The Meeting

All over the civilised World, business meetings can either be useful, efficient and interesting or they can be the most tedious and stressful affairs imaginable. The distinction can be as simple as the relevance and/or importance of the subject matter (and how that subject matter is approached) or, perhaps, the difference might lie in the characters (or lack thereof) of the individuals involved in the meeting. No country has a monopoly on boring, monotonous farts and, of course, there are always going to be the snipers and vipers to look out for – some people take great pleasure in the opportunity to belittle or undermine a colleague in front of a captive audience. It could just be the sheer volume and duration of meetings which make the difference between feeling that one’s time has been well-spent or wasted.

Assuming those variables to be common to all countries, then there are the cultural and linguistic specifics to consider.

A meeting in the UK might consist of, say, 8 people around the table, one of whom rises to his feet to point at arrows and graphs being projected onto the wall. He drones on for as long as it takes and the other 7 listen and scribble (or tap out text messages on a mobile phone hidden just below the edge of the table). This process is punctuated from time to time by a point or question raised by one of the other 7 people. Whilst their point is being made, it is temporarily they who “own” the meeting and that ownership is duly handed back to the presenter for his explanation or just to watch him sweat and stammer as he realises (along with everyone else) that there’s something fundamentally flawed in his notions. Traditionally, a 10 o’clock meeting in the UK begins at, well, 10 o’clock and, just as traditionally, one’s sense of humour is supposed to be left in a special rack outside the door on entry and picked up again afterwards, if one still has the will to live and to laugh by that stage.

Traditionally, a 10 o’clock meeting in France begins at some point thereafter. By about 10:20, most of the players will have arrived and two of them are wiring up the projector. At some stage in the ensuing day or so, the remaining participants arrive. Suddenly, invisibly and inaudibly, a starting pistol is apparently fired and all 8 people begin talking. Some are talking in pairs and others are talking to everyone. In the UK, a conversation is very much like table tennis. The “ball” (the topic of conversation) is only ever on one side of the table at any given time and it gets batted back and forth. The same conversation in France would be better compared with American Football. There’s still only the one ball but it can be chucked, kicked or carried in any direction and there are heaps of players involved, some in piles of 4 or 5, some running around individually and some grappling in pairs. I’ve witnessed many occasions when, for uninterrupted periods of several minutes, literally 5 people are in a conversation where each of the 5 is talking to the other 4 simultaneously and, amazingly, each seems to be listening to what the other 4 are saying whilst making their own contribution to the debate.

I’ve long-since abandoned any effort to try to keep up with what’s going on in these free-for-all exchanges. Clearly, the fact that the mêlée is conducted in French presents problems to me but it’s far more the case that the tight-arsed Brit in me just rejects this approach to debate. My instinct is to try to single out the voice of the person I deem most likely to be making the most sense but, at my level of French, the mixture of noise of the other 4 voices, each of which is competing to be “the one most heard”, makes it practically impossible to stay focused on the target voice.

As ever, I recognise that I’m a guest in this country. I arrive in the meeting with inevitable cultural baggage and it’s my approach to debate which is the alien one and theirs which is the norm. I just have to do my best to occupy my mind with something interesting during the scrimmages and hope that I have a clear view of the ball at the end of the fourth quarter! Touchdown!

Noddy & The Bedwetters

Dear little Noddy was born in 1949 and endures to this day in animations, books, toys, on clothing and on bed linen. Sadly, none of the Noddy merchandise sold here in France can be exported to the UK subsidiary. It just wouldn’t look quite right. Noddy is so named as he’s an agreeable little sort, nodding his way through life with a “Yes, Yes” positive attitude.

Unfortunately, the French took too literal an approach to the re-branding of little Noddy over here and, consequently, were you to buy your little scamp a French Noddy bedding set, you would find that you’d acquired a duvet cover which, even before those nightly accidents, already has “Oui, Oui” all over it.

Vive toilet humour!

Another Day, Another Milestone

I started work in Roubaix on March 1st 2006, exactly one year ago today. Ray Mears, as much as he's a top 5 hero of mine, has nothing on that level of survival!

Lille's Newest Arrival

Ok. So the last time I was waffling on about my arrival here, you side tracked me into talking about status and Airfix kits! ;o) I’ll try to stay completely on track this time but, of course, I can guarantee nothing!

So, with all those thoughts and uncertainties about for how long I might be here and where it would take me, I made an uneventful connection with the TGV and settled into the familiar, hour-long whiz to the North North East. When I hopped off the train, there I was… “home”. The more awkward bits of the journey behind me, all I now had to worry about was whether or not things were going to go smoothly for me the following day when, in theory, all my Worldly goods would arrive at my apartment, on time and in the same number of pieces as they’d been in when I’d packed them in Leeds, 2 weeks earlier.

My friend, JC, had kindly donated his spare room to me for this first night in France. I’d arrived in the late afternoon and JC would still need to be in the office for a few more hours so, killing two birds with one stone, his gorgeous girlfriend, Flo, had offered to meet me at the TGV station to pass me some keys to JC’s apartment and also to give me a lift there. Luxury! No messing about in taxis between various locations to collect keys, no trying to remember precisely where JC’s apartment was and, as a bonus, the most beautiful driver imaginable!

This wasn’t the first time I’d be seeing JC’s pad, nor was it the first time I’d encountered Flo. Obviously, my own apartment wasn’t just there waiting for me by accident. I’d spent a week in Lille a month earlier, during which time I’d familiarised myself with various job-related issues (and people), I’d benefited from the rare chance to span a weekend (as you might imagine, a normal business trip from Leeds to Lille would never be arranged in that way – mine had been deliberately organised to give me that benefit that particular time) and I’d spent a drizzly January afternoon in the pre-arranged company of a pleasant lady from a property rentals agency. She showed me 4 apartments, each of which had already been vetted to ensure that they all met with my “rules” for choosing a place to live. Being solo, I didn’t need to worry about anyone’s needs and preferences but my own. For example, a bloke with kids would need to think about school locations and whether or not the roads of the neighbourhood were safe and whatnot. A bloke who’d become accustomed to “a certain standard of living” would want to worry about living up to at least that standard. Where I’d last lived in the UK had had damp patches and wallpaper bubbling and hanging from the walls, threadbare carpets and a kitchen so small that to open the oven door in one’s dressing gown would be to risk severely over-roasted nuts. Of course, had I been a married bloke, then "my" choice of apartment would have been….. well…. “someone else’s" decision, if you get my drift.

As it was, I had 4 rules.

1) Not too pricy (the move to France was going to cost me dear, despite the company’s subsidies)

2) Central to Lille (to give me easy access to nightlife and to be close enough to the hotels where future visitors (my friends and erstwhile colleagues) from the UK subsidiary would inevitably stay)

3) Two bedrooms (To accommodate Mum and other visitors)

4) Calm!

It really was as simple as that. If the agency lady was going to show me one apartment meeting those criteria, I was going to choose to live there. As it was, she showed me 4. They all fit the 4 rules to varying degrees. One was on the tenth floor of a block so the views were fantastic but it was just a bit more pricy than I wanted and it wasn’t in the nice, quaint bits of Lille. Another had a “dream kitchen” but lacked the calm, old World character I hoped for. Another, which was comparatively cheap, simply deserved to be cheap and the fourth is my home and has been for over a year. I decided as soon as I saw it. It “ticked all the boxes” and I still love the place now, perhaps even more so today than then as, obviously, this apartment has become a character in whatever story I’m currently living.

It was and (usually) is a calm, quaint place. It charmed me into choosing it, even, as I saw it on that day, completely empty of all furniture and fittings. It has two nice bedrooms, a decently-sized kitchen, nice spacious bathroom (so much so that, as is normal here in France, the washing machine lives there). Nice big living room with good lighting and general atmosphere and, whichever of the 6 windows I might choose to look out of, something pleasant and very “French” to see. It’s 7 minutes’ walk from the fountain on the Grande Place (very much the hub of the city) and, as a result of the lack of parking and two storeys of narrow spiral staircase to climb, (no lift), it’s not a place which would appeal to someone with a car or someone old or infirm and, therefore, it was fairly reasonably-priced. “Tick, tick, tick, tick”! I’ll do a proper Blog on the apartment sometime soon, with a “walk-through” sequence of photos attached…… (when I’ve made my bed and done the washing up!)

Just to round off this chunk of waffle for the moment, as easily-pleased as I am, I’d never have been able to make the choice of apartment so confidently without the amazing help of JC and Flo. During that week in January 2006, a week which seems 10 years ago now, they both went well out of their way to help me. They walked me and talked me around the various neighbourhoods (“quartiers”), Flo had prepared a map for me with all manner of additional post-it notes and advices attached and, in a word, they were priceless.

After waving goodbye to Flo as she dropped me off at JC’s apartment, I opened his door, took my coat off and walked to his window, pulling back the blinds and looking down onto the street. To my left, a brasserie and a curiosity shop. Ahead, a florist and what looked like an old church. To my right, in the distance, restaurants familiar to me from my visits over the preceding 3 years and, just visible, a corner of the Grande Place.

No longer was the mantra “Is this right?” Much more “Bloody Hell! I’ve moved to France!”

The two photos you see above were taken from my kitchen window, one normal Sunday morning. I heard music, looked outside and there they were. Probably Saint Euphonium's Day or some such.

Bars de Lille - Episode 1

I’m never short of a bar to go to, even if I’m usually short of someone to go there with! When I was in the UK, going to a pub on my own was completely normal to me, as much as I didn’t always like that fact, so at least that meant that it was no transition at all for me to find myself in need of an escape from the apartment walls here in Lille from time to time and to satisfy this need by hitting the streets alone. Leeds? Lille? What the Hell? They’re twin towns, after all.

There are literally hundreds of bars and restaurants of all different moods, types, musical persuasions and natures of clientele and I have this rich spectrum available to me without ever needing to resort to transport beyond my own two feet so I can tailor my choice to suit the mood. I’d never lived in a city centre before moving to Lille and, despite the odd resultant problem, it’s a situation I find that I really quite like. City living is generally a good thing for a bod who’s alone although, like it or not, I’m sure it would be far more difficult for a female in similar circumstances.

I’ll do a couple of “bar reviews” (nothing pompous!) from time to time, just in case you’re over here at some stage and need a beer. I’ll start with these.

During the summer, I found myself thoroughly enjoying the intensive “people-watching” opportunities afforded by the terraces outside the many bars and brasseries of the centre of Lille (around the Grande Place, for those who know the place). Walking time from Chez Gray = 10 minutes. Having said that I like the situations of these places such as Café Leffe and Le Metropole and as much as the most comprehensive range of sights is usually to be seen from those terraces over the brim of a cinquante centilitre glass of Leffe or Stella, they’re very much “all or nothing” bars, depending upon the time of year. In the Winter, they’re fairly dead places as their main appeal is their terraces, no good in a biting wind and their interiors lack any real atmosphere. In the Summer, their terraces are almost invariably heaving and normally feature a table or two of Brit tourists who, as I’ve said before, rarely inspire me to “reveal myself” and don’t always do the UK much of a service as regards their lack of effort. Hearing someone say “Thanks, mate” to a French waiter rather than to exercise the minimum courtesy, effort and maturity it takes to say it in French makes my beer curdle. Still, I suppose it’s a step up from their not thanking the waiter at all.

Despite these reservations, these places still hold huge appeal for me in the Summer. They’re a bit pricy as a result of their orientation towards tourists (who are, of course, mainly from other parts of France). A pint can easily push $6 (about £4) but the vantage points they provide (especially Café Leffe, right on the corner of the focal point of Lille) and the sunny and interesting evenings they represent usually more than compensate.

I spent a lot of evening time making notes, designs and sketches in relation to “daft” future projects of mine over the summer and most of this was done in one or other of these two bars. I can tend to stand out a bit by doing things like that – hours on end, visibly pondering and then scratching away at a jotting pad with weird and wonderful scribbles. Like this, I get well-known to the staff and I get funny looks from the clientele. T’was ever thus (on both counts – in both countries!)

There was, however, a period this summer during which I didn’t do any writing or drawing at all as I sat at my favourite tables on those terraces. This period was, of course, that of the World Cup. Lille went totally nuts during the run that “Les Bleus” put together and the city seemed to gel, as one, to enjoy every second of it from the kick-off of Germany’s first game which, of course, opened the tournament, to the bizarre point at which Zinedine Zidane tried to find out if his eyebrows could mate with Marco Materazzi’s lungs. (Foreplay pictured above)

After that surreal event on that surreal evening of the final, it all seemed to go eerily quiet until, of course, the shoot-out. The whole of Lille and France woke up again. Up to that point, I’d barely watched France kick a ball in the tournament. I’d been far more interested in watching “them watching it”. I’d wait until the France match had started, knowing, of course, that the streets would, therefore, be practically deserted and that the terraces outside the bars, where no TV was available, would be relatively free. I’d sit there, “hearing” each cross, watching clutches of people sway in the doorways of the various bars in reaction to every free kick or near miss and seeing them explode onto the cobbles at every goal or anxiously-awaited final whistle and, ultimately, I’d watch, in intimidated wonder, as cars honked and parped their way into the night, victory in the bag, round after round, people clinging to their roofs, enormous flags swaying side to side and fireworks and flares blinding and cracking in all directions. At each passing round and expected victory, the fervour intensified and, each time, the steps of the Town Hall would, temporarily, be “owned” by whoever had brought the biggest tricolour along…… and so it was…… round after round…… until that shoot-out.

That night, even I watched the scenes on screen instead of watching the people around me. It wasn’t optional. I had to watch. As an Englishman, I knew what would happen (even as someone who doesn’t care that much about football, I was edgily aware of what I was used to seeing happen when these situations come along)….. it did. The country might have been different but the anticlimactic vacuum was the same one I’d experienced so many times before. Yes, there was the odd defiant “roof rider” and the occasional flare was let off but the town just turned itself inside out. The country did too.

Quiet disappointment. Thwarted hopes. Frustration. Parties cancelled. Poppers left unpopped.

Next time…..

Gray's Navarin D’Agneau

This might not be “the classic recipe” but I’ve done it heaps of times, changing the odd quantity or timing on each occasion until it was absolutely spot on!! (Or, at least, several people, including a Frenchman, tell me so!)

It is really easy to make and perfect for this time of year. These quantities will comfortably do for 4 people. Go on…. Give it a whirl!

We need…

A shoulder of lamb (about 700g) trimmed of fat and cut to about 3cm cubes. Keep the bone.
1 big onion, finely chopped
2 cloves of garlic, (of course!), finely chopped
About 20 small pearl onions, peeled, topped and tailed
About 20 of the smallest whole new potatoes you can find, cleaned and rubbed
About 20 tiny whole baby carrots (tinned are best)
About 150g peas (tinned are, again, best for this, even though I’d normally hate them)
2 turnips (or parsnips, if you can’t find them), peeled and chopped to about 2cm chunks.
½ pint of chicken stock (I just make it with 2 cubes and boiling water)
½ pint dry white wine
Tomato puree
Thyme and Rosemary (dried is ok if needs be)
Small quantities of olive oil, plain flour, salt and pepper
A fresh baguette.

Put the oven on! 180°C

In a large ovenproof casserole dish on a hot-plate, brown the meat completely (including the bit still on the bone) in heated oil. Add the chopped onion and garlic and keep it all moving from time to time until the onion is softened. Sprinkle a heaped tablespoon of flour over it and stir it in thoroughly. Pour the chicken stock and the wine in and add a tablespoon of tomato purée, a level teaspoon of thyme and the same again of rosemary. Stir and simmer over a medium heat for 10 minutes. The liquor will begin to bubble and thicken. Add plenty of twists of salt and pepper. Add the potatoes and turnips, stir, bung a lid on and put it in the oven.

Turn the hot-plate off and go and watch a film. Stir during the adverts.

2 hours later, add the small onions, carrots and peas and stir. Lid back on and back into the oven for min 45minutes.

Put the baguette in the oven for the final 5 minutes. Locate and remove the bone….. once cooled, give to dog. Serve the Navarin on heated plates with crusty baguette on the side and a nice glass of Muscadet.

Enjoy!

Dr Googlestone, I Presume (for PG)

As every Scotsman knows to his chagrin, we English puffs have a propensity to absorb, as “British”, the great and the good from Scotland. The list of people adopted in this way, having made their mark in the last century alone, is very substantial and extends far beyond such noteworthy names as John Logie Baird, Alexander Graham Bell, John Boyd Dunlop (yes, tyres), Anthony Charles Lynton Blair (Tony, if you like) and, of course, the “British” winner of the sprint Gold at the Moscow Olympics in 1980, Allan Wells.

Mr Blair and Mr Wells, despite each having done stuff the normal “Briton’” could only dream of doing, can’t claim the historical importance of the others in my tiny sample list. Look a little further back in time and you can find still more heavyweights of history who are “Britons”…. erm, that is to say, “Scots”. What would the World look like if James Watt hadn’t perfected steam engine technology in the 18^th Century? It doesn’t even bear thinking about and he achieved much else besides. Moving on, the advances made in the technology of bridges and canals, behind which lay the expertise of Thomas Telford, are deemed as British as any of our historical achievements could be but, yes, you’ve guessed it. Another Scotsman. There are many, many more and their feats deserve to be pinned upon the country of their birth and then, but at a secondary level, upon Britain!

As a Briton, I’m hugely proud of their ingenuity but, as an Englishman, I won’t participate in the fraud. Vive l’Ecosse and all her progressive sons and daughters!

Ok. Now that we’ve made a small scratch in the area of giving praise where it’s due, let’s get to the point of this chunk of waffle. A point inferred in its title. Having hinted at how different today’s World would have been without what they did, let’s just picture, for fun, their World with the benefit of what “we” can now do.

Yet another Scotsman, frequently deemed, by history, to have been as British as pie and peas with a Union Flag stuck into it, is David Livingstone. My personal opinions of the man are tarnished by the fact that, above all else, he was a religious missionary who sought to replace one genre of mumbo-jumbo with another (not my idea of progress – more of a sideways step in my book) but his courage and his dreams of civilisation cannot be greatly doubted. How many of us would, today, be prepared to risk our lives in the way that he and his colleagues and aides risked theirs in the pursuit of, (after the mumbo-jumbo), knowledge and discovery?

My own opinion is that it’s very unlikely that much that was “discovered” by Livingstone had been unknown to man before his arrival but I absolutely contend that, in that age as in any, it takes educated minds to register a discovery, to realise its value, to set it beside other similar discoveries elsewhere for the furtherance of human knowledge in general and to estimate its effect upon all that follows. To “see its place”, one might say.

Amongst the things catalogued and ordered for the first time, as a result of Livingstone’s endeavours, were Mosi-oa-Tunya, which he re-named "Victoria Falls" in honour of his Queen (are you sure he was Scottish? ;o) ). I can’t help thinking that “finding” something as big and as noisy as Victoria Falls is something which a European was bound to do at some stage but that doesn’t mean that I sneer at his efforts or his courage. I absolutely don’t.

About 3 years later, he set out to resolve an argument between two other notable explorers, (both of whom were actually English!) These two bods had found a large pond. In fact, it was a very large pond. As was the custom of the day, they took its local names of (disputably) Ukerewe or Nalubaale and they changed the odd letter (or even syllable) and the name of the pond was slightly adjusted into “Lake Victoria”. The argument, of course, was not about the name chosen for the pond. That was pretty much a unanimous choice. No. It was far more about the importance of the pond in the scheme of things as one of the 2 who had charted it made the (at the time) very bold claim that they had discovered the holy grail of river issues. The source of the Nile itself.

Livingstone set out to arbitrate on this claim (and its well-founded rebuttal on the part of the second of the two English explorers – the claim broke the most fundamental of scientific principles – it was not backed up by any proof and was, therefore, just a supposition). Livingstone seemingly believed that this lake might just be the source so many had been looking for or he wouldn’t have bothered.

Unfortunately, Livingstone must have been using a map he’d bought from a man in a pub in Islington as he made far too many left turns and, embarrassingly, managed to miss the lake, all 26,000 square miles of it, completely! Ironically, he didn’t miss absolutely everything on his trip. He did manage to bump into an American, who’d been sent on a mischief mission by a US newspaper. The American (although actually Welsh) was Sir Henry Morton Stanley. It was on this meeting that the celebrated “Dr Livingstone, I presume” line was allegedly uttered. Presumably, after that meeting, Livingstone carried on making left turns, based on the information of his pub map and he never quite got where he wanted to go. Stanley, on the other hand, found the pond, (the 26,000 square mile pond), did a lap around it, realised that it poured out water to the North and, thus, confirmed (this time with proof) that the source of the Nile had, indeed, been established.

I probably seem like I’ve aligned myself very much against Livingstone in my matchbox summary of these exploits. Not a bit of it. I’m a huge fan of his, just as I’m a fan of Stanley and the others for their extreme endeavour, courage, vision and stamina.

I can’t help thinking, however, that, as much as James Watt had his impact on the World going forward, the fact that these 5 photos catalogue the 2 minutes it took me to find Lake Victoria (thanks to Google Earth – if you haven’t tried it, DO!) suggests that our ancestral brothers and sisters would have fainted in admiration of what we later achieved.

…………… except, of course, that, without them, we may never have harnessed electricity and its communicational powers at all……. Foresight? Hindsight? …….. Intelligence.

Just out of interest, “ancestral” is an anagram of Lancaster, where my dear Mama came into this intriguing World of ours.