The Good Life France brings you the views of real French people via the bar Chez Annie – a hotbed of opinion in rural France!
Well, by now we all know that Valérie Trierweiler– companion (as she wishes to be called) to the president of France sent a bit of a pithy Twitter message wishing the opponent of her man’s ex and mother of his children good luck.
Good luck to the opponent running against the ex that is – in upcoming elections.
It has sent alarm bells ringing in the corridors of power in France as her man is Francois Hollande, President of France, and the ex is one Ségolène Royal who is running for the role of MP in La Rochelle on behalf of Monsieur Hollande’s Socialist Party.
Madame Trierweiler – we must not call her Mademoiselle since it’s not politically correct in France to call a lady Mademoiselle these days – acted a bit out of character for a woman who always seems so cool and professional. Or did she?
Her email is the talk of every bar in France it seems and everyone has an opinion as to why she did it and what it really means. Most people concur she must have known that it would be picked up, after all the woman is a political journalist – she simply can’t be unaware of the power of the internet. She must also have known that it would not be good for the man she is affiliated to and now France’s new president. It certainly makes her recent boast that unlike her predecessor Madame Sarkozy-Bruni “I know politics, I know the media” seem a tad exaggerated if not downright wrong. It also makes the President’s claim that he will have a very “normal” time in office by which we all thought he meant calm and dull, possibly a bit of a misnomer.
I tell my French friends that I can’t really understand what all the fuss is about – its hardly in Italian Prime Minister’s Berlusconi’s Bunga Bunga league after all. However they seem to think that French politicians and their cohorts airing their dirty washing in public is simply not acceptable. Previous Presidents have been able to keep a lid on such matters – one president was able to keep a whole other family secret for the entire duration of his time in office. I find it very odd that the French public seem to be happy that they were unaware of such shenanigans. Everywhere else we all want to know all about our politician’s lives. Though I must say Cherie Blair saying that Tony still excited her in all ways was a little bit too much information.
So… the conclusion in Chez Annie, my local bar where everyone has an opinion, is that “this is an affair of the heart”, one does not think straight when dealing with rivals. Rivals? Blimey Madame Companion seemed a bit sophisticated for this sort of thing to me, its a bit playground level isn’t it? “Non” – we are all of us “subject to the affair of the heart” apparently. Jean-Paul thinks that she meant for this to happen – its good for her job. “She is a rotweiler like they say” (yes, thank you Monsieur Leroy). It is a shot across the bows (not bowels) of her boyfriend the President to warn him off straying or paying too much attention to the woman he was with for 23 years and who has born him four children. “After all, if he did it once, he could do it again”… stray that is. It’s made her look foolish and Hollande look like he’s “got himself a bit of a live one”. This little gem from old Monsieur Dupont who says he knows a live one when he sees it on account of his femme who is known to have a frightful temper and chases him with a broom from time to time. He is the acknowledged expert on “live ones” and it is his opinion that behind every great man is a live one!
Final word from Annie herself “Perhaps she is not as boring as we thought she was”.
Watch this space.
A bientôt
Janine
