33. Christmas countdown..

25th November 2009. With the erection of 40 or so wooden chalets (aka garden sheds) in front of the Hôtel de Ville in Bayonne - ready for the Christmas market - there's now no hiding from the fact that Christmas is coming. The lights aren't up yet though.

When I was over in England in September, the previously mentioned Major Bloodnok was kind enough to make me a present of 2 large Christmas puddings. They've been sat in the cellar ever since and each time I go down there I'm tempted to bring one up into the light of day and sweet-talk Madame into heating one up. (Fat chance!) She does like them - but only at Christmas. (Rats!) I think that, as a food item, appreciation of them is usually limited to those of an Anglo Saxon origin. We're going up to Paris to stay with Madame's brother for a few days over Christmas and, for a few crazy moments, I thought that one of the Pudding Brothers would make an excellent contribution to the Christmas fare. That is, until the mental image of a table full of chauvinistic Gauls swam across my mind - each regarding their steaming slice of pudding with the utmost suspicion, poking and prodding it with looks of disdain as if it were still alive.. reluctantly tasting a morsel that could be harbouring e-coli at the very least. And this from a nation wot eats andouillette!! No, I don't think I'll bother. The French have a great expression for this: donner de la confiture aux cochons.. or to give jam to pigs!

At the risk of annoying those who live to the north, I must mention the unseasonably good weather we've been enjoying here for the last week (after the storms!). Temps of 24C and today it must be ~18-20C.. with matching blue skies.

With my knees giving me gyp at the moment, it's clear that our Golf is too small for us (ie, me) if we want to visit Tante S, Madame's auntie who lives in the Jura near the Swiss border (830kms away) as well as doing any long trips of exploration into Spain and Italy. After an hour's driving, I need to extend my legs which, in the Golf, I'm unable to do. So for the last few months we've been looking at all the options. We've test driven all kinds of cars and now we've homed in on the VW Tiguan as being the most suitable. With a little luck we should have one in time for our Christmas jaunt up to Paris..

Mentioning Tante S reminds me of the time when she and her now late husband were celebrating their 50th wedding anniversary one summer in the mid 90s. They'd decided to have a celebratory dinner and had invited a representative from each part of the extended family (to keep the numbers down to a manageable level) and so we came to be invited. We'd planned our annual visit to the Pays Basque such that at the end of it we could drive up & across to the Jura to arrive in time..

We wanted to avoid the boredom of the autoroutes so we thought we'd simply "straight-line it" across France - going by the Departmentale* roads - thus seeing a bit more of the country. After driving all day on lonely roads through mountains, forests and villages we stopped overnight at a village called Bourganeuf (between Limoges and Clermont-Ferrand) which is as near as dammit in the centre of France. We quickly dropped our bags in a 2* "Logis" hotel in the centre and then went out for a swift leg stretch before dinner. I remember being amazed to find a fish shop still open at 7pm. What's more, the display of gleaming fish on ice under the lights looked as fresh as could be and - remember - this was in a village 200 miles from the coast..!

We returned to the hotel and went into the cosy and heavily beamed dining room. Looking around, it was clear that this was the real France (aka la France profonde). After browsing the menu for a few minutes I realised that this was somewhere that took its food seriously. All the classic dishes were there. Madame often says that food is the second religion in France but I'd go further and say it's the first - as more people go to restaurants than go to church. Looking through the wine list I couldn't believe what I was seeing - most of the wine was priced at somewhere between £200 and £800 a bottle.. There were some fabled wines there that I'd only read about - Château Palmer, Château Gruaud-Larose, Château Haut-Brion and Château Yquem - and this in a un cheval village in the middle of nowhere.. Who was buying this? Needless to say, we had a bottle of something far more modest!

/to be continued..

* Autoroutes (motorways) are A roads.. as in the A63 from Bayonne to Bordeaux (UK equivalents? The M1, M5, M6 etc).

Nationale roads are N roads (as in N7) - these equate to the A roads in the UK.

Departmentale roads are D roads - and are equivalent to the UK's B roads.

Hope that's cleared up any confusion there may have been!

32. Spain

We went across the border to Irun in Spain today as Madame was in need of some retail therapy. Her "SHOPPING" low level warning light had been indicating steady red for a few days!

On arrival, we stopped for a hot chocolate at a cafe we'd been to before.. These are the real thing here - made with dark chocolate melted into hot milk - and are highly recommended. Looking around at the clientele of the cafe, it looked like they were auditioning for a Pedro Almodovar film.. There were a couple of middle aged guys who looked suspiciously "light on their loafers" and a number of excessively well dressed women who looked like they each had a story to tell (for a small down payment!). After that Madame went loose to look at clothes various - an activity which I was mercifully spared from - so I walked the pooch around.

I wished I'd brought my camera with me to take a few pictures of things that caught my eye - such as a shop that declared itself to be a Zapateria (a shoe shop in case you're wondering), a shop (in the main street) that curiously just sold domestic internal doors, a bar that advertised strep tease (yes, it was spelt like that), and a cafe that offered hamb urguesas (no prizes for guessing that one). There was a very pleasant square there with plenty of shade provided by plane trees that still had their leaves.

In the middle was a chap sat in a ONCE* booth not much bigger than an old-style red phone box selling tickets for the fabled Spanish lottery. La Loteria Nacional is played every Thursday and Saturday; the Bonoloto, which is drawn every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday; la Primitiva, which is drawn every Thursday and Saturday and the large jackpot, El Gordo de la Primitiva, or "the Fat One" as it's known, is drawn every Sunday. The main prize is a dizzyingly huge number of euros.

Spanish pedestrian crossings are quite novel and show a countdown in seconds of how much time to wait before the display changes from an animated Pacman-esque green one to a stationary red figure.

Back in the car, the outside temperature was reading 24C as we passed through Behobia on the border.. which I thought was very reasonable for 19th November.

Hmm, I think I've just worked out why Madame sometimes refers to me under her breath as El Gordo..

* ONCE = Organizacion Nacional de Ciegos Españoles (Spanish National Blind Organisation)

31. Vocabulaire

Another observation on how words are used here. For some time I've been aware at a subliminal level that the State and the media uses words for public consumption that we would never dream of using for the same audience in the UK and elsewhere in the Anglo-Saxon sphere.. While these words are completely correct, they would be judged by those who decide such things in the UK to be too highbrow, too technical or incomprehensible to yer average Brit. Or all three.. In France, there is a precision of expression - an absolutism - that mandates the use of a word that is totally correct (even if only a small percentage of the public is likely to understand it) in preference to a more widely understood simpler but less precise one. We appear to have swung in the opposite direction in the UK.

Let's take the TV weather forecast for starters. Here, instead of saying it will be cloudy - or "nuageux" - they talk of increased "nébulosité". Compare this with the 'baby talk' by UK weather presenters – bits and pieces of rain, gorgeous sunshine, weather pushing up from the south, or weather lurking out in the Atlantic waiting to attack us. I’m not making these up! And Arctic conditions when it's -1C..! Meanwhile, back at the Météo in France - another common one is to talk about a "perturbation" in the weather when all they really mean is a blip or a change in the weather is imminent - usually for the worse. "Luminosité" is yet another one.

And what is plain and simple in Anglo Saxon - for example, a ring road - becomes the périphérique in French. In the UK I somehow can't imagine White Van Man referring to the M25 around Greater London as the Peripheral Motorway.

Sometimes the centre of a road here is blanked off by a metre-wide strip of red paint to indicate that motorists cannot cross it. This is known here as the axial which I'm sure means nothing to a large percentage of the populace.

Catherine Jentile, the resident TF1 (the major French TV network) correspondent in London always refers to the English language as la langue du Shakespeare (the language of Shakespeare) rather than as English. And the UK/Britain/England becomes la royaume de sa gracieuse Majesté - the kingdom of her gracious Majesty. They often use this indirect form of address when referring to someone or something - for example, someone from Biarritz will invariably be referred to not by their name but as the Biarrot. Every town has an identity form which can be used like this. I'm not suggesting that any of this matters much.. but it's interesting to experience a different slant on how things are viewed. Broadcasters will not dumb down. In the UK, some cultural activities are perceived to be of interest only to a minority - such as the theatre or ballet - whereas here in France they are routinely reported in the television news both in the mornings and evenings.

And if you’re ever considering putting your foot in your mouth, French is the easiest language in the world in which to do it. Ask me how I know..! “A”, one of the girls at the rowing club, said during an outing on the river that she had a spare ticket for the local rugby derby match between Biarritz and Bayonne. Later, in the mens’ changing room, when the subject of the game cropped up I mentioned to the others (in French) that “A” had a ticket for me.. This produced howls of laughter..! Apparently this means that I have a crush on her! Another ‘foot in mouth’ moment occurred during an outing on the river, when I was attempting to explain to one of the girls in the crew the technique at the finish of the stroke for getting the oar out of the water and feathering the blade all in one smooth action. I remembered my old coach talking about rolling the handle of the oars (oars = les pelles in French) so I translated this into French as “roulez les pelles” which again produced a gale of laughter. This means to kiss with tongues..!

Meanwhile, some French humour that's doing the rounds..

Jean Pierre trouve sa prof d'anglais tout à fait à son goût, aussi il lui envoie un texte message:

"Douillou sink it is envisageable crak crak wiziou this ivening?"

Scandalisée, elle répond: "Never!"

Alors Jean Pierre, en joie, lui renvoie: "Splendid, disons never, never et demie!"

(Be still my aching sides..!)

Some useful vocab:

mon amour my love

mon ange my angel

mon bébé my baby

ma belle my beautiful (informal)

ma biche my doe

ma bichette my little doe

ma caille my quail (informal)

mon canard my duck

mon chaton my kitten

ma chatte my cat (familiar)

mon cher, ma chère my dear

mon chéri, ma chérie my dearie

mon chou my pastry (informal)

mon chouchou my favorite, blue-eyed boy/girl, pet* (informal)
*as in "teacher's pet"

mon cochon my pig

mon coco my egg

ma cocotte my hen (informal)

mon cœur my heart

ma crotte my dropping (also refers to a small, round goat cheese)

ma fifille my little girl (informal, old-fashioned)

mon grand / ma grande my big guy / girl

mon jésus my Jesus (when talking to a child)

mon lapin my rabbit

ma loutre my otter

mon loup my wolf

ma mie literally "my female friend," but used to mean "my dear/love." (This is a somewhat old-fashioned term contracted from mon amie > m'amie > ma mie. Note that mie also refers to the soft part of bread - the opposite of the crust.)

mon mignon my cutie

mon mimi my pussycat (informal)

mon minet / ma minette my pussycat

mon minou my kitty

ma moitié my half

mon petit / ma petite my little guy / girl

ma poule my hen

mon poulet my chicken

ma poulette my pullet (informal)

ma poupée my doll

mon poussin my chick (informal)

ma puce my flea (informal)

mon sucre d'orge my barley sugar

mon trésor my treasure

mon trognon my (fruit) core (when talking to a child)