In my travelling days I never got to the subcontinent and so I’ve never eaten Indian food in its natural setting, as it were. “You know, that expression ‘Indian food’ is rather misleading,” Nathan of Mother India, told me. “It’s just too vague, like talking of ‘European food’, as if Finns sat down to the same meals as Greeks. South Asian...
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This is the season of the new 2009 Telephone Directories arriving.

But for the last 5 years, the Alpes Maritime directory no longer lists Monaco subscribers at the end - just a few professionals who have paid to appear in the Pages Jaunes.  So those in France wanting to  call someone in Monaco whose number they do not know...
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So what’s the official political opposition doing at the moment? Its major representative is France’s socialist party which traces its history back 103 years. Its present state was indicated to us by a typical member – a Nice university lecturer – who told us she’s “full of despair when I look at the party today”. What’s the problem? One...
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That was a headline in one French paper when it was confirmed that Barack Obama would be the next occupant of the White House. Blacks and citizens of Arab descent in France were inspired to believe in the possibility of someone other than a pale-faced European one day taking charge of the country. An enthusiastic black entrepreneur actually...
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We don’t know who first said that and in what connection but in these troubled times there are quite a few foreign observers who would agree. And Nicolas Sarkozy has reaped the benefit. Although he likes to dismiss opinion polls as “so much froth” he has certainly been gratified to see his ratings creeping up. It’s too early for this to be put...
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Some birds like to flock together, others to mix with other species. So we’ve got clubs for the Irish and the Americans, for the South Africans and the Finns; some groups – like AMIAC, VIAC, the Commonwealth Club – enable expats of different backgrounds to come together and also welcome French members. A newcomer in this category is the...
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Pat Buchanan has said that any American who opts to live abroad for a significant length of time can’t be a loyal citizen of the United States. That opinion would certainly evoke angry snorts from members of the revived American Club of the Riviera. An impressive 130 of them showed up for the club’s Thanksgiving lunch. We talked to Vice...
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“It’s going great,” so says Mary Mitchell, founder-president of the Irish Association which recently celebrated its first anniversary. “We’ve got a simple aim – to allow Irish people here and friends of Ireland to get together for fun, chat and music.” Meetings are often held at the Roche Marina Hotel in Villeneuve-Loubet. Adds Mary, “We have...
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Well, that’s our usual way of dealing with gloom and the latest figures confirm that the Irish are the EU’s biggest consumers of booze – getting down over 30 litres of pure alcohol per year. But what’s it to be: a Guinness or a Murphy’s, a Jameson’s or a Midleton (a pricey whiskey, that, at €150 a bottle and now, you may recall, owned by Pernod...
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Indeed, even in this cyberdominated world, and for those who like to read in English there’s no better place to go than the English American Library in Nice (www.nice-english-library.org), housed in the basement beneath Holy Trinity Church Hall. It’s by far the oldest institution serving the anglophone community on the Coast, tracing its...
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Just three years ago Mary McAleese, in an outburst that would have gratified Dev himself, was lamenting the downsides of the new prosperous Ireland where “conversation is all about property prices, salary increases and new cars”. As anyone who’s been back recently will know, that’s changing rapidly as the country gives way, to quote the...
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You’re living in the area of Fenland District council in Cambridgeshire and you need to see their financial controller. In person.

Well, you’ll have to nab him next time he’s in the office. Mat Taylor, who’s on a £100,000 a year, actually lives in Adelaide, South Australia and drops in to his UK office “from time to time”. He does his...
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It started as a consumer protection measure - France has always set down firm rules on dates for "soldes" to stop unscrupulous retailers from claiming that everything in their shop was always on sale. But, like many well-meaning restrictive measures, the  date rules became more a hindrance than a help so this year the...
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Can you afford a long-haul vacation this year? The answer is likely yes – if you go for home swapping

Ever thought you’d like to spend a month in California or Cape Town? Well, these days particularly you’re probably going to dismiss the idea as too expensive. Then think again. If you’re living in the South of France,...
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Until late summer of last year, the scheme to extend Monaco’s land area by some 275,000 m2 off Fontvieille was still being vigorously hyped by the Principality’s PR machine. Then, a few days into December, it was announced that the project had been cancelled until further notice. Particular grief was felt by trendy architects Norman Foster and...
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Well over a hundred years ago a Nice newspaper reported that violent deaths were almost never allowed to happen in Monaco. The bodies of suicides or murder victims were discreetly dumped across the frontier in France. Not so long ago local gossip had it that a woman who jumped off a rooftop had “bounced” to a convenient distance beyond the...
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As the government claps a new rule on immigrants from outside the EU, requiring them to demonstrate a working knowledge of French as a condition of residence, latest figures printed in Le Monde indicate that around 200 million people worldwide speak the language. This compares with 2 billion who have English but the language still has...
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Yacht Captains and crews may well feel apprehensive this New Year, because there are no less than three Friday the 13ths in the calendar. These fall in February, March, and November. When I was the Admiralty Chart Agent on the Riviera, we used to give a Vendredi-Treize party on the office patio in Antibes to discourage captains from...
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It was just after breakfast on a Monday morning late in November when across the Alpes-Maritimes, the Var and in Monaco electric power from the regional grid was suddenly cut off. Lights went off, Nice’s trams suddenly stopped and across the Alpes-Maritimes some 250 people found themselves trapped in lifts. Only where emergency generators...
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Last summer we ran a piece about “Living on funny money” – the plight of those expats who have to live on sterling (or dollar) incomes. As Paul, a retired UK police officer living in the Var, told us: “When our pensions are converted we realise every month that we’re getting worse off all the time.” And that’s even more the case now, for sure,...
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Slim volumes of verse are sometimes just that – lightweight, often tentative gropings in search of an identity or voice. John Murray’s second book of poetry – Last Warming of the Heart (UK: Pen Press Publishers) – is another thing: here is a book that is a pleasure to hold and peruse, robustly bound and delightfully designed. But...
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- The EU has scrapped plans to impose size limits on carry-on baggage as “unworkable”. Airlines may still choose to do so.

- The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority reports a continuing and “worrying” rise in cases of air rage. In one case a British woman flying from Athens to Manchester tried to open a cabin door at 30,000 feet “to get some...
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