Trafalgar in reverse

My New Year’s resolution is to use the Net as a source of self-humiliation. How? By issuing comments to French blogs and enduring the subsequent corrections.

First I needed something suitable on which to impale myself. I went to Google’s “Preferences”, switched languages and searched Les blogs francais. Didn’t work for reasons too tedious to mention. Ditched that and tried Les bloggeurs qui voudraient partager (share) leur langue avec un Rosbif. Too long, of course, but it did at least reveal people rather than organisations. Alas, all were ultra-lefties (ie, unreconstructed Maoists) who wanted to discuss politics from a socio-philosophical viewpoint.

So I narrowed it down to the Languedoc, where we spent our last two summer holidays and where we’ve booked for June this year. After sorting through hundreds of thinly disguised publicists for the wines of that region I finally found a spirited lady of 77 who read Jean-Louis Fournier’s last novel with “a tightened throat and a heart full of tears” and who offered for inspection her last poem (“This sky so soft, pale and nacreous, This tranquil winter sky…”). Fine, add her to Favourites.

Then a group of young satirists running a cod poll as to the most appropriate recipient of their Golden Sausage of Political Impertinence. Inevitably a certain M. Sarkozy was leading the field.

But of course the first step is to-do-as-I-would-be-done-by. Hence the new blog. One point: since I share my pseudonym with a fictional Royal Naval bosun who spent the Napoleonic Wars kicking French butt, I felt the need for a less rebarbative flag of convenience.