| Dear diary - weather and finance edition, 12 April 2005 |
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The sky over Beijing is constantly veiled by fog according to a Chinese friend who has just returned from a month seeing her family. The fog is caused by the fumes from the ever-increasing heavy industry there. It was so bad, that when she and her German husband arrived back, they were happy just to see the sky again - at Heathrow! The social climate is just as bad. There is rampant capitalism, with Mercedes and BMW's everywhere, an emphasis on status symbols unknown here and corruption at every level of life. Maybe morality will make a come-back sometime, but at the moment it is hiding in a fog-bound side street. In Annecy, by contrast, we were lucky to have unbroken sunshine during our 6 days there. We had gone with a group of 12 friends and, as we knew the area, had taken responsibility for organising things. As it turned out, the itinerary we had discussed worked well and we ate, drank and talked far too much. A few of us went to see an exhibition of contemporary art in a renovated chateau 30 minutes drive away. The chateau is owned by la Fondation de l'Art Contemporain, which was created by M et Mme Saloman - the owners of the ski-goods company. The foundation buys contemporary art works and puts on exhibitions. The sculptures in the gardens were very much to my taste, although the works in the interior mainly tried too hard to shock or simply be different. Cutting up pieces of paper so that they form butterflies hardly seems to be great art. That the paper consisted of photographs of the artist's family doesn't seem to me to make the leap forward. What was good, however, was the very existence of such a foundation - funded by capitalists. We went to the Col des Arravis (1480 m) simply to see the contrast between the snow still around us at that height and the sunshine playing down on it, and of course to have lunch. We also went to see Les Gorges du Fier, a narrow winding gorge some 70 ms deep carved out of limestone by the melting of the glaciers at the end of the ice-age. In 1869, an enterprising Frenchman put a walkway along the gorge so that he could charge tourists for a closer and less dangerous view of the site. Workmen were suspended in barrels from the cliff-top in order to carry out the construction. It is still there, although thankfully much renovated, and gives a vertiginous view down on to the water rushing along between the walls of the gorge. And so the Pope died with almost no earthly possessions. On the other hand, he was not seen queueing for buses, lived in regal quarters at the Vatican with his band of nuns who looked after all his needs and was able to retreat to his summer residence whenever he wished to, rather than being confined to a time-share on the Costa Brava. He was not known for staying in bed and breakfasts on his journeys to other countries and did not have to fight for his seat on Easyjet flights. He did not even pay tax on his benefits in kind. The world's poor would love to be so poor. |