When I'm 64

Retirement and blasted nuisances

Dear Friend,

I hope you’ve had a good week. It’s indoor-weather here in Paris, that is to say, very cold, but that hasn’t stopped locals coming out in their hundreds of thousands to protest.

The government has announced the detail of long-planned and highly controversial pension reform plans that would push the retirement age up from 62 to 64, while requiring French people to work for a longer amount of years total in order to get the full pension.

French unions of all stripes, often in discord or disagreement, have united to oppose the changes. Macron and his government argue that the changes are necessary for the pension system to keep afloat; the unions and opponents argue that they could balance the books in different ways, like taxing the very wealthy or taking more contributions from employers or even wealthier pensioners who are already retired.

From the perspective of an outsider, 64 seems a reasonable enough retirement age, and sometimes it’s hard to understand the argument seen on placards at the protest that these reforms will see people dying on the job (the current average life expectancy here is 82+). But then again, I have to admire the zeal with which French people protect their rights. ‘Why do they complain when they have it so good?’, we think — but you could also argue that they have it so good because they complain. In a country with a proud history of revolution, the threat of the people rising up in protest is still a very real one for every government, and you could argue that their democracy is stronger for it.

Now there are also widespread strikes in the UK spanning healthcare, transport, teaching, civil service and more. As I understand it, the strikes are not as frequent or as vociferous as those planned in France this year, but they are much more unusual, at least in my lifetime. Brits are much less likely to take to the streets than the French. Partially as a result of this, many rights that French people across the political spectrum are proud to enjoy, have long since been eroded in the UK, and would now be considered almost ridiculous. These include:

• A (more than?) liveable amount of unemployment benefit. Known in France as allocation chômage. If you lose your job because you are made redundant, or by special mutual agreement with your employer, called rupture conventionnelle, and you have worked for at least 6 months, you are entitled to up two years of unemployment benefit equal to a signifiant percentage of your in-work salary and guaranteed at a liveable, minimum-wage amount (but can be much more if you had a high-paying job).

• Training budget. When you pay your social security/taxes, you put a bit of money in a pot which gets massively topped up by the Government to give you a training budget, which you can spend on acquiring a new skill. I, for example, had accrued 500 euros over the last few years, even as a self-employed person, and I can use that to pay towards a lot of different lessons — I’m considering finally getting my driving licence.

• Artists/creative status. There are special tax breaks for artists and a status for people working in spéctacle or performing arts, which allows them to collect a basic income between jobs.

• Free university education. Free state university is a fiercely defended right (though there are exclusive private institutions that offer career turbo-charges), and any attempt to introduce fees would be met with so many barricades that there would be no chairs left in the Latin Quarter.

Paris Match cover, May 1968

• “Tickets resto”. Luncheon vouchers funded by the employer that allow workers to buy a full lunch every day, but which can also be saved up and used in supermarkets and cafés. (On the subject of lunch, a French friend who works on a building site told me this weekend that EVERY lunch he and his boss have a three-course lunch, entrée, plat, dessert, and a quart of wine, often a cognac. He sees this as key to a productive working day. Another friend who’s a doctor has told me eating together is key for their work in the hospital, too ).

NB: France often tops official rankings (including the OECD) for the most productive country in Europe, and is almost always ahead of the UK on this metric (productivity per hour worked, measured in US dollars).

Unimpressed head, byHannah Meltzer

I’ve also written before about the differing attitudes to work between my British compatriots and my French neighbours. On the subject of holidays, I previously said this:

“In British culture, taking a week off work is seen as a bit MAD. It’s almost like living a fantasy, a celestial dream right here on Planet Earth. It’s not normal. It’s a big deal. It’s a process. When it’s over, we come back, maybe share our photos, assess often meagre tans, and then return to the natural order of things, that is to say, the routine of working life.

Whereas, I would argue, in France ‘Les vacances’ represent a return to a natural, lizard-like state. This idea crystallised for me when I asked French co-workers how their summer holidays were, and they replied with phrases like: “Super! We had beach, sun, swimming, good food,” adding “tout ce qu’il faut”, or ‘all the necessary things’. As many others have pointed out before me, for the French, pleasure is the point. The point of life and the point of interesting conversation.

It took me a while to realise that while in a British office, we bond by talking about the ins and outs of work—so much so that we continue talking about them well into the evening—in French culture, social Brownie-points are earned by conversationally basking in the leisurely elements of your life.”

This is relevant in the context of the discourse surrounding these retirement protests. Here’s what famous left-wing politician Jean-Luc Mélenchon said on the matter.

FR: “[ President Macron ], Soyez maudit de vouloir transformer toute notre existence en marchandise (…) tout salir, tout gâcher, tout réduire, tout quantifier …

Ils veulent tout marchandiser. Mais le temps de la vie, celui qui compte, n'est pas uniquement le temps contraint, celui du travail. C'est aussi le temps libre, celui où on peut vivre, aimer, s'occuper des autres, avoir la possibilité d'être totalement humain”

EN: “[ President Macron ], be damned for wanting to transform our whole existence into merchandise (…) to tarnish everything, to spoil everything, reduce everything, quantify everything …

They want to commodify everything. But the time of our lives, that which counts, is not only the time when we have obligations, that of work. It’s also our free time, the time we have to live, love, look after others, have the possibility to be totally human.”

Mélenchon is 71 (well ready for retirement, according to him) but his words chime with the current movement of ‘anti-work’, which has a lot of very young adherents. The reddit group (sub-reddit) united around this movement has more than 2 million ‘idlers’. It describes itself as: Antiwork: Unemployment for all, not just the rich!. Here’s what they say:

“We're not against effort, labor, or being productive. We're against jobs as they are structured under capitalism and the state: Against exploitative economic relations, against hierarchical social relations at the workplace.” - Antiwork FAQs, Reddit.

I read a New York Times newsletter the other day that described France as “a country where work is viewed by many as a burden rather than an opportunity.” But I’m not sure this is quite right: from what I can tell, the French attitude is not ‘no work’ but rather : ‘work, and life too’, with the latter ultimately taking priority.

French spider

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Thirty-second book club

I’m continuing to marvel my way through The Story of Art Without Men by

Katy Hessel

. The cumulative effect of reading about so many (often overlooked and underrated) women artists is profoundly heartening and inspiring. On this subject, I was really touched by this reply to last week's letter from one of my most faithful Pen Friends, Karen in Scotland.

Here’s what she said (bolded highlights added by me):

“… Still, today so many of us are not as free as men to roam without vigilance…

I am 64 and still have to deal with leering unwelcome attention in taxis, at a cafe or even just popping in to see a matinée on my own.

Not always of course but it rather sours my private revelry where I do not wish to engage with unknown old blokes!

From a life time of daft cat calls and all the rest, I have learned how to live alongside this blasted nuisance at best, blasted real danger at worse.

When I was 15 I won a local poetry contest back in 1973 , the local rag interviewed me and I was all puffed up and ready to prate on about poetry etc etc,

The first question the ( male ) interviewer asked was " how does it feel to be a female writer?"

And life has pretty much been defined by that type of question in most aspects of my career.”

“It rather sours my private revelry where I do not wish to engage with unknown old blokes!” Hear, hear, Karen! May your private revelry be as sweet as possible.

—

I finished reading The Sabbath by Abraham Joshua Heschel, which funnily enough also had me thinking about work and rest, though from an entirely different angle to striking French workers.

The book opens with this thought-provoking statement:

“Technical civilization is man’s conquest of space. It is a triumph frequently achieved by sacrificing an essential ingredient of existence, namely, time. In technical civilization, we expend time to gain space. To enhance our power in the world of space is our main objective. Yet to have more does not mean to be more. The power we attain in the world of space terminates abruptly at the borderline of time. But time is the heart of existence.

To gain control of the world of space is certainly one of our tasks. The danger begins when in gaining power in the realm of space we forfeit all aspirations in the realm of time.”

This book was written in the 1950s and is based on thousands-year-old religious scholarship, yet the ideas it expresses chime with current writing on the power of rest, in particular in the context of the US’s racially exploitative paradigm. In particular, an American writer and activist named Tricia Hersey a.k.a. ‘The Nap Bishop’ has spoken out about how sleep deprivation and grind culture is a racial and social justice issue and that rest, the seemingly simple act of lying down, can be a means of resisting white supremacy and exploitative economics. She has written a best-selling book aptly titled ‘Rest Is Resistance: A Manifesto’.

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Thank you for reading this letter about protest, work, French rights, time and blasted nuisances! I hope you found it interesting.

I’m trying to keep my January warm in various ways, including watching Eastenders, going to exhibitions and seeing pals (in warm cafés). I hope you have a comfortable week ahead.

If you are enjoying these letters, please consider sharing them with at least one pal or maybe more. In fact, this week, if you share Pen Friend publicly and tag me in/let me know, I will send you a special personalised appreciation! CURIOUS? You should be! Go forth and share!

I’ll write next week!

Yours,

Hannah