube strike seems a pretty genial affair compared with what's going on today - kindly reported by France-24.

Demonstrators staged almost 300 marches across France yesterday. Air and rail services were halved from normal levels and disrupted commuters in major French cities, from Toulouse to Lille through Lyon. 

Union officials claimed that nearly 3 million people had joined nationwide marches over the last 10 days. Meanwhile the Prime Minister,François Fillon said that falling numbers of protesters proved that the movement was fading. In reality it may be due to the colder weather.

Last week we returned from a trip to Lille, via the Eurostar. Had we stayed on another day, we may have been there still.

The amazing thing to a mere Englishman is the passion and enthusiasm shown by the youth of France. The strike is all about a tiny increase in the retirement age, from 60 to 62. This is far better than in the UK, unless you're a psychiatrist (they can go at 55, but by that stage in their career few notice).

Compare this French enthusiasm for civil action and future planning for retirement with the British youth of today. Few would know or care about retirement. Far fewer would brave the cold and man the barricades.

That was until today - announced by our Chancellor of the Exchequer.

The state pension age will rise to 66 in 2020 for both men and women. This will affect all Britons who were under the age of 57 on April 6 of this year. We will have to wait until we're 66 before we get our state pension. So I'm there with the French on this one, as I miss out by 6 months.

It will get worse. Ministers are thinking about extending the pension age to 70 and even higher in the following decades. The state pension could be 'indexed' to increasing life expectancy, as it is in Denmark.


But the real reason the French students are striking. Social justice for the late middle aged? Equality across the generations? Not a bit of it. If the retirement age goes up, the old buggers will keep their jobs longer. In an era of high youth unemployment this is bad news. There's only a certain number of degrees you can do before having to get a real job. 


They'll be asking for euthanasia at 62 next. 


Vive La France. Vive La République.

Queens Gate, London - France 1 : England 0

A delightful day wandering around some of my old haunts in London, especially around South Kensington, Imperial and the Royal Albert Hall, backdrop to part of one of my favourite films, The Ipcress File.

Lunch at the Polish Club in Queens Gate. A fine venue and charming staff.

There are railings and diversion signs outside, as part of some misguided scheme to pedestrianize the road with vile bricks as a surface. They will never learn. Bricks are for walls not for walking on.





In Lille during the week for some culture and cuisine. Somehow the way the locals have managed the traffic access in the old town is exemplary. More so I realise, after seeing the travesty that is Queens Gate.




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Boris and the angry underground

The London Underground system is probably one of the finest in the world. It is certainly the oldest, commenced in 1854. It is the second longest in terms of track length, behind Shanghai and it is the third busiest in the world, behind Paris and Moscow. It has 260 stations and over 4,000 carriages, served by a staff of about 19,000. Over one billion individual journeys per year - an impressive workload.








But there in unrest amongst the workers. The impression given by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, is that there is a need for change and that old practices need to be kicked into at least the last century. 800 job losses are expected, with about 450 involving ticket office staff. There was a mention of staff behind glass reading novels and the need for change.









Some 10,000 staff in all categories from trains and stations took strike action this Monday evening with inevitable consequences for London's travellers.

Boris Johnson wants the government to introduce legislation to outlaw industrial action unless at least 50 per cent of union members in a workplace take part in a ballot. The CBI has suggested a minimum of 40 per cent should take part. The rightwing thinktank Policy Exchange called for similar laws last month.

Boris Johnson was elected mayor of London in 2008. The turnout was 45.3 per cent and he got the support of only 23.9 per cent of the participant electors . I know an election is different from a call for strike action, but under his recommendation he would have been an invalid contender for the post of mayor.

When faced with threats to their job, pay and pension rights, striking is usually the last resort, after discussions with management have failed.

Any capable management team would be wise to invest in useful discussions with representatives of their workforce, ideally to avert or at least to minimize strike action.

To demand legal constraints through parliamentary law-making rather misses the point, as the Mayor, to my understanding has never had direct involvement in discussions with the London Underground union representatives.







Boris Johnson has a problem. It's good to talk. Perhaps he may do so after the Conservative Party Conference this week in the capital of the speech impediment that is Birmingham.


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Commonwealth Games - Monkey business

Just when the poor folks attending the Commonwealth Games thought that things couldn't get much worse, Prince Charles turns up. No doubt he'll be asking ridiculous questions and even worse he'll be pointing at things. I've noticed that a lot of photographs of him and his even more useless brothers show them pointing, usually at some obvious structure that most people would just accept, like a shelf or a table.






So hurray for the unsung heroes of the games. The Haruman Langur monkeys, brought in to police the various stadia. I note that hockey is particularly targeted.

Delhi, one of the most crowded cities in the world has a problem with smaller monkeys. They go where they want, unhindered. They steal, they defecate and they urinate where they please. Think of them like smaller versions of chavs at a foreign holiday destination.

They are considered holy by some and they can give a very nasty bite.



Police Monkey







Chav Monkey





Windsor Monkey