Long musings with a whiff of gentle irony
The Parisians leave Paris for the beaches of the west and
south – a great relief to both those who stay on in the city and for the
tourists visiting the capital: a two-month slot almost empty of sour-faced
impoliteness. Those on the beach (the Parisians mostly – 25% of the whole population)
suddenly become themselves – nice people
– and once rising from their bronzing positions on the sands, it is dreamily
sauntering past the paper shop and on the way to eat four-course evening meals
that they learn that the outside world is still functioning: the odd coup d’état
here (while the former leader is probably sunning it up on exactly the same
beach as the Parisian), the odd earthquake there; an unobserved innovation –
like say, the Internet super-highway – that the country misses out on during
the big sleep and subsequently has to peddle like mad for the next ten years to
catch it up. Paradoxically, it is then the turn of all the inhabitants of the
coastal areas to rush about like madmen as they host, feed and coax the
holiday-makers from the capital to spend their money.
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| It was said that Dali had many big sleeps... |
All this means that the hangers-on in greater Paris – the small-business
owners, lowly paid civil servants, the friendless, the divorced, the childless
couples waiting to have the beach only for themselves in September
when the screaming kids go back to school, or simply those waiting to squeeze in
a long weekend or two of rest somewhere during the two months – suddenly find
themselves bathed in an almost surreal calm. There are no train strikes – the railway
workers gleefully keeping this in store for the traditional back-to-term strike
in October-November. There is hardly any traffic. Road-rage suddenly evaporates and the
last, festive nation-wide burning of cars already belongs to the past. Bastille Day, 14th
July, “only” led to 600 cars being burnt across the country according to a
government official speaking on the radio.
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| No doubt inspired by their holiday in Paris |
It is a well-earned heaven. And the days automatically seem
to stretch long and elastically into the night with aperitifs sipped by open
windows giving out to empty and silent streets. And it is also the perfect time
for the mind to meander and philosophise instead of thinking about objectives
and potential delays in the public transport that will hamper you reaching
them. One may take one’s time to read, stroll or go for a dip in the deserted municipal
swimming pool. And one’s mind may also be allowed to think of silly things like
love, the meaning of life, writing a book or poem, true happiness, getting
fit, repairing the shower curtain that had collapsed in February, inventions
and ideas. Letting my mind really wander far, these silly ideas might just include one or some of the following:
·
An international job search watchdog that would
advise job-seekers on which companies and institutions to avoid, simply by
trying out their absurdly unfathomable and truthfully unanswerable online job application
forms. The sort that are 6 web pages long and contain lots of boxes, none of
which suit your profile details, and which prohibit you from moving on to the
next question unless you click one of their categories: “Right – okay – so I’ll
just click on 'PhD in Duck Watching' even though I’m trying to get the job
advertised as 'office clerk'”.
·
A law that would see a vast educational training
programme get underway for drivers in the Paris region. Large, digital displays
would be set up along the main routes informing people that they only have to
do four things to avoid creating traffic jams: 1) Instead of accelerating and closing
ranks to those wishing to join the highway, simply let them in. 2) Keep in lane,
keep your distance. 3) Drive at a steady 30-40 km/h without fail along the stretch
of congested road until it quite naturally becomes flowing again thanks to your
exemplary conduct. 4) Refrain from gesticulating obscenely at the
drivers of other cars – anger causes acceleration!
·
A multinational “Bullshit detector club”, where
a group of enthusiasts bent on the truth and openness to the citizens of the world
would watch their national news every day for one week every month and note
down how many times the news speaker lets rip with overtly patriotic or
xenophobic remarks destined to hoodwink the scared, desperate or uneducated
into being grateful (and, quite handily, at the same time willing to swallow
the increase in taxes and energy bills due for November). Things like “Our X, the
most beautiful capital in the world”; “the most X (meaning “like us”) of the
Spanish football players on the field”; “We have the best national health
system in the world” (true, thirty-five years ago and now just as hampered by
under-staffing and waiting queues as any other system of the late 1940s); “No-one
can rival our world-beating food (while handily forgetting that many national recipes were adopted or stolen from the Italians, Austrians, Morrocans, etc.)”; “We possess the most beautiful avenue in the world - naturally”; “the
Chinese / Polish / Ukrainians / Romanians, etc. are taking our jobs” (when everyone forgets
that they actually work very well and very hard and are unhampered by corporate
taxes which choke national employment initiatives to death); or “X, our beautiful,
historical and great county, will resist this new plague that is globalisation
and defend our interests” (Funny… I thought globalisation started 1.5 million
years ago when Homo Erectus left Africa to find resources elsewhere…We might
not be here if they hadn’t).
·
A worldwide training initiative for directors
and managers to help them find something different to say other than “we don’t
have the budget”, and then go on to hire cousins, uncles, aunts and nephews in
the week that follows. While this may be accepted by young newbies on eternal
short-term contracts and managers and directors who use it as an off-the-shelf
standard to avoid conflict, a 40-50 year-old having worked in many fields
throughout his/her working life knows it to be complete flatulence. On second
thoughts, maybe it’s best to keep the “we don’t have the budget” phrase – if the
truth were to be told the whole system might be in danger of collapsing.
·
And finally, a worldwide ban on all telephone
answering machines leading you through an absurd labyrinth of options, none of
which are suited to the real subject of your call, and which require endless
pushing of numbers and hash tags (on my phone, a twelve-year old Nokia, I have
to push two buttons to access the hash – meaning that by the time I manage to finally
press a third time on the right icon, the answering machine has moved on to the
next option and I have to start all over again). Usually government-body instigated (despite
even higher taxes they still can’t afford to hire real people to offer human assistance
and contact), or incredibly the telecoms companies themselves, these machines
are characterised by mutant digital voices ordering you what to do, and
interspersed with overly loud jingles – seemingly composed on a Bontempi organ,
the kind offered to 5 year-olds at Christmas during the 1970-80s – of Dave Brubeck’s
“Take 5”. At times the machine goes wonky – giving off feedback and suddenly
turning into a rendition worthy of Jimi Hendrix’s 1969 Woodstock version of The
Star Spangled Banner.
So there one goes. And it's positively time to chill out, after all. A parting word might be that July and August are the most truthful months in which to call France the land of the free. Other ideas may come, or maybe even yours. Welcome are they…
And
now, as a July evening in western Paris stretches deliciously and cat-like into
oncoming night, a glass of the hard stuff suitably chilled in hand, with the
sun hovering and hesitating to part, I bid you soft and silly things wherever
you are, if only for a moment stolen.
Sleep long, sleep tight.
Tom ;-)
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