French laundry day

 When I have large quantities of sheets and linens to wash and dry, I always think of what it must have been like for the women who first cared for these fabrics without the help of washing machines.

I wash all our old linens in the machine then simply hang them out to dry behind the barn.  100 years ago the women  would have been down on their knees at the village lavoir, before carrying the heavy sheets out to dry flat on the grass in a meadow.   Today these lavoirs or wash houses are carefully preserved, but thank goodness nobody needs to take their laundry any more!

I actually quite enjoy caring for the linens, they smell good after blowing dry in the garden and of course they look so beautiful once freshly pressed.  Time I am happy to invest!  Right now I am preparing new sheets for the store.

Tomorrow I start my new series about my stylish French girlfriends!  Don't miss the first episode, how they dress; where they live, how do they cook and of course why they look so great!

A demain!

French wedding globes

 Les globes de mariés

the French love them, they always have done.

Originally designed as a 19th century wedding souvenir

today they are displayed empty, with nature mortes,

or the base is simply used to present a pretty object

gold letters available here

gris-bleu

sometimes, when the glass dome has been broken, 

the shape is reproduced with wire to great effect.

inmyvolvocar

bord de scene

esprit champetre

Wedding souvenirs, containing important symbols:

orange blossom to represent virginity;

ivy symbolising the attachment between husband and wife;

lime tree for faithfulness;

oak leaves for wisdom and long life;

a dove for peace, symbol of the holy spirit;

grapes and vine leaf to represent abundance and wealth;

in the case of a remarriage a crown of pearls ...

don't forget!
only two more days till the end of the dress giveaway

flowery french fields

Remember Monet's pictures of poppies in wheat fields?  Those were the days before selective weed killers and maximum return on crops, but in today's farming world our birds and bees have a hard time finding pollen and food.

Farmers have kept a 'green' border to their fields for many years, but more recently  the famous French biscuit manufacturer LU, created a project encouraging farmers to lay aside a small border on their fields to be sown with  flowers.  Packets of seeds were distributed, cornflowers, sunflowers, cosmos, escholzia and many others depending on the region.

LU is a major consumer of wheat flour and this way they hope to improve their corporate image as well as the fashionable bio friendly image of their biscuit.

In the meantime, whatever the motive behind the operation, we get to enjoy flower-edged fields all over the valley, and maybe the best bit of all, nobody stops to pick the flowers, everyone has understood they are there for a reason and the best way to enjoy them is to let them grow where they stand.

French cuisine - at school

Do you remember what your school lunches used to be like?

  I do,  .....  you don't want the details!

As children in France return to school this week, there is inevitably much talk about the quality of school meals:  how well balanced they are; the portion size, the choice of dishes  - excuse me! .... the choice? !!! 

Yup, children at French primary schools take for granted their bright friendly canteens, the well balanced menus with choices for first course , main course, cheese and dessert!

Schools regularly have 'tasting' weeks or theme days, where children are encouraged to try small portions of new flavours; to tell the difference between regional cheeses or to understand why wholemeal bread doesn't look the same as white baguette.

They also find it normal that every French child in primary education takes a napkin to  school, generally in a hand-sewn napkin bag.  Clean one into school on Monday morning, home to be laundered on  Friday afternoon.  Child's name on the napkin and on the napkin bag.  Motherly pride can get slightly out of hand on this one, and some of the personalised napkin holders would make Martha Stewart look like an amateur.

The school are also meant to display the menus for the coming week,  and you often see parents pausing to study the chart as they drop their offspring at school for the day. 

 

What  happy days the primary school age brings, when the most they have

to worry about is what they get for lunch!

playtime in France

How many hours can be whiled away with a game of boules or petanque?  Played by all generations in every corner of France, taken seriously, played for fun, it rarely fails to please.

Of course it helps if you can play on a perfect boules ground with the finest sand and gravel, surrounded by stone walls, ivy and the sound of cigales, but failing that a regular gravel drive works well too.  We have had memorable boules evenings here, with teams, trophies, champagne and a lot of loud French discussion over winning points.

If you've never played,  you may enjoy this light hearted extract from Le Gendarme de St Tropez.





It helps to have a minimum ability to aim, and if you get to a good level you can start flourishing your arms and using key phrases such "je pointe ou je tire?"  ("do I roll up to it, or do I shoot it out of the picture?").

Whichever way you play, whatever your style, it is a simple game needing a minimum of inexpensive equipment that guarantees an instant French moment !!

Vive la pétanque!

back to school soon

There is a moment on the French school calender that always sends shivers down my spine; that when the "liste de fournitures" drops through my letter box.  This list of school supplies is to be religiously consulted, purchased,  ticked off and jammed into the new school bag each September and  that to me is fraught with danger.

Since early August, the local supermarkets have been devoting  miles of shelving to exercise books, binders, pencils, pens, set squares and compasses.  I watch wistfully as very organised mothers march up and down the alleys, unceremoniously grabbing items from the shelves and dropping them into their trolley with an air of triumph, whilst I know that such organisation is way beyond me, and that we will - yet again - have the humiliation of being the last family in the school to have every single item off the wretched list.

"What is she whining about?", I can hear you say, "it can't be that big a deal to buy a couple of crayons and the odd exercise book", but my dears your have NO IDEA ....

First of all take a look at a typical list ..........

You see, it's awful, never ending and that's just for one child, because of course, no two schools require the same things, that would be far too simple.  Believe me,  when I had all four children in primary education, I needed  to triple the Prozac before I could even unfold the lists.

Pens and pencils are relatively straight forward, providing of course you get the right colour ink, and the right sized ink cartridge for the appropriate pen.  Compass sets get a little tricky since manufacturers insist on innovating and more often than not, what you though looked like a well designed piece of geometrical machinery, turns out to be a waste of money looked down upon by the maths teacher.

It's when you start on the exercise books that the merde hits the proverbial fan.  If you thought that an exercise books was nothing more than some folded sheets of lined paper, stapled together to form a practical sized book then think again.

First of all in France they don't do lines.  They do squares, for maths (I think) and weird coloured grids that make your eyes hurt for all other subjects, unless it's 'travaux pratique, in which case you need the weird grid on one side of the book and plain paper on the other.

Next the size.  Obviously just one or two sizes would be too simple.  No, we have incy wincy vocabulary books (I can deal with that, I am after all a linguist), then we have those nice old square exercise books which remind me of my school days and comfort me, then we proceed to the pitfalls of A4 or 'just a bit bigger', and yes it does matter.  You also have to check the number of pages, 96 or 124, and yes it does matter.

I won't bore you with the choice of colours and designer brands.   I will mention that "la rentrée" (going back to school) costs a small fortune to French families, and most of all I'll have a final moan about the ridiculous weight of the school bags.

France needs to put aside money now for this generation's back problems.  I have seen slightly built 11 year olds carrying half their own weight to school each day - I'm not kidding.  A 13 kilo bag (30 pounds) is not unusual.

Enough from me ..... as you can tell, what I actually prefer is the summer holidays.  Maybe it's the fact that they are drawing to an end that is actually causing me so much grief.

Thank you for listening!

Bastille Day

Bastille Day

village balls in country fields, national holiday,

parade down the Champs Elysées, fireworks for the Tour Eiffel.

Vive la France!!

the french school year

For most French children the school year is drawing to a close and as always I am drawn to reflect upon the pros and cons of one country's educational system compared to another.  Did I do the right thing leaving them in the French system,  Should we have moved elsewhere? ...  Everyone does this, right?

When students leave French high school with the Baccalaureat , they can be sure of holding a qualification that means something and that is respected worldwide.  However, they can also be sure that they worked really hard to achieve it, and didn't have that much fun or creativity during their school years.

The advantage of the French system is that they keep their options wide open right up to, and including, the baccalaureat.   Even if they specialise in science or literature or economics, they still have to study maths, history, languages and philosophy!  The inevitable downside of this broad scope of subjects are the long hours - up to 40 hours of lessons a week plus a couple of hours of daily homework. They usually go to school 6 days a week.

But I think that what bothers me the most is the lack of praise and encouragement.  Both are surely vital to learning.  In the Anglo-saxon tradition we continually  encourage and build up confidence.  In France they prefer to use critique and the fear of failure.  This week thousands of French students will wait to know if they have ' got through' to the next school year, or if they are to be kept down to do the year again.

I am mostly happy with the education my four children have had or are receiving.  We worked hard at home to balance the lack of sport and creativity, and anyway this is where we wanted to live so we had to find the best local schools and do all we could to make them work.

So what I wonder is your attitude, do you just pack them off with their school bag and trust the system?  Have you been willing to move the whole family closer to the best school system?  Did you resort to boarding schools?  Or are they all grown now, and you just think that actually whatever the education they received, it all works out in the end?  I'd be interested to hear.

le muguet for the first of may

Here is a charming tradition, that has been going on for ever in France.  On the first of May, offering a bouquet of lily of the valley brings good luck.  This morning, all over France, there are trestle  tables, laden with lily of the valley set up on pavements outside the bakers, on street corners, in the markets.

In our village, two elderly people were  selling their bouquets for 2 euros each, in aid of the old people's club.   They explained to me that it had been difficult this year to have good muguet to sell because all the flowers have come out too early.  Nobody seemed to mind too much, I'm sure all their little sprigs were sold by the end of the morning.

wishing you a fragrant first of may!