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Category Archives: France
It’s Sunday – Lettuce Pray
At last it looks like rain. Farmers are out in their combine harvesters several weeks early in order to save what they can of the crop. Tant pis for the ground nesting birds that still have chicks in the nest. This morning I watched un paysan who marched back and forth to a ditch to fill his bucket. Each journey was 100 metres and each bucket watered a lettuce. He had known them each as seeds. His psychological profile probably ruled out the corporate thrust yet his lettuces survive in the dust. Corporate empires shrivel overnight.
News of the cat. “Les tests sont clean.” My neighbour informed me in franglais that she had picked up on a dubbed American TV show. We did 4 kisses and then 4 with Gilles and several batches of 4 with other locals who generally do 2. The cat lady is from some other region where they do 4. Its location is too far away to be of interest, but it must be a very foreign place. No one has ever been there.
Cost a packet
The cat’s out of the bag
Woken at 7 o’ clock by piteous wailing in the road outside. Looked out to see neighbour from a few doors up holding shopping bag in her arms. I will translate the conversation.
“My God! My God! She will die. Oh my angel- my little flea.”
A cat’s head appeared from the bag and said something similar but in the first person. (Ok I’m a grammar geek writer).
I went out.
“My pussy will die. Oh Emma- Madame I pray to you. Take me now and I will fill you up I promise.”
The neighbour lit a Gauloises, sliding into the car seat beside me. Obviously the cat was a passive smoker.
“I know the place – it is in Rochefort – I will fill you up”
We set off. Even through the smoke I felt kinda important. I was a romantic novelist on a real heroic mission at last.
Moo-ton Frothchilled
Milk in France comes in bricks of UHT. Imagine my astonishment at encountering a fresh milk machine at the Carrefour hypermarché. You take a bottle from a dispenser and place it beneath a nozzle. A veritable champagne of milk is delivered whilst the machine moos in appreciation. It’s almost like being down on the farm. Gilles suggests replacing the metal spout with a soft rubber teat but I won’t go into his reasoning. As you will know by now, he is foreign.
Walking home through the allotments I met a very local French son of the soil guy wearing a T shirt labelled in English “Ethnic Support Council.” A Google boogie reveals this to be from Washington State USA. What unknown currents colour our lives?
Something fishy down at Intermarché
Neighbours round for dinner. Quite a marathon with apéros, starters, saumon au riz, lemon pudding with custard and cheese. Le Monsieur loves to speak English and it is just possible to catch the odd word. After the kir, the white wine, the red wine and the cognac the concept of language seemed to slip away under the table and was probably eaten by their dog.
The salmon was labelled wild pink pacific but to me it tasted like tuna. Can this happen? Do they interbreed and form hybrids called Tumon or Salma. If they do, Intermarché are selling them. If this is a unique discovery I hope those Nobel prize guys are reading this.
Novel progress – well – let’s just say thinking shall we.
Sat Naff
Just how many times in your life were you right on top of success, triumph, victory, smug superiority and finding that jar of harissa paste in the supermarket when…….wait for it…….you gave up?
Today I went to Saintes guided by my sat naff. My mission was to find a bicycle spoke. Now you may think this is not the kinda thing that ROMANTIC NOVELISTS and POETS do. Quite right – they don’t. Sat Naff knew even less than I did. Somewhere near an Ibis hotel and a roundabout on a Zone Industrielle in France there is a bike shop. It is still there……like a dream, like a gossamer web of desire, like a tender kiss of a bloody Greek God. And wherever it is- I couldn’t find it. And I GAVE UP.
Surprised by Joy
So out came the sun and out came the bikes. We rode to Crazannes to see some wonderful stone carvings which local and international artists have created over the past ten years. I would have loved to post a photo but any publication is banned by les Lapidiales authorities. Well, if you’ve got it flaunt it I’ve always said. That’s how I pulled Gilles!
On the way home we rode into a wall of perfume at a spot named Allée des Tilleuls. That’s lime or linden in English. The heart shaped leaves connected these trees to Venus in days gone by. If you have a soul sensitive to warm air, blue sky and perfume the link is still there believe me.
Surprised by joy is a beautifully sad elegiac poem by Wordsworth – a big hero of mine. Check it out at: Surprised by Joy – poem
Bienvenue en France
Good Lord…..big furniture van just gone up the road. Looks like Brits. I know I should be pleased but to be honest I avoid the ex-pat roundabout. The French know I’m not French – but I think I am! Some villages and even small towns become almost deserted when too many houses are sold as holiday homes. In the end they destroy the environment that they came to enjoy. At least if they don’t speak French I can show off – like a crap magician impressing five year olds.
Quelques Fleurs
Nature has its seasons and we can but follow. Here in Charentes the infinity of greens begins to merge into a unity as the adolescence of Spring finds for now at least, that adult face in which it will live called Summer. Ladies, let’s not think of those wrinkles and that gravitational pull of time on our tender assets.
I often look to flowers for metaphors of love, sex and the cycle of being. I’ve added a poem called “Bluebells” to my website. It’s about those things that pass and that we cannot hold. Click here to go to my website, and select “My Poems” Emma’s Poetry
If you’ve any love of French or just its sound and music check out
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQGNpRnFNgM
Emma Undercover 