France

Monday night’s murderous gunman in Vienna is officially described as ‘Islamist’. Brahim Aioussaoi, the man accused of murdering worshippers in a Nice cathedral last week, arrived (reported the BBC) with ‘three knives, two phones and one Quran’. These would seem to be the basic toolkit required. A friend who lives in southern France tells me that although the latest lockdown measures prevent church services being held, so serious is the terrorist threat to churches that many are guarded by police. So it seems natural that President Macron of France warns of the danger to French Catholics and speaks of ‘Islamist terrorist folly’. Each of his three chosen words rings true, and the link between them cannot be avoided.

The French were asking for it, weren’t they? All that laïcité is the political equivalent of a short skirt. What did Marianne think would happen if she went out like that?The very act of being French, Politico tells us, ‘incites’ Muslims to murderous rage. A New Yorker writer explains that Charlie Hebdo cartoons are ‘effectively hate speech’, which effectively implies that Samuel Paty, the teacher who showed the cartoons to his pupils in a class on free speech, got what he deserved. The New York Times tells us that there are fine people on both sides: the real victims of Islamist terrorism in France are French Muslims, who are left feeling uncomfortable.

Home Wales, entering a 17-day ‘firebreak’, closed most shops by law but then tried to stop supermarkets selling ‘non-essential’ items such as bedding, kettles and smoke alarms. At the beginning of the week, Sunday 25 October, total deaths (within 28 days of testing positive for the coronavirus) had stood at 44,745, including 1,166 reported in the past week, compared with 819 the week before. In England, Nottingham entered the most severe restrictions,Tier 3, taking the number of people so restricted to 7.9 million (in Liverpool, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, South Yorkshire and Warrington).

My French friend André speaks perfect English and is the kindest of men. After reading last week about my futile efforts to place a bet on the French state betting terminal in the village bar, he put himself out during the week to have a word with one of the bar staff. He gave her my description and told her to expect me to appear in the bar the following Sunday afternoon in time for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. And he drew an assurance from her that she would help me decipher the betting-form multiple-choice hieroglyphics. Or, better still, take a verbal betting instruction over the counter. I know next to nothing about horses other than that they are frightened of crisp packets and can deliver a terrific kick if you loiter behind them.

Scotching my bright idea of a stiff gin for Dutch courage in the bar across the road, Catriona bounded straight for the door of the Colombe d’Or. My restaurant phobia was fast upon me and I followed her into the bourgeois holy of holies more slowly than a nudist climbing through a barbed wire fence. We were half an hour early and directed to the bar. Here my plea for strong spirits was again denied and I had to make do with champagne. Speechless with ecstasy — this was her birthday treat — Catriona toddled off with her flute to cast her eye over the Miros, Matisses and Chagalls in the dining room. I sat alone on the windowsill in the bar where Picasso and Yves Montand and James Baldwin had once parked their famous arses and I mourned.

The old dog was in a companionable frame of mind and she trotted along at my side, glancing up now and then at my face with a grin, perhaps with happiness at being out and about in a pleasant temperature in a changing season. Each evening we tread the same 40-minute circuit out of the village and back. Along the route are several doggy equivalents of a message board, of which she is a fanatical reader and contributor. Her evening walk is the highlight of her day. Otherwise the old girl sleeps. The circuit is a popular one with other dog walkers. There is, for example, a French girl of about 15 who is Nature’s last word in animal beauty. It is better for me to look at the ground as we pass otherwise I have suicidal thoughts. She has a hairy mongrel.

This week, the Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg dropped what could be his biggest piece since he won a major award for drawing bogus links between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda. The piece claims that during a 2018 visit to France President Trump canceled a visit to an American war cemetery, dismissing the dead who lie there as 'suckers' and 'losers' unworthy of passing beneath his presidential shadow. Outsiders have expressed skepticism of the story for many reasons. For starters, in Goldberg’s account, Trump also questioned America’s pointless and enormously costly involvement in World War One. If Trump really said that, it would be an unprecedented display of historical knowledge and insight on the President’s part.