We had to laugh when I came back from our letter box up the track with a little slip of paper on which our existing post woman introduced us to our new factrice. She's moving on, it would seem, to another round. You can't stay too long in one place or you risk over-familiarity with the clients. On the slip of paper, she made it very clear that we would be buying our calendar this Christmas from her and her alone, not her replacement.
She's a very nice woman, always personable, always a smile, but it's clear that she has little sense of just how privileged a post person is in this day and age of zero-hours contracts. My wife and I are delighted to buy calendars from the pompiers, because the fire people are brave and voluntary. But both of us object to the custom that someone with a job for life and a nice index-linked pension at the end of it should supplement his or her income come Christmas time with some tax-free gratuities. There's just a sense of menace about it all. If you don't buy my poxy calendar for a few dollars more than it's worth, you'll find your correspondence next year dumped in a ditch.
Our ‘frank discussion’ triggered a rant from The Daughter. She went back to Paris late on Tuesday afternoon and, apart from the protracted showers and the gloomy looks when asked if she wouldn’t mind walking the dog, I’m certainly going to miss her company. She can be very funny, particularly when she’s in mid-rant (often about her peers and contemporary culture). I can’t remember exactly why, but she was ranting this time about the baccalaureate’s idiosyncratic marking system. Everything’s marked out of 20 and then multiplied by a coefficient assigned to a certain subject. Why is it, for example, that philosophy – a subject studied only during your last year of school – should have the highest co-efficient?
Why indeed? She's right; it's madness. Is it, I suggested, because the French like to see themselves still as a nation of philosophers? Apart from Sartre and Camus, who are more three parts novelists to one part philosophers, the last truly global French philosophers – one might argue – were les philosophes of the Enlightenment, which happened more than 200 years ago. By that reckoning, why not encourage final-year students to study impressionist art, slap a dirty great co-efficient on it and wait for French art once more to rule the cultural world? I should just mention that this rant had nothing to do with our girl's underwhelming four-hour philosophy exam result, which demoted her from a mention très bien to a mere mention bien. Maddening.
Now that the girl's back in her metropolitan digs, the Good Wife of La Poujade Basse and I were able to watch Lincoln on DVD the other night. It probably qualifies as a 'quinoia' choice in our daughter's book. This is a category she invented after sitting through – and thoroughly enjoying – Le Havre, a marvellous film by the wacky Finnish director, Aki Kaurismaki. 'It's like eating quinoia,' she suggested afterwards. 'You don't particularly fancy it at the time, but once you've eaten it, you feel really clean and healthy, like it's done you a lot of good.'
Lincoln did us both a power of good. It's beautifully staged and feels utterly authentic, but what sucks you in is the sheer brilliance of the acting. Sally Field, Tommy Lee Jones (who can never do any wrong, because my wife would have married him if I hadn't got there first) and, above all, Daniel Day Lewis. His performance, un-showy and compassionate, was mesmerising. If there's a better leading male out there, I've not yet seen him.
Earlier in the week, my wife brought back the sad news from her cabinet, that one of her most delightful clients had finally lost his long and wretched battle with cancer. Every time that he and his wife came to see her, they insisted on bringing half a dozen or more eggs: not from their own chickens, but purchased from the old man next door. Sometimes, if they happened to be in Brive, they would drop off some reinforcements in the waiting room. A truly charming couple, they both re-married late in life and experienced 20 years or so of marital bliss. I wonder how his widow will manage without him – and I wonder how we will manage without the richest eggs in Christendom.
Sad news is often balanced by good. Skimming through the home page of The Grauniad the other morning, I was delighted to read that Wilko Johnson's apparently terminal pancreatic cancer is in remission. During his farewell tour, it seems that a surgeon contacted him to suggest that he visit his hospital in Cambridge. An operation removed a tumour weighing three kilos. Imagine! That's more than your average bag of potatoes. So Wilko's still with us, which is wonderful, because he's one of the most entertaining human beings on the planet. Dr. Feelgood worked a miracle.
This beautiful autumnal weather is still holding. But our heat pump whirred into life the other night for the first time since about April. Gloves are now de rigeur for my matutinal dog-walks. My shorts are hung and I'm back in longs and I have even at moments shod my feet in slippers. What with the clocks going back on Sunday, there's only one thing to deduce: we're slipping irredeemably and inexorably into winter. My God, Holmes, you're a genius!