All right, Jacques?

Jacques Chirac was a neighbour in Paris. He remains an occasional one in the Var for the last weeks of his present job, since it has the perk of a holiday home down the road.

Though we choose not to live in each other's pockets, we have met twice - perhaps leaving the bigger impact on my memory - and I have observed him often enough to know I am not, at such times, in the presence of a monster.

My wife, in common with many French women, likes him. Her mother adored him and, I imagine, would have continued to do so had she not died before he became president.

But if you are British, and especially if you are English, Jacques Chirac is - or is meant to be - a hate figure.

This is expressed in more ways than the one chosen by a former editor of the Sun whose contribution to the entente cordiale was to dispatch a posse of Page 3 girls to the Champs Elysées, armed with a limited-issue edition of that day's paper, with Chirac depicted on the front as a worm.

Forget for a moment the inconvenient detail that, in Paris, to be likened to a worm will cause more bemusement than anything else (as my consoeur Agnès Poirier has pointed out in one of her books, Les Nouveaux Anglais, the term doesn't exist as an insult in French).

The gesture still reflected a view of the French president held pretty widely on the Sun's side of the Channel and the vulgar gimmickry of the tabloids has its equivalent in higher-minded journalistic circles.

Someone at that Other Place once inserted a word I had not used so that a piece written in the run-up to France's referendum on the EU constitution in 2005 declared that recent polls had confirmed the president's "worst fears that the electorate may use the referendum to register its disgust with him, his government and its lot in life".

I was cross at the time, not just because a colleague wishing to change copy in such a significant way should at least have the courtesy to mention his or her intentions in advance, but because the change introduced a word I considered far too harsh to describe the true nature of France's relationship with Chirac.

My own phrase had been "broader disapproval" and I might, on reflection, have chosen something stronger.

But disgust, while undoubtedly felt by an essentially partisan portion if the French electorate, was surely over the top and, in the specific case, much more accurately a reflection of what a middle-class Englishman of a certain political disposition believed.

Someone responding to one of my articles for the Guardian's Comment is Free web pages mocked Chirac's theory that it was more important to get on with governing France than satisfy media and political demands to end the guessing about his own future.

Picture: coombskj

A lot of French people I speak to would agree with that (French, I assume) person's criticism of his record in office, yet it is also commonplace to hear words of genuine admiration for the way he represents their country on the international stage.

But leave to one side his stand on Iraq and Chirac departs from the presidency having failed to make much impact on any of the important issues facing France. That puts into perpective all the attempts he has made during the dying months of his mandate to improve history's judgment on the Elysée years of his long career.

One former confidant, Franz-Olivier Giesbert, wrote in a scathing book last year that Chirac's career, which once promised a great deal, had ended up as "a personal tragedy that has become, in the end, a national tragedy".

This morning, more than one French commentator assessing last night's broadcast from the Elysée observed that here was a politician who was invariably stronger on analysis than on delivery, on words not actions.

Perhaps in the end, Chirac's failure was that no one was ever quite sure what he stood for, or whether what he stood for now was the same as what he stood for a little earlier.

He proved changeable on Europe and America, on the need to drive home reform in France; he opposed war in Iraq and loved to present himself as utterly committed to peace but was pig-headedly determined, as one of the first big decisions of his presidency, to try out his own nuclear weapons in the Pacific. He could be both a charmer, as I certainly found, and a bully (as Blair did).

If being detested by the American or English Right (or, for sure, the far Right of Le Pen) doesn't make him a bad person, Le Figaro could not help noting that he wasn't, at heart, a creature of the French Right either.

Much attention has been paid to his refusal to endorse Nicolas Sarkozy in the broadcast (he may, of course, do so later with whatever enthusiasm).

But I was left rather more intrigued by his reference to moving on from the presidency to serve France and the French in some other way. What can he possibly have in mind?

Coup de Tête pour Nice en fête

Get the idea?
Picture: cjwooduk

We hate Man United. Well I don't as it happens, but this isn't really a football posting so I'll come back to that in a minute.

Where I should start is not at the Nice carnival either, but on the Corniche, which I have just been able to enjoy for the first time since I saw Edward Fox whizzing round its perilous cliffside bends in The Day of the Jackal.

That was a long time ago and I have naturally travelled along the same coastline, from Cannes to Nice, many times since. But enjoyment of the spellbinding scenery is, on the whole, impaired when you have to take care not to drive into the sea.

So I insisted on leaving the car at Saint Raphaël and continuing to Nice by train.

Rail is easily my preferred means of transport and I know there are several spectacular train journeys in the world. But this was a real treat, from the exhilaration of racing along parallel to the Mediterranean shore to the pleasure of trundling through cuttings ablaze with mimosas.

One carnival goes rather a long way for my tastes, and I had been in Bormes-les-Mimosas only a week earlier when Bernadette Chirac opened the corso there.






But the current Nice festival does boast a number of outstanding floats representing the efforts of people from each quarter of the city, and was well worth half a day. We also found an excellent stop for lunch, the Indian lounge, run by a family from Pondichéry and now added to my short list of good French Indian restaurants.

When the procession got under way, the giant caricatures of Chirac (and Bernadette), Ségo and Sarko and the other presidential contenders were especially impressive.


And then there was Zinedine Zidane. Which brings me back to Manchester United.

That statement of hatred in my opening line is also the opening line of a refrain heard, with varying force depending on which club's supporters you are listening to, at most English football grounds.

In France, just now, they hate Man Utd, too. The French naturally prefer Arsenal in any case, given the stronger links that make them seem almost part of Ligue 1. But in normal circumstances, they also respect Man Utd for the mighty club that it is.

The new antipathy follows last week's match against Lille. Everyone by now has a view of the events involving Man Utd fans and French police, and also of Giggs's quickly taken free kick that won the game; there has been comment here as elsewhere.

But limiting myself to the free kick controversy and Lille's petulant walk-off, I couldn't help feeling, as I watched the Zidane character in the Nice carnival parade, that double standards were at play in the French reaction. Man Utd's sense of fair play has been put in question and the referee has been pilloried.

Yet all Giggs did, apparently without breaking any rule of the game, was to make the most of an advantage awarded because of some unfair play by Lille.

Why on earth should a free kick on the edge of the penalty area be delayed to the convenience of the offending team?

Even if that view is open to debate, surely we can at least agree that no verbal provocation justified Zidane's actions in the World Cup final, much as some have charitably expressed understanding of them.

Yet in Nice here was further evidence that far from being a matter of personal disgrace that also tarnished the image of an admirable French national side, Zidane's show of yobbish aggression can be seen as a source of pride.

The carnival caricature had the great man's head thrusting forward as it had towards the chest of Italy's Marco Materrazzi last July.

And the city authorities treated the crowds to repeated bursts over the sound system of that cuddly French hit, Dance of the Headbutt, glorifying the footballer's moment of madness. Without wishing to rain on the carnival, I cannot help thinking that this sends out a depressingly wrong message to youngsters who idolise great sportsmen.

Abbé Pierre: uncommonly great, uncommonly honest

You had your Queen Mother, we had Abbé Pierre.

A remarkable priest and what he meant to France were summed up in those nine words. They came in response to my expression of mild surprise
that France 2 had devoted almost the whole of its lunchtime news to his death, aged 94.


Photograph: Abbé Pierre Foundation


There was a significant difference between the Queen Mother and Abbé Pierre. Whereas she was known universally, his was hardly a household name outside France.

At home, though, this friend to the poor, indefatigable battler for the under-privileged was a true saint in the minds of people who shared his concerns and liked his rebellious spirit, but could not hope to match his commitment.

That is why we were treated to reams of old footage with snapshot glimpses of a great man's life, reverential tributes from a succession of studio guests and clips of today's words of praise from everyone who matters or hopes to matter in France.

Chirac, of course; he is actually very impressive in such circumstances, and spoke of France losing "an immense figure, a conscience, and incarnation of good". Then Ségo, Sarko and the lesser presidential candidates.

As someone from France 2 put it, Abbé Pierre's appeal transcended real and supposed barriers; he was adored and admired by young and old, men and women, rich and poor, Left and Right.

In today's small hours, he knew he was dying, beaten by bronchitis, but had no fear of death, we discovered from one of the speakers. A niece, and an executive of the worldwide Emmaus charity network that he created, sat with him and prayed until he breathed his last at 5.25am.

By midday, they were talking of burying him among the greats at the Panthéon, of giving his name to the law on rights for the homeless about to go before the French parliament.

In fact, he had already expressed a clear desire to be laid to rest among colleagues from his 1954 campaign for the poor and unsheltered, during a ferociously cold winter. That will take his bones to Esteville in Normandy, where he lived for most of the 1990s at an Emmaus retirement home.

As for laws in his name, I doubt if he could have cared less. His foundation was not prepared to go beyond giving the legislation a oui mais, seeing it only as a useful start.

But the thing that struck me most about Abbé Pierre during the last two years of his life was that he remained one of his country's most popular citizens even though - perhaps because - he was big enough to own up to human weakness.

Towards the end of 2005, he admitted in a book that he had more than once broken his vow of chastity as a Roman Catholic priest.

Looking at the old television and newsreel film of a good-looking young man - if priests can be swashbuckling, he was - it was not hard to see that temptation would have crossed his path.

There had, he said, been "passing relations" with women, though he had not felt able to commit himself to anything more lasting: "I was very young when I dedicated my life to God and other people.

"I made my vow of chastity, but that did nothing to remove the strength of desire, to which I have succumbed in passing fashion......I could not allow sexual desire to take root. I therefore have known such desire, and on rare occasions satisfied it, but in reality this satisfaction has been a real source of dissatisfaction because I felt I was not being true.

"To be properly satisfying, sexual desire had to express itself in a loving, tender and trusting relationship. That was not open to me because of my chosen life."

I do not know how this went down in the Vatican.

But to their credit, it seems to have mattered not a jot to the French. Only a few months after making these comments, he was voted the third greatest Frenchman of all time, behind only de Gaulle and Pasteur.

Elysée election: early result

And the new president of France is Ségolène Royal.

Photograph by: PS Clichy sous Bois.

Don't just listen to me. Ségo's election in May, it seems, is the logical extension of claims by Jean-Marie Le Pen, leader of the far-Right Front National, that he will again make it through to the final round of the race - to face her in the deciding poll.

You would have to take a very dim view of the French to believe that given such a choice, more than a small minority of them would vote for Le Pen.

He naturally takes a different view. And there is some evidence that the opinion polls, which currently give his party only 15-17 per cent of popular support, consistently under-estimate his electoral pull.

But can Le Pen really hope to split the centre-Right vote to such an extent that Nicolas Sarkozy is eliminated in the first round as the socialist candidate Lionel Jospin was in 2002?

As a foreign observer of French politics who identified the presidential potential of Mme Royal some time before most, I am naturally pleased to see my instincts being vindicated.

She has a lead in the national polls, at least on first round voting intentions, and so far seems capable of making light of perceived weaknesses and gaffes.

With her radical - and, says the centre-Right, unworkable - ideas for helping the SDFs (France's great army of homeless people who have been turned into an early election issue), she has even begun to sound a little more Left wing.

This will satisfy some of the doubters in her own Parti Socialiste, who worried about her penchant for New Labour tactics with a French accent, appealing to middle France voters just as Tony Blair once offered olive branches to middle England.

And she has also managed to sound a little more Chiracien, with her echoes during her visit to China of his mantra that the world needs counterbalances to American superpower dominance. This, in turn, will please parts of la France profonde that still approve of the kind of France Jacques Chirac represents, if not of the man himself.

I loved that quote spotted by one of my readers, Richard of Orléans, to the effect that it was a big mistake to think of her as nice but unintelligent when she was in reality highly intelligent but not very nice.

But it won't harm her; in the end, I suspect a lot of French people sympathise with her riposte that what critics see as faults in her - her steeliness and ambition -would be considered virtues in a man.

If I am determined to rule out Le Pen's chances of bringing everlasting shame to France by reaching the Elysée, I am not wavering in my belief that M Sarkozy remains a massive obstacle to Mme Royal (and, of course, to M Le Pen's unappealing prediction).

Sarko will be formally installed as the UMP candidate this weekend and we will then see his campaign enter a much more urgent phase.

He is more than a match for Mme Royal in political debate, though his own female supporters have already urged him to avoid being seen as macho and sexist in his clashes with her.

When he talks about immigration and crime, and backs his words with firm action, he clearly impresses large numbers of voters and speaks their language.

Across the south of France from Marseilles to the Italian border, a new poll suggests, he is way ahead of both the socialists and Le Pen.

Questions have been asked this week about his dual role, candidate and minister (not forgetting that as well as being interior minister, the equivalent of the British Home Secretary, he is No 2 to Dominique de Villepin in government).

But he can be expected to stand down soon as France No 1 Cop - that's how the press likes to describe the interior minister - to concentrate on getting into the Elysée.

De Villepin has said he will not give his formal support to Sarko, but this is no surprise. Usually, of course, they don't even seem to belong to the same party, let alone work together in the top two Cabinet roles.

Since de Villepin notoriously is not even an elected politican, the absence of an endorsement from him will inflict little or no damage on the Sarko campaign. Nor will there be much fall-out from President Chirac's constant put-downs of his interior minister's more robust approach to solving France's problems.

But what of M Chirac's own immediate plans? Until quite recently, he was widely seen as an elderly man going through the motions of seeing out his final months of presidency, moreover a presidency judged by most to have been an abject failure.

In his New Year messages, however, he has taken to making what sound very much like declarations of intent for a further five-year mandate. His stance on the war in Iraq has increasingly been lauded as a rare success of his time as head of state.

Surely the very idea of him standing for a third term of office remains preposterous.

Maybe. But it has been treated by some commentators and political reporters in recent weeks as if well within the bounds of possibility.

The UMP, broadly, doesn't want him, nor does the public. But can we yet be sure? Le Figaro suggested the other day that he was talking up his programme of action for France's future as if he saw himself as the man to put it into effect.

M Chirac's wife, Bernadette, enjoyed causing a bit of mischief a month or two back by suggesting that her husband might yet put himself forward again.

And she did little to discourage the speculation when she stonewalled such questions while appearing on peak time television a couple of nights ago.

If, against all logic, he does stand, what banner will he choose? Since Sarko will be the official UMP choice, we could be looking at a One Nation One People contender offering, essentially, more of the same at just the time when France arguably needs something quite different.

Mme Chi-Chi can't or won't say. After insisting, implausibly, that such matters are simply not discussed between husband and wife, she added that Jacques would not even inform her of his decision until the eve of his eventual announcement.

What if he said he was going for it? Could such a step be sufficiently divisive of conservative voters to make the first part of M Le Pen's analysis come true?

Ruffled feathers

Apologies for absence from here, and more especially for my absence from the New Year voeux.

Photograph: Harry Halibut.

Sorry to Jacques Chirac, of course, since I fear I won't be in Paris for his annual drinks-for-the-press gathering on Thursday, but also - and no less sincerely - to Gil Bernardi, the mayor of Le Lavandou.

Poor old Gil may already have been feeling left out of things. I see in Var Matin that none of the presidential candidates has sought his blessing, French law decreeing that no one can stand without having secured 500 signatures from around the country.

Then, on the very evening he throws open the salle d'honneur of the town hall to every Thomas, Richard et Henri in town, it must have been especially hard to be snubbed by one of his most recent permanent residents.

But it wasn't a snub at all. I had simply found a better offer: an evening's badminton.


How sad it that? You live in one of the world's most beautiful countries. You abandon its magnificent capital but beach up in one of its lovelier regions.

And all you can think to do, when the mayor invites you to sup with him and hear of his plans, is to whack a shuttlecock around a sports hall.

Guilty.

There are mitigating factors, however. Working from home - or, more accurately, living at work - is no aid to keeping fit. It seemed in Paris that I was either darting from one end of the country to another, or (rather more often) merely darting across the corridor from bedroom to work station. It wasn't a bad commute.

In Le Lavandou, things have already changed. Mme Randall has imposed a sensible regime of less wine, less bread, more salad and lots of steps. Steps?

Yes, foolishly enough, we live on the top of a hill. To go anywhere, there is a winding road, and there are steps. Joëlle has decided that I/we should take the steps, which are beyond the old BMW's powers to negotiate.

Yesterday, going for the baguette bien cuite, I counted them down and then counted them up, and there are 136 of the things. Some of them may well be shown here once I overcome one of those technical problems of mine and manage to upload some new photos to an unfamiliar and unwelcoming computer.

That sort of exercise is all very well and good provided, in stick and carrot terms, there is also the promise of a ball to chase and kick or, in my case, the feathers of some poor goose to tempt my racket.

The mayor was just unlucky to have chosen to present his voeux at the same time as, I discovered, you could play badminton at a sports centre on the outskirts of his town.

No disrespect, Gil, but also no contest and I trust you appreciate how enthusiastically I took advantage of local facilities.

French badminton clubs are probably much the same as French anything else clubs, that is to say not clubs at all. Are the French just too single-minded for clubs?

Certainly, I retain unfond memories of my experiences at the prestigious Racing Club de France in Paris, where people arrived with their own friends/playing partners, their own shuttles and their own resolve to nab a court from which they would not budge all night.

No hint of the sensible British system of pegs and boards and shaking things around to make sure everyone plays and little cliques don't simply stick together.

Ming, mentioned in my posting about hits and misses from Paris, was my saviour, introducing me to a much friendlier club which had begun life as an out-of-hours social amenity for post office employees but probably has few members these days who even buy stamps.

Even there, if Ming wasn't present to prove I knew someone, it could be tough to break into ready-made foursomes.

Photograph: trevor.

But I think I will take to badminton in Le Lavandou. For a slightly selfish reason.

Southern France has taken longer than the rest of the country to cotton on to the joys of this wonderful sport, with the result that a basic club-standard basher like me can look half decent among those who have taken it up.

And on my first night, there was therefore no shortage of people wanting to play with me.

Zizou: the ifs and butts

It does not take much insight into the English way of seeing and doing things to imagine the repercussions had one of our World Cup squad ended his career in Zinedine Zidane fashion.

Picture: Kaptain Kobold.

An English Zidane would have been torn to pieces by press and public, hounded from pillar to post and left feeling he alone had cost his country victory.

In time, he would have been able to shrug off Most Hated Public Figure status. But he would never have been allowed completely to forget the moment of shaming stupidity.

And he most certainly would not, less than six months after the event, have been named his country's most popular personality in a respectable opinion poll.

But that is what has happened in France. Zidane's act of violence, butting the oafish Italian Marco Materazzi under some verbal provocation, has not so much been forgotten as ignored or understood or even applauded by the French public.

Zidane was one of my two favourite footballers of his time, another Frenchman - Thierry Henry - being the other. But my admiration for his consummate skill did not lead me to overlook his appalling disciplinary record - 13 red cards, more than a few of them for behaving as a lout.

On the morning after the last dismissal of Zidane's career contributed greatly to the wrong team winning the 2006 World Cup, the French sports daily L'Equipe gave front page prominence to a stern, headmasterly piece asking how he would explain his coup de tête to millions of youngsters who looked to him as a role model.

That is about as long as Zizou's humiliation lasted.

Later the same day, President Chirac cleverly sensed and exploited what was quickly becoming the public mood, and welcomed the French squad back to Paris as returning heroes and making light of Zidane's disgrace.

Before long, a jolly pop record glorifying the assault on Materazzi was all over the radio and in the charts.

An interview in which Zidane explained himself - a bit, and with regret but not apology - was to become the most-viewed Canal+ programme of the year. And someone in Italy began marketing sweatshirts showing two figures simulating the incident.

So which approach is right? I tend to agree with those who feel the British are far too quick to build 'em up and bring 'em down.

David Beckham did not deserve the abuse he received for the petulance that brought him a red card in France 98. Football is a game of passion and a player should not be consigned to eternal shame for a sudden loss of control.

But nor does Zizou deserve to be hailed the people's hero so soon after setting such an appalling example.

The French who voted for him acted like those parents from hell whose idea of supporting little Darren and Jason in a school match is to jump up and down on the touchline urging children to replicate the excesses of millionaire superstars they see on the telly.

Gone today, Hyères tomorrow

Salut! is on the move.

Surrounded by cartons stuffed with millions of folk CDs, football fanzines and books on everything from the French revolution to the history of badminton, we bid farewell to Paris.

Specifically, it is adieu to the rue de Rivoli, our grand if not very homely home for the past two-and-a-half years. Part of the magnificent view from the living room is captured inexpertly here (where's Bill when you need him?).

Tomorrow, we will pass the busy little Mediterranean town of Hyères - which really has nothing much to do with this except that I couldn't resist the title - on the final approach to Le Lavandou and a new life there.

There is little time between filling in insurance forms and supervising the removal of our belongings to say much more, and there is also little need.

But what will I tell my neighbour Jacques Chirac? Despite our ups and downs, the president has gamely invited me back to the Elysée for the New Year's drinks reception he throws for journalists each January.

This, we can safely assume, will be his last such voeux, and it looks as if I shall be among absentees.

And the loss of presidential office will mean that the Chiracs will also no longer be our neighbours in the Var, since their holiday home at, the Fort de Brégançon, goes with the job. But somehow I feel our paths will cross again.

I'll be back here soon enough once we've settled in, with reflections on what I will and will not miss about Paris. In the meantime, I will lift France in Flashes near the top of the blog in case the more recent additions inspire further comment.