Tales from practice: Vive les avocats!
And did you have a good time?†“No,†I growled. “It was dreadful. Never take children on holiday with you.†It was only my vegetarian partner (who himself had had rather a good holiday) who dared to raise the subject again. Several hours later he emerged from my room vowing never again to ask anyone if they had had enjoyed their break.
And did you have a good time?' 'No,' I growled. 'It was dreadful. Never take children on holiday with you.' It was only my vegetarian partner (who himself had had rather a good holiday) who dared to raise the subject again. Several hours later he emerged from my room vowing never again to ask anyone if they had had enjoyed their break.
It was a long time ago, but I still remember my first French lesson. I was coached by a retired brigadier in the art of conjugating je suis, tu es, il est until the cows (or rather, les vaches) came home. I could not become excited about all those French expressions, and the text book pictures of quaint French towns with their camions, their men on bicyclettes avec les oignons et les pains, and the angled buildings radiating out into angled streets. I developed the view that the French were garlic-eating, Gauloise-smoking, wine-drinking, regulation-flouting no-goods; and that if ever one was to go to France it was purely to pass through to a more worthwhile country.
Then we discovered the Channel Tunnel and found how easy it is to drive to France; and how much the French have improved since I went to school.
Last year we made two successful, enjoyable and relaxing sorties into northern France and this summer we decided to make it the big one. Between us, my wife and I can summon up six supposedly grown-up offspring. Five decided to join us. Add to the pot, a boyfriend and a girlfriend; and a satellite navigation system and you have a recipe for an epic disaster.
I will remember that holiday long after those dull affairs merely involving sun, sea, Spain and sangria. It is said that the chaos and disruption from your children increases according to the square of the numbers involved. The square of seven (my wife and I were marginally better behaved) yields a chaos factor of 49, and that was reckoning without the dulcet tones from the box on the windscreen, which could address you sarcastically in French if required. Sulks and rebelliousness abounded, and our satellite navigator constantly tried to induce us to drive across open fields or approach our destinations by forming several cartographic figures of eight. We vowed that all future holidays would be taken without offspring and without satellite navigation.
But secretly I found it much more enjoyable than I was prepared to say. I have become a lover of France and the French. The country (at least Normandy, which is as far as we ventured) seems to have retained a calm sense of proportion that we have lost in England.
It is all too easy to view a foreign country through rose-tinted spectacles when you are taking your precious annual break; but remember that our spectacles were smeared and blood-spattered. Although many have commented on the joys of France, the things we noticed and particularly liked were:
- An absence of lawyers. There must have been lawyers but they were little in evidence. One of the French words for lawyers is 'avocat', which also means avocado pear. If 'solicitor' was also the name of a fruit what would it be? A lemon? An ugli fruit?
- The roads and motorways. They were smooth, uncrowded and traffic cone-free. The service areas were frequent and inviting. True you had to pay tolls from time to time, but it was a small price to pay for such good roads.
- The lack of plastic carrier bags. You either had to buy them or do without. One supermarket did not stock bags of any description. You had to take your purchases away in cardboard boxes. Marine species, which apparently mistake the bags for jellyfish (and then die horrible deaths), are benefiting from this French 'take it or leave it' attitude. Ireland can manage without plastic carrier bags too, so why not the UK?
- The lack of the 24/7 culture. France closes for lunch for two hours, and almost everything (supermarkets included) shuts down '“ aside from the sidewalk cafés, where the shopkeepers go to share lunch with their friends. Very little is open on Sundays, and I defy you to buy petrol in the evening if you are not French. There are a few automatic fuel stations, but they accept only debit cards issued in France. 'Je regrette', the message is clear, 'Vous Johnny foreigners ne pouvez pas acheter l'essence ici, après dix-huit heures, parce que nous avons better things to do than hang around waiting to serve vous.'
- The language. I hated learning French, but it is so useful to be able to say more than 'please', 'thank you' and 'may I have the bill'. When a visitor arrived at the place where we were staying, and asked for directions to a nearby museum, I was able to tell him clearly how to find it. We conversed for several minutes in my best school boy French until the visitor eventually asked if I spoke any English. It turned out that we were both English. After that I was able to give him even better directions, and correct the fact that I had confused my droite with my gauche.
- But above all, the bread. The village where I grew up had its own bakery in the 60s, but there are now very few of them in England. In Normandy, almost every village or hamlet still has a bakery, enticing you every day with its scent of new-baked bread. And when you have tasted it you never want to go back again to mass-produced English cotton wool variety.
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