Weather, Fruit and Fashionable English

Back Again From England
A health scare with my mother, fortunately resolved, took me back to England again earlier than planned. The weather had been good there so I was hoping I could get my mother out into her garden for a few hours or maybe to drive somewhere with her. But the weather turned sullen, mostly overcast and with a cold wind that chilled even when the sun was out.

Nonetheless, the countryside looked sumptuous with its green livery of new leaves. Here the countryside looks green too but somehow less fresh than in England; I decided it is probably the predominance of evergreen trees here, the fir trees and truffle oaks, that makes the difference. And, in England, the wayside poppies here were replaced with ox-eye daisies everywhere.

When I stepped off the plane in Avignon, dressed in pullover and jacket for my early flight from England, I found that the temperature had risen into the 90s. While I was away the cherries that were loading down the trees all around had started to ripen and it looks very much as though there will be a glut. Unfortunately most of them are of white varieties that are good to eat but not for jam making; and the best for preserving in alcohol are the bitter variety. So a lot of eating has to be done! It still surprises me that there are so many abandoned cherry trees, on the edges of fields and by the roadside. Clearly at one time they must have been part of a garden or an orchard but now they stand in one or twos unattended; and a great source of free cherries. Strawberries too are now in plentiful supply so I shall make some jam. If the other fruit crops follow suit it will be an exceptional harvest all round this year. Already the first local melons are appearing in shops and markets as also are the first nectarines and peaches.

Also, the lime trees are now in bloom. The flowers have a wonderful scent of honey which, for some reason, doesn't carry into the tea that locals make from them. The tea used to be used as a soporific to help you get to sleep but has largely been superseded by sleeping pills of one sort or another. You can still buy the flowers occasionally in the markets but the tea tastes of nothing more pleasant than hay.

Fashionable English
Having breakfast with Daniel yesterday in the Cafe des Sports I noticed a headline in his paper that described someone as having been “relookée”; it was the “k” that caught my eye as it doesn't occur in pure French. Daniel explained that it meant that the lady in question had had a face-lift, in effect given a new look. It seems just one more case of English words being Frenchified in the French fashion world. This occurs in simply scores of instances in fashion magazines, Marie Claire, Elle, etc, presumably the converse of the English use of French words in fashion. “Le shopping” for instance is not used for everyday shopping but for clothes shopping, more specifically shopping for fashionable clothes. And “les people” are socialites. There is also “le best of” for the top fashion items. I suppose it is a back-handed compliment to the English.