Business Going Up

I happened to look out of the window whilst on the phone at the office in Roubaix yesterday and, as you see, the building was on fire. Even as I first noticed it, there was already many a siren approaching from various directions and, as much as the second image clearly displays that the fire was really taking hold, they had it under control within about 15 minutes and, despite a bit of damage, nobody was injured and only the specific block concerned was evacuated. I understand that the seat of the blaze was in the Marketing Department but that’s somewhere I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly ventured into so whatever excitement there was happened without changing my day (apart from making me glad that, since I started this blog, I always take my digital camera with me wherever I go).

It made me think of a detail relating to the time I spent in the UK subsidiary. In the UK, every Wednesday, without fail, the fire alarm was tested. Not a good time to be in the smoking room with no carpets and curtains to dampen the noise. Then, every once in a while, the UK fire alarm would sound and seeing everyone climbing out of the window usually signalled the fact that it wasn’t Wednesday and so, out we’d all trot, have a fag and a shiver and then trot back in again, fire drill “successfully executed” – except that nobody EVER did a head count, either as we exited or as we re-entered so I don’t quite know how valid the exercise was. All I think it achieved was to make people totally blasé to the sound of the alarm and get them used to trudging out from time to time with no sense of urgency whatsoever.

Might I suggest some concealed smoke machines for the next UK fire drill?

In contrast, here in France, in the 14 months I’ve worked at that office, I’ve yet to hear the sound of the fire alarm a single time! ….. including, of course, yesterday. :o(

Nicolas & the "R" Word

Nicolas Paul Stéphane Sarközy de Nagy-Bocsa, as Minister of the Interior, made himself very unpopular with all manner of incongruous, 3^rd World, free-loading dross and their ill-informed apologists here in France in late 2005. Offending thick people is never too difficult for an intelligent person and, undoubtedly, he is an extremely intelligent person. How did he perpetrate this “offence” of our “hard of thinking” sub-species’? In the usual way, I’m frustrated to admit. He dared to speak truthfully and, what’s more, he dared to use straight talk. How audacious. His straight talk related to an incident in Clichy, Paris. A notorious shit-hole.

To be fair to our once-lovely planet, I have to qualify this by acknowledging the fact that, in the inhabitable regions of the World, there is no such place as a “shit-hole”, just places frequented or inhabited by “shit-holes” and these places, as a result of the existence and activities of said shit-holes, become deemed, geographically speaking, to be worthy of the shit-hole epithet in that secondary sense – I just thought I’d clarify. If you’re still uncertain, imagine how idyllic a walk in the country can be and then remember when your walk was marred as a result of your having stumbled across a scene where some pea-brained twat-head had dumped his old kitchen units on the edge of a gorgeous forest or, after spending an hour hearing only the voice of your walking-talking, country-loving partner and the odd welcome twitter of birdsong, you hear a distant thudding which grows ever-louder until you realise that some utter, cane-worthy, brain-dead little shite has parked his car in an otherwise wonderful location and, windows open, is playing his brain-dead, ranting, moronic beats as loudly as his speakers can muster.

So Clichy, in respect of my qualification, is not (and never was) a shit-hole in itself. It’s in Paris, a once unquestionably-beautiful and romantic city. No, Clichy just seems that way, like many a quarter in the North of England and all over the (otherwise) civilised parts of the World, as a result of “human” shit-holes being all-too-plentiful there.

Back in late 2005 in Clichy, two criminals had been fleeing from police officers who needed to talk to the criminals about alleged offences with which the criminals were thought, by the police officers, to be implicated. Obviously, not being the least bit interested in so-called Political Correctness myself, I justify my use of the word “criminals” (to those out there who need it to be explained) by the uncontested fact that the criminals were fleeing police officers. Non-criminals have no need whatsoever to flee from European police officers, whatever the colour or creed of those police officers might be. Colour is irrelevant. Criminality is the issue.

So, in their plight, these two aspiring brain surgeons looked for a “safe hide-out”. The establishment their “brains” led them to enter was an electricity sub-station. You know the kind of place. Usually a dull, insignificant little concrete edifice with nothing to distinguish it from any other shed whatsoever….. oh, apart from the fact that they’re invariably protected (or, rather, we are) by tall barbed wire fences, firmly-locked doors, often no windows and, then, their “trump card”. They tend to sport gaily-coloured signs displaying happy slogans like “Danger of Death” and such like. A minor detail? Not to me.

But, then, I’m not a fleeing criminal. I haven’t studied the minutiae of the incident so well that I know whether or not these criminals were sufficiently adept in written French to allow them to understand a phrase like “Danger de Mort!” but, if they weren’t, then they embodied the folly of allowing people to reside in Europe who don’t even possess the rudimentary building blocks required to “make a go of it” as an immigrant anywhere – mastery, to a reasonable level, of the language being one of the more crucial of those rudimentary blocks. At the same time, I have to wonder if language was even an issue in their “slight error of judgment” in their flight as I can’t help remembering, from my albeit infrequent sights of them, that “Danger of Death” signs seem invariably to feature a graphical representation of some kind, usually anything from a zigzag zap deal, to a skull & crossbones to a picture of a man holding a wire whilst his testicles explode. No, I suspect that, if these criminals were illiterate, then they may have compounded their woes by being as dumb as dumb ever gets too, just for good measure.

So the police finally caught up with them, presumably guided to their haven by the curious smell of broiled liver in the air. To the “hard of thinking”, this whole episode was a manifestation of police brutality and intransigence. Even racism. Obviously, when the story is explored with a brain or two added into the mix, the conclusions are much more realistic. Two very thick and possibly illiterate criminals lost their lives as a result of their own criminality, combined with their own stupidity. I can’t help adding a quick “So what?” to the end of the story. If we already live in a World where the demise of thick criminals is a bad thing, then the World is in a hopeless mess.

The reaction of the “less than bright” peers of these two critters, (or should that be "fritters"?), was not sombre reflection and a stark realisation that there must be a better way to live their lives than their persisting in being ill-educated and lawless no-hopers as their smouldering friends had been. No. The decision of these people was that an appropriate reaction would be to burn cars and attack police officers. Yeah, that’ll fix the whole situation, won’t it? There followed several weeks of savagery of this nature. This seemed particularly relevant to me as it all started at precisely the same time as I was starting the interview process in relation to my proposed move to France. I found it more than a little off-putting but I consoled myself with the fact that, whatever was happening wasn’t, in the main, being perpetrated by French People. Ok, I realised that, as in England, France’s indigenous thickheads tend to see something positive in the emulation of the lifestyles and linguistics of the lowest incoming denominators and, of course, there was many a genuinely French chav involved in the riots but small-minded dross, of all persuasions, is being bred by slightly older small-minded dross all over the World. The worthless shit-heads of France are no better or worse than their counterparts in Britain, America, Russia, Australia, India, Brazil and everywhere else.

Sarkozy’s “crime”, as I mooted, was to talk, as a politician, about this situation of savagery and rioting, in similar parlance to that being used in bars and households by the real French all over France at the time. He used the “V” word, “voyous”, which translates as something near enough to the word “thugs”. The French and the World's media could probably have coped with the “V” word as it was clearly difficult to argue against but then, now famously, he went on to use the “R” word – “racailles”.

To the tenderfeet of Political Correctness, the “R” word took things to a new level. I guess, to the etymologists amongst us, the word “racailles” seems to look like “rascals” and, were that the case, it would have been an alarmingly inadequate way to describe the violent hatred pouring from the shit-holes of France at the time. No, thankfully, the word translates, unequivocally, to “scum”.

How much more reassuringly-realistic do politicians ever get? I don’t have any transcripts of speeches to hand but he let rip. In the bars and homes of decent people up and down France, jaws must have dropped. He went on to say that, in a future France in which he would play a leading part, he would take a Karcher, you know, those pressure hoses you hire when you want to clean your patio and he would sweep clean the streets of a certain area of France which had seen yet more savagery. The Karcher tag still sticks with him, the best part of two years later, as does the thoroughly justified “R” word. He also dared to suggest that our feeble legal systems in Europe should be changed as his opinion was that there was something unpleasant and unacceptable in the fact that a criminal was freed by an inordinately-lenient judge, only to go on to murder a woman. I don’t even feel inclined to offer details of this crime as to do so would be to suggest that it was some kind of an extraordinary occurrence in Europe, where judges long-since lost the plot as regards what they’re there to do. This kind of "murder caused by PC judge” is all too common and any politician who speaks out against “learned idiots” like this can only be good for those of us who live our lives as the potential victims of those judges’ stupidity.

As you may know, Sarkozy is now in a four-horse race for the Elysees and, if common sense and French values prevail, then he seems to be France’s next President and that’s a superb development for France and a much-needed lesson for many other European countries. Europe is in desperate need of realistic politics after a decade or more of self-destructive nonsense.

The other contenders are;

1) Ségolène Royal, an ever-gaffing so-called Socialist whose enduring campaign achievement has been to add to her own image of hopeless naivety with every campaign phrase she’s uttered. Even if she’d been a better politician, she still represents a nightmare scenario for France. At a crucial point when France needs to get really firm in order to protect its identity, a weak and naïve President with soft policies on immigration and crime is “really not too good an idea”. Bye-bye, Baby.

2) François Bayrou. Apparently a Liberal, this guy makes Charles Kennedy and Paddy Ashdown look like they had some policies and, as an encore, he makes Ming Campbell appear to be charismatic. Do me a favour, Frank.

3) Ahh… and then we have the fifty years of political guile of Monsieur Jean-Marie le Pen of the Front National. This guy is so astute and so in tune with real French sentiments that, as much as he’ll probably arrive in 4th place, (as opposed to 2^nd in the last election), his legacy will likely be the cherry on Nicolas Sarkozy’s cake. The reason for this is both sensible and stupid in equal measure. Sensible because I imagine that even le Pen himself realises that, as much as France would like to see many of his policies espoused, it’s impossible to superimpose a FN President over the sorry state of World politics at the moment. Stupid because World politics in 20 years WILL embrace people like le Pen as they will be realised to be the only choice in the face of the scourges of regression that will increasingly face up against our hard-won progressive societies (see London, July 7^th 2005 if you don’t yet get the point) For the moment, people like le Pen and his equivalents abroad are seen as anything between curios and bullies. Sadly, the shaven heads, boots and flag-waving of many parties who seek to defend their countries’ cultures at the moment get in the way of the messages so they are largely viewed as being “too dangerous” to vote for in many countries but that sentiment is brittle here in France.

All of the rest of the candidates are just making up the numbers. Greens, Communists and other such short-sighted idiots.

In the last elections, Monsieur le Pen came 2^nd and, flying full frontal in the face of the basis of democracy, thousands of young "French" thick people (largely not French, of course) marched the streets in protest. Protest against what? Just as today, many candidates had put themselves and their policies forward and the French people voted. Le Pen came second. This was never something to protest against. It was 2 messages wrapped up together.

The first message was one to be revelled in – in France, the French had the right to vote for someone way off the “normal” path and, like it or not, their votes were of huge significance. Try playing out that scenario in some of the non-European, non-democratic shit-holes of the World. The candidate would simply have been murdered long before getting the chance to come second in any election.

The second message was much more immediately significant. Huge numbers had voted for the specific policies of the Front National. They were not coerced into doing so. They chose to. They didn’t vote for him for his sex appeal. They voted for him because then, as now, he promised (and they are 100% right to believe him) that, were he to be in power, the real French people would be put before all others in terms of jobs, welfare and all manner of things. He would, of course, be being nothing but democratic to follow such a tack. The single, defining essence of democracy is that, if there are more people who want "A" than there are who want "B", then "A" is what everybody gets. It's a philosophy founded on the idea that the majority will rule (which is why South Africa had so many problems in the last few decades as, there, the minority ruled for a short while and some people didn't seem to like that idea.... there). I, as an Englishman, have no right whatsoever to expect France to shape herself to my needs and, if I had bizarre ideas of invisible friends and protectors floating around in the ether above my head all day, I couldn't sensibly expect the French to smile upon my desire to build special places to cater to my "belief needs", let alone to play a part in funding such buildings. I am in the minority and I chose to be by moving here, just as all other first generation immigrants chose to live, for themselves and for all their current and future descendants, as minorities by choosing to move. That they whine about inequalities once they arrive is simply cretinous and completely unjustifiable, whatever inequalities they might think they suffer from. The consequences to me, to them and to their litters are for me and for them to bear - not for France to cater to. Majority rule is the cornerstone of democracy and, if anyone doesn't like the idea of minorities being treated as secondary, then a) they shouldn't move to a foreign democratic country and b) they shouldn't push for democracy back where they belong either unless, of course, they like the idea of it if they, themselves, are in the majority and, therefore, are on the winning team. "Cherry-picking". We immigrants do not have the rights that our hosts have themselves and it's completely correct that we do not, wherever we chose to come from.

As an immigrant myself, I’d correctly and justifiably be excluded from many of the benefits le Pen offers in return for the vote but, even if his policy would be to kick me right back to the UK, I'd take that fate graciously and I’d smile on my way back to Blighty at the thought of all those other immigrants being rightly asked to leave at the same time as me so as to protect French interests and culture. The difference would be that I’d be going back to a country which dragged itself up from the squalor of the Middle Ages, through hard work, ingenuity and leadership, to become a country of some repute (for a time). Many of my fellow deportees would be going back to shit-holes which were, remain and will always be shit-holes. Countries which, through lack of effort and organisation or a ridiculous obsession with one or other type of magic, have consistently made so little progress, have developed so little (their own fault) that the greatest wish of their citizens is, enduringly, to be somewhere else! Great contribution to humanity, losers. You"ve collectively owned a whole country since time immemorial and yet you still can't make anything out of it and need to become a burden on someone else's country just to avoid meeting your own excrement flowing down the "street". Pathetic.

My idea of aid to countries of that nature would be one of two options.

1) Give them loads of illustrated history books to provide them with a headstart by showing them how to find and extract metal from ores, then how to make steam engines, threshing machines and such like - things the more energetic and organised countries had to work out for themselves. I'd say that this type of aid would be a phenomenal gift to give with no major dent to the recipients' pride. Who knows? A couple of hundred years later, the recipients, from that headstart, might have taught themselves how to build canals and bridges and how to educate, how to regulate their populations in relation to their resources. That the World is not flat and how to prove it with a few metres of string and 3 pebbles or, alternatively, how to prove it with two wooden sticks on a sunny day.

2) Simply offer to run those countries for them, for a "small" consideration. That way, they get the infrastructure for next to no effort whatsoever and the people with the skills make lots of money and educate the aborigines along the way.

Win-win (until, as in the past, the huge benefits get taken for granted and the educators begin to be resented by the under-achievers) See my blog "Funny Plus" for more details.

No, Europe can’t cope with radically culturally-defensive politics yet as a result of PC stupidity still doing its sordid and degenerate works and so, whilst the stalwarts will still use their votes on the FN, large numbers of people in France who wish to God they could start the process of retrieving their country at this election, realise that they have to allow the mainstream politicians to continue to allow things to get ever worse, year on year, until, as is amply demonstrated by history, there comes a point where the true people of a country, lacking the power of voices they thought to have been elected to speak for them, have to speak for themselves. Shop windows seem to be the traditional things to break first in these circumstances – it builds from there.

This time, many a heart which votes for le Pen, will, by the time it has a pen in its hand, vote for Sarkozy as a far safer bet for victory. They are, of course, correct. Sarkozy will win. Nobody else can.

I just hope he can live up to what he’s led us, the Europeans, to expect of him and, if he can, I sincerely hope that he breeds many a “do-alike” in other civilised countries.

If you want to avoid seeing thugs being voted into your parliament (if you have one) then you’d better hope the same.

Speak Up, Mr President

We can't quite make out the message ;o)

Films of the Coen Brothers

If the Coen Brothers’ films have passed you by unnoticed, then I’m envious of the evenings you have in store for you. You could spend the next couple of months watching a Coen Brothers film every Saturday night and, if you pick the right timing and viewing sequence, you could start off with “extremely good” and, as the weeks pass, you could watch a better and better one each time until you arrive at “out and out masterpiece” and such superlatives.

Just to contextualise what it is that I’m recommending to you, imagine a film in which even the lowliest, non-speaking role has been cast to perfection so that you’re wondering about the story behind the most seemingly-irrelevant of characters. The main players are gentle but biting caricatures whose idiosyncrasies and simultaneous normalness seem an unlikely blend until, after just a few minutes, you find yourself liking each and every player, even the ones occupying the most despicable roles.

Faces and physical quirks play a huge part in the overall imagery and intrigue of the films and the winning characters are usually naïve and yet as sharp as daggers in equal measure. The dialogue is rich, even in scenes which seem out of place and there appears to be an insistence that each and every line is delivered with the precision timing of the best stand-up comedian and with the mannerisms and background detail that only someone who loves the fact that they’re playing the character in question could possibly insert. Music is subtle, relevant and crucial.

The stories are intricate and yet very straightforward and seem to revolve around the “Seven Deadly Sins” of Dante’s Divine Comedy. One or more of Greed, Envy, Sloth, Lust, Gluttony, Wrath and Pride are never too far away from the emotions, actions and reactions of the darker characters and the “good guys” sometimes seem to embody the innocents, untouched by these negatives and vices, possibly implying the antithesis of the “Seven Holy Virtues” but always appearing to be unaware of the depth of value in their own good standards.

If you’re lucky enough never to have seen a Coen Bros film, then I suggest a course of treatment…. to be taken with an open mind. Start with one of the best, just to make sure you get hooked. “Fargo” would be a very good introduction. God, I wish I’d never seen it and had bought it at random from a flea market as “something to watch” tonight. I’d love to be able to hear the introductory music to Fargo tonight without knowing anything about what was to follow. I remember when I was in exactly that situation and I was already deep into the atmosphere of the film before the opening credits stopped. The heroine is outrageously-loveable and the impossible situation into which they thrust her (heavily-pregnant and ridiculously under-resourced small-town police chief, faced with an unprecedented string of local killings) is sheer perfection. She responds to the situation with “everything” and yet the way she polices the film is like nothing any other filmmakers have ever given us. The villains of the piece, the sap, the police officers, the witnesses and, true to form, everyone else in the film, are outstanding. Never have two hideous, psychopathic villains been so enchanting to follow!

After Fargo, maybe The Big Lebowski, The Hudsucker Proxy, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Blood Simple, Barton Fink, Raising Arizona, Miller’s Crossing and many others and then, benefit from some of the by-products of the Coen Brothers’ mastery. On the one hand, actors whose faces you know well but whose names elude you will keep on popping up, time and time again, reinforcing the idea that bloody good actors keep on wanting to appear in the creations of bloody good filmmakers. John Turturro, Steve Buscemi, John Goodman and such like keep on keeping on in Coen Brothers’ films and, each time, you get the head start of remembering how brilliant they were in the last one and you soon bond with the new character. On the other hand, you get the chance to see whether or not people we’re “supposed to recognise” as being A-list superstars are really up to the job.

Holly Hunter and Jeff Bridges were always names known well enough to me but I never saw either of them as being a truly excellent actor until I saw them do it the Coen way. Tom Hanks comes in for a lot of unwarranted stick and many people consider George Clooney to be eye-candy and little else.

For your last two Saturday evenings with the Coens, watch Tom Hanks in The Ladykillers and then watch George Clooney in “O Brother, Where Art Thou?”.

If you ever doubted the skill of these actors before, you won’t afterwards.

Switzerland & Concrete

I needed to go to Switzerland this week for work-related purposes. I’d never set foot in Switzerland before and I’d always harboured a chocolate box notion of its beauty so I was very much in a positive frame of mind about the trip. The only inevitable downside to gigs like that are that, if you want to travel, you have to do the travelling yourself. You can’t delegate it and wake up at the destination. You just have to grin and bear it and hope that, at least, the mechanics of the journey function as intended and, as much as it might be a bit draining, there’s a lot be said for an uneventful journey. I’ll take “boring” in preference to “traumatic” any time.

The journey consisted of 20 minutes on the metro into Lille, wait half an hour, spend an hour on the TGV to Paris, wait an hour, spend an hour on a plane from Paris to Geneva, wait half an hour, spend an hour on the train from Geneva to Montreux, wait half an hour in hotel room, walk for 20 minutes to Harry’s Bar, close to the lakeside, wait 10 minutes to be served and, eventually, beer arrives on table and the journey is completed.

I’m a smoker but I try to be considerate wherever possible and whenever appropriate. I was delighted to see that Switzerland hasn’t succumbed to the Euro-American bullshit when it comes to the relaxation which used to be embodied in an evening out. In a bar or restaurant in Switzerland, it seems to be the case that they still treat adults like adults. There’s a rightful assumption that the Swiss public can think and decide for themselves, unlike the European and American models wherein common sense and decency have been deemed no longer to be of any importance and have been replaced by legislation and nonsense. In the UK, America and large chunks of Europe, all bars will soon be required to be non-smoking spaces, even if those bars are privately-owned. This is, of course, bullshit. Even more so in capitalist societies. Capitalism is supposed to revolve around supply and demand. In the smoking debate, that should equate to “if I, the proprietor, decide to allow smoking in my bar, then I realise who will and who will not frequent it as a result of my decision”. In other words, there may well be non-smokers, nuns and semi-professional protestors who might decide never to frequent that particular bar but their numbers are likely to be low in comparison with the adults who normally frequent the place. On the other hand, a proprietor might, of his own volition, decide that he won’t allow smoking in his bar and, in doing so, as has been proven in Ireland, Scotland and elsewhere, he must resign himself to a greatly-reduced patronage. He might even be killing his business off completely by taking such a decision. Obviously, this deadly prognosis doesn’t necessarily follow through if ALL the pubs and bars are compelled to make the same changes at the same time. In those circumstances, no single pub needs to die but, of course, much of the relaxation and freedom of the traditional night out is killed, along, of course, with freedom of choice and the principles of supply and demand and, thus, the futures of many thousands of pubs and bars will be jeopardised through the many decisions to have a tinny and a smoke in front of the telly on Saturday night rather than to spend half the evening outside like a leper in a tent in a pub garden or on the pavement. Who wins? I can’t see anyone who wins from this PC daftness. Even the people who choose to go to pubs (places they’ve been to enough times to know what to expect) and then moan about smoke as if they weren’t expecting it, will lose out if their "favourite" bar (the one they whine about after every visit) has to close through reduced takings. My feeling is that these people should stay in or find a non-smoking bar but, either way, they should stay the fuck away from places they know full well they aren’t going to like and leave the adults to their traditional enjoyment.

It should be the owner’s choice and, as far as the debate over employees’ welfare is concerned, if the people who suggest that we all want non-smoking bars are correct, then there’ll never be any need for a barperson to be compelled to take a position in a smoky bar as most of the proprietors of bars will, of their own free will, have declared their bars non-smoking. Yeah, right. I suffer from hay fever in the summer and, of course, that means it’s not a good idea for me to take a job cutting grass. If I was someone who had some problem or other with smoke, then I wouldn’t pursue a career as a Guy Fawkes or a barman. Common sense. Over the years, I’ve been in bars which smelt or looked dirty or where the glasses or toilets or staff were disgusting to behold – but I only ever go into a place like that once – I don’t keep on going there, moaning every single time about issues I could have avoided completely just by going somewhere else. I’d love to be around when PC finally gets seen through and we can all get back to making our own minds up.

Supply and demand. It’s a concept which seems to have been lost, even to the most capitalistic of regimes. Another example would be the requirement to add ramps as well as steps into practically every privately-owned establishment in the civilised World. Yet again, complete nonsense. Only one person in 1,000 or so is genuinely incapable of getting up steps so why on Earth do we need to tell every single shop, hotel, pub, cinema etc that they need to provide such access facilities as a matter of law? Public buildings, yes. Public buildings are "owned" by the public and that means that all members of the public have a right to be able to enter but absolutely nobody has any right to expect access to privately-owned premises and they have no right to expect private proprietors to cater, at their own cost, to the personal and specific needs of every human being on the planet. Again, supply and demand should be enough. Let’s say that nine out of every ten shop owners said “Balls to them. I’ll keep my steps and risk losing the business of the people who can’t get up them”. To the enterprising businessman, this is a golden goose. He sees that, around him, 9 of 10 merchants are excluding a certain clientele so he decides to put a ramp in front of his shop. This enlightened bod is then fairly assured of most the physically-disabled business available in the locale and lots more sympathetic clients besides, as long as his product and his service are up to scratch and there will be a portion of his clientele which his neighbours with steps might envy but which can never be lost to them. Private businesses and personal, commercially-oriented decisions. Not the government’s business and not the local council’s business.

So, anyway, Swiss bars and restaurants are still proper bars and restaurants where adults get to choose whether or not they want to smoke or whether or not they want to be around people who smoke. I don’t know much about the Swiss psyche but I sincerely hope that they keep this grown-up attitude to their lives and their public. It’s admirable.

With my three colleagues from France, I enjoyed a relaxed evening in good company and a pleasant enough bite to eat. There was nothing particularly “Swiss” about the evening and the final leg of the journey, the train from Geneva to Montreux, had been in darkness so, if there’d been any spectacular views to be seen from the train, they’d been lost to us in the night. We were all pretty weary so we split to our rooms at a reasonable hour. I watched the some TV news in German (of which I speak not a word), then some in French and then some in English and then to bed. Not much danger of insomnia.

I got myself down into the hotel foyer at 8.15ish to meet the others. I had enough time to wander out onto the terrace at the rear of the hotel and the view, as you see, was stunning. My camera was in the safe in my room and I didn’t have time to go and get it but I resolved to get some pictures from there that evening and the following morning. As you can see, I did. Time to go to the office.

From the work point of view, more than adequate preparations had been made on all sides and, to cut a long couple of days’ meetings short, the objective of the trip was attained and so there’s no need to delve into that side of the trip. All of us already delved deeply enough. For lunch, we were treated to a pleasant enough Chinese meal in a local restaurant. Is it just me or is Chinese food “out of place” at lunchtime? I enjoyed it but it felt slightly weird to be using chopsticks at 1pm in Switzerland.

After the first day of debates, I dodged away for 20 minutes to get my sunset photos and then returned to the office and our hosts drove us the 20 minutes or so to a village called Les Paccots, where they knew of a pleasant, chalet-style restaurant which specialised in a form of nourishment very much associated with Switzerland. The Fondue. The smell of melted cheese needed to be opened like a secondary inner door on entry.

There were seven of us and our hosts, knowing the ropes, ordered 2 cauldrons of molten cheese (it’s traditionally prepared with a dash of wine and various seasoning) and, aided by long, slender forks, we communally twirled chunks of bread and new potatoes in this yellow lava on the ends of our forks until thickly-coated and then, what a taste. Incredibly nice. The two cauldrons offered two different tastes, both excellent but the one which was based on Gruyere cheese was by far the nicer. The seven of us took about half an hour to leave two empty pots and very little else on the table. It was superb and all the better for its relevance to our location. It was, however, possibly the “heaviest” thing I’ve ever eaten. In terms of volume, each of us clearly ate an amount of cheese which, in its normal, solid state, would be a block one might buy for a family of four each fortnight. Furthermore, we’d been warned by our hosts that fondue and alcohol, once combined, are synonymous with the word “concrete” but, in the evenings, I’m not really Mr Diet Coke and, one teetotaller apart, everyone had a beer or two and some wine with the meal. The concrete phenomenon began to manifest itself about half an hour after the cheese-twirling had ceased. I still had the pleasant latent enjoyment of the meal on my taste buds but it began to feel like I’d ingested a yellow anvil. If, at some stage in the next five years or so, I finally manage to defecate that meal, I swear it’ll still be yellow and it'll probably arrive in its own iron pot. I joked with someone that we’d all have nightmares that night. For my part, I certainly did. I woke up convinced that I was carving chunks out of someone’s back with a dagger (or was it a long, narrow fork?) at 5am. Realising that neither dagger nor victim was real, I drifted back to sleep.

In the “real” morning, the iron feeling had gone, I descended to the terrace and got a few early morning photos of the view across the lake. I gave a brief presentation in the office and the debating continued for several hours. There wasn’t time to find a “real” lunch so we all just nipped out and grabbed whatever sandwiches, bagels and wraps we could find.

4pm came around and it was time to head off to the station (all of two minutes’ walk away). Only two of us left as the other two from France were bound for England the following day. I wasn’t at all envious that they were staying another evening and then heading for my erstwhile homeland. I was happy enough to be Lille-bound. It was soon clear that we had, indeed, missed some amazing views from the train that first evening. For most of the hour or more of the train journey, we were pretty much skirting the entire North coast of Lake Geneva and we rarely lost sight of it. The mountains were a constant backdrop and, as train journeys for work purposes go, it’s hard to imagine one much more spectacular. (Send me to Canada for research purposes… please!) Lake Geneva (also known as Lake Léman and various other translations) is the shape of a leaping salmon with its “nose” facing due East and, by Western European standards, it’s pretty vast. As we neared Geneva, the famous “Jet d’Eau” fountain became visible from the train. Situated in the lake itself, the Jet d’Eau is one of the largest fountains in the World and throws a plume of water 140 metres into the air at 200kmh. For many a bod of my generation, this landmark evokes memories of a supernatural thriller series in the late 1960s called “The Champions”, the title sequence of which featured the ever-present fountain in the background.

After that train journey, my colleague and I enjoyed a quick drink in a Geneva bar. The rest of the evening was less inspiring. Planes, trains and lots of waiting around. Journeys like that are never fun but at least I was in good conversational company and that always, metaphorically at least, takes an hour off the duration. We finally made it back to Lille at about 11.30pm. My colleague was due to set off at 3am the following morning, to spend her wedding anniversary in Rome. She was about to enjoy 2 hours’ sleep before the trains and planes routine would begin again for her.

Would I like to go to Rome some time? Absolutely. Was I jealous that she was heading there the following morning? Not one bit!

France & the Burberry Cycle

I work in an environment where the sales of clothing are analysed to the nth degree and sales predictions are made with an eye on the smallest fraction of a percentage point. Obviously, this is intricate work and due heed needs to be taken of the crystal ball gazers who seek to work out (or, perhaps, dictate) what people will deem to be fashionable 18 months into the future.

With all of this educated and finely-tuned prediction going on and with all of the vast quantities of thousands of different items of clothing being ordered by the company to satisfy the predicted demand for them, it’s hard to imagine managing the earthquake which happened under the Burberry company in recent years.

Burberry came into being just over 150 years ago and, once established, became synonymous with high quality, practical and stylish outdoor wear, favoured by the well-to-do, all the way “up” to the monarchy. The now famous check or tartan-style pattern started off as just a lining standard for trench coats in the 1920s but, over the following 40 years or so, it gradually fought its way onto the outside, first onto umbrellas, scarves and luggage and, eventually, onto…. well, pretty much everything. Image and popularity grew hand in hand for well over one hundred years from the company’s founding and I can easily imagine the executives of the 1970s viewing the demand curves of previous years, knowing full well who their clientele were and ordering yarns, dyes, treatments, machinery, manpower and whatnot with a certain air of certainty that their predictions for “next year” would turn out to be very close to the eventual reality. Possibly 1 or 2 percent out, one way or the other.

Then, of course, the earthquake. People of a certain mentality began, through wheeling and dealing or market trading or football management, to acquire a wealth that people of that ilk could only previously see from a distance in the wardrobes and jewellery boxes of the silver spooners and the university-educated, suburb-dwelling financiers and their wives.

These newly-affluent people knew that they could never be high class. They didn’t have anything in their armoury to achieve that status but then, as now, they had the only thing it took to allow them to look high class. Money.

Houses with mock-ancient Greek carriage lamps outside, swimming pools in the shape of a roll of carpet (in recognition of the source of one’s wealth) and pink Cadillacs are all well and good when you want to show the World how high you’ve soared but these things can’t follow you everywhere. Jewellery can. Clothing can.

So, after a short hunt for the right things to be seen wearing, the rules became clear to these ignoramuses. If a small gold ring on a finger demonstrated beauty, class, rarity, delicacy and a sense of one’s being, in some way, “select”, then it stood to reason that 16 gold rings, distributed amongst 10 fingers and thumbs must surely be 16 times as beautiful, classy, rare, delicate and select a manifestation. You and I, of course, see something far removed from “classy” when we see those fingers.

Similarly, if a distinctive, expensive, “upper-class” scarf demonstrated one’s having hauled oneself up the social scale by one or two layers, then dressing oneself from head to toe in such distinctive and expensive garb must surely mean that one is viewed as having raised oneself higher still. Again, of course, you and I see this in what might be described as inverse proportion but, to the “hard of thinking”, there’s no irony, no pathetic cry for acceptance to be heard, no inanely transparent attempts to be something more than is possible are being made.

Clearly, as far as the clothing was concerned, the Burberry range fit the bill perfectly. Expensive and distinctive, it was the perfect choice and, probably after a period of foiled analyses and abject shock, the good people of Burberry, seeing their numbers soar for the unlikeliest of reasons, appear to have opted to swallow their pride and to bask in the figures. This gave rise to little gems like the Burberry baseball cap and such like – items which the founder and the original core clientele would never have recognised and would never have been seen dead wearing. After this, the law of the jungle dictated that those oiks who had the money to "dress posh" began to be emulated by countless hordes of dross who had neither the brains nor the money to make an independent wave on the social seismometer and the inevitable result was that, just as the "I now have money but no brains" team emulated the upper classes, the "I have neither money nor brains" team began to emulate the former and, of course, this World is chock full of people with neither brains nor money. With neither class nor intellect. With neither decorum nor self-awareness. The result? Thousands upon thousands of sales for our friends at Burberry but at the price of the assassination of their hard-won image and, worse, the fact that hordes of under-achievers now wanted to be seen wearing things they couldn't afford led to another group of scum, namely forgers, bridging the price gap in the market so that not even Burberry themselves could take full advantage of this bitter-sweet turn of fortune for their range.

Whatever is happening in the Burberry empire and however they see their future, it’s clearly impossible that things will ever be the same for them again. It would take 100 years for them to shed the image created for them by the dross who hijacked their brand and, of course, they are culpable themselves too. If not, then the Burberry baseball cap would never have existed. Presumably having realised what they’d done to themselves, they discontinued the cap in 2004 but it was too little, too late. The thieves and counterfeiters had already made sure that the product, albeit not the “real” one, remained and remains well and truly available.

Having moved to France, there’s an amusing codicil to be seen. Whereas, these days, in the UK, Burberry, as a brand, is almost 100% associated with the pondlife who appropriated the brand image from its rightful owners, here in France, the cycle is still at a fairly preliminary stage. Yes, the gold-dripping oiks are bedecked in it, as in the UK but, here, decent, normal people are still to be seen sporting it in apparent unawareness of the way the Burberry cycle works.

As the months and, perhaps, years pass, the “nice” girls and boys of France will gradually shun it, like the truly “classy” people long since did and then, as much as it may continue to cause the demand forecasters of Burberry stomach ulcers, in France, just as in the UK, the only people who’d be seen dead wearing that once proud tartan are the people to whom this blog would make no sense whatsoever.