Sogger’s Blog

I mentioned a long time ago that my son had got himself elected to the local council, campaigning on a green agenda (OK, that’s over-blowing it a bit, but he did ask for bigger recycling bins). His enthusiasm has waned a bit in the meantime as he’s called to various events when he would rather be outside kicking a football. However, last weekend, as a member of the “Environment” sub-committee, he was required to take part in an organised litter-picking exercise. This involved taking black bin-liners and picking up the litter on the street, weighing it and publicising the results. All very worthy, so I decided to help out.

This post will describe the event - not only those directly related, but something that happened as a result of my participation. Intrigued? Not really? Well, read on anyway.

It was last Saturday morning and it was pouring down - not a steady drizzle, but a real downpour. This dissuaded many people from taking part (either that or apathy). So there were 5 parents with 30 children to manage. We were allocated parts of town to target and to set off at 9AM (”Don’t pick up any syringes”), meeting back at 11:30AM for the weigh-in. I was allocated a group of 6 children (not including my son), and off we went. One of the children (10 years old) proudly informed me that last year he had found a condom and a bottle of urine, so I was on my guard. Our town is not a particularly scruffy one (probably quite the opposite) but we were soon on the way to filling 3 large bin-liners, mostly with beer bottles and Coke cans (thankfully no condoms, but a bottle of water with contents that did look suspiciously like urine). By 10:00, everybody was soaked and enthusiasm was at a low ebb. I managed to get them to go down a couple more streets, promising that we would get back to the town hall where no doubt we would be greeted with wine and Coke (obviously placing the empty bottles in the recycling bin afterwards rather than throwing them in a ditch at the side of the road).

It’s 10:30 and we arrive back at the town-hall - nobody is there, the doors are locked, we are all soaked and my back is killing me from all the bending over. What should I do? Four kids moaning (the 2 others were friends who tagged along for the ride and had long since gone home) and still one hour to go before we are due back. Next door to the town hall is a theatre, but that is locked, but at least it has a bit of shelter in front of the main door. There’s nothing for it: if in doubt call your wife to help out. She suggested that we bring them back to the house and let them play on the Wii for half an hour or so while they dried off. An excellent idea, so along she came and we were soon back in the house.

However, in the meantime, unbeknownst to me, the parents of one of the children in the group had called the organisers to see where their son was so that they could take him home and get him dried before the lunch that was organised for afterwards (any event in France is always followed by a meal and wine of some kind). In order to help them, they also wanted to know which area of town he was in. Unfortunately, the response of the organiser was, “erm, I don’t know who they were with, but it was a man that I don’t know and I don’t have his contact details”. Put yourself in their position now: you don’t know where or with whom your son is and when he might be coming back. What do you do? Their reaction, perfectly understandably, was to call the parents of all the other children in the group and follow up with a call to the police, engendering mass panic.

So now a posse is forming, anxiously looking for any sign of the children around town. We, of course, are holed up in my house, playing Mario Kart. Because they are having such a good time, we don’t manage to get away in order to arrive exactly at 11:30, so arrive back at the meeting point at 11:40. I fail to understand the gasps as I arrive back with the children and have to explain myself, feeling more and more uncomfortable as I explain to a large group of parents that I had taken their children back to my house “to dry off”. In fact I felt sick as I said the words. The only thing that made the story less paedophilic was that my wife had been with me, but even that might not wash.

Anyway, having seen me, and seeing that my son was there (and wasn’t denying that he was my child), my explanation was accepted and the tension lowered. The organiser then realised that in fact, silly me, of course they were with Monsieur Soggers! This, as you can imagine did not make me feel any better at all, knowing what, unwittingly, I had put the parents through.

I was due to stay for lunch and to join them in the afternoon for a walk, but I admit that I felt slightly sick, made my excuses and left. I think that it must have taken some time for the organiser to realise the impact of her words, because it was only this morning that she sent me an email, asking me to accept her heartfelt apologies and hoping that she hadn’t caused too much embarrassment. Well, actually, yes you did, but I’ll get over it.

And so, you might be asking, how much litter did we collect: I haven’t got a bloody clue.

It’s Monday; the working day starts at 8:30. but I am a little late today, arriving at 8:40. I am the first to arrive. Towards 9:00, my colleagues wander in and the daily routine of greeting each other begins, adhering unerringly to the following logic:

1. Greet your colleague. This can be one of “ça va” or “Bonjour”, abbreviated to “B’jour”.
2. If the subject is male, shake hands
3. If the subject is female, a kiss on both cheeks.

It doesn’t matter if you hate each other and will spend the rest of the day insulting each other, you must always begin like this. The fact that you saw them 15 hours ago is not important. There are no exceptions to this rule.There are 30 people working in the office, so the day begins as follows:

B’jour, shake shake; B’jour, kiss kiss; B’jour, shake shake; B’jour, shake shake; B’jour, shake shake; B’jour, shake shake; B’jour, kiss kiss; B’jour, kiss kiss; B’jour, kiss kiss; B’jour, kiss kiss;B’jour, shake shake; B’jour, kiss kiss; B’jour, shake shake; B’jour, shake shake;

…and so on.

The first half-hour of the day is therefore spent congregated around the coffee machine, so the cramped kitchen area resembles a polite orgy as people arrive and head off for their offices.

A management meeting is first on the agenda: planned start time, 9:00; actual start time, 9:40. This is a very important meeting - important decisions for the next weeks will be made. Required attire: Blackberry telephone and laptop, preferably open with MSN up and running. “What’s first on the agenda? Me to start? OK, I would like…”. Interruption by phone ringing, so the Big Boss (Europe) leaves the office to take it. Everybody else takes the opportunity to read their mail or send a message organising the first coffee break. 5 minutes later and the Big Boss (Europe) returns. “Sorry, we will need to cut the meeting a little short - the Big Boss (Worldwide) arrives today”. “OK, but I have a couple of points I would like to make first…”, “OK, let’s push on, but make it quick”.

My slightly contentious point is raised, leading to raising of voices and stress-levels. As eyeballs pop, stand-up arguments begin and much finger-pointing ensues. After 5 minutes, we all agree with each other. British Telecom said “It’s good to talk” but I don’t remember France Telecom saying “It’s good to shout”. After another hour of Blackberry-watching, we all decide to stop. No decisions are made, but we have all taken the opportunity to catch up with our email. It is 11h30.

The CEO has another meeting with the “Délégues de Personnel”. These are a breed apart, their aggression surpassing that of a rutting stag. They are the “untouchables”, people elected by the staff to once a month ask questions about toilet cleanliness and staff training, preferably in a loud voice, in the sure knowledge that employment law allows them to go as far as they like, short of physical abuse, without the fear of sacking. These questions fended off by the Big Boss (Europe), it is time for lunch. It is midday.

It’s been a hard morning, so what better at lunch than a nice Pastis…or two. Lovely. It is 14h00 and I am sleepy.

Today is an important day - the Big Boss (Worldwide) has flown over from the US to address the French employees. He will be outlining the major achievements of the last year and the goals for the coming year.

What the Englishman heard:

“Blah blah-blah blah [Baseball metaphor] blah blah blah [Another baseball metaphor] blah blah blah [Yet another baseball metaphor] blah blah [I've got a big yacht]…

…1 hour passes…”Let’s not be good, let’s be great”

What the Frenchman heard:

“Blah blah-blah blah [Blah blah] blah blah blah [Encore blah blah] blah blah blah [Et encore blah blah] blah blah [Blah blah bateau]…

…5 hours pass…”Blah blah blah”

Phew, time for coffee. “Is it time to go home yet?”. It’s 17h00. Time to read the abusive email from customers, customer support and management before heading for the door. I am the last to leave.

I recently received a CV from a Canadian national, Fisher Scott. Two things struck me about the CV:

1. The name seemed a bit strange: I would have thought Scott Fisher was more likely
2. The technical capabilities weren’t quite right, but it may be worth an interview anyway.

I therefore gave the guy a call and left a message asking him to give me a call for a phone interview.

It was only much later that I admitted to myself that a third thing had struck me:
3. It would be nice to have another native English speaker around the place.

The following day, I received another CV. One thing struck me about this CV:

1. It was identical in every way to Fisher Scott’s CV, except that the name of the applicant was Mohammed and the native language was marked as Arabic rather than English.

This engendered feelings of both panic and amusement and I showed it to my boss. He displayed only feelings of panic: journalists or worse still, the government, were testing us to see if we were racist employers. He asked me to call the Algerian candidate and invite him for an interview.

I have to admit that I felt like I had been stung and was against calling, and, when he arrived, I asked him if he was here as Fisher Scott or Mohammed - a low blow. When I pressed him on why he had sent two versions of his CV, his reply shocked me, “When I apply as Fisher Scott, I get about 25% replies (either positive or negative). When I apply as Mohammed, I am lucky if I get a single reply.”. When I asked him how he expected to get a positive reaction when a bogus Fisher Scott turned up, he replied, “I just hope that the interviewer can put that aside and that I will be judged purely on my technical and personal aptitudes.”. He explained that this was a common approach for north African job-seekers.

We hear often about the plight of what they call the “visible minorities” - unemployment levels for the 30-39 year-old African-descent population is running at >30%. What a terrible state of affairs and one that I had never had brought home to me so clearly.

Now I have to ask myself whether I am equally guilty of racism: would I have called the guy if the first version I received had been the Algerian version? Deep down I have to admit that I might have passed over it if it hadn’t been for the Anglo-Saxon name. As a minor consolation, I can say that this means that I might also have dismissed it if the CV had come from Monsieur Blanc. I wonder how many times my CV has been rejected because of my name? One thing for sure is that it is less often than the poor Fisher Scott.

If anything positive came out of it, it is that I have learnt my lesson. I just hope that France as a nation can do so too, but from what I see around me, I fear it won’t be any time soon.

As to the glaring question, “Did you hire him?”, the answer is, “No, he was rubbish”. And that is based on purely objective reasoning.

Like my teeth, the follow-up to Scoop 1 has been difficult to get out. However, for your delectation, here, finally, is the sequel.

As I said previously, I was kindly invited back for further investigations, having gone away from the first visit with a temporary filling, which “would hurt, but in a different way”, designed to disinfect the site ready for the real work to start. With the filling removed, scoop 2 began. Very kindly, the dentist decided to use anaesthetic for this one. However, he seemed to inject it everywhere in my mouth apart from the dig-site. For several days afterwards my gums were scarred and I am pretty sure they were burnt by this anaesthetic.

During this investigation, he decided that the nerves were beyond repair and that it would need “at least” 3 more sessions in order to deaden them. “After that, we’ll talk about your wisdom teeth”. “I’ve put in another temporary filling - I can’t understand why the first one didn’t work”.

However, he very kindly filled the second tooth for me in the meantime. It was only the day after that I realised the filling was not at all adapted to the shape of my mouth and that, when I closed my mouth on one side, on the other side the teeth were not closing - I looked like Popeye; all I needed was a pipe to hang out of this side (and infeasibly large muscles in my arms) and the effect would be complete. Unlike the cartoon violence meted out by Popeye, this situation led to extreme headaches because the muscles on one side of my face were constantly tensed while those on the other side hung loose . Not pleasant.

“OK, let’s give this one a chance to work - come back next week and we’ll carry on”.

Now, I may be a coward, but I knew full well that it would be folly to keep coming - of course, I was never going to tell him to his face. Oh no, run away and hope he doesn’t notice. So, it was with a feeling of guilt that I rang him just before the 3rd appointment and told him that I had been delayed overnight on a customer site and would call him when I got back. I then called the dentist where we used to live and who is treating my son. The thing is, they are very popular, so it was another 10-day wait for an appointment, and only then because they gave me preferential treatment - they have already taken 700€ from us for his brace, with the certainty that his story is not finished and my other son will soon need the same treatment. Mouths - who needs them? The phrase “put your money where your mouth is” never rung truer.

Anyway, onto scoop 3…

Entering the surgery here literally made my jaw drop (but, for obvious reasons, only on one side). Everything was clean, new and white. The dentist had an assistant who held the apparatus for him - I didn’t have to do it myself! I didn’t have to expectorate (great word) from a paper cup into a dry-spit-covered off-white basin - they had a machine to do this too. I had couched the visit as needing a “second opinion” on the original work. The dentist was very diplomatic, but could only express disbelief at the fact that the filling was convex, thus preventing my mouth from closing properly. He had a tiny X-ray machine. A click of the button, a swivel of the head and he could see the results immediately on his iMac screen. These results showed that there was no obvious nerve damage and that a simple filling would suffice. “I will fill it with a white composite” he said, quickly correcting himself, “Well, not white, but matching the colour of the surrounding teeth”. Gggrrrr.

So this time he corrected the damage from the filling from scoop 2, gave me another (well-fitting) temporary filling and asked me to wait another week to make sure that there was really no nerve damage before coming back to have the other filling. “And then we can talk about your wisdom teeth…” was the now familiar parting line.

Scoop 4 is a happier tale. I arrive and am led to their X-ray room where they take a full mouth X-ray with a lovely new machine that swivels around your head, takes 2 seconds and flashes the results up immediately on the computer screen. A quick filling and the bill is presented - 64€ for 2 sessions which included 3 X-rays and 2 fillings, all of which is reimbursed by the dramatically over-stretched health service. Funnily enough, I still haven’t received any word from the original dentist. My guess is that it will come to more than 64€ though.

Anyway, to finish, a few words on my wisdom teeth. It turns out that, like a drunk driver in a crowded shopping street, they have veered uncontrollably to the right, crashing through the crowd of orderly normal teeth, causing them to scatter in panic. This has had the effect of squashing them together so that the poor tooth in the middle has been isolated. Imagine a police line-up: the victim selects the suspect and he is asked to step forward while the others take a step backwards- that is what my poor centre tooth on the bottom must be going through right now. Unfortunately, the wisdom teeth have defended themselves by wrapping themselves around nerves. “We can take them out, but if we make a mistake you will end up spending the rest of your life with no feeling on one side of your face…”. I think I’ll put that decision off until after Christmas.

Unfortunately, the story itself, like the blood from my gums, will run and run, but, from now on, I will spare you from the gory details.

This post relates to my first experience of French dentistry. Prepare to wince (if you don’t, I have failed in my goal). It is a long, ongoing story, so I split it into a few parts in order to stop you getting too bored and speed-reading to the bottom to see if there is anything interesting.

Anyway, to get underway, I should say that, like the French medical service, I assumed that French dentists would be of a high quality, with immediate availability - kind of like a high class call-girl (I would imagine).

As we have just moved house (did I already mention that ), I didn’t have any recommendations, so chose the one closest to our house (one dentist is pretty much like another, no?). First surprise: a 2 week wait for an appointment. So, as a proper man, I had spent several months moaning to my wife about the excruciating pain, and, like a proper Englishman, I waited several months before doing anything about it. OK, 2 more weeks, but the wheels were in motion.

Come the big day, I headed off down to the surgery. The signs were good: the surgery was in the courtyard of a beautiful bourgeois house; the waiting room was full of antiques; basically, it was not like any dentists I had ever visited before. Also, unlike any I have ever visited, I was welcomed at the door by the dentist himself - an austere man befitting of his surgery’s waiting room, obviously close to retirement, but seemingly steady of hand with a pleasant manner and obviously lots of experience - I should have seen it coming…

I never asked myself, “where is the receptionist? Where is the dental assistant? How much is this going to cost?” as I was waved straight into the surgery. Second surprise: the surgery was also full of antiques, starting with the chair that he beckoned me to sit in. Think imitation beige leather, worn out and patched together with cellotape and you get the idea. OK, it’s just a chair - he had comforting high-tech gadgets after all. Look at that Sony monitor in the corner - no idea what it does, but at least it’s beige. It looked like one of the oscilloscopes we used at university 20 years ago - actually, maybe not so comforting…

So, napkin on, and in he goes. “Where does it hurt?”. Strangely, that day, it didn’t hurt at all. He soon fixed that though. With something too closely resembling a fish-hook, he pulled and pushed my teeth in the general area where I said it hurt. Soon enough he found the problem, and like a dodgy garage mechanic (aren’t they all?), he gave a sharp intake of breath and told me that I had 2 cavities, both below the gum, one of which had dug a secret passage from one tooth to another. Of course, the problem was down to the previous dentist who had badly filled the teeth.

So he decided to have a closer look. He went off to get his drill bit from one of his antique cupboards, uttering, “Hhhmm, I only seem to have one left but that’ll do”. He didn’t want to use anaesthetic, so in he went, asking me to raise my hand if it hurt. It was OK for a bit, but sure enough he got far enough down to hit the nerve causing my hand to raise, but not under any control. “Hhhmm, even worse than I thought. It’ll need at least another four sessions. I’ll have to deaden the nerve, do this, do that…come back tomorrow”.

At this point, the alarm bells and my gums were ringing. No price (”we’ll discuss that at the end of the consultation”), no details, no waiting list - this was the big one; the one that would pay for the new tyres on his Jaguar. Still, as the good Englishman, I didn’t dare to kick up a fuss and agreed to come back in tomorrow, which was incidentally a Saturday.

I’ll tell you next time about anaesthetic that left my gums burnt, deeper digging (with non-functioning anaesthetic that was obviously past its sell-by date), a filling on the other tooth that left me unable to get my teeth to close on one side of my mouth causing headaches and a final realisation that I needed to see a real dentist…