French Windows

It's not all bad

2011-11-02T18:04:00.026+01:00

Due to personal problems – of which I’m sure you’ve heard quite enough – I haven’t written anything for a while. Actually, I’ve been waiting for someone to set my car on fire and although I have had to rush down in the middle of the night a couple of times to drive it away from the blazing vehicles surrounding it, my car is still more or less intact. So nothing interesting to report there, I’m afraid.

And I’m certain you have no desire to hear how daily life has become a metaphor, rich in symbolism, for my state of mind. How computers, cookers and fridges have turned against me, how my piano no longer plays F # or A, how the shutter in the sitting room refuses to close while the one in the bedroom refuses to open or how the front door handle now comes away in my hand because somebody tried to break in.

And is it fair that in the third flush of youth, my body has started to fall apart? The ignominy of having to search for my glasses in order to read the small print on a packet of Cup O’ Soup! Gluten and nuts are devious devils…

As for my brain…well, I needed to do a bit of spring cleaning up there as it was getting a bit cluttered and I’m convinced this is the reason my memory is not what it was (as far as I can remember, that is). So I took myself and my arthritic knees off for a walk in the mountains.

The last time I went for a walk in the mountains, I nearly had to be carried down. Now, I have absolutely no problem walking up a mountain – in fact, the only reason I haven’t climbed Everest before is because I hate getting my feet cold. However, as I have developed arthritis in both knees, walking down feels like someone is sawing my legs off very slowly with a rusty cheese knife.

So I had to buy walking sticks. Cool, technical-looking ones, of course, so people will think I’m a seasoned hiker rather than an arthritic old bag.

And off I went to Chamrousse.

Chamrousse is a ski resort perched above Grenoble in the Belledonne range of mountains. It was first mentioned in 1260, when it was referred to as Culmen Rufus (Red Peak) and it appears on the map for the first time in 1744 although the discovery of Roman coins at the summit indicates that the Romans were familiar with the peak.

After the creation of the Uriage spa in 1823, curistes would regularly climb to the top of Chamrousse as part of their treatment. I’m not sure how efficient this was as the waters of Uriage are used to treat arthritis amongst other things. Perhaps it was just a scam by doctors to have their patients coming back for more?

The ski lift was built in 1952 and was deemed to be the safest and fastest in France, along with that of Courchevel. And of course, the Winter Olympics were held here in 1968.

My destination was the Lac Achard, a tiny lake above the resort and apparently named after a man who once owned a hut nearby. It’s an easy walk from the ski resort and at an altitude of 1 917 metres, the view is wonderful.

I sat in the autumn sunlight, contemplating the reflections playing on the surface of the water, and realised how fortunate I was to be able to enjoy such stunning scenery. My mind cleared and my problems suddenly seemed so insignificant…

Then I reached into my rucksack for the bag of delicious apples I had hurriedly packed for my picnic and pulled out…a bag of lemons.

Is Somebody trying to tell me something?

Au voleur

2011-08-30T10:55:00.007+01:00

On Saturday morning, I was rudely awakened from my sleep by a neighbour shouting down the intercom “Madame, they’ve smashed your car, they’ve smashed your car! Get the police!”

As I was wearing a henna-stained nightie, two shower caps and a woollen bonnet, I couldn’t rush down immediately. However, once my Golden Oak locks had been rinsed and dried, I nervously made my way downstairs with a feeling of dread.

If I didn’t know better, I would say my car is cursed. The very first time I parked it in front of my flat, it got keyed. Then some drunken thugs backed into it, leaving a dent. Once, I had to call out the breakdown truck at two in the morning because the car just stopped as I was driving someone home. I still cringe at the memory of Mr Breakdown Man saying “Um – you’ve run out of petrol”. To be fair, I use LPG but nobody told me it needed petrol in order to run. Nobody ever tells me anything.

Then I had a violent tussle with a kerbstone in the rush hour and had to buy a whole new wheel.

And now this.

In fact, when I saw what they’d done to the car, I was relieved. Only the window was smashed and the radio-CD player stolen. Or rather, the façade had been stolen. I’m a bit thick when it comes to practical matters and I hadn’t realized that the façade was detachable and I was supposed to take it off in order to prevent people smashing the window to steal it.

I know now.

I took photos, like the police told me to, using the last of my precious ink to print them and photocopy all the documents they asked for. Then I spent two hours waiting at the commissariat and reading every single copy of Femme Actuelle and Auto Moto before a policewoman took my statement. She was far more interested in the fact that I’d been born in Cambridge than looking at my photos and kept throwing oddly inappropriate phrases at me in broken English.

I finally got through to the insurance company who told me they didn’t need the dépôt de plainte at all and that they couldn’t reimburse the radio or – and I swear I detected a snigger here - suggest how to extract the George Benson CD.

Thank goodness for Golden Oak Herbal hair dye, that’s all I can say. The stress of living here is turning my hair completely grey…

Notes

2011-08-07T21:10:00.018+01:00

I volunteered to play the piano in church last Sunday. I have no idea what possessed me to volunteer, given my previous rabbit-in-the-headlights experiences. Although I can play the hymns perfectly in the emptiness of my own sitting room, I am invariably struck by the musical equivalent of Writer’s Block in front of an audience.

Child prodigy I was not. My piano teacher was a lonely spinster (am I still allowed to use that word?) whom I could manipulate into telling me her life story for the duration of the lesson. By the time the following pupil arrived, I had managed to avoid the piano entirely. So I saw no point in practising.

Probably the best-known composer for the piano is Frédéric Chopin (1810 – 1849), who was Polish. His father was French though and Chopin himself came to Paris in 1831 and stayed there for the rest of his life.

Now, he was a child prodigy. Already composing at the age of six and giving public concerts when he was seven, he was frequently compared to Mozart and Beethoven. His success as a composer and performer led him to Europe, where he stopped off in Paris and settled there for good.

In 1836, Chopin met the feminist author, George Sand, at a party. He didn’t fancy her much at first – in fact, he found her repulsive and asked, in a way that would do Prince Philip proud:

“But is she really a woman?”

Nevertheless, they became lovers. Their relationship was difficult as Chopin was often depressed and always ill. In 1847, Sand published a novel where one of the main characters bore a strong resemblance to Chopin and the portrayal was far from flattering. Chopin went into a big sulk and before the year was out, the relationship was over.

He died aged thirty-nine of suspected tuberculosis.

Here’s a Chopin Nocturne: Opus 9, n° 1:

Camille Saint Saens (1835 – 1921) was another child prodigy and he was simply brilliant at everything. He had perfect pitch and began learning to play the piano when he was two. He wrote his first composition aged four and he was five when he first appeared in public.

Saint Saens had learnt to read and write by the time he was three. At seven, he was studying Latin. He was also a scientist, a mathematician, a philosopher, a poet and a playwright.

Oh – and he played the organ in church too, although I’m sure he didn’t stop half-way through a hymn mumbling “Hang on, hang on, I can get this bit…”

Saint Saens married a woman half his age when he was forty and had two sons, both of whom died within weeks of each other. He blamed his wife for the second death (the child had fallen out of a window) and left her. She never heard from him again. The fact that he was rumoured to be homosexual might have had something to do with it too.

He died of pneumonia in Algiers at the ripe old age of eighty-six.

Here’s the Andante from his piano concerto n°2:

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1924) studied music at the Ecole de Musique Classique et Religieuse in Paris. Camille Saint Saens was his piano teacher there and they became life-long friends.

He also earned his living as a church organist but he didn’t get on very well with the priest. This is because Fauré used to sneak out between hymns for a crafty cigarette and when he turned up dishevelled one morning after a night on the tiles, the priest asked him to resign.

In 1905, Fauré was appointed head of the Conservatoire de Paris where his ideas were considered far too modern for certain members, who promptly left. It was also around this time that he started to go deaf.

His love life was a bit of a shambles. Brought up by a wet-nurse and packed off to boarding school when he was nine, he wasn’t exactly familiar with normal family life. He married in 1883 but was hardly ever at home, due to his horreur du domicile. He also had several mistresses including the married singer Emma Bardac, who was also the mistress of Claude Debussy.

Fauré died of pneumonia in Paris at the age of seventy-nine.

The following clip should bring back comforting memories for those old enough to remember Listen with Mother. Here is the Dolly suite…are you sitting comfortably?

Claude Debussy (1862 – 1918) was born in Paris. He started taking piano lessons at the age of seven and entered the Conservatoire when he was ten.

From the beginning, Debussy was a rebel. He rejected the rigid, traditional methods of composition in favour of unusual intervals and dissonances which shocked his teachers. I’m quite good at unusual intervals and dissonances myself so I can sympathise.

Between 1885 and 1887, he studied at the Villa Medici in Rome. He didn’t like it much there either and complained about the company, the accommodation and the food. He didn’t even like Rome and got quite depressed about it all.

But his turbulent love-life surely provided relief from all that boredom. He was a heartless womaniser, having affairs with all sorts of women, including married ones. He left one girl for her best friend, Rosalie, a fashion model, whom he married. She turned out to be a bit thick and Debussy got bored again and embarked on an affair with the ubiquitous Emma Bardac (see above). When poor Rosalie found out, she tried to commit suicide by shooting herself and consequently most of Debussy’s friends turned against him. Well, he only had himself to blame…

Debussy’s other claim to fame is that he was one of the first people to undergo a colostomy operation. He eventually died an unromantic death from rectal cancer at the age of fifty-six.

Listen to Two Arabesques:

Erik Satie (1866 – 1925) was born in Honfleur but moved to Paris when he was four. His mother was English (born in London to Scottish parents) and when she died in 1872, Satie was sent back to Honfleur to live with his paternal grandparents. When they died six years later, he went back to live with his father, who remarried shortly after.

Satie’s step-mother was a piano teacher. Either she wasn’t a very good one or – more likely – Satie was a bad student. When he began his piano studies at the Conservatoire in 1879, his teachers soon let him know he had no talent whatsoever and labelled him the ‘laziest student in the Conservatoire’.

He was sent away for two and a half years, but was readmitted in 1885. Unfortunately, he was still deemed to have no talent, so Satie stormed off to join the army. He managed to stick it out for four months and then, desperate to escape, he endeavoured to catch bronchitis by sleeping outside in the middle of winter with no shirt on. It worked and he was discharged.

He moved to Montmartre and began to hang out with all the arty types in Le Chat Noir café-cabaret. During this period, he started publishing his Gymnopédies – he was, after all, more gifted as a composer than a pianist.

In 1893, Satie met Suzanne Valadon, an artist’s model and an artist in her own right. After their first night together, Satie asked her to marry him. She wouldn’t and he became obsessed with her. She finally left him six months later and poor Satie was heartbroken. It appears to have been his only intimate relationship (so where was Emma Bardac when he needed her?).

He died, aged fifty-nine, of cirrhosis of the liver.

And on that cheerful note, I leave you with his Gnossienne n°1:

By the way, the piano playing at church went very well. There were a couple of moments where I inadvertently slipped down a semi-tone or two, lending an interesting jazzy element to What a friend we have in Jesus, but – hey - there’s nothing wrong with dissonance. If it was good enough for Debussy…

Losing it

2011-07-21T20:43:00.003+01:00

I’ve spent most of my life trying to lose weight and there’s absolutely nothing I don’t know about calories, ketones or cottage cheese.

I have consumed gallons of glutinous milk-shakes, swallowed fistfuls of fibrous pills and detoxed myself dizzy. I’ve even joined slimming clubs in the hope of humiliating myself into submission.

But nothing ever worked for long and it was all so boring and expensive…especially the slimming clubs.

French slimming clubs are no different from English ones. You pay to get weighed once a week by a celery-stick thin woman who clucks as she notes down your weight loss (or gain, in my case) while you stand there shivering with indignation and cold because it’s the middle of February and you’re wearing a chiffon sundress and no shoes. It’s worth a try but it fools nobody.

And while food is indeed an interesting subject, there’s a limit to the amount of enthusiasm I can drum up for endless discussions of fat-free fairy cakes, frozen yoghourt and Naughty Doughnuts. So I left the local slimming club before they threw me out.

However, I have finally discovered the secret to easy weight loss.

It started with nuts: peanuts, cashew nuts, hazelnuts…anything with a shell. I found myself writhing in agony at the mere whiff of a walnut.

As someone who can finish a jar of organic peanut butter at one sitting, this discovery came as a shock verging on the anaphylactic.

And once my doctor had ensured, through a series of scans and examinations of various bodily fluids, that my intestines had not taken up macramé and my womb was not about to drop out, she came to the conclusion that I was suffering from food intolerance.

Gill Baconnier intolerant to food? That is one oxymoron of a diagnosis.

And it didn’t stop there.

I suddenly became intolerant to gluten, too, which seems pop up in the strangest of places: vinaigrette, chocolate, crisps, beer…in fact, I’m having trouble finding anything to eat at all.

The Health Food shop is no help. Their sad little stock of gluten-free products consists of urine-coloured pasta, bread the texture of damp sand and biscuits that are so expensive they should be chained to the shelf.

I could, of course, get an allowance from the Social Security to enable me to buy these ersatz products masquerading as food, but I haven’t got the courage to fill in all the forms. I suppose I’ll just have to do without.

And that’s the secret. Do without. I’ve lost ten kilos so far so it works well.

But what I wouldn’t give for a Naughty Doughnut…

Le Plug

2011-06-15T10:57:00.013+01:00

When my children were young, my idea of a fun-day out was to drag them around the museums of Aix, pointing out interesting monuments on the way. For some reason, they were never quite as enthusiastic as I hoped they’d be.

What I needed then was a book like Operation Cézanne. That way, my girls would think they were simply reading a gripping adventure novel, unaware that they were also learning fascinating historical facts about Aix-en-Provence. Sneaky, eh ?

I suppose I was a bit late in getting the book written and published as my children are adults now (they’re used to it: I still haven’t got around to making that doll’s house I promised them). Still, that doesn’t stop them from enjoying the adventures of Charlie Travers, Time Traveller, which they have described as Enid-Blyton-meets-Doctor-Who.

And I hope you’ll enjoy it too, even if you’re not aged between eight and twelve!

Operation Cézanne is the first in the series of Charlie Travers, Time Traveller books. The wonderful front cover was done by the talented Sybil Harris

You can find Charlie here:

Amazon UK

Bongo Publishing

and on all the other Amazon sites, of course.

You can read the blurb and the first chapter below.

Sometimes, twelve year-old Charlie Travers wishes he’d never been born a Time traveller. He never goes anywhere exciting, his mum makes him eat horrible food she brings back from the Middle Ages - and he’s still rubbish at history.

Then Charlie receives a mysterious plea for help from the past and when his parents take him back to Aix-en-Provence in 1902, he’s rather hoping he’ll find out who sent it. He has no idea he is about to embark on a breath-taking journey through Time, where kidnappers, dinosaurs and a stolen painting will be the least of his worries…

Charlie Travers, Time Traveller

Chapter One

Sometimes, Charlie Travers wished he’d never been born a Time traveller.

Having stomped as loudly as he could up the stairs, slammed his bedroom door and flung his schoolbag across the room, he now threw himself on to his bed.

“Aix-en-Provence,” he yelled at the closed door. “Boring, boring, boring. How come Ade gets to go to the Boer Wars and the French Revolution and I get to – to - to go to a stupid bath in Aix-en-Provence?”

Mrs Travers, who had been boiling something that smelt disgusting, was now coming up the stairs, humming to herself.

“Never mind, love,” she said as she walked into Charlie’s bedroom without knocking. “Have a nice bowl of frumenty, it’ll cheer you up.”

“It’ll make me throw up,” snapped Charlie. His mum was forever cooking stuff she’d discovered on a Time tour. In fact, she did most of her shopping in the Middle Ages because she said the food was better for him. Charlie couldn’t see how something that looked like sick and smelt like a cow pat could be good for him at all and he pushed the bowl away.

Mrs Travers sat on the bed next to Charlie and ruffled his hair with her free hand.

“Oops, sorry love,” she said, picking out the bits of soggy frumenty that had got stuck in his fringe.

Charlie scowled.

“Mum, can’t we go somewhere exciting for once? Like Egypt? Or China?”

Mrs Travers put the bowl of frumenty on the bedside table and rubbed her hands on her skirt.

“Well, love, you see your father’s got this nasty rash on his b…”

“Stop!” shouted Charlie, sticking his fingers in his ears. “Anyway, why do I have to come? You’ll only be gone for ten minutes.”

It is a common misconception that no time passes at all when you travel in time and that you always get back to the point you left. This simply isn’t true. And even less so where Chronic Tours was concerned, which was the Time travel agency used by Charlie’s family. You were lucky to get back to the same decade with them.

“Well, I know for a fact that that nice girl, Cynthia, is coming along,” said Mrs Travers as she stood up. “She’ll be company for you.”

That made things even worse. Cynthia was a stuck-up, bossy know-it-all and it was bad enough having to sit next to her in class never mind go on holiday with her.

Charlie knew it was no use arguing with his mum. He slumped back on to his pillow and muttered: “Old people with rheumatism and rashes. Fantastic. Can’t wait.”

Mrs Travers smiled. “Eat your frumenty before it gets cold, love.” She shut the door quietly behind her.

“Wish I had my own Time machine,” Charlie grumbled. Of course, that was practically impossible. Only multi-millionaires could afford their own Time machine and even then, the upkeep was beyond the means of most Time travellers. Charlie had tried to persuade his parents to consider a Time Share, where they would buy a machine with other families. But his dad said it was still too expensive and they’d only have the Time machine two weeks a year.

The problem was, his mum and dad never wanted to do anything exciting, ever. Even when they weren’t Time travelling, they didn’t do things other parents did. Ade’s mum and dad were Time travellers too but they took him hang gliding and canoeing and skiing in the holidays. Ade even went to summer camp every year with Chronic Tours but Charlie’s dad said Roman Britain was full of hooligans and he wouldn’t send his dog there. They didn’t have a dog but that wasn’t the point. The point was Charlie’s mum and dad treated Charlie like a baby and he was nearly twelve. He was fed up of it.

Charlie wished there were more Time travellers in Warpington. Well, more children anyway. There were plenty of oldies – he saw them regularly on Time tours. But the only children he knew were Ade and snotty Cynthia. If there were more, he’d never met them; then again, it’s not something you go around telling people. You’d get locked up if you did.

You had to be careful, especially in history lessons. All time travellers were good at history, obviously, but sometimes the history books got it wrong and if you started talking about stuff that wasn’t in the books, you could be in trouble. It happened to Ade, once. Ade wasn’t in Charlie’s class so Charlie hadn’t heard it first hand but it was all around the school at break-time. The conversation had gone something like this:

Mr Bradbury …and during the Battle of Hastings, King Harold was killed. How did he die? Ademola?

Ade: Um, he got his thumb caught in his hauberk and slid off his horse, sir.

Mr Bradbury: Don’t try to be funny with me, lad.

Ade (puzzled): I’m not sir. It’s true, I saw him…um…I mean…um

Mr Bradbury: Stay behind after class, Ademola. We’ll see who’s laughing then…

Ade had to write At the Battle of Hastings, King Harold was shot through the eye with an arrow five-hundred times and he was grounded for a week by his dad.

Charlie suddenly remembered he had some history homework to do for Monday.

“Might as well do it now,” he muttered, swinging his legs off the bed and grabbing his schoolbag. He had to write an essay on The English Civil War and as his parents refused to take him there, he’d have to look stuff up himself.

He was rummaging through a pile of books on the floor when something caught his eye. On one of his black trainers (that was on the floor too – he didn’t know where the other one was), a yellow patch was forming. It grew bigger and brighter until it resembled a post-it note and then – as Charlie had expected – letters began to form.

“Wow!” he said as he grabbed the note. “A Time slip!”

Charlie had never been sent a Time slip before. In fact, he’d only ever seen one once. It had materialised on the television screen one evening while his dad was watching the snooker. His dad was really annoyed because the Time slip appeared right in the middle and blocked his view of a particularly tricky combination-shot. It had been from Auntie Maureen. She was lost in a souk in Marrakech, in the fourteenth century and wanted to know if someone could please find her. Charlie’s dad had carried on watching the snooker but someone must have found her because she turned up the following Christmas with a box of Turkish Delight and a very deep suntan.

But this Time slip was for Charlie! He waited impatiently for the words to become clear then read them out loud:

“Aix-en-Provence, twelfth of June nineteen-oh-two. Help Perpetua fi…”

He waited for the end of the sentence but it didn’t come. What did ‘fi’ mean? Who was Perpetua? And how come the Time slip was dated the very year Charlie and his family would be travelling to?

Charlie grinned. He put the Time slip in his pocket and went downstairs, whistling.

For once, he was quite looking forward to going on holiday.

Travels with a donkey

2011-05-29T18:26:00.009+01:00

I went for a lovely walk in the Vercors the other day, with a donkey called Marguerite. She was – naturally – a little stubborn at times, dipping her head without warning to chomp at the grass and refusing to budge, no matter how hard I tugged. But she was beautiful and sweet and I would love to renew the experience.

When I do, it will be to walk the GR70 in the Cévennes, otherwise known as the Stevenson trail. Robert Louis Stevenson set off in 1878 with the intention of having an adventure and writing a book about it in order to make the money he needed to be with the woman he loved. What a romantic soul…

He arrived in Le Monastier, a village about fifteen kilometres from Le-Puy-en-Velay and stocked up on food and equipment, much of which he would eventually have to throw away. He also had one of the first sleeping-bags made, which he designed himself. Then he bought a donkey, Modestine, for ‘sixty-five francs and a glass of brandy’. The villagers helped him to load her up (quite incompetently it would turn out) and he set off one bright October morning full of optimism.

However, Modestine soon put a stop to his good spirits. She walked so slowly that Stevenson found himself not so much walking as lingering on one leg, alternately. If he walked ahead or behind her, she would simply stop and start munching grass. Although he was loathe to ‘brutalise this innocent creature’, he managed to make her walk faster by hitting her with a cane. But this seemed to distress her (and him) so much, that he relented and resigned himself to shuffling for the rest of the hundred-and-twenty-mile journey.

Then he met a local peasant who, when he had stopped laughing, assured Stevenson that the donkey was just play-acting. He gave him a switch to use instead of a cane and told him to yell ‘Proot’ and he would have no more trouble. I do wonder if the peasant was pulling his leg as well – I mean, would shouting ‘fart’ at a donkey really help?

It didn’t. Modestine grew increasingly stubborn and no amount of prooting would budge her from her chosen path or pace. She led him round in circles and refused to go up hills until Stevenson was convinced she was ‘filled with the demon’. It wasn’t until another peasant offered Stevenson a goad – a long stick with a pin at the end – that the two began to make progress. Stevenson no longer had qualms about chastising the donkey, so exasperated had he become with her.

Stevenson finally arrived in Saint-Jean-du-Gard twelve days after setting out. He had always been regarded as an eccentric figure but this adventure had surely cemented his reputation. Nevertheless, he was one of the first to popularise hiking and camping as a recreational activity and over a hundred years later, people are still walking the Stevenson trail.

Stevenson was able to marry the woman he loved (phew!) and went on to write the classic novels that we all know so well.

And Modestine?

Well, he sold her, saddle and all, for thirty-five francs. ‘The pecuniary gain is not obvious,’ he said, ‘but I had bought freedom into the bargain.’

Well, at least I won’t have to buy my donkey…

Communication

2011-04-19T16:38:00.013+01:00

My dad bought me my first computer. I remember the day well: my parents arrived from England (many years ago, in another life) and Dad announced that he’d got me a nice little typewriter for my birthday. It was a computer, of course, and since then – well, I wouldn’t know how to live without one…

In those days, there was no email or Google and I used it solely for writing excruciatingly bad short stories in lurid green Locoscript. I am so relieved my floppy disks are now obsolete ...

Dad loved his computer and when he died last year, Mum decided she might as well learn how to use the flippin’ thing and went on a course. Once she’d discovered how to switch it on, there was no stopping her. Her vocabulary’s a little shaky still – she ‘prints’ words in ‘Google’ and gets confused when everything goes ‘negative’ – but I do understand what she means (although I was a bit startled when she told me my sister had sent her coach tickets via ‘You Tube’).

And now, she’s my ‘friend’ on Facebook!

I immediately warned my children that they should think carefully about what they wrote on their Facebook page and that anything incriminating should be written in French rather than English. I’m a bit worried about some of their photos too – it’s all pouting, boobs and pierced tongues. Facebook can give you a nasty shock if you aren’t careful – and I should know as I’ve had a few myself.

Communication by email, text messages and telephone is quick and easy but don’t you hanker after a lovely, long handwritten letter sometimes? I can’t remember when I last wrote one, with pen and paper.

Before the advent of New Technology, people knew how to write a good letter. One of the earliest examples of correspondence in France is that exchanged between those tragic lovers, Héloïse and Abélard in the eleventh century. Peter Abélard was a French philosopher and was considered to be one of the greatest – and most controversial – thinkers of his time. He fell in love with his pupil, the beautiful Héloïse, who was the niece of Canon Fulbert. She got pregnant, they married in secret and…a very angry Uncle Fulbert had Abélard castrated. Héloïse ended her life as a reluctant nun while Abélard became a monk (well, he was going to have to live like one for the rest of his life so why not?). Héloïse wrote hundreds of passionate letters to her former lover who was rather less passionate in his replies. Here is an extract from one of her letters:

You know, beloved, as the whole world knows, how much I have lost in you, how at one wretched stroke of fortune that supreme act of flagrant treachery robbed me of my very self in robbing me of you; and how my sorrow for my loss is nothing compared with what I feel for the manner in which I lost you.

Madame de Sévigné (1626-1696) is probably the best-known letter-writer in French history. She was the widow of the marquis de Sévigné, who got himself shot in a duel. When her daughter left for Provence in 1671, she felt as if her 'heart and soul had been ripped out' and began to write her letters – at the rate of two or three a week – which were published posthumously by her descendents. There are over one thousand of them…here is an extract :

And what do you think I am doing, my poor dear? Loving you, thinking of you, giving way to emotion at every turn more than I would like, concerning myself with your affairs, worrying about what you think, feeling your sufferings and pains, wanting to suffer them for you if possible, removing anything unpleasant from your heart as I used to clear your room of any tiresome people I saw haunting it; in a word, my dear, understanding deeply what it means to love someone more than oneself.

Voltaire (1694-1798) was quite a letter-writer too. His famous Lettres Philosophiques are amusing and satirical essays about life in England (they would have made a great blog) but he also wrote more than twenty thousand private letters. Here are some lines from a love-letter he wrote from prison to Olympe Dunover:

I am a prisoner here in the name of the King; they can take my life, but not the love that I feel for you. Yes, my adorable mistress, to-night I shall see you, and if I had to put my head on the block to do it.

Victor Hugo (1802-1885) wrote beautiful letters to his wife, Adèle. He certainly had a way with words…and with women, it seems. He had several mistresses and probably wrote similar letters to all of them. Here’s a letter he wrote to Adèle – let’s hope she was the sort of person who didn’t believe everything she read:

My dearest,

When two souls, which have sought each other for, however long in the throng, have finally found each other ...a union, fiery and pure as they themselves are... begins on earth and continues forever in heaven. This union is love, true love, ... a religion, which deifies the loved one, whose life comes from devotion and passion, and for which the greatest sacrifices are the sweetest delights.

This is the love which you inspire in me... Your soul is made to love with the purity and passion of angels; but perhaps it can only love another angel, in which case I must tremble with apprehension. Yours forever…

Finally, if you need a giggle, look up the coded letters of Alfred de Musset and George Sand. These letters are in fact fictitious and were written as a joke by somebody else. I haven’t included them because they’re a bit too rude (I’m getting prudish in my old age)…but they are rather clever.

Well, I’m off to check my email and perhaps I’ll send a text message to my daughter. You know the sort of thing: ur keys r here lol c u 2nite x

Well, it saves on stamps…

Spring Clean

2011-03-07T22:51:00.009+01:00

I have a magnet on my fridge that says: My idea of housework is to sweep the room with a glance and another that quite rightly proclaims: Dull women have immaculate houses.

However, as my French Windows have been looking a tad grubby lately, I decided to do a bit of Spring Cleaning. Well, it is the school holidays so I can hardly use lack of time as an excuse.

Once I’d located the broom and the duster, I set to work. I unearthed a few surprises along the way: furry fruit, mummified pizza, unpaid bills, the phone, the cat…I also threw a lot of things in the bin. The experience was so traumatic, I started to have doubts about the benefits of this cleaning lark. Then I remembered the time I was rushed to hospital after I’d squirted concentrated bleach into my eye and how, more recently, I nearly broke my nose when I walked slap-bang into the French windows because they were so clean…and that settled it. Housework is far too dangerous for the likes of me.

So I turned my attention to DIY – which stands for Destroy It Yourself, as I’m sure you know. I’d been meaning to put up a shelf in the kitchen for over a year (I need more surfaces to pile stuff on) and this seemed like the ideal opportunity. I grabbed the drill...

Now, I’m a bit nervous of drills – I’m afraid they’ll somehow leap out of my hand and turn on me in a frenzied, unprovoked attack and someone will find me the next day lying perforated beneath the stepladder. So I was very, very careful.

I drilled the first hole. Almost immediately, a whistling, whooshing sound filled the kitchen (it wasn’t that loud, but it’s a small kitchen). What had I done? I put my ear to the wall: it sounded like I’d drilled into Hades. Would the wall fall down? Maybe the kitchen was going to explode. Maybe the whole block of flats would suddenly collapse!

Fortunately, the housing office is just around the corner, so I ran and told them what I’d done.

“You’ve drilled into the ventilation shaft,” they said with a chuckle. “Not to worry.”

Still, it put me off drilling any more holes. I resorted to my old favourites of glue and double-sided carpet tape for the rest of the DIY jobs and it all looks perfectly fine.

The next thing I need to do, of course, is Spring Clean my mind. There’s an awful lot of clutter up there and one or two things I really ought to get rid of…but perhaps it can wait. I mean, it’s not even spring yet, is it?

Poetry

2011-02-13T21:22:00.015+01:00

To be perfectly honest, I’m not really in the mood for writing about love as I’m no longer sure I know what it means. And anyway, I’ve already written about it here

So I’ve turned my thoughts to poetry. After all, most poets have written about love so it’s a fitting subject for le Saint Valentin. The problem is, it’s also a vast subject, so I’ve had to limit myself to a handful of famous French poets, most of whom were tortured, angst-ridden, debauched souls with a penchant for drugs, alcohol and infidelity. So they obviously knew what they were talking about…

I wanted to begin with a brief description of poetic form. However, after several hours reading articles about it in books and on the Internet, I am thoroughly confused. I understand that most French poetry is syllabic and I know what an Alexandrine is (a twelve-syllable line probably named after the twelfth century Alexandrine romances in which Alexander the Great was the hero). But my eyes begin to glaze over when I read of mute ‘e’s being elided and hypermetrical when followed by vowels, and the significance of caesura, hiatus and hémistiches…

So let’s stick to the poets. And I apologize in advance that half of my post seems to be an html link. I have no idea why but I am not going to stay up all night trying to put it right. Just don't click - it will get you nowhere...

Pierre de Ronsard (1524 - 1585) was called the Prince of Poets by his generation. He was an epicurean although as far as I know, he wasn't particulary debauched. However, he did fall madly in love with a thirteen-year-old girl after having met her just once. It can't have been a mid-life crisis as he was only twenty at the time but it was definitely a silly crush. His infatuation prompted him to write a collection of poetry dedicated to her, called Les Amours de Cassandre. Here is the first verse of one of his poems, which has been learnt by heart by generations of schoolchildren:

Mignonne, allons voir si la rose

Qui ce matin avait déclose

Sa robe de pourpre au Soleil,

A point perdu cette vêprée

Les plis de sa robe pourprée,

Et son teint au vôtre pareil.

Moving on to the next century, we have Pierre de Marbeuf (1596 – 1645). Unfortunately, I was unable to discover any salacious details about him but I wanted to share one of his wonderful love poems with you. So here’s the first verse:

Et la mer et l’amour ont l’amour pour partage,

Et la mer est amère, et l’amour est amer,

L’on s’abîme en l’amour aussi bien qu’en la mer,

Car la mer et l’amour ne sont point sans orage.

Because I’m a sucker for romance, my favourite poets – both English and French – are the Romantics. The Romantics were often Very Naughty Indeed and one wonders how they ever found the time to write poetry at all, as they were mostly stoned, drunk or dying of syphilis.

Alphonse de Lamartine (1790 – 1869) came from a wealthy family but his roving eye and his gambling habit eventually led to his downfall. He had an affair with a married woman called Julie but she died the following year and after that, everything went downhill. Lamartine expired in true Romantic fashion of apoplexy whilst crippled with debt. Serves him right, I say.

Here is an extract from his poem, L’isolement:

Que me font ces vallons, ces palais, ces chaumières,
Vains objets dont pour moi le charme est envolé ?
Fleuves, rochers, forêts, solitudes si chères,
Un seul être vous manque, et tout est dépeuplé !

Charles Baudelaire (1821 – 1867) sponged off his mother and squandered his money on prostitutes - from whom he caught syphilis and gonorrhoea - and clothes. He is best known for his masterpiece Les Fleurs du Mal for which he was prosecuted for impropriety. Fascinated by perversion and the macabre, he died Romantically, an alcoholic and opium addict.

From Les Fleurs du Mal:

Un coeur tendre, qui hait le néant vast et noir,

Du passé lumineux recueille tout vestige!

Le soleil s’est noyé dans son sang qui se fige…

Ton souvenir en moi luit comme un ostensoir!

Paul Verlaine (1844 – 1896) abandoned his wife and son to hook up with fellow poet, Arthur Rimbaud. When Rimbaud decided to leave him, Verlaine shot him in the wrist in a drunken rage. He found himself in prison and when he came out, he tried to join a monastery but for some reason, they wouldn’t have him. His Romantic Reputation was tarnished somewhat when he went to teach at a school in Bournemouth but he soon regained it by returning to Paris and descending into drug addiction, alcoholism and abject poverty. He spent the rest of his life drinking absinthe in Parisian cafés.

Perhaps his most famous poem – and one familiar to all French school children – is:

And finally, the verses of poet Jacques Prévert (1900 – 1977) sung by Yves Montand:

As an afterthought, I’d like to subject you to one of my own love poems. It’s not in the same league as the above but that’s because they don’t stock absinthe at Carrefour and I can’t get hold of opium for love nor money (of which I have neither).

Still, at least it rhymes.

First kiss

I shall remember this night, years from now,
when life has drifted, settled in the cracks,
covering our tracks. I shall think of how
the summer moon slipped from her shroud
and bowed to peep between the chimney stacks,
beamed softly as you said my name out loud
and stooped to press your mouth against my own;
of how wind moaned, stars clustered, rivers gushed
while Time, in eagerness to tell, had flown.
And when existence palls, I’ll think of how
one night the fretful universe fell hushed -
and blush when I remember, years from now…

Happy Saint Valentine’s Day…xxx

Art

2011-01-19T22:36:00.010+01:00

I’m a great one for visiting art galleries and museums, as my children will attest in loud, groaning voices (I call it culture, they claim it was child abuse). Grenoble has some wonderful museums and I’ve been to most of them. There’s nothing like gazing at a work of art or an ancient artefact to raise your mind to a higher level, I say.

As my mind has been wallowing in the murky depths of self-pity for the last six months, I’ve been doing quite a bit of gazing. OK - some of it was navel gazing (although my navel is quite ancient) but mostly, I’ve been going to art galleries.

The Musée de Grenoble is one of the best art galleries in France with collections from the thirteenth to the twentieth century. Modern art makes me nervous so I spend my gazing time in the pre-twentieth century rooms: there is something soothing in the gleam of old oil paint and I never get tired of scrutinizing the faces that peer at me from across the centuries. I have to fight the urge to run my fingers over the canvases but the unnerving presence of the museum guard puts a stop to that. He follows me from room to room, eyes narrowed, as if he expects me to slip a Canaletto under my coat when nobody’s looking. I wish.

The Musée de Grenoble regularly hosts temporary exhibitions but these are usually too modern for me to understand. However, I once had two photos selected for a photography exhibition there called C’est dimanche and was invited to the vernissage. I assumed I was going along for a glass of wine, a couple of vol-au-vents and some arty small talk after which I could scuttle home. When I arrived, though, there was a camera crew standing in front of my photo, which had been blown up to gigantic proportions, waiting to interview me.

Not having prepared anything at all to say, I babbled my way through the interview, knowing that the minute it was over, I would come up with all kinds of witty observations. I did, of course, but it was too late. Isn’t that always the way?

The photo was of my dear dad and I’ve posted it below. He told everyone he met – with a twinkle in his eye - that his portrait was hanging on the wall of one of the most prestigious art galleries in France. My wonderful dad died in December but he left behind him a legacy of love and laughter. Just look at the photo and you’ll understand what I mean. He was seventy-two when it was taken…

One day, I decided to be adventurous and go along to Le Magasin, “one of France’s foremost sites dedicated to contemporary art since 1986”. The fact that it is housed in an old boilerworks on a disused industrial site should have given me an inkling of what to expect.

It was bloomin’ freezing for a start but perhaps that was an intentional, contemporary irony I failed to appreciate. Still, anxious to cast my prejudices aside, I set forth with a mind that was, if not open, most definitely ajar.

The first exhibit was a beautiful jet-black sculpture of a unicorn which appeared to be classical rather than contemporary until I learnt that it was made from the wreck of the artist’s car after a particularly bad crash. But it looked like a unicorn and I understood it and this gave me confidence to continue.

Halfway up the corridor, bewilderment set in. Was this art or just some stuff the cleaner left behind? Was this bar of wood in the middle of the floor a shoe scraper or a subtle statement of metaphysical proportions? I panicked and looked around to see what other people were doing. They were nodding and murmuring words that I suspect they had just made up but more to the point, none of them looked confused.

I shuffled despondently to the next room, casting a brief nod and murmur at a light switch on the way (just in case) and found myself in what I could best describe as MFI-meets-Claire’s Accessories.

And that was when, with a rusty but determined creak, my mind slammed shut…

Next week, I’m going to an exhibition by the Chinese artist, He Yifu. He paints mountains. His pictures look like paintings of mountains. They say: ‘Look, I am a painting of a mountain.’

And I shall simply gaze….

Grace

2010-12-04T16:47:00.010+01:00

Update: Download the collection of winning short stories in the e-book here or here

My ghost story, Grace, is a winner in the Daily Telegraph Ghost Story competition.

The painting slides out from between the folded yellowing sheets in my mother’s linen chest. I recognise it immediately – the house, I mean, not my father’s painting, which isn’t very good. He’s written the name and address on the back: Le Mas Fontblanche. Ventabren. Near Aix. But I would have known it anywhere.

Strange how I haven’t thought about it in all these years. Tracing the outline of the water-coloured stones, I try to remember. My finger comes to rest on a shutter, half-open and bleached to the colour of sun-dried lavender. My throat constricts with a long-forgotten panic. What’s this? A figure peering from the window: a pale wisp of a creature, hardly more than a smudge really.

It’s her - I know it’s her…

We went to France the summer I was twelve. My mother was French and the house belonged to her cousin, René. He was going to meet us at the station.

I stepped off the train in Aix-en-Provence, gasping at the heat. I remember the smell of dust and burnt earth and a sound like sandpaper rubbing together. “Cigales,” Mum said, smiling. Cicadas. My mother was happy - I think she had missed coming home. Dad picked up the cases and we walked through the brief coolness of the station building and I could tell he was happy for her too.

The car wound its way through narrow streets and out into the country. A stark, white mountain was etched into the brilliant sky. “Look, Angela, Sainte Victoire,” said my mother. I’d seen it in a painting by Cézanne - maybe Dad would try to paint it.

The car window was open and the air was thick with the smell of rosemary and thyme and so heavy with heat it was like breathing honey. My bare legs stuck to the leather seat and my hair was damp around my shoulders. It seemed to take an age to get there.

When my father died, I came home and then my mother fell ill, so I stayed to look after her. They have a new word for it now: carer. I didn’t mind. Caring is what I do best - after all, I used to be a nurse. Anyway, I always felt safer at home.

But in this empty, silent house, I feel bereft. Not lonely exactly: I have enough memories to keep me company and no great need for friends. I simply feel, as I have often felt, that life has eluded me.

I close the lid of the chest and take the painting downstairs, hugging it close.

I know exactly what I’m going to do.

There was a hand-painted sign pinned to a tree. It said: “Le Mas Fontblanche” and we turned up a rough, dry track through dusty fields. “The House of the White Fountain,” said my father, pleased to have understood something at last. Mum laughed and said there had been a spring there, years ago, but it had long since dried up. Looking around at the arid landscape, it seemed to me that everything had dried up.

Then the mas was there in front of us, a huge, L-shaped farmhouse of pale grey stone. We climbed out of the car and followed René into the dark, cool house. My bedroom was at the top of the stone staircase and down a small corridor. I could see the Sainte Victoire from the window, beyond the dry, rock-strewn fields.

I saw another door, in the far wall of the room. René said it led to a part of the house that wasn’t used anymore and that it had been locked for as long as he could remember. The short stroke of the “L”, I thought.

I hadn’t realised plane tickets were so cheap. The young man in the travel agency even found me this hotel right in the centre of Aix at a reasonable price. I managed to get here without mishap and I feel quite daring. Who would have thought it?

The Tourist Office is just around the corner so I get myself a guidebook then I sit at a café on the Cours Mirabeau, sipping Perrier-menthe and thinking about the painting. I’ve come to the conclusion that my father was merely recording a memory: a sort of morbid holiday souvenir. After all – and this much I do remember – the incident was responsible for the panic attacks that blighted the rest of my childhood.

My father could not possibly have seen her, could he?

One day, I opened the door. My parents had gone down to the village and I was alone. I don’t know what made me try, as I knew it was locked. Only it wasn’t: I turned the handle and it opened easily. I went in, and found myself in a bedroom. From somewhere came the sound of piano music, melancholy notes drifting through the house like strands of gossamer. The shutters were open, which puzzled me. Didn’t René tell us this part of the house wasn’t used anymore? The window was on the same side of the house as my own yet, moving towards it, I realised that the view was different. I could see rooftops where there should have been only fields. It was raining hard outside and the sky was the shade of a swollen bruise, but I knew that here, thunderstorms could take you by surprise.

I turned from the window, just as she came into the room.

I had a bad night. It may have been the heat or the noisy air-conditioning but I couldn’t sleep. And now I stand at the window looking up at the blue, blue sky and wondering why on earth I came. On a whim? That would be a first.

I don’t want to go to Ventabren. I don’t have to. I’m on holiday, I could go anywhere: Avignon, Marseille, Manosque…Besides, what could I hope to achieve by going back? The house might not even be standing and certainly, I have no idea where it is. I was only twelve.

The bus to Ventabren leaves at nine forty-five. As it winds towards the village I find myself scanning the countryside, just in case. The driver drops me outside a supermarket and, swinging my rucksack on to my back, I start to walk towards the village.

No. Not this way.

I turn around and head into the hills.

She was a girl of about my own age, tall and thin with long, black hair. It was her eyes that startled me: the palest of grey, like an icy lake in winter. She closed the door and leant against it, staring straight ahead.

“Hello,” I said.

She turned those beautiful, strange eyes to the window, looking straight through me. Then she started to cry.

“Are you all right?” I asked. I wanted to reach out to her but I felt awkward, being caught in her room like that. She didn’t answer, but ran past me as if I wasn’t there and fell sobbing on to the bed. I didn’t know what to do, so I stood and watched her for a moment and then slipped quietly out, back into my sunlit bedroom.

There was no sign that it had been raining at all.

The heat seems to have eased off, for which I’m thankful. I’ve been walking over half an hour with no clear idea of where I am. What does surprise me is the number of modern villas with swimming pools and landscaped gardens. Such a pity.

And then I spot it. Not the same sign, of course, but still pinned to the tree: “Le Mas Fontblanche”.

My heart is thudding. Oh for goodness’ sake, it’s just a house! I take a deep breath and begin to walk. They’ve put tarmac on the road and fenced off the fields on either side but wildness still lingers about the place.

The house looms up before me, against a darkening sky. I feel suddenly weak. A woman is in the garden, unpegging a line of billowing sheets. She stops when she sees me approaching.

Mum and Dad didn’t believe me, so I made them come upstairs and see for themselves. The door was locked and wouldn’t open, even when my father rammed it with his shoulder. My mother thought I must be suffering from the heat and insisted on taking my temperature. When I checked outside, later that afternoon, the shutters on that part of the house were indeed closed.

A few days later, I tried to open the door again, but it really was locked. I began to think I must have fallen asleep that afternoon and dreamt the whole thing. Yet that night, I couldn’t sleep at all. She troubled me, that sad girl with her ice-grey eyes. I wanted to be her friend, to help her maybe. I didn’t even know her name… I sat up and saw a strip of yellow light underneath the door, so I got out of bed and turned the handle.

It was open.

The woman is wondering who I am. I explain why I am here and it must sound to her as is does to me - sentimental nonsense. I tell her that my parents are both dead and that this house represented the last happy moments of my childhood. If only she knew.

“When we stayed here,” I say, “that part of the house was closed up.” I can see that the short stroke of the ‘L’ is lived in now. There are curtains at the windows.

“Ah,” she says, frowning, as the first drops of rain begin to fall, “let me finish this and I’ll show you around.”

She starts to fold the sheets.

I pushed the door gently, not wanting to startle her. She was lying on the bed, her black hair spread over the pillow. I moved closer and saw that her eyes were open, lifeless, frozen. One arm hung over the side of the bed, the thin, white hand dangling like a broken wing. I watched helplessly as the steady trickle of blood crept in scarlet rivulets across the floor.

Outside, the rain was lashing against the window. Was it already daylight? Surely I had only been in the room for a few minutes? I rushed out, shouting for help. As I flung open the door of my own room, my father was running down the corridor towards me.

Only then did I scream…

The house has been modernised and I can barely recognise it inside. It has a great deal of black ash furniture and an enormous television set in the sitting room. I have to be patient while the woman shows me her streamlined kitchen and the new patio door and then I ask her if I could see my old bedroom.

“Of course, madame,” she says, leading the way up the stone staircase. “It is empty now. My daughter Grace has the room next to it.”

I can’t understand why I am trembling so hard. The room is bare but familiar all the same. I look out of the window at the Sainte Victoire that rises beyond a new housing estate. A memory flickers: Rooftops where once there were only fields. The rain is lashing against the window now; the sky is the shade of a swollen bruise. And someone is playing Chopin.

I turn as a door opens. The young girl is standing there, watching me, pale as a ghost. She pushes back her long, black hair with a thin, white hand. She doesn’t smile and, of course, she can’t recognise me, but as I meet her gaze, I feel the blood rushing to my head. Because her eyes are like lakes of ice and fathoms deep with all hope drowned, and suddenly, I know. It isn’t too late. It never was too late. I know why I had to come back.

“Grace,” I say, as I reach out to her at last.

Measlyjet

2010-11-03T21:15:00.007+01:00

I think my girls have inherited a faulty gene of mine, making them Transport Challenged.

My ability to get lost in my car, even on short journeys, is legendary. However, I also have a habit of getting on the wrong buses or trains through no fault of my own. I mean, how many of you have boarded a coach bound for a sleepy backwater of a town in the North and found yourself heading non-stop to London?

Or stood at the carriage door of a train, hand poised on the handle, only to see your destination flash by in a blur?

Or got on a train that took you, against your will, to a different country entirely?

Perhaps you too have missed the last bush taxi home to your isolated village in the depths of Africa and had to hitch a lift on an earth digger?

I have done all of the above, so it’s not surprising that my children have followed in my totally unreliable footsteps.

My three girls have all missed a plane – one of them has done it twice. Each time, it was an Easyjet plane and it was never their fault.

The latest episode, last Wednesday, is a classic. I shall reproduce the spirit of the situation here. Note that I said spirit…the conversation didn’t go exactly like this…

Gatwick Airport check-in

Nasty Easyjet Employee : Oh look, three French teenagers. I hate kids, I hate foreigners and I’ve got my period. I’m going enjoy this.

Daughter : I’m being nice to you, Easyjet lady, because last time you made me miss my plane. Look at my big smile.

Nasty Easyjet Employee : That’s annoying. Everything seems to be in order. Aha – your friend’s hand luggage looks too big.

Other Daughter : But she brought it over from France and there was no problem.

Nasty Easyjet Employee : I don’t like you, you revolting French adolescent. Give me that bag, I’m going to measure it.

Friend : Oh, OK.

Nasty Easyjet Employee : Well, it’s two centimetres too big so I’ll round that off to four centimetres and you’ll have to pay me eighteen pounds.

Daughter : Do you take euros? We haven’t got any pounds left. I’m still smiling nicely at you.

Nasty Easyjet Employee : No. And now your friend will have to go all the way to the bureau de change and change her euros into pounds so you’ll definitely miss the plane.

Fifteen minutes later, the girls are back with the money.

Nasty Easyjet Employee : Oh b**ger, there’s still time to catch the plane. Now what do I do?

Friend : I can’t carry all this stuff, that’s why I’ve put the twenty-pound note between my lips. Sorry – I’ll just put it down here…

Nasty Easyjet Employee : Perfect. I consider that to be an insult of the highest order so you three can stand to the side and wait while I deal with every single person in the queue behind you.

When the girls were finally able to dash off they found that they had, of course, missed their flight.

Now, they were angry. Very, very angry…

Daughter : It’s your fault we missed our plane ! I want to speak to the supervisor.

Supervisor : Oh, Dolly must be having her period again. What fun!

Daughter : I’m explaining everything to you but I’m afraid I can’t smile nicely anymore.

Supervisor : I don’t believe a word you say – well, I do, actually, but it’s not our policy to admit it.

Daughter : What’s the Nasty Easyjet Employee’s name ?

Supervisor : I’ve been working with her for five years and we play badminton together but I have absolutely no idea what her name is. Sorry.

Daughter : Well, is there a police station here ? We’re stuck – we don’t have any money because you won’t give us our eighteen pounds back. My little sister’s only seventeen…

Supervisor : I told you I’ve only been working here for five years. I have no idea if there’s a police station, you nauseating French teenager. I hope you like my evil, smug smile. Just push off and sleep on the streets. The next flight isn’t until Sunday and I’ll make sure you miss that one too.

At this point, my volatile daughter lost it and, drawing on her extensive knowledge of every single episode of Absolutely Fabulous, she tossed her head and snapped:

“You can drop the attitude, lady. You only work at Easyjet…”

…and stalked off.

I am so proud of her.

They finally made it home, via train, coach and plane. They were exhausted and so was I. And I was also completely broke…surely there must be a cheaper way to travel?

Slim

2010-10-27T13:13:00.006+01:00

My blogging friend and writing colleague, Sarah, has just had her children’s book published, available from Amazon and the Bongo website. There is also a 'Story Builder' to accompany it. For details, check here

Slim, the Vegetarian Ogre is fun, educational and superbly illustrated so if you have children aged from 7-12, or nieces, or nephews or if you are just a Big Kid yourself, I urge you to take a look!

In the meantime, I’m sitting here biting my nails because my children are wandering around Gatwick without money, food or a plane…a frequent occurrence in the Baconnier family. It will, of course, be the subject of my next post providing I haven’t already dropped dead from apoplexy…

Hot

2010-10-17T00:01:00.013+01:00

Many of you may have read about the recent troubles in Grenoble – I’m talking about social disorder here, not my personal troubles. They didn’t make the headlines, funnily enough.

I live on a council housing estate, Teisseire, in an area euphemistically deemed sensitive. A couple of months ago, riots broke out on a neighbouring housing estate, Villeneuve, and these did make the headlines. Nicolas Sarkozy even paid a visit to tick off the Prefet – in fact, he removed him from office and put an ex-police chief in charge instead.

That night, I sat on the balcony and watched the search helicopter as it circled above Villeneuve. I felt pretty safe. Although I live on the Teisseire housing estate, nothing exciting ever happens in my neighbourhood.

I spoke too soon. A week or so ago, a young drug dealer (he was only 24) was gunned down…practically at the end of my road and at the time my daughter would have been walking home from one of her wild nights out (as I imagine them to be). Fortunately, she decided to stay with a friend at the last minute.

A few days later, a car was set alight a little closer to home but still not close enough to really worry me. Just as long as they kept their hands off my car…

Ah...my beautiful new car. It was a gift from somebody I love very much although I’m a bit confused as to why he bought it for me now – but I’m going off topic. Sorry.

My car hasn’t escaped completely unscathed. Not long after I had proudly driven it home for the first time, somebody keyed it. I was quite upset even though I’m not at all materialistic. A car’s a car and as long as it gets me from A to B (via F, M and Q – but that’s just my eccentric sense of direction), I’m happy. But I was very, very upset.

Then a few days ago, some drunken louts backed into it and drove off roaring with laughter. If I ever see them again, I shall beat them to a pulp.

Last night, I drove wearily home from an English lesson and looked for a parking space. At that time of the evening, there usually aren’t any left but I saw two, and I chose the first one I came to even though it was further from my flat. Actually, I often park in the other space, which was closer. I wasn’t thinking clearly, I suppose. I still had ’ow are you, I’m fine, and you ? echoing in my brain.

Now to this evening, when a series of explosions jolted me from my habitual reverie (I was fantasizing about Gérard Depardieu begging me for the lead role in the film version of my book). I ran to the window and saw that a car had been set alight and for one panic-stricken moment, I thought it was mine. It was right where I had nearly parked the previous evening – where I often park – where I shall never ever park again.

I called the pompiers and then hung out of the window, breathless with excitement, to watch.

Well – can you blame me ? Those pompiers are really, really hot...

Merci

2010-09-23T18:14:00.018+01:00

I have a lot to be thankful for...

God - he never lets me down...

My mum and dad - the best Mum and Dad in the world...

My beautiful, courageous children...

(apparently it's cool to show your bra....)

My friends (I've got more than two, honest...I just haven't got any photos. Honest...)

Laughter - like when this waiter pretended to take a photo when in reality he was filming us - making us look like prats with lockjaw...

Nature...and sweet memories...

And of course...cheese!

And so I'm counting my blessings...

Batty

2010-07-21T09:29:00.010+01:00

Image by Batdesignz

As if it wasn’t bad enough having to deal with the fact that my Wayward Spouse has just decided to leave me for good, last night I had a bat in the flat…

Not a baseball bat or a cricket bat, you understand – although those particular weapons – um, I mean articles of sports equipment - do play a large part in my current fantasies. No – I mean those flappy, mousey animals with wings. Bats.

I thought that moving to a third-floor flat would put an end to Sugar (Sugar by name, blood-crazed psychocat by nature), bringing in birds and mice and other delicacies. Well, it did. But now they come to Sugar.

What silly, silly creature flies into the arms –oops, I mean paws – of a predator ? What was the bat thinking as she lay there squeaking helplessly, allowing herself to be toyed with, tossed into the air, up and down, backwards and forwards ? Why didn’t she try to escape then ?

Eventually, Sugar got bored and left to curl up on the sofa and dream of birds. Birds are prettier and they sing. More fun than silly old bats.

Meanwhile, the bat lay gasping, battered, her bruised heart fluttering in pain…

But guess what ? She survived ! She crawled to a safe place between the wall and the cupboard where Sugar couldn’t reach her and waited quietly.

She’s not there this morning. I hope she felt the cool, sweet air coming in from the balcony and heard the rustling of the breeze in the honeysuckle.

I hope she took flight and glided gracefully into the night.

Safe.

Free.

Reader, I was blind. I was as blind as a bat…

Souvenirs, souvenirs...

2010-03-11T18:19:00.010+01:00

Photo courtesy of reddman

Reading Colin Randall’s post about package tours over on Salut! reminded me of the time my mum and I went on a day trip to Boulogne.

Mum had spotted an advert for the trip in the local paper. The coach would be picking people up from various towns around North Shropshire, including ours. In an effort to rouse me from the depths of despair (it’s a long story), Mum offered to treat me.

So the following Sunday night, Dad dropped us off at the bus station. It was bitterly cold and the sound of our stamping feet echoed eerily around the deserted car park.

“Do you think we’re the only ones going?” asked Mum, peering into the window of the dark, empty and locked office building. “Perhaps they’ve forgotten us…”

“Don’t be daft,” I said. The manager was my ex-boyfriend and he definitely wouldn’t have forgotten…

We shuffled round the bus station for about half an hour until Mum decided to ring the said ex-boyfriend to see what had happened. It was getting late.

“Oh,” said Steve sleepily, when he finally answered. “Sorry. We must have forgotten you. Don’t worry – I’ll send someone to pick you up.”

This time at least, he was true to his word. Twenty minutes later, a coach rumbled into view and the driver – a mournful, short-sighted chap – climbed down a tad unsteadily and squinted at us.

“Forgot yer, did they? Lucky I was in when Steve called – I’d only just got back from the pub. C’mon then – off we go.”

Recklessly, we followed him on to the bus. It might have seemed rude to sit at the back of an empty coach, so we sat near the driver, to keep him company.

“Now then…” He fumbled with various knobs and levers, “um…yeah…that’s it…um…” and the coach lurched violently backwards towards the exit.

“Could yer just guide me out?” he shouted, above the grinding, squealing noise. “’aven’t driven one of these fer a while.”

“Oh…why’s that?” I shouted back, perhaps unwisely. “Have you…Left! Left! No, TURN LEFT!”

Now, I can’t swear to it, but that concrete gatepost might possibly have been breathing in as we reversed into the street. I could be wrong, of course, but the sensation was tangible…

When he had located first gear, the driver turned round to answer my question:

“Well, I used to be a driver, like, but I got the sack, see. Wrote one of their buses off… doing this as a favour, like.” He turned his eyes back to the road. “Is this the right way?”

Mum and I ought to have been desperately worried at this stage and there was still time to leap out and run for our lives. Instead, we had to duck behind the headrests of the seats in front so the poor man couldn’t see how hard we were laughing.

Once out of town, the coach gathered speed – the driver had got the hang of it now, and the Shropshire countryside was flashing past the window in a blur.

“’ave to put me foot down a bit,” he said, “if we wanna get to Hilton Park Services on time.”

Nodding, we clung to our arm rests. Getting there uninjured would be OK by us. Really it would.

A roundabout loomed. Hmm. Tricky one.

“M6, M6…can yer see the sign? ’ere?…no, that’s not it…er…ooh…yeah, why not?”

The coach veered off on to a dimly-lit country road and continued for about five minutes before screeching to a halt next to a mysterious row of lights on the verge.

“Eee – that was a bit close,” muttered the driver who had made us get out to have a look. The coach was teetering on the brink of a four-foot deep trench. As we giggled nervously, he frowned and scratched his head:

“This canna be the way to the M6. Dunno ’ow I’m gonna turn round, though.”

I can’t remember how we did turn around but somehow we made it to Hilton Park Services in time to catch the proper coach. Saying our goodbyes with tight, bright smiles, we watched with an indescribable sense of relief as the driver finally found his way out of the car park and disappeared into the night.

Boulogne was far less exciting. It was midday and it was raining. We sat in a café for quite a long time pretending to be French then tried to find something to eat that wasn’t Fish and Chips or Welsh Rarebit.

As the afternoon drizzled on, it dawned on us that the shops weren’t going to open at all because it was Monday and half-day closing. We had to be back on the coach by four so we made a mad dash around Monoprix, the only shop that was open, then another mad dash down to the port where the ferry was waiting to take us home.

As our fellow travellers congratulated themselves on having bought three zillion bottles of beer or whatever, we contemplated our own hasty purchases: two cans of Elnett hairspray and a giant jar of Dijon mustard.

And I do sometimes wonder, even now, if that poor bloke ever found his way home…

Living in an Acronym

2010-02-22T20:14:00.007+01:00

Well, I’m slowly getting back to normal (relatively speaking, of course) and having finally retrieved my laptop from the depths of one of the many cardboard boxes that are still cluttering up my new flat, I have decided to catch up on my writing…

Yes! I am now the proud locataire of a council flat just fifteen minutes’ walk away from my place of work. And about time too: it took three years of filling in forms, writing begging letters and getting to know people who knew people who knew people…three years of sobbing hysterically into answer machines, pleading impoverishment/indigestion/insanity and threatening to plant a bomb in the housing offices (nah – made that one up) before they finally relented and gave me one.

Council housing is called HLM which stands for Habitation à Loyer Modéré – housing at a moderate rent. The first HLM were built for workers who came to the towns during the second industrial revolution in the nineteenth century. At first, these workers were housed in shoddy ‘rabbit cages’ built by unscrupulous entrepreneurs. Crime and disease were rife and of such concern to the philanthropists of the day that steps were rapidly taken to improve the state of worker housing.

The first of these was the creation of the Société des Cités Ouvrières (Society for Worker Cities), founded in Paris in 1849 by a group of such philanthropists. With financial help from the government of Louis Napoléon, they built the Cité Napoléon with the aim of housing ten thousand workers and their families in clean, affordable blocks of flats in every district of Paris. It was never finished and still stands on the rue Rochechouart, as one of Paris’ lesser-known historical monuments. One of the reasons for its failure was that it was hardly much better than the ‘rabbit cages’ it was supposed to replace and would, according to moral reformers, encourage the spread of sexual immorality and – horror of horrors - ‘socialism’. It did, however, pave the way for later cités ouvrières built during the Second Empire.

Since then, social housing has undergone numerous changes. In the nineteen-fifties, there were more white-collar workers living in HLMs than there were manual labourers, the majority of whom were living in inferior, insalubrious private housing. During the sixties, huge tower blocks, known as barres, were built and for the next decade, the percentage of ouvrier tenants increased. From the eighties, the occupants got poorer and poorer and today, they make up the majority of tenants.

Living in an acronym does have its advantages. My HLM is in a ZUS (as opposed to a ZAC or a ZUP) – that is, a Zone Urbaine Sensible which is a euphemism for a trouble spot. This means that local government spends a lot of money trying to make the place look nice. My sweet little flat has been renovated and now boasts a wooden balcony, with a view of the Vercors mountains (I also have a view of the Chartreuse mountains from my kitchen and the Belledonne mountains from my bedroom). I have double glazing, under floor heating and a brand new bath tub. I was also given wallpaper (which I could choose from a limited range), paste, paint and plaster which launched me into a frenzy of DIY. I’m rather proud of my efforts, I must admit – apart from the bit of paper I stuck on upside-down and the mysterious gaps near the ceiling.

Even the cat has lent a helping paw. Unfortunately, she doesn’t understand that the stripping had to be done before I put the new wallpaper on.

I can’t show you a photo of my newly-decorated flat as someone has nicked my camera but if any of you are in the area, please let me know and I’ll invite you for tea and show you around. Oh and bring your toolbox – I’ve still got a few shelves to put up…

Marseille soap and other fiction

2009-05-10T18:53:00.011+01:00

I haven’t written anything for a while simply because I have horrendous stuff going on at home and my brain has just packed up its neurons and left.

So…I’ve been watching a lot of mindless television. I don’t watch telly usually – I don’t even own a set. However, I can get a few channels on the computer and for the past few weeks I’ve been sitting in front of various émissions with a glazed expression on my face (so I’m told).

One programme I admit to being fond of is Inspecteur Derrick. It’s not even French – it’s German. The title music is great – DER DER! DER DER! DER DER! DER DER!…di da di da di daa, da da da da, di da da – (hope you got that) and the seedy seventies’ atmosphere, all orange and brown geometric patterns, Formica and men in polo neck sweaters, stirs up memories of a simpler time. Derrick is a rather unattractive but charismatic policeman while his sidekick, Harry, has perfectly blow-dried hair. Together, in beige gabardine raincoats, they weed out the criminals of Munich with a mixture of psychology, meaningful facial expressions and a total lack of humour. I just love it…

Another programme (that I do not admit to watching) is Plus Belle La Vie. Set in a district of Marseille, this could be compared to Eastenders – except that it’s nothing like Eastenders. Everybody is beautifully dressed and coiffed and even the students live in luxury flats with designer furniture. The people who live in the quartier Mistral are prone to being kidnapped with alarming frequency and when they’re not being kidnapped, they’re committing adultery, taking drugs, discovering they’re gay, losing their memories and…oh, I can’t be bothered. You get the picture.

Yet in the midst of all this trauma, they still find time to pontificate on the issues of the day: homophobia, racism, religion, the environment, the recession - it’s all there. And even though the actors sound as if they’re reading aloud from a political manifesto, I suppose it does make a nice change from “Rickaaaaaaaay”!

Now I come to think of it, all the soap operas in France are unrealistic. I remember Hélène et les Garçons, a series from the early nineties about a group of students. These students also lived in luxury flats, wore designer clothes and spent most of their time drinking strangely fluorescent beverages in a café or going to the gym. I don’t remember ever seeing them revising for exams or having spots or hangovers. Sous le Soleil, however, was a soap opera set in St Tropez so you’d expect everybody to be rich – even if they were waitresses in a snack bar on the beach.

So why is there such a difference between the English soap operas and the French séries televisées? Perhaps it’s because the English are basically a nation of nosey-parkers and watching the lives of ordinary working-class people on television is akin to peeking through the net curtains at the neighbours. The French, on the other hand, are an altogether more gregarious bunch so other people’s lives hold no mystery for them. They prefer escapism, preferably with a designer dress and a yacht or two thrown in. It’s also something for them to aspire to…

That’s enough thinking for today. I’m exhausted.

Now, what’s on telly? Hmmmm. Le météo…great. I do love a good piece of fiction…

French Bred

2009-03-21T22:59:00.003+01:00

Just a little plug for a great book by Frédéric Guarino called French Bred.

Frédéric was born and raised in Paris. He moved to the Boston area in 1988, following his American wife, knowing very little English and even less about American culture. Along the way, he learnt his new country's language well enough to feel comfortable writing again. Now a divorced father of two, he lives in Medway, Massachusetts, runs his own business and somehow found the time to write "French Bred", his first book.

This is a wry look at the French...from a Frenchman's point of view - which makes a nice change!

I've put the link in the side-bar under "Favourite Views".

Brilliant title too, I think...

Holiday Plans

2009-02-20T10:29:00.013+01:00

The winter school holidays are nearly at an end here in Grenoble. France is divided into three school zones: A, B and C and the holidays are not at the same time because otherwise, there wouldn’t be enough room on the mountains for all the skiers (the entire population of France – except for me - goes skiing in winter).

I had far more exciting plans. I was going to go walking for two hours every day, lose five kilos, clean the house and work on my novel, A Stitch in Time.

Of course, I fully expected a few hiccoughs along the way although I hadn’t anticipated the drunken teenaged boy that my daughter and her friends had selflessly picked up – literally – and brought home to sleep it off on my sofa. I startled him in the kitchen the next morning as I shuffled to the loo in my nightie. As he stared at a point somewhere beyond my left shoulder, he explained to me that he had cleaned up nearly all of the vomit but that he’d run out of washing-up liquid.

I shuffled back to bed.

The cat disappeared. Now, I have never considered myself an animal lover. I like animals well enough as long as they belong to other people but you won’t find any calendars with photos of kittens on them in my house. However, my cat is different. She is an intelligent human being who just happens to have fur, pointy ears and a silly name (my daughter named her Sugar). For three days, I wandered around the quartier shouting for her like some deranged fan of The Archies and I even knocked on a stranger's door and asked if I could look in their garden. Sugar eventually waltzed in through the cat flap at four o’clock one morning without so much as an apology. She treats this house like a hotel, that one.

Then my youngest daughter dyed her beautiful black hair – and several towels and a bath mat - bright orange.

Oh, and my middle daughter decided to go to London with a couple of friends for a few days.

“Where will you stay?” I asked, prising my eyes from the online newspaper article I was reading about the most recent fatal stabbings in that city.

“Oh – we’ll find somewhere when we get there. Bye.”

Of course, she’s just turned eighteen so she can do whatever she wants, as she likes to remind me two or three times a day. But she probably didn’t count on missing the plane back. Or running out of money. My wonderful sister – who has a demanding job - immediately arranged train tickets for all of them to her home in Eastbourne and promised to drive them to the airport the following morning in time to catch the early flight. Sisters are great. Teenagers and cats, on the other hand…

To see me through these crises, I resorted to piles of jam sandwiches and bowls of porridge washed down with litres of sweet, milky coffee. I’ve put on five kilos. Of course, I couldn’t go walking for two hours every day because all those sleepless nights meant I was getting up at three o’clock in the afternoon.

But I did get some work done on my novel. Once I’d checked my email, read every single one of the British newspapers online twice, played Solitaire, checked my email, phoned my mum, read all the adverts for Losing Tummy Flab, Earning Money From Home and Tree Consulting (found that one on my blog) and checked my email, I wrote three paragraphs of chapter seventeen and deleted two.

I wonder why you’re supposed to call it a work in progress, though?

Soldes out

2009-01-15T19:33:00.007+01:00

According to mental health experts, January is the most depressing month of the year. In France this is because of les Soldes (the Sales) – at least, that’s my theory.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century, the word solde was a slang word used by cloth merchants to designate off-cuts that were sold at – um – cut price. The word comes from the Italian, saldo and means ‘balance’ as in bank balance.

Well, thanks to the festivities, my bank balance has shrivelled like a burst balloon while my cheques are bouncier than ever. So what bright spark decided that this was the perfect time of year to induce shopping frenzy in the pecuniary challenged?

Simon Mannoury, that’s who. In 1830, he opened Paris’s first department store, Le Petit Saint-Thomas, in rue du Bac. He had plenty of great ideas: he was the first to mark prices on his goods, he invented mail-order and he even brought a donkey into the shop for the children to ride on. Fortunately, that idea was shelved pretty quickly.

Photo Eau de Paris

Monsieur Mannoury also introduced the concept of Soldes. In order to liquidate stock at the end of the season, he sold everything off at reduced prices. Of course, this was very popular but I do wonder if he had any notion of what he’d started…

In France, les Soldes are regulated by law and must begin and end on dates specified by the government: for example, the current sales period began on 7th January and will end on 10th February. Winter and summer Soldes last for five weeks each and shopkeepers are allowed to choose two other weeks during the year, as long as they are not too close to the main sales period.

But all that doesn’t really matter to me. By the time I’ve saved up enough money to go to the sales, all that’ll be left will be a couple of acrylic tank-tops in a colour that doesn’t go with anything, a few dozen tan panty-hose and a job-lot of mysterious kitchen utensils that I never knew I needed.

Although you never know. And they are very cheap…

Name that king!

2009-01-01T02:24:00.009+01:00

Louis the Lazy

On this day in 898, Charles III, known as Charles the Simple, was crowned King of the Franks. I was relieved to discover that at that time, ‘simple’ meant ‘honest’ rather than 'stupid' but it got me thinking about the other nicknames the French gave to their kings.

Whereas the English named their monarchs ‘the unready’ or ‘the glorious’ or ‘the peaceable’, they didn’t often resort to personal insults, like the French (unless you count William the Conqueror who was also known as William the Bastard – but I have a feeling that wasn’t meant to be an insult and anyway, he was French).

I mean, fancy calling your king Charles the Fat, Charles the Bald or Charles the Mad! Not to mention Louis the Stammerer, Louis the Lazy, Louis the Quarreller, Louis the Universal Spider and - my favourite – John the Posthumous (perhaps he was just very quiet).

Still - what can you expect from a people who call the heir to the throne a dolphin?

BONNE ANNEE!

That old chestnut

2008-11-15T18:23:00.007+01:00

Châtaignes dans les bois
Se fendent, se fendent,
Châtaignes dans les bois
Se fendent sous nos pas
*
Chestnuts in the woods
Split open, split open,
Chestnuts in the woods
Split open at our feet

Words from a French song

I am not going to crack any lame jokes about French nuts in this post, although there is certainly plenty of potential. Instead, I am going to talk about the chestnut, without which Noël just wouldn't be Noël and it would be a sad and empty day for festive turkeys everywhere.

In French, there are two words for chestnuts: châtaigne and marron. The distinction is recent and merely culinary. They come from the same tree but the fruit is called a châtaigne when there are two or three nuts in a burr (the prickly shell), and a marron when there is only one. I have no idea why this is important but apparently it is.

Up until the 19th century, chestnuts were a major source of nourishment for people and animals alike. In fact, in some regions of France, the tree was known as the 'bread tree' because the fruit - and the wood - were so valuable. Although chestnut trees had been around for thousands of years, the first cultivated chestnut groves, or châtaigneraies, were only established in France during the Middle Ages. The tree thrives in warmer climates so most were planted south of the Loire, particularly in the Cévennes region, where chestnuts are still a speciality. The fruit was eaten roasted, made into jam or cooked with milk and vanilla to make a soup called bajana and it was also pounded into flour and used for making bread. At one time, it was even used as a trading currency and dowry offering - so, happy indeed was the soul with a few chestnuts rolling around in his pocket.

Sometime during the 19th century, the chestnut trees were afflicted with ink disease caused by a fungus, which reduced their number considerably. Gradually, the chestnut's popularity waned as people became more prosperous and could afford to vary their diet. There was a brief return to glory in wartime when the chestnut saved the population from famine, but the mass rural exodus in the 1950s sealed the fate of the humble chestnut tree forever. Once a vital necessity, it became little more than something to stand under.

Chestnuts are still gathered in the traditional manner - that is, picked up from the ground. There isn't any other way to do it really, as they are only ripe when they fall off the trees, which happens at the end of October. The use of nets makes the job easier and good chestnut pickers can gather up to four hundred kilos a day. In the past, they were paid in chestnuts and today, they would argue, they're paid peanuts (but that's another story).

Because of their high water content, chestnuts don't keep well so need to be preserved and the best way is by drying them. In some regions, this is still done in a clède, a small two-storey building with a slow-burning fire on the ground floor that dries the chestnuts spread out on the large rack that forms the first floor. After about a month, the chestnuts are skinned and are ready to be ground into flour or packed into tins and jars. In the past, the skinning process was carried out by men who stamped through the piles of chestnuts in boots studded with long nails. Today, they use a slightly more sophisticated method involving machines.

However, France has to import two-thirds of the total chestnuts they consume, mostly from Asia. And they are very fond of them. From October onwards, the smell of roasting chestnuts wafts through the city streets from chestnut sellers' stalls - although three euros for a small cone is a bit steep for something you can pick up yourself in the local park. It is, of course, unthinkable for the French to stuff their turkeys with anything other than chestnuts (my dehydrated sage-and-onion mix has never met with great success here) and those famous marrons glacés - candied chestnuts - are as essential to their Christmas as a tin of Quality Street is to ours.

A favourite topping for crêpes or toast is crème de marrons, a thick and sweet chestnut spread flavoured with vanilla. The best-known brand is sold in retro brown and white tins evoking the distant childhoods of a bygone era…it is the ultimate comfort food although condensed milk comes a very close second. You can also buy chestnut honey - and I have done, so I can warn you that the smell is atrocious and reminiscent of fresh cowpat but the taste is… unusual, perhaps, but not bad. As for bread made from chestnut flour, I bought some the other day from a health food shop. It was a small and extremely expensive loaf and I think I'll be giving it a miss in the future. To be perfectly honest, it didn't go very well with my Marmite…

A Stitch in Time

2008-09-18T23:25:00.009+01:00

Er...I'm writing a children's book (cringe) and have uploaded the first twelve chapters on Harper and Collins' "electronic slush-pile" site: authonomy.com.

This is the bravest thing I've done since driving over the Monts de L'Ardeche in a windowless car, in a thunderstorm.

So if any of you have a little time to spare, why not take a peek and tell me what you think? Any comments (on the authonomy site please - it will drag me out of total obscurity) would be welcome - even if you think the book's rubbish (but I warn you, I'm sensitive and I may just plunge into deep depression and never speak to you again).

The book's called A Stitch in Time and you can find it here

Trumpet Blow over...

Merci beaucoup

On the pavement

2008-09-04T18:28:00.009+01:00

There is a wonderful cartoon by the French cartoonist, Sempé, which depicts a man standing at one end of a café-lined boulevard with an anxious expression on his face. In the next frame, he has emerged at the far end of the boulevard, having slipped around the backstreets and avoided having to walk past all those people-watchers. Believe me, I know how he feels - it takes great courage. In fact, I recently tripped and fell headlong on the pavement in front of a dozen or so cappuccino-sipping café customers. I do believe they were mildly amused – after all, it’s not every day you see a plump middle-aged English woman perform a perfect flying tackle on a lamppost.

Taverns have been around forever but cafés were opened specifically to sell coffee. The first coffee house was opened in Constantinople in the fifteenth century. When the new drink arrived in France in the seventeenth century it quickly became fashionable and in 1686, the first French coffee house – or café – was opened in Paris. It was called the Procope after its Sicilian owner and soon became a meeting-place for writers, artists and philosophers such as Voltaire, Rousseau, Balzac and Victor Hugo. Diderot’s encyclopaedia was conceived here and the French Revolution was planned and plotted. Initially, women weren’t allowed in these dens of iniquity, unless it was to serve. A second café – La Table Ronde - was opened in Grenoble in 1739. Situated opposite the law courts and the theatre, it has had its fair share of famous clientele. Sarah Bernardt drank here as did Fernandel and a host of other actors and singers.

There is a café for everyone in France. If you are of a philosophical bent – like Sartre, for example, who spent most of his life in the Café de Flore in Paris – then the café-philo is for you. You don’t have to drink much but you do have to be able to spout a load of old rot about the meaning – or not – of life. My daughter went once and came back either drunk or extremely bewildered, I’m not sure – in any case, she was completely incoherent. She thought so…therefore, she was…or something like that.

Then there is the café littéraire where completely sober people stand up and recite poetry or prose and then talk about it over a drink or two. To be honest, I’ve never been to one of these – they remind me too much of Eng Lit lectures at University and when I go to a café, I want a drink and a good laugh – not an in-depth discussion of limping iambics.

Another recent phenomenon was the chicha-café. They didn’t last long because of the anti-smoking law which defeated the object somewhat. They had names like Oasis and Le bar à Chicha and had exotic Arabian nights type of décor. Apparently (the information comes from my daughter, who is – as you may have guessed – a regular café-goer) one would lounge around on silken cushions, drinking mint tea and taking regular puffs of fruit- flavoured tobacco from a hookah pipe. In fact, my daughter’s birthday present to me a couple of years ago was an evening out in a chicha bar but I was afraid I would cramp her style – and I wasn’t completely sure I would be able to heave myself up off those cushions at the end of the evening, my knees being what they are. I settled for bath salts instead.

The Irish pub has become very fashionable in past years. Every French town has a Shannon Pub or a Shamrock Bar. These places are usually furnished with wooden benches and trestle tables while the walls are hung with anything remotely Celtic: Guinness adverts, pictures of Donegal, leprechauns, Aran jumpers etc. For some reason, Saint Patrick’s night is very popular in France and most Irish pubs will be holding events such as céilidhs to the accompaniment of fiddles, flutes and bearded bard. Sometimes they get it wrong, of course, and I personally know of two ‘Irish’ pubs called The Loch Ness and The Queen’s Head. Kilts, Celts – it’s all the same to them…

At a café-theatre, you can see up-and-coming stars perform. I saw Charlelie Couture in Périgueux nearly thirty years ago and he is now a household name in France. Many of today’s stars began their career in café-théâtres.

Then of course, there is the café de la gare: the station café. Seedy, moody, depressing plastic-table-topped-Gauloises-smoke-filled meeting places…the stuff obscure French films are made of, quoi…unfortunately, they are rapidly being replaced by cheap and cheerful American fast-food outlets- not half as romantic, I’m afraid, but just as seedy. And of course if you lit up a Gauloise you’d be thrown out.

The French bistrot is just a café with a name of obscure origin. A popular explanation is that it comes from the Russian word for ‘quick’ and originates from the period of the Russian occupation of Paris. However, this is much disputed and the true meaning remains a mystery. Who cares anyway? It’s just a café with a fancy name...

Bars – as far as I can gather – differ from cafés in that they cater for locals who just want a shot of pastis and a read of the newspaper – and perhaps a bet on the horses. The bar-PMU doubles as a betting shop and if you accidentally wander into one of these establishments you will be met with cold stares and frosty silence. There will always be a television in the corner broadcasting a horse race and a burly barman who will pointedly ignore you.

In all these places, you can sit at a table – either inside or out – and expect a waiter to come and serve you. This is the theory. In practice, you sometimes have to do a lot of coughing and hand-raising before you manage to catch his eye. And don’t be fooled: French waiters have phenomenal memories. You can give the most complicated order and they will have no trouble at all remembering it along with three or four other orders from other tables. They will also have no trouble at all remembering whether or not you gave a tip the first time – and treat you accordingly on your next visit. You have been warned…

Camp sights: Part Three

2008-07-24T19:36:00.004+01:00

On the beach...

The Bay of Pampelonne is 5 kilometres of sand divided up into public and private beaches. It was also one of the sites for the Provence Landing of 1944 and was soon to be the site for the lesser-known Baconnier landing of 2008.

They told us at the campsite that the beach was just down the dirt track that wound through vineyards and bamboo plantations. It sounded terribly exotic so we set off, me in my glamorous new silver flip-flops and the girls in their micro-shorts and tiny strappy tops.

It was further than we imagined and at one point we had to cross a busy main road. We stood hesitantly on the verge while young men in sleek sports cars sped past, flashing their lights and sounding their horns as my girls giggled prettily. Well, they are gorgeous. I was quite flattered when someone beeped their horn at me - until I realized it was because I was in the middle of the road and in danger of being run over…

When we finally stumbled onto the mythical beach, my feet were bleeding profusely and I had to take off my flip-flops. Walking barefoot on the sand was like walking on shredded Brillo pads but it was either that or lose one of my toes. By this time, the girls had decided I was cramping their style and had gone on ahead. But why were they staring at the ground? Had they suddenly lost confidence in the face of all this glamour?

Then I realized. This was a nudist beach. My girls are not used to seeing so much flesh and so many dangly bits on show, especially when the flesh was a little – how shall I put it? – past its prime. Still, it made me feel better about my own floppy bits.

In fact, a few days later, I came to this beach on my own for a bit of topless sunbathing. At least no-one would bat an eyelid at a pasty plump English woman baring her boobs. Now, my boobs are a little on the large side – let’s say that anyone sitting next to me wouldn’t need a parasol – but surely they wouldn’t draw attention here, would they?

Wrong. After a few minutes of blissful sunbathing, a shadow fell across my body. Then I heard a series of hoarse grunts and a man’s voice murmuring “Oh là là. Oh là là. Oh LA LA!” I immediately hitched up my bathing costume and rolled over. The Pervert of Pampelonne grinned lasciviously and walked away while I opened my book and vowed never ever to go topless again.

Still, I’ve got nice tanned ankles now. Pity I can’t wear the flip-flops…

Camp sights: Part Two

2008-07-16T22:33:00.016+01:00

The English Abroad.

A play in one act.

St Tropez: a mediaeval port that has lost none of its charm; its narrow streets wind lazily beneath the sun as azure waves lap softly against the ancient shore.

Gigi is strolling along the seafront when a lion-like roar (in a broad northern English accent) rips through the air. A large, purple-faced man is gesticulating menacingly in the middle of the street:

Angry tourist: Police! Get me the police! Anyone 'ere know where the police station is? Shut up you. I want the police NOW!

Gigi: Ahem - can I help perhaps?

Angry Tourist: Yeah, I ordered mools mariner, right? And when it come it were too salty an' there were no wine, no cream, nothing so I said…

AT’s Wife: We've only bin 'ere two days.

AT: So I said I’m not 'aving this rubbish take it away. I’ll 'ave what 'e's 'aving cos the bloke next to me were eating a pizza.

AT’s wife: Disgusting it is.

A French waiter, who has been standing calmly by and is now on the phone to the police, smiles tightly at Gigi.

Waiter: Ils sont partis sans payer.

AT: An' the waitress brought the pizza, right, and she slapped it on table an' said "There is no wine with this meal."

Waiter: Et il l’a traitée de pute.

AT’s wife: This is disgusting, this is. We've only bin 'ere two days.

Gigi: Er – the waiter said you left without paying and you insulted the waitress…

AT: No I never, stupid cow. POLICE! Where's the police? I want the police.

Waiter: No problem, monsieur– you are going to spend ze whole day wiz ze police. Zey are on their way.

AT: I want the British Embassy! Someone phone the British Embassy!

AT’s wife: My 'usband's not well. 'E's already 'ad one heart attack. It's disgusting, it is. We've only bin 'ere two days.

The Angry Tourist clutches his chest and starts moaning loudly.

AT: Oooh! Arrgghh! Get an ambulance, quick! Oooh…

Waiter: No problem, monsieur – what is ze number for ze eenglish ambulance?

AT: Nine – nine - nine.

Gigi: Well, er – I’d better be off. Um – I’m sure the police will sort it all out.
(To the waiter) Je suis désolée. Nous ne sommes pas tous comme ça. Bon courage…

FIN

Camp sights: Part One

2008-07-14T22:00:00.015+01:00

I have just come back from ten wonderful days in Ramatuelle with two of my children. We did hardly anything at all except sleep, read and sunbathe and it was perfect – well, almost.

I’ve never been camping with my children before. If we ever went on holiday, it was with my ex-husband and he did all the booking, organising and driving. I am quite proud, therefore, that I managed to do all these things by myself and only got lost a teeny weeny bit at the end – hardly anything at all really; I just missed the turning for the campsite on the route des plages and had to do a nifty U-turn in a vineyard. No problem.

We stayed in a bungalow toilé. This was not some grotesque parody of English suburbia as I had first imagined, but a glorified furnished tent full of zips: the cupboards were zipped, the bedrooms were zipped, the windows were zipped, the door was zipped…Forget the sweet, soft chirping of crickets at dusk - every evening at bedtime, the air fairly resonated with the sound of zips.

The showers were great, which was a good job, since my two girls had refused to leave home without at least three kilos of make-up and toiletries – each. The loos, on the other hand, were Turkish. These holes in the ground have always inspired in me fear and loathing: what if I slip and get my foot stuck? What if I overbalance? It has not happened so far although the last one I frequented had a rather aggressive automatic flushing system which took me by surprise because I hadn’t quite finished…

There were a lot of Dutch and German people at the campsite, all tall with headfuls of gleaming Boris-Johnson hair. Our immediate neighbours - a blonde couple with two blonde, well-behaved children - provided us with fine examples of Teutonic discipline. When we staggered out of our bungalow at midday, bleary eyed and dishevelled, they had already left (at dawn) to visit some interesting, historical monument. They had prepared a healthy picnic and never forgot their sun block. I know this because I once got up very early to go to the loo and saw these items neatly aligned on their table. Our own table was strewn with the debris of the previous evening’s meal (cheese rind, gobs of pickle, apple cores and crisps) and our beach towels were hanging off the backs of the chairs rather than neatly pegged on the clothes horse provided. They also aligned their shoes on the terrace and I never once heard them yell ‘Where the *µ@% is my other flip-flop?’ as we did quite often.

It was a ‘family camp’ which is a euphemism for ‘very noisy’. On most evenings, an animation was provided. We never went to any of these – we didn’t need to because we could hear everything from the comfort of our own beds. On the first night, an extremely irritating ventriloquist with a stupid voice kept us awake until half past eleven (I would have told him just where he could throw his voice but I am far too polite). The following evening, we were regaled with a couple of slightly out-of-tune guitarists who were obviously having a bit of plectrum trouble and a few nights later, a magician - who sounded suspiciously like the ventriloquist – performed an act which seemed to consist in shouting ‘Are you having fun, children?’ every five minutes to a worryingly silent audience.

Of course, it wasn’t really proper camping but it was bucolic enough for my tastes. I bravely squashed a huge spider with my shoe but I am ashamed to admit that when a giant cricket found its way into my children’s bedroom one night, I was unable to come to the rescue. Once more, it was my fearless daughter, Rachel, who found the courage to dispose of it (after suffocating it with fly spray) while I trembled in my own safely-zipped-up room like the despicable coward I am.

To be continued…

Liberty, Equality and Strikes

2008-06-21T21:35:00.011+01:00

The other morning, I thought I heard rioters outside my door. Hundreds – perhaps thousands – of people were hurling incomprehensibly; traffic had come to a standstill; I could smell tear gas. Nevertheless, I ventured outside. Call me foolhardy if you wish, but I needed to buy some bread for lunch…

A substantial portion of the unruly mob was shabbily dressed. Men with straggling grey hair and corduroy trousers were brandishing placards; ferocious-looking women were punching the air with menace. The strains of a seventies’ protest song struggled to keep afloat above the chanting crowd while police stood on street corners looking a trifle bored. I spotted my daughter’s history teacher and nodded pleasantly. Ho hum. The teachers were on strike. Again.

The origins of the phrase faire grève, which means ‘to go on strike’, have more to do with looking for work than stopping it. The word grève means ‘gravel’ and by extension ‘shore’. In Paris, in the fourteenth century, workers would wait on the ‘shore’ of the Seine hoping for employment when the ships came in. The area was known as Place de Grève and functioned as a sort of job centre without the paperwork. It wasn’t until the end of the nineteenth century that the phrase acquired its present meaning, when it finally became legal to go on strike.

Oh, they like a bit of Revolution, do the French. Look at Robespierre. He would have been right up front today with a megaphone and a handful of flyers, egging everybody on. Indeed, these strikes are a sort of Reign of Terror, although the rolling of heads is just a figure of speech and the only chops to be had are lamb ones sizzling on the barbecue set up in front of the Préfecture (this is France, remember, and not even strikers would forgo their lunch). And who could forget mai ’68, when a student protest meeting in Paris sparked off a month of violent riots involving not only students but workers, school children, teachers and university lecturers? In a spectacular example of overreaction, the CRS – French riot police – were immediately sent in with truncheons and tear gas. The demonstrators reacted by building barricades, setting cars alight and hurling paving slabs. Hundreds of people were wounded on la nuit des barricades (the Night of the Barricades), including seventy-two policemen, but this merely added fuel to the fire. The trade unions joined the movement and by the end of les évènements, over ten million strikers had brought the whole country to a standstill. De Gaulle had even contemplated bringing in the army…

Yet, despite the violence and the inevitable shake-up of French society, the demonstrators aroused much public sympathy and this is still the case whenever there is a strike. In 1997, the lorry drivers went on strike and blocked access to the refineries so nobody could get any petrol. Did anyone complain? No. Even my (sort of ex) husband, whose fuse is so short he makes Basil Fawlty look like a monk on Prozac, happily stacked jerry cans full of petrol in the garage without so much as a murmur. And what about the civil servants? Normally the target of vicious and paranoid mutterings from the seventy-five per cent of the French population who do not work for the state, they suddenly become paradigms of virtue whenever they go on strike. Or maybe it’s just not that easy to tell the difference… Striking while the iron is hot, so to speak, the unions make sure they cause a maximum of inconvenience to everybody - which is, of course, the point. We all know that every year, the postmen will go on strike in the run up to Christmas and the dustbin men will choose the hottest month of summer.

Ask any French person if they think all this is thoughtless, foolish or downright mean and they’ll reply cheerfully that no – it’s democracy. Strange, then, that a mere ten per cent of the French working population belong to a trade union, compared to twenty per cent in the United Kingdom and a whopping eighty per cent in Sweden. Another French paradox, evidently…

Back to this morning, and as I waded through the throng in an attempt to reach the boulangerie on the other side of the road, I thought fondly of my seventeen year old daughter. She has also been on demonstrations for the past four Thursday afternoons with the rest of the lycéens, protesting against a proposed educational reform. How mature she is for her age, I mused – she has already found a cause to fight for! Was I witnessing a political activist in the making? A future leader of the Green Party, perhaps?

“So, dear,” I asked her at lunchtime. “Why exactly are you doing this?”

My daughter shrugged.

“Well,” she said. “There’s a chance I might be on telly…and also I get to miss maths.”

Maybe I shouldn’t have asked.

Purple Haze

2008-05-11T19:03:00.011+01:00

As a child, I hated the smell of lavender. It reminded me of elderly ladies, furniture polish and that can of air freshener we always had in the bathroom. Now, however, it is one of my favourite scents which leads me to think that it is perhaps a smell one acquires as one gets older and more sophisticated, rather like acquiring a taste for olives or oysters or wine. Either that or I’ve been overdoing the aerosol sniffing again…

Lavender is a wild, aromatic shrub that loves the sun and thrives in dry rocky soil. It originated in Persia and the Canary Islands and has been in documented use for over two thousand years. The Egyptians used it as scent and as an ingredient in the mummification process; the tribes of Gaul used a lotion made from lavender essential oil called celtic nard and it is possible that the nard mentioned in the bible – the ointment with which Mary anointed the feet of Jesus – was also lavender. The plant was brought to Provence by the Romans who used it to scent their linen or their bathwater – hence the name ‘lavender’ from the Latin lavare – which means ‘to wash’.

Three types grow predominantly in the south of France. Lavandula vera or true lavender, which grows above 800 metres; lavandula augustifolia also known as ‘asp’ lavender because it is a favourite hiding-place for snakes and lavandula hybrida, a hybrid of the above which can grow at a much lower altitude and has a higher yield of essential oil. English lavender, brought over by monks when they fled the French Revolution, is lavandula augustifolia.

Lavender was (and is) used for its medicinal properties: Pliny the Elder mentioned it in his writings and Dioscoride, a Greek doctor and botanist who lived in the first century, advocated lavender tea as a cure for headaches and insomnia. In the twelfth century, the abbess and herbalist, Saint Hildegarde de Bingen, recommended lavender eye drops and believed that lavender promoted ‘pure knowledge and reasoning’ – whatever that means. In the fourteenth century, people carried around bunches of lavender as protection from the plague – and indeed, it may have helped as lavender does repulse fleas. In the sixteenth century, it was used as a treatment for mental disorders and chewing on it was believed to restore speech to those who had lost their voice – the sufferer’s first words presumably being ‘Yuk – what is this stuff?’. Later, it was discovered to relieve rheumatism, catarrh, vertigo and period pains, mood swings, digestive headaches – an intriguing condition that translates as flatulence on the brain – hysteria, asthma and ringworm…to name but a few. Lavender was indeed a panacea.

It had other uses, too. Rubens and his fellow painters used lavender oil as paint thinner and it is thought that this is why the colours have retained their brilliance over the centuries. It also had its place in superstition– lavender kept away the evil eye; rubbing the flowers on one’s forehead before going to sleep ensured premonitory dreams; a few drops of lavender in one’s toilet water prevented marital discord (hmmm – wish I’d known that before). In Provence it is said that a man who eats lavender flowers while standing in a vineyard that has been abandoned for more than twenty years has a sporting chance of seeing ghosts…and frankly, if he’s going to go to all that trouble, he deserves to see ghosts…

As if that wasn’t wacky enough, as recently as 1965 a 41- year old lavender farmer, Monsieur Maurice Masse, spotted a rugby ball-shaped object in the middle of his field on the Valensole Plateau. Moving closer, he noticed two small beings busy gathering lavender. Now Maurice, being quick-witted and not at all one stalk short of a posy, realised at once that he was in the presence of aliens (rather than two small boys who had just come to get their ball back.) What were they doing? Taking samples, perhaps? Was lavender an essential component of a new deadly weapon with which they would take over the earth? Were they going to genetically modify it? Or did they simply have a problem of lavatory odour on board? Maurice would never find out. The aliens saw him and zapped him so that he was paralysed and could only watch helplessly as they boarded their vessel and shot off into space. The mystery was never elucidated but for many years afterwards, no lavender or plant of any kind grew in the spot where they had landed…and Maurice is now in the Twilight Zone…

Lavender is a herb, like rosemary or thyme and is an ingredient of herbes de Provence. Chicken and lamb are particularly good with lavender and lavender cream, lavender ice-cream and lavender mousse are delicious. If you put a few sprigs of lavender with sugar in an airtight jar you can make wonderful lavender-flavoured cakes and biscuits. However, it is a pungent herb and must be used sparingly if you don’t want your food tasting of fabric softener. Lavender honey, on the other hand, has a delicate, fragrant, summery taste. Pale and golden, it is considered by many to be the best tasting honey in the world as well as having healing properties…talking of which, I feel a bit of brain flatulence coming on and I’m going to need to take my medicine…and what better way to take it than dripping off warm toast?

Waterway to go...

2008-04-09T17:36:00.006+01:00

France has a rich network of canals. If you wanted to – and if you had the time - you could travel from north to south and from east to west without ever setting foot on dry land. There are quicker ways to do it, of course, but why rush?

Canals have been around for thousands of years and France has a great tradition in hydraulic engineering that reaches back to the twelfth century. They were built initially for irrigation and then as a means of linking towns to rivers but it wasn’t until the sixteenth century that the French began to build longer canals – a feat made possible by the invention of locks. In 1526, a man with the unfortunate name of Adam de Craponne, was born into a noble family in Salon-de-Provence. A hydraulic engineer, he developed several canal networks in the region but his most famous canal, the Canal de Craponne, provided water for Salon and irrigation for the Crau, an arid rocky plateau nearby. At sixty-two kilometres, it was the first grand canal. Monsieur de Craponne not only invested his entire fortune in the project, he also had to borrow money from his friend, a certain Nostradamus - who evidently foresaw a great future for canals. Unfortunately, he was unable to foresee Adam de Craponne’s fate: he died a ruined man, poisoned - so the story goes –by rivals.

Probably the best known canal in France is the Canal du Midi which was built to link the Atlantic Coast to the Mediterranean. The idea had existed for over a thousand years - the Roman emperors Nero and Augustus considered it as did Charlemagne, Francois I, Charles IX and Henri IV. Several attempts were made at building a canal but they all failed.

The reasons for building one were simple: the sea route around the coast of Spain was not only long (3000 kilometres) – it was also dangerous because of pirates. Moreover, the Straits of Gibraltar were controlled by the powerful Spanish Kingdom who lined its coffers at every passage. This would be a way to weaken Spain’s economy.

In the seventeenth century, in the reign of Louis XIV, one man made the building of this canal his life’s work. His name was Pierre-Paul Riquet, a tax collector from Béziers. Within twenty years he had become very rich (no questions asked) and launched himself into the project with dedication and almost foolhardy enthusiasm. In 1666, the King issued an edict for the construction of the canal and work was begun the following year.

The canal was built to link the Garonne river at Toulouse (which flows into the Atlantic at Bordeaux) and the Etang de Thau, one of a string of lagoons along the Languedoc coast. It was a great challenge that had defeated many an engineer before him, not least because of the features of the landscape. But Riquet was undeterred. When he came to a hill, instead of going around it, he built the world’s first canal tunnel – le tunnel de Malpas; when the ground sloped, he built a lock and when a river had to be crossed he built an aqueduct. Today, there are three hundred and twenty-eight such constructions – some of which are over three hundred years old.
Twelve thousand people worked for him. He paid them above the going rate and – unheard of at the time – he paid them on their days off (which included rainy days) and when they were ill. They were even provided with subsidised housing. Needless to say, this didn’t make Riquet terribly popular with other, less generous employers…

Poor Riquet died exhausted and bankrupt in 1680, just a few months before the canal was completed. His son carried on the work and in 1681, it was inaugurated by the King. Known as the Canal Royal de Languedoc up until the French Revolution, it was renamed the Canal du Midi by paranoid revolutionaries.

From the very beginning, the canal was used to transport people and mail as well as merchandise. The Barque de la Poste (Postal Barge) took four days to travel the 240 kilometres from Toulouse to Agde and stopped regularly along the way to allow its passengers to eat (the stops were called dinées) and to sleep (couchées). At every stopping place there was a chapel, an inn and stables for the horses that pulled the barges. Horses were used for traction until the 1930s, when motorised barges replaced them.

Between 1830 and 1856, another canal was built linking the Canal du Midi to Bordeaux because the river Garonne flowed too slowly to be economical. Ironically, the Bordeaux-Sète railway line was finished at around the same time and marked the beginning of the decline of fluvial transport.

photo www.canal-du-midi.org

Today, the canals are known collectively as Le Canal des Deux Mers: - Canal of the Two Seas – which covers a total distance of over four hundred kilometres. In 1996, it was declared a World Heritage site by UNESCO. Together with the other 6300 kilometres of waterways in France, it accommodates thousands of tourists messing about in boats every year while cyclists and walkers travel the old towpaths beneath the shade of the plane trees. It is a wonderful way to experience the variety of France and a perfect opportunity to just relax - and go with the flow…

French bloomers

2008-02-22T19:30:00.012+01:00

There are two flower festivals in France during the month of February: la fête de la violette in Toulouse and la fête du Mimosa in the south of France. It’s nice to have something to brighten up the dull wintry days between Christmas and the first signs of spring.

I remember eating Parma Violets when I was a child and calling them ‘perfume sweets’ because I thought that’s what they were made from. In a way, I suppose, they are. Perhaps Toulouse, called la ville rose because of the colour of the buildings, should have been named la ville violette after the flower that is its emblem. Certainly, the Parma violet is omnipresent in this town. As you stroll beside the Canal du Midi, a heady scent drifts along the towpath from La maison de la Violette - a fragrant barge that has been turned into a shrine to this purple flower with its heart-shaped petals. Once inside you are offered a crystallised violet (only one, I’m afraid) and are free to look around and learn about the history and the uses of this flower.

In ancient Greece, the violet was considered a symbol of fertility and love and it was used in love potions. As it was also used as a cure for a headache, the recipient had no excuse not to succumb. Violets were used extensively in the middle-ages both in cookery and in medicine: apothecaries made cough syrup from them and they were used to add colour and flavour to food.

During the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, they were still used in cookery but it was also fashionable in court to douse oneself liberally with violet-scented powder to mask bodily odour - although violet-scented soap may have been a better idea…

Violets were Napoleon’s favourite flowers. Josephine wore them on her wedding day and Napoleon sent her a posy of violets on every anniversary. After her death, he picked violets growing on her tomb and wore them in a locket around his neck. In exile on the Isle of Elba, he promised his followers he would return in the spring… with the violets. This earned him the nickname of Caporal Violette and the flower became his emblem, worn by his followers in his honour. Suddenly violets were everywhere: on pots, on clothes and on postcards. The postcards looked innocent enough but they were cleverly drawn and on closer inspection, revealed the outline of Napoleon’s portrait cunningly camouflaged. When he returned from exile, women offered him bouquets in the street and violets were strewn beneath his feet. Up until 1874, the French government tried to ban – with little success - any reproduction of a violet because it was the symbol of the Bonapartists

In the language of flowers, the violet is symbolic of faithfulness in love. It is associated with Valentine's Day too, since legend tells us that violets grew outside the window of the jail where Saint Valentine was imprisoned. And in a profound philosophical statement, this delicate, sweet flower also represents death...

Mimosa, on the other hand, represents sensitivity and feminine energy – whatever that is (I certainly haven’t got any…). This sunshine-laden tree is a member of the acacia family and was brought to the Mediterranean from Australia in the early nineteenth century. Rich Europeans planted it in the gardens of their villas on the French Riviera and enjoyed the masses of golden flowers that bloomed in the late winter months. Mimosa is prized for its delicate fragrance and is a component of several well-know perfumes as well as being used to scent soap and other products of the perfume industry.

Mimosa growers are called mimosistes and between January and March, they export more than eight million bouquets of their flowers all over the world. The fête du Mimosa takes place mid-February in the small town of Mandelieu-la-Napoule where the streets are vibrant with music and gaily-coloured floats. La mimosette – a cream-filled brioche decorated with mimosa and made from a secret recipe - is baked especially for the occasion and you can also buy mimosa syrup, sweets and even jelly.

photo mandelieu

In aromatherapy, mimosa is taken to relieve anxiety and depression and to liberate oneself from “oppressive memories”. It apparently provokes feelings of joy and lightness of spirit and the truly whimsical can use it to induce prophetic dreams.

On a less picturesque note, mimosa extract is used to treat a variety of ailments including swollen ankles and sensitive skin. The bark is used to make an astringent gargle and to treat colic and… chronic diarrhoea.

I expect that is where the feelings of joy and lightness come in…

Crumbs!

2008-01-27T22:41:00.000+01:00

In French the word for friend is copain, which comes from the Latin cum pane (with bread) and is the person with whom you share your bread. One could be forgiven for thinking that the French invented bread but it was probably the Egyptians: however, while few people have heard of eesh baladi, nearly everyone knows what a French stick is.

Along with strings of onions and smelly cigarettes, the baguette - that thin loaf of crusty bread that makes a sandwich as long as your arm - is an enduring, albeit hackneyed, symbol of France. The elongated form of the baguette was created in the early twentieth century and was invented for townspeople who lived near to a bakery and could buy their bread fresh, twice a day. The bread was made to be eaten on the same day as purchase and this is still the case. I have tried wrapping leftover baguette in a tea towel; I have put it in a plastic bag overnight; I have popped dry bread in the microwave, I've sprinkled it with water and baked it in a hot oven - but the result is always the same: day-old French bread tastes like carpet slippers.

Bread has been the staple diet of the French for centuries, even if they are now eating a mere five ounces a day as opposed to the two pounds they were eating in 1900. The Ancient Gauls ate their food off a thick slice of bread called a tranchoir and when told to "finish your plate", that's exactly what they did. This custom lasted well into the fourteenth century, although the wealthier classes would give the sauce-sodden tranchoir to the poor to finish off. The quality of bread eaten was an indicator of wealth and the whiter and finer the flour, the more expensive the bread. At this time, the humble peasant had to make do with coarse, black rye bread that he made himself - but not before he'd paid tax to his overlord to grind his flour in the communal mill and more tax to be allowed to use the communal oven. As if that wasn't humiliating enough, he often had to add straw or even clay to the grain when times were hard, producing a loaf that, I suspect, closely resembled the 100% natural high-fibre rustic bread you can buy for a small fortune in any organic bakery today.

The rising price of bread was one of the reasons for the French Revolution. The harvest in 1788 had been extremely poor and the population was starving. At the beginning of 1789, riots broke out throughout the country, and not for the first time. People were demanding work and bread and it was then that Marie-Antoinette - who was a little half-baked herself – was supposed to have suggested that if there was no bread, they could eat cake instead (actually, she didn’t say that, but I wanted to get that joke in about her being half-baked…) Later, in 1791, the Constituent Assembly fixed the price of bread and decreed that bakers could only bake one sort of loaf, the "Equality Loaf", made from three parts wheat flour to one part rye.

In the 19th century, the mechanical kneading machine was invented and bakers no longer had to knead their dough by hand - or with their feet, which had been the case for some types of bread. Consumers were hostile to the idea but professional bakers welcomed the chance to lighten their workload. Further changes followed, including the replacement of brewer's yeast with baker's yeast and the use of steam ovens over wood-fired ones until finally, in the 1950s, bread was being made in what is known as industrial bakeries, thus becoming plentiful and cheap. In the face of this competition, 6,786 traditional bakeries were forced to close down between 1968 and 1975. Today, shops known as "baking terminals" sell bread that they have bought frozen and partially baked and which they have finished cooking in their own ovens, to con you into thinking it is homemade. American and British-type sliced bread has also become popular - I have even seen it sold without crusts: pale and limp and wrapped in cellophane. It’s enough to put you off your croque monsieur…

Thankfully, there are many for whom bread is still the staff of life and 36,000 traditional boulangeries continue to flourish in France (that's one for every 1,500 inhabitants). Each region produces its speciality in a myriad of shapes and sizes, some flavoured with walnuts, raisins, bacon, olives, basil or garlic and others with names that read like poetry: fougasses, flûtes and fibassiers, polka, choine and gâche. The feast day of the patron saint of bread, Saint Honoré, is celebrated on the 16th May and events that include processions, free breakfasts and bread tasting are held throughout the country. And once a year, the Grand Prix of the Parisian Baguette (yes, really), is organised by the City of Paris, the victor walking away with a prize of 4000 euros (almost £27,000) and the honour of providing the President with his daily bread for a year. Now, that's what I'd call a real breadwinner…

*My camera has given up the ghost and I have had to find pictures on the Internet. I do not know who took them so please - if these are your photos - let me know and I will post your details (or remove them, whatever you prefer!).*

Noël, Noël...

2007-12-22T10:44:00.001+01:00

Christmas customs were brought here by the Romans and the first celebration of the day was in 496 when King Clovis was baptised in Rheims along with his entire army of three thousand warriors, presumably in an Olympic-sized font. Charlemagne was crowned emperor on Christmas day in the year 800 and on the same day in 1066 that other Frenchman, William the Conqueror, was crowned in Westminster Abbey.

The first Christmas tree appeared in 1837: it was brought over by a German princess on her marriage to the Duke of Orleans (Germans obviously considered a tree to be a suitable romantic gift because Prince Albert brought one over too, when he married Queen Victoria). Father Christmas evolved from Saint Nicolas, a thinner and more discerning person who distributed presents on the 6th December, accompanied by the Père Fouettard – a rather politically incorrect Father 'Spanker' who punished naughty children by whipping them. Saint Nicolas's day is still celebrated in the north- east of France and so children there get twice as many presents in December as everybody else, which seems a tad unfair.

You can buy Christmas crackers and stockings here now, even though traditionally, French children put their shoes beneath the tree on Christmas Eve. Mind you, as my own children pointed out, that’s only fun if you have big feet. They prefer Christmas stockings because they can tie them to the bedposts and stretch them big enough for Father Christmas to stick a stereo in there and maybe a laptop while he’s at it. The idea for Christmas crackers, on the other hand, came from the French bon bon – a sweet wrapped in tissue paper. Tom Smith, a 19th century London baker, brought these back from Paris, added mottos and gifts and eventually got rid of the sweet altogether to add the ‘snap’. Crackers are still a novelty in France, though – the French get their ‘snap’ from papillottes: foiled-wrapped chocolates which also contain a silly joke but no gift (unless you count the chocolate).

Leaving aside the premature fake-snow-and-holly-wreath window displays, the real run-up to the festivities begins – at least for those who live in Provence, as I used to - on the 4th of December, which is St. Barbara’s day. You plant grains of wheat in a saucer (rather like planting cress), and watch it grow tall and strong by Christmas. We still do this in our house even though my wheat nearly always dies, which apparently means I will not be prosperous during the coming year. Curiously enough, this has so far proved to be true.

The French have not entirely forgotten that Christmas is a religious festival and the focal point is not the tree or the fairy lights or even the bowl of mixed nuts. It is the crèche - the Nativity crib. In Provence, the figurines are clay representations of the Holy Family and also of villagers and local craftsmen. These are called santons - little saints - and the people who make them are santonniers. One santonnier I heard about has made a santon of every single person in his village and at Christmas, each villager brings his clay 'double' to the church and places it in the crèche. The crèche is often the first thing people want you to see when you visit their home although I’ve noticed that no one is ever impressed by my own cotton wool and papier mâché representation. Too conceptual, perhaps.

Children are kept busy here on Christmas Eve, either with cartoons on the television or attendance at Midnight Mass. Père Noël comes by at midnight and the presents are opened then. Rather than falling exhausted into bed, clutching their new Barbies/Playstations, with bits of Sellotape stuck to their pyjamas, the children then have to eat a gargantuan meal with friends and family, called le Réveillon. There is usually a turkey, stuffed with sausage meat and chestnuts, quite often oysters, foie gras, smoked salmon, plenty of champagne and a bûche de Noël -Yule log - for pudding. In Provence, they also serve les treize desserts - symbolic sweetmeats representing the twelve apostles and Christ, which include dried figs, nougat and calissons, a confectionary made from almonds and preserved melon. If you manage to get through that lot, you are allowed to go to bed, unless you are a guest in someone’s home, in which case it would be polite to offer to help with the washing up.

Chez nous, however, Christmas is resolutely English. When they were younger, my children would go to bed early on Christmas Eve after a few carols, mince pies and mild threats involving boughs of holly. They would wake up five minutes after I’d gone to bed and open their presents very noisily and would not want their Christmas dinner because they’d have eaten all the chocolate tree decorations. This year, the only difference will be that they’ll probably go to bed early on Christmas morning.

Joyeux Noël everybody!

Wined up

2007-11-18T11:33:00.000+01:00

In an attempt to civilise the uncouth barbarians of Ancient Gaul, the Romans brought with them the art of wine making. The Gauls had been growing vines and making crude wine for thousands of years before the Roman occupation but it was the Romans who showed them how to do it properly. The first wine using Roman methods was produced here in the Dauphiné, by the Allobroges tribe and soon other Celtic tribes were planting their own vineyards all over the country.

After the fall of the Roman Empire in the fifth century AD, France had become a Christian country. Wine was in great demand because it was a potent symbol in the Church and so it was the clergy who oversaw the planting of vineyards around the major cities. Later, the monks took over and became skilful wine growers, establishing most of the great vineyards we know today.

By the fifteenth century, vines were cultivated everywhere in France. The middle-classes vied with the aristocracy in producing the finest vineyards which they planted outside the city walls. Wine was still a drink for the elite and it wasn’t until the eighteenth century that it became available to ordinary people. It was healthier than water which was usually germ ridden and the average man would drink a litre a day. No wonder they had a Revolution…

In 1875, the vines became infested with an insect called phylloxera and the crops were destroyed. Wine growers had to start again from scratch by grafting the ancient French vines on to American ones. Over a million hectares of vineyards disappeared from Brittany, Normandy and Picardy but wine production actually increased – so much so that the government had to bring in measures to stop wine growers planting inferior vines and producing cheap plonk and encourage them to produce better quality wines. The reputation of French wine persists today…and to be honest, even the plonk is good.

But let’s not give the French all the credit. If it weren’t for us, they’d have no wine bottles or corks – or even corkscrews. Wine used to be kept in casks – invented by the Ancient Gauls – but they were not airtight, so conservation was difficult. With the invention of coke ovens in seventeenth century England came a new method of making bottles from thick, reinforced glass. These travelled well and moreover, a cork stopper could be banged into the neck with a mallet without breaking it. Wine could now age gracefully without turning to vinegar (from vin and aigre, meaning ‘sour wine’).

Poster by Favre&Assoc

Getting the wine out of these new bottles proved difficult however. More often than not, the glass neck had to be broken, which could put a bit of a damper on a romantic candlelit dinner for two. It was an Englishman who first patented the corkscrew in 1795 – the inventor took his inspiration from a tool called the bulletscrew or gun worm, a device that extracted stuck bullets from rifles. Not terribly romantic either but very efficient.

November is the month for Beaujolais Nouveau which is always released on the third Thursday of the month, regardless of when the harvest began. Drinking and celebrating the arrival of new wine is an old custom. In the middle ages, it was in the best interests of the vineyard owners to get their wine on the market first, as this would ensure them a good price. Also, wine did not keep well at that time, so the younger the wine the better. A great celebration was held on the 11th November in its honour, the fête de la Saint Martin - in fact, one of the politer synonyms for a hangover is ‘the Saint Martin blues’, although I have never heard anyone say it.

Beaujolais isn’t the only new wine – I have drunk a very nice new Côtes du Rhone – but the media hype ensures that Beaujolais is the best known and most popular. The grape it is made from – the gamay – is particularly suited to new wines as it is sweet and fruity. Most Beaujolais Nouveau is drunk by the New Year and you’re unlikely to find any in the shops after that. I have no idea what happens to all those unsold bottles – perhaps they really do end up as vinegar.

When drinking wine in France, the custom is to chink your glasses with your fellow drinkers and say “Tchin, tchin”. This onomatopoeic toast has its origins in the middle ages when it was common to poison one another’s food and drink. The idea was to knock your goblet against your neighbour’s goblet so that some of your wine splashed into his (tchin) – and he did the same to you (tchin) – that way you could both be sure no-one had slipped arsenic into the claret.

These days, however, fewer people are chinking their glasses. French wine consumption has dropped by half since the 1960s and people prefer to drink water with their meals rather than the traditional vin de table. This doesn’t concern me, of course, as I’m English so I have been waiting eagerly for the Beaujolais Nouveau to arrive on the 15th of November, a glass in each hand. Tchin tchin…

Grave circumstances

2007-10-26T20:52:00.000+01:00

November is a bit of a morbid month here with three days, including Armistice Day, devoted to remembering the dead. The first, All Saints’ Day – or Toussaint - is a public holiday and, although it sounds nice and holy, it has its roots in pagan mythology. Like Hallowe’en, All Saints’ Day was created to supplant the Celtic celebration of samonios (samhain) which marked the end of summer. In the eighth century, Christian monks who had come as missionaries to Gaul found themselves witness to strange rituals and dark goings on at around the beginning of November. People would lay places at the table for deceased relatives and light candles and lanterns to guide the dead souls whom they believed mingled with the living during this time. These practices were so deeply anchored in the rural population that they endured in one form or another even after conversion to Christianity. In fact, in certain parts of France today, people still light lanterns for the dead and in Brittany, they pour milk on the tombs as an offering. I bet it curdles...

In the ninth century, Louis the Pious instituted a feast day for all the saints with the aim of replacing the pagan feast of the dead with a joyous Christian celebration. As usual, the French didn’t take a blind bit of notice and carried on inviting their ancestors to dinner. To cater for this, the Roman Catholic church had to invent a ‘Feast of the Dead’ on the second of November but to this day, most French people choose to remember their ‘disappeared ones’ on the first – probably because it is a holiday.

The day begins for many with mass followed by a family lunch - to which only living relatives are invited - and in the afternoon, everyone goes to the cemetery to put flowers on relatives’ tombs and tidy them up a bit. The traditional flowers are chrysanthemums because – like everything else in the cemetery – they need very little looking after and do not mind the cold. It is the ultimate faux-pas, of course, to offer chrysanthemums to anyone on any other occasion, unless you are trying to drop some sort of grotesque hint.

Cemeteries in France are beautifully kept and many are listed as historical monuments. The idea of cutting through one en route to the shops or nipping in for a sneaky fag on your way home from school would be shocking and incomprehensible to the French. It is important to keep grave plots neat and tidy and woe betide the slatterns who let their epitaphs get dusty – they’ll get a stern dressing down from the town council and more than a few cold stares. Like prisons, cemeteries are surrounded by high walls, the gates are locked at night and there are strict rules to be obeyed: singing or playing music is prohibited except for liturgical chants and military music; you are not allowed to enter if you are drunk or under fourteen and unaccompanied; animals are forbidden except for guide dogs and you are not allowed to take photographs without permission. A quarter of an hour before closing time a siren sounds, loud enough to wake the…well, never mind…and a uniformed keeper walks round to check in case anyone was thinking of spending the night there.

In the village of Mens, 55 kilometres south of Grenoble, you can find private Protestant cemeteries. They were established during the Reformation when Protestants were forbidden by Catholics to bury their dead in 'true Christian' ground. There is also a cemetery divided in two by a low wall: on one side are the Catholic graves - neat and tidy and decorated with photographs and flowers and dinky little statues; on the other side are the Protestant graves - plain, austere and overrun with vegetation...

The most famous French cemetery is Père Lachaise in Paris, established by Napoleon in 1804. This is the place to be buried for any...er... body who is anybody. Chopin is buried here as is the painter Pissarro; Jim Morrison’s grave is regularly besieged by fans and it is traditional for admirers to kiss Oscar Wilde’s tombstone while wearing lipstick. Today there are more than 300,000 people here ‘eating dandelions by the root’ (French for ‘pushing up the daisies’), making Père Lachaise the biggest cemetery in the city of Paris.

Perhaps the most unusual burial place in Paris is les catacombes. These are a network of tunnels and rooms beneath the city in what was once the site of Roman quarries. In 1786, bones from the cemeteries in the centre of the city were moved here as they were presenting a health hazard. There are about 186 miles of tunnels beneath Paris and only a small section is open to the public but of course, that doesn’t stop the cataphiles – catacomb lovers or urban explorers, as they prefer to call themselves - from using the many secret entrances to gain access and hold wild parties amongst the artfully arranged skulls and bones of about six million people. Well…they’re not disturbing anyone, are they?

Another unusual burial site lies beneath the deconsecrated church of Saint Laurent in Grenoble. More than 1,500 tombs have been uncovered that include fifth century mausoleums, seventh century sarcophagi and other tombs dating from the fourth century right through to the eighteenth. The church is now a museum, and you can walk around the crypt on gangways suspended above it and peer into the open stone coffins. Fortunately, they are empty now but I am nevertheless reminded of the words carved on one Frenchman’s headstone: Just leave me to sleep. That's why I'm here…

Mysterious

2007-10-13T21:00:00.000+01:00

The nights are drawing in and it’s time to gather around the fire and tell spooky tales of ghosts and sprites and other fearsome apparitions. Did you know, for example, that during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, France was overrun with werewolves? In the space of a hundred years, there were thirty thousand trials concerning loups-garous and many of these cases are well-documented. In 1573, in the village of Dole in the Jura region, a certain Gilles Garnier confessed to having murdered and eaten scores of young children and a few years later, a father and son admitted killing and eating several adolescents. In 1603, a thirteen-year old boy called Jean Grenier from Aquitaine was found crouching in the bushes chewing on what turned out to be human flesh. Another werewolf caught red-handed - or pawed in this case - was a creature called Jacques Rollet, who not only admitted to eating human beings but commented on the fact that lawyers had particularly thick skins. Well, we all knew that, didn’t we?

These wolf men all had something in common: they were excessively hairy, their nails were long, sharp and black, their teeth pointed and they scampered around on all fours – at least when there was a full moon. As recently as 1930, a werewolf was thought to prowl the streets of Paris and even today, desperate parents use the threat of a loup-garou under the bed to chasten naughty children.

As far as I know, there have been no cases of loups-garous in this region – although there are plenty of excessively hairy men. There is, however, a history of fairies. Near the thermal resort of Allevard are two caves said to be occupied by fairies and at the height of the resort’s popularity at the end of the nineteenth century, they were a major tourist attraction. However, unmarried women were not allowed to enter as legend had it that a young girl was warned by one of the malevolent fairies that if she did not marry her lover – who had gone to war – in exactly a year’s time to the day...he would die. On the allotted day, the lover preferred to go hunting rather than get hitched and met his death as predicted. The fairy got the blame, of course, rather than the disgruntled bride-to-be…

Closer to Grenoble, the village of Sassenage claims to have been home to the fairy Mélusine. Legend relates how a certain King Elinas met a beautiful young woman, Présine, while out hunting. She agreed to marry him on condition that he never see her give birth. He broke his promise, however, and his wife promptly disappeared with her three daughters. Years later, on learning of their father’s broken promise, the girls took their revenge and imprisoned him. Présine therefore punished her eldest daughter, Mélusine, condemning her to turn into a snake every Saturday and if she married, her husband must never see her as a snake otherwise she would disappear forever. One day, Mélusine met the handsome Raymondin in the forest and agreed to marry him as long as he didn’t try to see her on a Saturday. Strangely enough, he accepted – I suppose he thought she was the sort of woman who like a girls’ night out. Unfortunately, one Saturday, suddenly suspicious and mad with jealousy, Raymondin burst into the bathroom where poor Mélusine was trying to deal as best she could with her scaly skin problem - and discovered her secret. She fled to the caves in Sassenage and was never seen again. The small, spherical stones still found in the mountains around Sassenage were believed to be the fairy Mélusine’s petrified tears.

Other strange stones include those observed by two young girls in 1842 in the village of Clavaux. Stones started falling around them in slow motion so they ran to tell their parents who returned to the place with them. Suddenly, a sort of whirlwind began to suck the two children skywards and their parents had to grab hold of their feet to prevent them from disappearing into the stratosphere like helium balloons.

On a more ghostly note, this region has its White Lady too. On the outskirts of the village of Château-Bernard, some say a hitch-hiker can be seen thumbing a lift at night. All in white, she tends to dissolve like mist into the darkness as you approach her but thirty years ago, a man actually stopped and gave her a lift. Taking a fancy to her, he put his hand on her knee and then groped her breasts at which point he realised that she was – literally – frigid. She suddenly disappeared and feeling guilty, no doubt, the dirty old man stopped at the next police station to report what had happened and discovered that he’d just tried to make out with a ghost. I hope he had nightmares for the rest of his life.

There are countless other mysteries but to be honest, I’m still grappling with the everyday ones, never mind the supernatural. My house does seem to be haunted though…by three young girls who only appear at mealtimes and then mysteriously disappear…mmmm…

Minding your onions

2007-09-28T21:57:00.000+01:00

In 1828, the story goes, Henri Ollivier, a young farmer from Roscoff in Brittany, set sail for Britain in a fishing boat filled with pink-skinned onions and ruddy-cheeked companions. For some reason, he thought that the British might like to try the delicately flavoured local onions - and he was right. From then on, there was no stopping the petitjeans or Onion Johnnies, as the British called the onion sellers.

They formed themselves into "companies" led by a master (they used the English word) and in the beginning, each company numbered up to sixty onion sellers, onion stringers and apprentices. The master was responsible for drawing up contracts, establishing wages, sorting out accommodation and attributing the beer and tobacco allowances. He also planned the itinerary: the onions were sold throughout the whole of the United Kingdom, from Scotland to Cornwall and from door to door. At first, the onion seller was on foot, carrying up to twenty kilos of onions strung around his neck. From 1921, however, when bicycles became more common, he was able to carry up to one hundred and fifty kilos with hardly a wobble. This gave rise to the enduring stereotype of the onion-bearing, bicycle-riding, beret-wearing French peasant in his stripy t-shirt that persists today.

photo courtesy of Vincent

Before they were sold, the onions had to be strung together and this was the job of the botteleur. It was an awful task because he had to stand hunched over all day and make at least one hundred and fifty strings. As if that wasn't enough, he also had to cook for everybody else, presumably from a cookbook named "A Thousand and One things to do with an Onion". Fortunately, his contract included two pints of beer a day, which gave him something to cry into at the end of an evening.

The apprentices were recruited as young as eight. They were taught a few useful English phrases and sent out with an onion seller to learn the trade. It was a hard life: they weren't allowed 'home' until the all onions had been sold and 'home' was often nothing more than a leaky barn on the outskirts of some English village. Moreover, their mothers had stayed behind on the family farm and only a few came over to visit their husbands for short periods. Those women who did decide to stay weren't allowed to go out selling: they had to cook, clean and be generally domestic, so that most of them jumped in the first boat back to Brittany when the opportunity arose.

The Onion Johnnies had their ups and downs. In 1898 and in 1905, ships carrying the Johnnies sank and nearly ninety lives were lost. Also in 1905, the Aliens Act limited the number of onion sellers coming over to a mere twenty (although, in typical French fashion, the Johnnies found a loophole). Then came the First World War, which got everybody in a pickle and after the Second World War, the British government simply forbade the retail of imported fresh vegetables because of its own economic crisis. The ban was only lifted in 1954 and the following year, 852 Johnnies were back at work.

Believe it or not, there are about twenty Johnnies still working in Britain today. Some of them even continue to ride their bicycles but this is mostly for the benefit of the tourists. Oddly enough, if you mention Roscoff or Onion Johnnies to the French and they won't know what you're talking about. Even the stripy-t-shirt-beret-bicycle thing is a mystery to them because their idea of a typical Frenchman is a cross between General de Gaulle and Christian Lacroix, with a bit of Sacha Distel thrown in.

Still, they certainly know their onions. Their onion soup is world famous and one explanation of its origins (to be taken with a pinch of salt, perhaps) is that King Louis XV returned late one night after a hard day's monarching, with the munchies. All he could find in the kitchen was onions, butter and champagne. He mixed everything together, cooked it and - voilà! - French Onion Soup. I have serious doubts about this story, as I'm sure King Louis wouldn't have even known where the kitchen was, never mind the butter - but I could be wrong.

I prefer to believe that the soup originated in Lyon. They say that their Gratinée Lyonnaise is the original French Onion Soup, so as I am biased, here is the recipe:

800gr/2lbs of onions
120gr/4oz of Comté cheese (you could substitute cheddar)
4 thick slices of wholemeal bread
40gr/2oz of butter
one rounded teaspoonful of sugar
1,25 litres/ 2 1/2 pints of beef stock
salt
freshly ground black pepper

Peel and thinly slice the onions. Grate the cheese. Put the slices of bread in a low oven to dry out. Melt the butter in a heavy-bottomed saucepan and add the onions. Season and cook on a low heat for about 15 minutes, with the lid on. Take off the lid and continue to cook for 30 minutes. Sprinkle on the sugar and let the onions caramelise before pouring in the stock. Bring to the boil and then simmer gently for 15 minutes. Pour into individual ovenproof soup bowls and place a slice of bread on the top of each one, making sure it soaks up some of the liquid. Top with the grated cheese and put the soup bowls under the grill for 5 minutes, until the cheese is toasted. Serve at once and let it warm you to the very tips of your toes…

Balls

2007-09-11T21:44:00.000+01:00

Who would have thought the French invented rugby? Well, the French for one…they claim that a game called la soule was brought to Britain by William the Conqueror but in fact la soule was just one of many rugby or football-like games played all over Europe in the Middle Ages. The game usually involved two rival villages. The villagers stood on neutral ground and the soule – often an inflated pig’s bladder or a piece of stitched leather filled with sawdust, bran or even dried dung – was thrown into the air. The aim was to get the soule to one’s own village by running or kicking it across country while fighting off the burly opponents. There were few rules and a soule match was a dangerous, violent and rowdy affair. No change there, then…

The French did invent tennis, though, that’s for sure. Real tennis – from royal tennis-began as the jeu de paume (palm game). It truly was ‘the game of kings and the king of games’ – Louis X died after a game (he drank water that was too cold) and Henri II was a champion among monarchs. King Charles V built the first known indoor court at the Louvre in 1368 and the French Revolution was hatched in the tennis court at Versailles, although this was because the would-be revolutionaries had been locked out of the assembly rooms.

It was invented by bored monks who started throw a ball made from a piece of cloth around the cloisters, hitting it with the palm of the hand when it fell back. Well, it beat Gregorian chants, I suppose. They began using harder balls which meant the players had to wear a glove to avoid injury (as in cricket and basketball today). Then a wooden bat was used and eventually a racquet, which had the form of a forearm and a palm. The racquet with strings of sheep gut, laced across the frame, was developed in the sixteenth century.

A rope was introduced and the ball had to be hit over this (later, of course, it became a net). Special bouncier balls were made by paumiers and when rubber was discovered, Parisian balls became a coveted booty for pirates. Please note that I have not made a single, unsavoury joke so far…

The word ‘tennis’ is a deformation of the phrase 'Tenez Messires’…roughly translated as ‘Take that, sirs’ which was uttered at the moment of service. One of the explanations for the strange scoring system of 15, 30, 40 is that it was based on the presence of a clock face at the end of the tennis court; another that in medieval French numerology, 60 was the equivalent of our 100. Doesn’t explain the 40, but still. The term 'deuce' is derived from the French deux meaning two and ‘love’ is possibly derived from the French l’oeuf meaning egg and symbolizing zero although there are more likely explanations.

When the finer days arrive, in dusty village squares all over France, in the shade of plane trees, elderly men in string vests and berets drink pastis and play boules. In Provence, the game is known as pétanque, a word derived from the provençal ped tanca or ‘feet together’. In 1910, a player called Ernest Pitiot suffering from rheumatism, was unable to do the little run before throwing his boule so he was allowed to throw it standing with his feet together. The tradition stuck – as did poor Ernest, no doubt. The image is very vivid…

In the game of boules Lyonnaises, the metal balls weigh nearly a kilo, bigger than those used in pétanque, and the player must run before ‘shooting’. In both games, the object is to throw one’s boule so that it lands as close as possible to the small wooden jack, called a cochonnet.

Billiards, it seems, is another French invention. Some say it originated as an indoor version of croquet – itself derived from a French game called la crosse. Some say it was the other way round. At least we know that the name comes from the French billart, the stick that was used, and this probably comes from the word bille, meaning ‘ball’. The game was played on a table covered with a green cloth and the object was to push a ball through a wicket to hit a peg. The narrow end of the stick came into play when using the club end would have made a shot difficult to control. This was called the queue from which we get ‘cue’. For a long time, women weren’t allowed to use this end of the biliart as it was feared they would rip the cloth…that was the official reason, at any rate. I bet the real reason was that the men were simply terrified of losing to the ‘weaker sex’…

I have never learnt to play tennis and I’m no great fan of football but I did play pétanque once. It is a more skilful game than it looks and gets even more difficult after a few glasses of pastis…still, at least I didn’t have to wear a string vest. That would have put everybody off their shot…

Salut!

2007-08-24T09:56:00.000+01:00

Colin Randall has invited me to post in his Salut! Forum, so I have. Thanks, Colin!

See you over there, then...

Back to school

2007-08-23T11:24:00.000+01:00

Ahhh. The holidays are coming to an end and September looms. Going back to school conjures up cosy images of freshly sharpened crayons, shiny conkers and Readybrek – or at least, it used to. These days, la rentrée (a handy word to describe going back to school) is more likely to mean financial ruin, a nervous breakdown and a fair idea of where one would love to stick all those sharpened crayons…

Charlemagne (742-814) is held responsible by French children for having invented school. He realised that being unable to read or write was going to be a bit of a handicap for a King of the Franks, especially when it came to filling in all those forms and writing decrees and stuff like that, so he founded the Palace School in his home town of Aix-la-Chapelle and attended it himself. He learnt to read Latin and Greek but he never quite got the hang of writing, which is ironic for someone who claimed to love administration more than war - if he were alive today he’d never be able to get a council house or join a tennis club or apply for a credit card. Actually, I can’t do any of those things either despite being an absolutely brilliant speller…

As if that wasn’t enough, in the 19th century, Jules Ferry made school compulsory for 6 to 13 year olds – including girls, which was something of a novelty. He secularised the state schools and abolished religious education - barring members of Roman Catholic orders as state school teachers. This is why there are so many problems today when young Muslim girls turn up at school wearing the veil – by law, pupils are forbidden to display any sign of religious allegiance and this includes wearing veils, turbans or orange robes, shaving their heads or indulging in transcendental meditation in the playground. As for Jules Ferry, he was assassinated in 1893 by a religious fanatic – probably an irate Jesuit with a grudge who saw his pension fly out of the window with not even the chance of a Welcome Back bonus as consolation...

Jules Ferry also ensured the education in France was free and it is, bien sûr – give or take a few hundred euros. Course books are on loan from the school but workbooks have to be bought, as well as books studied in literature classes, file paper, exercise books and hugely expensive programmable calculators. To be fair, financial help is available if you have a limited budget - although I do have to explain to my children that the money is meant for books and not hair extensions.

And so I head off to town clutching my limp cheque book, in search of the elusive pink exercise book cover that is always on the list and never in the economy pack-of-five on sale and the very expensive oil pastels that will be used just once for a work of art entitled The Inner Eye and will end up in the bin on the last day of term. Then there are all the felt pens, rubbers, pencils and biros that have mysteriously disappeared during the summer holidays. And then there is the paper...

It is not surprising that a nation known for its obsession with paperwork should have as many different words to describe paper as the Eskimos have words to describe snow. I have had to buy: A4 file paper with small squares, A4 file paper with large squares (single sheets and double sheets of both), A5 file paper with small squares etc. etc., tracing paper, squared tracing paper, drawing paper, coloured drawing paper, small, medium and large exercise books with and without spiral bindings…all this in the knowledge that on the first day of school all the teachers are going to vehemently deny ever having asked for large, small-squared spiral-bound exercise books in the first place. I don’t see why the French can’t write on straight lines like everybody else.

Oh, I hear you say, but you don’t have to buy school uniform, do you? I only wish I did. I wouldn’t even begrudge buying those voluminous bottle-green school knickers and fawn knee socks my mum had to buy and sewing in all the name-tags - at least my girls would know what to wear every day. Instead, they throw clothes around the room in a panic as if it were Saturday night and their first date, rather than Wednesday morning and double chemistry. It’s no good asking them to wear the same outfit two days running, either – they’d sooner flunk the baccalaureat, believe me.

During the first week back at school, the children will stagger home with piles of textbooks for me to cover in clear plastic film. This has to be done, even if the book has already been covered by the last owner – you can’t just leave the old plastic film on and pretend it’s new because they can tell and I know because I tried. Finally, just when you think you can relax and get some time to yourself, you are sent various forms to fill in, in triplicate, with information that the school already has because you fill in the same forms every year. This is fine if your child has changed sex, place of birth or parents but otherwise it feels like you’ve been set lines as a punishment for having immutable children. In fact, it feels exactly like being back at school…

What a bastide...

2007-08-21T19:19:00.000+01:00

Coo-eee…I’m back.

However, I’m afraid I have nothing very exciting to report (sorry, Alex!) – it was just…nice. We went to Mirepoix, a medieval fortified town (a bastide) in Ariège. Our hotel room was overlooked by the cathedral and so I was woken every morning by a deafening cacophony of bells (why do they have to strike the hour twice??). The bed was rubbish…

We walked a lot – between eight and twelve kilometres a day - in the surrounding hills. The weather was beautiful. We talked a bit and only argued twice and…we ate too much cheese.

But at least my husband was his old self, if a little sadder. And although my feelings for him haven’t changed - I have. Like Mirepoix, I was completely destroyed - then rebuilt from scratch in a safer place, with bloomin’ great thick walls around me…

And with that excruciatingly pretentious simile (or is it a metaphor?), I leave you…because my feet are still killing me from all that walking and they need a good long soak…

Down that road...

2007-08-10T00:11:00.000+01:00

Tomorrow, I'm off to meet my husband-from-whom-I-am-legally-separated in Narbonne. From there, we are going to Mirepoix, where we will spend a week discovering Cathar country. And perhaps a lot of other things too...who knows?

Wish me luck...

Holiday

2007-08-02T11:24:00.000+01:00

The question I have to ask myself is: Am I a juillettiste or an aoûtienne? Hmmnn. I think I’m probably a bit of both …and no, I’m not talking politics or being rude. I’m talking about holidays.

You’d think that with all the days off they have the French wouldn’t need five weeks paid holidays a year, but it seems they do. By law, they are not allowed to take less than a fortnight at a time or more than a month and in any case, they must take their summer holidays between the 1st May (itself a day off) and the 31st October. Most of the time, it’s the boss who decides and many choose to close down their businesses for a month, either in July or August - hence the name juillettistes for those who holiday during the month of July and aoûtiens for those who choose August. The result can be a little disconcerting as you can wake up one morning to discover that not only is your familiar home town crawling with foreigners pestering you for directions but also you can’t find a single newsagent’s that’s open.

Until the beginning of the 20th century, tourism was reserved for the wealthy upper classes. The first hotels appeared in France in the 1760s and Stendhal wrote his Mémoires d'un touriste in 1838. Although Grenoble was Stendhal's home town, he hated it and spent a great deal of his time travelling in Italy before eventually settling there and having lots of love affairs with Italian women - in fact, he probably set the fashion for holiday romances. Stendhal would have been dumbfounded to discover that the first syndicat d'initiative - or tourist information office - was established right here in Grenoble, but he would never know because this happened in 1889, almost fifty years after his death. In 1900, the first Michelin Guide was published, aimed at helping wealthy, gastronomically orientated individuals to choose restaurants while travelling - as opposed to taking their own sandwiches and a thermos flask.

The 19th century also saw the first colonies de vacances or holiday camps. These were initially set up for poor, malnourished city children who never got the chance to go on holiday and benefit from the country air. Today, nearly one and a half million perfectly adequately nourished children go on these camps every summer. They do all sorts of interesting activities like windsurfing, horse riding or rock climbing that their mothers haven't got the energy to take them to at home and they stay at the camp for up to three weeks. I send my children every year and look forward to it immensely...

From 1936 onwards, there was a veritable explosion of mass tourism due to the increase in leisure time and the institution of paid holidays for workers. Today, sixty-two percent of the French go away on holiday every year. Increasingly, these are activity holidays – they go hand gliding, canyoning, hiking… not my idea of a relaxing break but then I need to summon all my energy just to turn over on my beach towel. Eleven million French tourists go abroad every year – presumably to escape the hordes of incoming foreigners complaining about the food, the water and the loos. Spain, Portugal, Italy, Germany, Austria, Tunisia, Morocco and the United Kingdom seem to be their favourite destinations and they are more likely than the British to be able (and willing) to speak a foreign language. This is normal because not everybody speaks French whereas most people speak English – at least, they ought to…

Lakes

2007-07-22T20:40:00.000+01:00

Summer is supposed to be here and despite the rain, thoughts of lazy days by the pool are on my mind. By pool, of course, I mean lake - because my local “swimming baths” is just that. Set in an area of woodland called Le Bois Français, the shore of this lake has been turned into a sandy beach and when I finally get the chance to stretch out in the baking sun, I could almost be in St Tropez - if it weren’t for the surrounding snow-capped mountains and low-flying buzzards, that is.

There are thousands of lakes in France, both man-made and natural ones. Lake Geneva – called Lac Léman in French – is the second largest freshwater lake in central Europe. Sixty per cent of the lake is in Switzerland and the rest is in France, in the department of Haute-Savoie. Like many Alpine lakes, Lake Geneva was formed by a retreating glacier thousands of years ago. It was so polluted in the 1980s that swimming was forbidden, but pollution levels have dropped considerably since then and swimming is one of the main leisure activities along with sailing, wind surfing, boating and scuba diving. There are many anecdotes attached to Lake Geneva: Empress Elizabeth of Austria, known as Sissi, was fatally stabbed in the heart by an Italian anarchist while she waited to board a steamship on the lake; Mary and Percy Shelley and Lord Byron took their holidays there and wrote ghost stories; it is also said that the song Smoke on the Water by Deep Purple was written about a casino burning down on the shore of the lake just before one of their concerts.

Not counting Lake Geneva, the largest and the deepest Alpine lake in France is the Lac du Bourget in the Savoie department. The western shore of the Lac du Bourget, lying at the foothills of the Jura mountain range, is inaccessible by road and remains a haven for wildlife, including beavers and turtles. The eastern shore, on the other hand, is built up (the main town is the thermal resort of Aix-les-Bains) and is lined with restaurants and night clubs. Legend has it that the lake was formed by the tears of an angel whom God ordered to leave the Northern Alps although personally I can’t see why he had to make such a fuss…

A little further up the road is the lake of Annecy. This is the next largest lake after Bourget and is reputed to be the cleanest in the world. The same angel is supposed to have cried this lake too so he was obviously quite upset about leaving. Paul Cézanne, however, sneered at the picturesque views, calling it the type of landscape young lady travellers like to sketch in their albums. It didn’t stop him from painting Le Lac Bleu, though, during his stay in 1896.

The third largest Alpine lake in France is the lac d’Aiguebelette, also in the Savoie region. The tearful angel had probably cried himself dry by this time and instead, another legend explains its origins. There was once a village, the story goes, whose inhabitants were wealthy and pleasure-loving. One day, a poor beggar arrived looking for food and shelter. None of the villagers would help him except for an old mother and her daughter, who were themselves ostracized and poor. The beggar turned out to be Christ in disguise. In His wrath, He flooded the valley, drowning the selfish inhabitants of the village except for the two women, whose houses remained intact on two small islands in the middle of the lake. Hmm. I wonder how they got to the shops, though?

Further south, in the Mercantour National Park, lies the lac d’Allos. Situated at 7,316 feet, it is the largest natural lake in Europe at this altitude and in my opinion, one of the most beautiful. The air is clear and crisp and the surrounding scenery is majestic, with mountains rising to ten thousand feet towards a brilliant blue sky…

Near Chamonix, there is a lake known as the lac à l’anglais – the Englishman’s lake. This artificial lake was built in the early twentieth century by an eccentric Scotsman called Lord Sinclair (English, Scottish - we’re all the same to the French) and includes a “cave” built from reinforced concrete and a false “ruined” chapel. Today, it is used as an aquatic sports centre which is much more sensible.

Lacs artificiels, or reservoirs, were created to produce electricity. The first hydro-electric dam was built in 1868 by Aristide Bergès, a French engineer who settled in Grenoble and today, there are four hundred and fifty dams in France that belong to the electricity board (EDF). Most of the reservoirs were created at the expense of village communities and people have not forgotten. The Sautet dam, about forty miles from Grenoble, was one of the first hydro-electric dams to be built. In 1934, the dam was completed and the villagers stood on the top and watched as their village, with its twelfth century church, disappeared beneath the water. Ten years later, when the dam was emptied for maintenance, they came back out of curiosity and were shocked to see that their village was intact (if a little damp). EDF decided that in the future, it would be prudent to destroy the houses before flooding. The village of Les Salles-sur-Verdon, for example, was razed to the ground to make way for the lac Sainte Croix in 1974. A new village was built nearby and some monuments from the old one were incorporated, including the fountain and the bell from the church tower. But for many, the heart and soul of the village still lies beneath those deep waters.

I’m a little frightened of lakes myself – I don’t like to swim out of my depth and I don’t like the idea of swimming with fish. I can’t windsurf either – or water ski. No. I much prefer to lie down in the sun, close my eyes and think of St Tropez…

The Revolting French

2007-07-07T13:51:00.000+01:00

Louis XVI was in for a run of bad luck when he ascended the throne in 1774. For a start, the country was heavily in debt after being involved in various wars, including the American War of Independence. Secondly, he married Marie-Antoinette, but didn’t get around to consummating the marriage for seven years as neither of them knew what they were supposed to do. Thirdly, of course, he got his head chopped off.

Louis was undeservedly considered weak and stupid (although his diary entry for July 14th 1789 did read Rien– that is, ‘Nothing happened’) yet he tried his best to sort out the country’s dire financial state. In the years leading up to the Revolution, the Royal coffers were filled from the taxes of the poor: they paid taxes to the king, to the church and to the lord of the manor, as well as taxes on wine, salt and bread. The nobility and the clergy were exempt and when Louis attempted to tax them, they refused. Understandably, the peasants were upset.

As if that wasn’t enough, the crops failed and there was a shortage of bread – the staple food. The inevitable revolt began - not in Paris but in Grenoble. When the king sent a garrison to deal with the disgruntled Grenoblois, the inhabitants climbed on to the roofs in the rue Voltaire and hurled tiles at the soldiers. The day was known uninspiringly as ‘The Day of the Tiles’ and immortalized by the painter Alexandre Debelle.

It was followed by an assembly of representatives of all but the poorest segment of French society, in a nearby castle at Vizille. They demanded that the king convene the Estates-General (representatives from the nobility, the clergy and the bourgeoisie) in order to vote on the matter of taxes. The bourgeoisie – who did pay taxes – felt they were being unfairly treated and when they realized the king had no intention of implementing fiscal reform, they broke away and formed their own National Assembly. Finding themselves locked out of the assembly rooms, they held their first meeting in an indoor tennis court in the Palace of Versailles. Here they swore an oath to remain together until a constitution for France had been drawn up. It became known as Le Serment du jeu de Paume or The Tennis Court Oath and it was truly a revolutionary act. The king no longer had absolute power.

The spirit of revolution spread through France. In the countryside, peasants and farmers revolted by attacking the manors and estates of their landlords. They became known as the sans-culottes. This did not mean that they walked around without any trousers on but rather that they wore long trousers and not knee-breeches, like the upper-classes. In Paris, on July the 14th 1789, citizens stormed the city’s largest prison, the Bastille, looking for munitions. Much has been made of this event - in fact, July the 14th is known, at least in Britain, as Bastille Day even though it commemorates la Fête de la Fédération which took place a year later. But the Bastille was a cushy prison and held principally aristocratic prisoners (Voltaire was sent there twice). They had comfortable cells and lacked for nothing. The dramatic-sounding Storming of the Bastille freed just seven inmates – two of whom were insane. It was purely a symbolic gesture albeit a bit of an anti-climax …

The nobles fled. In 1791, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette tried to escape but were caught. Some say it was because Louis tried to buy something in a shop and was recognised by the shopkeeper from his portrait on the coins; others say that Marie-Antoinette’s expensive scent gave them away. Whatever the reason, they were arrested and sent back, where Louis was forced to pledge his allegiance to the French Constitution. A year later, he was sent to the guillotine for treason.

Ironically, the guillotine was named after a humanitarian doctor, Joseph Guillotin. A member of the new national assembly, he recommended in a speech that executions be performed by a beheading device which he argued was quicker and less painful than the traditional methods of hanging or beheading by sword. Even though he did not invent the device, his name became linked with it. After his death in 1814, his children tried unsuccessfully to have the device's name changed. When their efforts failed, they were allowed to change their name instead.
The guillotine became the must-have accessory. Children were given toy guillotines with which to behead their revolutionary Barbies and women wore guillotine earrings. As a fashion victim, Marie-Antoinette would probably have worn them herself had she not had her own head sliced off. Her last poignant words were to her executioner: “Monsieur, I beg your pardon,” she said, having stepped on his foot, “I did not do it on purpose.”

In 1793, the Revolutionary Calendar was established, briefly replacing the Gregorian one. The year was divided into months consisting of three weeks of ten days which were named after various crops and flowers. Now, instead of getting one day off every seven to go to church, the people had to make do with one day in ten to attend a 'temple of reason', which is what the churches were rechristened, after the new ‘Cult of Reason’ which had replaced Christianity. Predictably, the English considered the new calendar highly amusing and gave their own names - reminiscent of Snow White’s vertically challenged companions - to the calendar months . They called them: Wheezy, Sneezy, Freezy, Slippy, Drippy, Nippy, Showery, Flowery, Bowery, Wheaty, Heaty and Sweety. Thankfully, the calendar was abandoned in 1805…

As for Grenoble – an attempt was made to change its name to Grelibre , thus replacing the ‘noble’ with ‘free’, rather like the American attempt to rechristen French Fries as ‘Freedom Fries’. This did not catch on, of course, because it just sounds silly.

As Sellars and Yeatman would say, the French Revolution was a Good Thing because without it, the French would not have wooden pencils, divorce, liberty, equality, fraternity or liquid bleach. Or fireworks. I rest my case.