les Davey de France

A chap on the tram was explaining loudly, on his mobile phone, that he would be late because the tram was stopping at Terres Neuves instead of taking him further. "Et après ? Il faut que je marche à pied !" (And afterwards? I'll have to walk on foot!) In French we hardly ever walk without explaining how we propose to walk, even though it is invariably on foot.   It set me thinking about the other silly expressions that we use. "Would the congregation please be upstanding". (well, would it???) but never "would the congregation please be downsitting"... We do something similar in Welsh.  Wnewch chi sefyll ar eich traed . Will you stand on your feet. As if in some circumstances we might say, Will you stand on your heads...

 The Welsh for ‘resurrection’ is atgyfodiad. To say ‘he was resurrected’ you’d say ‘atgyfodwyd ef’ and the Apostles’ Creed claims belief in the resurrection of the body, ‘atgyfodiad y corff’. I just wanted to reassure you that these words do exist in Welsh. I’m praying that Archbishop Justin Welby will tell the whole wide watching world that Jesus has conquered death by His resurrection and that He promises bodily resurrection to eternal life to all who trust in Him, however great or insignificant.  This is the faith of the church. (But the music was awesome) 

 So over the summer while we were in the UK we were able to think a little about our decision to stay here for retirement. It’s a hard-headed decision, based on where we can most easily afford to live, where we already have a life to live and where we might conceivably be most useful in the future. But of course, that means that we are not retiring to the United Kingdom, and we are not retiring to Wales. Had we returned to Wales I envisaged getting my Welsh back up to a reasonable level. Years ago I read contemporary novels with little difficulty. Now I struggle.. a lot..As for conversation, I don’t know any Welsh-speakers here in Bordeaux. But then I haven’t looked for them. So I can tackle, and am tackling my reading by getting the old familiar books off the shelf and getting books from Amazon in kindle format. I’ll also make a few trawls for Welsh-speakers in Bordeaux and see if they come up with anyone. I continue to work on my French, of course, and hit situations still where ...

 Some time into the adventure that is the learning of the French language, I became aware of an immense feeling of frustration. Despite the fact that I could hold conversations with lots of different people about lots of different subjects and in various registers : informal, polite, etc, there were things that came naturally to me in English but over which I would labour in French. For example, how does one say the commonplace "If I'd known you were coming I'd have baked a cake". I can render this into French, but it just all sounds wrong: Si j'avais su que tu venait j'aurais préparé un gateau .  Why does it sound so wrong? Because nobody talks like that, that's why. The other day someone in the choir complimented me on my French. "Mais tu parles drîolement bien français, le syntaxe et tout" . I replied, "Eh bien, les gens croivent que c'est pas possible quand on est âgé" She laughed, "Ça tu as fait exprès" She was righ...

 As some wag remarked, at least with Macron you learn some new words. Last election we learnt poudre de perlimpinpin which means snake oil. This time we learnt ripoliner , which means to paper over the cracks, and carabistouille , which means blatant, bare-faced lies.

 From supermarkets to restaurants via the factories, shortages are getting worse in the United Kingdom. It's a phenomenon due to the delivery problems generated by Brexit and the pandemic. Industrials leaders are urging the government to act, particularly in the light of the coming Christmas festivities. The Nando's restaurant chain closed some fifty restaurants last week because of a lack of chicken. In industry car manufacturers have had to pause production because of a shortage of electronic components. In construction certain medium sized businesses find themselves short of materials and of manpower. The CBI states that stocks held by distributors are at their lowest level for forty years. Manpower and logistic problems are threatening the UK's economic recovery.

I have had to revise the rules on numbers following a little controversy between two French friends over whether it is correct to say on page twenty-one as à la page vingt-et-une, or à la page vingt-et-un.  The thing is, you can't necessarily trust your friends, even those who are really clever and educated and adamant and stuff, because the rules are a bit ... opaque. Still, you can always trust your favourite grammar checker website, Le bon patron.

 I'm coming round to it. I used to hate the new verb, to gift something to someone, or to gift someone something. After all, we used to have a perfectly good verb, to give. But it is falling into disuse. "The lieutenant gave the Queen a bouquet of roses" has become "the lieutenant gifted the Queen a bouquet of roses". "The Queen was given a bouquet of roses" has become "the Queen was gifted a bouquet of roses". Why not? Who says you can't turn nouns into verbs? And given the general irregularity of the English language, why not replace one old verb with a new one derived from its related noun ? Anyway it is better that blessing people with things, which for someone from an Anglican background is fraught with misunderstandings, as when a friend once told me someone had blessed him with a puppy.  I was genuinely baffled. Water, OK. Hand signals. OK. Touches on the top of the head. OK. But a puppy ? We could even make whole new useful verbs ...

 Nightmare. One example. Casserole. Here's the French definition : 1. Ustensile de cuisine de forme cylindrique, à manche ; son contenu. 2. FAMILIER Mauvais piano. It means a saucepan with a handle. You can get a batterie de casseroles , but let's not get too ambitious. I grew up in South Wales in an English-speaking household. From time to time my mother would cook a casserole, which was a kind of stew, but cooked slowly in the oven typically in a "Pyrex" oven-proof glass dish often referred to as a Pyrex Casserole.You could make chicken casserole or beef casserole and you'd know what you'd get. You could buy a set of Pyrex casseroles for a wedding present so people would start their married life with a matching set in different sizes. American friends understand something completely different by the word casserole. They make "green bean casserole" and I don't have any idea what that means at all. Now that's just one word, but in our vocabul...

One of the downsides of our flat is that quite a lot of the fixtures and fittings are not of the best quality. The windows are fine, thankfully, but I'll be surprised if the sink unit lasts 10 years. It's the cheapest tat you find in the least prestigious diy shops, and was installed with the corresponding level of care. So our Heath Robinson system of outpipes under the sink is leaking a little. I took off the trap and cleaned it out and put it back and screwed it as tight as possible, but the leak isn't coming from the trap. It's coming from some of the other joints. One good way of making these joints good is to use a little PTFE tape. It actually helps you screw the fittings together, but it also fills the threads and stops leaks. It's great. But the hardware stores were closed during confinement. Then they opened the out of town ones. Ha! They're no good to townies like us! But now the ones in town are open. I went in to one of my favourites. They made ...

elféksa She only does that = That's all she does. (Elle ne fait que ça)

Secrétaire. serck-rett-air, not sec-rett-air ...repeat until you can no longer say it wrong...

On Monday afternoon we took the tram to the nearest UGC cinema in Talence to see Darkest Hour in VOSTF. There were four people in the room. Well, it was Monday afternoon. Of course, watching the film in Bordeaux probably increases the visceral blow of the film. How do you defend against panzers and blitzkrieg? How do you negotiate with totalitarianism? How do you willingly wake up from a nightmare? I had a new appreciation for the pace of events. In just two weeks everything was unleashed. I wondered at Chamberlain. Was he really such an evil old buzzard, controlling the voices and reactions of his party with just the flick of his handkerchief? Could this be a true portrait? At the same tie I have known people like that and, to my lifelong shame, I have not always explained the danger of their habits. I wondered at Churchill's energy. He was born in 1874, so at the outbreak of war he was already 65. No wonder he needed his naps! And his drink! It would be good t...

will there be language courses so we can understand whatever strange tongue you are speaking now? " I didn’t hear any edition of the Today programme this week, due to deciding recently that it harshed what little zen I possess too early in the morning."

Inscrutable. No, like, I mean it's REALLY HARD!!! You stare at computer screens and barely understand one word in 10. Announcements in trains only make any sense at all because of the context and the place names. Menus are not really a problem because most things we encountered were either a variant on bangers and mash or escalope of pork or veal (Schnitzel is an escalope in breadcrumbs). Pronunciation is phonetic and regular but it's still utterly baffling. And hard to get your mouth round. But I did make two minor victories. One evening I ordered two small glasses of red wine, and later explained that I wanted Montepulciano. Zwei Achtel von Rotwein. Montepulciano. The following day I reflected, planned, rehearsed and ordered two small glasses of Montepulciano with a bit more finesse. Guten Abend. Zwei Achtel von Montepulciano bitte. Danke schön. So glad to get back to the Francophonia!

President Macron came to power saying that he wanted to restore the prestige of the presidential office after the last two rather unprestigious presidents, little president Sarkozy with his potty-mouth and his actress-singer consort and again little president Hollande with his nocturnal liaisons by scooter. A jupiterian president, with dignity and class befitting his power. His elegant wife won Trump's approval for her physical condition ("just beautiful") and there's no doubt that she is a great support to him. But he does have a rather earthy turn of phrase sometimes. Instead of the expression he used, shown in the tweet from the Sud-Ouest, he could have said "semer la pagaille" or any one of a number of less ... pungent things. And lest we think it is a problem of vocabulary, let us remember that President Macron is married to a French teacher. We can safely conclude that if anyone has ever come close to mastering the language of Molière - vain ...

at the bookshop: Alors, vous êtes Québécois, monsieur? Non , quoth I, smiling. Non, il est Anglais , said the first guy's friend. Ah non! je suis Gallois.

The lady opposite me in bus 4: Il fait pas froid... It was 40°C.

Pat had her TCF ANF (Test de Connaissance de Français - Acquisition de Nationalité Française) at the Alliance Française yesterday. We decided to make it a little special by going into town for lunch. It would have to be a hurried lunch because she had to be there for 13:15. We messed up our plan by leaving the house too late and just missing a number 4 bus, so we arrived in town with just an hour to eat and get to the exam centre. OK. Subway it is. Two mega sandwiches eaten in the street later I waved her goodbye and went off to explore Bordeaux. Pat stared at cartoons and strained to hear recordings before ticking random boxes. Meanwhile I scoured two stores in Bordeaux looking for a pale yellow top for her before finally giving in and having an ice cream. After her "chat with a friend about preparing for a job interview" we met up and looked at the yellow tops I'd found. She bought a pale blue one as well as a surprise birthday present for me. We then went to on...

the other Saturday a little group of us headed for the nearest tram stop. We got talking. As often happens the subject got on to how long I've been in France, whether I came directly to Bordeaux and stuff. It comes up because I have an accent (American? Canadian? Belgian? Martian?) but I do pronounce things like what we do in Bordeaux. One woman said, "Ah yes, I am from north of the Loire and it wasn't till I came here that I had any idea that in and un could conceivably be pronounced differently." So for her there were just three nasal vowels, and in un grand pain rond, un and ain sound exactly the same. As do un and in in un bon vin blanc . I'd read about this in the unique and unparalleled Harriette Walters books. And all of a sudden the penny dropped on something that I'd not thought about. A friend who is very cultured, well-read and a professional story-teller did some workshops on the use of the voice. We went along to some. She insisted ...