Autumn This And That

Indian Summer

The clement autumn weather has continued. I've been playng boules in shirt-sleeves in the afternoon and still have no general need of heating in the house, just occasional use of a small radiator in my living room in the evenings. Even when the inevitable couple of windy days arrived the wind was the Sirocco rather than the chilling Mistral. Happily we have had a couple of days of rain, which has reduced the need to water plants. I'm now scouring garden centres and markets for blue pansies so that I can plant my pots for the winter (narcissi bulbs and pansies).

The French At Work

I ate at Steve and Jo's on Sunday and we sat outside on their terrace in the sun. Conversation got around to trying to puzzle out the French attitude to work, which is subtly different from the English attitude. I've already commented that the French seem more pre-occupied with quality of life rather than earning and we teased out another difference: the French focus on “métier”, which translates roughly as “trade” in English. This contrasts subtly with an English focus on career. The French (around here; I mustn't generalise too much) don't seem to think of a career other than as what they did when they were working. If they join a large company their view of themselves seems still to be specialised: accountant, technician, whatever; not a chameleon-like whatever is needed to get on the next rung up the ladder. It's a more static, less flexible view of what they are about. They stick to their “métier”. And the “métiers” seem to be almost classless, which contributes to the quality of life issue. If your trade is to be a chef, what matters is that everybody around recommends your restaurant for having the best cooking. It doesn't matter if your restaurant is stuck in a small town or village with a very small catchment area. And being that best chef implies no compulsion to open more restaurants, put up prices or otherwise exploit market position. It is enough to be that chef and make a living. All this makes for very small enterprises and local specialisation. You could ask in any location around here who was the best confectioner, baker, butcher or whatever and get a reply (perhaps after a debate). In England, if you asked the question, people would probably look at you in askance or give you a brand name.

I recall talking many years ago to a French international sales manager of my acquaintance and being surprised at his relatively intimate knowledge of IBM's MVS operating system. When I asked him why he knew so much of the internals of MVS he replied that the MVS market, into which he sold, was his “métier”. Despite being an extremely successful sales manager, he didn't regard sales management as his trade so much as the MVS market.

Another example. Friend Steve still occasionally goes into raptures about the doors I have had fitted in my kitchen and living room. The doorways are 19^th century non-standard sizes, lower and wider than anything you will find today. Being forced to have them specially and hence expensively made, I decided to go the whole hog and have them made of solid oak with no nails or screws (apart from fittings). The local carpenter in Vaison was very happy to do that, carpentry being his métier; where would you find someone locally to do that in England?

If as Napoleon (I think) said, the English are a nation of shopkeepers, the French are a nation of tradesmen,

Christmas Carols

As I've mentioned before, friend Jo has the idea of a group of us singing Christmas carols this year; neighbours Jean-Marc and Florence have agreed to join the French “team” so we now definitely have enough to do the deed. I learned from Daniel that “carols” translates as “chants” rather than “chansons” and also that he would like to film the event. Knowing Daniel I'm sure he will now be scouring the Internet for graphics of partridges in pear trees or whatever to, in his terms, add value to the film. Daniel also advised that if we could get the Amitiés Mollanaise village club involved they would help with production of posters to publicise the event and maybe even chip in with some eatables at the Bar du Pont. Jo already plans to produce some mince pies and we hope to persuade Patrique in the Bar du Pont to produce some mulled wine (though Heaven knows what the locals will think about adding spices to and “cooking” their precious Côtes du Rhone). We've nominally set the date for the 15^th of December as both Steve, Jo and I will be departing for the UK shortly after. It promises to be a cheerful evening.

Footnote

As can be observed from the above, I've finally figured out how to insert French accents into the text and cut and paste into the blog under Windows 7 and new interfaces. The ways are all very reasonable but it really shouldn't be that difficult to figure them out. Or maybe I should just do a lot more exploring and familiarisation before working on what I really want to do. Hopefully Windows 7 will do me for the next few years and I won't have to relearn again. Knowing IT as I do, I suppose I should accept the need to change habits and adopt new ways of doing the same thing. Maybe I'm getting to old and stodgy but learning for me implies knowing new things rather than new ways of doing the same things.