Law Of The Week

Nimbyism is one thing, existing residents objecting to a proposal that will affect their peace and quiet, but having the audacity to move into an area and then complain about what you find there is quite another. The diaspora from the city to the countryside is fraught with difficulties. People who are quite content to put up with the hum of traffic and the rattle of trains while living in an urban setting suddenly seem shocked when they find that the countryside is not the tranquil Elysium they had imagined it to be and that the soundscape is full of mooing cows, noisy cockerels, and the peal of church bells.

The French courts have been plagued with cases in which irate newcomers have sought to put an end to alleged noise pollution caused by a host of animals, even frogs croaking in a pond and noisy cicadas going about their cicadian business. Not any more, though.

In a piece of legislative breath air, that puts our own moribund parliament to shame, the French parliament has just passed a law that puts an end to such nonsense, giving the courts the authority to strike out such cases. As the justice minister, Éric Dupond-Moretti, observed, “those who move to the countryside cannot demand that country people who feed them change their way of life,”

Well said.

Team Of The Week

Grass roots football is poles apart from the pampered world of the elite game. The almost endless rain that we have endured over the last couple of months has meant that many non league teams are faced with a backlog of fixtures, a situation exacerbated by the refusal of the FA and their associated league committees to extend the season. So much for a duty of care to players.

The situation reached its logical conclusion at Beatrice Avenue, the humble abode of East Cowes Victoria on Tuesday night (April 16^th). Their opponents were Totton & Eling, who had already played the previous day and had sustained three injuries and arrived at the ground fifteen minutes before kick off with just nine players, including the manager, analyst, and a novice playing his first game of competitive football. At least the analyst’s job was easy – we haven’t enough players! – and there was plenty of room on the bench.

Despite the overwhelming odds, the Millers put in a creditable performance, their defence not breached until the 31^st minute. They went on to lose 6-0, a result that could have repercussions in the race for play-off places at the top of the Wessex League Division One. Unsurprisingly, they are playing again tonight, a home game.

Hats off to Totton and Eling, truly the team of the week!

Book Binding Of The Week

I cannot say that I have given anthropodermic bibliopegy much thought but the practice of using human skin as a form of binding for a book has recently been in the headlines when Harvard University announced that it was removing the binding from the copy of, appropriately enough, Des Destinées de l’Ame they have held since the 1930s.

The book, written by Arsène Houssaye in the 1880s, a meditation on having a soul and life after death, came into the possession of a physician, Ludovic Bouland, who then bound the book with skin taken from a dead female patient. We know what her destiny was.

The ethical dilemma, of course, is that the skin was removed without her consent. That said, whether we are buried or cremated our skin disintegrates and with the passage of time, Harvard’s point seems a little moot.

As we are encouraged to give hope through our death by agreeing to donate organs, perhaps this form of consent should be extended to our skin. I rather fancy the idea of a smart row of leather bound books being bound with my gnarled and wrinkly skin. Now, where is my will?  

Waiters Of The Week

If you are in Paris and are looking for fast café service in Paris, perhaps you should seek out Pauline van Wymeersch at the Le Petit Pont café facing the Notre Dame cathedral or Samy Lamrous who plies his trade at La Centrescarpe in Paris’ 5^th arrondissement. They were the winners of the women’s and men’s sections of the revived Course des Cafes, a two kilometre race through the streets of the historic Marais district around City Hall.

Wearing traditional aprons and white shirts and carrying a tray bearing a traditional breakfast of croissant, coffee and a glass of water, around 200 waiters set off with the goal of completing the course without running or spilling spilling a crumb or a drop. Lamrous completed the race, run for the first time since 2011, in 13 minutes and 30 seconds while Ms van Vymeersch finished with a time of 14 minutes and 12 seconds.

Apart from the prestige, they were presented with medals, two tickets each for the opening ceremony of the Paris Olympics, and a night’s stay in a Paris hotel.

Let’s hope this traditional race is back to stay.

Defence Mechanism Of The Week

On March 19^th a group of marine biologists aboard a Naturaliste Charters boat exploring Western Australia’s southern coast saw a group of sperm whales come under attack from a pod of at least thirty orcas. After being chased to the point of exhaustion, the four sperm whales adopted some unusual tactics to fend off their potential predators.

First of all, they huddled tightly together in a circle, with their heads to the centre, fanning their tails and thrashing frantically. All then went quiet until the scientists saw a big cloud of dark red liquid make its way to the surface, which, fearing the worst, they took to be blood. However, instead of tucking into their next meal, the orcas made an about turn and exited stage left.

Instead of the tell-tale signs of a massacre, what the marine biologists had witnessed was the sperm whales emptying their bowels and launching a “poonado” at their foes in an act of what is termed “defensive defection”. As their diet consists mostly of squid, their faeces is a reddish colour and the dark bubble was later confirmed to be a “cloud of diarrhoea”.

The moral of the tale is that if you are going to shit your pants, be sure to make good use of the output.