h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

I'm sitting watching BBC News 24 - eight people killed by flash floods in Spain.

"It's terrible," says the woman being interviewed. "A couple of friends of mine have lost their tennis court..."

KB

Well. I have been called a racist because of my observations concerning the impact of an often traumatic and tragic history on the Continent of Europe.. To some extent I live with this reality everyday because my wife has really been shaped by a post-war France, being brought up by parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents, who had to learn to get by with the only things that they could count on being friends and family.. So her immediate reaction to any such News, which she has hardly ever found time to watch, is just how it impacts on her close family. Only such things really matter: though, as Camus wrote in "La Peste" she shares a French obsession with weather forecasts.


Gradually I have learned some of the ways that my French family survived the German occupation. My mother-in-law's family seem to have got my because her great-grandmother was in charge of the kitchens in a hospital, and with regular food supplies I guess lots of other things could be got by exchange.. My father-in-law's family survived variously, a couple of brothers were in the Armed Forces. The one just immediately senior to him ended up working as a primary school teacher, responsible for handing out ration coupons to the pupils- and making sure that his family got some. Both youngest boys had been farmed out to work on farms during the summer holidays from an early age, and it may be because of this that a farmer offered to lend my father-in-law (then 18-22) a field that he had not the wherewithal to actually work properly because the Germans had requisitioned so many horses and men. The farmer actually ploughed the field for him. He planted it with enough potatoes to get by. And the farmer even lent him a horse and cart to take the crop home. Perhaps they knew that his mother had lived in Lorraine at the time that the Germans took it over in 1871, at which moment one of her female relatives had had her head smashed in by one of the German soldiers to whom she had shown obvious hostility...

In my experience France is still very much a land of "System D" when there is an official way to do things, and the way that the red tape can be circumvented if there is any personal contact... Spanish history has its own darknesses- perhaps best summed up for me in Dali's painting of the Spanish Civil War.

This of course all feeds into the current economic crisis because, devoid of any real and organic Society, so many European countries are the artificial creations of central governments of one kind or another since Louis XIV "I am the State", with the ever-increasing demands and expectations piled on to governments (without which nothing collective or communal can happen) having built up vast debts as Governments have borrowed in order to deliver now increments of the better future that they have promised the electorate. Promises. Promises. Of course the British Labour Party was modelled on the Parliamentary success of the German Socialist Party and dreams of just what its own "Meritocracy" could do with access to German-style "Statism".

Cass

I didn't mention it because I didn't think it was important, but before we get into sweeping generalisations about the Spanish national character, maybe I should mention that it was an English woman speaking.

KB

But presumably part of the British ex-pat community who have bought into "places in the Sun" and have played their role in encouraging the great holiday building boom.. And of course such moves to "Places in the Sun" have usually been based upon selfish and self-serving motives in this age of "It can be you". Most Brits going abroad do not think that they are thus buying into the tragic and troubled history of Europe.

For the question of the "sweeping" nature of Europe comes from the dynamic of European history, which is at least as powerful in Spain as in other regions- especially the regions West of the Rhine that have fought each other over the right to rule the world throughout modern history, as S. Harrison Thomson wrote in his 1963 study of "Europe in Renaissance and Reformation".

Spain and Portugal were the first country/region to assume that right, with the blessing of the Pope, who gave them secular authority over the whole world outside of European Christendom c1515. As Thomson wrote, Spanish pride felt that this was justified because of their proud history against the Romans and the Muslims, and soon enough took over Portugal to create the first European "Empire on which the Sun never set". As we know in Great Britain handling the loss of such status does include navigating sweeping "Winds of Change". And as French people remind me that "we" were able to opt out at Dunkirk, there seems to be something of a similar opt-out of that "Places in the Sun" culture, or moving on, as some of our friends have done to Turkey.

Cass

Cass

Ah!

So she must have been a good English woman contaminated by the troubled and tragic history of Spanish undesirables. Thanks for explaining it.

I wonder if her name was Titanic? She was ok when she left here...

KB

It is not a question of being "contaminated by the troubled and tragic history of Spanish undesirables" and the whole suggestion smacks of ideas of racial or cultural superiority.

But French people have often told me just how lucky "we" are to be living on our small island. It has given "the English"- as they insist on saying- a great opportunity to opt in and out of the great scheme of things, which is denied to people living on the continent and subject to "continental climates"- which holiday makers usually avoid the worst of. And it seems to me that some of the ex-pat phenomonon is based on the "Holiday Romance" effect, which can easily turn into tragedy when you are "leaping from the frying pan into the fire".. "Places In the Sun" programs have sold the idea of cashing in your stake in the UK and moving abroad to enjoy a permanent holiday- tantamount to "winning the lottery".

But I usually do point out that the Franks, Burgundians and others rushed down to get their hands on the "Glittering Prizes" of Mediterranean wealth and easy living as the Roman Empire collapsed: whereas the Anglo-Saxons probably in the light of existing knowledge came to settle in England where there was no wealth to fight for (unlike the minerals of the Celtic regions) and nothing to offer but "Blood, sweat, toil and tears" as Churchill summed it up.

Cass

Cass

"But French people have often told me just how lucky "we" are to be living on our small island. "

I think this is known in common circles as "being polite". It makes the conversation flow easier over the dinner table than telling people how your country is better than theirs.

As for "racial and cultural superiority" - well. Whatever.

Thanks for your input. But I suspect that not only are you barking up the wrong tree, but you're barking in the wrong forest.

Hey, KB, thanks for the update. Elektra had just asked me, 'Do you think the flooding has got better over there?' We were alarmed at just how bad it looked. Best wishes to all.

You're right about that lady's remark. Sometimes, when a microphone is thrust in front of the face, breathtaking inanities come out. It is a commonplace in the South during tornado season that some person will be standing in the midst of devastation and opining, 'Yup. Sounded jest lahk a freight train.'

On a personal level, a solid night of thunderstorms has left us high and dry, as we are on a ridge. and the creek is far below. Of course, I'm glad I don't have to go out - the swamp half a mile away is capable of rising to the road, but it hasn't happened to us yet.

KB

Not at all.. As anyone can witness who watches any French TV, unklike h2g2, in France there is a real intellectual curiosity and an interest in learning about different cultures and analysing them in depth.. French politeness alone does not extend much beyond mere functional etiquette: and when the French "get into it" they can get down to the "nitty gritty"..

Some years ago when Anglo-French relations were a bit strained over the Gulf War, we were camping in our normal French educationalists camping club, to which I have belonged for over 40 years and my wife longer, and a new friend gave me friendly advice never to go to Dunkerque because they hate the British there, even if they are polite to them as they pass through the Ferry Port.

In the French state-centred educational system in which people go to teach where they are sent, he had been sent to teach in Dunkerque, where he was now the Head of his primary school, while his wife was one of the staff. There they were surprised to find just how much the local children were brought up to hate the British for the evacuation that left the Pas de Calais exposed..Dunkirk was an act of betrayal, and this year when Tony Blair and George Bush had ignored Chiraq's "Non" had raised old ghosts.

Another friend of longstanding from the Pas de Calais has often recalled just how her family always had their valuables ready packed so that her mother would tell her to "Go and get the 'sac a sous'" as they took to the roads. After Dunkerque, and then the Armistice of 1940, her father had been taken away for four years to a prisoner of war camp in Germany: and she had missed him for precious years of her childhood.

So you can and will believe whatever suits you. But I have every reason to believe that my exchanges with French people are not merely polite, even some very short ones. In a market in the South of France, where we go every Easter, I asked a venerable lady selling lavender the difference between two kinds with different labels.

"Oh". She said" There's no difference. It's just that the English prefer the ones with that label".. I smiled broadly. "I am English".

She just smiled back at me without the least embarassment. Obviously by then I was so at home in French culture that I was not properly English, and would understand exactly what she meant.

But, of course, the French are always telling people how their country is better than other peoples. The French have a manifest destiny to occupy the central position in human affairs in the long run, unlike other upstart countries that were not already part of the great Ancient Greco-Roman world that the French are still trying to keep in contact with. It is interesting to note the difference betweeb UK TV coverage of the wider world that is very often closely bound up with Britain's economic history. French TV seems to me to be more universal in its interest in the full spectrum of humanity, human history, and the full potential of Life on Earth; even when programmes like Kate Humble's ones on the Spices of the World are dubbed into French, the French commentary takes the content to another intellectual level.

The French are on the more ambitious route, as far as they are concerned. England is the land of "Let sleeping dogs lie". I suspect it is why I often feel more at home in France than in England.. It is the Blessing and the Curse of an Oxford upbringing.

Cass

"So you can and will believe whatever suits you."

Now that's just being rude.

Thinking that one's country is the best in the world is hardly unique to The French! And your experience of them is different to my own - unsurprisingly, we've moved in different circles.

But what I really really have to go WTF at is your assertion that dubbing into French somehow enhances the intelligence of the content! How is that even possible!?

Hey, Bea. I suspect you're right - do you remember the old Norwegian folktale? For some reason, when you said that, my mind flashed back to this story, which I read as a child:

http://www.sacred-texts.com/neu/ptn/ptn35.htm

'One's own children are always the prettiest.'

As to the ability of the French language to make things sound 'intellectual', oh well, de gustibus non est disputandem...

It reminded me of the silly stuff we used to say as teenagers, over in the top corner of our high school building where the language study went on. The French class asserted that the German language sounded militaristic, so in revenge, we sang harmless bucolic folk songs at them in a belligerent manner. 'Ist das nicht ein Haufen Mist? Ja, das ist ein Haufen Mist.' (Haufen Mist=pile of manure.)

My sister retorted that the French could make 'pass the mustard' sound like an improper suggestion. Then she'd ask a French student to say it and claim, 'See?'. Suggestiveness is in the ear of the audience...

This, of course, was just Silly Kid Stuff. We got better, promise......well, most of the time...

Beatrice

It depends exactly what one means by "best".. I wrote a piece a few years ago entitled "Paris at the Heart of Europe" which I believe is how the French who have any really European or world view essentially feel about the long-term reality.. Some years ago I found this directly reflected is books as different as (a)The latest collection of writings by the Trotskysist French Workers Party , based upon the latest Communist International that spelled out in specific terms how various events around the world were creating the conditions for the World Revolution, which would find its heart and impetus in Paris, as in the great dawning of the Age of Revolution in 1789: And (b) The post-war novel "The Flower and the Snow" which had sections entitled "The World Turns on Its Axis", which meant the student communities in Paris that were the subject of the book, and "The Land After the Deluge" in which a group of these young people journeyed (almost Hindu like) to the mountainous core of Europe from which the great rivers that in part shaped France's "River Valley Civilizations".

And in fact to us students of the Sixties French culture was the one with the most interest, because in that Age of Cold War hostility, France- not least under the ambitions of De Gaulle insisted on bridging the gap between East and West. The Sixties was in many ways a time of the celebration of the lost opportunities of Paris just before the outbreak of war in 1914 a few months when Duncan Bell, of the Bloomsbury group, could write of as a possible New Dawn, especially in England because the Diaghelev Ballet Russes that had wowed Paris the year before with the multi-media extravangza that married Russian dance genius with the art, poetry, and music of great artists from France and elsewhere who had made their home in "The Rives Gauche".. Only French writers it seemed had the breadth of vision to actually emcompass the new age with works like that of Jean Paul Satre's "Roads to Freedom"- his panoramic novel of the Second World War and Albert Camus allegory of that European tragedy "The Plague".

Perhaps I could mention that in early 1967 my wife, as now is, wowed the parents of the girls who attended the ballet-organization in Dijon to which she belonged and in which she taught with a ballet which we had worked on based on an the story of Hiroshima.. I was unable to be at the performance for I was busy at Uni in Cardiff. But it was very well received. And I was privileged to have the whole cast, supplemented by my wife dance the whole thing in the theatre in which I was the only audience. They clearly felt that it had been something important.

As for the dubbing translation is an art and there are very many circumstances in which no French person would use the literal equivalent of a way that the English would say something. In French it has to be worthy of the French language and perception. Perhap the reverse is also true. I am currently reading some Tolstoy, and of course all educated Russians of his generation were fluent in French and well-versed in French culture. So I noted the English translator's note that she had taken the liberty of changing Tolstoy's title from "Family Happiness" to "Happy Ever After". It seems to me that she had taken the liberty of changing something with dark and uncertain undertones into something one associates with romantic fairy tales.

But going the other way, Jean Bailhache translated and adapted "The New Anatomy of Britain" by Anthony Sampson (1971) producing as his title- 'An X-Ray of England". The English title suggests a rather Life Science treatment of the whole body of life in Britain. But the French title suggest stripping down to "the nitty-gritty" and revealing the skeletal structure of England.. As "politeness" has come up,whenever I try to correct any French person and point out that there is more to Great Britain than just "Angleterre", they look at me as if to appreciate the politeness of an English gentleman. But the French know from their historical experience that the real power comes from England. England defeated France often enough- even when France had Scottish and Irish support.

Perhaps the fact that the most popular A level Baccalaureate in France was traditionally Philosophy and Psychology also has an impact on what a TV commentary feels able to say to its audience, in contrast to dumbed down Britain.

Cass

KB some people DO live in a different world, but some people never lose that thing you have as a child where you can't imagine there is anyone else in the world and everything revolves around you.

No idea what CASS said - sorry, CASS you are too much of a windbag I can't bring myself even to scan read those walls of text.

Oh, hi Sho!

Let me welcome you here. Pull up a chair. I've no idea what this journal is about now, but I'm sure somebody will tell you sooner or later.

When they tell you, can you tell me?

Can I say hi Sho too! God to see you roun' there 'ere parts x

And to give a precis of Cass's post: The French think they're the best country in the world, but they're very polite to forriners, and even their translations of forrin telly programmes are more intellectual that the originals.

That's OK Sho. In this "Freedom of Expression" Universe I am free to try to explain myself fully, and you are free to insult me for doing so. It is not like exchanging views and ideas on h2g2 actually serves any clear end-purpose apart from perhaps confirming current ideas about Big Bangs leading to Black Holes.

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But in terms of "people living in a different universe"- one area where that French cultural legacy has left its mark on British culture is that the News should concern itself with every bad thing that happens in the World- as I have written before a Panoramic view. We are especially encouraged to be outraged and appalled that such things should come to be, but are constantly reminded (today by Mr. Milliband) that the world is constantly in crisis and our fates must be entrusted to people who actually have nothing to do with us personally. Hence there is a natural reaction when listening to an attempt at an encyclopedic view of what has happened and is happening in the world, to try to work out just what particular bits have implications for us at a human level.

Hence the Nepal aircrash put me in mind of our daughter flying off all on her own to go trecking in Nepal exactly five years, whether she flew in such planes (I know she hired a plane taxi to cut across some mountains in NZ last year on another trip) and then whether any of the Nepalese guides involved were ones that she got to know on her trip.

I think that I had a chat with John Simpson some years ago when I had performed a song I wrote about this inhuman scale of news reporting in a club near the now defunct BBC TV building. Such coverage encourages people to feel a sense of apathy and impuisance. Whether it was him or not over the last couple of decades he at least seems to have tried to convey a sense of what "The News" actually means in the daily lives of people caught up in it, who more often than not have to just get on with life as best they can.

Cass

*peeks in to wave at Sho, and refrains from further muddying of KB's journal*

Um. The whole "tennis court" thing could be, as Dmitri suggested, merely the effect of suddenly having a microphone shoved in your face. On the other hand, maybe she is that self-absorbed. It would probably be hard to decide without at least a little bit of context. Certainly, people that self-absorbed do exist, as witness some of the inanities spouted by would-be President Glove.

TRiG.