Sunday 4 January 2015

Le Café de la Place


Even before we lived in Menthon-St-Bernard we would occasionally stop at its Café de la Place on the way home from dropping the children at school. Having been up since 5.50 am and then often having had to battle to get the children out the door in the dark plus intensely cold weather conditions and the traffic we could justify a little early morning pause before heading home to the days isolation.

It is always a bit intimidating the first time you walk into a building that is clearly a ‘local’, and our first time in the village café was no exception. Heads turned to look my husband and I up and down, both those who were half-sitting on the tall metal stools, half-leaning on the counter and those who were sitting at the very few but closely packed wooden tables and chairs around the edges of the room. There was a big screen television on the back wall, constantly playing the top 50 songs loudly. It conveniently covered the momentary drop in conversation. We noticed that amongst the crowd there was a gendarme in full uniform chatting casually and several men in bright orange safety vests. The gendarme was having coffee but on the counter there were several half-empty liqueur glasses. As we settled ourselves discretely on the sidelines we watched the orange-vest-clad messieurs finish their alcohol and then walk to the car park where they hopped into their big work trucks and drove off, presumably to handle more heavy machinery. It wasn’t the first time that we wondered about the occupational health and safety practices in France.

But, the cafe had character, a cute name, was warm and we were accepted if not warmly welcomed. So, we went back.

It sits a little back from the main road behind the old stone village fountain that looks like the one that Jack and Jill used to tumble down from in the storybooks of my childhood. No handle to pull up a bucket on a rope but a peaked roof, clear fresh water and low circular stone base. The cobblestones around the fountain lead to the bakery on one side of the café and the newsagent, which stocks all things to do with smoking, so is called le tabac, on the other. The chemist completes the commercial roll call and with its large garish green neon sign lighting up the main road half way to Annecy it unfortunately upsets the natural balance of the square. Actually, it isn't a square at all as the road has cut off one corner but there really is no better translation of the French word ’place’. Every morning in front of the café a blackboard is chalked up with the set meal of the day.  There is a menu but with the blackboard option comprising an entrée, main course, dessert, carafe of wine and coffee all for 12 euro 50 most don't bother reading it.

Last year the café underwent renovations and a big red awning was added to make the outside terrace shadier in the summer and give a bit of protection from the rain and snow in the winter. It has big glass windows from calf height up and being an old building, inside it has exposed stone walls, a wooden paneled ceiling, wooden floors and is quite poky. The awning has only accentuated the darkish ambience of the interior.

By rights it isn’t the sort of place that usually attracts me. So, why did we keep stopping there? No doubt we were looking for somewhere that made us feel like we belonged. To that point we had had very few feel-good moments since our arrival in France and we were spending most days fighting uncomfortable administrative battles. We needed a bit of cocooning.

‘Un café double et un café au lait’ became our standard order. What a shame that the day my husband hopped next door to grab a newspaper and asked me to order for him, not a 'café au lait' but a 'chocolat chaud', the waitress saw me come in and called out "the usual?" "No," I replied, crestfallen and felt sure she would never ask us that question again.


We’ve been back at different times of the day, including to celebrate our wedding anniversary. Meals were not being served so my husband and I had a glass of champagne each instead. Stupidly, I knocked my glass over and broke it so handed over a tip at the counter as I indicated my broken glass. Strangely enough the publican, an enormous guy with a mirthless disposition smiled at me. Were we once again making progress? Did we perhaps just have to show that we were real humans filled with all the usual faults and deficiencies and not just cash happy English speaking tourists passing by and sending loud waves through the peaceful routine-oriented community? Quite possibly, or was he just amused at the unnecessary money outlay which perhaps only served to confirm his previous theory?



Friday 2 January 2015

Bonne Année

Happy New Year Cake. Miam !
The New Year. Who knows what sort of year we will have. Here’s hoping that we will fill it with wonderful moments and lots of family laughter. We stayed up until midnight so that we could let off our legal-in-France fireworks and in equal parts I felt happily juvenile and clandestine sheltering on the balcony whilst my husband went down to the lawn to officiate our proceedings. It was drizzling, not enough to prevent the fuses from igniting but enough to complicate the procedure and add an extra element of danger. He hid under my pearly pink golf umbrella with the lighter and a firework until there was a flame and then bolted backwards, removing the umbrella just in time to stop him emulating Mary Poppin’s graceful umbrella-flying feat.

When we started the quiet was tangible. An occasional car passed in the street and a man was out walking his dog but the majority of shutters were closed and lights appeared to be out. Out of respect for the calmness we attempted to be quiet, but the only fireworks that were compliant were a couple of pretty, gyrating crackers with quickly extinguished bursts of light, the rest were impressively loud, many flying through the wet branches of the tall pine trees and exploding loudly in the sky above. Several ricocheted back down to the ground and others appeared to chase my husband in a manically vengeful dance. He was rediscovering the forbidden pleasures of his youth and my son, having never seen fireworks up close was reversing the adult-child relationship, calling out several times to his father to be careful. After a few too many close calls and with his level of anxiety building my son's tone changed, ‘That’s enough now, Daddy!'  ‘Just one more,’ said several times over, came the busily engrossed parental reply.

With the promise of more fireworks the next night we persuaded my husband inside only to search in vain for what we had felt sure would be spectacular Parisian fireworks on the television.  Cabaret/talk shows were the go. Yearning for something less 'Gallically' serious or at least that we could understand without extensive prior French entertainment history, we hunted down one of our favourite Eddi Izard comedy routines. It gently mocked the simplistic uselessness of the phrases learnt in French class at school and the exaggerated ‘souris est sous la chaise’ and 'singe est sur la branche’ were as puerile as expected and effortlessly succeeded once again in producing out-of-proportion mirth. As always Izzard concluded that the only way he was ever going to be able to fluently drop these memorized, beautifully pronounced schoolboy gems casually into conversation with a gaulois puffing French man was to go to France with a chair, a mouse and a monkey and stroll around heavily wooded areas. Look it up. Be prepared for laughter.

Chinaillon
Our last two New Year’s Eves here in France have been slightly more eventful. Last year in the afternoon of the last day of the year we stumbled across a poster advertising a family celebration starting at 6pm in the small ski station of Chinaillon near Le Grand Bornand. The timing was perfect for us as we were hosting dinner with my sister at 8pm. Carefully we drove up the icy roads, expecting to find a few lonely strays in the street but struggled to find a carpark due to the large numbers present and nearly missed the downhill flame descent on skis. The flames snaked their way down the slope opposite the village, shining vividly in the darkness of the evening. Free hot wine was being served in the street and a DJ, perched on a platform above us, exhorted us all to get warm and dance to a selection of pop and French traditional songs. It didn't matter that we didn't recognise half of the tunes, we were swept up anyway into the spontaneously formed human circles, arms linked following as best we could the intricate dance steps performed with complete assurance despite the crowds, icy roads and free-flowing alcohol. The short festival culminated in a spectacular fireworks display on the hill opposite which, in short bursts, lit up the snow covered slope, the spire of the church and the clusters of miniature-looking chalets.

The year before, we were very newly arrived in Annecy and did not expect to know enough people to be invited out. Circumstances lead to us having a perfect evening lakeside around a bonfire and with new friends. Our troubles began when we headed home at three o’clock in the morning and found our house locked, as expected, but bolted internally, preventing us from using our key to get in. Our 16 year-old niece visiting from Australia was ostensibly babysitting. Boy, she must either have been taking revenge for not being out at her own New Year's Eve party or have been in a very deep sleep. No amount of yelling through the keyhole into the downstairs corridor just under her bedroom, throwing rotten quinces up at her window from the ground around the tree in the garden or ringing her mobile number roused her. We kept at it for an hour despite the freezing cold and eventually, out of fear of reprisals from our village neighbours, my husband and I retreated to our car where we fell into a half-prone deep slumber still dressed in our coats, bonnets, gloves and scarves with the engine and car heater on. 

Around 6am my husband tried again with grim determination and the more conventional method of knocking loudly on the front door. This time he got a response but no remorse or sympathy from the well-rested one as we trudged silently through the house straight into the warmth and comfort of bed. I’ve had late celebrations before and not got to bed until later than on that particular morning but never before have I had to sleep in the car in the carport, dreaming of the inaccessible luxury of my bed only a few metres away. Happy New Year indeed!

Those Quinces !


Thursday 1 January 2015

On Being French


In French schools, students are graded constantly and the same curriculum is taught the entire country over. Four thirty in the afternoon and standing patiently at the locked school gate for my children to be released along with the other captive collegians I risked mentioning in passing to the female teacher supervising the footpath fraternising that the curriculum did not seem to have changed much since I was last here teaching some twenty years before. In a moment of unexpected but refreshing candour she replied that it was probably more like two hundred years with no change.

There is a mark accorded out of twenty for most pieces of work that the students complete and parents and children alike constantly compare their ‘moyenne’ or average overall mark. In some schools, if a student is not doing well, there are 'soutien' or support classes but in most cases the classroom teacher is not expected to cater for the different ability levels in the classroom and the children are expected to just cope. If a child does poorly on a piece of work it is not uncommon for the teacher to write a straight-to-the-point denigrating comment next to the mark. Imagine the face of your crestfallen offspring faced with the one French word ‘Catastrophe,’ no English explanation needed and scrawled at the bottom of a written assessment task complete with exclamation mark, and you have some idea of teacher feedback practices. The idea that a child might respond to praise or to a warm relationship with the teacher is not the norm.

I went to a parent-teacher interview yesterday afternoon to discuss this exact point. I was on time and my daughter showed me up to her teacher’s classroom. He was chatting to another teacher when we appeared and made no real effort to come and greet us so we waited patiently. When he did come out into the corridor he did not introduce himself, shake hands or engage in conversation. He indicated that the meeting would take place downstairs and headed off with us in tow.

Before sitting down I introduced myself using my first name and put out my hand to be shaken. He mumbled back his full name as he took my hand although I suspect he would have been shocked if I had actually dared use it.  There was no animosity or impoliteness from either of us but he did look surprised at the frankness with which I spoke. He came across as someone sure of himself in his role of teacher but not a self-confident man. It wouldn’t have shocked me to read a poster on the walls listing the rules of the meeting, number one being ‘you are talking to a school teacher and so he has superiority and his methods and practices are not to be questioned.’ Of course I did though, question him, and with the assurance of a perfect, unarguable answer he replied ”But you are in France, Madame.”

As a justification this answer seems to be all that is required, not just in a school context but everywhere. I loosely recall a newspaper article that my husband and I were discussing wherein a Frenchman had become unruly on a flight after having consumed too much alcohol. He refused to accept that he should abide by the rules for all passengers and be served no more alcohol. His argument to prove that rules shouldn’t apply equally to him “But I am French.”

On holidays recently we stopped to visit the castle of Chambord.  Arriving mid-morning we thought that it might be nice to have a coffee before going into the castle. There were several restaurants and cafes to choose from and the owner of one was out the front getting ready for his lunchtime service. Some instinct made me ask if it would be possible to order just coffee before we sat down and made ourselves comfortable. “Of course not, I am far too busy and have got too much to do before midday.” He was speaking French but my English translation would be something like, “I am French, you are not, what were you thinking?” We went next door.

Many a similar story abounds in the travel folklore of arrogant Parisians and unhelpful and disdainful Frenchmen. Why is this so? I live here and have many good friends who are French but until you can prove yourself as someone of interest, which is particularly hard if you are an English speaker, you do risk being brushed off with a “But you are not French” haughtiness.  Smiling does help, as does persistence, developing a thick skin and dropping as early as possible into the conversation that you are from Australia.

Funnily enough I was once the target of ‘being French’ discrimination. My sister, visiting from Australia and speaking English to the sales assistant in Galeries Lafayette, a mildly up-market department store, could not have been better served. She was offered gift-wrapping and a smile. I was up next and spoke French. I was offered neither a smile nor coloured-paper and ribbon. When I asked if my gift could be wrapped I was told that I would have to go and line up at another counter. I would have liked to slap down on the counter my written assessment and mark out of twenty for her. She wouldn’t have made the moyenne.

Wednesday 31 December 2014

Le malheur des uns fait le bonheur des autres


Still no snow and it is the first of December. On this day last year the children were hurtling down the road next to the house on their toboggans in seventy centimetres of soft fresh snow. Then, I watched with video camera in my hand and heart in my mouth as amidst shouts of joy they veered away from the bridge at the bottom of the hill at the very last minute avoiding toppling into the icy river. In fact there was so much snow that once again it was causing havoc at airports around Europe. My husband, on his way back to France from Australia, was stuck in Abu Dhabi awaiting news of whether his flight to Geneva would be allowed to take-off. At our end, the children and I were monitoring the Geneva airport site constantly trying to get the latest news on whether or not his plane would be allowed to land.

It turned out that his plane was re-routed to Milan where, upon arrival, the passengers had a choice of waiting until flights were able to land in Geneva, trying their luck with another plane to another airport or taking a bus to Geneva. My husband chose the third option and then spent ten uncomfortably cold hours in the bus as it wound its way around Switzerland through hand-size flakes of falling snow.  He was hungry, too, and could only dream longingly of the Tim-Tam biscuits, which he was bringing back to our children as an Australian treat, but which were tantalisingly just out of his reach in his luggage in the hold. On the bus with him was a young Australian couple who were doing their best to keep their baby and toddler calm. There was also a young man in his early twenties who asked to be dropped off at the side of the road on the outskirts of Lausanne. He disappeared into the pitch-blackness of the eery homogeneity of the night wading through waist-high snowdrifts and weighed down by his back-pack. We hope he made it to where he was trying to go.

Dropped of at Geneva airport at 2 am, my husband then tried to work a little and sleep a little just to pass the time before attempting to get on the 6 am bus down to Annecy. The security guards in the otherwise empty airport smiled encouragingly at him as they passed doing their rounds but were unable to relieve the discomfort and tiredness of two consecutive days travelling without a break. More bad luck when he went to get his bus ticket from the bus station at just before 6 am to find that the first bus out had been cancelled, as the autoroutes were considered too dangerous to navigate.



I got a call from him around 8.45 am just after I had walked the youngest two up the snow-covered road to the primary school.  A snowplough had cleared a 2 metre wide path from the front gate of the school to the classroom entrances. The rest of the playground was a labyrinth of ice sculptures and igloos made by the children the previous day. Most were in ski pants and jackets as they had been told that they would not be allowed to play in the snow if they weren’t wearing ski gear. In Australia I fought hard to bring in a ‘No hat, No play’ policy for the summer months in the school that I was working at back in the early 1990s. What a contrast! But what a joy to have eager, affirmative responses to set school uniform guidelines.

I tried calling the bus office in Annecy on my husband’s behalf, as he still only had a smattering of French and they assured me that there would be a bus from Geneva mid-morning.  Thankfully, this turned out to be true and after another couple of hours in the bus he was back in Annecy. Our own car was completely snowed under, so a taxi ride from the bus station to home completed his long exhausting journey.


There is a French proverb which sums up these two days: ‘Le malheur des uns fait le bonheur des autres’ or in English ‘One person’s unhappiness is another person’s happiness.’ At the same time as the snow was making life miserable for many, including my husband, my children were in seventh heaven rolling around in it at home. But it was my oldest daughter who was the happiest. Her bus into school was cancelled and there were no expectations that she find an alternative way of getting there. I think her translation of the proverb would be ‘Lots of snow, no school-everyone happy!’

As for snow this year, we wait in eager anticipation. It might be tomorrow.  The snowplough did drive up our street as we were eating lunch, which is a sure sign that the men at the town hall have been given the word that snow is on its way. Plus, one of the Mums from school told me yesterday that it was definitely going to snow, as she had smelt it when she opened her windows in the morning. She might be right.




Swimming through a Tim Winton story



My husband woke me this morning with a cup of tea, and opened the curtains so that I could see the snow falling. It had started snowing again last night after I had gone to sleep and in a few hours had left a thick cover on the ground. As always, a fairy-like world had replaced the dreary greyness of last night’s landscape. It was a lovely romantic surprise, as today we celebrate our wedding anniversary.



...

Sixteen years ago, I was in the final happy hours of preparing to get married. Being summertime, we had planned a five o’clock church ceremony followed by a reception dinner. It meant that the whole day could be spent indulgently ‘getting ready’. I had woken early in the hotel room in Saint Kilda that I had booked for my three sisters and myself and, leaning on the windowsill with my chin in my hand, I remember looking out over the deserted beach in view, for a long, quiet moment. I was the last of my sisters to get married and I was looking forward to the adventure. I knew that I would be pampered and in company all day, but for a few moments, contemplating the distantly silent waves, I was alone with my thoughts.

...



This morning, I was again looking out of the window with most of the rest of the household asleep and it was the silent twirling snowflakes that formed a backdrop to my thoughts. It was hard to believe that another year had gone by. Would we still be celebrating after fifty-six years like my French neighbours, who still go for long mountain walks together and, when out walking around the village, do so arm in arm?

...

I wore a traditional white wedding dress. After all, I figured that it was a one and only opportunity, so why not? Plus it is hard not to be swept up in the euphoria of being the bride. Marie Stuart was apparently the first to choose white when she married Francois the Second, son of Catherine of Medici in 1559. Amazing to think that since that time many of the same wedding traditions; carrying a bouquet of flowers, being attended to by a bridesmaid, receiving guests afterwards for a meal and giving gifts to the bride and groom, are still adhered to despite the vastly different lifestyles that we live.

Here in France the main difference from my own wedding experience is that the official marriage ceremony is held in a mairie (town hall) and is performed by the mayor. It is the compulsory legal declaration and signing of a union and although many couples choose to have a second ceremony some time after with a priest in a church, this is not necessary.

Friends of ours got married a week after us in England, which gave us time to fly across the world to join them. Coincidentally, my girlfriend and I had announced our engagements at the same time, independently planned our weddings for the same time of year and then, some years later, our children were born on the same day, minutes apart. We had shared all the joys of the planning of the two wedding celebrations and both nearly came off without a hitch.

She and her husband-to-be had chosen a magnificent old stately home as the venue for their wedding day. We arrived the night before in the dark coldness of an English January evening and fell under the spell of the sizeable grounds, lushly carpeted and decorated reception rooms, thick walls, gaping fireplaces and quaint bedrooms with odd-shaped bathrooms, added years after the mansion had been divided into rooms. The staircase was majestic and wide, quite worn down in places and I for one felt like I was a princess at home in my castle.

The beginning of my girlfriend's wedding day was full of vigour and happiness. All of the guests breakfasted together before we made our way to the registry office for the first official joining of the couple. A loud, informal lunch in an English pub next to a warming open fire followed. Back to the manor house, my enduring soundtrack to the pretty church ceremony that had been organised in the mansion's chapel remains the enthusiastic pre-ceremony song rehearsal, where unfortunately twenty plus the priest does not a choir necessarily make. Any mild discomfort was chugged away with multiple, generous cups of afternoon tea in the drawing room before we retired to our rooms in order to prepare ourselves for the wedding dinner; the meal de résistance, carefully planned and orchestrated from Australia. Early evening, and dressed in our gowns and suits, we met again for elegant apéritifs in the suite of the bride and groom. Responding to a call for dinner, we made our way to the staircase.

A happy end to the day it was not to be. The bride fell, broke her leg and did not make it to her own wedding dinner. After being operated on, but still in hospital later that week, she heard a couple of patients discussing the unfortunate ending to a bride’s wedding day; her’s. Her wedding cake comprising handcrafted flowers, flown over as part of her hand luggage, had been divided amongst the hospital staff and the skiing holiday, planned as the honeymoon, cancelled. We jokingly put the blame on another of our girlfriends who had written a telegram to the happy couple, finishing with a theatrical ‘break a leg’. Curiously, and despite much agonizing over this unfortunate coincidence, the telegram had never actually arrived.
...



We had planned to go out and eat in a restaurant at lunchtime today with all the family but ended up having soup and bread together at home after a long walk in the snow and rain.

...

I didn't share this story at the time of writing, and a further seven years have passed as, once again, my husband and I are celebrating. This time, the sky is blue, the shutters are drawn, the cricket is playing on the television and, outside on the deck, I am being chorused by a very loud contingent of cicadas. We have returned from our morning swim at the beach where the water was a deep, silky green. Not for the first time, did I feel that I was swimming through a Tim Winton novel.





In many respects, it is a day like any other, just encased in lovely reflections and extra personal attentions. Of course, our anniversary falls at the very end of the year, which possibly contributes to the sustained looking-back. Where will I be writing to you from next year? Where will you be? What will our conversations sound like? I hope that they will be interesting and informative, kind and generous, peppered with humour and lightness. Happy new Year. Bonne Année.

For more of our French story - Kindle or print - click here But you are in France, Madame