Franpierre

A day of housework and contemplation never did anyone any harm I suppose and today was bound to be that day. Scrubbing the decks is mildly satisfying, as it gives plenty of time in the sunshine, or drizzle as the case may be to consider the constants in life.

Like why some people consider that combining the the first syllables of their collective names is a perfectly acceptable and highly original device for inventing a name for their abode, or boat as the case may be, and no matter where in the world one is, whether washing a car or scrubbing the decks of a boat, there will be a constant stream of people with big grins on their dials, asking in at least four or maybe six languages, if one could "do" their conveyance next.

Perhaps imponderable, but I did a good job anyway, was the conversation I had last night with a German fellow who was quite close to my own age. He had just come back from a visit to the WW1 German war cemetery nearby and was quite contemplative. He thought it terrific that the Jewish soldiers who had fallen had their graves appropriately marked with a Star of David, and even more terrific that they were acknowledged equally. In ever more increasing tones of almost melancholy he told me how his father had been a physician in the occupying forces in this region, and he brought him here forty years ago to show him what war really meant, and to introduce him to some of his friends from France, met during the occupation, and how he had never forgotten and how all children should be shown what he was shown at the age of twelve and the world would be a different place.

Then he told me about how he works to keep neo-nazism at bay, and how it has roots all over Europe and is more dangerous to security than other more obvious movements, and warned me of places where it would be unwise to moor the boat because "there are a lot of black people" and it might not be safe, and he saw no contradiction in that, which became the crux of my own contemplation.

It occurred to me later, after the decks were sparkling and I no longer had to think, that if my parents had called me something beginning with "Yeux", then we could have named our boat "Joyeux" without the need for further explanation.