20 oct

Went to visit the town Vaux-en-Beaujolais, or Clochemerle as it is known by most French people. Gabriel Chevalier wrote in the early thirties of last century a novel with some of the happiest sinning in the history of literature. Well literature, the plot is horrible, although still more intriguing then the plots of PG Wodehouse. They were even more simple and flat and Wodehouse’s books are almost all classics, or should be considered as such.
Well Clochemerle really isn’t. Although the description of most characters is delightful, it is not really clear what their role is in the book. It is the story of the struggle between a socialist mayor and a catholic priest. The mayor decides to do his village a favor by building public toilets, in front of the church. Everywhere in France you see this. It is kind of a logical place. Mainly because the local pub is opposite the church and pubs didn’t have public toilets at the time.
In Vaux-en-Beaujolais, I couldn’t find the public toilet though. And the same was true for this nice older Frenchman who knocked on my window, when I was leaving, and asked if I knew where the public toilet was. Ah, also a fan of Clochemerle, I said. Turned out he just needed to pee.
Well, they, in Vaux, have tried to capitalize on the choice of Chevalier. The official sign itself makes reference to the novel. There is a Clochemerle restaurant, too expensive for me. There is a hevalier museum, closed on sunday, but most fun, there is a whole house which is painted with the cartoon characters of one of the prints of Clochemerle. Looking at the building was like rereading the novel, quite fun.
Happy sinning, I am not sure if that is a good thing. I do like the concept of sins, as I said earlier. It is clarifying. In his book Finding Happiness, Christopher Jamieson identifies eight of them. He calls them Thoughts, somehow. Three about the body: Gluttony, Lust & Greed; Three thoughts in the heart and mind: Anger, sadness and acedia; Two in the soul: vanity and pride. I had never heard of Acedia, but it is the most important one, according to Jamieson, meaning spiritual carelessness or apathy. I sympathize with him on this.
Jamieson focuses in his book on Vices, although for each sin, or vice there is an opposite virtue. Three virtues in the body: moderation, (chaste) love and generosity; Three in the heart and mind: gentleness, gladness and spiritual awareness; Two in the soul: magnanimity and humility.
Why focus on the negative I wondered for a while, but then I found the answer, I think, in a quote from La Rochefaucault: ‘Our virtues are usefully only virtues in disguise.’ Which is very insightful, it seems to me. It explains definitely why people who pride themselves on their virtues are, almost without exception, unbearable. But it also explains that human beings tend to vicious behaviour. It is only by realizing this, by laws and norms and values, that this behaviour is limited, in most people’s cases, to acceptable behaviour.
Well enough about this, but it is sunday again, so a little preaching was necessary.
Today was really the day where a new crazy thing to occupy my thoughts really was lifted from the ground. I saw a French car with the number 01 of the first French Departement, Ain to be exactly.

To explain my excitement I have to tell you the story of my former Commercial Federal colleague Bob. Bob was the saddest creature in the history of mankind. He was a retired employee of the insurer Mutual of Omaha, but young still, in his mid fifties I would guess. He was well off, which he didn’t dwell on, but was explained one day when he told me he had quite a few shares of Berkshire Hathaway, the Buffett company. This was in the days before B shares. I figured he was a millionaire, even then. Right now, if he is still alive and hasn’t sold any, he is a multi multi millionaire. But he was working a $5 an hour job, just like me. We had to make sure all the documents to get a mortgage from the bank were actually in the files. It was pretty easy work. Each file took me about 5 minutes, I guess. Not Bob, who was sitting right opposite from me. He could easily take an hour to go through each file in detail. This very much to the chagrin of our boss, Marie. I have to tell something about her too, although it might be a bad idea. It has been a few years since my nightmares are not centred around her anymore. Marie, my goodness, was a person of the best intentions, but of an intensity that was amazing as well as maddening. She was a devote catholic who was devastated by her divorce, a fact that happened more than ten years before, but which she would mention almost every day. She was in charge of ‘clean’ files and she was certain that the world would fall apart if we would miss something. Which didn’t make Bob’s slowness acceptable to her.
One of the reasons Bob was so slow, was that he would take a little nap after lunch. I was a witness to this every single day that I sat opposite from him. His eyes would drop, his head also a little bit, but his hands would keep on turning pages, slowly. I had to hold my nose not to laugh. He would not wake up with a shudder, but as gentle as he had fallen asleep, reason why nobody ever found out about his little nap.
He did get fired though, because the file an hour average was not acceptable at the end. He accepted it, and dreaded the fact that he had to stay home with his wife now, someone, it seemed to me, who had a habit of interrupting his afternoon nap, which was cruel, of course.
Bob had the most fascinating hobby, which he told me about once. Nebraska had kind of the same system with number plates as France. Every different county had its own number. The difference between France and Nebraska is (maybe was) that while France takes an alphabetical order for its 95 departements, Nebraska used the number 01 for the most populous county (based on a census in 1927 or something). So number 01 was Douglas county (Omaha), 02 Lancaster County (Lincoln) – if I remember it well – and so on. There were more than 70 in total. Bob’s idea was that he was mentally collecting these number plates. He was trying to collect all 75 (or something) counties. But, here was the catch, it had to be in sequence. Which is maddening of course. In most of the lower number counties of Nebraska hardly anybody lives! Bob had started this mental game when he was a teenager. Now he had reached number 25, if I remember it well.
I do sympathize with collecting, and with obsessiveness by the way, but this was way out of league for me. Bob, I said, there is no way you will finish this game before you die. He realized that.
I was in awe of the fact that he did this. And I always wanted to do something similar. Today I started my own game, having seen a car with departement 01. Can’t wait to see number 02, which is Aisne, in the North of France. Wonder where I will be when we leave France in the spring of next year. I am pretty sure it won’t be number 25. There are 95 departements.