French Windows

There is a dislike of having a toilet in the bathroom. I picked this up from one of those TV shows where five ‘Chambre d’Hôte’ owners take turns to stay in each other’s guesthouse and criticise it. One home had what looked like a perfectly acceptable British style bathroom with a toilet in it. Marks were deducted. The reason being that it was not very pleasant to look at a toilet while bathing. Bathrooms do not often contain toilets. Toilets are generally in a separate WC with no sink. If you wish to wash your hands then it’s either, search for the bathroom or use the sink in the kitchen. Many modern, newly built flats have no hand basin next to the toilet.

There is no obligation to tip in France.

I keep them all. If you have a problem with any item you have bought you will not get anywhere if you don’t have the proof of purchase, even if the product is marked with the store’s name. My stories of good customer service in the UK are met with gasps of astonishment from my students.

In the UK, we place a tick (✓) next to the names of those present. In France you put a cross. My ticks confused the school where I first worked. Now, the habit of putting a cross for those present has confused me. I don’t know if my students have a cross because they were at my class or if they couldn’t come! What do I put if they are absent?

Apparently, there are 7 separate agencies in France that deal with combatting terrorist attacks. That sounds very reassuring, except that I read that they don’t talk to each other or share information!

In the UK, if you don’t know where someone lives, you can look them up in a telephone directory. In France the ‘annuaire’ lists the villages of the region in alphabetical order. Firstly, you must know the name of the village where the people live, then the inhabitants are listed. It makes genealogical researches difficult.

Tea is seen to be more refined than coffee. French people find it ‘très british’ that we drink our tea with a ‘nuage du lait’ – a cloud of milk. Coffee is generally drunk black, as is tea.

A well-dressed table takes as much time to prepare as the meal. On the French equivalent of ‘Come Dine With Me’, ‘Un Dîner Presque Parfait’, contestants are scored on both hospitality, décoration de la table, and their cooking skills.Guests have been treated to such things as tables full of tropical fruit, or a layer of sand to replicate a beach scene. One that was particularly memorable had a fishpond in the middle made by building a low Plasticine perimeter wall, lining the middle space with impermeable material and adding real goldfish! Napkins, flowers, glitter, placemats, many sizes of drinking glasses are often used and there are shops that specialise in selling these items. Candles seem to be ‘de rigueur’. I find it slightly ridiculous that there are sometimes so many things on the table that when the food arrives everything has to be displaced to make room for it!

Men cannot go to a French swimming pool wearing swimming shorts. They could have been worn in the street so are considered unhygienic. Only miniscule, tight trunks are allowed. If you don’t have any, there are often vending machines that will dispense a pair for you.

I recently saw a magazine article promoting French sweets. A map of France highlighted the aniseed flavoured‘Anis de Flavigny’, Montelimar nougat, ‘Betises de Cambrai’, salted caramels from Brittany etc. It started me thinking as to whether we had regional sweets in the UK. Yes, Everton mints, Pontefract cakes, Brighton rock, Devon toffees came to mind. It seemed another example of how we lack the bluster and pride of the French. A sweet is after all, just sugar but in France it becomes a matter of national pride! Did you know that Jelly Babies were invented after the 1WW as ‘Peace Babies’ or that Flying Saucers were voted the most popular British sweet? A recent visit to an old-fashioned Bedford sweet shop opened my eyes to our rich sweet heritage. Pear drops, liquorice allsorts, coconut mushrooms, clove rock, pineapple cubes, wine gums (I don’t know how they have managed to avoid the wrath of the champagne regulatory board – shhh, don’t tell them that the word CHAMPAGNE appears on one of these sweets!), Edinburgh rock – the softer cousin of seaside rock, and many more! Not forgetting the quintessentially English rhubarb and custard sweets. We should do more for our cultural heritage! Love Hearts helped to teach my daughter to read. “If you can read it, you can eat it”, I used to say. ‘Learn English with Love Hearts’ could be proposed on posters at our ports!  Sweets I have actively promoted in France have been ‘Fishermen’s Friends’. Every time someone coughs in my lessons, they are offered one. I warn them that they are very strong because they were invented for fishermen working the freezing waters of the North Sea, so they are very effective. On the ‘Boston Memories – Lincolnshire’ site, I learned that Jakeman’s throat and chest menthol cough suppressants are manufactured in the town and sold all over the world. Why had I never heard of them before? Recently I found some on sale. They are worth having a sore throat for. The ‘Original’ has the same taste as a glass of Pastis! Something that is completely unknown in France is fudge. When I try to describe it, students say, “Ah, caramels!”. “No, they are softer and melt in the mouth and have a delicious buttery, creamy taste”, I reply. There is definitely a gap in the French sweet market for fudge!