When reading about Reims during the occupation at the start of the 1WW, I came across this account in the archives. “The provision of food for the civil population was of constant concern to the municipal administration, who created a committee to buy large quantities of basic necessities: meat, potatoes, sugar and chocolate.” Chocolate! – as a basic necessity! That surprised me! Even if chocolate has been part of the French diet for nearly 400 years after being introduced to the French court by Anne of Spain, when she married Louis XIII, I wouldn’t have thought it was a staple of the common man! Were ‘pains au chocolat’,drinking chocolate, chocolate based breakfast cereals and spreads already part of the ‘petit dejeuner quotidienne’? One site tells me that at the time of the French revolution breakfast was a cup of coffee or tea and at most some chocolate drowned in milk.

Each day of the week in a French diary has a saint’s name written under it. These are the 365 classic names that are safe to choose for your child. From Napoleon’s time until 1993 parents had to choose from an official list.  Jean-Marie and Marie-Anne comeout as the most popular. I have 15 people named Marie, and variations of it, on my address list. The cruellest usage of the name must be the parents of twin girls who named one, Marie-Anne, and the other Anne-Marie. Imagine being the considered as the mirror image of your twin all your life. But, woe betide you if you try to think of something a little out of the ordinary. When you register your new-born, the registrar has the right to veto the name you have chosen. A judge nearly refused to let a family call their daughter Megane because their surname was Renaud. It sounded too much like a brand of car. Another story relates that the parents of twin boys were refused the choice of Orly and Oissy because they are the names of the two Paris airports. Just recently a family who wanted to call their daughter Nutella were taken to the Family Court and fortunately lost the case! An incentive for choosing one of the classic 365 is that your child gets 2 birthdays! Not only do they celebrate their actual day of birth, but they might also get flowers or a small gift on their saint’s day.

In the UK, we feel it is our right to have 2 children in order to replace ourselves on the planet, but to have 3 is greedy and selfish as it will cause a population explosion. In France, having three children is far more thee norm. Firstly, your tax bill is divided by the number of children you have. Some people have managed to live quite comfortably off the child benefit from a large family, plus never paying any tax. Secondly, historically France has felt threatened by Germany and has tried to make sure that they are equal in terms of population. If another war happened France would like to win! Thirdly, as soon as you have three children, you are officially a‘famille nombreuse’.Then you can apply for an official card and get reductions wherever you go. SNCF (French railways) give discounts of up to 75%, lesser savings can be had in supermarkets, clothes shops and restaurants. If you raise enough children, you can claim a silver medal (Médaille d’argent)for 6 or 7 but a gold medal (Médaille d’or) awaits those who produce 8 children or more! I recently learnt that upon retirement, people with three or more children get 10% extra in their pension. Little girls seem to be more girly in France, they giggle and squeal and wear skirts and dresses and ribbons in their hair for much longer than British girls.

I do not think there are many people outside of France who know that there are two names for chicken depending on how it is cooked. ‘Poule,’ sure enough, is listed in my dictionary as ‘(CULIN) (boiling) fowl’. Whereas ‘poulet’ is defined as ‘chicken’. I stumbled on this when I bought an organic frozen chicken. I cooked it in the same way as I had always done, in a casserole surrounded by vegetables and 2cms of water to give it plenty of moisture and flavour, while at the same time a bit of roast chicken colour. The bird looked a bit old and scrawny when it went into the oven and did not improve one bit on cooking! It was shrivelled and dry and the meat refused to come off the bone, so I took it back to the shop. ‘Mais, madame, vous-avez achetez un poule et pas un poulet!’ They tried to explain that I had bought a ‘poule’ and not a ’poulet’. The first should be boiled for several hours to make soup and the other could be successfully roasted. ‘Poule’ is the name for a female and also gives its name to expressions of endearment such as ‘ma poule’ or ‘ma petite poule’. Perhaps the poor poule that I had bought was was an old bird at the end of her egg laying life. ‘Poulet’ refers to the young of the species before it is obvious as to whether it is a male or a female, and which is killed upon reaching sexual maturity. When I asked one of my French friends the difference she fetched her recipe book to show me, ‘Poule au pot’ and‘Poulet rôti’ – chicken in the pot and roast chicken but with slightly different names that I had never noticed or realised had existed.

One of the famous quotes from General De Gaulle is, ‘How can you govern a country which has two hundred and forty-six varieties of cheese?’ Britain produces over 700 different varieties! Fancy that! The UK beats France on cheese! I find it irritating that packaged French cheese almost always comes with a piece of rind. When you see pictures of cheese being produced and the rounds being wheeled across factory floors, I wonder if the skin is suitable to eat. Why do I have to pay for a piece of  cheese that I need throw away? Some cheeses are coated in ash. I want to know exactly what was burnt before I eat that part! I have learnt many interesting things from my students such as, in high society, the cheese board goes round the table only once. You should take what you want at that moment, because it is bad manners to ask for its return. French etiquette dictates that if the cheese shape is a triangle, you should cut it so that what remains is still triangular. The crust and the interior have different tastes, so it is impolite to cut across the point and take all the creamy part. Now you know!

In the UK, we have more than 6,000 charity shops. Often High Streets are overflowing with them. Oxfam alone has 750 outlets. Charity shops help recycle our old possessions while at the same time feeding the poor in many countries or paying for research into deadly diseases. The only one that has successfully established itself in France is Emmaus, but you won’t find any charity shops in the town centre. Empty shops in the UK can be rented cheaply as a landlord would rather have a low rental than have an empty shop that could be vandalised. VAT is not paid on donated goods. Emmaus shops in France are found in out-of-town locations on industrial estates where rents are lower. Clothing bins are to be found in supermarket carparks. The better quality clothes are resold, others are sent to poorer countries, but a lot of clothes, depending on the charity, are shredded to make loft insulation.

Our house overlooks a cemetery. We have been told that this could be a problem when we wish to sell it, as French people can be very superstitious. This could explain why cemeteries are well hidden from view, often behind high walls. Let me give you an example. When I was researching the life of my great-uncle George Tinsley Loveley, I was looking for the civil cemetery in a village on the Somme where he was killed. Every village has a cemetery. I looked on the village website, I looked on maps of the village, I typed it into search engines – nothing. In the end, I went onto Google Earth® and ‘walked’ around the entire district.  One country road had a hedge on one side with a tiny layby at one end. I showed it to my husband and said, ‘I think the cemetery is behind that hedge.’ When we visited the area, we drove along that lane and sure enough, there was the cemetery I had been looking for, well hidden behind some greenery.  French people visit their family graves much more than the average Brit – they have to. If graves slip into disrepair, they are reclaimed by the municipality. Any bones are moved to a communal ossuary and the grave space is used for a new burial. Many modern grave concessions only last for 30 years, so there is no ‘rest in peace’ for the average person. However, if you die during a war for your country, the grave is marked with a little tricolour metal disc which means that no one will ever dig up your bones! Graves are usually visited at least once a year to be cleaned and polished. People often make the journey during the October half-term and leave flowers for All Saints’ Day on 1^stNovember. Whole families arrive with buckets and brooms to do the annual clean up. However, there are some people who visit the family grave every day and one friend goes both in the morning and again in the afternoon!

See also an article i had published in the Telegraph Expat section.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/expat/expatlife/6509309/A-French-cemetery-at-Toussaint-chrysanthemums-and-yearning.html

Children read Asterix and Tin-Tin, but French adults are seriously into comic books too. The market is enormous. Over 800 are published each year and more than 21 million are sold annually. ‘Les Bandes Dessinées’,which translates as ‘drawn strips’, is used to describe them rather than comic books.They are read by professionals and the middle-classes. In fact 40% of French people regularly buy them. A friend of ours has written one about the history of champagne. I think a British person would say that the last comic they read was when they were in junior school.

Black cats are supposed to be lucky in the UK, but in France a black cat is unlucky.

I don’t know anyone who has a wall to wall carpet in their house in France. People might have a big rug in the sitting room, but that is all. We had to fit a new bathroom as soon as we moved into our French house as the previous owners were in the process of changing it when they needed to move. To cover the old flooring quickly and cheaply, we bought carpet tiles. This has drawn remarks from our French friends. It is just not done in France; but we prefer warmth under our feet when we have to get up during the night! You know what I mean?