The Gravity of the Grève...

By Thomas Jaunism

A kind and generous young woman from Paris has lent me her appartment in one of Nantes' party quartiers. I share it with a mouse who lives behind kitchen bench- though we keep to ourselves for the most part. I say to everyone “j'ai mon propre appartement pendant deux semaines”.

I've managed to create two plastic bags of waste in just over a week and I'm not happy about it. Everyone knows I despise waste, but I've been careless and lazy. Today I thought about adding my waste to the piles of other people's waste that are growing throughout the city. The bins have long been filled and now shit's flowing onto the footpaths. It's starting to smell. Some people have taken the initiative to burn the plastic bins. It does minismise the physical size of the problem, but comes short of solving it completely.

There is a certain glory in these mounting dumps. The French Government is introducing new laws around superannuation including raising the age of retirement from 60 to 62. The majority of the French people are against the reforms and there have been weekly demonstrations for a while now. I attended rallies in Toulouse and here in Nantes, joining the hundreds of thousands of people who walked the streets in good spirits. The lycéens (high school kids) have been blocking the entrances to the schools and often lead the demonstrations. For the last couple of Tuesdays there's been no trains and the kids at my collège (junior high school) have been told to stay home due to industrial action. Hundreds of service stations have run out of gasoline as strikers block the refineries. And rubbish collectors are doing their bit by not collecting the rubbish.

It warms my heart to see 16-19 year old kids marching the streets and giving the middle finger to a Government they didn't vote for. Regardless of what these protests achieve, the importance of les jeunes involvement cannot be understated. To be surrounded by hundreds of your peers as your actions lead to the disruption of an institution you are forced to attend is to know the power of collective disent.

I've become enamoured by the waste piles too. It is such a visual reminder of the importance of a functioning community. Normally we just throw our crap in the bin under kitchen sink, then when that's full we take it outside. Then it's taken care of by the people in the hi-vis vests. But what if they don't come? What if the people don't unblock the drain? What if the train drivers don't drive the trains? What if the teachers don't teach the kids? What if they all decide to join together in saying “Actually, we play an imprtant role in this society and we'd like to be fairly renumerated for that...”

Superannuation is a grave problem throughout the world as our people live longer and have less children. I don't know the economics of the problem well enough to say whether it's possible to keep the age at 60 in France. It may seem like a sweet deal as New Zealand's retirement age is 65 and Australia is rising their's to 67- though the way France's pensions are calculated is entirely different. I'm not interested in exploring the numbers here. I just want to highlight the magnificence of uniting in solidarity for a common goal.

I leave this apartment for Paris on Tuesday, the usual day of action. Though the bill has been passed by the upper house, the unions are not giving in. I'm playing a song at Lake's solo gig on Wednesday. It'd suck to miss the show but I'll try and be like the French and treat all disruptions with a fascinating amount of good humour. But first I have to clean up and take out the rubbish...
and bid farewell to my discrete, easy-going room-mate...

A memory from Liverpool St...

I was in a generic 'city' or 'express' supermarket in London.... I shouldn't have been there, but I was on tour with the band and they travel cheap.

Supermarkets are always cold and I hate that. I like the bright lights and the abundance of shiny food, but the pre-made sandwich displays in the first corridor irk me.

I'd just rounded the first corner when I noticed green slimy water on the floor near the vegetables. An employee of Indian descent was discussing the problem with a West Indian colleague when the owner arrived.
“What the hell is this?”
He was a white Englishman in his late thirties, a big man, slightly overweight.
“Could someone tell me why no one is cleaning this up?”
He was balding, but well kempt. He wore a casual suit that clearly emanated his superior status...
“Um, I was...we were just....”
The employees rushed to the floor in an attempt to placate the fury of their boss. The owner was not not about to let them get away with this shit. He could do it better himself. They were fucking useless and, though his skills were not in cleaning, even he could do a better job. He grabbed a mop from one of the workers and started hastily mopping the leak.
“Could someone tell me why I'm mopping the floor in my own bloody store?”

I looked at Ben and said “Yeah bro, that's mad.... What kind of chump would clean his own store...?