Some years ago, in one of the unhealthy surges of puritanism which intermittently assail the coverts of moral torpor in which we are most comfortable, The Irish Times introduced the Ethics Committee. Its purpose was simple: it was to ensure that the daily crates of wine arriving for journalists were not having too distorting an effect on our editorial coverage.
It was, of course, an outrage: for the first thing one learns as a journalist is to accept a bribe gracefully. This is not a talent so easily acquired. It is an exquisitely delicate art-form, the Mechlin lace of our profession. And now here was the Ethics Committee telling us that our primary skill, one honed to perfection over the centuries, was to be made redundant. All sweeteners were to be confiscated at the point of arrival.
So. We were permitted neither to be bribed, nor even to accept the bribe even as we declined to be influenced - my own preferred option. It made one feel both very pampered and yet so extraordinarily principled. Instead, we now had a policy that was reminiscent of the very worst excesses of the Khmer Rouge.
Ethics Committee
And while The Irish Times was re-enacting Phnom Penh 1975, the Ethics Committee stalked the newsroom smelling people's breath for signs of illicit alcohol, while various Pol Pots cracked their knuckles and grimly perused our bank accounts to see if secret payments were being made. A few sub-editors were summarily spiked, presumably for no other reason than it seemed a good idea at the time, and Christmas in this newspaper became positively Kampuchean.
I don't know what happened to the Ethics Committee - much the same, I suppose, as the Committee for National Safety after the French Revolution, or the Politburo after the Russian Revolution. Whatever it was, history doesn't record. The committee just vanished; but the curious thing was that the pantechnicons bearing crates of champagne gifts never quite resumed their happy deliveries - certainly not into this corner anyway. Once broken, old habits were not restored, no doubt because of the lingering ethics code. Thus Christmas became much the same as Lent.
Then last month, a most curious event occurred. The French embassy, which, even in the pre-revolutionary days of nude dancing girls arriving on the backs of lorries, had never paid much attention to this modest acre of The Irish Times, out of the blue (comme on dit en français, dehors le bleu) sent me a leather-bound diary the size of a brick.
To be sure, it is not a perfect diary - it retains that curious French habit of giving days incorrect names. One would have thought that by now they'd have managed to get these small details right; but no, the French are still calling Sunday dimanche, and not even managing to give it a capital letter. Well really. But otherwise, it's a quite remarkable thing, this diary. Did you know that the French Embassy in Cairo is on the avenue de Charles de Gaulle? Rather handy, that: no matter how drunk the ambassador gets, he'll have no problems remembering his address. It's even in French. I'll bet that the Irish Embassy in Cairo isn't on Bóthar Eamon de Valera.
Definite article
Another thing. Did you know that the French refer to certain capitals with the definite article? All right, we do with the Hague, because the Dutch do. But the French call Cairo Le Caire and Havana La Havane and Valetta La Valetta. Why? Good question. Ou est le comité des éthiques? Better question still.
Do you know that the French list Jerusalem as a separate sovereign state, between Japan - or Japon, as they mysteriously call it - and Jordan, or Jordanie, their ambassador to Israel remaining in Tel Aviv? Ah the unfathomable sophistry of L'Elysée minds.
But perhaps the most revealing item in the diary is the international list of national holidays. Being Irish, I had always assumed we were rather generous to ourselves in such matters. Not remotely. We give ourselves 10 bank holidays a year.
Apparently, the Americans give themselves 28. That's an entire lunar month. And indeed, not a single month passes when the Americans don't enjoy a holiday of some kind.
However, I have to add this proviso. If those in L'Elysée are here being as imaginative as they were when making Jerusalem into a state, maybe they're just trying to create the impression that the Americans are a bunch of lazy cochons.
Forlorn bankers
The allegedly industrious Swiss have 33 national holidays - that's getting on for one a week. In March alone they have six bank holidays. Can you imagine all those unfortunate bankers gazing forlornly at their shuttered banks, day after day after impoverishing day? Poor Mozambique, on the other hand, has just 10, Lesotho nine, and Swaziland 11 holidays. Zimbabwe also has 11, when they take a much needed break from killing white farmers.
Every country listed celebrates January 1st and December 25th - except Israel and Kuwait. For whatever reason, Saudi Arabia is not present either, because it doesn't have national holidays, or because every day is one, or finally, because L'Elysée is up to its little tricks again.
More surprises in the Conversion Tables. Did you know that there are actually such measures as the EU pint, the EU gallon and the EU bushel? The EU pint is in reality the US measure, 16 fluid ounces, or .8327 of our own and of the British. (Why?) The EU bushel is .9689 of the British bushel, which is Christ I don't know what.
But anyway, thank you France; next Christmas, a cottage in Normandy, svp; et, surtout, à bas le comité des ethiques.