Hello, hi
My grandad died earlier this week. He was very old and had lived a very good life, but it was still very sad. I wanted to write something about him but wasn’t sure where to start. I just don’t see how you can possibly do someone justice if you knew them your whole life. Instead, I’d like to share some small snapshots, which I think say a lot about who he was.
# I was 16 and not quite revising for my baccalaureat. I went to spend the afternoon at my grandparents', as I often did, and told my grandad I had to read some Victor Hugo for my literary oral exam. I just didn’t really want to. He lit up when I mentioned Hugo’s name, and we ended up spending over an hour talking about him; his life, his works, his influences, his legacy, all of it.
It was fascinating, though still not quite enticing enough to get a bored teenager to do the set reading. A few days later, the exam came up, and I was asked to talk about Victor Hugo. The examiner and I ended up going overtime, discussing many of the things I’d talked about with my grandad. As it turned out, I’d absorbed a lot of it; that’s how interesting his spin on Hugo had been. I got a very good grade in the end, and no-one ever found out I’d not done the reading.
# As a child, my school went through a puzzling phase of trying to teach us ice-skating. My grandad was, for some reason, the relative tasked with driving me to the meeting point for the first lesson. We ended up running late, probably because of me, and watched in horror as the students and teachers boarded the tramway, while I was still in the car. We didn’t know where the ice rink was, and so couldn’t just meet them there.
A lesser grandparent would have called it a day, but my grandad saw how annoyed I was, and so the chase began. We ended up following the tramway by car and finding excuses to slow down or stop at every station, until we reached the one where everyone got off. I remember it like it was a police chase, it was even better than the ice-skating itself.
# A few years after I moved to London, we had a small family gathering at my grandparents’ place. I must have been about 19, and my brother 15. We spent most of the evening playing the part of well-behaved teenagers, but eventually found ourselves on the verge of exploding, and so went to the balcony to smoke a cigarette.
There, we took the opportunity to be fully ourselves. We shared stupid anecdotes about drinks and drugs, wondered how everyone would feel if they knew what we really got up to, and so on. At some point, our grandad came to join us on the balcony, looked at us and quietly told us that we could be heard from the living room. He smiled then left us to it. Mortified but thankful, my brother and I lowered our voices. He never brought it up again.
I could go on but hope you get the gist. Paul Le Conte, who I was lucky to have as a grandfather for 32 years, was incredibly clever and incredibly kind. He also made a terrific mayonnaise. I loved him very much.
Anyway!
I don’t usually write or link to political stuff on here, because I see this newsletter as a bit of a hiding place from my job, but I did find this piece on political schemas and why certain attacks on political opponents work while others don’t fascinating. It’s one of those features which sort of tells you stuff you already knew, but manages to link it all together in a very elegant and incisive way. Or maybe I’m just saying that because of course I would*.
*this will only work as a quip once you’ve read the piece
Elsewhere, I have to admit that it’d passed me by entirely at the time, but I thought this…stunt? art piece? statement? bit? by a collective who sold drawings that may or may not have been Andy Warhol’s very charming and fun.
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