What the fuck is going on? (Part 2)

                         Rocha Kanter, my great grandmother 

When I first laid eyes on the photo of my great grandmother a couple of months ago, I instantly collapsed into uncontrollable sobbing. I wasn’t expecting the level of grief and despair I felt on seeing her photo. I don’t know when the photo was taken, but there was sadness in her eyes. I’d found it alongside her Person Card in the database of Jews of Latvia 1941-1945. This is an historical record of the fate of Jews in that region during the Nazi occupation. I knew nothing really of my great grandmother when I was growing up, other than she died during the holocaust at the hands of the Nazis, along with a number of her children, my grandmother’s brothers and sisters. I could see my grandmother Celia (Zila)’s resemblance in her mother’s face. She looks like she was a proud woman. There is strength to her, and dignity, but also a sorrow. Maybe that’s me projecting feelings on to her, but I can sense it. Rocha (Soresmann) Kanter was her name. She was born in Šiauliai in Lithuania, but like a lot of Lithuanian Jews had migrated to Riga sometime in the late 1800s, possibly with her family. She married my great grandfather Moshe in Riga and it seems like they were quite well to do based on the neighbourhood  and building they lived in, which still stands today. By the time of the war she was a widow, with my great grandfather having died some years earlier in 1925. Her daughter (my grandmother) Celia had already migrated to the USA in 1924. Rocha’s record in the Jews of Latvia 1941-1943 database lists her as being in Riga before the war and in Riga during the war. Her place of death is blank. Her date of death is blank. The field indicating her fate during the years 1941 to 1945 is also blank. What seems highly likely is that she was one of 28,000 Jews who were taken from the Riga ghetto to the nearby Rumbula Forest and murdered in one of two mass shootings that took place on 30 November and 8 December 1941. These Jews had no record of death. They were force marched into a forest, murdered anonymously and buried in a mass grave.

Just as an aside, this is what an actual genocide looks like. 38,000 Jews were executed in two days at Rumbula; 28,000 Jews from Riga and the rest from Germany, Austria and elsewhere who were brought in by train to be slaughtered. In June 1941, there were 45,000 Jews living in Riga. By early 1944 there were close to zero.

It’s quite a thing to know that your relatives were rounded up and killed as part of a systematic eradication program. And to know also that you would have met this same fate if you had been around at that time. It’s difficult for it not to have a significant impact on how you view the world. I’ve never really been able to get my head around it and have been searching my whole life for an understanding of how something like this could happen. As I took in the aftermath of the killing of Jews on Bondi Beach, I couldn’t help but feel a sad continuum. Jews killed for being Jews. Nothing to do with their politics or their beliefs. Nothing to do with their character. Nothing to do with whether they were Zionists or not. Nothing to do with any aspect of them at all, other than the fact that they were Jews. And it should be noted a couple of non-Jews also died in the Bondi attack. Poor souls who had the misfortune of standing in close proximity to a whole lot of Jews, the target of Islamic extremists who had decided that it was their purpose in life to globalise the intifada, bringing it to an Australian icon. I was in a state of shock when I first heard the news. Maybe I still am. In the couple of weeks afterwards I oscillated between extreme sadness and white hot fury, flicking from one to the other in a fraction of a second. A heartfelt message of support sent to me from a friend, or a generous post online expressing support for the Jewish community as a whole still chokes me up and occasionally brings me to tears. On the other hand, reading or hearing discussions with people explaining away that the spread of antisemitism in Australia is in no way related to the relentless protests of the pro-Palestinian movement, or the inaction of government, makes me angry. It seems so clear to any Jewish person. But unlike for any other minority, people want to tell Jews what anti-Jewish hatred is and what it isn’t. The double standard of everything related to both the Jews and Israel since 7^th October 2023 has been astounding. This is not to say that I think that there is a direct causal relationship between the protests and the tragedy at Bondi, but there is certainly a strong correlation between the protests and the normalisation of anti-Jewish sentiment in Australia. When Jews hear the phrase “globalise the intifada”, it sounds to them unambiguously that people are calling for exactly what happened in Bondi. That might not be what sections of the crowd believe that they are chanting for, but that is exactly how Jews are hearing it and have heard it for the last two years. Jews know what the second intifada in Israel looked like. It involved the blowing up of Jewish school kids on buses or of people having a meal in a pizza parlour, or a suicide bomber exploding a nail bomb into a crowded marketplace. How we interpreted that chant didn’t change in any way after Bondi. This wasn’t a new realisation. It just seemed a manifestation of exactly what those people were screaming for all along and what the Jewish community had been raising with government and the authorities as an eventual likelihood for quite some time. When we are told that “Zionism = Nazism”, we are hearing that Jews wanting to have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland is somehow equivalent to the systematic extermination of six million Jews, including the rounding up of my grandmother’s community and their execution in a forest. Apparently, we are as bad as those Nazis. There are of course claims to redefine what Zionism means, which is funny coming from anti-Zionists, telling Zionists what it is that they believe. The “From the river to the sea” chant has always sounded like a call for eradication of the only Jewish homeland, a land that the Jews have had a connection with for thousands of years. Singling out the one Jewish state as illegal or immoral or evil, because it is based on colonialism is both a rewriting of archaeologically proven history and highly hypocritical when it’s coming from Australians who have no problem living on stolen Aboriginal land while making these claims. Invariably if Jews raise concerns of this overt, aggressive and often violent anti-Jewish sentiment, which they have continuously since October 7^th, they are told that they are trying to shut down legitimate protest about the actions of the Israelis in Gaza or the “occupied territories”. Playing the antisemitic card. What crap. Anybody can criticise a government or a country for their actions. Many Jews, including me, are critical of the Israeli government, but this movement has so clearly spilled over into generic anti-Jewish territory with many of the same old antisemitic tropes masquerading under the more benign and acceptable heading of anti-Zionism. It does seem highly suspicious to Jews that the only world conflict that anybody seems to give a shit at all about is the one involving the Jews, but… whatever. I have a friend, who I know is not anti-Jewish, who told me that his strong anti-Israel views were fuelled by seeing images of “Israelis murdering women and children”. I asked him if he considered all wars were the murder of people, of women and children. I was met with silence. Maybe he recognised the double standard at that moment, but he didn't acknowledge it. In a sense I agree with him. I think that all war is just legalised murder at a national scale. It’s abhorrent to me, the most disgusting manifestation of human fear and hate. But to single out just the war involving the Jewish state as murder, when wars of similar or greater brutality are going on all over the world right now and have been for the entire existence of humankind seems inherently antisemitic in nature. As I said, I don’t believe that this friend is antisemitic at all. But the one-sided narrative that is being pumped out into our society, into our institutions, blasted out by social media, paints this antisemitic narrative to a point where it becomes the accepted truth even by well-meaning individuals. For me as a Jewish person, when people who I know love me and have high regard for Jewish people in general have this kind of selective view, what hope really is there?

When raising with friends over the last couple of years that there seemed to me to clearly be a significant rise in antisemitism in our society, I was often told that I was just imagining it, that it wasn’t real. I was being over-sensitive or over-reacting. That I was seeking out supporting evidence to confirm my existing beliefs in a form of confirmation bias. Yet somehow over the last couple of years in Australia there has been a huge increase in physical assaults on Jewish people, vandalism and graffiti on Jewish schools or synagogues, destruction of Jewish property, firebombings of Jewish buildings and cars, boycotting of Jewish businesses, entertainers, writers and the like even to the point in some cases of making public their email addresses, phone numbers and addresses, so that people could take their virtue signalling Jew hate disguised as giving a shit about the Palestinians directly to their doors. Jewish businesses have had stickers with the star of David and a line through it plastered on their windows, that instantly take any Jewish person’s mind back to images they have seen of Germany in the early 1930s. And then of course there has been a torrent of open Jew hatred and ancient libels against Jews in the cesspit of social media comments sections. The evidence is clear and has been for some time. Why has it taken a massacre on Bondi Beach for anybody to take these claims seriously?

I’ve got to a stage where I now find laughable the view coming from the far-left that Israel embodies everything that is evil in the world. Colonisers. Apartheid. Nazis. Racists. Genocide. Ethnostate. And that anybody who is a Zionist is essentially the worst human in the world because they support all the evils that Israel represents just by its mere existence. I am unashamedly a Zionist. I believe that the Jews have a right to self-determination in their ancestral homeland. I am bemused by the fact that people still talk about Israel’s right to exist and what form that should take, as if they have any say in the matter. Israel does exist as a sovereign nation. The Zionists already won. And if you are calling for the dismantling of the only Jewish state, while you may call yourself an anti-Zionist, I will be calling you a Jew hating arsehole. I didn’t feel so strongly for Israel before October 2023. I don’t like their policy on expanded settlements in the West Bank over the last decade or more. I particularly don’t like their right-wing government or their current leader. But the rise in anti-Jewish sentiment has somehow pushed me closer to Israel as a nation. I’d always considered myself firmly a part of the political left, being a strong supporter of minorities and their rights in our societies, regardless of their colour, race or beliefs. My beliefs in that regard and continued support for those people are unwavering, but I no longer feel part of any left movement or political collective as I have seen that cohort turn on the Jews in the name of anti-Zionism. They are like the inquisitors in Spain during the great inquisitions. Jews can be a part of their community if they renounce the great evil of Zionism, otherwise they are to be cast off as the modern-day leftist version of the antichrist where anything that happens to them is deserved. Fucking hypocrites.

I listen to the sanctimonious rhetoric from many European and other world leaders calling for boycotts and telling Israel how they should be acting towards their neighbours. Neighbours who voted in their Jihadist leaders with a publicly stated policy of removing every last Jew from Israel by whatever means necessary and who perpetrated the mass killing of Jews on October 7th. Many of those same countries helped the Nazis round up the Jews in their own countries to send them off to the gas chambers or to be executed in a forest. I only found out relatively recently that when the second world war ended and the concentration camps were liberated, that no country would take the 250,000 emaciated and traumatised Jews who had survived the camps. Not England. Not France. No country in Europe. Not the USA. Not Australia. Not Canada. Nobody. Everybody knew what had happened by then and what these poor souls had been through. Everybody had seen the photos of skeletal Jews in stripy pyjamas and mass piles of Jewish corpses. Yet no country would take them in. They had to remain living in those same camps as displaced persons until 1948, three years after the war had finished. And it was only on the founding of Israel that they finally had somewhere to go. And now some people want the Jews to give up the only country in the world that unequivocally guarantees their safety. Fuck off! Am Yisrael chai.

I don’t know where this all leads. I have great friends who aren’t Jewish. The vast majority of my friends in fact. And I feel that the wider Australian community in general are supportive of a multicultural society where Jews can go about their lives as any other Australian can. Seeing the petitions raised in the last few days by Australian sporting legends, community and church leaders and the like for a royal commission into the rise of Jew hatred and extremist ideology in Australia has been heartwarming.  I don’t know whether this is necessarily going to make a difference, but the fact that these people care enough to put their voices to it means something significant in itself. I love the country I live in. I’m a proud Australian. It’s my predominant identity on a day-to-day basis. I’m not a religious person, leaning more towards atheism than anything else. But I have felt myself much more isolated at times in these last two years. It’s made me identify more strongly with being Jewish than at any stage of my life since my bar mitzvah nearly fifty years ago. I lit Chanukah candles for the first time in half a century. I am much more engaged and interested in Jewish culture and history than I had been. There’s something about any attempt to intimidate or eradicate Jews that makes me feel defiant in a “fuck you” kind of way to those haters. It makes me more Jewish. Maybe that’s a good thing.

I’m not sure what the real point of this diatribe is. Probably just to get out of my head the multitude of thoughts that have been swirling around in there for some time. Better out than in. If you’ve read this far. Thank you. That probably makes one of you.

I guess that my request for anybody who cares about the current situation being experienced by many Jews in this country, or indeed around the world, is that regardless of your beliefs around the Israel/Palestine/Gaza situation, please can you form those views based on actual facts. There has been a flood of misinformation, false photos, probably AI videos and the like around things that the Israelis have allegedly done in Gaza. That’s not to say that they haven’t done some heinous shit for which they should be judged, but please can you hold your judgements on a situation until you’ve actually checked the veracity of what you are reading or looking at? I know that’s easier said than done. Who do you trust? It’s difficult to know. International institutions who are supposedly neutral arbiters of what is right, such as the UN and Amnesty International have regularly put out misinformation and biased views of their own. News media, right and left, have their own agendas to put forward, be it the right-wing “immigration is bad” crowd, or the left-wing “Zionists are evil” mob. I’ve put a list of sources that may be of interest to anybody wanting to know more at the end of this lengthy monologue. If anybody has any suggestions for me, I’m happy to hear. I try not to live in an echo chamber and to seek alternate viewpoints. Please just base your views on facts.

Secondly, can you please listen to the Jews in your life if they tell you that they are having a tough time with anti-Jewish rhetoric and sentiment. They are probably not imagining it. They will know better than you what it looks like. They are probably not over-reacting. And maybe, if something horrific like the Bondi massacre or a synagogue blowing up happens again, just reach out and let them know that you care. I know that I truly appreciate the messages of support that have been sent to me.

Some Links To Check Out:

On the history and differences between antisemitism and anti-Zionism

On genocide in Gaza

Facebook page of Ahmed Fouad Alkhatib, who is a Palestinian man seeking a better way for peace

The best podcast for a balanced Israeli view of history and the present

Organisations for peaceful Jewish/Arab coexistence:

https://www.standing-together.org/en/about-en  

https://www.nif.org.au/advancing_jewish_arab_partnership 

To the memory of my great grandmother Rocha, my great aunts Leya and Scheine, and my great uncles Lasar and David, who all perished in Riga or the Buchenwald concentration camp during the Shoah. Hopefully things will continue to get better for the Jews of the future.

My great grandmother Rocha with her family. Clearly no smiling for the camera in those days.

 

What the fuck is going on?

I’ve discovered over the last few years that I couldn’t be less in touch with what the fuck is going on in the world if I tried. I guess it started with Brexit. And then Trump. But this shit just keeps on going. Is it just that I am getting older? I’m sixty now and some days I feel fucking old. Maybe it’s just me. The world moved on in a different plane and left me behind. Maybe all generations feel like this. We as a generation, in this part of the world, have certainly been blessed for a very long time compared to our forebears. Our generation came to being post the second world war. My parents were children in that time, and what’s more Jewish children, in a time where Jews were being exterminated in Europe. My grandmother had her parents and a whole lot of siblings wiped out by the Nazis (do I really have to give those fuckers a capital letter Mr. Autocorrect). She lived through the great depression where her husband, my grandfather, lost his business and went broke and then died leaving her with nothing but a couple of sons to feed in a time when women typically didn’t work. She left Latvia just after the Russian revolution when Stalin came to power. So, the world has always been mad. And my family have had to be dealing with it for generations, like everybody else’s family. But I guess I felt that mostly I could make sense of it during my time. Certainly at least since I reached adulthood. Now, I’ve got no fucking clue. I know that if my grandmother was here, she’d just tell me to get on with it. But, right now, I feel in despair.

At heart, I’m an optimist. And I want people to get along. Love is the answer. Surely, we all know that, for sure. But I feel so disappointed by my fellow humans. So let down. Not that I am putting myself out there as perfect. Far from it. I know that I’ve been a right cunt at times. And for those times, some of which come to mind, I am truly sorry. But I’d like to think that these days I’m mostly guided by principles of fairness, and compassion, and a desire for equality. And it is in these contexts, that I now pass these following judgements.

I have no understanding for anybody that voted “no” in the recent Australian referendum to give Aboriginal people acknowledgement in the Australian constitution and the forming of an advisory body on Aboriginal issues to Parliament. It was such a simple ask. It would not have affected any non-indigenous person in any way whatsoever, but as a nation we said, “fuck off! We don’t give a shit what you want”. I can’t help but feel that those who voted “no” either have no understanding whatsoever on what Aboriginal people have had to endure in this country, or they simply don’t give a fuck. I don’t see any other option. And either option makes me feel sad. And angry.

And now, we have the whole situation in Israel/Palestine to deal with. So, bear with me while I pour myself another drink, and launch into this dangerous territory. And launch, I will.

 

I’m not really sure where to start, but as a person of Jewish heritage, and so with some inherent bias, I guess I’ll start with the fact that I think that what Netanyahu and his cronies have done over the last fifteen or so years to the Palestinians is a disgrace. The expansions in the West Bank are a crime for which I hope he is eventually called to account. Likewise, the overt policing that has made life unbearable for everyday Palestinians who, like you and I, would just like to wake up in the morning and lead a normal life. They should be free to live in their own country without impediment from some other force. And clearly the response from Israel to the horror of October 7^th has been extreme to say the least.  I’m torn on how justified it is. For those who see Hamas as freedom fighters, just trying to overcome Israeli oppression, you have no clue. They are like the Taliban. And how good are they for the people of Afghanistan? Hamas need to be gone for there to be any chance of peace in this region, because like it or not, Israel isn’t going anywhere.  And like the Mujahadeen may have once seemed like a good idea in Afghanistan to free the local citizens from the oppression of the occupying Russians, it hasn’t worked out so well in the long run. But I also understand why people who are so oppressed take some joy in the death of innocent people from the side of their aggressors, as happened on October 7^th. While it disgusts me, I understand it. Persecution does that to people. But, at the same time, every time the Israelis have given some kind of leeway and pulled back from occupation and control, such as unconditionally withdrawing from Gaza in 2005, members of the Palestinian community have launched violent attacks against citizens of Israel. Be it a bus blowing up or a bomb in a pizza parlour or rockets fired onto towns. And unfortunately, all the rhetoric I see coming from Palestinians and their supporters, indicates that to me this has got a long, long way to play out. Because it needn’t have been like this, and yes, I do also blame the Palestinians for this.

I can’t believe that there is a narrative out there about the Palestinians being the indigenous people to the region that were displaced by a decision of empire for Europeans to come and replace them as part of an imperial colonisation. To that, I say, “fuck off!”. The Jews have lived in that region at least as long as the Arabs have. The sacred Al Aqsa (Dome of the rock) mosque is built on the ruined foundations of a Jewish temple. Who are the colonizers here? And when you put up your Christmas trees to celebrate the birth of a Jew in Bethlehem, don’t come and tell me that Jews have only been living in that region since 1948.

My grandfather was born in a town called Be'er Tuvia, near Ashdod, about 40km north of the Gaza strip in the early 1900s. Long before the creation of the state of Israel. His brother, my Uncle Joe, told me that the family frequently had to take refuge in their stone barn when local Arab youth would come into town to wreak havoc on the Jews who lived there, in the British controlled Palestine. He told me that on one occasion their rabbi was taken by some marauding Arab youths, wrapped up in the parchment scroll of the Torah and set on fire inside the local synagogue. So, all of the people out there suggesting that Jews living in an Arab majority state of Palestine would be able to live a nice peaceful life, if there were to be a single state solution with a majority of Palestinian people, can also fuck right off. You have no clue. This all had nothing to do with the creation of the state of Israel. It happened decades before.

What is it with people? I know that this is an alienating phrase, and clearly I don’t mean you if you have taken the time to read this rant by a drunken lunatic, but the world is full of proudly uneducated people. People who have only the barest understanding of a situation but can form such strong opinions based often only on what seems to be the popular opinion of their political leaning. And yes, I’m looking at you the left. I thought I was one of you, generally speaking. I thought that the position of the left was supposed to be of humanity. For all people. But actually, as a political collective, you are just another bunch of pathetic “black and white” viewing simpletons manipulating facts to suit your political agenda. And that saddens me. Because I thought that in you, there was a hope for a better humanity. I’m not talking of people who want to stop the Israeli bombing of Gaza. I totally get that. I’ve been crying in front of my TV frequently watching that horror unfold. And I’m not talking of people who oppose the policies of Israel. As you can see from my opening paragraph, I have been one of those people over the last fifteen or twenty years. But I am talking of people who question the right for Israel’s existence. Who take the opportunity of this current situation to question whether it is right for there to be a Jewish homeland. The rise of antisemitic crime occurring in the world makes me feel that it’s not only justified, but that it’s required.

I am an atheist. As Nick Cave, who now appears to be a Christian, once said, I don’t believe in an interventionist God. I don’t believe all the Jewish stories of God talking to Moses and all that stuff, but I do do a mighty good impersonation of the almighty when leading a seder at Passover. Just don’t cross me or ye shall be smote. Just make sure you drink that fourth glass of wine while leaning to the left. But the one thing that does make me feel Jewish to my core is antisemitism. And there seems a bit of it around at the moment. But I also hate the kneejerk reaction of people who criticise some shit policy of Israel being labelled as antisemitic. And then there are those who say that they are antizionist, but what really does that mean? To me, from my readings on social media, that seems mostly a convenient modern moniker for antisemitism. Anybody who denies the right for the state of Israel to exist, as a traditional Jewish homeland is denying all archaeological evidence that Jews have been there for thousands of years. How that state goes about its business, and where exactly the borders are, is a different matter, and I’m totally up for the discussion around that. Hopefully one of the positives of this horrific situation is that Netanyahu will be gone soon from Israeli political life. And to that end, here is my optimistic plan for peace in the region.

Netanyahu and the ultra-orthodox right-wing Jews in the Israeli parliament gone. Fuck right off!

Hamas gone. Hopefully the Palestinians can see that Hamas, Islamic Jihad and similar groups are not the way forward for them to achieve their desire for a self-governed homeland where they can live in freedom and peace. That’s clearly not going to happen unless Palestinian people see real hope and possibility of it happening and that Hamas are just getting in the way. And true peace won’t happen until the Palestinians get this and have the power to do something about it.

And maybe, most importantly, but severely overlooked in all the discussion currently going on, the ayatollahs of Iran to fall and give way to a secular society, which it seems is what the majority of people in Iran actually want. Without the support of Iran, Hamas and Hezbollah and other similar groups lose massive funding and armaments and Israel feel less threatened, meaning that they can perhaps lighten the fuck up in their need to defend themselves. They feel less threatened, the Palestinians have a better chance of living in peace. And we’d all be happy. Especially the Iranian women, who can then wear whatever the fuck they want.

Anyway… that’s how I feel today. Some of those feelings will be with me forever. Some will change with circumstances and perhaps with good arguments from my fellow well-meaning protagonists. I welcome dialogue on all this. I’m just trying to sort it out in my own head. It’s all been a bit overwhelming.

Shalom.

Pourquoi apprendre le français? Je ne sais pas

Claude - My French teacher in Paris. 

I turn sixty next month. That’s some large number and I can’t say that I’ve been handling the impending milestone brilliantly. All the maths indicates that I’m much closer to the end than the beginning. And that has caused me some consternation. What it also does is act as a significant reminder to do things now, because there may not be too many laters. So when Tori asked me where I wanted to spend my birthday, my spontaneous decision was to spend it in France. Not content to do things the easy way, I’ve opted to spend a month doing one-on-one language classes while living with the family of a French teacher. Well in actual fact, four teachers and three families, in three different locations – Montpellier, Carcassonne and Paris. After that, Tori and the rest of the crew will be joining me for a bit more of a relaxing time that takes in a few places across the country where I’ve never been, as well as a couple of old favourites. I’m mostly spurning England and the rest of Europe, with apologies to my good friends there, and as attractive as many of those other countries may be. I just want to hang out in France for a bit.

So, what actually is my aim here? The truthful answer after much consideration is, fucked if I know.

I’m now pretty close to the end of the four weeks of classes and am getting a better understanding of where I am with this language. The fluency light at the end of the tunnel seems quite a distance away. I’ll likely never reach it unless I get to spend a significant amount of time living here and that seems difficult given the various components of my life. I have no doubt that to the French I sound like an anglophone speaking their language, but I’m ok with that. It’s pretty clear when the majority of French people speak English where they are from, however well they speak it. And there’s nothing wrong with that, so the inverse doesn’t bother me, as long as I can make myself understood. I feel that I now get where most of the major building blocks for this language fit in with each other. I just struggle at times to assemble them, especially in spoken French where the blocks need to be put together quickly. Some days, the blocks are difficult to handle and it all resembles a very rapid game of Tetris. On those days I can’t help but feel that if I haven’t got it by now, at nearly sixty, then perhaps I never will. But then, I ask myself, does it really matter. And what’s it all for anyway? Maybe Camus could help me. Or Sartre. They’d probably be satisfied that I’m just plugging along with this seemingly futile task as if it’s something important, when in fact nothing really is. And there’s something in that too. Is it about an end goal or is it the journey? There have certainly been a few very frustrating days where I’ve been disappointed with myself that I haven’t attained the level that I aspire to. But some other days have been brilliant where I’ve had moments of erudition and fluidity. And when it comes down to it, I’ve spent three or four hours every morning speaking and hearing nothing but French and being able to comfortably communicate in this fashion with another person. So, that’s something quite significant. And while doing it, I’ve been in France, staying with some very nice people, experiencing how they live, eating delicious food and enjoying the wine.

My relationship with the French language and of its nature France itself started in my year 7 French class with Miss Hurse. I remember my excitement when I had to do an assignment on French cheeses. After savouring a few of whichever cheeses mum was able to procure in Australian supermarkets in the seventies (I do remember trying and liking Port Salut) I lovingly stuck all the wrappers neatly onto a sheet of folder paper and notated whatever my 11-year-old mind made of them.  I did well that year in French, receiving a distinction from Miss Hurse, but the comment she wrote on my report card still stings. “Greg has produced some excellent work but unfortunately spoils it at times by chattering like a parrot”. I guess it was a sign of things to come. My year 8 French teacher, Mrs. Leonard went with the rote method of learning verbs. If you were caught talking in class, which surprisingly enough I often was, she’d just turn to you and say “dire and devoir, five times English and French”, meaning that you had to write out the conjugations as a form of punishment. Sometimes the verbs were replaced with vouloir and pouvoir. That helped me learn those potentially tricky verbs well. Year 9 and it was Miss Hurse again, followed in year 10 by Mr Dobberstein, an old German guy who universally was known as Dobbo, though not of course to his face. At this stage, my enthusiasm for learning French had somewhat waned and I was far more interested in whatever mischief was going on in class. This culminated in year 11 where it all degenerated into turmoil which among other things involved a couple of Saturday detentions. I even had one on Grand Final day where I had to rock up to school on the Saturday morning for three hours to repeat an exam that I’d responded to on the original day by answering all the questions in a completely mocking manner, which I found hilarious but unsurprisingly the school didn’t. When I’d completed the detention, I jumped immediately on to a tram to the G to watch the Blues sink the Pies, thanks partly to a piece of Wayne Harmes brilliance from the boundary line. I did pass the subject that year, but it was conditional on me not choosing it as a subject in year 12. So that was it for me and French at school. Started on fire, finished in flames.

My next flirtation with the French language wasn’t until Tori and I relocated to England some 17 or so years later. I’d managed to find myself eight weeks between work contracts and decided to spend it in Nice, living with a family and going to French school every day, having a completely immersive experience. I had a ball. I loved being back in the classroom and surprisingly had matured enough by then to pay attention and be an enthusiastic student. My level of French improved to a point where I could communicate in a basic fashion with my host family. On returning to England, I spent nine or ten months seeing a French teacher one-on-one in Brighton and even achieved the basic certificate for language proficiency needed at that time to get a job on Eurostar or British Airways. I felt that fluency could perhaps one day be in my grasp. But leaving England and the arrival of children put all of that on hold again for some years, as my language goal tumbled down the priority list. Australia is a long way from France, and it is incredibly difficult to learn a language if you are not surrounded by it. That’s the case for me anyway.

Another twenty odd years passed. How did that happen? My amount of French in that time was effectively pas du tout (i.e. fuck all) outside of a couple of brief side trips to France when I’d been in England for work in more recent years. Before one of those trips, I went and saw a local teacher up in St. Andrews in a bid to resurrect my latent knowledge. Though it wasn’t really until last year when Jazzy bought me a Christmas present from Alliance Française that my learning goal resurrected itself again with appropriate vigour. Firstly, I had to do an assessment of my level of proficiency where I was completely flattered and surprised by the result, coming in at the upper end of intermediate. I then had a term of one-night-a-week classes, which was also quite encouraging. So I followed it up with another term. Most days I was able to comprehend what was going on and found my levels of grammar improving and old forgotten knowledge coming back to me. Though pretty much every week after the two-hour class I felt completely drained and relieved it was over. I’d also found that on the days when I was feeling not quite up to par that I was able to mostly hide in the class and not speak too much. It may have been counterproductive to me improving my French speech, but it was definitely the path of least resistance when my brain just couldn’t deal with it. I knew that if I really wanted to learn the language, I needed to put myself in a position where there was no escape and nowhere to hide. Which is when I discovered the possibility of living in France with a French teacher and studying with them one-on-one each day. I recalled the fun I’d had in Nice and how much progress I’d made. And I do love the AirBnB experience of staying in somebody’s home and getting to know them and their town from a local perspective. So, with my upcoming birthday, I decided (with Tori’s support) that this would be a present to myself.

And now here I am, pretty much at the end of it all. It’s been a bit of a rollercoaster. My brain no longer fatigues in conversation and goes searching for the door. If somebody wants to have a conversation with me in French, they can do so, and I’ll be able to express myself back to them in a reasonable fashion about most topics. Often though I’ll hear the words come out and know that I got the gender wrong, or the verb ending wrong, or the relative pronoun wrong, which really annoys me because I know how they all should fit together. I understand most of the concepts of how the language works, but I still find it difficult to put it all together in speech. And still too often for my liking, people will say things to me that are just too fast and go right past me, but I don’t freak out about that quite so much anymore. I can watch the news on TV and understand most of what’s going on. I can read the paper and get most of the story. I’ve had the experience of watching a Clint Eastwood film and hearing him speaking in French in a voice that I know isn’t his. I’ve had a good taste of French life and got to know some extremely interesting and lovely people. I’ve had the opportunity to see the cities of Montpellier and Paris through the eyes of a local. To really feel like I was living there, as short a time as it’s been.

My final teacher, in Paris, was my best teacher. This is not to denigrate my other fine teachers, but she has undoubtedly had the most experience, having been teaching diplomats and ex-pats for several decades. She loves language and the origins of it all. The rare moments when she flicked into English to explain a concept that I couldn’t get from her explanation in French showed me that her English is flawless, at a higher level than a lot of native speakers. She was ruthless in correcting me every time I made an error in my speech, which was frustrating but something that I needed and appreciated. She honed in on any weaknesses that I showed in my grammar or pronunciation, and gave me detailed explanations of how it all worked. She held me to a high standard. She made copious notes for me of everything we discussed. She was quite incredible. And at the end of it all she graded me at an exceptionally high level in the feedback form that she was sending off to the school, which both surprised and flattered me again. So, while I still can fumble over words to a waiter and get frustrated, maybe I can actually speak this language better than I think I can.

But what is it all for anyway? And does it matter? Well, I guess it matters to me for reasons I still can’t fully explain, but maybe it’s becoming slightly clearer now. I love this country. I love how entrenched the enjoyment of life is in their culture. I love the passion that the country has for sport, in the way that Australia does. I love their outdoor lifestyle and their streetside restaurant and bars. I love going to a market and buying a baguette, some fine cheeses, tomatoes, strawberries and a bottle of red wine, and then supping on one of the finest meals known to humanity. I love the passion of the people. I love that as a people they stick up for their rights, even if it means bringing the whole country to a standstill. I love that in their history they decided to cut their king’s and queen’s heads off. I love the philosophical thinking of Voltaire, Montesquieu, Rousseau, Camus and others. I love their appreciation of the arts and the way that they value and support their artists and musicians. I love their architecture and how many buildings seem to be works of art in their own right. I love the gritty reality of French cinema and the fact that however beautiful the people in the film may be, they look like real people. I love how welcome I’ve always felt in this country.

So, maybe I do know what it's all for. I still feel equal measures of encouragement and frustration with the language, but I’ll persist. I’ll take some next steps in my attempted mastery of it on returning to Australia. And I’ll start planning for how I can relocate my life here for a slightly longer period next time. Along of course with Tori. In reality, and naturally enough, I’ve already started planning.

Clotilde and Anne Elisabeth - My teachers in Montpellier

Eliane - My teacher in Carcassonne

A photo a day - Day 43 - Bill and Barry

 

Bill McAuley with his iconic photo of Barry Humphries, a copy of which is hanging in the National Portrait Gallery in Canberra

A photo a day - Day 42 - A lucky escape

 

On a dark, wet and slippery night, Finn lost control of his car when the wheels locked up on a hairpin bend in Donvale, and went careening over a bank and into a tree. Thankfully he and his two passengers walked out of the wreckage completely unscratched. Very very lucky.

A photo a day - Day 41 - A big surprise for D

Surprise party for Derek's 60th, organised by Tony, at our house, on the night of King Charlie's coronation.

A photo a day - Day 40 - Tori's pop-up exhibition

 

Tori's pop-up exhibition with Jac and Sarai, in the gallery space next to the Warrandyte Library

A photo a day - Day 39 - Un jour at the G

A day at the G with Finn and Clément. Très chichi in the Members Dining Room before the Geelong v Essendon game, Clément's first AFL game.

A photo a day - Day 38 - Kimi shoots, he scores

 

Start of season six for Kimi and he has a nice jump shot

A photo a day - Day 37 - Finding my feet

 

What is this weird thing on the end of my leg?

A photo a day - Day 36 - Mother and daughter

 Mother and daughter

A photo a day - Day 35 - Pure joy of swinging

 Nothing quite beats that free feeling of swinging through the air

A photo a day - Day 34 - Strange bird in a Ballarat swamp

 

I don't know what this strange water bird is. But there were quite a few of them around the swamps and wetlands of Ballarat.

A photo a day - Day 33 - Ribbons for the victims

The Catholic church in Ballarat, like in many other places, has a lot to answer for. Home to George Pell and convicted paedophile Gerald Ridsdale, the diocese of Ballarat counted many victims of sexual abuse at the hands of the clergy. The ribbons on the fences at St. Patrick's Cathedral are a show of support for the victims of the heinous crimes perpetrated under the watch of the church.

A photo a day - Day 32 - Ballarat swan

Lake Wendouree at Ballarat is teeming with bird life. On a weekend trip there with Jazzy and Kimi, we hung out particularly with the swans.

 

A photo a day - Day 31 - A bust at Montsalvat

 

Decades ago, early on a Saturday evening when all the shops were already shut, we needed a birthday present for a friend whose party we were going to. Not wanting to turn up empty handed, we nicked a solid metal bust from Montsalvat. I always felt a mix of guilt and pride about that theft. I'd like to know who the rightful owner was and somehow return it if I could. Whenever I find myself at Montsalvat, I'm always drawn to the busts.

A photo a day - Day 30 - Photo by remote control

 

Kimi wondered how I took a selfie yesterday with my fancy camera. So I showed him. Though the presence of a phone in this photo belies the true magic.

A photo a day - Day 29 - Vote YES

 Time to start my unofficial campaign to try and increase the YES vote in the upcoming referendum to recognise indigenous Australians in the constitution. The result will show us what kind of nation we have.

A photo a day - Day 27 - Whiskey in old glass

 A nice drop of whiskey in a beautiful crystal glass that is older than me. It was a wedding present given to my mum and dad. The old hip flask came from Tori's dad to Tori, but I've procured it. The whiskey is a nice ten year old Talisker from the Scottish isle of Sky.