The papers are tediously full of it.
The September magazines are coming out. Sex is no longer the cover story.
This weekend, France's roads and motorways will be full of it too, bumper to bumper crawling and cussin', children turned maddening brats the length of the traffic jams that stretch for kilometre after kilometre.
Dreaded, bitter-sweet, here comes "La Rentrée". Last year, I wrote up this annual phenomenon, I won't repeat myself. But it's struck at the Factory too.
Check the Beeb for Jessel. Three and a half years ago, he gave us 'Analysis: Trouble at the top'. Part of the French "leadership" has changed since, so -- but not much -- has the nature of the trouble, but this rentrée will bring more of it.
Here begins the season of strikes and turbulence, dismal domestic disharmony.
Cheekily I asked Stephen yesterday, "Would you mind if I blogged you as 'that s*** f***. b***'?"
"Well, yes, I would," Jessel replied, "especially if you identify me by name." It doesn't stand for what you'd guess it might, but I won't. Instead, I'll wish him a fine Himalayan adventure!
As for Barry 'Blackhorn' James, our second veteran and occasional object of great note here, he'd rather be 'Liquorice Stick'. That's his clarinet, one instrument for a defiant clarion call to the republican barricades.
"And what do I call Donald?" I wondered aloud, "Mr Armour." Third fearless hack of the summer trio and the most gifted mimic of the bunch.
"Hmm," somebody reflected. "The Laird of Curmudgeon?"
"There you have it! Thanks."
This grand trio deserves a tribute, an affectionate one for what I've been calling "The Wall".
Almost as regularly as the 14 pigeons who wait on roofs near my bathroom window for their daily breakfast, but far more strong-willed, these gentlemen have for several weeks been ambling into AFP.
They take up seats in a row across the midships of the English Desk, bang between the Command Deck and the Dark Stern: Africa, and other journalists who venture down sometimes into the bilge.
Sometimes erudite to the point of obscurity, occasionally tetchy at how some younger sub-editor might nervously attempt to hack their copy, and entertaining and funny, masters of wordplay, this trio has helped to make it survivable: the summer that never was.
Often after Karin's gone and I have followed with a happy sigh, it's been one or other of these guys who have picked up wherever we left off on Africa's Great Lakes (Relief Web), Darfur and the black tragi-comedy of Equatorial Guinea, suddenly of much more interest to the world because of the involvement of the Iron Lady's allegedly scheming son.
Occasionally, they've dared to tell ironic truths that even I, in all my irreverence, just might think twice about revealing to the Kansas City Milkman.
This past week, they and the wry evening editor, Denholm, spotted yet another plot afoot.
It has been purported that across Africa, Factory hands, rebels and propaganda-mongering warlord leaders alike conspire like this: "KDZ and NB have left for the day. Now let's hit 'em." So, in Burundi, in Rwanda, from north and south, they commit their most devious deeds and make nigh-incomprehensible declarations between 8:00 and 10:00 pm, Paris time.
"Was it all right?" one victim or another asks me the next day about the story. And usually, of course, it was "just fine".
Sadly, la rentrée means the end of all that. When I'm back in the Factory after my last week of fragmented holiday, those particular veterans will be gone. And for the rest of us, it'll be "annual all change time", settling down after the summer shake-up that sees old faces starting in new posts around the AFP world.
I'll miss the terrible trio, jibes in Latin and chats in Russian which lost me, look forward to seeing them again, but it won't be back to life as normal, because it never is.
If I've learned anything from all the previous rentrées, it's that "normal life" is no more than a reassuring myth!
What chance of an Indian summer?
11:39:51 AM link 
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