Autumn
There's a poem by some French poet I can't recall about autumn leaves, put to music and sung by Juliette Gréco, that just about gets the mood here now. The extended warmish weather has meant the trees and vines have kept their leaves longer than usual and all are now putting on a great autumn display: yellow, orange, red through to brown. And it's everywhere. Opposite the front of my house Mt Bluye is full of cover and the back road to Vaison through St Marcellin, which goes quite high up, gives some beautiful panoramic views.
I hadn't expected as much. There are a lot of fir and pine trees here and the truffle oak which also abound don't turn brown in autumn (they do later on). However, the vines can put on a display and this year the fruit trees haven't lost their leaves yet (plus the poplars, lime and plane trees). After a few years of wandering around arboreta in England and wondering at Japanese acers I decided that these were a bit too showy. A group of them can look quite startling but you never get enough to make a broad panorama; for that you have to rely on the native trees and the natives here this year are doing great.
Cinema
Autumn is also the time to start scrutinising the cinema programmes. I went to see Fish Tank, which I liked, then Le Syndrome du Titanic which was a worthy documentary on the state of the world's resources but a bit too worthy and obvious. Despite some great photography I fell asleep in places. Then I saw Partir, which disappointed me. Despite good acting from Kristin Scott Thomas et al, and good reports on the IMDB database, I felt the plot lacked something and didn't feel much in sympathy with any of the characters except perhaps the kids, whom I don't think were supposed to figure much in the overall film. Maybe that is just me (and the wrong film for me). Next week it's off to see Le ruban Blanc
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Monday, 19 October 2009
English, French and Cooking
Happy Birthday To Me
It was my birthday last week and, apart from receiving cards and presents as usual (but gratefully) from old friends and family, I received similar this year from relatively newly acquired French friends. A key was a round-table session of the week before discovering what star sign everyone was born under, through which my birthday date had to be revealed. I was very touched by the good wishes I received and felt that some kind of response, other than thanking the individuals concerned personally, was required of me.
The weather having been suddenly colder recently, thanks primarily to a light but persistent Mistral, I have tended to stay indoors and embarked on a cooking jag. So, I took my reputation if not actually my life in my hands and decided to cook something for everyone at the next “pizza” evening, which was tonight. To say that the English haven't the best reputation for their cooking ability in France is an understatement: many have not been to England for a long time and remember English cooking as it was before cooking programmes took over prime time television. Anyway, I decided to cook a cherry tart from the cherries that had been taking up too much room in my freezer and and an apple tart as well, apples being plentiful and cheap at the moment. As it turned out, Roberto had decided to offer mussels and chips as well as pizzas tonight and there was something of a record turnout, around 30-40 of us. So it was as well I had decided to cook two tarts and both were well received, and at least the English cooking reputation was not harmed. Everyone seemed genuinely appreciative of the tarts, as well as of the effort and the gesture.
House Sizes
There has been a spate of renovation of old houses in Mollans recently which reminded me again of the disparity between the size of French houses, at least in rural areas, and those in England. I have friends in England who have recently undertaken extensions to add a room or two to their houses. Here, even when renovated, houses tend to have fallow space, unconsidered and to be used as cellars or whatever. The reason seems to be that, in rural areas, the French have built houses not only for themselves and their family (often extensive) but also to accommodate farm equipment and/or livestock. The result is that even a small house locally tends to have as much space (at the very least) as a modern 4-5 bedroom detached house in England.
Accentuating this trend is a French insistence on selling houses according to the amount of living space it has. The square metres of living space is multiplied by a magic number, according to the area, and thereby the state agent comes up with a valuation of the house. This value may be modified by the internal condition of the house, the modernity of the facilities, but factors such as open beams, beautiful views, facing south or north, etc, seem to have no impact whatever on the valuation. The perception is quite different to that I have been used to in the UK. My own house would suffer, if it were to be sold, quite considerably in the matter of square metres, although it is more than sufficient for my needs, and all the things I love about it would not be taken into account. The result is that my house would attract a much higher price from an English buyer than a French one. The effect is also that an English buyer can still find a bargain in France, even despite the currently awful exchange rate, if buying by typically English rather than French criteria.
Hon(ni) Soit Qui Mal Y Pense
At the recent village vide grenier, equivalent to a car boot sale in England, I bought a book with the above title which is a history of the influence of French on the English language and vice-versa. It turns out to be a very interesting book. I had always assumed that the French influence on English dated from the arrival of William the Conqueror (1066 and all that). Not so, it seems. For around three centuries there were effectively two separate societies in England (not surprising in feudal times) and one – the nobles – spoke French and the other – the peasants – spoke English; and the two didn't communicate much and so didn't need a common language. Moreover, the French, in the form of William and the Conqueror and his acolytes, didn't speak French; they spoke Normand. It wasn't until Chaucer came along and decided to write in English that the English language became, as it were, legitimate in its own right. Then Chaucer found that the then current version of English was inadequate for any vocabulary that wasn't in the peasant idiom and so borrowed lots of words from the nearest alternative, which was Normand becoming French. You can tell some of the earlier versus later influences because the Normand "ca" beginning to a word tends to become "cha" as Normand developed into French. Subsequently, other writers, notably Shakespeare (who, did you know, never wrote his own name with that spelling?), added more than 100 words to the language and other writers, more concerned with legal and ecclesiastical matters, went back directly to Latin rather than to the then current French equivalents; which accounts for many English words of Latin derivation being much closer to their Latin origins than French equivalents, which had already been bastardised into French.
Isn't that interesting..........?
The brackets around Honni are because the older version lacked the extra “n” and “i”. And do you know how that phrase became the motto not only for the Order of the Garter but for England? I didn't. Apparently, Edward/Henry the 2/3, (I've lent the book to Daniel and Patrique is also waiting to borrow it, so can't check) had a mistress who dropped a garter when dancing at some palace function and the king promptly picked it up and uttered those now famous words. I find it very amusing that our national motto should derive from an incident with a king's mistress. Good for us!
It was my birthday last week and, apart from receiving cards and presents as usual (but gratefully) from old friends and family, I received similar this year from relatively newly acquired French friends. A key was a round-table session of the week before discovering what star sign everyone was born under, through which my birthday date had to be revealed. I was very touched by the good wishes I received and felt that some kind of response, other than thanking the individuals concerned personally, was required of me.
The weather having been suddenly colder recently, thanks primarily to a light but persistent Mistral, I have tended to stay indoors and embarked on a cooking jag. So, I took my reputation if not actually my life in my hands and decided to cook something for everyone at the next “pizza” evening, which was tonight. To say that the English haven't the best reputation for their cooking ability in France is an understatement: many have not been to England for a long time and remember English cooking as it was before cooking programmes took over prime time television. Anyway, I decided to cook a cherry tart from the cherries that had been taking up too much room in my freezer and and an apple tart as well, apples being plentiful and cheap at the moment. As it turned out, Roberto had decided to offer mussels and chips as well as pizzas tonight and there was something of a record turnout, around 30-40 of us. So it was as well I had decided to cook two tarts and both were well received, and at least the English cooking reputation was not harmed. Everyone seemed genuinely appreciative of the tarts, as well as of the effort and the gesture.
House Sizes
There has been a spate of renovation of old houses in Mollans recently which reminded me again of the disparity between the size of French houses, at least in rural areas, and those in England. I have friends in England who have recently undertaken extensions to add a room or two to their houses. Here, even when renovated, houses tend to have fallow space, unconsidered and to be used as cellars or whatever. The reason seems to be that, in rural areas, the French have built houses not only for themselves and their family (often extensive) but also to accommodate farm equipment and/or livestock. The result is that even a small house locally tends to have as much space (at the very least) as a modern 4-5 bedroom detached house in England.
Accentuating this trend is a French insistence on selling houses according to the amount of living space it has. The square metres of living space is multiplied by a magic number, according to the area, and thereby the state agent comes up with a valuation of the house. This value may be modified by the internal condition of the house, the modernity of the facilities, but factors such as open beams, beautiful views, facing south or north, etc, seem to have no impact whatever on the valuation. The perception is quite different to that I have been used to in the UK. My own house would suffer, if it were to be sold, quite considerably in the matter of square metres, although it is more than sufficient for my needs, and all the things I love about it would not be taken into account. The result is that my house would attract a much higher price from an English buyer than a French one. The effect is also that an English buyer can still find a bargain in France, even despite the currently awful exchange rate, if buying by typically English rather than French criteria.
Hon(ni) Soit Qui Mal Y Pense
At the recent village vide grenier, equivalent to a car boot sale in England, I bought a book with the above title which is a history of the influence of French on the English language and vice-versa. It turns out to be a very interesting book. I had always assumed that the French influence on English dated from the arrival of William the Conqueror (1066 and all that). Not so, it seems. For around three centuries there were effectively two separate societies in England (not surprising in feudal times) and one – the nobles – spoke French and the other – the peasants – spoke English; and the two didn't communicate much and so didn't need a common language. Moreover, the French, in the form of William and the Conqueror and his acolytes, didn't speak French; they spoke Normand. It wasn't until Chaucer came along and decided to write in English that the English language became, as it were, legitimate in its own right. Then Chaucer found that the then current version of English was inadequate for any vocabulary that wasn't in the peasant idiom and so borrowed lots of words from the nearest alternative, which was Normand becoming French. You can tell some of the earlier versus later influences because the Normand "ca" beginning to a word tends to become "cha" as Normand developed into French. Subsequently, other writers, notably Shakespeare (who, did you know, never wrote his own name with that spelling?), added more than 100 words to the language and other writers, more concerned with legal and ecclesiastical matters, went back directly to Latin rather than to the then current French equivalents; which accounts for many English words of Latin derivation being much closer to their Latin origins than French equivalents, which had already been bastardised into French.
Isn't that interesting..........?
The brackets around Honni are because the older version lacked the extra “n” and “i”. And do you know how that phrase became the motto not only for the Order of the Garter but for England? I didn't. Apparently, Edward/Henry the 2/3, (I've lent the book to Daniel and Patrique is also waiting to borrow it, so can't check) had a mistress who dropped a garter when dancing at some palace function and the king promptly picked it up and uttered those now famous words. I find it very amusing that our national motto should derive from an incident with a king's mistress. Good for us!
Sunday, 4 October 2009
September Summary
This And That
September has been a glorious month: temperatures down to a respectable low to mid 20s, lots of sunshine and warmth that has continued until late in the evening. The mornings have been noticeably cooler as the sun struggles to get above Mt Bluye, in front of my house, until around 9.30. Usually, the evenings cool rapidly at this time of the year but this has not happened yet and I can leave my balcony door open or even sit on the balcony until late in the evening without the need for a sweater.
Pizza man Roberto took a week off last week but Dominique and Chantal, two of the usual crowd, stepped bravely into the breach and offered everyone a spaghetti bolognaise at their home. It was a generous gesture and appreciated by all the usual attendees. Their house is magnificent with a steeply stepped garden on one side and a lawn and swimming pool on the other. Sometimes I wish I had a place like that and then I think how much work it is to maintain such a place and what all the running costs are, let alone the purchase price: what would you pay in England for a 4-bedroom house with large living rooms, an acre of garden and a swimming pool in an area with a good climate? Still, it's great to visit.
My “bulbing” in the front of my house is now complete, with bulbs in the pots that have had plants that have finished in them as well as groups of bulbs in new holes in the road outside the front and under the honeysuckle to the side. I'm also getting seriously to grips with the back garden, which has unfortunately but necessarily meant ripping up the Valerianne that is still blooming but was covering up patches of ground that I needed to see to. I think I'm now getting a feel for how the garden should look next year.
Friend Steve came over to help me fit some lights that I'd brought back from England (sale bargains) that needed 3-4 hands rather than the two I'm limited to. So the terrace room and terrace itself are now properly lit. Daniel has been back in La Réunion for just over a fortnight so I've been feeding his dog, Crevette, in the evenings; Jean-Marie does the honours in the morning. Daniel is often my boules partner and my form over the last week or so has been terrible; so I'm blaming that on him!
September has been a glorious month: temperatures down to a respectable low to mid 20s, lots of sunshine and warmth that has continued until late in the evening. The mornings have been noticeably cooler as the sun struggles to get above Mt Bluye, in front of my house, until around 9.30. Usually, the evenings cool rapidly at this time of the year but this has not happened yet and I can leave my balcony door open or even sit on the balcony until late in the evening without the need for a sweater.
Pizza man Roberto took a week off last week but Dominique and Chantal, two of the usual crowd, stepped bravely into the breach and offered everyone a spaghetti bolognaise at their home. It was a generous gesture and appreciated by all the usual attendees. Their house is magnificent with a steeply stepped garden on one side and a lawn and swimming pool on the other. Sometimes I wish I had a place like that and then I think how much work it is to maintain such a place and what all the running costs are, let alone the purchase price: what would you pay in England for a 4-bedroom house with large living rooms, an acre of garden and a swimming pool in an area with a good climate? Still, it's great to visit.
My “bulbing” in the front of my house is now complete, with bulbs in the pots that have had plants that have finished in them as well as groups of bulbs in new holes in the road outside the front and under the honeysuckle to the side. I'm also getting seriously to grips with the back garden, which has unfortunately but necessarily meant ripping up the Valerianne that is still blooming but was covering up patches of ground that I needed to see to. I think I'm now getting a feel for how the garden should look next year.
Friend Steve came over to help me fit some lights that I'd brought back from England (sale bargains) that needed 3-4 hands rather than the two I'm limited to. So the terrace room and terrace itself are now properly lit. Daniel has been back in La Réunion for just over a fortnight so I've been feeding his dog, Crevette, in the evenings; Jean-Marie does the honours in the morning. Daniel is often my boules partner and my form over the last week or so has been terrible; so I'm blaming that on him!
Monday, 28 September 2009
Gardening and Food
Gardening
The recent weather (temperatures close to 30 degrees during the day and warm evenings) have convinced me it's not yet time to start on winter work like scraping the paint off those bloody beams in my bedroom. So, I've been digging more holes in the road to plant bulbs and still have about another 30 of those that I brought back from England to find somewhere to plant. Should look OK next spring.
My plumbago, in a pot under the balcony, has decided to go mad this year for some reason and has spread itself outside amongst the honeysuckle growing between Jean-Marc and Flo's house and mine and is covered in bloom. At the same time, the Dublin Bay rose has decided to climb and start blooming again so that corner is looking good. My false jasmine (trachelospermum jasmoinides) in the pot on the balcony is also doing its nut and is now within four bars of completing its trip across the balcony, as well as pushing up above the grape vine to just below my bedroom window. Near-neighbour Jean said he counted three separate groups of people stopping outside my house and taking photos and wanted to know why I didn't charge them. Maybe I should put a box out for donations for the village school. The local man who refurbishes old cars as a hobby and whose sister makes scented candles has started making ceramics with phrases on them, one of which reads “Place de l'apero”. A bit twee but I think I might get one for my balcony nonetheless (in blue, if course).
The back garden needs weeding again and it will soon be time to sort out what has survived and thrived and where the gaps are. What is already clear is that the ground there is very poor and needs lots more fertilizer; job for February/March. I've decided that when the winter pansies come around, in 4-6 weeks, I'll transplant the perennials I have in two pots out front into the back and fill the pots with pansies as I did last year.
Food
French prepared meals are generally better than their English counterparts but still not as good as the real thing generally. However, I got a flammekueche from the local supermarket which Steve and I ate this evening and it was really quite good. I'd assumed it was a Flemish dish but it in fact hails from Alsace: it's sometimes referred to as a French pizza but the base is quite different, more like an English water biscuit, and the toppings focus more on ham, cheese and onions. I think it could be good as a less usual first course to a meal.
And......more fruit. The house on one side of me that is let out to all and sundry has a damson tree that is currently full of ripe fruit with no one interested in picking it. I can't just let it go to waste and yet don't want to contemplate yet more jam. I think I may pick it (I know the owner well enough to do that) and freeze it while I decide what to do with it. Maybe a fruit tart or two......
The recent weather (temperatures close to 30 degrees during the day and warm evenings) have convinced me it's not yet time to start on winter work like scraping the paint off those bloody beams in my bedroom. So, I've been digging more holes in the road to plant bulbs and still have about another 30 of those that I brought back from England to find somewhere to plant. Should look OK next spring.
My plumbago, in a pot under the balcony, has decided to go mad this year for some reason and has spread itself outside amongst the honeysuckle growing between Jean-Marc and Flo's house and mine and is covered in bloom. At the same time, the Dublin Bay rose has decided to climb and start blooming again so that corner is looking good. My false jasmine (trachelospermum jasmoinides) in the pot on the balcony is also doing its nut and is now within four bars of completing its trip across the balcony, as well as pushing up above the grape vine to just below my bedroom window. Near-neighbour Jean said he counted three separate groups of people stopping outside my house and taking photos and wanted to know why I didn't charge them. Maybe I should put a box out for donations for the village school. The local man who refurbishes old cars as a hobby and whose sister makes scented candles has started making ceramics with phrases on them, one of which reads “Place de l'apero”. A bit twee but I think I might get one for my balcony nonetheless (in blue, if course).
The back garden needs weeding again and it will soon be time to sort out what has survived and thrived and where the gaps are. What is already clear is that the ground there is very poor and needs lots more fertilizer; job for February/March. I've decided that when the winter pansies come around, in 4-6 weeks, I'll transplant the perennials I have in two pots out front into the back and fill the pots with pansies as I did last year.
Food
French prepared meals are generally better than their English counterparts but still not as good as the real thing generally. However, I got a flammekueche from the local supermarket which Steve and I ate this evening and it was really quite good. I'd assumed it was a Flemish dish but it in fact hails from Alsace: it's sometimes referred to as a French pizza but the base is quite different, more like an English water biscuit, and the toppings focus more on ham, cheese and onions. I think it could be good as a less usual first course to a meal.
And......more fruit. The house on one side of me that is let out to all and sundry has a damson tree that is currently full of ripe fruit with no one interested in picking it. I can't just let it go to waste and yet don't want to contemplate yet more jam. I think I may pick it (I know the owner well enough to do that) and freeze it while I decide what to do with it. Maybe a fruit tart or two......
Monday, 21 September 2009
Fruit, Weather And A Dog
Fruit Galore
Two weeks ago I went with some friends to help a local small-holder harvest his plums from around 60 plum trees. We picked just over 500kgs in the afternoon and, for our time, got back about 80Kgsand some aching limbs. We were also royally entertained for an hour by the small-holder with aperos that were home-made. There was a fad in the 1970s in England to make your own beer and wine; I remember Boots having a whole department selling the kits and cans of grape juice of various sorts. However, rising wages and reducing booze prices, plus the efforts of Camra and new world wines, knocked this little home industry on the head. And, given that good if unsensational wine is cheap in France relative to the UK, I was surprised that the French would try any home-made stuff. But, it appears, they do; and it can be good as an aperitif rather than as a wine to go with a meal.
Afterwards, I took my two cases of plums home and shared them with the neighbours and the Monday evening pizza crowd. The remainder have since been transformed into jars of jam and chutney. I hadn't intended making plum jam but the chutney was always on the agenda. Many years ago in England my mother had wanted to make chutney and dredged up a recipe from a 1940s edition of Good Housekeeping called Old Dower House chutney. We found that, by doubling the amount of spices recommended, we had a very good chutney. As a base it has plums, apples, tomatoes and onions, all in plentiful supply here in autumn. And the small-holder let me pick a couple of handfuls of apples. All that, plus brown sugar, vinegar and plentiful spices (cloves, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, chili and garlic) makes a great chutney. Of which I now have very many jars to give away when invited out and, of course, to eat myself. I know from experience in England that this chutney keeps for 2-3 years (at least) and even gets better the longer it is kept.
And............the local man who sells his produce on the car park wall opposite the Mairie had a notice offering tomatoes, olives and figs today, all at more than reasonable prices. He had, however, run out of figs when I got to him but promised more for Wednesday. So I shall be there on Wednesday. At the supermarket right now they are selling for over 4 euros per kilo, the market not yet being in full flood. If I can get them for less than half of that then the planned fig jam will be on the way.
Weather and Plants
I was very abstemious this time when going back to see my mother in England and came back with only one clematis (Bill Mckenzie) and one succulent (plus, admittedly, a few bags of bulbs). The former are planted already; I need to think about the latter. I was going to plant some of the bulbs in my pots hanging from the balcony but am a bit worried about what winter and spring winds might do to them. A friend from England should be coming out to see me this autumn so I think I may ask her to bring me some bulbs of miniature daffodils/narcissi and plant those in the pots on the balcony.
The weather here has been much as in southern England over the past 2-3 weeks although slightly warmer here; overcast at times, raining at times but with sunny periods. A bit like classic April weather in England. Here, however, the remnants of summer should hang on for a bit longer so we are due for a spell of better weather to come. Whether we get it or not is another matter. Today, anyway, I was able to resume playing boules and didn't play badly.
And A Dog....................
Daniel has gone off on an assignment to La Réunion for ten days and left the care of his dog, Gillette, to myself and various friends. I feel slightly guilty about not saying I would have Gillette with me all the time, although Daniel didn't ask that. He had already arranged with Jean-Marie to walk Gillette in the morning, with Michelline to let it out at midday and asked me simply to feed her in the evening, which I am doing. She seems quite happy with that and, even though when I feed her I stay around for a time so that she can roam the garden, she seems content to return to “captivity” within the house before I leave. So I don't feel too bad about it; but I do wonder.
Two weeks ago I went with some friends to help a local small-holder harvest his plums from around 60 plum trees. We picked just over 500kgs in the afternoon and, for our time, got back about 80Kgsand some aching limbs. We were also royally entertained for an hour by the small-holder with aperos that were home-made. There was a fad in the 1970s in England to make your own beer and wine; I remember Boots having a whole department selling the kits and cans of grape juice of various sorts. However, rising wages and reducing booze prices, plus the efforts of Camra and new world wines, knocked this little home industry on the head. And, given that good if unsensational wine is cheap in France relative to the UK, I was surprised that the French would try any home-made stuff. But, it appears, they do; and it can be good as an aperitif rather than as a wine to go with a meal.
Afterwards, I took my two cases of plums home and shared them with the neighbours and the Monday evening pizza crowd. The remainder have since been transformed into jars of jam and chutney. I hadn't intended making plum jam but the chutney was always on the agenda. Many years ago in England my mother had wanted to make chutney and dredged up a recipe from a 1940s edition of Good Housekeeping called Old Dower House chutney. We found that, by doubling the amount of spices recommended, we had a very good chutney. As a base it has plums, apples, tomatoes and onions, all in plentiful supply here in autumn. And the small-holder let me pick a couple of handfuls of apples. All that, plus brown sugar, vinegar and plentiful spices (cloves, cinnamon, ginger, allspice, chili and garlic) makes a great chutney. Of which I now have very many jars to give away when invited out and, of course, to eat myself. I know from experience in England that this chutney keeps for 2-3 years (at least) and even gets better the longer it is kept.
And............the local man who sells his produce on the car park wall opposite the Mairie had a notice offering tomatoes, olives and figs today, all at more than reasonable prices. He had, however, run out of figs when I got to him but promised more for Wednesday. So I shall be there on Wednesday. At the supermarket right now they are selling for over 4 euros per kilo, the market not yet being in full flood. If I can get them for less than half of that then the planned fig jam will be on the way.
Weather and Plants
I was very abstemious this time when going back to see my mother in England and came back with only one clematis (Bill Mckenzie) and one succulent (plus, admittedly, a few bags of bulbs). The former are planted already; I need to think about the latter. I was going to plant some of the bulbs in my pots hanging from the balcony but am a bit worried about what winter and spring winds might do to them. A friend from England should be coming out to see me this autumn so I think I may ask her to bring me some bulbs of miniature daffodils/narcissi and plant those in the pots on the balcony.
The weather here has been much as in southern England over the past 2-3 weeks although slightly warmer here; overcast at times, raining at times but with sunny periods. A bit like classic April weather in England. Here, however, the remnants of summer should hang on for a bit longer so we are due for a spell of better weather to come. Whether we get it or not is another matter. Today, anyway, I was able to resume playing boules and didn't play badly.
And A Dog....................
Daniel has gone off on an assignment to La Réunion for ten days and left the care of his dog, Gillette, to myself and various friends. I feel slightly guilty about not saying I would have Gillette with me all the time, although Daniel didn't ask that. He had already arranged with Jean-Marie to walk Gillette in the morning, with Michelline to let it out at midday and asked me simply to feed her in the evening, which I am doing. She seems quite happy with that and, even though when I feed her I stay around for a time so that she can roam the garden, she seems content to return to “captivity” within the house before I leave. So I don't feel too bad about it; but I do wonder.
Thursday, 30 July 2009
Festivals And Jokes
Fête Votive
Last weekend was the Fête Votive in Mollans, which is probably best translated as the annual village fair. However, it doesn't correspond very well to the English version. True there are a couple of stands of games for kids, hooking plastic ducks or shooting ballons, but there's no cake stall, no cream teas and no vegetable/flower show. Instead there are boules competitions, contested by all comers and many do come from neighbouring villages and towns, and three evenings of music and dancing. The bands weren't up to much but that didn't seem to spoil anyone's enjoyment.
The Fête Votive more or less marks the end of the festival “season” in the village, which begins with Feu de la St Jean on the 23rd June. There is another small festival, the festival of the Rue des Granges, which this year is devoted to the theme of music, but that is quite a small event even by village standards. Of course, there are major arts festivals ongoing in Vaison and Avignon but they don't count as village life.
French And Territory
I was struck once again by a difference between village life here and in England when an unknown (to me) girl turned up at boules the other day. She appeared to be known to Kevyn, Daniel's son, but was certainly not one of his usual retinue of girlfriends. Daniel explained the connection, which was more or less as follows. Daniel had met the girl somewhere and, on hearing her surname, mentioned that he had known soneone of the same name when he was young. This girl turned out to be the grandaughter of Daniel's old friend, whom Daniel hadn't seen since his youth. The old friend was now living in nearby Malaucene.
People here seem much more often to retain connections with their early stamping grounds than I have found to be the case in England. Why? I believe that land ownership could explain it. How often in Enland do we find people who own small plots of land around places where they grew up. Very seldom, I think. In England, I very rarely met anyone who owned any land: a large house and garden perhaps, perhaps even several houses, but not small plots of land. French inheritance law tends to keep land in the family and, unless the land is obviously commercially very valuable, in the family it tends to stay. There is a lot more land in France than in England (which also makes it de facto less likely to be commercially valuable) and if you have a plot or plots of land you naturally tend to retain a connection with that place. That is my explanation, until I get a better one.
Joke
Pizza evenings tend to mean jokes. A bartender in a small village who had exceedingly strong hands used to squeeze lemons and nobody in the village had ever managed to extract another drop of juice from a lemon after he had squeezed it. So he put up a notice in the bar for the benefit over anyone passing through offering a 100 euro prize for a 5 euro stake if anyone could get more juice out of lemon after he had squeezed it. Over the following months several strong men tried but none
succeeded. Then, one day, a rather weedy, besuited individual came into the bar, saw the notice and asked to take up the challenege, much to the amusement of the others in the bar. At first, the barman was reluctant to take the man's five euros. However, the newcomer persisted so in the end the barman took a lemon and, to knowing smiles all round, squeezed the lemon apparently dry. The newcomer then took the squeezed lemon, squeezed hard himself and managed to extract not one but several more drops of juice. Everyone in the bar was astonished; after all, how could such a weedy individual extract more juice than the barman? The newcomer was asked what he did in life to enable him to carry out such a feat? . He replied, “I am a tax inspector”.
Last weekend was the Fête Votive in Mollans, which is probably best translated as the annual village fair. However, it doesn't correspond very well to the English version. True there are a couple of stands of games for kids, hooking plastic ducks or shooting ballons, but there's no cake stall, no cream teas and no vegetable/flower show. Instead there are boules competitions, contested by all comers and many do come from neighbouring villages and towns, and three evenings of music and dancing. The bands weren't up to much but that didn't seem to spoil anyone's enjoyment.
The Fête Votive more or less marks the end of the festival “season” in the village, which begins with Feu de la St Jean on the 23rd June. There is another small festival, the festival of the Rue des Granges, which this year is devoted to the theme of music, but that is quite a small event even by village standards. Of course, there are major arts festivals ongoing in Vaison and Avignon but they don't count as village life.
French And Territory
I was struck once again by a difference between village life here and in England when an unknown (to me) girl turned up at boules the other day. She appeared to be known to Kevyn, Daniel's son, but was certainly not one of his usual retinue of girlfriends. Daniel explained the connection, which was more or less as follows. Daniel had met the girl somewhere and, on hearing her surname, mentioned that he had known soneone of the same name when he was young. This girl turned out to be the grandaughter of Daniel's old friend, whom Daniel hadn't seen since his youth. The old friend was now living in nearby Malaucene.
People here seem much more often to retain connections with their early stamping grounds than I have found to be the case in England. Why? I believe that land ownership could explain it. How often in Enland do we find people who own small plots of land around places where they grew up. Very seldom, I think. In England, I very rarely met anyone who owned any land: a large house and garden perhaps, perhaps even several houses, but not small plots of land. French inheritance law tends to keep land in the family and, unless the land is obviously commercially very valuable, in the family it tends to stay. There is a lot more land in France than in England (which also makes it de facto less likely to be commercially valuable) and if you have a plot or plots of land you naturally tend to retain a connection with that place. That is my explanation, until I get a better one.
Joke
Pizza evenings tend to mean jokes. A bartender in a small village who had exceedingly strong hands used to squeeze lemons and nobody in the village had ever managed to extract another drop of juice from a lemon after he had squeezed it. So he put up a notice in the bar for the benefit over anyone passing through offering a 100 euro prize for a 5 euro stake if anyone could get more juice out of lemon after he had squeezed it. Over the following months several strong men tried but none
succeeded. Then, one day, a rather weedy, besuited individual came into the bar, saw the notice and asked to take up the challenege, much to the amusement of the others in the bar. At first, the barman was reluctant to take the man's five euros. However, the newcomer persisted so in the end the barman took a lemon and, to knowing smiles all round, squeezed the lemon apparently dry. The newcomer then took the squeezed lemon, squeezed hard himself and managed to extract not one but several more drops of juice. Everyone in the bar was astonished; after all, how could such a weedy individual extract more juice than the barman? The newcomer was asked what he did in life to enable him to carry out such a feat? . He replied, “I am a tax inspector”.
Tuesday, 21 July 2009
Eating And Language
Eating In Company
One of the big differences in my life here to that in England is the number of times I eat with friends. While in England I could probably count on both hands the number of times I ate with friends in a year and those occasions were mostly in restaurants. When friends are even just 30 miles apart, it always seemed to take a significant effort to arrange to meet up and eat. Here it all seems much simpler.
Part of it may be distance, part may be the meal itself. Part of it also must be the love of food and drink and conviviality. Since most of my friends here are within walking distance or a very short car ride, it's just much easier to get together. And since the meals generally mean giving thought to just one dish, it's easy to invite people off the cuff. Starters are easy (Russian salad with egg, some charcuterie and salad, melon), then the main course, then cheese, then fruit or buy a flan or ice cream or, if I'm energetic, do some pancakes. And that happens here always more than once a week.
This week, for example, Steve and Jo came over to eat on Sunday and I did pork chops à la Estremadura. Pretty simple really. Monday, I was going for a pizza evening when two friends emailed to invite me to eat with them: Anita and Pierre Boillot, he an ex-diplomat mostly in the Middle East and south America and she a Louisianan. They had family staying with them, Pierre's sister who had married an Englishman and who are now living 100 miles north of London. Good conversation and a good meal. Tomorrow, Dave and Hazel, friends of Steve and Jo who have rented a neighbouring house, have invited me to eat. And so it goes on................I'm probably due to make another shepherds' pie for Daniel (it always has to be that when he comes) and there are others whom I shall invite to eat once the annual round of grandchildren visiting has passed, when September comes.
It was never like this in England. Is it France, the make-up of the meals or just small village life? And that's not including the numerous invitations to aperos.
Language
When Steve and Jo came over on Sunday we got to talking about language, Steve having been reading Pinker's “The Language Instinct”. So I lent him my copy of “Words And Rules” and the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Languages. Language always seems to be a fertile topic of conversation, even if we are (as we often are) just puzzling over French expressions, similarities and disparities with their English equivalents and their derivations.
It's surprising how often, usually in pizza evening discussions, we discover that French and English expressions have exact equivalents. On the other hand, if the similes/metaphors are obvious and from common life experiences, perhaps it's not so surprising. It's the differences that are more interesting: while we English sometimes have a frog in our throat the French have a cat in theirs. We go for the sound, they go for the feeling. The French actually make a lot of use of cats in colloquialisms; what have cats done to deserve this?
Added to all this is the use of particular words. I feel that that best basis for understanding usage is to try to get at the root meaning of the word (the meaning not the lexicography), which usually involves getting back to the Latin or Greek origin. However, how the French came up with tiring (fatiguer) a salad rather than tossing it still defeats me.
Charles Simonyi at Microsoft tried for years to formulate a language (although he refused to call it such) of what he called “intentions” (meanings?), a formulation that would be computer-language independent. Thus, an intentional object would have a computer language as a method for expressing it. For some time (early 90s) Simonyi would talk about nothing else. It no doubt had its fallout in Microsoft's intermediate language but never really got anywhere (as far as I know). It always struck me as Chomsky-esque territory at its most theoretical and I ventured into that only with the most awful dread.
One of the big differences in my life here to that in England is the number of times I eat with friends. While in England I could probably count on both hands the number of times I ate with friends in a year and those occasions were mostly in restaurants. When friends are even just 30 miles apart, it always seemed to take a significant effort to arrange to meet up and eat. Here it all seems much simpler.
Part of it may be distance, part may be the meal itself. Part of it also must be the love of food and drink and conviviality. Since most of my friends here are within walking distance or a very short car ride, it's just much easier to get together. And since the meals generally mean giving thought to just one dish, it's easy to invite people off the cuff. Starters are easy (Russian salad with egg, some charcuterie and salad, melon), then the main course, then cheese, then fruit or buy a flan or ice cream or, if I'm energetic, do some pancakes. And that happens here always more than once a week.
This week, for example, Steve and Jo came over to eat on Sunday and I did pork chops à la Estremadura. Pretty simple really. Monday, I was going for a pizza evening when two friends emailed to invite me to eat with them: Anita and Pierre Boillot, he an ex-diplomat mostly in the Middle East and south America and she a Louisianan. They had family staying with them, Pierre's sister who had married an Englishman and who are now living 100 miles north of London. Good conversation and a good meal. Tomorrow, Dave and Hazel, friends of Steve and Jo who have rented a neighbouring house, have invited me to eat. And so it goes on................I'm probably due to make another shepherds' pie for Daniel (it always has to be that when he comes) and there are others whom I shall invite to eat once the annual round of grandchildren visiting has passed, when September comes.
It was never like this in England. Is it France, the make-up of the meals or just small village life? And that's not including the numerous invitations to aperos.
Language
When Steve and Jo came over on Sunday we got to talking about language, Steve having been reading Pinker's “The Language Instinct”. So I lent him my copy of “Words And Rules” and the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Languages. Language always seems to be a fertile topic of conversation, even if we are (as we often are) just puzzling over French expressions, similarities and disparities with their English equivalents and their derivations.
It's surprising how often, usually in pizza evening discussions, we discover that French and English expressions have exact equivalents. On the other hand, if the similes/metaphors are obvious and from common life experiences, perhaps it's not so surprising. It's the differences that are more interesting: while we English sometimes have a frog in our throat the French have a cat in theirs. We go for the sound, they go for the feeling. The French actually make a lot of use of cats in colloquialisms; what have cats done to deserve this?
Added to all this is the use of particular words. I feel that that best basis for understanding usage is to try to get at the root meaning of the word (the meaning not the lexicography), which usually involves getting back to the Latin or Greek origin. However, how the French came up with tiring (fatiguer) a salad rather than tossing it still defeats me.
Charles Simonyi at Microsoft tried for years to formulate a language (although he refused to call it such) of what he called “intentions” (meanings?), a formulation that would be computer-language independent. Thus, an intentional object would have a computer language as a method for expressing it. For some time (early 90s) Simonyi would talk about nothing else. It no doubt had its fallout in Microsoft's intermediate language but never really got anywhere (as far as I know). It always struck me as Chomsky-esque territory at its most theoretical and I ventured into that only with the most awful dread.
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