Shellfish Etc

Shellfish Etc

Georges Corbo offered his shellfish lunch again today at the Bar du Pont and I duly went along with friend Steve (Jo, his wife, doesn't like shellfish). We ate outside in the sunshine on the terrace, the first time I have done so this year although there have been many days when I could have had lunch on my balcony.

Georges has just been elected president of the Amities Mollanaise, the village old peoples' club, so Steve said to him that, being a president, he had to have a mistress. I added that, going by Hollande, maybe one mistress wasn't enough and that he should have at least two. Unfortunately there were only a half-dozen of us taking the meal so it probably wasn't worth the trouble for Georges. I hope he'll try at least one more time.

Also there were friends Dominique and Chantal and we started discussing colloquial phrases and their origins. Steve noted that whilst, when it rains hard, the French say it is raining ropes (purely descriptive), in English we say it is raining cats and dogs. The origin of this, supposedly, is that in the days of thatched roofs cats and dogs would often climb into the thatch for warmth. When it rained, the thatch became slippery and the cats and dogs slid out of the thatch. I can't confirm the veracity of that at the moment.

Following on from that, Chantal volunteered an explanation of the expression “to fall pregnant”, which is the same in English and French. It has always puzzled me, since it suggests a random happening such as falling ill or falling in love, whilst in fact there is a very ready explanation for the condition resulting from a very specific act. Chantal said that it derived from frequent ignorance among young peasant girls who, barring miraculous conceptions (for which a few claims have been known), could not understand how they had become pregnant. Hence, for them, it was a random inexplicable event.

We also talked about changes in society, particularly family life and shop opening hours. Some three years ago I noted that the first supermarkets here had decided to open on Sunday and that therefore they would all have to; sure enough they have. That may seem relatively inconsequential but is an element in a huge social change over the past 50 years in both France and the UK. When I was young in England, Saturday was the day for recreation. On Sunday, everything was closed; no sports, no theatre or cinema. You were supposed to catch up on any jobs not done during the week or else massage your puritan guilt complex. I remember wondering why we couldn't have continental Sundays, where the rule seemed to be that as long as you went to church in the morning you could do what you liked during the rest of the day; all the entertainment facilities were on offer.

What seems to have happened is that work patterns have changed to the point where there are no set days for doing anything. If families are to live to a pattern, and I believe most do, then they have themselves to impose that pattern on their week, based probably around varied work schedules. No general patterns imposed from outside are any longer discernible, neither are there social pressures to do any set thing on any set day. I think that may be one reason why family life often suffers; there is no generally set time for it, such as evening meal times or Sundays, so it has to be consciously planned for and often gets forgotten.

Dominique and Chantal commented that the same changes were discernible in France. The situation in the large towns was very much as in England but the old patterns of life still persisted to an extent in rural France. There the sacred two hours for lunch was still widely observed, for instance, and retention of primary schools in even very small villages such as Mollans meant that children still came home for lunch. I like that and that is perhaps why, even 12 years into retirement, when I can do pretty much what I like when I like, I still feel I should be enjoying myself at weekends and not doing whatever jobs are awaiting attention. Old habits die hard.