Huttonian is breaking the habit of a lifetime and is off to France on Wednesday to see the Oz family in their newly acquired mansion near Versailles-tho', apparently, not so large. I actually have been there before as a young hitch hiker but our destination was Italy and we did not let les Grenouilles detain us overlong.I think many Brits have a love hate relationship with our nearest really forrin neighbours and I have tended to be inclined towards the latter sentiment rather than the former. Although I must say I did enjoy our last visit on the canals where the French one met were rural and friendly and made a courteous and patient attempt to unravel my speach. 'Prenez Garde' Churchill memorably said in one of his wartime broadcasts to occupied France' Je voudrais parler francaise' My grudge has always been with the more sophisticated French-mostly those one met in foreign parts in their diplomatic service; reserved, reticent, secretive, jingoistic, chauvinistic-very like the Brits. And they generally seemed to regard their British colleagues with the deepest suspicion, again fairly mutual in my case. Charming socially-my colleague in Jordan went so far to compliment me on the English wine I served up when entertaining my EU colleagues-but put them in an official situation-
intolerable. But sometimes their obsession with concealing their hand-cards so closely held to chests-that they couldn't see them themselves played to our advantage.
They say that the Parisians, with their intolerance of anything foreign and especially of people whose French is halting and badly pronounced 'Comme une vache Espanole-' as mine has once been described or worse still 'comme un Belge' . We shall see.
Anyhow posts from Paris may be hard to do. Post-poned as it were.French key pads in Cyber Cafes are, for some reason, in the French manner with QWERTY being Anglo Saxon, abandoned, and all the letters in the wrong place. The wife could not find @ which made e-mailing a challenge. Hopefully the oldest daughter will be on line by the time we get there but if not we will have to report later. If we are spared.
