[guignol]

well it's that time of year... time to wish everyone

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

it seems simple enough, but it's something i personally don't relish. oh, not the year itself, but the conveying of best wishes, meilleur voeux, individually, to to all and sundry ... oh, not every stranger on the street, but everyone you come into regular contact with: relatives, neighbors, the bus driver, the convenience store clerk... and of course everyone at work.

no mean feat when you work in a factory with several hundred people. and what makes it harder is that it's not a simple question of greeting everyone on Jan 2 with bonne année because not everybody starts back on the same day, some take an extra day or two off; and of course next week one has to start all over with the other workshift... not to mention a few souls who may be off ill or injured, and will show up in the middle of the month with "happy new year" on their lips... or the supplier you talk to once in a blue moon (never to late to offer holiday wishes, you have all the month of january it's said ); it seems never to end. after a while you need all your little grey cells just to remember whom you've bestwished and whom you haven't.

and no mistakes, because like the everyday morning handshake, it's only one per customer! forgetting you've already greeted someone and offering your hand a second time is as good as a snub. that little tradition i still find quaint but this january monster version is not fair play.

but more than the daunting scope of the enterprise, what gets up my nostrils is its gooiness, piling platitudes one upon another... thank the gods for rational people who keep it to a simple bonne année; everytime i hear et surtout la santé i want to say et surtout la peste, ouais!

[Pierre-Henri]

[grandiloquence warning] It's being part of the big human community, I guess. Of course, I don't have 2000 colleagues, so I keep the stuff to the minimum syndical.

You may not like it, but Bonne année anyway. I wish you success in Ligue 1 for your dear OL... and that is not an irrational wish.