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    K7/PF comes up trumps again!

    Must admit Renaud songs of that kind bring a tear to my eye these days- they remind me of the loss of lots of things: my French fluency; my job in a French dept.; the friends who made me the K7s (cassettes) of his early stuff; the trips to France to visit students on the year abroad that allowed me to buy the originals in 2nd hand shops and flea markets; the culture he came from and embodied; his own vibrancy and importance (tho' Les Bobos was funny) etc etc

    Comment


      Yep, seconded about the general atmo in his songs, the post-68 era, the working-class Titi Parisien stuff etc. (although he moved away from that milieu a long time ago obvs. He is a bit of a Germanopratin himself now, more often found these days at the Closerie des Lilas or the Café de Flore - upstairs, away from the hoi polloi - in hyper bourgeois St-Germain-des-Près than the bistroquets of Belleville…).

      I love his song Oscar, about his Ch’ti grandfather who left the northern coalfields to escape pit life after WWII and went to Paris to work in factories – Paris when it was very working-class and affordable. It encapsulates a lot of this lost world (the line "Il était marxiste tendance Pif le chien" has always cracked me up):



      Oscar

      Y venait du pays où habite la pluie
      Où quand y a du soleil c'est un mauvais présage
      C'est qui va pleuvoir, c'est qui va faire gris
      Il était chtimi jusqu'au bout des nuages

      L'a connu l'école que jusqu'à treize ans
      Après c'est la mine qui lui a fait la peau
      Vingt ans au charbon, c'est un peu minant
      Pour goûter de l'usine y s'est fait parigot

      Dans son bleu de travail y me faisait rêver
      Faut dire que j'étais jeune, je savais pas encore
      Je pensais que le turbin c'était un bienfait
      Bienfait pour ma gueule, surtout c'est la mort

      L'avait fait 36, le Front populaire
      Pis deux ou trois guerres, pis Mai 68
      Li avait la haine pour les militaires
      Je te raconte même ce qui pensait des flics

      Il était marxiste tendance Pif le chien
      Syndiqué à mort, inscrit au parti
      Nous traitait de fainéant, moi et mes frangins
      Parce qu'on était anars tendance patchouli

      Il était balaise fort comme un grand frère
      Les épaules plus larges que sa tête de lit
      Moi qui suis musclé comme un serpillière
      Ben, de ce coté-là je tiens pas beaucoup de lui

      L'avait sur le bras gauche un super tatouage
      Avec un croissant de lune et une fleur coupée
      La couleur s'était barrée avec l'âge
      Il avait le bleu pâle d'un jean délavé

      Quand j'allais chez lui des fois de temps en temps
      Je lui roulait ses clopes avec son tabac gris
      Pis je restais des heures avec des yeux tout grands
      À l'écouter me baratiner sa vie

      Vers soixante-cinq ans, on lui a dit, bonhomme
      T'as assez bossé, repose-toi enfin
      L'a quitté Paname et la rue de Charonne
      Pour une petite baraque avec un bout de jardin

      L'a usé ses reins, a cassé la terre
      Pour planter trois pauvres salades, trois carottes
      Y regrettait ses potes du boulevard Voltaire
      Le bistrot, l'apéro et les parties de belote

      Il est pas parti, comme disent les poètes
      Y s'est pas envolé, comme disent les curés
      Un matin de décembre d'un cancer tout bête
      L'a cassé sa pipe, il a calanché

      Y venait du pays où habite la pluie
      Où quand y a du soleil c'est un mauvais présage
      C'est qui va pleuvoir, c'est qui va faire gris
      Il était chtimi jusqu'au bout des nuages
      Il était chtimi jusqu'au bout des nuages

      Songwriters: Renaud Pierre Manuel Sechan

      Comment


        In other France-related news, I would like to register my great disappointment ginormous piss-offness at penny-pinching Hollande (maybe Macron). I’ve just found out via email that the hitherto very useful French Consulate in Edinburgh which I will be visiting next week and which up to now has been a proper consulate (passports/IDs issued etc., as opposed to a basic honorary consulate staffed by volunteers, interns etc. with limited attributions) has been hugely downgraded, to basically not much more than an honorary consulate. That means that they no longer deliver pretty vital stuff like passports, ID cards etc. anymore. You have to go to bloody London for everything now (I can just imagine how long it will take to get a slot, it was at least 1 month in Embra, will be longer in London I bet).

        This is mega pisspoor from France for a country (the UK) with ~150,000 French citizens. Only about 10 yrs ago, even honorary consulates (like Newcastle’s) used to do passports, IDs, Livrets de Famille etc. Now, their admin function is just to collect those documents done in London so northern French citizens don’t have to go back to London to collect their passport issued a month later. I understand passports are not the rudimentary paper thing they used to be (they're biometrics with clever chips and all that whizzkiddery stuff) but still, only 1 admin centre for French citizens for the whole of the UK is appalling.

        Obviously part of the cost-cutting measures (probably Hollande’s fault rather than Macron’s here but it’s kif-kif anyway, much of a muchness (it'll be even worse with Macron as he wants to cut 120,000 civil service jobs over 5 yrs). In this particular consulate case, it will save absolutely zero €, simply because the staff hours they’ll save in Embra and elsewhere (Newcastle, Leeds etc.) they’ll have to add in London to absorb the extra workload. So,they'll save nothing but will inconvenience the 1000s of French citizens who live 2 hrs away from London and were using either Embra or their local French honorary consulate. Fucking short-sighted idiots.

        And then you learn that His Majesty Macron has ordered a new set of plates and tea cups for his Élysée Palace for a total cost of… €500,000. Yes, it's not a typo, the new crockery at l’Élysée will cost 500 fucking grand. You do wonder what on earth happened to the "old" plates, did Hollande’s missus (Valérie Trierweiler) smash them all when she found out that Hollande cheated on her with actress Julie Gayet? Must have been one hell of a domestic then. Oh well, the world over, we're fucked with those bozos in charge.

        Comment


          Originally posted by linus View Post
          According to this clever chap, Israel is "the most beautiful democracy in the world".
          He is a cunt on these issues, a total cunt. As I wrote here a year ago, he joked last year about the plight of the poor Kwassa-Kwassa people as he visited an RNLI-type rescue centre in Brittany: Macron sparks row with migrants' boat joke. (the Kwassa-Kwassas are migrants from the Comoros Islands who attempt the crossing to the French territory of Mayotte on Kwassa-Kwassas – small makeshift fishing craft – and often die in doing so, at least 10,000 of them have perished since 1995).

          But that’s what many educated arrogant politicians often do, they think they’re so above us mere mortals that their impeccable education credentials and background and fucking brain the size of the EU will save them and absolve them of any fault (that’s if they even think they’ve done sthg wrong in the first place…). I don’t think Macron is a racist at heart (but likewise I think racism is far from being a clear-cut affair, there are many shades) but he certainly displays worrying signs of pig-shit ignorance and insensitivity.

          The fundamental problem remains in France: who is there that’s better, in terms of stability, pro-EU etc. than Macron for the next elections/Presidentials & GE? A sensible, more leftwing Parti Socialiste would be preferable but they’ve been wiped out in the Macron hurricane of 2017. They will rise from the ashes but that could take a generation. They have a new leader since April, one Olivier Faure, but he’s been described as a chip off the old (Hollande) block, so that doesn’t bode too well for this Parti Socialiste "renouveau" (rebirth), this great renaissance we keep hearing about.

          A better alternative in the 2017 Presidentials, as I wrote in the French political thread last year (as I’m old enough to remember Mitterrand’s "synthèses des Gauches" – union of the Lefts – that propelled him to power in 1981), would have been a Hamon-Mélenchon ticket but unfortunately it didn’t happen.

          That unlikely alliance came very close to being formed apparently but didn’t, no official explanations were given as to why. (We learnt afterwards from party insiders, and Sophia Chikirou in particular, that Hamon and Mélenchon secretly met several times in February 2017 and that they "agreed on most things and were OK to join forces" but that "a few minor things" were too much of a stumbling block – Chikirou was Mélenchon’s PR guru who transformed him, at least for the time of the presidential campaign, from a thoroughly obnoxious miserable no-hoper to a polite, smiling and media-savvy potential winner.)

          IMO, it didn’t happen more because of leadership reasons than ideological ones (although Hamon’s pro-EU position vs Mélenchon’s Euro-scepticism would have been a challenge to reconcile, but I think Mélenchon would have understood and accepted that his position was untenable, even Marine Le Pen backed down on Europe! That Frexiting debate shouldn’t even have been discussed at all in France FFS, a Frexit is so totally unthinkable and impossible. I don’t think Mélenchon ever wanted to leave the EU – well, none of them really does in France, even the Front National – but like all populists he loves to blame the EU for all evils, never got anything positive to say about it. If the cunt had dropped the fatuous posturing & grandstanding and softened his hardline stance on the EU, he would have got to the 2nd round and could well have beaten Macron in the face-off).

          Realpolitik should have prevailed here but the practical nuts and bolts most likely got in the way. This sort of questions must have kiboshed their plans: who will be the presidential candidate of the reunited left? Who will be prime minister? How many ministers of each party in the gvt? What about the General Election lists a month later? etc.

          The Parti Socialiste, who didn’t even support their presidential candidate Hamon, must have wanted to be top dog in spite of their low polling scores, but so did Mélenchon who drew his legitimacy from polling much higher. We know what happened, the Left ended up with 2 candidates and predictably lost, as you do when you’re divided. A compromise platform between the two certainly wouldn’t have been ideal but better than what we’ve got currently.

          Comment


            And now the Macrons want the state to build a private pool on the state-owned estate off the Côte d'Azur which the Président controls.

            Initial bids are Euro 150,000, but the final cost is expected to be higher.

            Comment


              He is a bit of a Germanopratin himself now
              Indeed, as he cleverly admits in the last lines of Les Bobos:

              On les appelle bourgeois bohêmes
              Ou bien bobos pour les intimes
              Dans les chanson d'Vincent Delerm
              On les retrouve à chaque rime
              Ils sont une nouvelle classe
              Après les bourges et les prolos
              Pas loin des beaufs, quoique plus classe
              Je vais vous en dresser le tableau
              Sont un peu artistes c’est déjà ça
              Mais leur passion c'est leur boulot
              Dans l’informatique, les médias
              Sont fier d'payer beaucoup d'impôts

              Les bobos, les bobos
              Les bobos, les bobos

              Ils vivent dans les beaux quartiers
              ou en banlieue mais dans un loft
              Ateliers d’artistes branchés,
              Bien plus tendance que l'avenue Foch
              ont des enfants bien élevés,
              qui ont lu le Petit Prince à 6 ans
              Qui vont dans des écoles privées
              Privées de racaille, je me comprends
              ils fument un joint de temps en temps,
              font leurs courses dans les marchés bios
              Roulent en 4x4, mais l’plus souvent,
              préfèrent s’déplacer à vélo

              Les bobos, les bobos
              Les bobos, les bobos

              Ils lisent Houellebecq ou philippe Djian, les Inrocks et Télérama,
              Leur livre de chevet c’est surand
              Près du catalogue Ikea.
              Ils aiment les restos japonais et le cinéma coréen
              passent leurs vacances au cap Ferret
              La côte d'azur, franchement ça craint
              Ils regardent surtout ARTE
              Canal plus, c’est pour les blaireaux
              Sauf pour les matchs du PSG
              et d’temps en temps un p'tit porno

              Les bobos, les bobos
              Les bobos, les bobos

              Ils écoutent sur leur chaîne hi fi
              France-info toute la journée
              Alain Bashung Françoise Hardy
              Et forcement Gérard Manset
              Ils aiment Desproges sans même savoir
              que Desproges les détestait
              Bedos et Jean Marie Bigard,
              même s’ils ont honte de l’avouer
              Ils aiment Jack Lang et Sarkozy
              Mais votent toujours Ecolo
              Ils adorent le Maire de Paris,
              Ardisson et son pote Marco

              Les bobos, les bobos
              Les bobos, les bobos

              La femme se fringue chez Diesel
              Et l'homme a des prix chez Kenzo
              Pour leur cachemire toujours nickel
              Zadig & Voltaire je dis bravo
              Ils fréquentent beaucoup les musées,
              les galeries d'art, les vieux bistrots
              boivent de la manzana glacée en écoutant Manu chao
              Ma plume est un peu assassine
              Pour ces gens que je n'aime pas trop
              par certains côtés, j'imagine…
              Que j'fais aussi partie du lot


              Les bobos, les bobos
              Les bobos, les bobos

              Comment


                PF - re Macron - good analysis, his aim was to enforce an image that the Presidential office is sacrosanct and respect is due. You are entirely right, this will play very well with mainstream rw voters or even voters who in general have a liking for institutions such as the Presidency, it's not necessarily a rw only thing. He played it for the gallery (then went to the kid and a chat with him that was probably rather less pompous - what's the bet he will vote for him at the next Presidentielle?)

                "C'est pas l'homme qui prend la mer, c'est la mer qui prend l'homme....." - ah Renaud!

                Comment


                  Turns out the finance ministries put out their own version of the Franco-German Eurozone reform plan and it's meaningfully different in substance.

                  Of particular note in my field, this wasn't in Macron-Merkel:
                  The Commission proposal for Sovereign Bond Backed Securities (SBBS) has significantly more disadvantages than potential benefits and should not be further pursued.

                  Comment


                    Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                    And now the Macrons want the state to build a private pool on the state-owned estate off the Côte d'Azur which the Président controls.

                    Initial bids are Euro 150,000, but the final cost is expected to be higher.
                    €150K for an an above-ground pool, humm, sounds a bit dear to me.

                    The Macrons should really have asked this nice fella below, he sells good value proper pools for Piscines Tanguy. Recognise him?



                    Comment


                      I wonder if he's better at selling pools than he was up front for Les Bleus . . .

                      Comment


                        Originally posted by Felicity, I guess so View Post
                        Indeed, as he cleverly admits in the last lines of Les Bobos:

                        par certains côtés, j'imagine…
                        Que j'fais aussi partie du lot


                        Les bobos, les bobos
                        Les bobos, les bobos
                        Well spotted...

                        He’s in a pretty bad state now (alcohol, cigarettes). Left Paris (well, Meudon) about 5 yrs ago after his wife filed for divorce, she'd grown tired of his alcoholism I think. Now lives in the lovely town of L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue in the Lubéron, near Avignon, lots of rich Bobos in the Lubéron (L'Isle-sur-la-Sorgue is famous for its huge Sunday market, food, antiques, second-hand stuff etc. it’s one of Europe’s largest vintage markets). Often to be found at Le Bouchon café drinking Pastis and chatting to people, they’ve got some sort of Renaud shrine going on in that bistroquet.

                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3OJQbH0C0M

                        Comment


                          Originally posted by ursus arctos View Post
                          I wonder if he's better at selling pools than he was up front for Les Bleus . . .
                          He was ace, just terribly misunderstood. The Mags didn't deserve him anyway.

                          Comment


                            He was ace at Guingamp and AJA, not so much elsewhere.

                            That said, he's far from the only player who became a shadow of they once were under M. Roux

                            Comment


                              Very true, Guy Roux was the Great Wizard, away from him they all withered.

                              Comment


                                Originally posted by Moonlight shadow View Post
                                PF - re Macron - good analysis, his aim was to enforce an image that the Presidential office is sacrosanct and respect is due. You are entirely right, this will play very well with mainstream rw voters or even voters who in general have a liking for institutions such as the Presidency, it's not necessarily a rw only thing. He played it for the gallery (then went to the kid and a chat with him that was probably rather less pompous - what's the bet he will vote for him at the next Presidentielle?)

                                "C'est pas l'homme qui prend la mer, c'est la mer qui prend l'homme....." - ah Renaud!
                                He's going off the rails at the minute and playing a dangerous game IMO. A few LREM MPs are starting to speak out as a way to warn him (they get a lot of flak in their constituencies), but I doubt he will listen, he is too hors-sol at the minute.

                                Quite funny this couple from Burgundy who sent a big parcel full of crockery to L'Élysée Palace to help save a bit of "pognon" (colloquial for money) on the crockery (a few days ago, Macron ranted that France was spending too much "pognon" on social welfare, hence their use of the word).

                                https://twitter.com/MONSTERLOVE696/status/1008305455901364224

                                Comment


                                  Was that Guivarche hawking pools? Almost felt sorry for him at Rangers. Hope he got a good ezee terms EbT from that scumbucket Murray.
                                  Last edited by Lang Spoon; 22-06-2018, 22:00.

                                  Comment


                                    FFS, it's Guivarc'h man. Never ever miss out the apostrophe again or I'll have you banned from this forum.

                                    Comment


                                      When he could hit a barn door with a coo is when I’d spell his name right.

                                      Comment


                                        Wilful apostrophism should carry a jail sentence.

                                        Comment


                                          Originally posted by Pérou Flaquettes View Post
                                          He is a cunt on these issues, a total cunt. As I wrote here a year ago, he joked last year about the plight of the poor Kwassa-Kwassa people as he visited an RNLI-type rescue centre in Brittany: Macron sparks row with migrants' boat joke. (the Kwassa-Kwassas are migrants from the Comoros Islands who attempt the crossing to the French territory of Mayotte on Kwassa-Kwassas – small makeshift fishing craft – and often die in doing so, at least 10,000 of them have perished since 1995)....
                                          Actually it was Renaud who made that statement about Israel being "the most beautiful democracy", not Macron. Renaud has been a hardcore zionist in his recent bobo stage, a 180 degree turn from his early days:

                                          Comment


                                            Ah OK, I’ve just seen the clip where he says that, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRTjsvIkSvs, I had no idea he'd turned funny. In this clip and the Ardisson show with Guy Bedos, it looks very much like he once said (at the time of the Gulf War) that he was for the total obliteration of Israel.

                                            While googling around to find recent info on him, I read that he quite liked Fillon too, said about him: "He looks very honest, he is a real Republican". ("Il a une tête de parfait honnête homme", avait alors estimé la star).

                                            https://www.lci.fr/people/renaud-fil...n-1254430.html

                                            https://www.lci.fr/musique/en-concer...s-2024755.html

                                            Renaud : "Il n’y a qu’Israël qui m’intéresse en ce moment"

                                            I don’t care about him toying with the idea of converting to Judaism, but the rest is pathetic, he seems completely lost. This radical move away from his core beliefs, can’t just be down to alcohol and drugs surely.

                                            Comment


                                              Ugh, Macron is planning a full-blown En Marche - Ciudadanos alliance for the 2019 Euros!

                                              https://www.politico.eu/article/macr...2019-platform/

                                              Comment


                                                Just seen a Football Lads Alliance type I know of from the O's on Twitter vigorously applauding Macron's proposal to bring back national service.

                                                The future there, ladies and gentlemen.

                                                Comment


                                                  On the other hand, his rail policy is entirely sensible and forward-looking. Public ownership of the SNCF remains, with competition on routes to reduce costs. Promoting integration of rail policy across the EU, and manufacturers combining. Avoids our sprawling system, and more attractive than the Lexit Island vision that seems to be Labour policy at the moment.

                                                  Comment


                                                    Originally posted by E10 Rifle View Post
                                                    Just seen a Football Lads Alliance type I know of from the O's on Twitter vigorously applauding Macron's proposal to bring back national service.

                                                    The future there, ladies and gentlemen.
                                                    There won’t be a national service, as I wrote on here in March. Macron's initial proposals to resurrect the old (military) national service (sthg that featured in his 2017 manifesto, purely to appeal to the more conservative electorate) have been being hugely watered down since last year and particularly since February 2018 when it was further watered down and fudged as I wrote (Macron never had any intention to reintroduce it anyway, far too expensive and onerous), and the final plans could even be further downsized and amount to fuck all basically. It will end up most likely resembling a (non-military) "citizen service", sthg like this: https://www.gov.uk/government/get-in...itizen-service

                                                    France's Macron brings back national service

                                                    It will only last 1 month (compulsory – and then maybe another optional period of 2-3 months) instead of the 6-12 months Macron said it would last and will probably consist in citizenship lessons mixed with some good Samaritan charity/community-based stuff, like helping old ladies or pupils to cross the road or doing volunteer work in wildlife trusts trying to save extinct breeds of frogs. The whole thing should be finalised in 2019, his gvt are busy looking at how to reduce the overall cost and how to involve private companies. The economic reality of reintroducing a military service really is a brutal one, it would cost tens of billions of £ and achieve fuck all politically in the long run, therefore Macron has gradually hugely downsized his plans. He doesn’t want to scrap the whole thing altogether as it would be seen as losing face and giving in to those lily-livered "liberals" of course but it will defo be a SNINO, a national service in name only.

                                                    I wrote about his pissy electoralist project in this March post: https://www.onetouchfootball.com/sho...=1#post1403759 (to fend off the resurgent threat from the right & far right 3-4 months ago, Macron publicly debated it around that time). In particular this bit:

                                                    “Macron himself is also trying to take the wind out of Wauquiez’s sails [new Les Républicains leader, mainstream right] by finding ways to appropriate for himself several of the right’s traditional themes to keep as many of his rightwing voters as poss, probably explains his forthcoming anti-immigration bill (to be examined soon, it'll be watered down probably but will be passed, weak opposition in parliament). He is on the warpath after having lived a charmed presidential life (hardly any political opposition, all AWOL, in disarray or too small to do much, like Mélenchon's La France Insoumise) since being elected last May and fawned upon (while taking liberties with the media), and has unveiled a series of right-wing looking measures since Christmas, such as a new "tough" penal reform and this new three month long "national service" – scrapped 20 yrs ago – where kids will learn proper manners and take cold showers at 4am to toughen up.

                                                    Although Macron seems to be backtracking now on the idea after his bean-counters told him that it would cost much more than first anticipated, at least €5 billion a year to put through 700,000 youngsters yearly + the huge initial setting up costs (up to €20bn altogether) + the logistic difficulty to organise such a massive scheme from scratch, so it’s likely to remain pie in the sky (will probably be replaced by something far less ambitious, according to rumours by something lasting only 1 month or even by a 10-day long "citizenship course" done on the cheap in schools during holidays) but in the meantime this faux patriotic stuff gets the pensioners and all excited so that’s all right. Give it another 6 months and this "national service" will consist of a weekend in the woods playing games and smoking pot with post Soixante-huitards as sergeant majors.

                                                    It is all clearly designed to fob off this new Wauquiez threat as well as other potential dangers such as the Front National which is preparing its comeback proper

                                                    etc.
                                                    He included that gimmick in his 2017 presidential campaign platform as part of his pretend "law and order" agenda, this kind of thing appeals to some voters, there are a few nostalgiques of the military service in France, often for the wrong reasons (pure nostalgia basically, or practical reasons, stuff like being able to take all your driving licences – car, motorbike, HGV – although I very much doubt that option would be open today).

                                                    It’s just another faux measure to try to grab a slice of the rightwing electorate pie (just like his seeing the pope for an hour a few days ago), but there will be no reintroduction of the traditional military service, God no, Macron knows full well that it’s very expensive, very complicated and electorally pointless past the initial frissons of excitement (it was scrapped in the 1990s for a good reason: it was expensive and served little purpose, especially in a context, the 1990s, of downsizing the military forces - lots of bases were shut down etc.).

                                                    (I would say that I suppose – that it was pointless – as I bloody had to do the damn thing, I wrote about it here. Well, I had to start it I should say, as I was discharged after 2 months - but it still fucked my plans for that year but never mind, I did my best to turn the negatives into positives and did other things, like working in a shop, then for my uncle in his business then as a postman etc.

                                                    I pretended I had suicidal ideas t get discharged, it was the quickest way to terminate my military career, they kept me in observation for about 4 days in a military hospital in Versailles, then had a final ITW with a doctor who discharged me there and then. No way I was going to spend a whole year in some barrack doing 40 hrs/week being paid £50 a month (as a conscript, after the first period of military training lasting 1 month-6 weeks, you're assigned a proper job on the base, can be anything really, mine was to sort out the plane order from a huge storage facility full of obscure parts, bloody boring... I had to count 100s of nuts and stuff like that and sometimes the aircraft hangar people/mechanics would take the mick out of us conscripts and place fake orders, or ask us to fetch them 10,000 wingnuts or 50 metres of velcro, neatly wrapped in a ball as per the order form... I don't know if you've ever tried to wrap around even 2 metres of velcro but it does tend to stick... Of course, they'd given us an impossible job to do, did it as a practical joke. It's funny first, you have a good laugh with the lads and the sergeant major back at the mess during your break but it didn't amuse me for long, I lost patience after 2-3 weeks. But I didn’t mind the month-long military training in the air force prior to being assigned to that storage unit, I wouldn’t say the training was fun but most of it was enjoyable, top camaraderie and it wasn’t very physically tough, there was no crawling in mud, obstacle courses and that sort of thing – it was much tougher in the Army though –, we played football and most of the air force staff were very pleasant, a few of the lieutenants and officers even begged me to stay! I have a degree in English and they were dying for people to teach English to the trainee pilots in Cognac, Istres I think and other bases. The whole package – pissiness of job, wages, pension, huge holiday entitlement, retirement at 45 etc. – was superb but non merci, each to their own and it defo wasn't for me).

                                                    Comment

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