In the shade

This shameful object on the left, known as a store in French, is shortly to be replaced. I went with Philomena and Herne to the stores shop (this is getting confusing) and we chose this cheerful bright blue pattern for the new one. It should be installed before the end of July.

The folding stuff

The folding theorbo is now a reality. Prompted by the sad tale of a Ryanair calamity, lutemaker David van Edwards set about designing an instrument which could be dismounted for travel and easily reassembled at the other end. It's a brilliant piece of work, and the casemaker's contribution is pretty impressive too.

Read the full story on David's site, illustrated with an excellent set of pictures of the new instrument, as well as one of the shameful Ryanair case smash which started it all off.

The instrument plus case costs £6,500. Unfortunately you still have to buy a seat for it, but at least you can be sure it will fit - airline seats were not designed with theorbos in mind...

Emissions

Lowri is returning to the UK on Tuesday for a couple of days, her fourth visit in just over a month. In these carbon-conscious days one can feel a bit guilty about flying.

But not very. Not when there is a UK government agency called Visit Britain whose purpose is to encourage as many people as possible to do just that. Visit Britain is proud that 2006 was a record year, with 32.1 million overseas visitors, with 2007 set to increase by a further 4%. Ten times as many as in 1964.

I will be interested to see the results of the carbon footprint consultancy for the 2012 London Olympics, if they're ever published. That will involve an impressive amount of flying. I'm not convinced about the urban regeneration effects of the Olympics either. We walked round the 1992 Barcelona Olympics site when we went there last month. It looked sad and empty and the stadium was covered in scaffolding. To judge from the DCMS press release, I don't think Tessa Jowell and Sebastian Coe were shown that bit when they went on their fact-finding mission to Barcelona last November.

More pesky predictions

"'Nicolas Sarkozy heads for a huge parliamentary majority ... The UMP's share of parliamentary seats is likely to rise from 359 to 405-445, out of 577."

So said The Economist on 16 June, the day before the second-round elections. The actual result? A mere 313 seats for the UMP. Still an absolute majority, but miles below the prediction.

What went wrong? Possibly the new government's plans to increase VAT by 5%, notably missing from the presidential campaign. Even calling it 'social VAT' doesn't seem to have helped. Or maybe people just lie to polling agencies.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow

"It's tough to make predictions, especially about the future". Nice one. But who said it? 'That great baseball-playing philosopher, Yogi Berra', according to The Economist a couple of weeks ago.

Just a moment though - here's the latest issue of The Economist, attributing it this time to Sam Goldwyn.

I always thought it originated from Niels Bohr, the Danish physicist. At least it would have had some relevance to his work with quantum mechanics.

It turns out that the quote has been attributed to at least a couple of dozen people. See
http://www.larry.denenberg.com/predictions.html

I'm confident that more claimants will keep popping up.

Ecole - collège - lycée

The end of the school year approaches. Now that language isn't so much of an issue, the children need more challenge to keep them stimulated, so we've decided to change schools next year. We've spoken to a lot of parents and Barral is widely agreed to be the best school in Castres, so we're going for that.

Barral is a private school, but fortunately these are much cheaper in France than in England. Fees for the Collège are €460 a year, plus lunches. Contrast this with Whitgift, back in Croydon, whose website states that 'the tuition fees for the academic year 2007/08 will not be more than £12,412'. About 40 times as much. The difference is possible because Barral, although a private school, operates 'under contract' to the state, which pays for the teachers' salaries. This means that public and private schooling are much more integrated in France than in the UK, and makes possible genuine competition between them.

Not that Fearnley's current headmaster would accept this. He was most miffed when we went in April to tell him that Fearnley would be changing school next year. He clearly detests the private sector on ideological grounds and refused to countenance the idea that any other school might be better than his. When Philomena's class (final year of primary school) went to visit Fearnley's current school recently, he told them that children at Barral all smoke and fight in the streets. And he's still miffed: there was a meeting of the class council this week, and the student reps told Fearnley with great excitement the following morning that the headmaster had blown his top about Fearnley's leaving. Seems fatally blinkered to me - he would do better to accept that competition exists, and to confront it by sharpening up his own act.

Barral is a Catholic school. Religious schooling seems to be a main reason for the existence of the private sector, since religious education is expressly prohibited in state schools, a consequence of the separation of church and state introduced in 1905. Surprising that the state still pays the bulk of the costs of religious schools, then, but I'm not going to complain.

Road rage

In yesterday's issue of Mon Quotidien, our children's daily newspaper:

"Depuis peu, des buses attaquent des cyclistes sur les routes du Berry. L'un d'eux a été hospitalisé après avoir été renversé par un de ces rapaces."

Rapacious buses attacking cyclists? Sounds rather alarming. As it turns out, they are buzzards rather than public service vehicles. Still rather alarming, though.

Up North

We were invited to a picnic last night at the Camping de Gourjade. Twenty primary-school footballers from Wakefield and their families have descended on Castres and the organiser, our friend Brigitte, was looking for some moral support.

Castres has been twinned with Wakefield for the last fifty years. Both were important textile towns, and the scheme used to be commercially important. No more; but it's still good for school exchanges and for developing Castres' fledgling tourist business.

Herne, wearing his Beckham shirt, happily joined in a foot volleyball game with Owen, Gerrard, Ronaldo and other replica stars. Ronaldo went off to play cricket after a while.

My lot were intrigued by the visitors' strong Yorkshire accent. The lady from the Mairie confessed herself totally baffled by it.

Old and new

But one good thing about the new car is that it has a CD player which actually works. A great chance to listen to all those lute CDs which have been sitting on my shelves. So, I've been listening to
Paul O'Dette playing Kapsberger
Rolf Lislevand playing Bach
Jacob Heringman playing Holborne
Hopkinson Smith playing de Visée
Michael Niessen and David van Ooijen playing Terzi
Paul O'Dette (again) playing Francesco da Milano
Taro Takeuchi playing baroque guitar
Andrea Damiani playing Galilei
Nigel North playing Varietie of Lute Lessons

and there's plenty more to go. In fact there's a dazzling quantity of lute CDs being released now, far more than I can keep up with. It's very gratifying.

I can only listen to them when I'm alone in the car. With the children it's more likely to be Skyrock or Radio NRJ.

On the blink

There is some French vocabulary that I would rather not have to learn.

Les clignotants on the car stopped working yesterday, so I've been into the garage to get them fixed. Le warning was still working fine, so the technician quickly diagnosed that it was simply the commutateur that needed replacing.

While I was out, I went to the swimming pool shop and bought a new flotteur for the robot and a new panier for the prefiltre since both the old ones were cracked. When I came to fit the panier I discovered that the vanne for the skimmer outlet pipe has failed and no longer closes properly, so I got very wet before bringing it back under control. Rather like Mickey Mouse as the Sorcerer's Apprentice.