Mes amis les français

This post is dedicated to Heulwen, who recently enquired as to when the next instalment was due out and therefore encouraged me to put fingers to keyboard.  Also Happy 80^th Birthday to her!

When we first moved to France we made a decision that we would try despite limited French, to integrate as much as possible into the life of our commune, or parish as it would be in England.  This has meant attending meetings where proceedings were at best hazy and playing four hours of Lotto (Bingo) after which the head hurt somewhat, but this has been a small price to pay for other events such as the annual village walk and picnic, which once we moved takes place each year by the bread oven that borders our garden and then moves into our neighbours garden for the picnic.  This picnic starts with a glass or several of trouspinette, the local aperitif made from the new spring shoots of the blackthorn bush, which has a surprising fruitiness, despite the lack of any fruit other than the grapes that are used to make the rosé wine that the concentrate is blended with.  The concentrate is simply made by soaking a large bundle of the blackthorn shoots in eau de vie or “alcool pour fruit” that is sold in the local supermarkets with some added sugar, and within half an hour of mixing the liquor takes on an amazing fruity smell, which intensifies over the two weeks that the leaves are steeped for.  Accompanying the aperitif are large trays of the local flattened garlic bread, called préfou, made with lashings of butter and garlic added to a squashed baguette and cooked with other tasty morsels in the bread oven, which has been warming up since being first fired up on the Thursday before, the picnic taking place on Sunday.

Other activities have included other picnics, games afternoons and for the last three years I have “ho ho ho’ed” my way through the children’s Christmas party and am booked again for the end of next month!  Interestingly, on my first appearance Père Noël was the strong silent type, hopefully not too much of a shock for the children, as the previous year he had spoken French fluently and was incidentally obviously an imposer as he was short, thin and clean shaven.  However, as the years have gone by the language has improved and last year a petit histoire was enough to impress our French neighbours, although there was nearly an incident the previous year when having told the children I had lost my reindeers in the nearby wood, one of the children informed me that one of them was behind me (had my French been better a pantomime might have ensued!).  Slightly at a loss as to how to proceed, as the child was most insistent that there was actually a reindeer behind me, I played along and turned around, to come face to face with the most amazingly large stag’s head hunting trophy that I had forgotten adored the wall of the village hall just behind where I was sitting!  The incident, well at a loss as to what to say, I told the thirty or more excited and expectant faces sitting on the floor in front of me that it was no good as IT WAS DEAD!  You can imagine what the headlines in the local paper might have been the following day “Santa grounded by death of Rudolph!”  But, fortunately chocolate saved the day as I quickly went on to ask the children “if they had been good” and presented them with their chocolate Advent calendars.  Thinking about it, I’m not sure if I’ve been invited back again this year, although I have a feeling that once in it’s a job for life!!

So, you get the picture, we’ve been trying to integrate, at times the only English people at various events such as hamlet soirées, and also trying hard not be too much the “ex-pat,” a term I dislike intensely and that reminds me rather of those unfortunate few that are around and do little other than attend English clubs and activities, and as we once overheard on a ferry, make statements like:  “I’ve lived in France now for six years, I spoke none of the lingo when I arrived, still don’t and have no intention of learning any!”  How very sad and excessively rude to what is his adopted country.

So, we now have a number of French friends with whom we are able to pass the time of day, even if we’re not quite at the “politics, religion and sex” stage yet, although we did touch on a couple of these topics at a recent dinner party, when neighbours of my cousin who has recently brought as house close by, and who speak no English, were the only French people there.  We found that the whole evening ended up being carried out in French.  This was made much easier as the couple in question spoke slowly and clearly, not least because there were not native French speakers there.  As happens when a group of English people get together, the French en masse speak too quickly and often over one another, making it very difficult to follow. 

Having acquired a few French friends is indeed the very reason that after renting a house in this commune for two and a half years, we have ended up buying a house that doesn’t perhaps tick all the boxes, but is still within the same commune.  When we were about to embark on house hunting in earnest, and thinking about moving somewhere within a radius of 10 miles or so, we had visitors and I dashed to the bread shop in the local village.  On the way there everyone I passed I knew enough to wave cheerily to, once in the shop I bumped into a French friend who lived just down the road from us and passed the time of day with her, whilst the lady behind the counter reached behind her for my “usual” loaf of bread.  Then, on my return again I knew everyone I passed.  I got back and said to Linda, “we can’t move away from this commune as we’d have to start building up friendships and acquaintances all over again, we come a long way in two and a half years, it would be silly to have to start again!”

Since living in France and particularly over the last couple of years we have renewed a friendship with a French couple, Ray and Yvonne, who live near Brest in Brittany, whom we first met through a European school link project, some 15 years ago.  This year we met up with them in Brittany and later near Rochefort, on the coast south of La Rochelle, where they go each year for La Cure, which is a three week long spa treatment, provided by the state, to ease a back condition that Ray has, Yvonne is also allowed to go along as part of the package, all they have to pay is for the apartment they rent.  It’s all part of France’s amazing preventative / alternative medical system, designed to ease problems before they happen.

On the second occasion we met them this year we took the caravan down to a lovely coastal site at Fouras, just north of Rochefort and on one of the days met up with them to visit an amazing working transporter bridge that spans the river just south of Rochefort.  Whilst with them, Yvonne who was previously a Headteacher of an école primaire near Brest, started reminiscing about a visit she had made to us in Stroud accompanied her Chair of Governor’s wife and two of her children.  The eldest child, then about 14 or 15 and now incidentally working in a high powered financial job in the City of London, found my mispronunciation of various French words rather amusing, as the French tend to be very precise with their pronunciation, and often Yvonne will correct something I say and tell me I should say it in a particular way, which to my ear sounds exactly how I have just said it!!  

One word that particularly made the son rather giggly, was a word I was saying that I made sound rather like a French word for bottom!, and apparently all these years later I’m still doing it!!

It was as we got off the transporter bridge that I politely “merci beaucoup’d” the young lady operating the controls and who had been able to tell us some of the history of the bridge and similar ones around the world in excellent English.  This exchange reduced Yvonne to fits of giggles as apparently I had just said to the young lady “thank you, nice bottom!”

Well, as I’ve been “merci beau ... coup’ing” everyone, male or female, for the last five years and more in the same manner, maybe this has done more to help our integration than any amount of attendance at village events and could also explain, why so often they reply “mon plaisir!”