This has been a gruesome week, hence no posts since I'm usually averse to writing anything here when daily life robs me temporarily of my sense of humour. But maybe I should at least say where I've been.
The front-page horrors in Iraq are, of course, the main dire developments preoccupying the politically minded in the blogosphere, but in another part of the Arab world, my colleague Gina has for the past few days been covering another event which will come as a disappointment -- if scarcely a surprise -- to some of my friends at the Canteen.
The more cynical international observers are scratching their heads tonight, wondering exactly where in the process Algeria's official electoral results managed to give the incumbent President Abdelaziz Bouteflika a "landslide" victory of quite such magnitude. As the man's main challenger in yesterday's vote, Ali Benflis, put it, Kim Il Sung "couldn't have done better".
Meanwhile, Rwanda and France are trading serious accusations in the wake of Wednesday's commemorations of the genocide 10 years ago. The most concise description of the small, crowded African country's President Paul Kagame I've heard from a journalist friend who has interviewed him is "creepy".
This is just the word that sums up my own feelings about Kagame after covering the whole of his career since from before the massacres, but I'd scarcely say he's seriously sick in the head. That's a term best reserved for some of the people who comment on stories from the Factory relayed by Yahoo. The week's Award for Vile Minds goes to the bunch who contributed to a thread called 'One million n!ggers in 100 days???' There are moments when even hardened hacks read stuff like that and wonder quite why we journalists bother...
My mood that day wasn't improved when the Factory's great leader, Bertrand Eveno, dropped into the engine room when most of us were at our busiest across the editorial floor wrapping the world's cheery tidings into the stories required for most of the European press deadlines.
Apologising for the interruption, the chief executive took the micro to give us a few tidings of his own about the "state of the nation", so to speak, in the light of the day's board of governor's meeting for AFP. To tell you what he said would be a breach of my employment contract, so it will suffice to report for the benefit of Factory hands abroad that it was met with the sound of stones sitting at the bottom of a very deep pond.
As Eveno took his leave, I was sufficiently irked by life in general and my assessment of the wellbeing of the media in particular, not just at AFP, to break the silence by accosting him with a question. This was not a matter of bravery, but of fatigue combined with the eternal naïvety for which I'm known and loved. The man wrapped an avuncular arm around my shoulder and sought to reassure me and thus, I guess, everyone else within earshot that my concerns were not only shared but had remedies.
Having heard more or less similar things from so many successive managements down the years that I've lost count, I suppose I should conclude -- and eventually did -- that "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose." Anyway, I'm no longer a trade union activist.
In the meantime, "what goes down must come up" has been the phrase applicable to every meal I've eaten since Tuesday night, but with the very important difference from last year that I know why the Condition has come back. There's even a remedy for this apart from fasting, which I can begin implementing as of tomorrow, after one more day in the Factory.
I shouldn't complain because last night the Wildcat woke me up with a distress call and a tale of woe far worse than this one, and I think we managed to cheer each other back to sleep.
Now the good news, because of course there is some. I've received a handful of delightful e-mails in the past couple of days, most of which I'll answer next week, when the Kid will be around and we both plan to do absolutely nothing but relaxing and agreeable things.
And Tony has not only sent me a blog-worthy review of 'The Passion' as seen by Gibson, but spiced it with anecdote to be shared with the Faithful Five ¾ as soon as normal blogging resumes.
That will be very soon now.
9:42:05 PM link
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