There's no word for 'wedding' in French..

...it's a 'mariage' - but you can have a marriage without a wedding:

A marriage is a long term relationship between two individuals. A wedding, on the other hand, is the ceremony of getting married.

Lucky us!  We got to do the wedding bit!  We were really looking forward to catering what promised to be a très chic event, but didn't realise we'd enjoy it quite as much as the guests.

Not having been to many French weddings (i.e. just the one) we didn't really know what to expect.  Do guest wear hats? Throw confetti?  Make inappropriate speeches?  Are sexy bridesmaids and well scrubbed page boys to be expected?  A three tier cake?  And dancing to bad disco hits?

The answer my friends, is OUI.  Oui, oui, and oui.  All the good things we know and love.

You can't knock a good wedding, especially when the French bride and groom are brave enough to have fish and chips as part of the catering and the whole event is held in a dreamy, rock star South of France maison de maitre (think Mick and Bianca circa '72) with fairy lights, formal gardens and champagne on tap.

 

We had a ball.  Jacques, dressed as a Frite, kept us supplied with said champagne. Sophisticated Parisienne lawyers danced the Macarena.  Tisane the cat kept watch on the roof of the trailer. 

There was high demand for our fares for most of the night (fish & chips are 'class', 'mignon' and 'chic' for the French) and it turns out the owner of the house is a screenplay writer who may want our trailer to appear in a (murder) episode of one of her detective mini series - let's hope it doesn't involve food poisoning.....

It's been over two years now...

...and we're still here, trying to make our way in a French world.  Sometimes it feels as if it might as well be a Martian world, so alien certain things are!

I've been quiet for four months I realise, and having been innundated with requests (well, 2..) to recommence French Lessons I thought it would be good to get into the groove again.

Facebook people will know that during those four months I posted every day for 100 days things that made me happy - harder than it sounds!  From February to May I featured flowers and kittens and all things in between, including our new endeavour to earn a crust in a country notoriously difficult and intractable for natives and foreigners alike.

 

A year of planning, six months of tussling with documents and Mairies and eventually Mr. Fish & Chips opened its shutters to serve traditional British poisson et frites to difficult and intractable French locals.  It hasn't been easy, but it's certainly been interesting, we've learned an awful lot and improved our vocabulary into the bargain - mostly concerning fish and chips, strangely enough.

We are still in Pomerols, we are still annoyed beyond belief about Lunch Time and Closed Sunday and Crap Coffee, we still appreciate the cheap wine and charming country side, the finds at the flea markets are still frenchy and fab, but we are on a different side of the fence now.  We are looking at the Languedoc and France as tax paying members of the community and wondering what the future holds.  It does seem that the French people who sample our fish and chips like it and come back for more, but will this afford us a life of comfort and joy in the long term?  Will I ever learn to love being a Fish Wife, Alex a Short Order Chef?? 

In the interests of punchy and interesting posts, I shall try to deliver weekly updates - maybe more often!  Stay alert for vivid thumbnails of our life and times in the slow lane.  Will battered cod and big chips sweep the nation and launch us into the big time?  Or will it all prove too much and it'll be Goodbye Mr. Chips..?? 

It's Still Christmas in France....

Happy New Year! Hope you all enjoyed the festivities on the 31st and 1st.

Happy January Sales!  Hope all you bargain hunters shopped up a storm.

Happy Epiphany! To all those in Spain and Russia etc. receiving their gifts on the 6th.

Happy Burns Night!  Lang may yer lumb reek beyond the 25th.

Happy Australia Day!  Hope you all had a good time on the 26th.


Here in the 'interesting' South of France it's still Christmas.  Yes, truly.  We still have Christmas trees up in shops and in the public squares...

 

Lights in the streets and signs advertising the Christmas markets....

 

Stollen, chocolate Santas, baubles, tinsel and wrapping paper etc. available in the shops AT FULL PRICE....

 

Houses decorated with my favourite abseiling Santa and giant nativity scenes...

 

I have no conclusion to draw from this.  Perhaps it is a local custom to drag out Noel as long as possible.  Perhaps it is another manifestation of the Lazy French Syndrome (see blog # 42) and nobody has time to take down the decorations as they are still recovering from Lunch. 

Perhaps it is something completely different.  Rumour has it the decorations can even stay up until Easter, and I did see evidence of this last year.  If anyone has the answer to this puzzling situation, I'd be happy to hear it.  Answers on a Christmas card, please, addressed to Pere Noel, La Poste, S. France as he is still large as life at his desk in this neck of the woods...

Christmas in France...

This really is my favourite time of year, and I am truly thankful not to be celebrating Christmas in neither a bikini nor air conditioning.  As we all know by now I could never, and will never, adjust to such an anomaly.

 

 

Even though France has the same seasons and similar weather to Britain in December, not everything is exactly the same for Christmas.  Yes, there are trees and lights, holly and mistletoe, hopes and wishes for a white Christmas (usually delivered in the French Alps and Pyrenees etc.) and excessive eating and drinking to be looked forward to.
 

But some things are different.  Father Christmas seems to climb up rope ladders here to deliver the toys and goodies.  This drives me crazy!  Santa Claus arrives on sleigh pulled by reindeer and goes down the chimney! Everyone is aware of this - the legendary stuff of Christmas - so I do not know where the notion of an abseiling Santa originated. I do not approve.

The French don’t really send Christmas cards, and the ones that are on offer are hugely expensive, really quite boring and often in the form of a postcard rather than a ‘proper’ card complete with envelope, glitter, robins and snow scenes.  Knowing this, I wisely stocked up on cards on a recent trip to London and sent them out in a timely fashion – probably my first and only bit of pre-Christmas planning.

 

 

French shoes rather than stockings are put out in front of the tree or by the chimney for Father Christmas/Père Noël to fill with treats.  France also has a Père Fouettard who patrols looking for naughty children to spank...

 

So very French is the law (passed in 1962) that all letters posted to Père Noël receive a reply – no room for negligence here! Not sure who hands out the punishments to workers from La Poste who fail to follow through on replies - Père Fouettard perhaps?!

 

The traditional Christmas meal can be on Christmas day but is usually in the middle of the night, after midnight mass is over with cafés and restaurants staying open all night. We are still mulling over whether to give this a try.  I’m inclining towards keeping it a daytime event, as there’s nothing quite like coming downstairs and opening the presents – with the breakfast 'toast' being champagne.

 

France has a very special place known as the Capital of Christmas, a city called Strasbourg which sits on the edge of the Black Forest in Alsace, all gingerbread houses, fairy lights and frosty pine trees and that’s where we are going for Christmas.  Famous for its Christmas market and starry eyed crowds, we plan to over indulge in mulled wine, late night shopping and sightseeing. A must will be a chilly ride in a horse drawn carriage, and even though I know there won’t be any, I am still secretly hoping for snow and maybe a sleigh ride instead.

 

We will have to track down some traditional fare for lunch and I will be avoiding the seafood bonanza the French – in common with the Aussies – enjoy over the festive season.  Turkey and mince pies all the way for me. Although, having attended a Foie Gras Fête and seen all the poor ducks and geese piled up, plucked and gutted waiting to be polished off, I might be tempted by a nut roast. It was all too much for hypocritical, squeamish me. 

 

Not sure what gifts may be waiting under the tree for us, but the trip alone is the best of presents.  And talking of presents, Christmas came earlyish for our indefatigable old neighbour Pam, a big fan of a bottle of wine, a packet of fags and Johnny Depp.  Imagine how thrilled she was when he did eventually drop by to light her up....

 

And all that is left to say is, in the words of Clement C. Moore in The Night Before Christmas, “I heard him exclaim as he drove out of sight, ‘Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night!’”.  Wishing you all the happiest of holidays and the jolliest of Christmases....

 

3 Steps To Winter Warmth

 

 

STEP ONE...

 

Meet lovely people with a very big garden full of tree prunings and timber left over from large scale house renovation...

 

STEP TWO...

Don special trousers and learn to use a chain saw (trickier than it seems - the chain saw bit, not the trousers), and spend a day cutting up large pieces of wood...

 

 



 

STEP THREE...

 

Take the wood home and make it into a fire.  Voilà!  It sounds quite easy, but is actually good old hard labour and enjoying the fruits of it is very rewarding.  Having said that, it is still glorious weather here, sunny and 23ºc – shorts weather for some, meaning log fires are hardly necessary, but we couldn’t wait.  It’s our first house with fireplaces and every time we light a fire feels like a special occasion. I’m sure the novelty will wear off when it is cold enough to necessitate the fire, but meantime it’s still my favourite decorative accessory!

 

 



 

 



Oscar is Lost

French village cats are tough customers.  Street wise and sly, crafty and confident they slink and swagger about the streets as if they own them - which they do, to a large extent. They have learned to fend for themselves, fight with dogs, avoid traffic and feed themselves from wheelie bins. They seem mostly to be unsterilised and intact, producing  a couple of litters a year at least.  

Oscar, on the other hand, is a well behaved, nicely brought up cat unaccustomed to life in the gutter.  Inexperienced, apart from a couple of run-ins with the neighbours' cat in Australia, we felt he was ill equipped to deal with the pugilistic lifestyle second nature to the alley cats of the Med, and decided to keep him in the house.  He seemed fine with it and disinterested in outdoors.

 

This was going well until one night when we returned home a bit late from dinner at neighbours Danny and Russell's house, and full of curry and VRAC, failed to notice Oscar had slipped out of the house as we were locking up.  Off to bed we went.

 

Early in the morning, I woke suddenly and realised Oscar was not in his usual morning position i.e. on my chest loudly purring the 'get up and feed me, slacker' purr.  Where was he?  A search of the house revealed he was not home.  Alex joined me in a second search and it slowly dawned on us that he must have sneaked out last night and been locked out all night.  With all those French alley cats.

 

We rushed out and frantically started to look for him.  We combed the streets all morning, feeling sicker by the minute. What if he'd been run over? What if he'd been stolen? We had been warned he was 'trop beau' and would be a prize trophy.  What if he were trapped somewhere where nobody could hear his cries?  What if, what if..  We tried to think 'he's a cat, he'll turn up' but didn't manage at all well.

 

We thought surely Roly and Pepper would find him. They set off all alert and determined - definitely on the trail of something - and lead us straight to a left over pizza dropped in Place Charles de Gaulle.  They were immediately relegated home.  

We bumped into Louis, the local policeman - Pomerols has just the one.  He was very kind and said he'd do an announcement from the Mairie PA, which he did, requesting news of a 'gros chat blanc' - 'gros' is big in French, not fat, though Oscar fits both descriptions.  This made us feel sad, not hopeful, however.

We made some Lost (Perdu) posters, which was awful as I hate to see them in the streets and always wonder where the poor pet is and how the poor owners are feeling, and of course dreaded having to resort to a Lost poster myself. We knocked on doors, asked around and continued to patrol the village. 

 

The village children quickly found out Oscar was missing and embraced the hunt with boundless enthousiasm, especially Gabriel (age 8) who probably reads a great deal of Tin Tin or the French equivalent of Secret Seven or Famous Five and decided he was going to find a trail of white fur and track Oscar down this way.  He requested his own copy of the Lost poster and gathered a band of acolytes who set off for the search on assorted bikes and scooters.

It got dark and then it got darker. No sign of Oscar.  We thought about going to bed and leaving the front door ajar in case Oscar found his way miraculously home.  We realised we wouldn't be able to sleep too well, so set of for one final search with a torch and a tin of Whiskas.  It was around midnight, and we bumped into Danny and Russell who told us they could hear a cat mewing near the Mairie.  We conducted a thorough search, to no avail.  Miserable, I wandered off down a side street shining my torch under cars and gates.  And then suddenly, there was Oscar!  Huddled in a recess in a wall to a garden - we had looked there a dozen times that day.  He must have been hiding, too scared to come out during the day. I scooped him up and rushed him home. He was frightened and dirty but nothing else.  We had probably (almost certainly) been more bothered than him by his disappearence.  But he was glad to be home, and Roly and Pepper were delighted to see him.  We were never so grateful, and still are.

 

Early the next morning Gabriel was ringing the door bell to announce his latest scheme for finding Oscar, which seemed to involve trails of crumbs and secret chalk marks on buildings. We told him the good news. He seemed pleased but requested proof - so we booked Oscar in for an official appearance in front of the search party, which would be accompanied by cup cakes for all.

Several hours and dozens of cup cakes later, everyone was happy.  Especially Gabriel who had collected white fur, a Lost poster, a band of followers and a reputation as village sleuth.  How was he going to occupy his days now, though?  He rang the door bell a bit later to let me know he'd be happy to show me how to improve my cup cakes.....

Is the Shopping Better in Britain...or am I just living in the Sticks??

Buying a house inevitably entails buying things for it.  Some things like Liquid Nails and paint are not so terribly exciting, although they do promise change for the better. Other things like sofas and chandeliers are utterly thrilling (at least to me) and merit considerable thought and planning.

 

Given our budget for furnishings, it's a good thing that I adore old stuff and that the prospect of weilding sand paper and a paint brush around a bedside cabinet purchased for 4 euros from the car boot sale deprives me of sleep through sheer excitement.  I didn't realise, though, that my passion for brocante, chineur, vide grenier, Emmaus, skip trawling etc. was also going to be practically my only choice for furnishing our home - apart from Ikea, that is. 

Much as I love and admire Ikea, and am terribly grateful there is one a 30 minute hop down the road, I don't want an entire house decked out courtesy of our Swedish ally.  I want choice, the ability to select from a range of suppliers and outlets, the possibility of comparing one rug / dining chair / console with another.  I would like a broad spectrum of bedding options and kick-ass kitchen ware selections. I'd prefer the idea of choosing between roman blinds, shutters, curtains, sheers, panel glides, venetians etc. to be a clear and present challenge rather than a distant memory.  In my personal opinion fabric should be offered in more than toile, stripes and 80's florals.

 

I never thought I would actively miss Pillow Talk, Freedom, Domayne, Kitchen World and Spotlight quite so acutely.  Not to mention Rugs-a-Million!! What I wouldn't give for a Rugs-a-Million now.  And these are Australian shops. I couldn't even begin to list the home furnishing options on offer in the UK - there, it's best to decide on your decorating style before leaving home in order to thus target the appropriate retailers, never mind wondering if there will be any duvet covers on the shelves actually available to buy as I do here. 

I like Maisons du Monde, I really do.  The furniture section of Galeries Lafayette is lovely for lofts and hotel particuliers.  A store called But presents an impressive selection of items almost exclusively upholstered in Union Jacks and Eiffel towers.  The rugs at 

Décor are all polypropelene and they had NO hall runners.  I am not fond of pimp style leather furniture so that elimiates Chateau d'Ax.  Where else do I go? I am sure there are places I don't yet know about or have not heard of.  I am becoming prepared to drive to Lyon or Marseille for a shopping fix and would hire a van, too!  I realise of course the plethora of possibility available on line and may just have to settle for that, although it's quite nice to wander around a few department stores and then have a sustaining snack, something on line won't ever supply. 

 

 

Shopping isn't all furniture and homewares, either.  Clothes are nice to buy. Alex needs new clothes to match his new slimline shape.  And shoes. His feet haven't changed size but co-ordinating shoes are good.  Mercifully the clothing options are marginally better here and Odysseum or Polygone can usually drum up some interesting offers.  But don't go looking for singlets or shorts out of season and put aside all thoughts of stylish, statement shoes of novel design.  Brown and black with laces rule.  Or boots.

I'm going to London soon.  I can feel a lengthy visit to Top Shop, Heals and Habitat coming on.  I might even get on a train and go to the Metro Centre, just down the road from my parent's house near Durham.  Really wish I hadn't booked a baggage free Ryan Air ticket now...