T i for Trees

T is for trees

Cela fait partie du train-train quotidian — It’s all in a day’s work

We have a garden. We have trees. So far, so good. The top branches of one tree are very near an overhead electricity cable. Not so good. Last year, when we got someone in to prune the trees, he said he couldn’t cut the tree near the cable as it was ‘trop dangereux’. He — and we — should therefore ring Electricité de France (EDF) to get the power turned off for the duration of the tree pruning operation.

He rang. We rang. Nothing happened. On the day, our man pruned the other trees, went to lunch and came back with an EDF lorry in tow. He had somehow met a couple of EDF workers in the local brasserie and hijacked them. With difficulty, they backed their truck into our drive and lopped off a few branches.

This year, we thought we would get ahead of the game and rang EDF asking them to come and sort out the tree. They arrived, six hours early, and said they didn’t cut trees. But you cut it last year, we said. Non, tree cutting was not part of their portfolio. However, they reassured us that, should anyone accidentally cut through the cable, it was insulated so they wouldn’t come to any harm. No matter that the lights might go out all over St Antonin.

So, it’s back to square one. Does anyone know a good tree pruner who is not afraid of electricity cables…?

A is for Adverts

A is for Adverts

Il faut de tout pour faire un monde — It takes all sorts to make a world

Ad agencies obviously like saving money. A lot of the TV ads you see in the UK are just dubbed for France (or vice versa). Some don’t even bother with the dubbing, so you get ads for cars and perfumes in their original language. The hope must be that the product sells itself. And we’ll draw a line under the Autoglass (UK) or Carglass (France) jingle that is as awful in both languages.
There also seem to be an awful lot of ads for ham in France.

My favourite ad here is for the supermarket chain Casino. It comes on most evenings, just before the news. It features two members of the public who live near each other, but apparently have never met. One goes round to the other’s house to cook a meal. The cook has to lug all the ingredients to the other house in their shopping trolley, cook a meal in a strange kitchen with unfamiliar cooker and utensils, while the host looks on, occasionally offering to chop a carrot or something. At the end, after many “Ohs” and “Ahs” about the lovely food, the person who did all the work cries happily “Next time it’s at my house”. My problem is, why didn’t they hold it at their house in the first place to save everyone a lot of time and trouble? Answers on a postcard…

We still have a little local cinema here. We get all the latest films, and a large selection of foreign-language films — anything from Hebrew to Japanese. We quite often get to see films long before they appear in the UK — we saw the latest Woody Allen several weeks ago.

When it comes to English-language films, you generally get a choice whether to watch it in the original version, ie in English with French sub-titles
(the 5pm performance), or dubbed completely into French (the 8.30pm performance). Every month a leaflet appears telling you what’s on over the next four weeks, but you generally have to be quick as most films only run for a few days.

The good thing about the cinema is you get absolutely no adverts. No trailers. No ads for the Star of Bengal, Coca Cola or Budweiser. Nothing. You go in, pay your €5.50, choose your seat, sit down, greet a friend or two, and watch the film. There’s not even a twee announcement asking you to turn off your mobile phone.

The process is slightly more complicated for the French members of the audience. They enter, they discuss animatedly the merits of various seats. They sit down. They get up. They move seats after more discussion. They sit down and enjoy the film.

The cinema is run by a local couple. She sells you the tickets; he stands a few steps from the box office and duly tears your ticket in half, while exhorting you to enjoy the film. At the end, as you all file out, he hopes you have enjoyed the film.

Now that’s what I call cinema.

L is for Life in the car park

Tu me mets l’eau a la bouche — You are making my mouth water

Another day, another car park. This time we had our monthly rendezvous with a white van. Not just any white van, this one belongs to John the Butcher and we had come to collect our sausages. Having been a master butcher in the UK for 30 years, John moved to France, opened a shop and now supplies deprived Brits with their much-missed sausages — Cumberland, pork and leek, Lincoln, lamb and mint — you name it, he supplies it. You can also get other delicacies such as Cornish pasties, spare ribs, gammon steaks and pork crackling joints…

As a succession of Brits drew up to collect their goodies, many having driven quite a distance in the pouring rain to get there, we inevitably saw someone we knew. “Amazing what we’ll do for a sausage,” she said. Very true.

Driving there, I was reminded of what is a very French aspect of life (those of a sensitive disposition should stop reading now): gentlemen relieving themselves at the side of the road. Whatever the weather, they’re at it. They sometimes position themselves behind a car door, but more often than not perform in full view of anyone driving by. So I don’t know why I was surprised when, the other day, an old chap in a beret let flow by the bonnet of my car in the supermarket car park. I happened to be sitting in the car at the time. To be fair to the old boy, I doubt he saw me there, judging by the trouble he later had finding his car door and then the exit to the car park.