French Windows

An artist friend says she loves the bay windows on British houses, that you just don’t see in France. Isn’t it interesting what people notice!

Bank accounts are not free. An account costs about 120€ a year. If you want to change currency, the service is independent and not found in your local branch.

When our daughter decided to study in the UK, she needed to close her French bank account.

She walked the 500 metres to the branch where our accounts are held and told them what she wanted to do. ’Pas de problème Mademoiselle”.

The next month a ‘relevé de compte’ arrived in the post for her because there were quelques centimes in her account from the interest on a savings account. I walked down the road and asked if the few cents could be transferred to our account. ‘No, that is not possible without a letter from your daughter to authorise the transaction.’

Said daughter wrote an email giving her consent for her parents to benefit from the small gift. I returned to the bank with a copy of the mail. “Pas de problème, Madame”.

However, to our surprise, another statement came in the post the following month.

This time, a little irritated, we descended again to ask why the money had not been transferred. The woman behind the computer was always the same one. ‘I will need a RIB’ was her response this time. A RIB is a Relevé d’identité Bancaire.  These little slips of paper are generously provided at the back of a cheque book so that anyone who needs your bank details has all the information they need. ‘Why do you need one?’ I asked. ‘So that I know which bank account to send the money to’, she replied.

‘But we are with your bank, our accounts are here, can’t you look on your computer for the information?’ I was getting even more annoyed. ‘Oh, if your account is here, there is no problem’.

Next month another relevé de compte’came in the post. This time I was not so patient.

‘Excusé moi, madame, pourquoi vous ne pouvez pas, transférer les centimes d’un compte à l’autre ? C’est n’est pas difficile !’ ‘

‘I can’t. You need to make an appointment with the manager’.

‘You only have to click on a few buttons and this could be done!!’

‘Non, je ne peux pas, vous devrez avoir un rendez-vous avec mon responsable.’

And she gave me a telephone number to ring to make an appointment. I was fuming. As I left the building I expressed my exasperation like a small child would do, stamping my feet and waving my hands dramatically in the air, much to the bewilderment of a client arriving at the door.

That afternoon, I picked up the phone to make the necessary appointment. The manager answered. ‘There is no need to make an appointment, Madame Brodier, I have your dossier open in front of me, and I am transferring the money as we speak. ‘Merci, madame. Merci, madame.  Merci, Madame.’ I think that if she had been in front of me, I would have kissed her.

This is the service you tend to get in a bank, even if banking is not free and they charge you 9.50€ a month for being unhelpful, slow, and extremely inefficient.

I have used this example during lessons with business students. I make it into a role play. One student is trying to close their bank account and another student plays the role of the unhelpful employee. It is usually very funny, as the excuses the ‘unhelpful’ person invents become more and more preposterous. I ask if they have experienced service like it and they nearly always say, yes. When I ask, ‘But, why?’ They reply that banks don’t like to lose customers and so they make it as difficult as possible for the customer to close their account. Also, the employment laws make it very difficult to sack anyone, so even if the employee is next to useless, she knows that she is safe in her job.

I was telling this story to a friend quite recently. He had recently sold a piece of land, but when he checked his account, the sum in the bank was less than it should have been. When he enquired about it, he was told that the bank had taken part of it for their fees! He was not at all happy and was ready to make a fuss. The clerk, relented by saying that as he was a good customer they would give him a goodwill gesture and gave him his own money back!

Moral of the story. Persevere. It’s not your French, nor your level of understanding that is the problem.

The aristocrats of France used to make up only 1% of the population, but owned 1/5^thof the land. They paid no taxes, but taxed the peasants around them for using salt, using the Lord’s ovens to bake their bread, and his mill for grinding corn. During the revolution many of the privileged were brutally killed. So, does France have many aristocrats today? The surprising answer is ‘yes’, because more were created after the revolution by the Pope, Napoleon and the the kings that followed him. It is estimated that there are 50-100,000 nobles today in France almost the same number as before ‘les miserables’ took back control. The UK has 1,200 aristocrats with 36,000 family members. But ours have always been kind and benevolent – I’ve just finished watching Downton Abbey!

The first time we were invited to someone’s house for an ‘apéro’, as it is often called, we knew that there were certain rules to observe. We asked a Dutch friend, whose husband is French, to help us out. What time should we arrive? Should we take anything and when should we leave? She didn’t know either, so she promised to check with her husband. There are three possibilities with this type of invitation. Firstly, the apéritifs of alcohol and nibbles will precede a meal to which you are also invited. Another possibility is the classic ‘apéro’ invitation. Once, we were invited to pre-dinner drinks to meet the dinner guests. When our host’s husband went into the kitchen and started cooking, we knew this was the signal for us to leave. Our hosts and their friends ate together as soon as we had gone. The third permutation is often called ‘apéritif dinatoire’.Drinks are served with nibbles that are more substantial than peanuts and crisps. There might be tiny individually wrapped cheese cubes, cherry tomatoes, mini pizzas, miniature slices of pork pie or stuffed fresh chicory leaves. Your host might have made a variety of ‘verrines’, which are served in tiny glasses and could have several colourful layers. For example, these could be finely diced fish under a vegetable purée topped with a creamy cheese layer. One of the dishes of a modern apéro-dinatoire’ is a ‘cake apéritif’ –  a savoury version of a tea-loaf which could contain asparagus, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, chorizo sausage or ham. Pitfalls abound. Once, we were invited for an ‘apéro’ and had eaten a light meal before we went, thinking we would leave before eating. However, when we arrived, we found the table had been laid and a three course meal awaited us!

Cottage industries, traditional crafts and old skills are celebrated in France. Stained glass window makers, wrought-metal workers, carpenters and stonemasons are trained in special schools.Traditional sentiments are brought forth when butter is labelled, ‘au beurre de baratte’ = made by churning. Ham might be cooked ‘au torchon’ = in a tea-towel. When I wanted to know more, I looked on You Tube and found that the meat was salted, wrapped twice in material like a thin rubber glove (well actually, it was like a huge condom), then shrink wrapped in plastic before being cooked on a very low heat. The original idea of ham being wrapped in a tea-towel was not very appealing, but the reality of replacing that with several layers of plastic was even less so! Sometimes, I would prefer a less ‘hands on’ approach to life. Some Brie cheeses are manually poured into circular moulds using an authentic Pelle à Brie = “Brie shovel“. Does it make any difference to the flavour? When I read on the packet that my salmon slices were ‘salé au mains’ i.e. salted by hand, I would prefer that a machine did it, rather than a trainee who had not washed his hands to surgical standards! Why is it impossible for a French artisan to make a cheese without putting his/her bare hands and arms, usually up to the elbows, into the curds and whey?

ACRONYMS. Nearly every well-known and frequently used organisation in France seems to have chosen its name, so that it can be called by an acronym. Every French person is familiar with what the body does, but has no clue what the letters stand for. Social charges must be paid to URSSAF Unions de Recouvrement des Cotisations de Sécurité Sociale et d’Allocations Familiales.Not only is the name shortened, but in many cases the initials become a word in themselves. The RAC in the UK is never called the ‘Rac’. In Reims, we have CREPS ‘Creps’, which I assumed was something to do with pancakes, until I had a student who studied there and I found it stood forCentres de Ressources, d’Expertise et de Performance Sportives – a sports college! The minimum wage is always called the SMIC ‘Smick’ = salaire minimum interprofessionnel de croissance and the emergency ambulance service is the SAMU ‘Samu’=secours d’aide médicale d’urgence. When dealing with anything official this becomes an almost indecipherable language.At the door of our Social Security office are 4 letter boxes marked with the initials of various departments in the building. I never know into which one I must post my letter. Is it CRAM, CMPS, CAMIEG or CARSAT?