Things I read

from huggingface_hub.utils import disable_progress_bars
disable_progress_bars()

os.environ["HF_HUB_DISABLE_PROGRESS_BARS"] = '1'

uvx imgcat filename.png

llm install llm-whisper-api
llm whisper-api myfile.mp3 > transcript.txt

llm install llm-jq
curl -s https://api.github.com/repos/simonw/datasette/issues | \
  llm jq 'count by user login, top 3'

[
  {
    "login": "simonw",
    "count": 11
  },
  {
    "login": "king7532",
    "count": 5
  },
  {
    "login": "dependabot[bot]",
    "count": 2
  }
]
group_by(.user.login) | map({login: .[0].user.login, count: length}) | sort_by(-.count) | .[0:3]

llm install llm-cerebras
llm keys set cerebras
# paste key here
llm -m cerebras-llama3.1-70b 'an epic tail of a walrus pirate'

Roundup

By [email protected] (Jon North)

Birthday time, and we have celebrated jointly with a  160th party (82+78, I am the baby) with friends locally, a very informal wine tasting from our varied collecton.  A few photos...

It has rained (a rare event) so things are looking a bit greener but this is a dry corner of the Languedoc - only 35 mm on 5 September when the local average all around was nearer 50 - and another 37 yesterday.  I do spend a lot of my time watering, recycling the copious condensation from our wine store cooling system.  I shalll need to get the mower out soon...

After an anxious few days Edmond has rallied and is eating the posher kind of dog food that now tempts him.   His heart is not strong, and the vet (who is kind and thoughtful) is on standby to pay us a visit when needed, but for the moment the dog is in good spirits.

Followign the outstanding success of the Paris Olympics, the Paralympics have come and gone.  We made a determined effort to watch: The simple evidence of determination and overcoming difficulties is inspiring, and sports have been adapted, or invented, to facilitate people with disabilities of every kind to take their chance.  Now we are obliged to watch French tv, but we also have podcasts in English.   There is a splendid podcast - well worth listening to - which conveys the excellence of these athletes.  Mary and I both spent a good part of our working lives with disabled people in the voluntery sector, so this inteterests us a lot.  It seems to us that France has begun to catch up with the UK in social integration of disability

I have long been interested in road safety, and the consistently higher mortality here as compared th the UK.  I have just read that the number of people killed or injured on Welsh roads has dropped significantly since most 30mph speed limits were reduced to 20mph. There were 377 casualties on 20mph and 30mph roads in the first quarter of 2024, down from 510 in the same period last year. The number of deaths dropped from 11 to five.

We keep looking for the good news, but some of it has been really awful lately, what with riots in the UK, horrible stories of sexual violence everywhere, fake news,  and political sleaze in the UK which seems not to have diseappeared with the change of government.  The Olympics were dragged in: "Prosecutors are investigating death threats made against the artistic director of the Paris Olympic Games opening ceremony, Thomas Jolly. The ceremony, staged on monuments and boats along the River Seine, was deplored by some religious leaders and conservative politicians for one section in particular – a bacchanalian scene featuring drag artists, which they mistook for a parody of Leonardo’s The Last Supper. Jolly, a well-known theatre director, says he has been sent hate messages, some in the form of death threats, reviling his sexuality (he is openly gay) and his “wrongly assumed Israeli origins”. Several threats sent to Jolly quoted a verse from the Koran and threatened “Allah’s punishment”. 

...there is a pattern stretching back to the 12th century....  Like everyone else, I gaped in dismay as rioting tore across the country... but as the reflexive search for the “root” or “underlying” cause gathered pace, I couldn’t help recalling the parable of the good sociologist.  In this parody of the Bible, when the traveller on the road to Jericho is assaulted, the first sociologist crosses the road and passes by on the other side. The second does the same. But the good sociologist rushes to the scene, cradles the victim’s head and weeps: “Boy, the person who did this needs help.”   The violence was the opposite of a laughing matter, but I groaned to see how swiftly it was taken to be symptomatic of a credible point of view.   Almost everyone was calling the stone-throwers “far-right protesters” or “Islamophobic” – as though name-calling might be enough make them come to their senses.  Surely this was giving them too much credit. It allowed them to style themselves as warriors for a cause instead of thugs. Worse, it walked into the Faragian trap of insisting that though the violence, yes, might be over the top, the grievances were understandable, and the conversation we really needed to have was about … immigration.

It wasn’t. The subject here was violence.This is not to say that immigration is trivial or a simple matter. It is neither. The Channel is being crossed by overcrowded boats. The government is having to spend up to £5bn a year on asylum seekers. That is inspiring enough culture-war friction to keep the thinktanks occupied for years. There are major policy discussions to be had in all these areas.  But it pained me to see what was obviously a criminal uproar so swiftly becoming a “debate”. Surely, if there is one thing we could agree on, it was the fact that it is wrong for someone halfway through a six-pack to be setting fire to someone’s car, in a town (not their own) where children have just been murdered, because someone on the internet has said something angry about someone else whose name they couldn’t remember.

Part of my twinge was selfish, down to the fact that some years ago I wrote a book that presented the age-old saga of migration to Britain (since the ice melted) not as a sociopolitical nightmare but as a natural part of human life – which happened to have enriched Britain greatly. I was mindful of Tolstoy’s observation that in all literature there were really only two stories: someone leaves home, or a stranger arrives in town.  But given that one of my hopes had been to pour oil on troubled waters, it looked as though I now had to admit – as flames lit up the night sky in Southport and Plymouth – that I had written the most unsuccessful book in the history of books.Except, perhaps, in one respect, because one of the main things I learned writing it was that angry summer uprisings against perceived outsiders are nothing new. Far from being a heated response to a modern problem, they are as entrenched a part of the English social scene as Ascot, Henley and the Lord’s Test.

One cold, late evening in the winter of 1999, I was waiting for a train at Termini station in Rome when I noticed an old lady struggling with her suitcases and offered to help. “Signorina,” her voice trembled ever so slightly. “Fortunately there are still youngsters like you. I was very worried. This station is full of Albanian muggers. It’s an invasion.”

Back then I had no courage to tell her I was Albanian. One of the lucky ones – a student on a scholarship, unlike my fellow citizens who worked as cleaners, builders, carers and sex workers. ...taken literally, the only invasion in the history of the two nations went the other way round. It happened in 1939, when Mussolini’s troops ...annexed the Albanian kingdom to the kingdom of Italy.

Keir Starmer has reportedly declared that the UK government is interested in a migration pact like the Albanian one. ...all that Britain needs for an equivalent deal is a former colony with a government whose memory is sharp enough to remember the roads and buildings its master constructed in the past century but not the human beings it exploited in the past few decades.... When the argument that we must “be pragmatic” is the first to be put on the table, principles – memory, responsibility, care for vulnerable people, you name it – have already been suspended.

How to oppose it, then? Perhaps by plain logic.  Migration deals such as the one Labour is apparently studying are premised on various assumptions: that migration itself is a problem, that irregular migration is best fought with draconian border restrictions, that extraterritorial detention can act as a deterrent. There is ample research showing each premise to be dubious. But even assuming they are valid, there are three further issues any “pragmatic” politician ought to confront.

Politically, the Albania model is presented as a novelty in the management of migratory flows because it involves cooperation between an EU candidate and an EU member state. ... [but this] leaves to bilateral negotiations what ought to come about as a result of an EU-wide process.... it creates a dangerous precedent in which individual countries pursue their own deals to address their own migration “problem”, heading off chances of a truly coordinated process acrossEurope.

Second, the principle of non-refoulment enshrined in the 1951 UN convention relating to the status of refugees, prohibits the expulsion or return of people to countries deemed unsafe. Meloni insists Albania is safe, citing its EU candidate status. But if that is the case, why are pregnant women, children and other vulnerable categories exempted from the deal?

Third, there is the economic question. To comply with international law, deported migrants must remain Italy’s responsibility. According to the agreement between Italy and Albania, Italy is responsible for all the costs of construction and management of the two centres...An irregular migrant in Albania costs Italy the same or more than they would if they were processed in their own territory. The only benefit is that migrants become invisible – lontano dagli occhi, lontano dal cuore, as the Italian saying goes.

We are told that Starmer’s government is pragmatic and interested in what works. But how can a “solution” that makes no logical sense from a political, legal and economic point of view still be considered “pragmatic”?

Perhaps there is only one plausible answer: propaganda. Labour clearly thinks it can send a message to the most right-leaning voters in its coalition that it too is tough on migrants. In doing this, it takes its liberal and leftwing supporters for granted. They may suspend their principles and forgive the rhetoric for a time. But the political, legal and economic contradictions will remain.

09:41:18 AM, Monday 23 September 2024 from Jon + Mary

A quiet summer

By [email protected] (Jon North)

 

After the total immersion of the  Tour de France here in our household (bear in mind we were brushing up on our French comprehension as we watched with 100% French commentary for the first time, straining to hear snatches of English behind the interpreters' rapid translations of interview clips).  On reflection one of our highlights was the overall success of small nations  - Slovenia, Ecuador, Eritrea, Belgium on various podiums as well as the endless beauty of thr French (and initially Italian) countryside.  I didn't think the Olympics would have the same fascination for us, but we have enjoyed some amazing moments, and continue to improve our comprehension of spoken French from the tv coverage.  Simone Biles has been a revelation, recovering from disorientation 4 years ago to take triumphant gold medals.  They keep evoking the days of Korbut and Comaneci, but the fitness and tranining have gone along with higher ages - the 27 year old Biles would apparently have been called granny by other gymnasts a generation ago.

in Marc & Flo's garden in Congénies

just out of hibernation (a year or two ago)

07:26:24 AM, Saturday 10 August 2024 from Jon + Mary

Heat, family and the Tour

By [email protected] (Jon North)

The Tour de France is in its 3rd and final week - this year exceptionally (because of the Olympics) not finishing in Paris.  We have followed the cyclists for years, and although we miss the British commentators we are enjoying the French ones - it is after all a French event.  We are getting used to Tadej Pogacar outpacing his rivals up steep mountains - his current nearest rival, the Dane Jonas Vingegaard, is never far behind, but this year I don't thing he will get in front.

The scenery in these broadcasts is always magnificent - helicopters and now, I guess, drones, provide views of landscape which we'd never have seen in earlier days, and the broadcasters take pride in interspersing shots of countryside and buildings among the pictures of the race.  Tuesday's stage from Gruissan to Nîmes was particularly enjoyable for us, including as it did shots of the Pic Saint Loup north of Montpellier and then the countryside from Montpellier through the Vaunage, all of which we knnow quite well.  This website has many excellent photos of the Pic Saint Loup by Régis Domergue, a local photographer we admire.

Yesterday too the Tour back into the Alps,with magnificent landscapes and a very confused field of breakaway groups.  These grand tour races can be confusing since overall winners are calculated by cumulative time, and those who are already well ahead as the race unfolds can ride in halfway down the day's arrivals but still be in the lead.  Yesterday there were a number of group battles ahead of the leaders, and the day's stage was well won by the Ecuadorean Richard Carapaz, who has had a long career in the peleton and was with Geraint Thomas in his heyday a few years ago.

08:30:54 AM, Thursday 18 July 2024 from Jon + Mary

Voting and things

By [email protected] (Jon North)

This is election time - double whammy for us since we are still in a whirl from Thursday, and this weekend is the tense second round in the French partliamentary elections.

But I must start today by saying that I've just heard that my friend and ex-boss David Lawtey died this month.  With no exaggeration, he was oneof the most important influences in my life, in my work in  the Notts voluntary sector above all.  He was one of the fairly few people in my life who was a confirmed Conservative - goodness knows what he made of the recent chaos in British political life - and he also helped me to understand the positive qualities of a political allegiance I mostly find it hard to sympathise with.  His decency and uprightness were a huge support to me, especially at difficult moments at the end  of my career.

The personal things I take away from the British election results include some astonishing results - Henley-on-Thames which I'd got to know as a teenager switching from Conservative for the first time since 1906! (my old home area of Chesham & Amersham had already caused a big ripple in a by-election);  Rushcliffe (Kenneth Clarke's old constituency) in Notts, where I spent nearly 25 years at work falling to Labour.  The horrible muddle in Ashfield (Lee Anderson changed parties 4 times I think, Labour via tory to the far right) caused Mary and I who had worked there to raise a lot of eyebrows.  Nationally the early reports of ministerial appointments and cabinet strategy are encouraging - Rwanda is instantly abandoned the new PM is well-equipped to understand the crisis in the prison service.  Above all I hope that the changes now will bring principle back into politics, and as an ardent champion of social justice and fairness I have hopes that the new regime will uphold these in redistributing resources to those who need them most.  Early signs are encouraging.

The French situation is much less certain, though tactical withdrawals of candidates in triangular contests reduced the risks.  As I write a heated discussion is happening on the tv following the announcement of the results, no clear majority for anyone but a 3-way split.  Time will tell how this will play out but the right has been edged away from a parliamentary majority.  We have no vote here, and the President will have to work with a parliament which is equally far from his position on left and right.  I feel relief and a sense that the 2-round system and hastily formed alliances seem to have done their job.  The best stimate of the final result is below.

Domestically things are fairly quiet for us.  Edmond the dog is not very well, rather wheezy despite medication against fluid on the lungs and slow to show interest in food this weekend, but at 15 he is often  lively and walks OK, snoozing a lot in between whiles.  The weather is finally getting really warm but still not approaching the heatwaves of the last couple of years.

We have long been avid followers of the Tour de France, which is just entering its second week.  Tadej Pogacar has shown his class in pushing to the top of the  leader board and of the first serious mountain, and Mark Cavendish also shone with his record 35th stage win.  The scenery in Italy (where the Tour began) was wonderful, and since then we have seen part of France we've got to know quite well around the Savoie area and in Burgundy. This Sunday has stretches of gravel along the route, complicating things for the leaders as well as everyone else.  A black Eritrean cyclist, Biniam Girmay, is leading the points (sprint) competition by a distance, excellent for black sport.

Like other cars we have had our current Dacia Lodgy is rather dented from a collision with a long lorry on a roundabout - happily no serious damage.

As I started to write this Kiri te Kanawa, who is 80, was the guest on Tom Service's Saturday morning programme on Radio 3.  Her Countess in Figaro was an all-time classic role - wonderful. To finish a few photos of Marc & Flo's garden and one of some musical fishknoves - they actually work for 4-part harmony!

07:04:20 PM, Sunday 07 July 2024 from Jon + Mary

Midsummer

By [email protected] (Jon North)

The glow of midsummer twilight, looking north from our house

These past few weeks have also been eventful in our garden, and in France with the continuing drift to the right across much of Europe and national elections here now imminent.  An anxious wait to see if the French electoral system is shock-proof.

 We have also had the pleasure of , a long weekend visit from Jeff and Fi - others of the family will follow over the summer.

 

09:15:23 AM, Sunday 23 June 2024 from Jon + Mary

Early June

By [email protected] (Jon North)

As summer warmth arrives, we look forward to family visits, and continue to read and listen to podcasts.

My love of reading goes way back - Just William and Arthur Ransome when young, phases of Victorian classics more recently, often linked to television adaptations.  As time passes I often gravitate to stories linked to real events, for example Snow falling on cedars  by David Guterson.  Its background is the exclusion of  Japanese Americans from the US in the fevered atmosphere following Pearl Harbour.  Listening to a fascinating podcast series  History's secret heroes on BBC Radio 4 brought this vividly back - the direct experience of families suffering such devastating treatment - displacement and internment in awful camps - was only partly mitigated by the later compensation and apologies of American administrations (a bit of a contrast, all the same, to the recent frequent and reluctant acknowledgement of maladministration and mistreatment of people in the UK).

On the similar theme, paraoia leading to unjust treatment of racial minorities in wartime, I've recently discovered Eva Ibbotson, whose novels (with admittedly romantic themes) strike chords for me with music, Austrian and Jewish threads.  The last I read, twice now, is A song for summer in which among other things a man, an eminent musician called Marek,  with Czech origins, ends up interned on the Isle of Man as some of my good friends were .  An extraordinary collection of human beings - members of the Amadeus Quartet were among those rumoured to have met there, and the internment camps also featured on a podcast we've just listened to - so I think it's worth quoting at length from this well-written account:

The poor British, waiting for invasion, standing alone against Hitler, succumbed not to panic, for that was not in their nature, but to paranoia. Nazis disguised as parachuting nuns were reported daily; old ladies with a chink in their blackout curtains were taken away for questioning – and now, in an act of madness, they began to round up and imprison just those ‘enemy aliens’ who had the most to fear from Hitler and Mussolini, and who had been engaged in the fight against Fascism while high-ranking British diplomats were still taking tea with the Führer and admiring the fact that the trains ran on time. Austrian and German professors were hauled out of lecture rooms, doctors out of hospitals, students out of libraries, told they could pack one suitcase and taken away by the police. Italian shopkeepers, German bakers who had spent years in Britain, disappeared within an hour, weeping and bewildered. Spy mania was everywhere; even one traitor among the thousands of innocent refugees could not be tolerated. The camps they were taken to were not in fact concentration camps, the Tommies who guarded them were no Storm Troopers, but the bewilderment and anguish, particularly among older refugees, was appalling. Leon [another character in Ibbotson's book] happened to be at home when two policemen came for his father. He lied about his age... and was taken to an internment camp consisting of a large number of seaside boarding houses on the Isle of Man.

The views of the landladies evicted from their villas – from Bay View and Sunnydene and Resthaven – are not recorded. Forced to leave behind their garden gnomes, their monkey puzzles and brass plates offering Bed and Breakfast, they were replaced by rolls of barbed wire, observation towers and iron gates. Facing the sea but unable to reach it, cut off from all news of the outside world, the inmates wandered about, guarded by soldiers with fixed bayonets, trying to understand the nightmare that had enveloped them. Housed in villas stripped of everything except camp beds and a few cooking utensils, the men assembled each morning for roll call and the rations which they had no idea how to cook. And each day more confused ‘enemy aliens’ arrived – Nobel Laureates, old men with diabetes, social democrats who had been tortured in the prisons of the Reich and had come to Britain as to Mecca or Shangri La.

Although it was obvious to even the thickest British Tommy that Hitler, if he had been relying on these men for spies, would have little hope of winning the war, the net which produced such a strange catch did just occasionally dredge up a genuine Nazi. When this happened, the results were unfortunate. Immolated in boarding houses with at least a dozen Jews whose suffering at the hands of the Nazis had been unspeakable, a man polishing his boots and saying that Hitler would soon overrun Britain did not have a happy life. He was refused his rations, ostracised, the blankets stolen from his bed. Most of them capitulated and learnt to hold their tongues, but one of them, a handsome blond young man called Erich Unterhausen, continued each morning to polish his boots, give the Nazi salute and say, ‘Heil Hitler!’ At least he did until a rainy morning in late July when he flew suddenly out of the first-floor window of Mon Repos, bounced off a privet bush, and landed on a flower bed planted with crimson salvias and purple aubretia. He was not hurt, only bruised, which was a pity, but the news, spreading quickly through the camp, was regarded by the inmates as the first glimmer of light since the fall of France. Needless to say, the perpetrator of this brutality was immediately marched off to the camp commandant in his office, where he admitted his guilt and was entirely unrepentant. ‘If you don’t get rid of people like Unterhausen you’ll have a murder on your hands,' he said, confusing the commandant with his flawless English. ‘Rounding up accredited Nazis with these people is madness. You know perfectly well who the real Nazis are in this camp – I’ve only been here a day but I can tell you: Schweger in Sunnydene, Pischinger in that place with the blue pottery cat – and the chap I threw out of the window. He’s the only one who could possibly be a spy, and the sooner he’s in a proper prison the better – anyone worth their salt could signal from here. As for Schweger, he’s in with some hotheads from the Jewish Freedom Movement and they’re starving him to death.’

Thank you for telling me my business,’ said the commandant, and was disconcerted by an entirely friendly smile from the tall, broad-shouldered man with the scar on his forehead. He looked down at the papers that had come with the prisoner. ‘You say you’re a Czech.’ ‘I don’t say I am; I am,’ said the prisoner unruffledly. ‘So what are you doing here? The Czechs are our allies.’ Marek was silent. The Czechs might be allies now, but before, at Munich, they had been betrayed. ‘Your name is German.’ ‘Yes. I came over in a fishing boat; we were strafed and capsized outside Dover. I got concussion. Apparently I spoke German to the dogs.’ ‘The dogs?’ ‘There was a whole compound of stray dogs which the Tommies had smuggled out of France when they were taken off at Dunkirk – you’ve never heard such a racket. They put my stretcher down beside a big black and tan pointer. My father’s hunting dogs were always trained in German and when I came round –’ He shook his head. ‘It doesn’t matter about me; they’ll sort it out. I’m quite glad to be out of the way till the Czechoslovak Air Force reassembles. But Unterhausen must go, and the other Nazis – and old Professor Cohen must go to hospital – the one who stands by the barbed wire and gets his beard caught. He’s very eminent and very ill – if he dies there’ll be questions asked. They’re being asked already in Parliament and elsewhere.’

Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?’ sneered the second in command, a brash young lieutenant, but the commandant frowned him down. A humane man, he knew full well that he was caught up in one of those administrative muddles that happens in war and can claim lives. It was to him that Marek spoke. ‘Most of the people in here understand what has happened – that there was bound to be confusion after the French surrendered, that we’ve got mixed up with the parachuting nuns and that it won’t go on for ever. But not all of them. There have been two suicides in one of the other camps, as you no doubt know. This whole business – interning the people who have most of all to fear from Hitler – is going to be a pretty discreditable episode in retrospect. What’s more, if Hitler does invade, you’ve made it nice and easy for him, corralling all the Jews and the anti-Nazis together so he doesn’t have to go looking.’ ‘... the internees (from whom all news of the outside world was forbidden) ... [saved] the newspapers that came wrapped round their ration of kippers... [to] keep in touch with the stock exchange.

Other familiar faces now appeared in the throng: the erstwhile flautist of the Berlin Philharmonic; a copying clerk from the office of Universal Editions; Marek’s old tailor from the Kärntnerstrasse . . . and all the time more people appeared, overjoyed by the news of Unterhausen’s fate. But Marek did not intend to waste too much time on swapping stories – . ‘There’s a piano locked in the basement of the Palm Court Hotel,’ he said. ‘We can have it. It’ll have to be moved into some kind of hall or shed – anything. We’re going to give a concert.’ ‘Of what?'‘There’s only one answer to that, don’t you think?’ ‘Johann Sebastian Bach,’ said the flautist. Marek nodded. ‘Exactly so.’ For a moment he raised his eyes to heaven, seeking guidance not so much from God (whose musicality was not well documented) as from his erstwhile representative on earth, the Kapellmeister of Leipzig.

I have been musing why my sympathy and emotions are so strongly stirred by such injustice - after all, I have had a comfortable life in entirely British surroundings give or take a splash of Quakerism and some marvellous friends as role models, but that is how it is and I shall continue to be drawn by underdog tales.

This has turned out to be  a single subject blog, but the accompanyjng pictures are the usual mixture from daily life!

04:17:20 PM, Thursday 06 June 2024 from Jon + Mary

A roundup

By [email protected] (Jon North)

 Sometimes there are carpets of poppies everywhere, this year fewer but this field right next to our car servicing garage kept catching my eye and I caught it just in time while Mary booked the car in for its service.  This post will be a bit of a roundup of things I have posted on Facebook.

A while back I wrote about the plight of migrants and someone thought I might have been referring to our situation.  Of course not - we are incrdibly lucky to have landed on our feet after Brexit thanks to a very fair-minded French government and bureaucracy.  But I am ever more angry and concerned about people who have gone through unimaginable hardships to reach France and the UK, and then find in the UK at least that they are vilified and stranded.  I have been reading the various writings of Sathnam  Sanghera whose disssection of Britains imperial past is trenchant.

His autobiographical The boy with the topknot is among other things a powerful reflection on mental illness in his family; our own experienceshave echos here, and among other things his description of the slow realisation that things are wrong, attempting to rationalise the painful, is something we have known.  I have been fascinated also to see a bit from the inside the experiences of Sikh immigrants to Britain and their cultural context, including marriage exepctations and the complex place of women in his stories.  His novel Marriage material is an excellent read.

Before I pass on to lighter topics, the ongoing inhumaanity of the various refugee themes in the news is not the only awful and distressing thing we hear of and read about daily - the plight of British subpost-people wrongly prosecuted by the Post Office because of long-denied computer problems, the infected blood scandal or the plight of carers forced to pay back benefit overpayments (this links closely to my lontime work with carers through Crossroads) and the ongoing inhumanity around post-war immigrants (from the Windrush etc.) are only somr examples of things which should havce been sorted out long ago but have been swept under bureauratic carpets again and again.  I have often said that Dickens and his Circumlocution Office (in Little Dorrit) seem still  alive and well.  Apart from deliberate inhumanity, there are plenty of ways of mistreating people through shoulder-shrugging neglect - Dickens' "nobody knew" is classic now as then.

Our houshold chugs on, looking forward to a family visit here in a fortnight.  We are daily grateful for Edmond's liveliness at the age of 15!  After a thorough overhaulof the roof, more complex than we had expected, our friendly factotum M.Beaumann has continued his care of our premises with a splendid cleanup of yard and terrace and is now starting on a new front fence.  IN the caourse of this he has discovered some very ancient (well, as old as the house, around 50 years) mains electrical wiring which is still all too live.  A better casing and leaving well alone are the answers.  And our lawnmower is finally going to be cordless!

A night shot of the Pic Saint Loup with boar passing by by an excellent local photographer, Régis Domergue

Although we have limited opportunity to watch sport on tv (Mary andn I are both gravitating more to radio and podcasts these days - for her it makes knitting easier!) we follow football and cycling keenly at least by results and reports, and I am fascinated to see that Liverpool have appointed another monosyllabic manager, Mr Slot (Arne), to replace the excellent Klopp (Jürgen).

09:10:35 AM, Thursday 23 May 2024 from Jon + Mary

Sagas all round

By [email protected] (Jon North)

Sagas have been on my mind in several ways since Easter.  But first, exciting times in the tortoise world.  We were given a new (to us) young one a few weeks ago, and he had been living in a cage inside until the weather warmed.  It has now done so and today the larger tortoise emerged from its hibernation in the enclosure in the garden.  I thought its was a lump of mud at first bat, as you can see, it has scrubbed up nicely and the younger one has joined it in the paddock! The first saga has been of the literary kind, the Forsytes which have occupied our dvd viewing and my re-reading for the first part of the year.  My name, Jon, was chosen by my dad (who was emotionally attached to the books) because of the young man Jon, the youngest Jolyon of the family.  I think my father was rather muddled because he also professed an admiration for the 'man of property' epitomised by Soames who was on the 'other side' of the family.  Never mind, the story was worth reading again, and the two tv productions  are both good in theier different ways.   But the third part of the 9 volumes, going up almost to Galsworthy's death in the early 1930s, were never dramatised as far as I know and I like them even better than the Victorian and Edwardian ones - a much more nuanced examination of love and marriage, with a dramatic view of mental illness thrown in. Two less welcome 'sagas' lately have been to do with roof and health, both happily resolved.  You'll recall perhaps that the roof was repaired last year by a firm which promised excellence and, as we thought, delivered it.  It turned out that what they did not do was the issue - first neglecting to tell us of very old insulation which we've now had replaced, and secondly failing to fix any but the end tile in a whole ridge.  Of course we could have no idea that there were problems - in the second case the rattling of tiles in the wind (after a long period of fairly calm weather) told us sometehing was amiss; and luckily our regular house and garden person Monsieur Beaumann was able to sort both.  It turns out that he has long been a roof specialist - if only we had known...

Our conversation groups still active, with new arrivals from Chicago

The health saga is not, for once, my various aches and pains but the long-running one of Mary's heart and blood (since a minor stroke in 2010), very well surveyed but needing careful supervision.  Not for the first time we have been glad of the very local A&E hospital, all built since we came here.  In the past week the care has involved feeet up and suppport stockings which are too hot for comfort when the weather warms up. The warm srping is a lovely time for flowers, so here are a few more from our garden. And finally a word of praise for one of the few bits of the British administration that actually seems to work.  With luck and a following wind my new passport should arrive soon, and like Mary's it was efficiently and quickly dealt with despite Brexit horror stories elsewhere.

 

07:38:34 AM, Thursday 23 May 2024 from Jon + Mary

Springtime with rain

By [email protected] (Jon North)

I have written before about the dry conditions here.  But when it rains it really does.  Last week we had 60 mm in a few hours, and another 40 at the weekend, but this morning we are back to bright sunshine and blue skies.  The photo above was taken a few days ago, a pink evening sky which we see quite often.

We have been a bit concerned about Edmond, 14 years old and with dodgy kidneys.  But we've just returned from the vet, and all seems to be fairly well after a blood test and with a bit more diuretic - desmite occasional wheezes, he is lively and has put on a bit of weight.  We hope he will be with us for a little whhile yet.

After our trips to the UK we have mostly stayed home and slotted back into our regular activities.  These photos of our regular Tuesday French conversation group were taken by someone elsse for once, so I'm in one or two!

After a good excursion on DVD into the works of Mrs Gaskell we have passed onto John Galsworthy, not just through 2 tv series of the Forsyte Saga but, for me, rereading the books.  I started on the paper versions but have passed over to the Kindle (lighter to hold in bed).  The Forsytes have a particular association for me because I was called after Jon, son of young Jolyon F.  My father pretended to admire the 'Man of Propeerty' characterised by Soames but much about Dad seems to me to have been nearer the softer, more emotional other side of the family, the Jolyons and their ilk.  Rereading for the 4th or 5th time I find much in the detail of the written version which can only be hinted at in a tv adaptation, and in the end it is the characters of Soames and his daughter Fleur which dominate the first 6 of the 9 books in the saga.  Of the final 3, which are far less well-known, I may write more anon.

Since we returned from the UK for the second time this year, we had one very enjoyable outing to see our friend Barry who lives in these rural surroundings in the area called the Laurargais south-east of Toulouse.  Barry is South African in origin but had long re-acclimatised to England where I met him in the Canonbury Chamber Choir in the 1970s.  He and his partner Peter (now sadly no longer alive) moved to France with their interest in antiques, and the house is a living reminder of those interests.  

A few garden pittures to end with.  Spring is with us, and the clocks go forward this weekend.

10:52:57 AM, Thursday 21 March 2024 from Jon + Mary

Home and more or less in good shape

By [email protected] (Jon North)

 

The light greeting our return

It is lovely to be back in the bright, light Languedoc.  Don't get me wrong, we had a very good trip (apart from the first few hours when the motorways here were closed by prefectoral decree, because of farmers' protests - 5 hours to get near Lyon then a speeding fine for going 8 km/hr too fast in our relief at escaping the jams).  We spent excellent days with our family, saw interesting things and ate and drank well.  Our return trip, despite threats of farmers' blockages) was calm and trouble-free.  We have established a simple, untiring driving routine, turn and turn about at the wheel with short breaks for fuel and snacks, and the hotels we used were convenient and reasonably comfortable.  

But on return our  wifi was (literally) on the blink, and we waited 3 days for the engineer to arrive.  The new world of telephones, internet, tv and radio has changed everyting.  Like most people, a few years ago we had a fixed telephone line through which an adequate internet connection could be made.  Then fibre arrived, and everything became much faster.  Above all, the internet require more and more capacity to keeep up with graphics and so on.  Now, everything comes in theory through the fibre-optic cable, much faster - if it works.  If not, there is no longer a fixed phone line, no internet and only the old tv signals via the aerial (if they work at all - I have not checked).  The tv satellite dish no longer works for British tv.  I am a sad old geezer who has not taken on board the brave new world of mobile phones which our children and theirs swear by.  For one thing the screens are too small - I love my iPad and computer whhich my old eyes can read.  And of course, we pay for the service we are not getting.

Goodbye to Jeff and Fi at the end of a marvellous week together

Since I started to write this a very helpful man arrived, fixed up our internet and left before we had a chance to make sure our phone line was working.  It was not and is not.  So now we decide whether to abandon our 'landline' phones and tell everyone to call on our mobiles, or try to get things straight  for the time being it's the mobiles or nowt.  Watch this space, as they say.  Above all,  do not phone 04 67 85 52 12 - you may leave a message which is never heard.

Until we arrived home, the only shock of our return trip was seeing the appalling mess strewn across the roundabout as we left the A9 here  for the main N113 road.  At the risk of being a serial moaner, I was shocked by the piles of rubbish left behind by the protestors.  I think we have always been in favour of fair prices for farmers - we enjoy good food and have the privilege to be able to pay for it.  So I support the agriculteurs in their demands for better conditions, and for proper rewards for local produce rather than cheap imports.  we love our local greengrocer who knows his local growers personally and guarantees freshness.  I just cannot understand why protestors should not clear up their mess.  We saw the final traces being bulldozed and shovelled away as we drove around yeterday, presumably a week or more since the first demos.  A lot of work for people not at all involved in the original  protests.

Anyway, this blog was among other things a way of sharing the odd notes I post on Facebook most days with you who do not use that dodgy medium.  Here are a few recent ones.   Letter to the Guardian: “I am grateful to His Maj for his encouragement to men to have the check (King Charles ‘doing well’ after prostate treatment, 26 January). I visited my GP and was examined, blood-tested and referred to my local NHS hospital in March 2022. I have now waited 22 months for an appointment. And waited etc. Of what exactly is he an example? (John Dinning, Cardiff)”

Another letter to the Guardian: ”Your article on a reproduction of the Bayeux tapestry (29 January) should have mentioned the copy in Reading Museum, sewn by 35 women from Leek in the 19th century. It’s beautifully exhibited in the lovely town hall, with free entry. (Plus older Londoners can travel there on their Freedom Pass on the Elizabeth line.) A great day out. (Rosie Boughton, London)”

And part of yet another letter to the Guardian, which rings strong bells: “…the huge issue for me, and many other drivers according to recent RAC research, is the dangerous dazzling effect of higher, brighter LED lights. I am an older driver, and acknowledge this is likely to impact on my night driving, but my optician has assured me that it’s not me, it’s the cars. I find night-time driving, if there is a lot of oncoming traffic, utterly terrifying, and feel trapped at home on winter evenings. It’s time for a close analysis of accidents attributed to dazzle, and legislation to ensure the safest possible headlight design and position. (Sheila Hutchins,Tregony, Cornwall)”

This on my mind very often: the face of local decline and fall. “Many councils are barely able to carry out their statutory and growing responsibilities in adult and child social care, let alone engage in the kind of “discretionary” spending that enhances the life of their communities. Last week, facing a rebellion by Conservative MPs fearful of further cuts in an election year, Mr Gove made an extra £600m available to local authorities. Useful but nowhere near enough.” The sign of timid, scared central government is to keep ever tighter central control over local spending.

Then, Jurgen Klopp is retiring as Liverpool manager - what a loss, but we all get older - he certainly deserves the rest of his life.  And Nottingham is among many local councils nearing bankruptcy - how can this be alowed to happen?

05:32:15 PM, Wednesday 07 February 2024 from Jon + Mary

Photos from our travels

By [email protected] (Jon North)

More from our UK trip this week, at the Yorkshire Sculpture Parrk and in Uttoxeter

10:42:13 AM, Wednesday 31 January 2024 from Jon + Mary

Travellers' tales

By [email protected] (Jon North)

We are in the UK for the second time since Christmas, this time visiting Jeff and Fi in their new home in Uttoxeter. Like the first trip to Sam and Sas in Wirksworth, over new year, we are driving which has all sorts of advantages. However, this time things are complicated by the French farmers' protests. We set out from Lunel at 7.30 a.m. last Wednesday, but what should have been a quick 2-3 hours' journey to Lyon turned into 9 hours, and we eventually arived at our hotel in Cambrai around 9.30 in the evening (original plan, before 5 and in daylight - we are frequently caught driving after dark however much we try to plan to avoid it). 

Most of the motorway closures were officially organised by the Préfectures, so we drove most of the way south of Lyon on routes nationales, interesting but much slower. After that we just trundled on fairly empty motorways, but continuing on Thursday we were held up again by closures even on the short stretch to Calais and the tunnel. But there was no major holdup and we arrived at our friends Elizabeth & Nigel in good time, well tucked away in rural Surrey. 

 Despite the tedium of the Wednesday morning journey we were glad to get a different perspective and view of the northern Rhône vineyards around Crozes Hermitage whhich we have known for many years on occasional visits. Later on the town of Cambrai seemed interesting, with a splendid redbrick railway station just opposite our hotel - we resolved to exlor in the future when less pressed by travel unknowns. And the hotel itself was, as we found out on our earlier visit, very comfortable and friendly, with an excellent and welcome range of bar snacks to make up for the lack of a full meal. 

We have gravitated towards the Logis de France chain over many years because it always welcomes pets, and although we left our current dog Edmond in kennels on these trips the familiar ambience still attracts us. The farmers' protests look likely to continue, and we don't know if we'll be delayed on the way home next weekend. But luckily we have plenty of time. 

Our first day was delayed by official motorway closures, but more often the hold-ups are caused by long slow queues of tractors, one of which we saw heading south as we set out for Calais on Thursday. Shortly after that the authorities closed the A26 motorway for a short stretch, but we had a short journey and good alternative routes to the Tunnel. So after out overnight with friends on Thursday we drove at a leisurely pace to our home for the week in Uttoxeter, where we are very comfortably housed by Jeff and Fi who find a bit of time for us despite their busy working lives. We saw Sam, Sas and Ben for lunch on Sunday and shall see other friends and visit Wirksworth again before we leave for home at the end of the week.

 

05:26:52 PM, Tuesday 30 January 2024 from Jon + Mary

Travellers' tales

By Jon North ([email protected])

We are in the UK for the second time since Christmas, this time visiting Jeff and Fi in their new home in Uttoxeter. Like the first trip to Sam and Sas in Wirksworth, over new year, we are driving which has all sorts of advantages. However, this time things are complicated by the French farmers' protests. We set out from Lunel at 7.30 a.m. last Wednesday, but what should have been a quick 2-3 hours' journey to Lyon turned into 9 hours, and we eventually arived at our hotel in Cambrai around 9.30 in the evening (original plan, before 5 and in daylight - we are frequently caught driving after dark however much we try to plan to avoid it). 

Most of the motorway closures were officially organised by the Préfectures, so we drove most of the way south of Lyon on routes nationales, interesting but much slower. After that we just trundled on fairly empty motorways, but continuing on Thursday we were held up again by closures even on the short stretch to Calais and the tunnel. But there was no major holdup and we arrived at our friends Elizabeth & Nigel in good time, well tucked away in rural Surrey. 

 Despite the tedium of the Wednesday morning journey we were glad to get a different perspective and view of the northern Rhône vineyards around Crozes Hermitage whhich we have known for many years on occasional visits. Later on the town of Cambrai seemed interesting, with a splendid redbrick railway station just opposite our hotel - we resolved to exlor in the future when less pressed by travel unknowns. And the hotel itself was, as we found out on our earlier visit, very comfortable and friendly, with an excellent and welcome range of bar snacks to make up for the lack of a full meal. 

We have gravitated towards the Logis de France chain over many years because it always welcomes pets, and although we left our current dog Edmond in kennels on these trips the familiar ambience still attracts us. The farmers' protests look likely to continue, and we don't know if we'll be delayed on the way home next weekend. But luckily we have plenty of time. 

Our first day was delayed by official motorway closures, but more often the hold-ups are caused by long slow queues of tractors, one of which we saw heading south as we set out for Calais on Thursday. Shortly after that the authorities closed the A26 motorway for a short stretch, but we had a short journey and good alternative routes to the Tunnel. So after out overnight with friends on Thursday we drove at a leisurely pace to our home for the week in Uttoxeter, where we are very comfortably housed by Jeff and Fi who find a bit of time for us despite their busy working lives. We saw Sam, Sas and Ben for lunch on Sunday and shall see other friends and visit Wirksworth again before we leave for home at the end of the week.

05:10:14 PM, Tuesday 30 January 2024 from Jon (Wine)

A new year with wine - a post for everyone, not just wine buffs!

By Jon North ([email protected])

Solutré, near Macon

Some of my friends are not really interested in wine and tend to skip these blog posts.  So before you  do that this time I will just add a note about the fascination for me apart from the stuff in the bottle or glass.  As you  can see from the photos, scenery is one of the many attractions.

 

Châtillon-en-Diois

 

 Wine exploration has shaped our visits to France ever since we started regular trips here 30 years ago.  If you look at the map of France, relatively small physical areas are taken up by vineyards, and you are much more likely to find yourself in logging forests or endless of cereals and grass, like the open horizons and rolling slopes of the northern plain we drove through on our way to England at the end of last year.

Beaujolais

 

But we hunt out the vineyards not just for nice wine but for the interesting people and scenery we discover, get to know and love.  I think of the beautiful villages just near us in Lunel or north of Montpellier around the Pic Saint Loup; or of the vineyards of the Entre Deux Mers area south of Bordeaux - the two 'seas' here are the rivers Garonne and Dordogne as the flow northwards to join together as the Gironde at Bordeaux; or of the cossetted iconic hilly  country of Beaujolais and the Côte d'Or in Burgundy and the breathtaking rocky beauty of the Rhône valley, whether near the great river at Condrieu and Crozes Hermitage just south of Lyon or, one of our favourite places, Beaumes de Venise tucked under the Dentelles de Montmirail, once best known for its fortified sweet muscat wines but now among the best red wine labels.

 

While I always liked wine, it was meeting people who were and are involved in making it that has captured our  attention.  Jean-Michel and Christine Jacob have just retired from their Hauts Côtes de Beaune vineyard and J-M will doubtless now have more time for his beautiful  art/sculpture, two pieces of which adorn our hallway.  Jean-Philippe Servières, our best local winemaker near Lunel, would probably like to retire, having had precious little chance of a holiday over the past 20 years; and Benoit Viot of the wonderfully-named Chemin des Rêves north of Montpellier has gone from small beginnings - we bought our first wines sitting in the kitchen in Grabels - to becoming president of the prestigious appellation Pic Saint Loup.  

 

We have got to know many other landscapes in the Languedoc, Rhône valley, the Diois (where twinning opened our interest in the Rhône Valley and beyond), or the wide variety of landscapes we have explored across the south - the wild hillls of the Corbières, coastal étangs around the Mediterranean where Picpoul de Pinet is produced, or tiny appellations with unusual grapes like Fronton north of Toulouse.  We discovered Seyssel in the far north of the Rhone valley towards Geneva thanks to musician friend and mentor Stéphane Fauth (and his wife Chantal whose cooking helped to 'oil' the many music courses we  shared).  And we have started to discover the Loire Valley, one of the longest river courses in France which always confused me because the river flows north a long way, just a short distance from the south-flowing Saone and Rhône, before turning left and west at Orleans towards the Atlantic; we got to know various bits of the river - Sancerre, the Touraine, a stretch towards Angers, on various drives south from different channel ports and thanks to good friends Sue and Ian who have a house south of Tours.

Fronton

09:59:34 AM, Thursday 18 January 2024 from Jon (Wine)

New year's blog

By [email protected] (Jon North)

 

Our all-too-brief stay with Sam and family is over halfway through as I write - lovely and we shall miss them but the weather began - let's say - sub-optimal (grey and wet, though not cold).  But new year's day dawned with blue sky and sunshine.

Before we left home we indulged in Dickens DVDs, 2 sets of Little Dorritt, one excellent, the older dismal  (I once liked this version...), and then a surprisingly good Martin Chuzzlewit (Tom Wilkinson who played an excellent Pecksniff has just died).  The casts of all three are mostly outstanding, but the earlier Little Dorritt despite iconic actors like Alec Guinness and Derek Jacobi seemed wooden and stilted.  Not helped by a weird 2-part presentation which separated Amy's view from Arthur Clennam's.  Claire Foy's heroine is heaps better than Sarah Pickering, who seems to have done nothing else in film - Dickens writes a low-key character but not that low key.

I was encouraged by an Eng Lit friend to read most of Dickens on train journeys commuting to London, and still love the books - Mary came to them after she met me, and I remember buying a job-lot on £1 paperback classics to  round out our library.  Thinking over the whole series, the theme of financial insecurity and ruin, together with the vital importance of inheritance, is a strong common thread.  Dickens' father was in debt and spent months in the Marshalsea, so  CD knew of what he wrote.  Few punches pulled either - the suicide of Merdle with a penknife in Little Dorritt is memorable in book and on film.  But other books like Great Expectations - the title gives the game away -  Bleak House with its fog of law-courts, A Christmas Carol of course (we have just seen a DVD with the splendid Michael Hordern hamming it up), Our mutual friend with its heaps of valuable dust, all have money and greed at their centres.

In between whiles I have caught up with Ken Follett's latest Kingsbridge novel, this one skipping centuries forward to the  Napoleonic era, and yet another fictional rerunning of the battle of Waterloo.  The moments where a character tells another rather artificially the name of such and such a farmhouse or Quatrre Bras crossroads does jar slightly, but Follett like Bernard Cornwell has done his research, and Follett is respected enough to write about cathedral construction in the rebuilding of Notre Dame Paris just as Cornwell has written a decent factual account of Waterloo alongside the romantic version.  In my more idiotic moments I wonder how Sharpe, and a Follett hero, acting as adcs to Wellington might have bumped into one another!

We are having a great, relaxed family time here, and trying to live day by day before we drive back.  Having heard some of the awful horrors and knife-edge adventures of Sam & Sas's family holiday (they did ultimately have a good time with close friends) across the world we feel glad to have chosen more local, staid journeys, and in our own car.  It does of course strike us that the distances and complexities of air travel are inevitable when people fall in love with others from New Zealand or have great friends in the USA.  These things tend to conflict with environmental considerations.  But good plans tend to involve meeting family and friends in France, in spacious well-equipped gîtes as we did with Judi last summer.  Sam and I have been discussing areas of France to meet in, and in any case we plan to visit friends in Normandy in the summer.

This is to wish all our friends and family a hapy and healthy 2024.

05:26:09 PM, Monday 01 January 2024 from Jon + Mary