French Windows

French people have a will of iron with regard to refusing a little taste of something between meals. Only Brits buy an ice-cream and eat it while walking down the road. A native would sit on one of the seats provided and eat the dessert with a spoon.

More people smoke in France than in the UK, a staggering 20% more. Throat, mouth and lung cancer kill 78,000 people a year. A possible factor is that French people don’t like to be told what to do. When the government decided to put warnings on cigarette packets, a fashion house brought out jolly covers to slip over the cartons. Smoking ruins the status of France as a healthy country. Cigarettes are only available in a Bar Tabac and not in a supermarket or corner shop. One of my students gave up smoking because she hated having to go into one to buy her weekly supplies.

It is almost obligatory to go skiing in February in France. The school holidays are staggered so that your two weeks on the slopes are not over-crowded. The country is divided into three regions.  Zone A takes their half-term holiday a week earlier than the second region. Zone C only starts its half-term when the first region is on their way home from the slopes. It is all carefully designed to keep ski chalet owners and mountainside restaurants in business. 

Large supermarkets sometimes employ girls on skates to whizz round the stores fetching and exchanging items for the cashiers. What a fun job to have! I wonder if there are any age restrictions on employees?  If you love roller skating, then it must be a super way to keep fit. But, would UK Health and Safety allow it?

Girls, be careful if a Frenchman tells you that he is single. I had a group of businessmen, only one of whom introduced himself as ‘married’. All the others said that they were ‘célebataire’. As I got to know them better, I found that they lived with a partner and had children. They were actually telling the truth because they were not married to the woman they shared a house with, but they are certainly not unattached, and were far from ‘celibate’! One guy asked me what he should put on his C.V. As he was not married, he wanted to put ‘Single’. I replied, ‘You have a wife, children and grandchildren – you cannot put ‘Single’. I persuaded him that ‘Married’ was 99% closer to the truth.

Since 1905 France has been a secular country. There is no subject recalled Religious Education in schools, so people have very little idea of Bible stories. The study of religions is done during History lessons in collège.One would think that the state would have disowned churches and synagogues. However, when France became secular it took over the most interesting existing religious buildings and still plays a role in their upkeep. For example, our local departmental magazine regularly prints reports like the following. ‘Arcis-le-Ponsart is a charming little village not far from Fismes that possesses a fine 12^th century church. The village carefully maintains the building and does regular renovation work on it to preserve this heritage. The latest project was to replace the roof and the corniche that decorates the southern face of the bell tower.’ They received a grant from the department of 22,096€ for the project. You will never have to pay to enter a cathedral in France as is now necessary in the UK.

I am not talking about mopeds but children’s two wheeled push along toys. They are called ‘trottinettes’ in France. They are a method of personal transport that is not the sole domain of 6-year olds. Parents might use one to make the return journey from school more rapid. Businessmen use them on the streets of Paris. Teenagers do stunts on them at skateboard parks. One of my adult business students arrived at a lesson with bruises and scratches. He had been riding on one and hit an uneven bit of paving. I’ll keep to my bike! Now of course there are electric versons of these being used on pavements!

When we arrived in France it was the beginning of the school holidays, but every supermarket was advertising ‘fournitures scolaires’ – school supplies. We saw mothers with supermarket trolleys full of crayons, exercise books, pencil cases and new backpacks. We wondered if we needed to buy all these supplies for our daughter. What was wrong with her old pencil case and crayons? Apparently, it is a custom for French parents to buy everything new for each academic year and some schools ask parents to supply exercise books.  We spent an anxious summer wondering if we should do the same until we received ‘La Liste’ from her school, which told us what we needed to supply. Fortunately, there was hardly anything on it so off she went with her old pencil case.

Many school textbooks are lent to pupils by external associations, and the books must be returned in a good state. Special book covers are sold so that books won’t get damaged. Protège-cahiers = book covers.

Since the beginning of their school lives in the UK, our children had worn school uniforms. Every year my husband would take our daughter shoe shopping to get ‘sensible school shoes’. He did the same before she started school in France. However, French schoolchildren do not wear uniforms, nor sensible shoes. After 3 days of school our daughter said that she needed more clothes. “Why?” we asked. “Everyone wears different clothes every day,” she replied. Selecting a new fashionable outfit each day, had never been a problem in the UK. The ‘sensible shoes’ were never worn, but they fitted me, so they did not go to waste.

SCHOOL EXERCISE BOOKS. Looking for lined paper is a problem as nearly all notepads have squared paper, so one naturally assumes that they are for use in Maths but that is not the case. The tall squares are divided by 3 horizontal lines. At school children learn how to form their letters using the lines as guides to the height and width of each pencil stroke. Adults continue to use squared paper to write on.