A rugby picnic - the French way

“Un pique-nique, à la française”

(I’m not sure I’ve got my genders correct – should it be ‘à la français’ because ‘le pique-nique’ is masculine? Ou quoi? Argh!)

So, my son and my husband went to Cahors last weekend for a rugby tournament (un tournoi). As they left late in the morning and had a fair way to travel, it was suggested by email that everyone bring a picnic lunch to share. To my mind, this meant that everyone would bring their own supplies and would share things like chips and little shop cakes, as has been done before on school outings, etc.

Being a good New Zealand girl, I packed a hearty filled roll, pieces of fruit, little cakes to share, salami to chop for whoever wanted it, and some licorice rolls as a treat. Basic but nice.

It seems that I had better revise my expectations of French school-aged boys enjoying a picnic lunch on the side of the road on the way to a rugby tournament. Here is what my husband said was eaten:

• lots of tabouli (tabouleh) that was eaten from bowls with forks
• already-cooked Toulouse sausage (lots if it) that was cut up and passed around
• a selection of nicely presented charcuterie (cold meats, salamis, etc)
• a big selection of nice cheeses
• a couple of vegetable tarts
• lots of baguettes
• wine for the adults
• then for dessert, flash-fried pastries coated with sugar (a popular treat from the bakery).

I often pack a snack for my two children who are at primary school (école élémentaire) but my daughter would rather go hungry now because she only wants pre-packaged, shop-bought, someone-else-made food, and only if it’s sweet. I say no. My son gets ravenous during the long school day so I make him cheese sandwiches. The other kids love them (because they are not sweet) and he often has to share them. At college, where my big 12 year old boy is now, there is no snacking at all during the school day even though there are break times. You eat at breakfast, you eat a big lunch in the middle of the day, and then you have a snack (un goûter) when you get home from school – don’t forget school finishes here at 5pm. Then of course there’s dinner, and that’s often late into the evening.

We must be becoming more French in our eating habits though because a New Zealand girl visited us last weekend for lunch and she was struck by how different the progress of our meal was. We had the ubiquitous starter, main and dessert, plus pre-dinner nibbles and coffee afterwards. Normal for us now. But it took all afternoon and she loved it. She ate well, but she said she didn’t feel full because the food had been spread out over some hours, and not dumped onto one plate. I warned her that if she goes to a French person’s house for lunch, she must be prepared to stay all afternoon, and if it’s for dinner, then it may appear kind of rude to duck away before midnight. She’s full of energy though, so I’m sure she’ll be fine.

So, my thoughts on this are that food is important in France, even if you are a bunch of peri-adolescent school boys on the way to a rugby match.

So British, in Toulouse

 

I like to go into the city of Toulouse. I like to just wander. There are so many little streets that are wonderfully wanderable, and the sights I find still take my breath away, even after three years in France.

I usually have an exceptional sense of direction but here it is completely screwed and it’s something to do with the earth’s magnetic poles I think. In France, I am closer to the North Pole, with the sunlight being strongest facing south. In New Zealand we are (definitely) closer to the South Pole and our orientation for the sun is always northwards. So if someone asks me to face north here in France, despite some serious thinking and subtle re-re-figuring, I still get it wrong and face south. It’s very strange.

But the nice thing is that when I wander in the city of Toulouse, I go where my feet and my eyes take me. I could of course keep looking at the map, but that means stopping, taking my sunglasses off, finding my reading glasses and putting them on, working out where I actually am, etc, etc…It’s too hard for me. So, having a general sense of where I might be, or where I think place Capitole is, I just enjoy the experience of strolling past ancient glowing brick buildings, so beautiful and lived in, with centuries of stories to tell. I wish I could talk to the buildings and see into the lives of all who have lived there; that makes history come alive for me.

Being from new New Zealand (really, it’s such a young country), anything older than 150 years is ancient to me. When I was still in New Zealand in my 20s, I remember hearing of a school in England having its 500th anniversary. I was unswayably incredulous. It simply could not be possible. How on earth could an institution be that old, still functioning today, and have (no longer living) old boys who went to school there some 450 years ago? Pah! The sense of history here still pulls me up and I try to absorb it into my being, knowing that I probably won’t be a New Zealander in France forever (gulp, sniff)…

So, today, I went a-wandering. I had just bought myself a silk and cashmere scarf from rue Four Bastards (really!) and was ready for some lunch. I trod lightly and expectantly down a little lane, and a café caught my eye; mostly due to the British flag draped enticingly around the posts outside. In fact I had stumbled across a veritable British tea room (un salon de thé à l’anglaise) in the heart of Toulouse. Now there are several tea rooms in Toulouse and the focus is generally a light salad-y/savoury tart-y lunch followed by real tea from a real tea pot poured into real, and sometimes antique, china tea cups, served with a dessert to be found in the large, wooden and glass window-facing cabinets. There are many of them and they all look gorgeous – that is, tea rooms and desserts.

This salon de thé is described in the promotional bumpf for So British as 100% English.

Set in baroque décor with floral crockery, rococo tables and gilt-framed mirrors, you can taste the English specialties created by our chef, Jérôme Pascal, from Oxford. You can enjoy the tables and chairs of the café/restaurant setting upstairs or move downstairs to a cozy space filled with sofas and armchairs in the basement.

And here is what the Toulousians consider to be traditional English dessert cuisine: muffins, sticky toffee pudding, apple pie, cheese cake, scones, fruit crumble, shortbread, cup cakes and English sweets. Do you think they have missed anything, I wonder?

So, I ate my foie gras, raisin and walnut mesclun salad, served with a basket of perfect outside-crunchy, inside-soft and squishy French bread. I didn’t have dessert this time, but I did have a mug of hot chocolate. No, not powdered hot chocolate but real melted dark chocolate heated in creamy milk. I had to walk a bit more around Toulouse after that to put my conscience to rights.

Each week I am going to visit the city and see what I find. I’ll keep you posted.

‘So British’ is open Tuesday to Sunday from 11am to 7pm. You can get brunch on Sunday from 11am to 3pm. Yum!

So British, 11 Rue Peyras, 31000 Toulouse, Tel: 05.61.38.30.88

Mercy in the wintertime

Here’s an absolutely extraordinary snippet from my son’s daily newspaper, Mon Quotidien. I’ve included it below, in French and then in English. My comments follow at the end.

Une mère et son bébé expulsés d’un logement

La Fondation Abbe-Pierre l’a révélé vendredi. Une mère et son enfant de 1 an viennent d’être expulsés d’un « logement » minuscule de 4 m² a Paris. C’est l’équivalent d’une pièce carrée de 2 m sur 2 m. Motif : la mère ne pouvait plus payer le loyer de 200 € par mois. Le propriétaire l’a prévenue par SMS. Puis il a change les serrures de la porte et a déposé leurs affaires dehors. La femme et le bébé ont été accueillis par un membre de leur famille. Le propriétaire sera puni, a indique le gouvernement. Il est interdit d’expulser des gens de novembre a mars, même s’ils ne payent pas leur loyer. C’est la trêve hivernale. Le but est d’éviter qu’ils dorment dehors en hiver. De plus, la loi interdit de louer moins de 9 m² (pièce de 3 m sur 3 m).

A mother and her baby evicted from housing

The Foundation Abbé-Pierre revealed on Friday that a mother and her one year old baby have been evicted from a miniscule ‘apartment’, 4 m² in Paris. This is equivalent to a square of 2 m by 2 m. The reason: the mother could not pay the rent of € 200 per month, and was notified by SMS. The proprietor then changed the locks on the door and left their belongings on the street. The woman and the baby were helped by a member of their family.
The owner will be punished, says the French government. It is forbidden to expel people between November and March, even if they do not pay their rent. This is called ‘the winter break’ (la trêve hivernale). The goal is to prevent people from having to sleep outside in winter. In addition, the law prohibits an apartment of less than 9 m² (3 m piece of 3 m) to be made available for rent.

Mon Quotidien, jeudi 24 janvier 2013

So, why do I think that that is extraordinary? It struck me because of the humanity of the government policy to give struggling people a break from their struggles during the really cold winter months in France. It’s cold in Toulouse, but it’s damn cold in Paris, and I can’t imagine what sleeping outdoors must be like when I’m cold, despite being wrapped up in my new down winter jacket, gloves, scarf, woolly socks and hat. Paris has more snow that Toulouse too.

It also struck me because of the nastiness of the proprietor of the property; chucking this mum and baby’s belongings onto the street, and notifying her BY TEXT that she was out of her apartment, I mean, out of her cupboard. I’m not very good at visualising space, so I asked my clever right-sided brain husband to show me what it looks like. It’s small. Really small.

A friend of ours, Kate, spent her student years in Dunedin (almost as far down the South Island of New Zealand that you can go). She described getting ready for bed in the wintertime in the big, old, uninsulated, wooden house that she rented with some other girls. Thermals underneath flannelette pyjamas, woollen jumper(s), woolly hat, and gloves, with a couple of hot water bottles, and that was before getting into bed. Then a last trip to the loo because it was impossible to get out of bed in the freezing temperatures at night. Kate said she tried not to move position during the night because her pillow would freeze and would be too cold to put her face on if she moved just a bit. And it took all her willpower to get up in the morning, just to see the lovely patterns of ice on the inside of her bedroom windows. But then, that’s old New Zealand housing for you (getting better nowadays thank goodness).

So, from my point of view it’s 10/10 points for the French government for a humane and meaningful and life-saving policy.

No wait, I'm back!

Having migrated to wordpress.com to post my blogs, I've decided to keep adding the blogs here as well, then I'll be a double-blogger. How cool!

So, keep reading, and I'll keep adding the posts I've got on my new address: www.saracromptonmeade.wordpress.com, to this blogspot address.

Happy reading
SARA x

change of address

Hello to my small but interested band of readers. I have now migrated my blogsite to www.saracromptonmeade.wordpress.com. You can sign up for latest postings there.

Best wishes
SARA

College in France

So, now my big 11 year old boy is in collège in France. For anyone in New Zealand, the equivalent level at school would be the first year of intermediate school, or year 7.

Almost overnight he has gone from a (comparatively) cosseted life at primary school to the rigours and regimes of scheduled classes, tough teachers and plenty of homework. Plenty means not more than 1 1/2 hours each night, but not less than 30 minutes. There’s not just homework though, there’s revision of the day’s work, required for each of their classes. Phew.

He has college every day of the week which normal in New Zealand but a big step up/sideways from four days a week in France at primary school. He springs out of bed at 7am, makes his still slumbering mother a cup of tea, prepares and devours his breakfast, makes his bed, brushes his teeth, tries to plaster his wilful hair into some order, then scoots out the door at 7.50am to catch the school bus at the end of our street.

School starts at 8.30am. Sharp. The entrance doors are monitored. Anyone who is late must have their special correspondence/notification book stamped, and there are consequences for anyone who is regularly late without justification. Once my son’s bus broke down and he was justifiably late, and terribly excited that in week no. 2 of college there had been a Major Incident with the bus. He was late and it wasn’t his fault! Cool.

Each lesson is 55 mins - 1 hour long, with a 15 minute break each morning and afternoon to pause or run to the locker and change some books. No food is eaten during breaks; only in the canteen at lunchtime.

Last week I had a parent-teachers meeting at school. This meant sitting at the kids’ desks while each of the subject teachers gave us a quick run down on work to be covered, general demeanour and aptitude of the class, and his/her requirements (multiple) for ensuring that our children succeeded. The main requirements are that parents ensure that revision and homework is done. It was fascinating seeing and hearing each of the subject teachers. I could understand some of them; most spoke rapid-fire French. I could NOT understand my son’s home class teacher however, with his local Toulousain accent and fascinating ability to mumble into his chin. I swapped notes with my son on each of the teachers when I eventually got home two hours later, and we pretty much agreed on the good ones and curious ones. One in particular is a dragon and she effectively told one of the parents off for asking a question that she considered ridiculous. (!)

Subjects for my son are: French, English, German, history and geography, maths, technology, science, life and the earth (sciences, vie & terre in French), and sport. He’s in a stream of kids who are learning two extra languages, which his primary school teacher recommended for him as he now has English and French notched on his belt. It’s very funny hearing his friends speaking French with a German accent and my son is enjoying learning German. Clearly the German accent sounds the same whether you are English or French.

Lunch is a whole other matter. It is a self-service system. You swipe your card (and the bill is sent to your parents) and then you queue with your tray and cutlery, making your way towards a smorgasbord of hot or cold entrées, main course, desserts (fruit included), plus a drink. You take what you like. There is always a fish option for the kids who don’t eat meat or who are Muslim (lots). You find a table and eat with your friends. They you take your tray to the tidy-up stack and race out the door. If you have time before your next class you might go to the activities club with your friends, or you just hang around in the playground. It is very noisy and very busy, and if you timetable is tight, you might only have 30mins to get all this done and be in your next class.

All the kids have different ‘classifications’ as to whether they have to stay at school all day or whether they are allowed to leave the school grounds if they have a free hour or if a teacher is away. You will see lots of college kids smoking outside the school grounds. Not recommended or encouraged, but pretty normal here. At the end of the day (4.00 or 5.00pm depending on their classification and timetable) kids leave through the monitored exit routes and catch the bus, walk or bike home.

My NZ friend whose daughter was at college in Toulouse tells me that French law states that once someone is 15 or 16 years old they have the right to strike, for their own causes or even in support of the staff. This is a right that is used too. Well, this is France where striking (a manifestation) is expected if you want your voice to be heard.

So college lays the foundation for personal autonomy. My son is rising to the challenge, more than I would have believed possible after his early years of struggling with new experiences/situations. He’s enjoying college life, the requirement of being organised each night ready for the next day, and the variety of subjects on offer. He can link into the school website where his homework is listed for each subject and where his notes (evaluation marks) are listed, along with the class average mark so you can see how well or not your child is doing. It’s a great system. School life is pretty tiring though and he is completely zonked at bedtime which is now much earlier.

But one thing a child at college/lycée/university in France seems to learn NOT to do is to question or challenge the teacher, in a way that would be normal in Scandinavian countries for example, or even in New Zealand, where opinions, thoughts and suggestions are welcomed and encouraged. My Swedish friend finds that very hard.

But so far, so good. It’s a well-oiled machine. Monsieur President, François Hollande, wants to introduce a few changes into the days/hours of school in France. We’ll have to see how that unfolds.

Sex in France, or, being sexy in France

There’s quite a bit of it about. It is normal, good, fun and healthy. I was raised in an Anglo-Saxon culture where sex had quite odd associations. I now live in France and mon Dieu, the attitudes to sex and sexiness here are so markedly different. I am happy being a woman in France and I love being appreciated for my unique 40-mumble feminine beauty. 

Here are my impressions:

1. Women in France (generally speaking) have an effortless sexiness about them. It seems to be about feeling comfortable in their bodies from an early age. Bums, breasts, hips, waists, legs - all are glorious. In fact curvy shapes are celebrated too (think of sexy Nigella Lawson and you’ll get the picture) and model-skinny is not the norm nor is it the goal. NOTE: obesity is not the problem in France that it is in New Zealand, for example. Not that I can see anyway.

2. French men really appreciate a well-presented, attractive woman. It’s okay for a man to smile, nod, voice, indicate his appreciation of a beautiful, well-turned out woman. It’s not sexual violation - it’s open, normal, well-deserved appreciation.

3. Older women make an effort with their appearance. They really do. I’m continually astonished at the number of really attractive older women (60 years plus) who are slim, well coiffured, beautifully made-up, and still with an innate sexiness.

4. Breasts are beautiful, and the French celebrate breasts by featuring them on billboards, advertising and in magazines. There are not something to hide away; they are gorgeous.

5. Sex in films and on TV is more acceptable here and doesn’t come with warnings for our (enfeebled) sensibilities.

6. It’s okay to be topless at the beach. It’s not obligatory, nor is it everyone, everywhere. But when you do see a topless woman you think, yeah! great! There’s a woman who is happy with her body. It probably helps that there is some ozone in the atmosphere over Europe (or is it smog?) and that sunburn isn’t nearly such an issue as it is in New Zealand.

7. Finally, skinny, slight, roundy, tubby, ‘normal’ shapes all add to the rich diversity and variety of beautiful womanity (new word?). And colour is worn. Clothes are bought that enhance a woman’s shape and flatter her curves, and French women really wear their clothes well. It’s not just the styles, but it’s the gracious/graceful/elegant way clothes appear on them. And importantly, a French woman knows how to drape a scarf around her neck. It’s her key attribute I think.

Just a normal day in Paris...