Where we've been: 3 (and fin)

French culture: Factoid 99. Electrically, France
 is two-pin, Britain three-pin. Converters are
 necessary. Then USBs need considering,
 My bedside table at Autignac. Down below
the digital thermometer (never used)

We’re still one day short of a week away from France, and thus not free from the possibility of infection. But if we do escape, containing our group of eight in a large villa might be one of the reasons. We spent a good deal of time there, messing about in and around the 10 m pool. The nearest we came to crowds was in the supermarkets and the mask/distancing regime there was pretty rigorous.

Why France, though? It’s near, of course. It’s a beautiful country but with many imperfections and oddities. It can seem unwelcoming but mainly towards those foreigners who go there uninformed about the culture (in the widest sense; not just museums and architecture) and – especially – about the language.

The one in the middle is daughter Professional Phlebotomist.
The other two I leave to your deductive powers

I had a familiar conversation at the local Office du Tourisme where I sought a reliable taxi service to get the others back to Béziers railway station to catch their TGV (train de grande vitesse). Not for the first time my grasp of French was complimented fulsomely (ie, flattering to an excessive degree). But I have a stock response to this, tailored to the way the French see things. “I can’t speak French, but I can communicate in it. My French is non-idiomatic.”

This gets their attention. They like polysyllabic words and anything that smells of a theory. However, although they seem better educated than Brits not all know the meaning of “non-idiomatic”. Naturally they’re reluctant to admit this. The tourist man let flow even more fulsomeness which included some predictable stereotypes of national bigotry. Then he paused, realising it wasn’t his job to slag off foreigners.

“Let us say, monsieur, that your French is better than my English.” And smiled charmingly.

Why France? Where else would you expect a self-regarding popinjay to go for a holiday?

Where we've been: 2

We went to France well-prepared; here's stuff we didn't use

Various US politicians, keen to appeal to tough-guy voters, have boasted about not wearing masks. Some have gone further and caught The Plague. I await with interest the first politico – hoping for sculptures to be raised in the state capital – to go further still and die in front of the TV cameras, a ventilator stuffed down his guzzard.*

France is not without its macho men. When the Eiffel Tower was first opened to the public citizens worried about a potential spate of aviational suicides. Cleverer administrators suggested a notice saying “Jump here”, knowing that such show-offs hated doing the obvious.

Trouble was I’d self-isolated back home and had no real comparisons. Even so I was pleasantly surprised, Masks were obligatory in the Intermarché. Not only did virtually everyone toe the line but they kept their masks on while loading their cars. And especially in the butcher’s shop (Ah, that terrific chunk of entrecote – I taste its juices still.) where the need for masks seemed visibly obvious.

We ate out several times: the restaurant tables were socially distanced and waitresses and waiters, resentfully perhaps, hid their sex-appeal behind scraps of pale blue. But you can’t keep an individualistic race down all the time. Halfway through one meal a long-haired beauty (I infer her loveliness since I only saw her back) lit up. How strange.

I go to France to inflict my imperfect, non-idiomatic French on the natives. Masks hinder this. No visits to the doctor or dentist this time. I made do with the pharmacy where I stumbled over turning the noun haemorrhoid into an adjective. Yes the pharmacienne knew the Anglo brand but handed over a French brand anyway.

When the temperature is in the thirties, the brief chill from squirted hand disinfectant is most welcome.

* This has happened since I posted.

Where we've been: 1

Note the sense of escape. The barely trafficked autoroute leading to somewhere distant, satnav prominent, bottle-spray of disinfectant securely mounted, relaxed hands on the steering wheel.

Look again and the car seats are occupied by two women. It’s my blog so where am I? In the back, reflecting that it’s now happening. The country I’ve come to loathe, temporarily I hope, is a Channel Tunnel crossing behind and I’m free from its incompetence and gerrymandering for a while.

The French villa where we’ve stayed before was booked almost a year ago. Ann, the generous and sympathetic proprietor, is willing to waive her rights to the four-figure deposit. But I’m not the only one with a strong urge to escape. As octogenarians VR and I are the most vulnerable to The Plague and it’s up to us to make the decision; VR was in no doubt from the start.

There’ve been major convulsions and we four in the car are the lucky ones, unaffected by travel uncertainties. Flights for the other four were cancelled and son-in-law Darren has worked prodigies, stitching together a sequence of train and TGV hops, broken by an Uber taxi ride across Paris linking the Gare du Nord with the Gare de Lyon. Large extra sums of money have been needed and VR and I have provided them. An initial online order of food and drink from a French supermarket has been contrived by computer whiz, Daniel, granddaughter Ysabelle’s partner. It will cost over £800.

In the sense that there are laws, we are not breaking them.

So why am I not driving? I’ve done it many times before. Because I have complete faith in daughter Occasional Speeder and Ysabelle. I loll and construct imaginary conversations with French citizens.

Next post: Did the French cope?

It beats crying

Neighbour Richy asked could he bring us

anything from Tesco. Yes please, we said. These
appeared (full) on the doorstep. Guess why

I like making people laugh. It’s socially rewarding, of course, but it also has psychological advantages.

Make someone laugh and you’ve aroused their interest. That’s always worthwhile even if it may be fundamentally selfish.

As in France where laughter can be a powerful conversational tool. Laughing Frenchmen are comparatively rare. Address one in French and he’ll immediately detect the foreign accent. His face takes on a certain remoteness, a certain condescension. He imagines he’s starting out on top.

Let’s suppose he operates a DIY shop and I’m looking for bath taps. “They must be easy to operate,” I say. He nods. I pause, then add casually, “Although I’m English I do wash regularly.”

That initial pause may disconcert him; have I been struck dumb? However the following admission will not only surprise him it may suggest this is how Frenchmen do, or should, regard Brits. Other nationalities would apologise here. Not the French. My DIY man laughs knowingly, showing he’s in on the joke. Spreads his hand on the counter, better disposed to listen, to treat me as an equal.

Doctors are different. They are endowed with built-in superiority. You are a medical conundrum that needs resolving, often a humdrum and familiar collection of defects. This mode has been repeated a thousand times.

You stop, you sigh, you wriggle in your chair. You say, “These symptom confessions are a problem. Too much detail and I appear paranoid and self-centred. Too little and I’m surly, perhaps resenting the fact you’re not a herbalist.”

Hey, I’m sympathetic. There’s not much to laugh at in the average doctor’s surgery. Especially now. Doctors enjoy an occasional laugh. Indulge them. You may save the human race.

TECHNO-NOTE
This post attracted NO COMMENTS. I wasn't offended; it has happened before. Tone Deaf is not one of the world's must-reads.

But perhaps you tried and didn't get through. Perhaps - for reasons unknown - the system didn't pick up your blogonym automatically. This is required info; without it a comment is blocked. However if the slot adjacent to "Commenting as:" is blank, just fill in your blogonym manually and the comment should go through. When you make your next comment (I'm been terribly optimistic in this) the previously empty slot should now carry your blogonym and all should be well.

A siren song

Arras is a town in northern France that was destroyed in WW1 and rebuilt. The town council took the back page of The Guardian on February 14 to issue the following message. VR thought it “poignant”.

Dear friends and neighbours

Here in Arras and the wider Artois region we wanted to use Saint Valentine’s Day as an opportunity to tell you just how much we love our union.

We love to see you here, enjoying a morning coffee on the Place des Héros, climbing to the top of the Belfry, heading to the market to buy a local cheese or a sweet treat… And in the evening, we are enchanted to hear your accent drifting across the terraces as you sample the local beer, order a local speciality and make the most of your time here.

We often see you on the country roads, too, around the many war cemeteries. Which remind us of our debt to you, and what your young men and your determination gave us a full century ago: Freedom… and a steadfast friendship.

So this year in particular, on 14 February we’re saying “I love you”.

Yes, our home is your home too.

Yeah, it’s a tourism advert: visit our town, help our economy. But perhaps it’s a little more than that.

Holiday scrapbook

End-on view of marvellous Millau viaduct on drive to Creissan.
British architect, Norman Foster, designed it and all France is
pleased with the result. I reflect on this as Brexit grinds away
towards its meanly isolationist end. 

RR (resurrected as Mr Punch) and VR
regard the Bouzigues oyster beds,  knowing full well
 some Tone Deaf readers can't abide oysters.

 

Dialogue at St Chinian street market, Languedoc, France.

Butcher: Monsieur?
RR: Your lamb liver has a price tag, your veal liver hasn't.
Butcher: That's so.
RR: This suggests the veal liver is more expensive. Terribly expensive.
Butcher and wife roar with laughter at my deduction. I order a small slice of veal liver and the butcher puts it on his scale.
Butcher (shouting): Two hundred euros! (ie, $220.77)
All three of us laugh.

NOTE FOR US READERS, NOTORIOUSLY SUSPICIOUS OF OFFAL. I fear this is the way things are in France.

When the reading exceeds 40 deg C where else would you go?

Creissan cemetery. Some graves, randomly adorned, look more
like a garage sale. (Below) Others await paying customers.

Easing the way back

Returning home from the French holiday villa in Creissan (22 miles north of the Mediterranean coast) is inevitably a burden. The distance, joyfully accepted a fortnight before, now seems formidable. Creissan to Calais is 660 miles (10 hr 12 min), then there's the Channel Tunnel crossing (say 1 hr 30 min with the queueing), then a further 210 miles (4 hr 10 min) between Folkestone and Hereford. Some 16 hr all told; it takes two days.

We've been doing it for over a decade and are now experts. The key lies in where to break the French part of the journey. For several years we've settled on Forges-les-Eaux, north-west of Paris. As the kilometres unreel we dream of the wine list at the Hotel la Paix.

This is where satnav comes into its own. After years of experimentation the optimum route takes us far closer to Paris than we first thought. Look at the geography. You'd like to weave your way through all those suburbs aided only by an atlas? Masochism can be your only justification. Satnavs mislead you, you say. So do atlases in a country where new roads are added every year. Treat the satnav as a tool not a crystal ball. Dominate it. We tested a small variation while in transit. It worked.

The bill for three at the Hotel la Paix was huge but then we sought catharsis. Achieved this year via a bottle of Latour's Vosne Romanée, followed by a snifter of old armagnac (VR never changes) and two doses of mature calvados for Occasional Speeder and me.

The hotel is beautifully maintained. Note the photo - the flex of the bedside light seems unnecessarily tangled. No! The switch becomes more accessible to the weary traveller. There’s a little treat.

A horrid thing averted

Dialogue (in French) at Intermarché

RR: There are no toilets in this supermarket? (NOTE: In France it's more chic to phrase questions as statements on a rising cadence than reversing verb and pronoun as we were all taught at school.)

Svelte Young Lady in Customer Service: There are none, Monsieur

RR: Why?

SYLICS: The building is too small.

RR: But some of your customers may feel the need...

SYLICS: It is simply a matter of floor area. (NOTE: For floor area she employs the French word superficie. I recognise its meaning and am ravished)

RR: A French thing, then?

SYLICS: Indeed.
------
Days later we (RR, daughters Professional Bleeder and Occasional Speeder) are hunting down a near relation of Poulet de Bresse (see pic) for which I am expecting to pay up to £25. The hunt is complicated by the fact that two of us are also suffering from that very special personal need alluded to above. Super-U (another supermarket) is the most likely source. Dare we risk the journey given we may end up chickenless and horribly embarrassed by Super-U's possible lack of a loo. PB checks her mobile phone and discovers there is a toilet off the Super-U's entrance foyer. We drive over and I rush towards the welcoming door. Inside I read a crudely written notice: Pas de papier à cause du vol. I emerge ashen face and my nearest and dearest supply me with several packets of tissue which all sensible women carry instead of handkerchieves. I sing their praises to the skies.

Le Blé en Herbe (Much revised)

Awoke from a mildly erotic dream. In a series of outdoor vignettes in Brittany a woman in her late thirties sought to stand with me. Her hair was poorly dyed (dark roots over-prominent) and her behaviour was alternately timorous then timorously forward. I called her Emmeline.

In the dozing half-life that is one of life's greatest blessings I expanded what I remembered of the dream into a wholly controlled scenario. I returned with Emmeline to her parent's home and subjected the whole of the family to a long series of English lessons, getting harder with time and conducted entirely in English, other than my corrections delivered in flawless and hyper-academic French. All joined in enthusiastically and Emmeline approved.

If I hadn't been directing each development of this tutorial I might have imagined I was asleep. When I speak French in dreams my talk is spontaneous, correct and interminable.

Up and shaving, I reflected on Emmeline and even now I feel a powerful if incorrect need to endow that second e with the aigu accent to emphasise her Frenchness. Her nationality is important. Physically she would not be considered good-looking by most Anglo-Saxon males. But to me she has that admantine expression of life which I associate with many French women.

On the way to pick-up the Guardian I day-dreamed. The only possible reason for Emmeline's interest in me is because I have recently taken to wearing black. Mistakenly, no doubt, I believe black to render me formidable. Especially my new footwear: Unisex Slip On School Plimsolls art no 7231 Black & White. Adult shoe size 11, Black.  My shoes have a pedigree, something of a first.

A good start to the day.

I really liked telle eloquence

Letter to Michelin tyre company, France, April 1993

Je suis francophil, j’ai acheté, il y un an, une maison à  Loire Atlantique et je suis en train d’encourager ma famille d’accepter mon enthousiasme pour les traditions francaises.

Avant Paques, j’étais fièr d’amener, pour the premier fois, ma petite fille, Ysabelle, en France. Pendant le trajet de Cherbourg à Drefféac, elle regardait les affiches à coté de la route et était ravi par l’image de votre M. Bibendum. “Qui est-il?” demandait-elle, on repondait et, enfin, elle commencait dire: “Regardez, M. Bibendum.”

Ysabelle a trois ans: votre société doit attendre longtemps pour le moment dont elle devient consommateur de vos produits. Puis-je suggérer que si vous voulez encourager l’enthousiasme de cette cliente naissante, vous l’envoyez une grande image de son héro, M. Bibendum. Ysabelle habite à...

Veuillez, messieurs, acceptez mes sentiments tres distingués.

Sincèrement,

Roderick Robinson

Michelin’s reply:

Nous vous remercions de votre lettre, exprimée avec une telle eloquence en francais, qui est rècemment parvenue au service Relations Extérieures.

Comme suite à votre demande nous avons le plaisir de vous informer que nous venons d’envoyer à votre petite fille une sélection d’étiquettes à l’image de M. Bibendum, que, nous, espérons lui plaira.

Dans l’espoir que nous avons donné entière satisfaction nous vous prions d’agréer, Monsieur, l’expression de nos sentiments les plus distingués.

Katie Nicholls
Relations Extérieures.

Going native 2

The villa was in Creissan, 35 km from the Mediterranean, close to the hard-to-pronounce village of Puissergian (Pwee-sair-gian) which quickly became Pussy Galore to our mainly monoglot party of eight. Each morning I awoke to the sight of this olive tree. Tiny olives, the size of peas, were reassuringly foreign.

There I lay, my PJs drenched with overnight sweat, dwelling romantically on my relationship with the difficult concept of France. From the first visit (a few days supervised by my father of Paris's three-star restaurants: "the last part of your education"), to the tours by car, to the scruffy falling-down house we owned for a decade in Loire Atlantique, to the lusher holidays spent in rental villas. Running in parallel with years spent vainly looking for fluency in the language, knowing it would never happen.

The brightly attractive young woman in St Chinian's cave des vignerons, spoke of schists and bottle aging as I tasted my way through half a dozen whites and rosés. She spoke in English and I in French, our competences roughly equal. As I left she paid me what she imagined to be the ultimate compliment, that I spoke good French. Other French citizens have said it too; it's not true. My French is non-idiomatic but what I say strives to be interesting, if possible funny.

The dentist who ministered to VR described his manual skills and I commented - "A sort of carpenter, then." He grunted his approval, but at the idea not the language.

Early morning at the supermarket, the middle-aged women, facing a long day, whipped our purchases through the bar-coder. Quelle vitesse! I said. What speed! She laughed, despite her awful job and my foreignness.

Language is human to human. One is obliged to do the best one can.

Going native 1

Finally, the most sensuous and rewarding moment was snuggling under the duvet back in Hereford yesterday. I was not born to endure 30 deg C-plus and the Languedoc boiled. The pool became a necessity; I lurked there until my bones crystallised with cold, slept briefly then awoke as a latterday Old Testament martyr.

Never mind, I holiday in France for the conversation not the weather. VR had dental ennuis (problems); as she lay prone the dentist and I discussed whether a Belgian buying up property in the neighbourhood might be a criminal. VR later complained I hadn’t translated what was said, my nominal role when the drill whines.

My French is fading and I need practice before I sound plausible or, more important, authoritarian. “Good day madam,” I said to the manageress of the Latino Beach restaurant at Serignan Plage, “my name is Robinson and I have booked your best table for eight.” Causing her to truckle.

At customer services in the Carrefour supermarket, Cazouls-les-Béziers, I asked why that most French of French aperitifs, Dubonnet, no longer seems available. Normally the French hate discussing national defects with foreigners but I teased the operative into laughter and together we sang the jingle from the TV commercial: “Dubo-dubo-Dubonnet.” A minor success.

Now aged 12, Zach as usual stretched the envelope. Claimed he could dive through a smallish inflatable ring and was sequentially photographed doing so by his Dad. (See above). He and my granddaughter’s partner, Daniel, played soccer with village kids and this became a regular fixture despite lack of a common language. This I regard a major success.

Tasting wine at the St Chinian cave des vignerons I was asked for my name. “Monsieur Contra-Brexit”, I replied and lectured everyone fervently about the EU’s benefits.

Billet-doux - revised

Pat, my gentle and tolerant French teacher, is not well and lessons have been on hold for a couple of months. I sent flowers and a card but what I owe her is beyond rubies. I opted for something regular in an envelope carrying a stamp. Pat has a laptop but doesn’t warm to electrons.

What to say? I lead a self-centred and dull life so there’s nothing there. Anecdotes describing my foreign-language experiences, mostly disastrous, were a goer but lacked a direct link with Pat herself.

Our lessons have lasted 17 years and I’ve translated thirty French novels with some rigour. I decided to re-visit this process I'd shared with Pat. Dig up the novels we trawled through, quote extracts, discuss their quality as stories.

The first novel I chose - Bienvenue parmi nous (Holder) - worked well. Gradually the story became clear and I wrote to Pat:

"Is it all coming back? Did it ever go away? You will remember Taillandier buys an expensive shotgun with which to reflexive himself and keeps it in the boot of the car. It was Raymond Chandler who said a gun mentioned on the first page must go off before the last page. ... if I remember correctly there was ultimate disappointment in that this gun didn’t go off. ... Was this a happy revival or not?"

La Lama Bleu  (Jacques Lanzman)was another matter. It takes place in Mexico, I don’t remember Mexico. I don’t recall the pretentious mini-foreword. On page 25 geographico-théologiques developments sound ominous and obscure. The summary on the cover means nothing. I turn my review into a joke which Brian, Pat's husband, says she reads avidly.

OK for now. But suppose I've forgotten the next book I dig up? Must I read it all again?

L'abri

French written paper. Q: Fill in the missing accents

As Britain lurches through geographical, financial and cultural suicide more Brits ponder the future. Typically farmers ("You didn't imagine the UK would match EU subsidies, did you?) and pensioners ("You were lucky to live when you did. It's logical to penalise your good luck so  you may die in poverty.")

These days I need to speak something other than English. Cometh the holiday, cometh the opportunity. Normally we've avoided France in July - August but this year that would have deprived Zach of two weeks' crucial schooling. Because France is crowded in mid-summer it is now sensible to book our diversions, especially restaurants.

I go to France because I like showing off and speaking French there. I make no apologies, if you've got it, flaunt it. Yes, yes, it's an outmoded skill and soon it won't mean a damn. But while it does... Beyond, there'll be just an urnful of ashes.

Booking French restaurants by telephone is another matter. The vocabulary's simple enough but there's always the unexpected, a bank holiday or some such. The trick is to get a joke in; the person taking the call relaxes and what's exchanged becomes a conversation instead of a transaction.

Recently I booked a beach restaurant which impressed us last year. "A table far away from the kitchen and out of the sun," I insisted. The guy misunderstood: "Close to the sun?" he asked incredulously. "Far from the sun," I said briskly. "I know the system. Late arrivals get roasted." He roared with laughter and switched to English. I said I'd wasted my time speaking French. "No, no, monsieur speaks good French."

Balm to my remoaning soul. Usually in short supply.

News: late and skimpy

NO PIX THIS TIME
Aeons ago, it now seems, the British media were terrifying us with tales of fuel shortages in France. And we had a big-bucks villa booked near Béziers. So should we chuck out our spare undies and the holiday books we intended to read and smuggle in some diesel? Amazingly, because it rarely happens, diesel is presently cheaper in the UK.

Since we intended to cross La Manche by Chunnel (35 minutes) rather than ferry (90 min plus all the hassle of embarking and disembarking) I phoned the Chunnel authorities because they are picky about what you can stick in the car boot (LPG, guns, explosives and unpassported Syrian refugees, for instance, are frowned on). I was told 30 litres was permitted. This may not seem much but it represents one-third of the Skoda's fuel tank and is equivalent to 200 miles travelling.

In the end encouraging info from France suggested that the 10-litre jerrycan would be enough and the 20-litre can (which, when full, I doubted I could lift up to the car's filler cap) could be left at home.

What the British media should have dwelt on were the widespread problems of flooding south of Paris which appeared perversely (But then what's missing from France's tripartite slogan: Liberté, Egalité et Fraternité, is Perversity) to be concentrated on autoroutes and other major roads. If ever there was a case for carrying and using a satnav this was it and we managed to circumnavigate great blockages of stationary Peugeots and poids lourds (French for large lorries) and point ourselves south for more sun and less rain.

RR and VR, the oldsters, subsequently read their Kindles, over-ate and over-drank while the younger end went in for karting and - a new departure - arbor-adventure, of which there'll be more including pictures when I get home. Foolishly I left my camera/computer cable behind in Hereford.

Oh, I saw the Canadian F1 grand prix on telly. All intellectual stuff.

The mussel epiphany

We were more impulsive when we lived in Kingston-upon-Thames, 12 miles SW of London.

One working weekday near Christmas we took time off and had lunch in Boulogne. Just over 100 miles but there was a snag: a blessing in 1939 - 45, less so later as Eurotunnel continued to remain a mirage. Crossing the Channel then required a 90-minute ferry ride with a further 40 minutes devoted to embarcation/disembarcation if you took your car.

But it was doable and we did it. And the event changed our lives. Younger daughter Occasional Speeder was going at a panful of mussels in a messy way. La Patronne stepped in, picked up the twin halves of a used shell (still flexibly attached to each other), and showed how, as tweezers, they could pick out the innards of a mussel yet to be consumed.

The hands in the pic are those of Ysabelle, OS's daughter, to whom this skill has been passed down.

These days Eurotunnel cuts down the crossing to about 30 minutes but Hereford to the Languedoc is nearly 900 miles and there's hard driving to be done over two days. To sustain concentration the co-passenger (who also works the satnav), unwraps sweets and feeds them into the driver's mouth in a steady stream. By now there's a consensus about which sweet works best. Chocolates and toffees are no good, they're gone in a flash. Jelly babies similarly. Werthers (a sort of hard toffee) are too frangible, quickly splintering into easily dissolved pieces. Best are hard transparent fruit drops, sort of doughnut shaped. They last and last.

To Hell in a hack

 I am continuously ashamed to read other bloggers' holiday posts: tours of XII-th century churches, discourses on geology, bracing 25-km thrusts over rough terrain, socio-economic analyses of the local neighbourhood, off to bed at 22.00 to read Heinrich Hesse. Whereas we... are so unambitious, so vulgar and ultimately  so debauched.

Last night, for instance, primed with Leffe (Belgian beer) and Desperados (a hideous tequila-adulterated lager), and after seven or eight bottles of rosé and/or white, out came the unexpected bottle of Limoncello (dispatched after one rotation of the Lazy Susan) and then the standby Pessoa (such a pretty pink) before oblivion descended. Sustained by a baby's bath full of paella while it was still light.

And, oh the noise from ungoverned and unenlightened conversation. Veritably our lives lack subtlety.

Two days before we set out to lunch at Capestang but La Galinière there was closed. Things then became tricky. We are seven and thus two cars. But the satnav employed by D, Ysabelle's partner, has turned out to be defective and we must needs travel in convoy as we test narrow roads with grass growing in the middle. Great potential for embarrassment. In peculiarly named Quarante, growing in desperation, we saw a chalk-board saying: Plat du Jour: Foie de Veau. D has picky tastes, but the hell with it. We entered the scruffiest of scruffy French bars, TV playing, drunks roaring at each other.

Followed by a kind of magic. A genial waiter who indulged Zach, an option of bifteck for the liver, comparative conversation about liver in GB and La République. Result: a nugatory sense of achievement.

Previously there'd been karting with D running off the other D (OS's hubbie) at the sweeping right-hander.

Honestly, you'd hate to be with us

The bikers unveil

In the end, despite my protestations about my need to communicate with the natives, we're like all other Francophiles, we eat out a lot. Especially with the temperature as it was yesterday PM, at 38 deg C.

Heck it's a holiday, we're here to enjoy ourselves. Finally we have a photo that proves the point with only VR appearing contemplative. For once the complete party has been captured on spouse's selfie.

I've posted about this place before. Its actual name is Les Tilleuls but we affectionately call it The Fly Restaurant. It sits by the roadside - almost in the road - and while we were eating a group of be-visored motorcyclists riding expensive bikes pulled up and did their now familiar Dance Of The Seven Veils. Divesting themselves of their helmets and jackets they revealed themselves as corpulent and in their early sixties.

The only major disagreement is between VR and me - she goes there for the barbecued duck breast, I for the mutton chop. The nearby village is St-Maurice-Navacelles - it's remote and every approach is gorgeous. The drive from our present villa takes 1 hr 21 min. but it's worth it.

WV BOOBOO For some reason or other - possibly because we're in France - an alternative WV system crops up. A dozen thumbnails of edibles and I was asked to tick those related to sushi. I ticked two but there were more. I scored better with gateaux.

FRENCH PHYSIC Grand-daughter Ysabelle, born to shine in France with a name spelt like that, had the collywobbles. A pharmacien offered the curiously named specific shown below.

Charlie still lives

Remember the massacred journalists with France's Charlie Hebdo? I bought the latest edition of the mag (Price €3) and the journos still living are as ribald as ever. Decoding the jokes can be, however, a real brain-cracker and good taste is discounted.

The front page (above) suggests Charlie isn't in love with former president, Nicolas Sarkozy. Planning a comeback Small Sarky aims to call his new party The Republicans, something of a national no-no given that most French people regard themselves as just that already. The cartoon bubble summarises Sarky's new/old policies: Crush the testicles, stuff the ballot boxes.

The other big story concerns corruption at FIFA, the worldwide organisation for controlling soccer. Faced with the FBI tie-wearers the long-serving FIFA boss, Sepp Blatter, decided to resign. Here the bubble provides a sort of epitaph: He wasn't a bad sort of chap, he simply fell among thieves. A much simpler (and better) FIFA joke appears in the lower cartoon which shouldn't need translating.

Many of the double-, triple-, and quadruple-entendres are beyond this simple soul and some articles are discouragingly long. However, I culled these from a column of briefs.

BAD TASTE AWARD? Many train services have been cancelled. One may no longer travel directly from Drancy to Auschwitz.

IDENTITY Johnny has had wife Laeticia tattooed. The reason: should he contract Alzheimer's he doesn't want to deceive himself when he fancies deceiving his wife.

EVOLUTION Fourteen percent of French men were mistreated when young. As adults they now vote FN (Front National - the extreme right lot).

SAFER A child playing with a kite (actually a cerf-volant - a flying stag) got electrocuted. Had he stayed in his bedroom watching porn he would still be living.

Anyone translating jokes is on a hiding to  nothing. But then there was nothing funny about the massacres.

Etre chic

Off and on since 1972 I've "done French". Why?

● We spend most holidays in France. ● Speaking French (purposefully) gives me a buzz. ● I profit from the self-imposed discipline. ● I'm reminded how language works. ● Elitism; snobbery.

After 15 years here in Hereford the pattern is fixed. During the week I prepare about ten pages of a worthwhile novel (presently Delphine de la Vigan's Rien ne s'oppose à la nuit; note the preparatory scribble in the pic). In front of Pat, a retired languages teacher with huge reserves of patience, Beryl and I read alternate passages aloud to improve our pronunciation and then translate them as exactly as we can. We're all of an age.

After all that time you might expect I'd be word-perfect. Rather the reverse. My deteriorating memory will quite soon drive French into that black hole down which ski-ing and swimming disappeared.

But there's another problem. The complete French vocabulary is smaller than that for English (viz. 1039 vs. 1149 pages in the Collins-Robert shown). The French often modify existing words rather than create new ones, not always logically. Attendre means to wait, s'attendre (the reflexive) means to expect. Even worse, there's vouloir (to want to) and en vouloir (to have a grudge).

Such small differences tend not to stick with me.

Not that I'm complaining. If French were easier I'd be denied my snobbism. Remember the Pharisee: I thank thee, O Lord that Thou hath not made me as other men.

Which raises an interesting religio-philosophic point...