Who am I?

Who am I, and why the blog?

I am a respectable, middle-aged married mother of two - well, that's what I tell people anyway, and then it's up to them to decided if it's the truth or not.

I live halfway up a mountain twelve minutes from Menton, with one husband, two children, one dog, two cats, and one out-size painted chicken.

I spend my time driving up and down the mountain; preparing and eating meals; enjoying those meals with friends and family; keeping house and garden, and all the mundane stuff that goes with it; admiring the landscape; playing my piano; enjoying my animals; swimming; travelling to England and the Netherlands to visit family; and so it goes on.

I used to be a journalist, broadcaster and consultant.

Now it's time to combine the two.

I have the time and energy to do something purely for me, and this is it.  I hope you enjoy it.  I do!

Hilary Spronken, September 2010

Cars - what's in a name?

This post has got nothing to do with the Riviera, apart from the fact that it was written here. However, everybody's allowed to go off on a tangent now and then, so there you go. I hope it makes you laugh!

I’ve always been fascinated by car names. When I was a little girl, we had a car called an Isis. It was black and had red leather seats, and there was enough room for three in the front and three in the back as well as two cats. Isis – it doesn’t matter whether named for a goddess or a river – the name and the car oozed femininity. She was solid but rounded, dependable but comfortable. Her name suited her perfectly.

How do cars get their names – is there a committee whose job it is to come up with the perfect name? If there is then sometimes they get it spectacularly wrong. I seem to remember some embarrassment with General Motors and the Nova, or is it the no va. That’s the problem with names, accent or language can change the meaning, and what sounds wonderful in one language can be laughable in another. Equally what can be appealing to one sex, can be ridiculous to the other.

A few years back, I was staying with my sister in California. Walking through the suburbs of Saratoga (actually, it is all suburbs) I saw what looked to be a new car dripping in bright blue paint. I couldn’t read the name, it was covered in paint, and being English, I feigned disinterest. But I did see a woman holding a large empty can of paint and screaming abuse at a man who was looking bereft as he tried to clean off the paint with a handkerchief.

Even though I was ignoring the scene, it was clear from what the woman was saying that she thought the man a total dickhead who cared more about his penis extension of a car that he did about her.

Life in the burbs. I continued on my walk

But the following day, everything became clear. My brother-in-law’s tennis partner, Dick (yes, that really was his name) was coming for lunch with his wife. He turned up in his new car which I realised was the same model as the one I’d seen the day before. When he got out, with barely a word of greeting, he started on about his car. How he was so excited, and look at how long the bonnet was, and it really went, and it was so comfortable, and it handled like a dream. Curiosity got the better of me, so I asked him what it was called. “It’s a Probe”, he said proudly. A Probe, well I just cracked up. That’s also when I formed my theory that car owners get to resemble the name of the car. My car’s a Rav 4, but I can’t decide whether it’s because I’m ravenous, ravishing or raving mad. And for the those of you gentlemen who drive a BMW and thought it stood for Bayerische Motor Werken, well you’re wrong – actually it’s Be My Willy.

Hilary Spronken, February 2007.

Beware - rhinos on the Riviera (and elephants)

Last week, I was invited to the inauguration of a new exhibition at the Castellar Cultural Centre. Castellar is only a small village, but is home to one of the most important archaeological sites on the Riviera, the Pendimoun Abri, which was discovered in 1953. Louis Barral, who was the Keeper of the Prehistoric Anthropology Museum in Monaco, ran a series of digs at the site and uncovered the Castellar Man. The man, who lived around 6000 BC, was handicapped which means that his family, friends or tribe must have taken care of him. A type of prehistoric social security.


 

The original skeleton of Castellar Man is in the Museum in Monaco, but Castellar does have a copy in the Cultural Centre, which also houses a collection of pierced shells used as jewellery, agricultural implements and bones from domestic animals, all found at Pendimoun.

The new exhibition is a collaboration between archaeologists from France and Italy, and concentrates on sites in the trans-frontier region. One of the organisers is an archaeologist who lives in Castellar, and goes by the wonderful alliterative name of Almudena Arellano Alonso. Almudena loves her job, and listening to her as she describes the new exhibition in heavily Spanish accented French, you cannot help but be infected by her enthusiasm. After the talk and a visit to the museum, we sat down together and I asked her how she ended up on the Riviera.

Almudena grew up in the centre of Madrid. Her father, a sales director for a large American concern, was passionate about history, particularly the Middle Ages. He built up an extensive library of books, and the family spent many holidays travelling Europe visiting, chateaux, forts, churches and museums. So from a very young age, Almudena was immersed in history and grew to share her father’s passion. When I asked her how come she became an expert in prehistory, she laughed and told me that history has too many dates!!

She studied prehistoric archaeology at the Autonomous University of Madrid, specialising in prehistoric fauna. Towards the end of her five-year course, she answered a call for students to work at the Grotte de Vallonet in Roquebrune Cap Martin, where the remains of a wide variety of animals have been found, including rhinoceros, the ancestors of the mammoths and sabre toothed tigers. She was invited by the professor in charge of the dig to study for her doctorate at Perpignan, where she chose fauna from the Grottes de Grimaldi at Balzi Rossi on the Franco-Italian frontier as her thesis subject. The Grimaldi caves have yielded up the remains of an even wider variety of fauna, including the bones of elephants, hippos, hyenas, lynx, bison, bears, panthers and, of course, homo erectus. She told me that the team are in the process of reconstructing an elephant from bones found at the site.

Out of curiosity, I asked her what happened to the sabre tooth tigers. Unfortunately for them, they were a victim of their own teeth - the tigers had difficulty turning their heads because of their teeth, so when lions appeared in the region all the lions had to do was jump on the necks, and bit by bit (so to speak) that was the end of them!

Although she has travelled all over Europe, Almudena is now based in Menton, working at the Prehistoric Museum. It seems unlikely that she will leave us, as she is now married to a man from our village.


For further information on the prehistory of the Riviera:

www.menton.com www.prehistoirepaca.com http://lazaret.unice.com 

Hilary Spronken, September 2010

A Matter of Life and Death

Imagine that you are walking down the street. Perhaps you’re thinking about a meeting you’ve had or what you’re going to have for lunch. Suddenly someone collapses in front of you . Could you save this person’s life? Would it make a difference to his chances of survival if he collapsed in Seattle or Nice? According to Dr Philippe Ricard, a cardiologist at the Centre Hospitalier Princesse Grace in Monaco, the answer to both these questions is «yes».

Dr Ricard, has just published a book, «Au Coeur de la Vie» in which he argues that thousands of lives could be saved each year by any one of us if only we were prepared to spend a couple of hours a year learning now. I recently went along to Monaco to talk to him.  He explained to me that cardiovascular disease is the main cause of death in industrialised nations, killing more people than all types of cancers put together, and accounting for almost 50% of all deaths. Although it is the number one killer, it is not ‘fashionable’ in the same way as other diseases like cancer and AIDs, and despite the fact that progress in treatments has saved literally hundreds of thousands of lives over the past twenty years, it gets little media coverage. Moreover, 50% of cardiovascular deaths are as a result of «sudden death», and according to Dr Ricard, many of these deaths are needless deaths which could be prevented by rapid intervention.

Sudden death is usually due to ventricular fibrillation, an arrhythmia of the heart where it beats so fast it is no longer able to pump blood effectively to the vital organs including the brain. From the moment the arrhythmia starts, the victim is literally minutes away from brain damage and then death. So what do you do? Most people just stand and watch, or turn the victim on his side or try mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Dr Ricard told me that the only three gestures that could save his life are: phone emergency services; start immediate heart massage; defibrillate. My answer to that is that most people would have no idea how to do the last two; which brings us back to Seattle or Nice. In many US cities there are wide ranging programmes to teach people how to do heart massage and how to use a defibrillator, a hand held device which delivers an electric shock to the heart. Defibrillators are then installed in public places. This is beginning to happen in some towns in Europe, but the education on use is lacking. The result of this is that if you collapse with arrhythmia in Seattle you have a 30% chance of survival whereas in France the chance is 2%. Dr Ricard would like to see the basic techniques taught in schools, and given that it only needs a couple of hours and annual refresher courses, it’s hard to argue against it.


«Au Coeur de la Vie» is not just about sudden death. As Dr Ricard explained to me, it also aims to inform people who already have heart disease how to live longer and better. Using a mixture of basic science, statistics and anecdotes, the first part of the book provides a comprehensive overview of the main types of cardiovascular disease, with a discussion of treatments and medical research. The second part is devoted to prevention, with detailed sections on smoking, fats and cholesterol, high blood pressure, and obesity and diabetes. For anyone with heart or weight problems, this book is a way to change your life and improve your French at the same time!

Dr Ricard is also the President of L’Association Monégasque de Lutte contre la Mort Subite. For further information contact: www.mortsubitemonaco.org

Hilary Spronken, May 2010

La Rentrée, strikes and special education for disruptive students

On Monday 6^th September, my children went back to school after nine weeks of summer holidays. Like millions of other returning students they were faced by two days of scholastic chaos. Teachers went on strike on Monday to protest education reforms and then joined other public sector workers on Tuesday to protest reforms to the pension system, which will raise the minimum legal retirement age from 60 to 62 with a full pension at 67 instead of 65.

Monday saw the implementation of wide-ranging reforms to the lycée system. The reforms change the way the baccalauréat is taught by introducing a core curriculum in ‘première’ (the second year at lycée). This includes two foreign languages regardless of the orientation of the Bac being studied and accounts for 60% of the timetable. The reforms also introduce a ‘mentoring’ system from ‘seconde’ (the first year at lycée), new provisions for helping students in difficulty, changes to teacher training, and job losses - hence the strikes. Vive la Rentrée!

Leaving aside the rights and wrongs of last week’s strike actions, my experience, and more importantly my children’s experience, of the French education system is overwhelmingly positive. Xavier’s path has been straightforward; he went to the village primary school, and is now in his second year at the catchment area ‘collège’. Cassandra is handicapped, so her path has been a little more crooked; but even though at times we had to fight for it, she has been in full-time education since she was six after being part-time from the age of three.

In the eleven years that Cassandra has been at school, the emphasis on education of children with special needs (in a fairly wide sense) has moved increasingly towards integration rather than separation. The 2005 law on equal opportunities for the handicapped advocates integration of handicapped children in an «ordinary environment» and reinforces the right to an adapted education locally. Before Cassandra started full-time primary school in Menton, the education authority had proposed sending her to school west of Nice, a minimum one hour journey each way in rush-hour traffic on the A8. Luckily, politics and pushing contrived to free a place just ten minutes away. She is now in a special needs unit in a mainstream collège also in Menton.

In view of this policy, I was interested to see that the education minister, Luc Chatel, has just opened a new type of school in Saint-Dalmas de Tende in the back country. The school, an ERS or établissement de réinsertion scolaire’ (no translation needed), is the first of some 20 new national schools which aim to deal with seriously disruptive pupils. At present, schools have little recourse other than suspensions. Last year a pupil in Xavier’s class was in constant trouble, and although he was threatened with expulsion, when push came to shove, there was actually little the school could do. As the deputy head explained at a meeting to discuss his future, the only real option would be to send him to another college either locally or in Nice, and that would just transfer the problem rather than solve it. The ERS are intended to provide a solution.

The ERS, boarding schools which will take 14 children aged 13-16 for a one year minimum period, are controversial. Mr Chatel defended them in an interview with the Nice-Matin editorial team, when he was asked if they were not just modern-day reform schools. As he explained, the pupils at the new school are all there with the consent of the parents, and the schools are not part of the justice system. He did concede, however, that in extreme cases a child could be sent there under a court order. He also emphasised that «respect for authority» would be a priority, and that lack of respect for either teaching staff or school mates would be sanctioned. Pushed to elaborate, he said that pupils who were disciplined would be required to do several weeks of community service rather than being suspended.

It remains to be seen whether the new schools will be effective or not. But clearly a solution is needed, if the education of the many is not to be disrupted by the very few. As with some handicapped children, integration is not always either possible or productive.


Hilary Spronken, September 2010

View from the back country - sheep, le condillon, and Fred the Donkey Man