Translation, Perfume And Fruit

Translating Time

I've been amused for years by foreign football players and managers struggling with English words that express time: time itself, moment, period and (by implication) patch, spell, run, sequence, stage, etc. And now I've seen that Gareth Southgate, manager of England' Under-21 team, has caught the disease. I've seen him quoted as saying that “we are in a good moment”. Who on earth who is English and not exposed to foreigners struggling with our language would express the thought that their team was having a good patch or a good run of results by saying “we are in a good moment”?

Bizarre changes do occur in language evolution. We have the verb to sidle (up to someone) only because someone centuries ago thought that the ancient noun a sideling (assistant) must be the present participle of a verb, as in singing, talking, etc, and so invented the verb to sidle. It hadn't existed beforehand and has no other origin. The word time in English doesn't translate easily into most romance languages; their general equivalent, be it temps, tiempo, or whatever, applies to the concept of time but not always to a period of it; it depends on context. Saying that a football team was having a good temps, tiempo or whatever would mean that they were living it up, so foreign football staff use what they assume to be the English equivalent of their word in that context, which would be moment, momento or whatever. But a moment in English is very much shorter than the period of time they are talking about. If the prevalence of foreign football players and coaches in England persists, however, they may succeed not only in changing our football style but also our language.

Yellow Hillsides

The hillsides around here are probably best known popularly for groves of olive trees or rows of vines and those are certainly abundant. But between the months of March and June the hillsides are a blaze of yellow, as in the photo. Towards the middle of March coronilla starts bloomimg, not only colouring the hillsides but also perfuming the landscape. Coronilla has special connotations for me as it was one of my mother's favourite flowers, although it wasn't easy to find plants in UK garden centres. Here it grows wild, everywhere. Then, as the coronilla fades, broom starts to bloom and the photo here shows just one hillside between Mollans and Buis covered in its flowers. Later on, higher up, there will be fields of lavendar and, lower down, fields of sunflowers, but for the moment this area can claim the prize for the most attractive landscape.

Fruit

It's been asparagus and strawberry season for the past six weeks and I've been indulging heavily in both. About a week ago I decided I didn't want to eat any more asparagus for a while. This evening friends Hallie and Mary came to drink wine on my balcony and stick their noses in all the honeysuckle growing over the front of the house. The honeysuckle has been there for some years now and always flowers but for some reason this an exceptional year; honeysuckles front and back are covered in bloom and, in the evening, perfume the whole house. I offered Hallie and Mary some strawberries with their wine and both said, reluctantly, that they really couldn't eat another strawberry. I know how they feel but, for the moment, strawberries are still me. The first apricots are now appearing in the markets though and the first melons and peaches won't be far behind. It's all looking good for a fruitaholic like me.

Mostly About Photos

The Bench

A couple of years ago I moved a bench from further down the road into the space between two trees on the opposite side of the road opposite my kitchen window. This year I posted two notices on the trees. One quoted Georges Brassens “Les amoureux qui se bécottent sur les bancs publiques …..ont de petites gueules bien sympathiques” and the other quoted John Donne “No man is an island...donc ne cherchez pas à savoir pour qui sonne le glas, le glas sonne pour vous”. I felt that they would give people sitting on the bench something to think about while viewing the scenery. However, I also went to the Mairie to say that the wood on the bench was rotten and needed replacing. So, two months ago, the village council had the bench removed and they have taken two months to replace it. In the meantime I and others went to the Mairie and pointed out that cars were being parked in the space and spoiling the flowers I had planted and that some elderly people who could not walk far came to sit on the bench and could no longer do so. This week, while I was away in the regional boules tournament in Chorges, the bench was replaced. So all is now well again.

Flowers

I'm of a generation that deals in text rather than graphics, which dates me. Everybody now posts photos, and has the means to do so, Thus my blog has been noticeably lacking in graphic content, a point which I'm determined to correct at least to some extent. So here are some photos of flowers in the front of my house and at the back. My house has become known in the village for its floral display and the best way to convey that is to show some photos; no amount of description can do the same in any useful way. Tourists takiing turns to take photos of themselves in front of the house are such a commonplace that my neighbours Florence and Jean-Marc say it is the most photographed house in the village. So photos there shall be.

Chorges

This week the village boules players and I went to Chorges, in the mountains near the Itlaian border, to play in the regional boules tournament. None of us did particularly well (no surprises there) but we all enjoyed ourselves, which was the main objective of the exercise. But, again, a photo is called for and in this posting or the next another will be forthcoming. I'm doing my best to get more graphically and less textually oriented.

Photos

There is a saying is that a picture is worth a thousand words and that can be the case. After all, what greater testament can there be to an event than that you have actually seen it with your own eyes? However…….I recall a class in my sixth form at school in which a teacher was trying to teach us to question everything and think for ourselves. In one lesson he showed a large photograph which could be cropped in different ways to suggest different interpretations of what was happening. In particular I remember a photo of a scene of devastation in a newspaper in which a policeman could be seen grasping a plank of wood which was on top of the head of a man on his knees. So was the policeman brutally beating the man over the head with the plank of wood or taking the plank of wood off the man's head to allow him to stand up? There was no way to know and the newspaper could equally have captioned the photo “police brutality” or “police help”, according to what it wished to convey. So a picture may well convey a thousand words but not necessarily the words you read in its caption.

That should be a caution for the graphically oriented generation, although text also should carry similar cautionary notes. As ever, the distinction will probably be between those who want to jump to conclusions and those who are prepared to say that they are not sure, that they don't really know. And those can be the most difficult words to utter.

Shakespeare Event

Shakespeare Event

As befits English ex-pats, the 400^th anniversary of Shakespeare's death had to be celebrated locally in some way and the Beaumont English library duly took note and staged its event on the 8^th of May. Fifty one people attended, both French and English, so those responsible for the publicity certainly did their work. Various library members recited sonnets or excerpts from plays and there were Shakespearean songs and even some nibbles exemplary of the period; and muscat from Beaume de Venise substituted well for mead. The whole proceedings, masterminded by friend Jo, went off extremely well and seemed to be greatly appreciated by the audience. A good time was had by all.

I read Mark Anthoy's forum speech from Julius Ceaser. However, there was something else that I really wanted to do for which there was no time in the programme. Jo would have killed me if I'd done it unannounced. (Being a kind person she would have killed me humanely but I decided not to risk it.) I wanted to recount my personal experience of acting in a Shakespeare play, a most noteworthy event since it was the evening the MacBeth tragedy was turned into a comedy. That is quite a feat, as I am sure you will admit.

I went to a boys' grammar school, a rather traditional one. Every year there was a school play and every second year it had to be a Shakespeare play. One year that I took part the play was MacBeth. The school had three or four boys with genuine claims to be able to act and four or five others who would have a reasonable go at it. Now, if you've ever had a look at casts for Shakespeare's plays you may notice that they all have one thing in common: they are long. Adding up our actual and potential actors we found that we were around 30 short for MacBeth. Where to find the extra bodies?

Amateur sportsmen are generally loyal to their team and loyalty, like patriotism, is an attribute that can be usefully abused. So the rugby team was approached. “The school needs you; do it for the school; you owe it to the school”. So we had another fifteen on the cast list but still needed the same again. A sometimes useful attribute of first year boys is that they are generally small and can be bullied. “I saw you talking in Assembly; do you want a detention or do you want to volunteer for the school play?” Wise choice. That gave us the full cast that we needed.

It should be pointed out that many of the characters in Shakespeare's casts are essentially “extras” and have little or nothing to say, except perhaps something like “yes my lord”. Even rugby players can be trained to say that in a couple of weeks. This is where we cast our “volunteers”.

Those familiar with MacBeth will remember that towards the end of the play the rival armies (actually about 8-10 soldiers of each) troop onto and off the stage in successive scenes, hearing what a messenger has to say, being exhorted, or whatever. We hadn't made one army out of rugby players and one out of first year boys as that would be giving the game away; it would have been obvious who would win. So we mixed them up. The result was a succession of scenes in which two motley crews consisting of some hefty 6ft rugby players, looking rather formidable in their military gear, and some diminutive first year boys, lagging behind and dragging their swords behind them because they were too heavy to carry, trooped on and off the stage. The audience loved it. They howled with laughter and brought the house down. And so we turned MacBeth into a comedy.

There was one piece of isnpired casting in all this, and that was me. I was cast as a witch; in fact the first (lead) witch. I was going through puberty at the time and never knew whether the voice that came out of me was going to be a growl or a squeak. Ideal for a witch. I am still immensely proud of having been the lead witch in the first performance of MacBeth as a comedy. We never got to do Hamlet when I was at school but you can be sure that, if we had, it would have been exceptional.

This And That

This And That

I realise that I haven't written anything for a while but there has been little to write about, although much to enjoy. Late spring/early summer is here and with it the asparagus and strawberry season, coronilla, lilac, irises and Judas and tamarisk trees blooming everywhere and a decent number of hot afternoons and balmy evenings; all very much as usual for the time of year but nonetheless hugely enjoyable. This year the season is undoubtedly a few weeks ahead of itself and I have already planted my hanging baskets with petunia surfina (blue, of course).

Next week my daughter Natalie and her husband Andy will be visiting for a week so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the weather will feel inclined to celebrate too, keep the sun shining as it has been and shut down the Mistral wind. I'm sure we will enjoy the week together anyway.

I've been playing boules regularly in Buis and received a gratifying number of comments to the effect that the English should all go home (meaning I'm winning too often). On that note, the EU referendum in the UK has been of some concern to me and I've been following the results of polls with interest. Living here, I very much hope the result will be to stay in the EU simply from a personal point of view. However, I also think that would be the best result for the UK. Economically that is definitely the case. Even ignoring comments to that effect from the IMF, World Bank, OECD and other global economic entities it seems obvious to me that the UK outside the EU would need a trade agreement with the EU, given that the EU accounts for something like 50% of the UK economy, which it is difficult to believe could be replaced from elsewhere. And given the experience of Switzerland, Norway and others outside the EU, such an agreement would cost just about as much as the admittedly high cost of membership. So any presumed saving from the cost of membership would be an illusion.

And I have little sympathy with those who cry freedom, the freedom to run the UK as Britons want, because I regard that as an illusion too. Nobody likes the idea that external powers can impose unwelcome measures but the fact is that the major influences on the world are and will continue to be the major powers, the USA, China, Russia and the asiatic bloc (and the EU); and the UK will have to live within the bounds of what they impose with probably less influence as a lone voice voice outside the EU than as an important voice within it. Of course the EU needs urgent and serious reforms but Angela Merkel has expressed the hope that the UK will remain within the EU to help implement those, an admission that reform would have Germany's powerful backing. And immigration is really irrelevant as an issue. Schengen is dead. The EU may seek to deny it but individual EU member countries have already dismantled it and are not about to resurrect it, whatever treaties state: RIP. Simply taking power from the Commission and devolving it to the European parliament would be an important step, at a blow removing accusations of being undemocratic and forcing realism on all future measures. Elected politicians don't vote for measures that make them unpopular.

So I'm looking forward to meeting and greeting more summer visitors and enjoying the coming months.

Moving Web Address

Were Moving

I'm in the process of moving this blog to a new host service which should allow it to be seen be more surfers. I can't be sure exactly when the new host servcie will cut in but, when it does, the new address will be a sinple change: from www.anenglishmaninprovence.blogspot.com to www.anenglishmaninprovence.com. The “blogspot” simply gets dropped. To continue to view the blog, use the current address, the one you always have, until you can't find the blog; then use the new address. I hope that is straightforward for you.

The EU And Memoirs

Exmples

One counter example can destroy a thesis but one good example can iluminate a point. Way back in July 2012 I described the example I'd been searching for but never until then found to illustrate the Year 2000 computer problem. Now I think I have the example Iwant to illustrate the immigration dilemma. The focal point was a discussion we had in the English conversation class on the subject of immigration, at which a full range of views was expressed. My example is as follows.

If soemone knocks on your door late at night, cold, wet and hungry, you can if you are kind let them in, dry them, warm them up and feed them, before sending them out into the big wide world again. Over a period of, say, a year, you could do that a hundred times or more without seriously disrupting your life or that of your family. It helps if the incomers know and respect your way of life but a few who don't shouldn't present a major problem. However, if 100 cold, wet and hungry people all knock on your door at the same time, then you have a problem however kind you are. The problem is exacerbated if they don't know your culture. That, I think, is a main part of the current immigration problem in a nutshell.

EU Referendum

So the referendum on Britain remaining in the EU will take place in four months' time. I am in favour of Britain staying in, in part for some very selfish reasons. I greatly value my life in France, helped in no small part by various cooperative agreements between Britain and France made through the EU. If Britain opts out I can apply for French citizenship since I already have the basic qualifications but having those is not necessarily a guarantee of acceptance.

I often criticise the EU in these posts and don't retract any of the criticisms. I think the EU is badly in need of radical reform. I haven't been paying much attention to David Cameron's negotiations as I have regarded them as largely irrelevant but he does seem to have gained an important point: the national power of veto against any further steps to increase political integration. In fact, I suspect that he gained this point because many other countries in the EU want it for themselves. The EU bigwigs undoubtedly want an EU as integrated as are the states of the USA but I doubt that is possible and, more importantly, I doubt that the people of most European countries want it either.

I'm not able to comment on the economics of Britain being in or out. They are as opaque to me as they seem to be for even qualified commentators. That is obviously a most important question for Britain but much less so for me, although it concerns my children. I think that the very best things that the EU has achieved have been arrived at through close cooperation, cooperative agreements rather than integration. And I would like to see the EU achieve much more of the same, as I think it can do. To do that, however, it will have to undergo reform and I think Britain could play an important role in pushing it towards that. The link between the EU commission and the people of Europe has been broken and needs to be repaired. That is a role I would like to see Britain play but it could do it only from inside the EU.

Memoirs

I have decided to write my memoirs and am a fair way through doing so. The idea occurred for three reasons. Firstly I suggested to a friend the same age as me, who had had an interesting childhood, that she should do so for her grandchild. Secondly, I have just finished reading a book, Stoner, a fictional biography of an inconsequential American academic which proved a good read. And thirdly I am interested in gauges of how much the world changes between generations, for instance between my mother's generation and that of my children. My mother lived in her early life some 50 miles from the sea but got to see it only when she was 17; she was in her 40s when she first went abroad. I saw the sea when I was too young to remember and first went abroad when I was 16. My daughter first went abroad and saw the sea when she was 9 months old, in France, and had her first birthday in California. 

Another example is when I was talking to friends and their 14 year-old granddaughter on the terrace outside the Bar du Pont.  The granddaughter had a mobile phone and I asked her if she knew it had a small computer inside it.  She did.  I said that when I had first worked with a computer in 1965, one much less powerful than that in her phone, it would have been too large to fit in the whole of the Bar du Pont and its terrace.  She had difficulty believing that.  Those kind of perceptions get lost between generations.

My memoirs will not be for publication, on paper or electronically. They are for my children (and me). I hope they will offer a clarification for them of why I am what I am and some insights into how the world was before they were born.

Health And The EU

Health Services And The NHS

In my last post I related a good experience that friend Steve had here with the French health system and implied that he wouldn't have had as good an experience with the NHS. Friend David in Scotland responded with an equally good experience that his wife Hazel had with the NHS there. I'll recount it in his own words.

“Hazel woke up one morning with a very painful eye. She got an appointment with the GP at about 10am. The GP said she needed to go to the Eye hospital and she would make an appointment. We returned home; at about 12 midday the phone rang and it was the GP to say she had got an immediate appointment so we drove to the Eye hospital . It was difficult to park so I dropped Hazel off saying I'd circle till I found a parking spot and then come in to the hospital to see how she was getting on. I circled a couple of times and then as I passed the entrance still looking for a parking space I saw Hazel coming down the steps having been succesfully treated and feeling fine. We were back home by 2pm . This is the story I always tell to anyone who knocks the NHS and there have been many other occcasions when we have been well looked after and not had to wait very long for treatment.

Maybe first class and speedy treatment happens only in Scotland but I suspect the media love to publish horror stories and these have coloured everyone's views of the NHS in England. There have been a few letters in the “i” (my favourite newspaper) of similar stories of good and rapid treatment even for minor complaints.”

I think David makes a useful corrective comment and have to admit that I never had any cause for complaint at the treatment I received from the NHS when I was in England. However my core point remains. It simply isn't economically viable for any national health service to offer a complete range of treatments for every ailment; indeed, as the average age of the European population increases so it will become decreasingly viable, both for health and ancillary care services. So there has to be some form of limitation, some form of compromise to produce an optimal solution. The question is: how can that comromise best be made? Totally ruling out any factor (as a matter of principle) doesn't make finding a good solution any easier.

Spring Already?

We've had a week of unusually clement weather. Flowers that don't usually appear at this time of year are merrily blooming, I've been playing boules in the afternoons in my shirt sleeves and Mont Ventoux has no visible snow (from down below) on its summit. I've never before known Mont Ventoux to be bereft of now at this time of year; it doesn't bode well for the winter sports trade at the ski stations. A sign of global warming or a blip? We'll have to wait around 300 years to get a decent perspective on that but don't have that long if we need to do anything about it.

The EU Again

I am in favour of the UK remaining part of the EU but have to admit that recent events make me sympathise with those in the UK who want the UK to leave. David Cameron's attempts at renegotiation strike me as a largely irrelevant side show, window dressing rather than addressing the core issues. EU President Juncker has been reported as complaining of the lack of action by individual members of the EU over the immigrant crisis. Lack of action by individual members? What about action by the EU? The EU has spent billions of euros creating embassies all over the place for no purpose that anyone can sensibly define. It wants to create a European armed force that could take no action at all unless 28 countries with differing agendas could agree to it. It seems more and more that the EU wants an ever expanding budget to create an ever larger bureaucracy but, when practical problems arise, it wants individual member states to resolve them. That doesn't bode well for a pro-EU result from the UK referendum.

The cost per capita in the UK of EU membership is already high and seems bound to get higher. So what is the return if the EU can't act on practical problems? If Greece is pushed out, as seems likely, and the UK opts out, the cost of membership per capita for other countries will rise steeply. Is that what is needed to get the EU to reform itself? Because it will surely have to then.