Téléthon
It's been said that the French don't do as much charity work as the English and it appears to be true. It probably isn't true that the French do less volunteering though; lots of local activities are made possible only with the help of many volunteers.
However, once a year the nation succumbs to a positive orgy of charity giving: the Téléthon weekend at the beginning of December. It works much like Children in Need bonanzas on English television except that it isn't directed at a single charity but at each and every one. In the village it kicks off with a knees up and a meal on the Friday evening. Then there are various parades, demonstrations and tournaments on the Saturday, plus an all-day fruit and vegetable market; there was a moules/frites lunch on offer and more music and food in the evening. And a bit more of the same on the Sunday.
I decided to take part in the boules tournament, “à la melée”, meaning pairs to make teams were drawn out of a hat. With a good partner, anything would be possible. As it happens, I drew someone of about my standard and we won one match before being eliminated. Organisation of the tournament was something that could only happen here though. The tournament was due to start at 14.00 so I went along just before then. At about 14.10 someone appeared with a piece of paper and two or three of us put our names down; then a hiatus. Finally the announcer called for more participants and repeated that several times over the next 20 minutes or so. Realising I was in for a wait I looked to see what else was on and saw there was to be a demonstration of shooting (at boules) also scheduled for 14.00; so I asked about that. It turned out that the person taking the names was to give the shooting demonstration, so was otherwise occupied. I then asked where we were playing, as the centre of the Téléthon organisation was in the St Marcel room, on the other side of the village to the boules pistes. “Don't know”, was the helpful answer. Eventually 16 participants were found and we scratched around for somewhere to play, the only viable space being around a cake-stall tent with people wandering around it all the time. Nevertheless, I did enjoy it, although the demonstration of shooting seemed to be forgotten.
Next year, if I can intercede in time, I'll suggest having the shooting demonstration 30 minutes before the tournament starts. That will attract all the potential boules players to one spot without the need for multiple announcements. And I'll suggest having both organised from the Cafe des Sports, right hext to the boules pistes. Only in Provence............................................
Translation
I've found a solution to one of the translation difficulties I mentioned in my last posting: the double-entendre in the word “feu” (fire and deceased). It came to me while I was sitting on the loo, of course. “Allumer un feu”, with the double meaning, can be translated by “light a pyre”. I think it's going to take a few more visits to the loo to sort out the other translation problem but burns in place of blisters may come to my rescue. And in the meantime........another double entendre has emerged: “au courant”, meaning “in the know” but containing the word “courant” which can imply electricity. Ah well, it was only something of a game anyway.
Global Warming
I went with Daniel to collect some wine from his favourite cooperative in St Cécile Les Vignes and to visit a friends of his, Jean-Claude, who grows some of the grapes the cooperative uses. Over aperitifs and lots of genial chat, two points emerged. One is that global warming (temporary, lasting, due to carbon dioxide or not) is having an effect on the local agriculture. Jean-Claude (more or less my age) said that the grape harvest was always on the 25th of September, give or take a day or two. This year and last it has been the 5th of September. And, for the olive harvest, orchard owners put out nets to catch the olives when they start falling, which until very recently was always at the end of November or early December. Now the nets are out at the end of October.
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Thursday, 3 December 2009
Joke Translation and Carols
Joke Translation
One of the things we do to entertain ourselves on the pizza evenings is to tell one another jokes. However, I am increasingly finding that many English jokes are untranslatable into French. This is not because the French lack a particular style of humour that is peculiarly British. Indeed many class ironic humour as English and enjoy it. The reason is always to do with language and sometimes the problem is not very obvious.
Perhaps the simplest problem is where there is a play on words. An example is the joke where two doctors discussing a new nurse say she is hopeless because she gets things the wrong way round. One says he ordered a patient to be given two aspirin ten hours and she gave him 10 aspirin every two hours and nearly killed him. The other says he ordered an enema for a patient every 24 hours and he nearly exploded under the 24 enemas. So far, no problem (except for the patients!). The doctors suddenly hear an agonised scream coming from a ward, and here comes the translation problem. One doctor says: “Oh my God! I asked that nurse to prick a patient's boil”. I defy anyone to translate that punchline so that the joke stands.
Here is a much more subtle example. It's one of a series about blonds who, stereotypically, have no brains. Someone says to a blond: “Look at that dog with one eye”. So the blond covers one eye with her hand and says:”Where?” The translation problem lies with the preposition “with”. You can't really translate the first “with” by “avec” and so the joke loses it's point. Conceivably, adding “seulement” after the first “with” might do it but it's doubtful if the French would express themselves that way. They would most likely use “borgne” or “qui n'a qu'un seul oeil”; either way, the joke loses its point. I think prepositions are often the most difficult words in translations between languages.
More Translation Difficulties
Daniel has written a sketch for the Rue des Granges festival next summer and wants it translated into English. The theme of the festival is light. However, he warned me this evening that there are many plays on words in the script.
One such is on the word “ampoule”, which means both a light bulb and a blister in French. A similar double-entendre in English is not going to be easy to find. Another is the word “feu”, meaning fire or deceased, Again I can see real difficulties in translating that. It may be possible to find an analogy in English that would work but one that has to do with light...........? We shall see.
Christmas Carols
Friend Jo had the idea of singing Christmas carols, in English, French and Provencal, outside the Bar du Pont, the local old people's home and maybe one or two places more. It seemed like a good idea with people from the pizza evening and other friends and acquaintances all joining in. It has since become clear though that this an English, or certainly not a French, thing to do. One by one the French contingent have all excused themselves; they are happy to come along but not to sing. It never occurred to Jo (or to me) that singing carols in the street at Christmas might be an English peculiarity. Anyway, we have decided not to push against the tide and so have postponed the idea for a year or maybe forever. The reaction of the French surprised me because it was not so long ago that we all happily crooned away to French songs of the 1950s/60s in the Bar du Pont on one of our pizza evenings, as I described in a previous post. However, there seems to be a distinction between doing that inside the Bar and, more publicly, outside the Bar. Strange but true.
One of the things we do to entertain ourselves on the pizza evenings is to tell one another jokes. However, I am increasingly finding that many English jokes are untranslatable into French. This is not because the French lack a particular style of humour that is peculiarly British. Indeed many class ironic humour as English and enjoy it. The reason is always to do with language and sometimes the problem is not very obvious.
Perhaps the simplest problem is where there is a play on words. An example is the joke where two doctors discussing a new nurse say she is hopeless because she gets things the wrong way round. One says he ordered a patient to be given two aspirin ten hours and she gave him 10 aspirin every two hours and nearly killed him. The other says he ordered an enema for a patient every 24 hours and he nearly exploded under the 24 enemas. So far, no problem (except for the patients!). The doctors suddenly hear an agonised scream coming from a ward, and here comes the translation problem. One doctor says: “Oh my God! I asked that nurse to prick a patient's boil”. I defy anyone to translate that punchline so that the joke stands.
Here is a much more subtle example. It's one of a series about blonds who, stereotypically, have no brains. Someone says to a blond: “Look at that dog with one eye”. So the blond covers one eye with her hand and says:”Where?” The translation problem lies with the preposition “with”. You can't really translate the first “with” by “avec” and so the joke loses it's point. Conceivably, adding “seulement” after the first “with” might do it but it's doubtful if the French would express themselves that way. They would most likely use “borgne” or “qui n'a qu'un seul oeil”; either way, the joke loses its point. I think prepositions are often the most difficult words in translations between languages.
More Translation Difficulties
Daniel has written a sketch for the Rue des Granges festival next summer and wants it translated into English. The theme of the festival is light. However, he warned me this evening that there are many plays on words in the script.
One such is on the word “ampoule”, which means both a light bulb and a blister in French. A similar double-entendre in English is not going to be easy to find. Another is the word “feu”, meaning fire or deceased, Again I can see real difficulties in translating that. It may be possible to find an analogy in English that would work but one that has to do with light...........? We shall see.
Christmas Carols
Friend Jo had the idea of singing Christmas carols, in English, French and Provencal, outside the Bar du Pont, the local old people's home and maybe one or two places more. It seemed like a good idea with people from the pizza evening and other friends and acquaintances all joining in. It has since become clear though that this an English, or certainly not a French, thing to do. One by one the French contingent have all excused themselves; they are happy to come along but not to sing. It never occurred to Jo (or to me) that singing carols in the street at Christmas might be an English peculiarity. Anyway, we have decided not to push against the tide and so have postponed the idea for a year or maybe forever. The reaction of the French surprised me because it was not so long ago that we all happily crooned away to French songs of the 1950s/60s in the Bar du Pont on one of our pizza evenings, as I described in a previous post. However, there seems to be a distinction between doing that inside the Bar and, more publicly, outside the Bar. Strange but true.
Monday, 30 November 2009
Winter Life
Winter
Winter is now here and Christmas is coming. The evenings have been gradually getting colder, although nothing like to the extent they can if they put their minds to it, and the weather has become more mixed. Today was fine again, with the temperature this evening only slightly below zero. The two previous days however were overcast and yesterday brought a lot of rain and high winds. The ground needed the rain so it was not unwelcome. Driving down the Ouvèze valley to Buis this morning, however, I noticed that most of the colour has gone from the hills, not surprisingly as the hills behind Buis were blanketed with snow down to about 1000ft. And the high wind has stripped most of the remaining leaves from the trees and vines. There were also layers of cloud down to not much more than 500ft. Even so, the scenery in that clothing still has a great deal of charm; it certainly beats the view from my former house in Reading.
Christmas is coming because the Christmas lights have been put up in the village. This involves a day in which one street after another becomes blocked off (and each time blocks off access to half the village) because a big chair-lift truck is needed to put them up. However, the village has the good taste to put up lights in Chelsea blue and white colours, which proves I was right to come here.
Life In General
The winter routine has taken on its habitual form. I've been to eat with Daniel and Steve and Jo, they and Mana have been to eat with me. I've been to see two films, one very good and one definitely missable. The Ruban Blanc (a German film whose German title I don't know) was a kind of social study of the repressive social scene in an extremely puritan Germany before the first world war and was very much worth seeing. The other, a Japanese film with the title Une Jeune Fille à La Derive, was supposed to be a landmark in Japanese cinema and may be but didn't seem worth the time. An Iranian film, A Propos d'Elly, promises to be good and I shall see it later this week or early next week. With the variety of films on offer I usually have little idea from the cinema programmes, which have promotional descriptions of course, as to whether a film is worth seeing (or to my taste) or not so I use the imdb.com database to check the films out before deciding whether to go or not.
I've commented previously on French acceptance of sub-titles allowing a far wider range of films to be shown than is the case in the UK. Another factor is that French cinemas are subsidised (at the moment). UK towns similar to Buis, Nyons and even Vaison with its “massive” 6000 population would never be able to support a cinema and the same would be true here without subsidy. To have three within easy driving distance is, in a sense, a luxury, but is an enormous boon in the winter. For as long as that lasts.......The universally derided Sarkozy has removed the wealth tax on companies that helped pay for such luxuries and already the cinema in Buis is asking for volunteers of all sorts (even projectionists) to help the cinema stay afloat. You can argue whether companies should have such an imposition placed on them but you can also ask what has been done in the UK to help keep village communities alive.
The printers have produced the proof of the village guided tour brochure I did the translation for and it looks good, running to some 40 A5 pages. Daniel showed it to me briefly this evening at the pizza get-together and I immediately spotted one mistake I made. Hopefully there won't be too many more; the problem is that as my French becomes more fluent so my English becomes less so. I'll have to practise over Christmas! A new library, now fancily called a “mediatech” (but do you know of any in English villages?), is being opened in the village in January and the brochure is destined to be unveiled at the same time so we should be ready. I shall be interested to be able to get my hands on the village archives, which have been difficult to access previously but will be freely available in the new mediatech. That will give me the incentive to really lobby for a good website for the village in place of the feeble excuse for one which we now have.
Winter is now here and Christmas is coming. The evenings have been gradually getting colder, although nothing like to the extent they can if they put their minds to it, and the weather has become more mixed. Today was fine again, with the temperature this evening only slightly below zero. The two previous days however were overcast and yesterday brought a lot of rain and high winds. The ground needed the rain so it was not unwelcome. Driving down the Ouvèze valley to Buis this morning, however, I noticed that most of the colour has gone from the hills, not surprisingly as the hills behind Buis were blanketed with snow down to about 1000ft. And the high wind has stripped most of the remaining leaves from the trees and vines. There were also layers of cloud down to not much more than 500ft. Even so, the scenery in that clothing still has a great deal of charm; it certainly beats the view from my former house in Reading.
Christmas is coming because the Christmas lights have been put up in the village. This involves a day in which one street after another becomes blocked off (and each time blocks off access to half the village) because a big chair-lift truck is needed to put them up. However, the village has the good taste to put up lights in Chelsea blue and white colours, which proves I was right to come here.
Life In General
The winter routine has taken on its habitual form. I've been to eat with Daniel and Steve and Jo, they and Mana have been to eat with me. I've been to see two films, one very good and one definitely missable. The Ruban Blanc (a German film whose German title I don't know) was a kind of social study of the repressive social scene in an extremely puritan Germany before the first world war and was very much worth seeing. The other, a Japanese film with the title Une Jeune Fille à La Derive, was supposed to be a landmark in Japanese cinema and may be but didn't seem worth the time. An Iranian film, A Propos d'Elly, promises to be good and I shall see it later this week or early next week. With the variety of films on offer I usually have little idea from the cinema programmes, which have promotional descriptions of course, as to whether a film is worth seeing (or to my taste) or not so I use the imdb.com database to check the films out before deciding whether to go or not.
I've commented previously on French acceptance of sub-titles allowing a far wider range of films to be shown than is the case in the UK. Another factor is that French cinemas are subsidised (at the moment). UK towns similar to Buis, Nyons and even Vaison with its “massive” 6000 population would never be able to support a cinema and the same would be true here without subsidy. To have three within easy driving distance is, in a sense, a luxury, but is an enormous boon in the winter. For as long as that lasts.......The universally derided Sarkozy has removed the wealth tax on companies that helped pay for such luxuries and already the cinema in Buis is asking for volunteers of all sorts (even projectionists) to help the cinema stay afloat. You can argue whether companies should have such an imposition placed on them but you can also ask what has been done in the UK to help keep village communities alive.
The printers have produced the proof of the village guided tour brochure I did the translation for and it looks good, running to some 40 A5 pages. Daniel showed it to me briefly this evening at the pizza get-together and I immediately spotted one mistake I made. Hopefully there won't be too many more; the problem is that as my French becomes more fluent so my English becomes less so. I'll have to practise over Christmas! A new library, now fancily called a “mediatech” (but do you know of any in English villages?), is being opened in the village in January and the brochure is destined to be unveiled at the same time so we should be ready. I shall be interested to be able to get my hands on the village archives, which have been difficult to access previously but will be freely available in the new mediatech. That will give me the incentive to really lobby for a good website for the village in place of the feeble excuse for one which we now have.
Monday, 16 November 2009
More On Autumn
Autumn Summary
Signs of winter came and then receded, so it's definitely still autumn. People are sitting out late into the evening on the cafe terraces, admittedly with pullovers and jackets on, but sitting out in comfort. And I've been playing boules in the afternoons in my shirtsleeves.
A week ago there was snow down to about 2000ft. The surrounding hills had snow towards the top and Mt Ventoux had taken on its familiar Christmas cake look, with snow down to the Mt Serein ski station. A small puff of cloud on the summit gave it an almost dream-like quality, viewed from below. In the middle of the wintery spell cloud was clinging halfway down the hills between here and Buis. The “winter” lasted only 2-3 days however and after the past few days of sunshine have totally eliminated the snow, even on the summit of Mt Ventoux.
Moreover, the brief wintery spell wasn't enough to knock the leaves off many trees and so the autumn leaves colour show goes on. The show seems even to have improved recently with more red showing up amongst the yellow, orange and brown. Tomorrow I plan to go up to Le Crestet, which provides a high-level view of the Ouvèze and Toulourenc valleys and see if I can take a decent photo from there.
Garden
The gaura and gallardias at the back have continued blooming and been joined by a blaze of chrysanthemums. These are ones I bought last year, on sale in all the garden centres at this time of the year, which failed miserably in the pots on my balcony and survived the winter. So I dumped them in the back garden last spring, since when they have gone from strength to strength.
I've also started planting the blue pansies in my pots in the front, which were so enjoyed by my neighbours last year. I've managed to vacate two of the bigger pots to be planted up and a third is awaiting the final demise of French marigolds which show no sign of stopping blooming at the moment.
Shades of Jean de Florette
At a recent gathering I got talking to Paul, an Englishman who has been out here for 30 years or more. We got onto the topic of changing attitudes and he recounted how a Parisian couple bought a house and some land overlooking the house we were visiting. They apparently intended to start a small market-garden holding and were drilling for water in various places over their land. They never found any and eventually sold up and moved on. The people they sold to also wanted to find water and asked a neighbour if he knew where it could be found. He did and they found it. When Paul asked the neighbour why he hadn't pointed this out to their predecessors, who could clearly be seen drilling earlier, and he replied: “They never asked me”. All this was a propos of discussion about how and whether people were welcoming or accepting or not and our respective experiences with other nationalities, French, English, Spanish and Italian. Whatever, it's a changing world.
Signs of winter came and then receded, so it's definitely still autumn. People are sitting out late into the evening on the cafe terraces, admittedly with pullovers and jackets on, but sitting out in comfort. And I've been playing boules in the afternoons in my shirtsleeves.
A week ago there was snow down to about 2000ft. The surrounding hills had snow towards the top and Mt Ventoux had taken on its familiar Christmas cake look, with snow down to the Mt Serein ski station. A small puff of cloud on the summit gave it an almost dream-like quality, viewed from below. In the middle of the wintery spell cloud was clinging halfway down the hills between here and Buis. The “winter” lasted only 2-3 days however and after the past few days of sunshine have totally eliminated the snow, even on the summit of Mt Ventoux.
Moreover, the brief wintery spell wasn't enough to knock the leaves off many trees and so the autumn leaves colour show goes on. The show seems even to have improved recently with more red showing up amongst the yellow, orange and brown. Tomorrow I plan to go up to Le Crestet, which provides a high-level view of the Ouvèze and Toulourenc valleys and see if I can take a decent photo from there.
Garden
The gaura and gallardias at the back have continued blooming and been joined by a blaze of chrysanthemums. These are ones I bought last year, on sale in all the garden centres at this time of the year, which failed miserably in the pots on my balcony and survived the winter. So I dumped them in the back garden last spring, since when they have gone from strength to strength.
I've also started planting the blue pansies in my pots in the front, which were so enjoyed by my neighbours last year. I've managed to vacate two of the bigger pots to be planted up and a third is awaiting the final demise of French marigolds which show no sign of stopping blooming at the moment.
Shades of Jean de Florette
At a recent gathering I got talking to Paul, an Englishman who has been out here for 30 years or more. We got onto the topic of changing attitudes and he recounted how a Parisian couple bought a house and some land overlooking the house we were visiting. They apparently intended to start a small market-garden holding and were drilling for water in various places over their land. They never found any and eventually sold up and moved on. The people they sold to also wanted to find water and asked a neighbour if he knew where it could be found. He did and they found it. When Paul asked the neighbour why he hadn't pointed this out to their predecessors, who could clearly be seen drilling earlier, and he replied: “They never asked me”. All this was a propos of discussion about how and whether people were welcoming or accepting or not and our respective experiences with other nationalities, French, English, Spanish and Italian. Whatever, it's a changing world.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Autumn Smells And Recollections
Autumn Smells
One of the things that most reminds me that it is now autumn is the smell of garden refuse burning: dead leaves, twigs, branches, etc, providing swirls of smoke that perfume the air. The boules court is so covered in leaves that we have trouble seeing the cochonnet when it lands and generally have to clear the leaves away from it so that we can see to point. Sylver, a boules regular, spends some time sweeping up the leaves but last night's high wind left a lot to do.
Sylver is a village character, 82 years old and with a limited brain capacity not helped by his age. He can be seen wandering around the village most days and likes to do odd jobs that help, like sweeping the boules court, making piles of leaves and burning them. Only recently, Daniel told me that his father was a foundling from Marseilles, like Sylver, but with much better luck. Both were part of the programme to find homes for foundlings in Marseilles at the beginning of last century in the Drome/Ardèche areas. Daniel's father, though, was placed with a family without children who treated him as their son and inheritor. Sylver, by contrast, was placed with a family that exploited him as an unpaid servant. Daniel says that, for that reason, he always has a soft spot for Sylver; the difference between his circumstances and Sylver's were a matter of chance.
Added to the smell of burning leaves here is the smell of wood smoke, coming from a number of chimneys and the result of a local liking for wood stoves. Every other household seems to have one. I'm not sure what the French have in the way of a Clean Air Act but it clearly doesn't apply to wood stoves or garden bonfires. The smell of wood smoke always reminds me of Herat in Afghanistan. I remember arriving there from the Iran border and wandering round the main square in the evening to be confronted by numerous stalls cooking bread and various dishes all on wood fires. The air was grey/purple with smoke and the smell of wood burning everywhere.
Nostalgia
Autumn is also often a nostalgic time for me and this evening was a prime example. At the pizza evening in the Bar du Pont, Jacques, the bar owner had set the TV for a programme that showed Petula Clark reminiscing about the 1960s, which was about the time virtually all the usual crowd were in their teens or early twenties. So we had Petula Clark herself singing, as well as the English Beatles and Rolling Stones and the French Johnny Halliday, Sylvie Vartan and Françoise Hardy, and the film scene of the time represented by François Truffaut, Grigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau. Plus of course the previous generation who were still in full swing such as Edith Piaf, Juliette Gréco, Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel. And fashion was represented by the Mini car, mini-skirt and Paco Rabanne.
It all brought back to me what an inventive era that was. The French “nouvelle vague” films were swiftly followed by the English kitchen-sink dramas. I don't think the French quite made it on the music front, compared to the Beatles, Rolling Stones and others, but Johnny Halliday was certainly something something new for them. And they added their own gift for chic to the English mini-skirt. I remember Petula Clark as a rather pure, slightly gauche, English rose who became much more seductive and wider in range after marrying her French husband. And mini-skirts on French girls always seemed to me at the time overtly the same as those on English girls but somehow less blatant and more provocative.
“Those were the days, my friend..........”
One of the things that most reminds me that it is now autumn is the smell of garden refuse burning: dead leaves, twigs, branches, etc, providing swirls of smoke that perfume the air. The boules court is so covered in leaves that we have trouble seeing the cochonnet when it lands and generally have to clear the leaves away from it so that we can see to point. Sylver, a boules regular, spends some time sweeping up the leaves but last night's high wind left a lot to do.
Sylver is a village character, 82 years old and with a limited brain capacity not helped by his age. He can be seen wandering around the village most days and likes to do odd jobs that help, like sweeping the boules court, making piles of leaves and burning them. Only recently, Daniel told me that his father was a foundling from Marseilles, like Sylver, but with much better luck. Both were part of the programme to find homes for foundlings in Marseilles at the beginning of last century in the Drome/Ardèche areas. Daniel's father, though, was placed with a family without children who treated him as their son and inheritor. Sylver, by contrast, was placed with a family that exploited him as an unpaid servant. Daniel says that, for that reason, he always has a soft spot for Sylver; the difference between his circumstances and Sylver's were a matter of chance.
Added to the smell of burning leaves here is the smell of wood smoke, coming from a number of chimneys and the result of a local liking for wood stoves. Every other household seems to have one. I'm not sure what the French have in the way of a Clean Air Act but it clearly doesn't apply to wood stoves or garden bonfires. The smell of wood smoke always reminds me of Herat in Afghanistan. I remember arriving there from the Iran border and wandering round the main square in the evening to be confronted by numerous stalls cooking bread and various dishes all on wood fires. The air was grey/purple with smoke and the smell of wood burning everywhere.
Nostalgia
Autumn is also often a nostalgic time for me and this evening was a prime example. At the pizza evening in the Bar du Pont, Jacques, the bar owner had set the TV for a programme that showed Petula Clark reminiscing about the 1960s, which was about the time virtually all the usual crowd were in their teens or early twenties. So we had Petula Clark herself singing, as well as the English Beatles and Rolling Stones and the French Johnny Halliday, Sylvie Vartan and Françoise Hardy, and the film scene of the time represented by François Truffaut, Grigitte Bardot and Jeanne Moreau. Plus of course the previous generation who were still in full swing such as Edith Piaf, Juliette Gréco, Georges Brassens and Jacques Brel. And fashion was represented by the Mini car, mini-skirt and Paco Rabanne.
It all brought back to me what an inventive era that was. The French “nouvelle vague” films were swiftly followed by the English kitchen-sink dramas. I don't think the French quite made it on the music front, compared to the Beatles, Rolling Stones and others, but Johnny Halliday was certainly something something new for them. And they added their own gift for chic to the English mini-skirt. I remember Petula Clark as a rather pure, slightly gauche, English rose who became much more seductive and wider in range after marrying her French husband. And mini-skirts on French girls always seemed to me at the time overtly the same as those on English girls but somehow less blatant and more provocative.
“Those were the days, my friend..........”
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Autumn And The Cinema
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
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
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!
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