Guy Fawkes? Burns? its all a mystery to me

We can stand here like the French, or we can do something about it. So said Marge Simpson and that just sums up the French. Getting a taxi other than in Cannes and Nice is almost impossible, and that’s often because of the french legislation about taxis.

For example, there are only 445 taxis allowed in Nice. No black cabs or dodgy Indian private taxis, these are just not allowed. This practice is all about dead mens shoes, the taxi franchise is handed down from generation to generation, and on the odd occasion a franchise becomes available on the open market, the value is set at around 500,000 euros (about £420,000 at today’s exchange rate), no surprise then that taxi prices are ridiculous and all the taxi drivers have new Mercedes. It is a shameful cartel.

When Sarkozy came to power in France, he tried to change the situation but the vested interests arranged an “escargot”; they clogged up the motorway at rush hour for a couple of days and, hey presto, Sarkozy backed down. As Dennis Miller said “What do you expect from a culture and a nation that exerted more of its national will fighting against Disney World and Big Macs than the Nazis?”

But the weather and culture are sublime and the countryside, food and ambience combine to make this country and particularly the cote d’Azur and surrounding Provence unsurpassed in the world as a place to live in my humble opinion, as my picture illustrates;

The waiting room for lunch in Cannes

The penultimate day of MIDEM yesterday and the last day today is usually considerably quieter, a good chunk of the frenetic hordes of thrusting music biz types have departed, leaving a more relaxed end of term attitude, which is just as well after Ma Nolans in Nice last night.

This is where I donned the kilt to join in the celebrations for the Scottish poet (?) Robbie Burns. I have a question mark here because like most of the English population that speak the Queens English rather than some guttural northern dialect, I have no idea what he was saying. I was once doing some voluntary work at a hospital in Scotland. A patient said to me “Wee sleekit, cowerin, timorous beasty, O the panic in thy breasty, Thou needna start awa sae hastie”. I asked the doctor “is this the psychiatric ward?” He said “No its the serious Burns unit”

I don’t recall understanding a single poem of his. Admittedly I have not tried very hard, but I am up for anything that involves putting a skirt and having a party, so I love Burns Night. I guess we have something similar, Guy Fawkes Night, celebrating the anniversary of when he tried to set fire to Parliament.

Talking of fire, by the time many of you are reading this column tomorrow, I will be roasting slowly on the spit of the Riviera Woman chatroom debacle. We will be debating multi tasking which men do not do well, as they prefer to get things done correctly, and science (and common sense) says multi taskers do nothing that they try to do at the same time well. However, three feisty feminists are ranged against me, hence the roasting I am expecting. It is just the tonic I need after 4 days of MIDEM with a Burns night in the middle.

Chris France

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