Just back from two weeks in France.
We had an enjoyable stay in Lille with trips to Ypres and Poperinge in Belgium together with a very pleasant lunch at the St. Sixtus Monastery, a place that always seems a trifle surreal to me.
The Trappist Monastery is enclosed and silent and the monks here brew beer which is sold at the monastery gate, usual in large wooden crates containing approximately twenty four bottles with a significant deposit charged on the crates and the bottles.
But the surreal aspect stems from the beer hall next door, where the Trappist Ale is sold 'on tap' alongside plates of food; bread and cheese, pate, pickled beef and a local delicacy, 'hennepot' which is a mix of meats, including ham and rabbit set in a jelly.
As you eat and drink, around you sit table after table a range of farmers with well developed beer bellies and their wives, Lycra clad cyclists, leather clad motorcyclists, families, scooterists and not a few who have arrived in motor homes and caravans.
Dancing between the tables are the waiters and waitresses bearing great trays of drinks often with up to six plates of food on their free arm.
It is a spectacle and the profits obviously pay for the maintenance and upkeep of the Monastery but building a beer hall such as this, outside a silent Monastery, in the midst of fields and farmland has something of the optimism of the Kevin Costner film, Field of Dreams.
I am sure that the Monastery Business Plan was impressive but it nevertheless has the feel of 'if you build it they will come'.
And they do!
On our last Sunday we were invited for lunch and over conversation a comment was made by our hosts that one of the differences between France and the UK was that in France personal banking does not come with a credit card, only a debit card.
This we were assured made all the difference to family finances because it ensured that personal indebtedness is more strictly controlled than in the UK.
Indeed in some stores and restaurants all transactions have to be by debit card as credit card payments are not accepted.
I must say that I used both credit and debit cards on holiday and both were accepted without argument from either waiters, cashiers or supermarket card reading machines so ces't la vie.
Travelling abroad is always an enlivening and enriching experience and raises all sorts of questions about how things are done in England.
In France it seems that every small town has its boulangerie, its boucherie and its patisserie.
On our last evening in Calais we were intrigued to see a crowd gathered outside the shuttered door of a locked shop, what is going on?
On closer examination it was an automatic dispensary dispensing freshly baked bread 24/7.
A couple of Euros in the slot and a stick of warm freshly baked french bread appeared as if by magic.
The collapse of the French economy is routinely forecaste not only by Osborne and Cameron who remain convinced it seems that the only possible economic strategy available to the UK is austerity, austerity, austerity.
But as Philip Collins writing in The Times today comments, despite protests from the English right the French prove again and again that that 'there is no robust relationship between levels of taxation, the size of the state and economic growth'.
Indeed!
But it might also be the case that, as our hosts at lunch advised, by ensuring that anything bought with your Carte Bleu or any cash advance withdrawn using it will be debited from your account immediately that, to quote Philip Collins again, despite working a bit less and paying themselves a bit more, maintaining a large public sector paid for by higher taxation, the French have made a different choice, one that calls austerity into question.
France has, it seems, rejected usury, the usurers and all their works leaving the French to pay as they go, whether its 'Fromage or Vin or Pain' they remain happily in the 'Noir' and try not to venture into the 'Rouge'.
We had an enjoyable stay in Lille with trips to Ypres and Poperinge in Belgium together with a very pleasant lunch at the St. Sixtus Monastery, a place that always seems a trifle surreal to me.
The Trappist Monastery is enclosed and silent and the monks here brew beer which is sold at the monastery gate, usual in large wooden crates containing approximately twenty four bottles with a significant deposit charged on the crates and the bottles.
But the surreal aspect stems from the beer hall next door, where the Trappist Ale is sold 'on tap' alongside plates of food; bread and cheese, pate, pickled beef and a local delicacy, 'hennepot' which is a mix of meats, including ham and rabbit set in a jelly.
As you eat and drink, around you sit table after table a range of farmers with well developed beer bellies and their wives, Lycra clad cyclists, leather clad motorcyclists, families, scooterists and not a few who have arrived in motor homes and caravans.
Dancing between the tables are the waiters and waitresses bearing great trays of drinks often with up to six plates of food on their free arm.
It is a spectacle and the profits obviously pay for the maintenance and upkeep of the Monastery but building a beer hall such as this, outside a silent Monastery, in the midst of fields and farmland has something of the optimism of the Kevin Costner film, Field of Dreams.
I am sure that the Monastery Business Plan was impressive but it nevertheless has the feel of 'if you build it they will come'.
And they do!
On our last Sunday we were invited for lunch and over conversation a comment was made by our hosts that one of the differences between France and the UK was that in France personal banking does not come with a credit card, only a debit card.
This we were assured made all the difference to family finances because it ensured that personal indebtedness is more strictly controlled than in the UK.
Indeed in some stores and restaurants all transactions have to be by debit card as credit card payments are not accepted.
I must say that I used both credit and debit cards on holiday and both were accepted without argument from either waiters, cashiers or supermarket card reading machines so ces't la vie.
Travelling abroad is always an enlivening and enriching experience and raises all sorts of questions about how things are done in England.
In France it seems that every small town has its boulangerie, its boucherie and its patisserie.
On our last evening in Calais we were intrigued to see a crowd gathered outside the shuttered door of a locked shop, what is going on?
On closer examination it was an automatic dispensary dispensing freshly baked bread 24/7.
A couple of Euros in the slot and a stick of warm freshly baked french bread appeared as if by magic.
The collapse of the French economy is routinely forecaste not only by Osborne and Cameron who remain convinced it seems that the only possible economic strategy available to the UK is austerity, austerity, austerity.
But as Philip Collins writing in The Times today comments, despite protests from the English right the French prove again and again that that 'there is no robust relationship between levels of taxation, the size of the state and economic growth'.
Indeed!
But it might also be the case that, as our hosts at lunch advised, by ensuring that anything bought with your Carte Bleu or any cash advance withdrawn using it will be debited from your account immediately that, to quote Philip Collins again, despite working a bit less and paying themselves a bit more, maintaining a large public sector paid for by higher taxation, the French have made a different choice, one that calls austerity into question.
France has, it seems, rejected usury, the usurers and all their works leaving the French to pay as they go, whether its 'Fromage or Vin or Pain' they remain happily in the 'Noir' and try not to venture into the 'Rouge'.
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