To all would-be writers. Beware of overusing and abusing the alliterative device. The machine-gun like overdeployment of too many consonants can tap on the readers brain like a woodpecker hammering into a tree, or endless rain, thundering down on a skylight window. This post contains a downpour of allitération – you have been warned.

Drenched

Drenched in a deluge of despondency, this grey, glum and gloomy land that is France. There’s been more rain in the last few weeks than Noah had in his entire life time. Interminable torrential downpours. Good for the garden, but now the veg are drowned out and washed away and those corners of God’s great earth, on which we lavish green fingered love, are now quagmires.

Stacking up stiffs

However, sun is on the way, and I know France and the French well enough to know that after two consécutive days of sunshine, everyone will be complaining. « Il fait chaud, trop chaud » – hot, too hot, because when températures rise over 30°c for a few days, we are screaming HEATWAVE !!!! with memories of the great heatwave of 2003, when températures soared into the low 40°c for almost two weeks, and over 15,000 people died from the great summer roasting – the elderly, or the infirm, those living alone, unable to look after themselves, who wilted, dried and died in the unrelenting August inferno. Hospitals and morgues couldn’t keep pace and the powers-that-be, were piling up stiffs in refrigerated containers normally used for the transport of foodstuffs.

Crawling into a sweaty box

And now in summer when the weathermen predict that températures will soar to skyrocketting highs, we hit the local shops to buy up portable aircon units and fans – Erm, didn’t we all rush out and buy this stuff last year, and the year before ? I’ve got three fans all sitting gathering dust in my attic, and last year during a hot spell, I bought another – « just to be on the safe side » – imagine we all want to be in seperate rooms during the heatwave and it would also be nice to have a fan on to cool down the bedroom, so much nicer than crawling into a stifling sweaty little box.

Up a nun’s fanny with no sign of lubricant

Rain, rain and more bloody rain and I know the French enough to know that after a few days of sun, those who till sow reap and grow will all be screaming « DROUGHT »

But we’ve just had a month of non-stop déluge of biblical proportions. How can there be a drought ??????

Well (some drought explanations)

It was not the right sort of rain and none of it actually managed to trickle down into water table and so now the ground is drier than a nun’s fanny.

There was so much rain that the ground became quickly waterlogged and could not take in the water,and there was not enough time between one déluge and the next to let the ground dry out. Yes vasr swathes of France were underwater BUT …. You know the rest, we are back up a nun’s fanny with no sign of a lubricant.

Not a drop to drink

Rain and rain and more bloody rain and that Ancient Mariner idea that there is water water everywhere nor any a drop to drink.

France may sell it’s mineral water to the world, but as we know, the French only drink wine, and by the bucket. (If only) – récent reports report that the French are drinking far less wine thane ver – roughly twenty litres a year per person – ( that’s about 25 bottles a year) – anyway, rest assured all ye health conscious Frenchies – the trieless torrential rain of récent weeks has washed away the grape and come next year there will be little or no wine to drown our sorrows, meaning too, that wine prices will probably rocket. Yes, not a drop to drink for next yea

Deluge of despondency.

More watery allusions – For the last moth, France has been hit by a wave of strikes. The French are revolting (again), as is their wont in May and June – for these are traditionally the months of the unofficial « strike season » – Dockers, railway workers, truck drivers, and those ladies and gents who man tha nation’s refineries, fuel dépôts and nuclear power stations – have been on strike, protesting against the government’s new employment législation – which I will not expalin here for the simple fact that French national news coverage and analysis is generally so bloody amateurish that, when something is happening, you know it is happening, but you never know why. Multiple stikes, national démonstrations, interminable lines of cars, stacked up at servcie stations waiting for fuel and millions of French workers, compromised in their already difficult daily journeys to work. Why ?

Well the nation’s trade unions are agianst the governments new labour laws, but event after a month of conflict, not a single bloddy news bulletin hasd managed to explain what is in the new labour laws that is making people so mad. Yes, I have looked at length on the Internet and, well, it is the same story – RIEN – nothing. Please, can the French do news like the Brits or the Americans with overkill détails and analysis. It might get bloody boring, but at least I will know why I can’t fill my car.