France

Life in France

Du piment dans la vie

Posted on by MELewis

Variety may be the spice of life but I am a creature of habit.

While I enjoy many different flavours, I am addicted to one particular spice: freshly ground pepper. Defying all rules of gastronomy, I cannot begin a meal without a few turns of the mill over my plate. Recently I added salt to the grind, a far more unhealthy habit. But how I love those little salt bombs!

I am also cursed with bad luck when it comes to pepper grinders. Over my lifetime I have gone through half a dozen of the things. All start well enough but end in the same way: spewing chunks of pepper rather than producing finely ground flakes. Is it simply because they get so much use? Or is it in the quality of the mechanism?

Now that our last combined S&P mill by Bodum has ‘rendu l’âme’ (given up the ghost) we have procured the king and queen of salt and pepper mills: Peugeot. I was vaguely aware that the French name most famous for automobiles also made mills. But I was surprised to learn that they began by making coffee mills and all kinds of steel implements, from saws to watch springs. The ‘moulin à poivre’ was introduced by Peugeot in 1874, way before they got around to making their first motor vehicle.

Now I see why they chose the lion for their logo: sharp teeth!

Only time will tell if these new beauties will live up to that reputation. For now, they work like wonders on both salt and pepper, with varying choices of grind size to boot.

Speaking of grinds, we are still struggling to figure out the future of our new home project. No news, I suspect, is not good news. Nonetheless, next week will see us taking off for Japan (fingers crossed I get a negative PCR test) and by the time we return in December I hope there will be more clarity as to when (or if) we will be able to plan our move next year. In the meantime, I will be trying very hard not to think about it.

How do you spice up your life?

Folle-Dingue

Posted on by MELewis

There have always been crazies in my life and, as much as I dislike the stereotype, they are almost always female.

When we moved to our first apartment in Lyon years ago there was a folle-dingue on the top floor who took an instant dislike to us. Was it the dogs (our first two Frenchies, the dynamic duo Edouard and Dorothée) or the fact that I was foreign? We never knew and it didn’t matter. She sprewed insults whenever she got the chance, and once when we left our groceries by the elevator for a few minutes, we found the top of a baguette ripped off. Other than that, she was harmless enough. But her gratuitous meanness felt like a personal assault.

Our next-door neighbour back in Chens-sur-Léman was not quite up there in the crazy category but she was close enough to qualify. She walked around her yard starkers and frequently screamed like a banshee at her husband and son, along with anyone else who got in her way. (I say that in all humility, being known to be no shrinking violet myself.) I avoided her as much as possible.

It seems we have a new folle-dingue in our lives. She lives in the house just above our future (hopefully) residence and is at least part of the reason construction is still stalled. She is the one behind all the complaints to the town, backed by another neighbour who is known to object to everything. The crazy-eyes in question has a swimming pool and is trying to pass off cracks in the foundation to the work on our building (she should check her own cracks if you ask me). Apparently they had an expert come to her place to assess the situation, and he confirmed that the cracks in her pool predated any work on our property; however, she is persisting in her ‘démarche’ to try and get more money from the developers (not the first time she’s done this).

Now the architects have submitted new plans (lowering the roof angle to correct the 72 cm error in the building height) and have a meeting with the authorities at the end of the month. After that we should know whether the project will be stalled for further inquiries (which could go on for some time) or whether it will be able to start up again and hopefully meet the new date for next May. If not, we have the option to bail and get our money back, which we’re not keen to do given how much time we’ve invested so far and how much we want to live there. But if means years of delay, we will cut our losses. I have no doubt that we will find something else.

Preferably without a folle-dingue as a neighbour.

Do you have any nutbars in your life?

L’indifférence

Posted on by MELewis

René Robert, the Swiss photographer who died of indifference on a Paris street

The other night a random ‘fait divers’ (news item) caught my eye. An 84-year-old man had collapsed on a busy street in Paris and died before anyone noticed. Of hypothermia. Nine hours later.

The fact that this man happened to be a well-known Swiss photographer doesn’t matter. He was Monsieur Tout-le-monde, Mr. Nobody, out for a walk on a winter’s evening. What matters is the fact that nobody stopped to help him, that for hours people walked by his body stretched out on the pavement. It’s an area with a lot of people, many of them homeless. The irony of the story is that it was one of these humble souls, a homeless man, who eventually called for help at 6:30 the following morning. But when the emergency vehicle came it was too late.

René Robert was born in Fribourg, one of the French-speaking cantons in Switzerland. He was a photographer known for his pictures of flamenco dancers, a passion that had come to him early in life. He lived in Paris and had long frequented its bars and venues where he could quietly capture the moments of raw emotion that define the art of flamenco.

René Robert achieved a certain celebrity for his work. He published several books and his photographs were shown in galleries around Europe. But he was said to have remained humble, quiet, someone who appreciated working in the shadows rather than being in the spotlight himself.

The reason Robert’s death made headlines was because of its reprehensible moral nature. The French are sensitive to ‘l’indifférence’; it is not a characteristic that defines us* as a people. Indifference is among the most-detested modern ‘maux’ (evils, wrongs) of society, that we can pass by human suffering on the street and look the other way.

It came to my attention because a journalist friend of the photographer, Michel Mompontet, talked about it. Did he trip? Was it a dizzy spell? he asked. And most importantly: Who among us would have stopped? Is it conceivable that I myself would have walked by?

The fact that this man was Swiss is also poignant to me. I have a soft spot for strangers in strange lands. And it seems the world we live in has become a strange place indeed.

RIP Monsieur Robert.

(*I have officially been away from my adopted country long enough now to identify as French.)

Je t’aime moi non plus

Posted on by MELewis

Jane and Serge, who loved to hate each other

I don’t often take an instant dislike to people. But I must say that Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin filled me with loathing when I first came to France and discovered the eponymous song of this post title. It made me cringe, not out of prudishness, but because it was embarrassing and tacky. I won’t share it here, merci, but if you don’t know the reference you can google it. The song is said to have inspired Donna Summer and a whole wave of steamy eighties pop.

I’ve posted before about how the French ‘sense’ each other often by le nez and will sometimes decide, even without speaking a word, that mutual mépris (indifference or disdain) is the only emotion possible. Then they will literally never speak or even look directly at one another.

I must say this makes me uncomfortable. Even people I feel little love for are deserving of at least superficial politesse, for their sake as well as mine. I try to put my best face forward and be kind, as long as I get similar in return. Not everyone has to be your best friend but with a bit of effort you can get along with most people. Besides, nobody wins in hate wars. All that negative energy flies back in your face.

Which is not to say there aren’t people I dislike. Whether by instinct or in reaction to their behaviour (often a combination of both). And sometimes in response to the sense that they simply don’t like me. Let’s face it – life is like that. There are people we just clash with.

Currently there are one or two clients I’m not fond of. Either because they treat me like the hired help (or at least a highly expendable resource to be called upon only when urgent need arises) or because I sense a certain entitlement in their behaviour. Those who think the world revolves around their problems get minimal support from me. Even when they are paying the bills.

Some years ago when I worked in the corporate world, I learned the hard way the truth in the saying, ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer’. A person on our team was proving not to be an ally and, frankly, I didn’t particularly like her. But when it came down to it, we had to work together and so I pushed up my positive energy in order to play nice. Wonder of wonders, we did become friends of sorts. Not in any permanent or deep way; we were too different for that. But I learned a lot about the value in making a connection with someone who is your poles-apart opposite. And having her onside made all the difference in the project we worked on. We still keep in touch.

As for ‘Je t’aime moi non plus’ the words of the song took on their own meaning for me. As I disliked Gainsbourg and the song, I took them to mean ‘I don’t like you either’. But what they actually mean is ‘I love you me neither’. Which makes little sense to poor literal old me but to the French is a subtle statement about the impossibility of love. All against a backdrop of erotic innuendo. Go figure.

How do you handle people you don’t like? Avoid, ignore, befriend?

Un franchouillard

Posted on by MELewis

He said it himself: Je suis un franchouillard. A derogatory term for an ‘average’ French person, that midde-class ‘Français moyen’ with all its preconceptions. Yet there was nothing average about Bernard Tapie. His death this week after a long battle with cancer was perhaps the only average thing he ever did.

Yet even that was exceptional. Tapie’s friends, from the world of entertainment and sport, politicians and media personalities, united in saying that he was a fighter, one who never gave up. Until the end he was climbing stairs to stay fit. Even when cancer turned his voice into a whisper, he was outspoken about his battle with the disease. And when he and his wife were victims of a brutal break-in to their Paris home earlier this year, he hid nothing of their shock and the injuries suffered in the attack.

It was shocking to see this once-powerful man reduced to an obviously feeble state. He showed humility but no shame, and I admired him for that.

The Paris-born Tapie was loved and hated by the French in equal measures. The son of a working-class family, in the 1980s he became the symbol of the successful businessman, le self-made man. He made his fortune buying up failing companies, the most famous of which was Adidas, and turning them around. He also owned sports teams like L’Olympique de Marseille (OM). (As an aside, I know nothing of football beyond how important it to those that follow it. Living in provincial France, you were either a fan of L’OM or L’OL, Lyon’s team.)

But Bernard Tapie was much more than a businessman. He was also a politician. Some have called him a French Trump, although I think he had more integrity. But here’s the twist: he ran as a socialist. Possibly nowhere but in France would a figurehead of the free market stand for a party on the left. Yet this is what happened when Tapie became a protegé of President François Mitterand and a deputy in the Bouches-du-Rhône department. A firm opponent of the far-right Front National, Tapie went head to head with party leader Jean Marie Le Pen on a televised debate over immigration.

This was in 1989, after we were married but still living in Canada, so I followed from afar. But I came to understand that it was groundbreaking. Why? At the time, the main political parties did not believe that the FN should be given a voice on national television. But Tapie argued that someone had to stand up to Le Pen and call him out on his lies publicly.

He later became a government minister but his political career ended early when his legal woes began, mostly over the fraud around the sale of Adidas by Credit Lyonnais. The complexities are beyond this post but the case dragged over for 26 years and court appeals were still ongoing at the time of his death.

What I find most intriguing about Tapie was his resilience. After going bankrupt, being ineligible for politics and banned from football, he returned to his first love: the arts.

Bernard Tapie began his career as a singer, but despite his obvious talent (and changing his name to ‘Tapy’) it was not to be. Yet he never gave up on his artistic ambitions completely. He continued to make singing and acting appearances throughout his career, also hosting TV programs. He later took to the stage, performing notably in the French version of the play, ‘One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest’.

The news of Bernard Tapie’s death this week at the age of 78 came as a shock. Somehow it seemed he would survive his battle against cancer, like so many others he had won. He was larger-than-life. An upstart, a renegade, one who reached great heights and lost it all. He was completely original; you couldn’t make him up. You could love him or hate him but you couldn’t be indifferent. And that, perhaps, is what made him quintessentially French.

Salut Bernard.