Staples

Back from the clinic in Mougins, where I spent Xmas in what I discovered was intensive care. I swapped some innards for a temporary catheter, whilst waiting for the plumbing to become watertight. Next visit to Mougins, for a couple of days' stay, will be in a fortnight. I have got used to the journey, though not as much as the BH, who has done two round trips a day for quite a while now.

My tummy is now graced with about thirty something staples between belly button and the dangly bits, exactly like those for paper. They come out on Monday, using a special tool, so I will be able to pass through an airport metal detector again.

Quick update

Last polishing session of the lifeboat this morning, essentially the handrails on the companionway going down to the sickbay, and the protective rails in the engine room. Super shiny for the moment, but greasy or salty hands are the norm when working the boat, so the metalwork won't stay like that for long. Still, it gives me something physical to do, keeps me warm in the unseasonable arctic blast, and whiles away the time before going under the knife.

Just a day or two before hitting the clinic at Mougins for the third time this autumn. Though I could conceivably get out before, I'll be spending Christmas in hospital, as a precaution, for the kind of plumbing I am going in for sometimes involves readmissions, when patients are released too early. By Christmas itself, apart from nosocomial incarceration and a catheter probably still in situ, I should be feeling reasonably OK again. May be wearing a nappy, though, to start with.

The BH will be having a lonely if busy 'holiday', retracing during the school break the same route to get to the clinic she normally takes to go to work. Still, it's good to think that the Munich, Brussels and London contingents will be able to spend the festivities together.

I will be glad to get home for Hogmanay, though it will be back to the old routine of self administered anti blood clot jabs and twice weekly blood tests.

Pilgrimage

Just back from a brief visit with the BH to Brussels, to view and approve the latest addition to the family. C. lives up to expectations: indeed surpasses all the photos and Skype previews. A pilgrimage well worth making, and I can see why the Three Wise Men went to all the trouble when it was their turn at infant inspection.

Brussels Airlines gave us the smoothest landing we have ever experienced, coming into Brussels airport. So good, in fact, that the spontaneous clapping (there were many Italians on board) didn't start immediately, as we were unsure we had even landed. Coming back was a different matter, with some really hefty turbulence descending over the Alps, so hefty, indeed, that in addition to the tightly buckled seat belt, I was clinging on to the seat in front just to stay in one place.

It's been a while

It's been a while since my last post. Over five weeks, in fact.

During that time the lifeboat has been pulled out of the water and given a thorough scrape to get rid of the barnacles, and then repainted with a blue paint which wasn't quite the regulation blue of the SNSM (as the inspecting engineer from Paris dryly remarked), but did correspond to the blue of the previous, mythical vedette. Local sensibilities matter here! The propellers were taken off and remachined, to rid them of serious vibrations caused by unbalanced rotation. Similarly, the engines were given an overhaul, and the propshaft seals and cutless bearings (burnt out from high speed rescues) were replaced. A lot of money and a good deal of crew time went into repairing the ravages of a hard season's rescue service. Most of us are still bearing the odd spot of blue paint somewhere on our skin. Still, the good ship Notre Dame de la Garoupe II is now back on station, though there are still crucial bits of maintenance we still have to do, particularly on the aft hatch for the auxiliary inflatable.

Similarly, this autumn, I have been hauled out of normal life, and have been expensively stripped down, overhauled and repaired. I have been seeing the French health service and hospitals from the inside, and they are pretty impressive. Like with the lifeboat, there is still some crucial work to do on my innards, which will mean passing Christmas in hospital, with a catheter instead of a propshaft seal. Still, I hope to be back on station sometime in the new year.

Escargots

A, in Brussels, has become adept at fashioning snails from blue playdough. Sounds like the idea has caught on, because a rather chichi art gallery has decided to place blue snails on its walls, facing the sea...

Dunno about the rest of you, but A's snails speak to me more.

Just before the storm

Yesterday, after a lot of practice docking and positioning the lifeboat, stuff we hadn't had much chance to practice as a team over the summer, because we were too busy on call outs, we were rewarded with a bit of a bounce, out in the bay. The wind was from the south east, so strong and whipping up quite a chop. For the first time with me aboard, everybody was in the wheelhouse, and the watertight door and hatches were all battened down, in case of capsize. Enjoy the video full-screen.

Fun, especially when the lookout shouts back "Big one coming, hang on". The boat needed a good rinse afterwards, including a going over with scotchbrite pads all over the railings, which were caked with salt and chalk.

Once back in harbour, the wind really began to howl, and sure enough, around eleven at night, the beeper went. But I got a phone-call before I was able to leave the house: another false alarm.

False Alarm

Hardly back from the library this afternoon, and just about to have a rest, when the beeper for the lifeboat sounds. So out of town clothes, into birdshit-proof trousers, expendable shoes, and lifeboatman shirt, out with the lifeboathouse keys, a quick kiss goodbye to the BH, and a sprint to the lifeboat.

I was the first there, so I did the engine room routine, got the windscreen protectors down, and started to prepare the boat for sea, covering myself, naturally, with birdshit. By this time, another oldie had come, and he started the port and starboard engines and tuned in the VHF emergency channel on the radio, whilst a third, younger lifeboatman began to cut the umbilical cord which supplies electricity to the boat. We were absolutely ready to go, but minus a cox and two more crew members; and minus instructions on where to go.

Finally, the deputy cox arrived and radioed to the coastguard watch station. Where were we supposed to go? What was the nature of the emergency? How many lives at risk? The usual questions...

The coastguards replied, a little embarrassedly, that there had been no call-out from them. Somebody with access to the secret number, or had had the fluke of punching in by mistake exactly the right code, had activated our beepers and caused all the rush. We were stood down half an hour later; quite relieved all the same that our services hadn't been needed.

That sinking feeling

Saturday morning was spent in the port of Antibes, with everybody, including rank beginners like myself, learning to dock and cast off the lifeboat. Quite farcical to begin with, as we presented the craft at very odd angles to the quay. But gradually we got better at it, and my last attempt didn't scare anybody, even though the throttles are super-sensitive, and could almost drive the bows through a concrete sea-wall. After the morning's exercise, we washed down the boat, checked out the engine-room, had a small beer and headed home.

Just as lunch was over, however, the beeper beeped and I ran to the station. I was called on my mobile, too, as I was sprinting, so I knew it was serious. A sailing boat was sinking some 30km off Antibes, and our lifeboat was the only one nearby, equipped with salvage pumps, allowed to go out that far. Things weren't helped by the fact that the crew had now dispersed. One poor chap even got arrested by the cops as he tried to get to the station as quickly as he could. His absence was keenly felt, as we eventually set out to sea with just three of us plus the cox, and one chap has a damaged shoulder. It really was the odds and sods brigade, which wasn't ideal if we had to pump out a boat and take it in tow.

On the way out, the chop was just enough to make things tickly when getting out the salvage equipment, which is very heavy and slides around the deck. It was also bumpy enough to spill the lifeboat secretary's drink (the first liquid he'd had all day, as he had been working) all over his dress uniform. He hadn't had time to change from the togs he had been wearing for an official function.

We raced there, with the windscreen wipers working overtime against the spray and occasional packets of water. Meanwhile, we were trying to figure out all the possible ways of rigging a venturi pump, in case the amount of water in the sailing boat was really serious. Lots of combinations possible, only one of them sucks water, the others pump water in: not what we wanted.

A couple of kilometers from the position we had been given, we came onto a collision course with one of the massive fast ferries to Corsica. We had no time to lose, and needed to cross their bows to reach our casualty. We hailed them on the VHF in French - no response. I tried them in English - no response, and we were getting perilously close. Finally we tried Italian, and they answered. Phew, we were sweating by then. They slowed down by about one knot, just sufficient for us to scrape across in front of their massive bulb bow. Check out our wake vis a vis their bow in the photo...

Then we saw the sailing boat, by now accompanied by a fishing boat. It was listing badly, and when we got to about 300 metres, after 30km of flat out, rivet and bone shaking race against time, the bow of the sailing boat went down, the stern rose in the air, and the Titanic scene played itself out in tragic miniature. Bubbles, sad personal effects, food and clothing bobbed to the surface over the next few minutes. We just hoped there was nobody aboard when it dived to the bottom. We were all in tears, it is like watching the end of a living being. Horrible.

We hailed the fishing boat, and took the crew of the sailing boat on board. They had taken to a small inflatable, which would have been almost impossible to find had they been on their own. They were cold and shocked. A whisky was served, the bottle protected from smashing with the lifeboat's motion by being placed in a lifeboatman's thermal welly-boot. It looked like pouring pee from a welly! Still, it bucked up our casualties, who were dead tired.

On the way back, yours truly, fresh from a full 15 minutes' driving instruction in the morning, and that in the sheltered waters of Antibes port, now took the helm, checked the charts, compass and radar, and brought us safely back through the shipping lanes and right to the entrance to the port. Nearly three hours at the wheel and it felt like it.

Once back in port and tied up, it was the usual rigmarole of cleaning, engine room routines, reports on oil, water and fuel levels, all in an engine room which had had plenty of time to heat up. We were down to our last 500 litres per engine, not a good margin for safety.

Water power

The weather since coming back from Brussels has been quite disturbed, with high winds in particular, which whip up the sea into a cauldron of churning, steep sided, close spaced breakers. Not a place to be in a small boat. The first screen is a view from the Bastion St Jaume towards the Gravette. The seawall with railings in the distance is quite substantial, which gives some idea of the power of the waves heaving over it. The second screen shows salt spray daring to besmirch the polished surfaces of the superyachts on the Quai des Miliardaires.

Brussels and back

Back from Brussels, and trying to get used to the intensity of light, after a generally grey old time up north. The temperatures, however, were pretty similar.

Looking after A., and doing errands, meant taking lots of public transport, and I can't speak highly enough of the integrated system in Brussels, where the same, time-limited ticket will see you board a tram, a train and an underground train (or a bus) in quick succession, with a minimum of fuss, and at a price which would leave Londoners gobsmacked by its cheapness.

Musical life was good, too, with an extraordinary concert at the Royal Conservatory of Music, featuring Monteverdi choral works accompanied by period instruments, courtesy of Il concerto italiano. Monteverdi was working in what was a fairly recent tradition of giving words their full intelligibility, and having real Italians, and intelligent ones at that, singing the words as if they were theatre was a real 'ear-opener'. The miraculous acoustics of the concert hall helped in no small measure.

Still, it is good to get back to Antibes, which now definitely feels like homecoming, even when, as today, it is blowing a gale, and waves are passing clean over the ramparts.

Northerly latitudes

Off to Brussels to join the 'A' Team for a week. It will feel funny wearing shoes and socks after so long in sandals and bare feet. Still, mornings on the roof terrace here are beginning to get chilly.

Alsace sur mer

A surreal experience yesterday, after the usual strenuous lifeboat exercises in the morning. One of our crew is off to Strasbourg to start nursing training, executing a 90° or perhaps 180° career turn from his former calling of notary's clerk.

To honour his send off, the station had organised a farewell alfresco lunch down on the quayside, next to the lifeboat. Lots of people, grizzly veterans of the open boats of years ago, chappies who gravitate around the lifeboats because they lend a hand on the mechanical front, spouses and children. It was good fun, but the main course, in a none-too-subtle nod to Strasbourg, was sauerkraut, or choucroute as it is known in France. It is the first time we have had outdoor choucroute on the Côte d'Azur. Very strange...

Another flag

You may have seen the rather ragged Tricolore in a previous blog. Well, there is one spanking new flag around here, brought back by some of the Normans on the lifeboat crew. The Norman flag, far bigger than the French national flag, was hoisted at the mainmast in a position guaranteed to cause apoplexy amongst the Bretons. Still, on the leaflets the national SNSM sends us, the picture on the front, of a lifeboat just like ours, shows a Breton flag fluttering proudly in the shrouds.

Propaganda and Proof

Saturday and Sunday were the Journées du Patrimoine, or Doors Open Days. Lots of buildings not normally open to the public were for once accessible, and guides were there to explain what went on in them.

One of the buildings in Antibes which opened its doors was the Coastguard look-out station, or 'sémaphore', up on the Garoupe plateau next to the lighthouse and the church. It is manned, 24/24, by specialised French Navy personnel, and since they still had their job to do, they asked the Lifeboat Service for a hand in showing people around. It was a nice assignment, as we met a lot of people, and working with the sailors (many of them now female) was good fun.

We profited from the forced presence of dozens of people queuing in the hot sun to vaunt the utility of the lifeboats, pointing out that when the coastguards identified a vessel in trouble, they usually sent us, even though we were unpaid civilian volunteers. To be fair to the sailors, they spent their whole time praising us, which was embarrassing but nice.

Just to prove our usefulness, our beepers rang three times during the day, so we piled into whatever cars were available (old wrecks) and headed down the corniche into town and on to the lifeboat station. For the first two beeps, we had already started to cast off, with the motors roaring, when the order countermanding the sortie came through on the radio. So back to the Coastguard station, handling crowds and questions...

The third beep came just as we were about to tuck into a delayed lunch. This time it was for real. We sped out of the harbour in search of an injured jet-skier in the water, with suspected spinal injuries and difficulties in breathing. Not easy to spot against the sun, but we found her and started the slow, painstaking job of getting her (it was a young woman) onto an orthopaedic stretcher in the water, stabilising her head, shoulders, pelvis etc, and craning her onboard with the minimum of movement to her body. Here is her wetsuit, afterwards: needs a bit of needle and cotton work before it can be put on again. I suspect it was hired...




As you may have gathered, once on the lifeboat a couple of us attended to her, unceremoniously cutting off her wetsuit with scissors to check for bleeding or embedded objects, whilst others administered oxygen and checked her blood oxygen. I have to stress that she was wearing a bathing suit, but we would have removed the wetsuit all the same. Meanwhile, we needed to get the boat ready for coming alongside a suitable landing stage to put the casualty near to an ambulance.

She didn't die on us, which was good, and this lunchtime I had a telephone call from the coxswain to say that though she was still in hospital having her - probably serious - injuries assessed, she wasn't at risk of paralysis.

So back, in the battered old cars, to the Coastguard station, and more people to show around. After the last curious visitors were chased out of the military precinct, the officer commanding the base offered the ubiquitous pastis to all and sundry, as the sun set, and the lighthouse began its regular illumination of the Coastguard barracks. Eaten alive by the mozzies, though, as they thrive in the dank plantations of all the millionaires who have houses on the Cap d'Antibes.

Finally got a lift home, or nearly home, in the car of my parrain, or lifeboat buddy, which alarmingly conked out about thirty times coming down the hill. I thanked him, and then walked the rest of the way. Hope he got home...

Coming apart at the social seams

The president of the republic is getting a bit hot under the collar about how his policy towards illegal encampments is being represented abroad. The problem for him is that France, despite its boasting about having invented human rights and having given the world liberty, equality and fraternity, has had - like many European countries including the UK - a murky and none-too-glorious history when it comes to aliens and minorities. This history comes back to haunt...

There is a distinct feeling here, at the moment, that many of the values of the republic are being flouted. I don't know whether the Tricolore and the triple motto of Liberté Egalité Fraternité are consciously linked in their threefold symbolism, but a peek at the flag flying over the Chateau Grimaldi in Antibes last night showed that the red part, for me the best of the colours politically, was rapidly becoming detached. Is that a portent?

Trousses de pharmacie

Spent the night lying awake, not out of worry, but out of curiosity about how to organise a spreadsheet to deal with the need to replace, at wildly varying times, the many medical supplies the boat carries. Some of the products, like injectable adrenalin, a real life-saver, need to be ultra-fresh. Pretty well everything we carry has an expiry date.

The inventory system needed to be simple, because other people than me will be having to modify and update it, and it needed to be transportable, because it is to go on several different computers. It also had to distinguish which of the two medical kits the item belongs to, so more than one search criterion will have to be applied.

I finally decided against a spreadsheet programme, as the learning curve is high, and there is no need, anyway, for any inter-cell calculations or formulae. I opted instead for a table within a bog standard word-processing package, on the grounds that pretty well everybody can use one of those, and most computers come with a compatible one already installed. The alphanumeric and numeric sort functions could deal with names and dates, provided I turned the dates into pseudo decimals, such as 2010.09 for September 2010. The different locations could be accommodated by a simultaneous secondary sort instruction, probably numeric (a simple kit 1 and kit 2).

Cracked it this morning, and started entering the data: a tedious business. Boy, do medicines have strange names! There is no obvious relationship between the names and what they do, as far as I can see, and certainly no relationship between names and the active ingredients. The chief research, if not the most costly, in drug companies, must be pseudo-lexical invention. Wouldn't mind doing a bit of that myself, if the money was right.

This afternoon I am off to the lifeboat station with my computer to try out on the cox whether it is easy for somebody else to understand. The trouble is, he is as sharp as a razor. More than I can say for all the crew, but he'll have to do.

Who are these blog followers?

I thought I'd just check how many had been looking at my blog, by country: the results are curious...

Royaume-Uni 403

France 180

États-Unis 100

Allemagne 63

Chine 20

Canada 19

Russie 9

Danemark 5

Pays-Bas 3

Ukraine 3

More to do at SNS 148

Saturday morning was spent at sea, as usual, practicing the same old manoeuvres: man overboard, passing towlines, getting everybody used to all the elements of the operations. Throwing a towline is really hard, as a previous blog indicates, but I am now learning to drive the boat, mostly by varying the thrust on the massive engines. The throttles are like those on an aircraft...

Afterwards, we cleaned up and refuelled (my job is to squeeze between the superheated exhaust pipes and the fuel tanks, and take readings every minute until the tanks are full, about twenty minutes in well over 55° air temperature). Great for testing deodorants, but not good for whoever has to wash the clothes afterwards.

Then the usual handshakes or kisses or both (delicate, mathematically, when dealing with a crew containing both Normans and Bretons, just like my family), and everybody separated for lunch.

Hardly had I arrived at home when the alarm goes off. Back to the station, at a smart trot. Start the engine room routine, whilst being filled in on what is going on. Apparently a ferry between France and Corsica had picked up a faint radar signature, and had gone to investigate a sighting of a boat without way. They observed a Marie Celeste style yacht with ragged sails, and seemingly only ravenous dogs aboard.

We were sent to check it out, a good sixty miles offshore, much nearer Corsica than to Antibes. Off we went, roaring into the empty quarter, which was bizarrely filled with hundreds of brightly coloured footballs lazily bobbing on the swell (container overboard?). What we were really keeping a watch for, however, was the presence of submerged logs, of which there were plenty.

After a bumpy ride, during which everybody either slept or was on watch or at the helm, we found the boat; the good ship Tapenade, almost spot on, which was down to the seamanship both of the ferry watch-keeper and of the lifeboat skipper, Laurent Desmare. Yours Truly was supposedly navigating, but really just acting as scribe for latitudes and longitudes, every fifteen minutes, and noting all radio traffic, whilst keeping radar watch.

We started to think what we should be wearing if we had to scrape long rotted human remains up from the deck. All weather suits, boots, gloves, etc.. Not a joyous prospect.

The boat, when we got to it, pretty close to Corsica, was a rubbish-strewn wreck, which we smelled even before we saw. It was a floating midden of the foulest excrement imaginable - three dogs, with full rectal freedom, and a bloke, still alive but off his head: apparently 'at the height of his powers' and living off a diet of powerfully emetic figs. Barmy and barfy, to put it short. There was a brief conference with the military and the navy doctors who give us our orders. "Board, take control, bring back the boat and its occupants!"

But we were not police, we were not armed or even insured for that kind of work, and had no desire to take on either dogs or a madman; let alone any corpses he might have had below deck as a surprise.

Still, one of our crew, Laurent N° 2, had spent ten years in the Navy, in the special forces, perhaps, though one is reluctant to ask. He went on board the boat, which was totally unseaworthy, just as the guy himself was, being completely off his head. Lolo2, somehow, (though secretly armed with the sharpest knife I have ever seen), got both guy and dogs to cooperate willingly. Indeed, both crazyman and dogs smiled or wagged tails furiously whenever our chap was near. Frightening, really.

We tied up alongside, passed essential provisions and a VHF radio, and began the tow. The tow took about six and a half hours, during time which we kept in constant radio contact, in case either dogs or loony decided to have a go. Luckily I had passed Lolo2 some supplies of water, and a fleece -because the water quality aboard, and the sanitary conditions of the blankets, were not ones to play around with. He deserves the Olfactory Medal, first class, with WC and nasal bar.

On the way back, we were surrounded by pods of dolphins, tucking into mackerel in a fantastic display of feeding frenzy. The idea that dolphins are some kind of sweet, cuddly creature is far off the mark. They are like killer dogs. Impressive to watch, though.

As night fell, we had to train a searchlight on our tow, which had no navigation lights. We were in the middle of the shipping lanes, with high speed ferries from Corsica passing close by at a rate of knots. Training the searchlight on a moving target, to keep it illuminated, as both it and us constantly changed position, is a tiring business, and we set up half hour stints. Half an hour feels like a long time, I can tell you. Still, seeing the sun set over Porquerolles, whilst still in full view of the mountains of Corsica, is an experience I wouldn't have missed for anything.

We got into port well past ten thirty at night, and were greeted by some very big guys from the firemen's ambulance service, escorted by a patrol of cops, one of whom, in the background, had undone the restraining strap on his revolver holster. In the end, the chap went quietly, leaving us with the problem of the dogs. Their first act was to crap, all over the place, and then they lapped up prodigious amounts of water, whilst a kind woman fetched some dog food. They attacked it, and each other with abandon. They were destined for the police dog pound, just as their owner was destined for a check up at the funny farm.

Then it was casting off time from the quay, to go around to our berth. Putting the boat to bed when that tired is the last straw, particularly the engine shut down routine, when the engine room has been in pretty well continuous operation for the best part of fourteen hours. We had used over 700 litres of diesel fuel.

We filled in the rescue chit. Nothing to pay for the man or his dogs, but the tow, at the admiralty rate, came to a modestly impressive set of euros with zeros. Not that the guy has any money to pay it with.

Next evening, the chappie turns up at the lifeboat station, pre-announced by the same unforgettable reek, having been released from hospital. He wanted to find his new friend, Lolo2 and offer him a drink on his yacht Tapenade, apparently in the same state he had left it. Luckily Lolo2 was indisposed, and in bed: who knows what drink he might have been offered, and with what consequences for his health?

Busyish

Blog silence for the last few days, as things have been quite busy down at the lifeboat station.

We were on helicopter training Tuesday night, with the same Navy squadron as before, with the same great diver, but a rather gung-ho pilot, who caused a couple of lads on deck to duck involuntarily. After debriefing, it was nearly midnight when we finished. Not possible for us to take pictures of ourselves from outside the boat, so here is one taken on an earlier exercise, by the lifeboat photographer, Choupette...


Having just gone to bed, or so it seemed, the alarm went off just before five in the morning, as the perfect storm hit Antibes. The sky exploded in a Krakatoa-style eruption of continuous thunder and lightning, then the wind and the hailstones hit simultaneously. Within seconds, the palm trees were nearly horizontal, and our street was under a foot of fast flowing water. No time to take photographs, but here is the sky the next morning, a veritable eiderdown of superheated water vapour just looking for a violent change of temperature...


The cox, Laurent Desmare, who lives up in the suburbs, risked his life to get down to the boat through the flooding, thinking all the time that his motorbike, with him on it, was going to be carried away by the terrifying force of the flood water. A brave man, even before stepping onto the lifeboat.

I myself waded through knee deep water/hailstones, now raging like a river in spate, freezing to boot, in order to get to the port. The others have similar stories to tell. We managed to get together a comically bedraggled crew, soaked before even sailing, who prepared the boat for sea, lit up by end-of-the-world style thunder and lightning. By this time, the wind had dropped sufficiently to get the boat out of the narrow berth and through the congested port.

Out to sea, then, at full speed, with the best cosmic fireworks I have seen in years. Our flashing blue police lights were completely outclassed. Strangely, by this time, the sea had almost been scraped calm by the wind.

We were being called in turn by CROSSMED to give assistance to five boats in difficulty (mostly dragging anchors, adrift, and subsequent collisions with major damage), including a fantastic sailing yacht (56 metres) which had been blown into the fish farm off Juan les Pins, causing havoc and a fair bit of Free Willy happiness amongst the liberated fish. Lots of herons were in on the story, and there might be some good line-fishing for once in the bay. Here is the yacht, now in calm waters, with divers disentangling the fish farm nets from the propellers and rudder.


We towed several variously shaped and sized boats to safety in ports (none of which - being privately run for profit - were happy to take on emergencies), reanchored another two which were drifting, and stood by on safety watch whilst the big yacht was extricated from the fish farm.




We were stood down five hours after setting out, and it took another hour to get back and tied up in port, this time punching through quite a swell. Nobody had eaten or had a pee, and the fresh coffee and the illicit relieving of bladders into the waters of the port were equal bliss. Writing up the official reports afterwards, and cleaning and preparing the boat for the next call, was less fun.

Then it was off, unshaven and pongy, to another crew member's house to do the graphics on a flier we are producing to try to get the English speaking community to support the lifeboat. Agreeably fed and watered by his charming wife, but struggling by now to stay awake.

Getting home at the back of three, I had just had a shower and was preparing for a bit of shut-eye when the alarm went again. So off to the boat, another engine room routine, etc. This time it turned out to be a false alarm, but it was an hour before we were stood down.

Then another helicopter winch exercise the following morning, with seas just beginning to be seriously ruffled by the mistral. With every bump and crash into the next wave, the spray went right over the wheelhouse. Everybody tired, and taking turns at the wheel (including yours truly), to save the cox for the hairy bit when the helicopter hovers over us. The bearing chosen by the helicopter pilot for our run was perfectly calculated for a nice corkscrew pitch and yaw, which brought one of our crew to the verge of barfing onto the descending Navy diver as he dropped onto the deck.

The way back was enlivened by the alarms going off in the starboard engine, so we nursed the boat back at a wallowing 12 knots instead of the usual jolting 25. Sure enough, when I did the engine shut down routine, starboard side there was a smell of burning - the insulating lagging in the ventilator had melted, and was dripping like hot chocolate down onto the massive exhaust pipes. I kopped a few drops nicely pre-heated, on the nape of the neck, which caused untold mirth amongst those who were by this time scrubbing the seagull dung off the wheelhouse.

Then, at 6pm, we had to get togged out in uniform for the arrival of a delegation from Paris. Good chance to get to know the lifeboatmen from the other stations, including the skipper from Menton, who used to pilot the barges with Airbus wings from Mostyn to Bordeaux, so very familiar with the charms of Denbighshire and the vagaries of the North Wales coast.

This morning, the planned scattering of ashes at sea has been cancelled, which is both a good thing in itself, to allow the crew to rest, and a means of giving me time to write this blog...

Redevance audiovisuelle

Some time ago I had dealings with the local tax office to sort out the question, unthinkable in this neck of the woods, of not having a telly, and therefore not being liable for the TV licence fee, which is collected automatically with the rates.

In the meantime, if you remember, I had to pay up.

Well, today, having had the use of our money for some time, they have finally conceded that we weren't liable after all, and are proposing - at some undefined time - to reimburse us the one hundred and eighteen euros. That slightly antiquated-sounding 'déclaration sur l'honneur' actually worked, despite my misgivings, so chapeau once again to the tax people here.

Hélitreuillages

The French Navy's Search and Rescue helicopter squadron at Hyères has asked us to offer a moving target for their winching crews to practice sending down divers, paramedics, stretchers, etc. Two exercises this week, one tonight in the dark, and one on Thursday morning, in the daylight.

This is what it looks like in daylight from our boat, with apologies for the music

... And here is what it looks like at night, again with our boat, but seen from the helicopter

Then, not this weekend but the next, tamer stuff: a lot of work manning information stands for the Journée du Patrimoine. Most of it sounds fun, but there is going to be a mass blessing of boats, so the language on board, whilst the priest intones and sprinkles, is likely to have to be a bit more what is in the dictionary, and less concerned with the human anatomy. Not that anybody can hear above the din of two turbocharged Volvo diesels.

Calern

Yesterday the BH had the bright idea of taking her mother-in-law and Yours Truly up to the Calern plateau, where the astronomical observatory litters the limestone with strange structures and even stranger notices (what, for instance is the T.A.R.O.T. facility, as there were no signs of card players or chiromantic enthusiasts?).



There was one solitary puff of cloud to emphasise the faultlessly blue sky, the crickets were suffering a traffic jam as they leaped out of our way on the tarmac, and the sarriette (summer savoury) was in fully scented bloom, backed up by the last of the wild lavender.

Can't think of a nicer spot, after the hectic scooter dodging of the coast.

Serving under the Tricolore

It feels strange to be finally afloat, but serving under a Froggy flag. Actually, as a flag it looks magnificent when spreading out over the stern, amidst a welter of spray.

However, yesterday I narrowly missed having to be on parade in 'penguin uniform' for the ceremonies connected with the anniversary of the liberation of Antibes. Uniforms, tricolore, speeches, veterans, I can put up with, but there was one element which would have been hard to take - the town 'harmonie' or band. Its renditions are impeccably bad.

Luckily, I wasn't needed, and I spent an agreeable evening with colleagues who had also missed having to go on parade, whilst waiting to shepherd the boats which were to leave port to watch the rather splendid firework display, orchestrated to synchronise with the songs of Ray Charles, for some reason. A late evening cruise, under a full moon, on a mirror-like sea, with the reflections of Nice, Antibes, etc, and the regular, generous festoon of spectacular fireworks, was really nice, even though Ray Charles is not entirely my cup of tea.

Rapace

Whilst having breakfast on the terrace this morning, en tête à tête with the BH, I detected movement behind her, on the roof of Mamo's restaurant, no more than six or seven yards away. A peculiarly hunched up bird, with its head down in its shoulders and very powerful looking wings. It was also wearing what looked like plus fours.

Clearly it knew I had seen it, for it opened out its wings and flapped briefly then glided its way into the morning sky. It was a bird of prey looking for a bit of breakfast, perhaps dove or pigeon. I had been party to one of those privileged moments, not uncommon in Antibes, when a moment is essentially eternity.

A lot of lifeboat time

As the summer silly season is supposed to be winding up, the weekly routine of training exercises has just started again. Saturday mornings, with everybody at the station before nine. Yesterday was different, though, as there had been a defamatory article about the crew in Nice-Matin. Apparently there had been a clear out of old lags just before I joined, and they channeled their discontent into the form of an article claiming the present crew, Yours Truly included, were incapable of taking to sea in safety.

That may well still be the case for me, as I am still (and will be for quite a while yet) just a trainee deckhand, but it was not welcome for the others, who have risked their lives on quite a few occasions, and have saved five people from a certain death this year.

So we had one of the big shots of the lifeboat service, in full summer uniform, down to lecture us on how to take the insults with dignity, and how to deal with the factual inaccuracies when the only channel open is the very same newspaper which printed the porkies in the first place. A fascinating example of media studies, and very professionally done.

I went home for a much delayed, hurried lunch and a swim, then almost immediately got called out. The big shot wanted to see the crew in action, for his report to Paris, so off we sailed, out from Antibes, and the coxswain took us deliberately, hair-raisingly close to all the most terrifying rocks along the coast, commenting on the dangers, and enumerating how many boats, bods and bodies had been pulled off each one. I don't think it was by chance, either, that he sailed not so far from a large, wrecked sailing boat, perched on a reef at an angle of 45 degrees, muttering quietly "Saved that lot of Italians only last week".

Hardly had we docked again, and readied the boat for the next call out, but the beepers went off, and we had to leave the big shot on the quay and speed out of harbour once again. Somebody with engine trouble, perilously close to the rocks at La Garoupe bay.

We got back, stinking with sweat, after nine pm. Twelve hours of lifeboat service in one day, a lot of rope work, two complete washes of all the windows, and four engine room routines. Not bad for a trainee...

H for CAVALLINO

How one works out what to eat, or not to eat, where, is a real problem. In certain countries, for instance, beef or pork might be the subject of prohibitions, religious or alimentary. I imagine similar worries about guineapig or dogmeat.

Antibes, to name somewhere close to home, has a couple of horse butcheries which have set my mouth watering.

On my trip around Europe, for instance, we passed some time in Mantova (Mantua), where we ate really well at the Leoncino rosso, an inn which has been in the same place for hundreds of years. The BH ate a main course of rabbit with local olives, but I had dobbin stew. As horse goes, it was awesome, cooked to perfection, and a perfect lesson that what one eats can be anything, as long as it is well prepared. Mind you, the accompanying wine helped a lot, probably. In any case, old horsey did me proud.

Normal Service Resumed

Do not adjust your set. Normal service has resumed after a pause filled by a grand tour around part of western Europe (Italy, Austria, Germany, France). The one thing in common about these countries was the propensity for rain, which seemed to follow us wherever we went.

What was nice, though, was to catch up with family and friends. This involved quite a few aperitifs and beers, which were welcome after all the driving.

Italy and Germany shone in the cycle-friendliness and pedestrian-friendliness leagues. Austria may have been up there, too, but there was so much damned rain and clouds that we never got to see. We knew we were back in France, though, the moment the car became king and crossing the road became a not unrisky business.

Various photos need to be put up on the blog, but I need to sort out the software to upload them from the camera. Watch this space...

On return, I was re-issued with a beeper for the lifeboat, which beeped twice today - both false alarms, but we turned out all the same. This precipitate arrival of all and sundry at the lifeboat provided convenient, orange-shirted extras for a film being put together by the France 3 TV chain, who had a camera crew at the station.

Tax Harmony

Some time ago, I went, armed with British tax forms, to the Antibes tax office. The mission was to get myself declared fiscally resident in France, and thus not subject to UK income tax. The forms were complicated, the day was hot, and the tax officials here were worked off their feet.

I was very well received, though, and they stamped and signed my forms for sending on to Paris and then to the UK. I thought the chances of anything happening were pretty slim. However, yesterday I received two charming letters from HM Customs and Excise announcing that the process had duly been put in motion.

Well done, both lots of tax people; and thanks for being nice, too.

Scattering of ashes

This morning the lifeboat crew took a family out to sea to scatter the ashes of their father/grandfather/great grandfather, who had spent years having fun on the water off Antibes, and wanted to be buried at sea. The youngest person aboard was a little boy aged six months.

The weather was clement, the ceremony short and dignified, and the whole event was curiously uplifting - I'm sure the family felt it too.

Twelve tone theory

For the last few months we have been living a trogloditic existence: strange, you might think, when we live on the second and third floors of a house. The reason has been the long, detailed restauration of the house's facade, which has meant living behind scaffolding, with closed windows, plastic sheeting and shutters battened. This is not a happy state to be in, and the etymology of window (wind-eye) begins to assume real importance in the summer's stifling heat.

Well, now we are almost at the end of the process, and the colour is being slapped on. We have had a lot of grief over the colour scheme, not from the stone mason, who is both chromatically subtle and sensitive to clients' concerns, but from the town architects, who have their own ideas on what goes with what.

The BH has suffered the most, as she has a much more developed eye for colour than I do. Each time she goes out of the house, she has been inspecting the latest layer of gunk lovingly spread over the walls, for quality (the workmanship puts Blighty to shame) and for tint (hard to tell with all the under-layers). She has now begun to see the final coat applied, and is somewhat dismayed to find what she calls Italian or Niçois hues going on, rather than the much more faded, pastel finishes common in Antibes. Still, the stuff needs to dry before you can actually tell what tone will be the final one. Watch this space.

ça marche

Just to say that the LIFEBOAT beeper works. I was called out just as supper was ready: a tow just in the roads near the port entrance, so lots of rope work and no time to enjoy the view. Still, it's good to know that it sends the message, loud and clear.

The BH, having heard over the phone that we were about to cast off, took this picture of us gunning out of the harbour. We are the tiny blue and orange dot between the curly street light and the nearer lighthouse. The white blur on the lifeboat quarterdeck is a group of us readying the towing winch.

Beepable

In the old days, the lifeboatmen used to be summoned to the station by the firing of maroons. Here in Antibes, they used to sound the air raid sirens... until the good citizens thought that their sleep was worth more than lives at peril at sea. Now they use pagers, called 'beepers' with rather ambiguous affection by the crew.

I've just been issued with one, which rather alarmingly went off five minutes after I got it. Luckily, old hands were near, who told me just to replace the battery. In the past, a number of people have arrived breathless at the lifeboat station, only to find that their beeper had gone on the blink with low juice, and had been beeping to itself.

I was at the station this morning as part of a polishing detail, as a kind and public-spirited sponsor (Mitsubishi Electric) had provided air-conditioning equipment for the crew room (no luxury in this climate, especially for crew who have to go directly from the 'shout' back to work). The publicity photos would have to show a gleaming boat, and for once it sparkled.

Face in the street

In the family albums there is a silhouette, one of those strange precursors of the black and white photograph, made by cutting an outline portrait of the sitter in black paper, and then placing it against a white background. I don't know how old it is, but it goes back quite a way, judging by the clothes being worn.

Well, today, in the streets of old Antibes, I was introducing young A to the sight of a magnificent grey cat sunning itself in a doorway. It turned out that the cat (and other equally pampered specimens) belonged to a well-known Chinese artist who has his studio here. As a sideline from sculpture in clay, he does silhouette portraits.

I asked him whether this was still practiced in China. No, he said, it was as rare as here, and then offered to do a portrait of A in one minute flat. Keen to see whether he could keep his promise, I said yes. He was a real psychologist, keeping A's attention whilst cutting out the black shape with enormous wooden, yes wooden shears. And, one minute later, he rang a bell, A slipped from his trance, and the portrait was ready.

As he was cutting away, I told him about the old family silhouette. Intrigued, he offered to do me, too, for free. By this time, there was quite a crowd watching.

Nice man, nice cats, and nice portraits.

Face in the papers

Accosted by our stonemason this morning, who told me my face was in the newspaper. So we went off to the local office of Nice Matin, and there I was, microscopic, in the back row of a group mugshot of the lifeboat crew, taken at the reception held for the mayor at the Yacht Club d'Antibes.

Does this mean I have arrived, at last?

Night thoughts

No pictures this time, because it was a night exercise with the French navy rescue helicopter service. We cast off at about nine o'clock and headed out to sea chased by a glorious sunset which lit up our wake in vibrant shades of orange and puce.

Rendez-vous was for ten o'clock off the Lérins islands. On board we had a guest, one of the navy controllers from the watch station at La Garoupe. It was funny talking to her in the flesh having heard her voice on the ship-to-shore VHF transmissions.

At the dropping zone, we waited around in the growing darkness, the boat wallowing wildly, despite the very little swell. Once in a while, both to get back in position after drifting, and to keep the batteries charged, we would circle back at low speed. On one of these manoeuvres, the cox saw some unusual splashes to port.

Yours truly was handed a pair of regulation binoculars. Very strange, we were surrounded by greyhounds, or so I thought. In fact it was a pod of dolphins, excited by our boat's way. Everybody except the cox and I crowded onto the foredeck and observed these streamlined, sleek animals weave elegantly and seemingly effortlessly in and out of our bow wave. Pretty impressive.

Then came two messages with opposite effect - first of all did we mind a trainee pilot? He would practice with sandbags before having a go at the real thing. Though terrified at the prospect, we said, not at all, no problem. Tension mounted visibly, helmet straps were tightened instinctively, and emergency cords felt... surreptitiously. A distinct smell of impending danger. And then another announcement! Exercise cancelled. Everybody breathed out for the first time in minutes, as if they had been underwater.

On the way back, with the tension broken, everybody started talking about their families for some reason.

Fireworks

Last night, T and I went out in the vedette to shepherd all the boats which had put to sea to watch the fireworks at Juan les Pins. The fireworks were spectacular and noisy, with smoke billowing out to sea, but what was really startling was the mayhem on the water, with reckless driving all round, and few of the boats with full sets of navigation lights. On the way back, T, acting as lookout, avoided us a collision with a steel hulled craft which could have cut us in two.

Busy day out

Yesterday was a pretty busy day. Not just because we have family with us, but because I was all day out with the lifeboat. The morning was spent stocking supplies, water and fuel in anticipation of the silly season of 'shouts'. Then it was out to sea, taking water samples, doing a census of both marine mammals and jellyfish (we saw neither), and recording the nature and density of floating rubbish (mostly plastic, but a surprising amount of sodden baguettes). During this work, we were called up and sent to Villeneuve Loubet to rescue three people whose scooter had started sinking. We took the three people on board, our diver Guillaume secured flotation to the scooter, and we towed it into port.



Then an instruction trip to the Abeille Flandre, a hefty salvage tug. Lessons on towing, on emergency procedures, manoeuvres. Trips into the gigantic bowels of the winch compartments and the engine room. Finally we got up to the towering bridge. About five minutes into the spiel on the towing controls (think spacecraft, but all in massive steel), our emergency radio went off again.



Eight people on an inflatable, engine conked out, heading for the rocks. It was like one of those corny war films when action stations is sounded. A human avalanche slid down the companion-ways, seven stories down to the well deck and the access to our lifeboat.




Cast-off drill double quick, so quick that we nearly kidnapped the watch keeping officer of the tug, who happened to be on the boat looking around.

Off towards the islands, at 25kts, blue lights flashing, radio squawking, tow ropes being prepared, hats flying off astern in the wind. Pure adrenaline. Then lookout stations, trying to spot a brownish cream inflatable against brownish cream rocks.

Then we spotted it, in water too shallow to take the lifeboat. So it was launch stations for our inflatable, as our diver put on diving gear for the second time in three hours. By this time, luckily, I had been partially trained in towing, so I knew which bits to get out and tie on to which.

It turned out the people needing rescue were Italians. We were two Italian speakers on the lifeboat. Useful when you need to get legal acceptance for the tow, and when you need to explain to landlubbers that if they continue to put their hands between their boat and ours, there might be a shortfall of fingers by the time they landed. We towed them very slowly back to Mandelieu, where they were taken under the wing of the harbourmaster, but only after they had signed the form promising to pay us back for the fuel we had used (690 euros). Yours truly acted as the go-between, accepting an Italian cheque later that evening, in a large 4x4 with darkened windows.

Operation DELPHIS cancelled

Yesterday the Antibes lifeboat was supposed to act as an observation platform and shepherd for a survey of marine mammals out in the Mediterranean. Our survey area was about 10 nautical miles off the Esterel, in a part of the sea about 3500 feet deep. Having arrived at the station at the allotted time, there was a no show from the lifeboat. Five minutes later it came into port, with tired hungry crew on board. After we tied up, I found that they had already responded to a 'shout'. Somebody who had fallen ill on a boat anchored offshore.

As coffee brewed and croissants were consumed, we learned that the DELPHIS had been cancelled, as the weather conditions were regarded as a little too risky for the many small craft which were to take part. So it was a chance to go dolphin spotting en famille. The lifeboatmen, their families and floozies (no overlap as far as I could judge) boarded the vedette. The BH (family, I have to stress) was amongst them, trussed up in a fetching red lifejacket with blue piping and yellow straps.

We roared off into the Med. Very quickly, even the mountains became invisible in the heat-haze, and we were absolutely alone in the oggin, about 18km offshore. Suddenly the cox cut the motors, and shouted "Prés à l'eau". Turned out that the poor chairman of the lifeboat branch, in order to please local traditions and, who knows, obtain financial support, had been one of the bearers of the enormous Virgin Mary statue, which is carried, barefoot, all the way from the cathedral to the sanctuary of la Garoupe. The path, with its stations of the cross, is very stony and steep. So the Prés (président) was very much in need of a wash.

Yours truly decided to take the leap (literally), too. So here we are, not quite touching the bottom, eighteen km out to sea, and in 550 fathoms of water. Clear as glass and piss warm. We were the only marine mammals seen that day. We did our best to gambol and dive, but, from the DELPHIS point of view, it was small beer.

You can wear fur again.

A rather large but amiable lady in the rue James Close in old Antibes seems to have found the ideal solution to the quandary of how to wear real as opposed to artificial furs without cruelty to animals. She wears a living cat round her neck. The cat really enjoys the vantage point, the woman has a silky soft stole. It certainly doesn't slip off, thanks to those retractable, razor sharp claws. The occasional sharp reminder in the nape of the neck was worth it, she said. Mind you, wearing fur in today's blazing heat seemed more than the call of fashion duty.

Chirrup, chirrup

That's it: summer is audibly here. Over the din of the workmen's drills and hammers, I can hear the cicadas in the trees outside our house. Late this year, though, and certainly makes a change from the 'piped' cicada tapes one hears in the souvenir shops of the old town.

Skills

Spent yesterday afternoon learning more about the lifeboat. Boy, is there a lot to learn: some of it technical, a lot of it physical, and getting a knack for some of the gestures needed is quite humbling. Coiling ropes, for instance, so that they will not spontaneously knot, is something which looks easy when you see somebody experienced doing it, but when you try it yourself it is surprisingly laborious and uninstinctive.

One of the skills I must practice and practice is coiling and throwing the light line with the weight on the end, which is used to haul in the real towline onto the boat in distress. I spent about an hour and a half doing this yesterday, and got very wet. It didn't seem to annoy the mullet swimming lazily around the lifeboat, even though the weighted ball at the end (pomme de touline) plopped really hard into the water, at variable and usually derisory distances from our boat. Meanwhile, the local fishermen were looking on with grins of polite amusement.

Quite a long time was spent on familiarising myself with the VHF radio, which has a relatively restricted range - roughly to the horizon. This instruction in its use meant the set was actually on, and listening to the constant squawk of radio traffic made me realise just how much activity is going on in a relatively restricted sector of coast.

Then came paperwork. The chartroom was full of certificates and permits. But what was even more interesting was the instruction manual for burial at sea. Apparently the station makes money to defray its expenses (which are enormous) by proposing the casting of the ashes of cremated loved ones out to sea - in a biodegradable, ecologically certified urn. The 'service' to be read out was not quite my cup of tea (too much artificial sweetener), so I asked who had to read it out. "Not the cox, that's for sure!" was the prompt reply, followed by "I give the orders around here!", which made me think I might have to brush up my French oratorical skills.

Finally, I have been allotted a 'parrain', or godfather, who I am to work with on deck. He will be the one to keep an eye on me and check that I am not endangering myself or anybody else. The parrainage required, you guessed it, a libation (in my case water, in theirs... something a bit stronger).

Formation accélerée

Yesterday was spent at the lifeboat station, receiving accelerated training from the cox. A nice guy, ex-navy, now working in the technical services of the local hospital. The training started with a detailed visit to the whole lifeboat, crawling into tiny, airless and cramped spaces, memorising where stopcocks, interruptor switches, emergency lighting, fire-fighting apparatus can be found. A lot to take in, and it was reassuring to hear that I will be hearing it again, and again.

Next followed matelotage, or rope-work. My clove-hitches were judged 'nickel' (super), and my knots for tying sheets (ropes) together were OK, if a little slow. Where I was hopeless was in relearning a different way of tying a bowline. I had done it the summer camp way, which is hopelessly slow and fiddly, if quite entertaining. I would have to learn the fast method, because often that knot is needed in a hurry. Unfortunately, the cox is left-handed, and I found it well nigh impossible to translate the movements into right handed, and neither could he, when demonstrating. Something to practice assiduously at home. Still, by this morning, I had hacked it, but I am probably not up to what they would call a satisfactory speed.

After these rather mixed results, it was on to how to attach a tow. Not just one rope, but three. The main towrope has about the diameter of a broom handle, and is equipped with an eye at the loose end. This is then shackled onto a shorter length of rope, in the shape of a 'Y', with loops at all three extremities, which actually gets fixed to the boat needing towing. All of this is far too heavy to throw, so a third, light line, intriguingly called a touline (towline) is then hitched on to the second rope (using a bowline, what else? holding together the two loops at the top of the 'Y'). This light line has a weighted ball at the other end, which provides the momentum to reach the other craft.

What then happens theoretically (but not often with Italians I am told), is that on the craft needing assistance you haul in the touline, bringing the second rope to the boat, and this you then attach, by opening the 'Y' and looping each branch to a separate cleat. The whole caboodle of boat with second cable is then towed using the first main thick cable. In the case of the Italians, apparently, the light line (like thin washing line with a tennis-ball stuck on the end) is believed to be the tow, and dutifully hitched, with inevitable consequences.

I have been told that the summer is almost non stop towing of boats that have got into difficulties, many crewed by Italians, so it will be a well rehearsed manoeuvre before long.

Then came mooring drill. Here in the Mediterranean, where there is little port space, and no appreciable tide, so boats are moored stern to the key, with four cables at the stern and two at the bow. Quite complicated when a wind is causing the boat to drift out of alignment and you are reversing into a very narrow space between other fragile and expensive boats.

By this time, the deputy cox had arrived. He was smoking a cigar, as he had just come off duty on the charter yacht he captains. That did not prevent us having to do the daily ritual of the peck on both cheeks, this requiring careful three-dimensional positioning so as not to burn our ears on the embers of his favourite smoke. There being three of us, it was time to roll all the firehoses used the day before, and left to dry over night in festoons from the radar mast. Now familiar with the boat, I was told to stow them in the fire locker. But I couldn't open the hatch. Somewhat embarrassed, I called for help, which came in the form of a shout from up on deck "Fous-lui un grand coup!" (F-ing thump it!). Another bit of highly technical accelerated training accomplished...

Still, there are rewards, like a post-training planter's punch made with genuine ingredients from Martinique, courtesy of a civic delegation from St Pierre, who gave a three litre, super-strength rum pack (the kind of wine bag with a collapsible foil container inside and a small tap) to the station, along with Martinique grown limes (even better than the rum in my view).

Today, more of the same, and no doubt a check on my capacity to do a bowline their way.

Fisherman's festival

These little boats, double enders, are the traditional fishing boats round here, now chiefly used for leisure. There is an annual rowing race across the bay. Hot work, that requires industrial strength coolant supply from the lifeboat's firefighting kit. It took four of us to hold the hose, and I am the one furthest aft on the foredeck, making sure no kinks happen in the hose, which gets really heavy and stiff, with a life of its own.

Me about to disembark for lunch, having just helped to haul in mooring ropes at the bow. Getting the flags down required me to shin up the radar mast. Strangely no vertigo when on water.

°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°°

No blogging done in the last couple of days because I have been putting in long hours on the local lifeboat. I've been taken on as a trainee crewman, which means that I take part in exercises and non emergency work, but am not yet qualified to go out on a 'shout'. The station here, despite a huge amount of leisure boating (and risk of accidents or breakdowns) is a little short-manned, which is why, I think, they were willing to take me on.

The long hours over the weekend were because we were on duty for the fisherman's festival (St Pierre), which includes lots of boat related mayhem (including squirting the rowers of the pointus with our fire hose to cool them down after a race), and quite a bit of water taxi work out to the Abeille Flandre, a big rescue tug. Yesterday was the wreath laying ceremony for all the seafarers who lost their lives at sea. The mayor, Leonetti, the parish priest in all his togs, and a group of wizened old salts bearing banners, all came on board a for once absolutely gleaming lifeboat (we had spent quite a few hours giving it a buff and polish that morning). We, too, had changed from work clothes into summer dress uniform (navy shorts and white short sleeved shirts with the SNSM logo).

Offshore, in full view of the ramparts, the priest grabbed a loudhailer and gave his blessing, in a tone which was quite moving. Meanwhile, a couple of lifeboatmen, including me, were holding the wreath, which was pretty heavy, (the frame was made of old pallets) but which we had ballasted with some spare anchor chain to make sure it fell into the sea the right way up. His nibs the mayor (looking quite nervous about being on board a boat which was bobbing just a wee bit) was symbolically ready to give the ceremonial push. We had been told, quietly, that our job was to correct his aim.

When the signal came, we tried to launch the wreath flat, like a frisby. Easier said than done when it has to clear the railings and all the gear at the stern of a lifeboat. Still, it did bellyflop into the water flower side up. The small boats began to circle around the semi-submerged floral tribute, and the priest then turned to me and owned up quietly that his grandfather, a fisherman, had drowned at sea not far from that spot.

Everything flows, except piss

The emperor Vespasian knew a thing or two about taxation. The trick was to try and find an activity or goods everybody must have, and then devise a way to make sure people couldn't evade the impost placed upon it. In the emperor's case, he decided that the activity nobody could dispense with was peeing, so he built public toilets, not as a convenience, but as an enforced, and therefore taxed locus for micturition, with heavy penalties for relieving onesself elsewhere. This new tax, a turning on its head of the old vectigal urinae levied on the industrial users of collected urine, probably gave rise to the Latin proverb 'pecunia non olet' (money has no smell). The name of this tax reformer lives on in France in those strange metallic monuments, for men only, the grammatically feminine vespasiennes. Mind you, the average Frenchman of a certain age thinks nothing of urinating anywhere and against anything, particularly churches.

Today, I saw a crowd of anxious ladies in a devastated circle around the entrance to the municipal toilets near the bus station. I went to look, as it is a place where accidents often happen on the slippery tiled steps, and where I had had to help an elderly and very shaken German lady last week. It turned out that the mass protests against Sarkozy's retirement pension reforms included a strike by toilet attendants.

Whether being forced to pee for the good of the imperial treasury, as in the case of Vespasian's unfortunate subjects, or old ladies being denied the opportunity to pee, courtesy of the frequently peeved French public sector, you realise that the effectiveness of decisions relies not so much on absolute coercive power (Britain's grotesquely punitive prison record is an example of how more actually means less) as on the speed with which effects begin to be felt. In the case of toilet denial, the effect is pretty well instantaneous. The ladies got the message...

The saying ascribed to Heraclitus, Πάντα ῥεῖ, [everything flows], was clearly transmitted to posterity incomplete, as there must have been an exception for the contents of the bladder. Πάντα ῥεῖ (oύκ άτερ ούρου). Everything flows (with the exception of piss).

Fête de la musique

I don't know when this festival started, though I suspect the BH does, having been conscripted year after year in its organisation in Edinburgh. It's a bit of an oxymoron, music in a thoroughly unmusical country. To be honest, it's the most tone-deaf nation I have ever encountered, but one where the few converts to Ste Cécile have shone by exceptional talent and devotion.

Tonight is the Fête de la musique, and the offering (Opfer, for Bach afficionados) is entirely demotic and hyperamplified. Nothing against that, providing that the Eustachian apparatus actually works under such pressure waves rebounding from the narrow streets.

A life on the ocean wave

Today was my contact day for the SNSM, or the French RNLI. The chairman of the local station had telephoned me two weeks back to invite me to come along to their training sessions, held on Saturday mornings, theoretically at eight o'clock. That way, I'd meet the cox, whose word would be law.

They came in dribs and drabs, after having had an apparently very pleasant evening out the night before, with one or two people having distinguished themselves in the consumption department. The general opinion of those who turned up this morning was pretty dismissive - they would not have liked to have responded to a 'shout' with colleagues in that condition. Too many lives at risk.

The morning's exercise consisted of taking a school party from the Collège Roustan out on a familiarisation trip. The kids were really nice, interested, polite, a good advertisement for France's future. The teachers accompanying them were prime examples of what is best about the system here, despite the dysfunction of much of the structures and programmes.

The lifeboatmen turned out to be born communicators, who drew the kids out of their shyness and got them asking questions. The highlight of the trip, apart from a couple of cases of pretty dramatic seasickness occasioned by visiting the sickbay below decks as the boat wallowed in the swell, was the launching of an inflatable liferaft, the kind that explode into life once they hit water. Watching such a large object inflate and turn into something you can trust your life with is really humbling.

The kids were put onto the liferaft and cast adrift (with adults, including yours truly, accompanying them), as the lifeboat roared around them making big waves with its wake. When onboard, the lifeboat had seemed tiny, but when down at sea level, crouched in the liferaft, it seemed enormous. The liferaft itself was past its use by date, so could no longer be shipped as a legal requirement by any boat. The owner of the raft had given it to the SNSM for demonstration purposes, as they can only be used once. Onboard the raft were all the supplies, including ship's biscuit (horrible), sterile water packs (not a lot) and a chart of the world. Sitting that close to the water, surrounded by waves, makes you realise what a potentially hostile element the sea really is.

After the morning's outing, the crew set to lunch with fervour, very generously including me in their number. The local pizza delivery was engaged to bring high calory, very high cholesterol eats, and the cupboard, which I thought contained essential lifesaving equipment, provided the necessary liquids for life-support, namely pastis and rosé. In fact, a great deal of water was drunk too, especially by the poor guys who had had to don survival suits and had dripped sweat all morning.

Lunch was only moderately leisurely, as there was a guard duty for a regatta. So we cast off again, and motored out into the bay. Hardly were we amongst the yachts, when the VHF went off, asking us to go to the Isle St Honorat, off Cannes, where a motorboat was in difficulty. So on my very first day, I was involved in a 'mission' (shout). As we gunned the engines for the island, we started readying the tackle for a tow, shackling hawsers and unwinding rope on a winch, not easy when the deck is leaning backwards with the thrust, and the boat is beginning to buck its way through the waves, sending spray higher than the mast.

But which boat was in trouble? The information we had was vague, and all we had to go on was that it was blue and white, the commonest combination amongst the hundreds of yachts 'parked' in the roads between St Honorat and Ste Marguerite. Finally we got to our call, only to discover that the real problem was that they had snarled their anchor in the high voltage cable which brings over power to the lighthouse and navigation equipment on the island. They were still busily trying to desnag the anchor, despite the fact that several hundred thousand volts were passing through a cable directly attached to them by a metal anchor chain. Not our business, though, as other 'competent' authorities deal with that kind of incident.

So back to Antibes, passing through the regatta we had abandoned, and on to the fuel depot, where huge quantities of diesel were pumped aboard, as one poor sod from the crew was sent below, to the engine room, to check the levels in 60 degree heat. A task which allowed him to perspire all the water, rosé and pastis consumed at lunch.

The last duty, in a long day, was to scrub the boat clean of all the salt, which by now, under the mediterranean sun, had dried to a kind of sticky, corrosive slime. So it was mops away, at the end.

Highrise housing

The yachts and superyachts in Antibes harbour are one version of the wet dream of the immoderately rich. Another version, of demential dimensions, was briefly anchored yesterday outside in the roads, within view of the marvelous Nomad statue of Jaume Plensa.

It turns out that the ship, called something naff like World ResidenSea, is essentially a floating block of flats, in which the nervous rich can live out their lives in apparent security, surrounded by all the things you really need, like golf courses, nail extension salons, bar room piano crooners and the like. Not to mention serious and probably armed close protection. Sounds like a luxury version of those prison hulks the previous Tory government briefly toyed with, like HMP Weare (see first photo). Not my idea of fun, being cooped up, day in day out, with that kind of person: as Sartre wrote in Huis clos, "L'enfer c'est les autres".

What price a mutiny on the Bounty? With millionaires not breadfruit being jettisoned overboard... A little swim to shore would provide more health benefits than any number of personal trainers. Mind you, who would pay to clean up the beaches afterwards?