France is Floundering

The news here is full of how unpopular the Socialist President Hollande is and whatever the latest humiliation for his struggling government is today. Initially voted in because people voted against the right wing Nicolas Sarkozy, his first few weeks had promise. He appointed Jean Marc Ayrault as Prime Minister and that went down a treat.

Hornets fight over the remains of a windfall pear.

But then his current spouse, the political journalist Valérie Treirweiler, made an astonishingly public and unashamedly disloyal statement of support for someone running against his ex spouse Ségolene Royal, and it's all gone downhill from there. Ségolene has been shafted, now relegated to regional politics, and Valérie has been quiet as a mouse for months.

Common Wasps, like hogs at a trough.

Now he is completely overshadowed by his Interior Minister Manuel Valls, who seems to have a finger in every pie going. I can't decide if he is a nasty piece of work, or whether he really is the only one in the government who can get anything done. Several Ministers have had embarrassing scandals cut their careers short, including Jérome Cahuzac who was tasked with sorting out the tax system, only to have his secret Swiss bank account revealed.

Medlar fruit, known in French as culs de chiens.

Woe betide you if you are in business in France. The rumour mill is grinding constantly. It is impossible to plan anything as you never know when an attempt to change some crucial piece of legislation will be presented to parliament. Once it is public, then there are endless arguments and protests, ending up in the watering down of the proposals, and vaguer and vaguer announcements about when such legislation will actually come into effect. Young ministers such as Sylvia Pinel, are publicly contradicted by the no longer golden Ayrault. I don't have much love for Mme Pinel, as her Ministry for Trades and Tourism has caused me personally considerable angst. However, I was astounded when Ayrault undermined her attempts at business reform, behaving as if she was an inexperienced school girl and he the patronising headmaster. It is clear the left hand doesn't know what the right is doing, and that face is more important than the future of France.

And the really nasty wannabes are getting louder and louder. The far right Front National is doing well in the polls and ordinary people feel free to publicly taunt a Minister of North African background in a clearly racist way.

The one piece of legislation that has gone through as proposed despite vocal and unpleasant protests is the mariage pour tous law. Not long afterwards I had a rather bizarre conversation with my bank conseillère (client customer service officer) when we were chatting at the end of our meeting. 'Why,' she asked, had Hollande 'focused on this piece of legislation and been so determined to get it through?' 'After all,' she said, 'Gay people hadn't asked for it. What difference does it make? Who cares? Why is he not focusing on financial issues?' I sat there rather taken aback and wondered just how many gay people she knew (none, I assume...)

Almost completely shredded by bird attacks, this Silver-washed Fritillary butterfly struggles on.

All that is just the domestic politics. Internationally, France is trying to save the EU and the Eurozone. Unfortunately, it looks like Hollande and the German Chancellor Angela Merkel do not personally like one another. Their political backgrounds are so different it seems they may not be able to work together effectively.

Personally, I cannot understand why the Centerist Francois Bayrou doesn't gain more of a following as a Presidential candidate in France. My theory is he smiles too much.

 The distinctly unprepossessing parasitic fly Tachina grossa.

Feel free to chime in with your own litany of frustrations in the comments section...

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Lichen Outing: The Association de Botanique et de Mycologie de Sainte Maure de Touraine is holding an outing in Sainte Maure to look at lichens on Sunday 24 November. Meet at 2 pm in front of the mairie. Don't forget to bring your loupe.

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A la cuisine hier: Slow-roasted Shoulder of Lamb. I bought the lamb shoulder at the butcher in Preuilly. It weighed 1.5 kg and was priced at €15/kg. As usual we discussed how I was going to cook the meat and the butcher asked me if I wanted him to remove the bones. I said no, but he recommended removing just the shoulder blade itself, and I agreed (he also very kindly weighed it sans shoulder bone when he charged me). He told me that prepared like that it is called épaule d'agneau, façon gigot. 7-hour Lamb is a well known dish here, so he gave me the benefit of his opinion about how one should cook it. He says even for a leg 7 hours is too long and if you cook it that long you will end up with nothing. He says for modern legs of lamb in modern ovens 5 hours at 120°C is about right, and less for shoulder, which is not so thick. He is also an advocate of not salting prior to cooking, but after.

He has taken on an apprentice, who is about 16 years old I would guess, and was absolutely not going to interact with me. I asked him in my best embarrassing middle aged middle class patronising foreign lady manner if he was learning lots and got a grunt and a shrug (presumably Gallic) in response. He did however bid me au revoir when I left. Even for the callowest of youths it would be unthinkable not to do so.

Last time I was at the butcher's he was discussing the difficulties of taking on an apprentice with one of the local joiners. I thought he had decided against it because it would involve changing his opening hours and other logistical moves. Apparently an employer is required to give apprentices two consecutive days off, and the butcher closes on Thursdays and Sundays.

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A Vine Collection at Risk: The Institute of Agronomy Research (INRA) holds a unique collection of more than 40 grape vine varieties from around the world at Domaine de Vassal in the south of France. It is the largest reference collection of its kind and because of the way they are grown they are phylloxera free. Most importantly, this is a living archive, including many old and forgotten varieties, and is a gene pool like no other. Because of funding issues there is a proposal to move the vines which could impact very heavily on the collections survival. If you care about such things, please sign the online petition to save the collection on its current site. Thanks to Jim's Loire for alerting me to this situation.