Success versus Survival – some end of year musings

The first essay I ever wrote at PSU was for a Psychology class, and compared the personality profiles of people who survived in concentration camps and as prisoner of war of the Khmer Rouge.  To my great surprise, the profiles were very similar.  A dozen years later I came across Bernie Siegel’s books on cancer survivors, and again the individuals who survived longest had the same characteristics.  It took me a long time to realise that these characteristics tend to make it difficult to achieve success!

Survivors tend to be highly individualistic, with their own ideas and ways of doing things.  They rarely do anything just because they are told to, and usually come up with unique ways of doing something else instead.  This is not considered an endearing trait by the mass of humanity!  Perhaps most importantly, they have a large variety of interests and engage in numerous unconnected activities.  They are more likely to have a succession of different jobs in unrelated fields, rather than stick to one career in one organisation or industry.  As a result they tend to be Jack-of-all-trades and expert of none.

Survivors are grit in any machine and prevent the smooth operation of any process or organisation.  They tend to be tolerated rather than appreciated, except in a crisis when everyone else has run out of solutions and is prepared to clutch at straws.  In such a crisis they may for a while rise to the top and call the shots, but as soon as the crisis is over they are sidelined and the usual company wo/men will come out from under their rocks and take up the reigns again.  Winston Churchill is an example, as are the East German dissidents who facilitated the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Soon after the war was over / the wall had fallen these people were dismissed with an insincere thank-you and perhaps a medal and/or small pension and sent back to their accustomed dunce’s corner.

To be successful, on the other hand, one’s ideas and actions need to blend in with society.  The occasional original thought will be applauded, especially if it leads to an increase in productivity.  People like things to continue as they always have, and feel threatened by new ideas, except for entertainment purposes which are outside of normal life and don’t count.  Therefore the company wo/man whose thoughts and actions chime in with everyone else’s will prosper and rise to the top (however defined).

To be successful in the way outlined above it is necessary to (a) suppress / twist one’s character and individuality, and (b) focus on the task on hand.  To illustrate my point, let us consider a woman who wishes to become the chairperson of a bank.  To achieve this lofty aim, she has to study the right subject (not the one she is truly interested in), hang out with the right people (not the ones she really likes), dress the part (not wear the comfortable rags she prefers), have the right hobbies (none that have no bearing on the goal), disown embarrassing friends and relatives (a la Hyacinth Bucket), acquire the right spouse (intelligent, svelte, shallow, social climbing), buy the right house in the right area (never mind the snooty neighbours), brown-nose the right individuals (without a gas mask!), ditch inconvenient morals and principles (in an inconspicuous way).  And so on and so forth.

The characteristics which make the Survivor such an unlikely candidate for the chairpersonship of a bank constitute the very elements of surviving.  While the successful person focuses all energy on one goal, the Survivor has lots of goals!  He wants to do a job well, have a good relationship with his soul-mate spouse, raise happy children, have a comfortable house with nice neighbours, spend the weekends re-decorating, dig a pond in the garden, learn a new language, knit sweaters, fix motorbikes, bake cakes, be a member of a rambling club, paint icons, write the odd poem, attend exhibitions, agitate at demonstrations, be a volunteer at a charity shop, read magazines and books on any number of subjects, etc etc – the list is endless.  No wonder the Survivor isn’t a brilliant success at doing any one thing, there are just too many things he does!

Scene 1 – Job Loss.  The Survivor feels terrible and awful, obviously.  But he has an understanding spouse, loving children, loads of friends ready to badmouth the idiot employer who fired him, and plenty of hobbies to take his mind of things, so he will not suffer too much emotionally.  Because of his varied interests and abilities he can quickly move from one industry to another, so chances are he will not be unemployed for long, even though his jobs may not be great.

The successful person, having a highly specialised job at a level at which there are few positions and therefore job opportunities, will not easily find a new job.  Her spouse, having been picked for being an arm-candy banker’s spouse, is furious with her for having lost a job which defines not only her but also his position in society.  The children will resent having to leave their private schools and no more expensive overseas holidays.  Her friends will be at first supportive but very soon make themselves scarce – they are not the sort who want to be associated with a loser!  As for hobbies to take her mind off things, well she has none.

Scene 2.  Retirement.  As per above, the Survivor has so many other interests that he is busier than ever.  As for missing colleagues, he has friends to fall back on and some of the colleagues have turned into friends anyway.  Since he has had so many different jobs and hobbies, and so many run-ins with authority, he has great stories to tell, so chances are he will be popular, especially with the young.  He usually sees no reason to change in his old age, so continues to take an active interest in anything and everyone.  And luckily for him, society tends to forgive eccentricity in old age and becomes much more tolerant of his rants and foibles.

The successful person on the other hand has a hard time of it and not infrequently either dies quickly after retirement or takes up any number of non-executive directorships to fill the emptiness in her life.  She has lived for her career and the social standing that goes with it, so losing it rips the heart right out of her life.  This might be a time for soul searching and attempts to mend fences with spouse and children – often too late!  When she talks she brags about her past achievements and the important people she knew, which quickly becomes boring.  Moreover, fame is short-lived in this hectic world, and her grandchildren are unlikely to be impressed by – or have even heard of – Director X or Chairman Y or even Princess Epsilon.

Scene 3.  Heart Attack.  When it comes to the crunch we find out who our friends are.  And life doesn’t get much crunchier than when we experience serious health problems.  This is when false friends melt away and spouses and children show their affection and loyalty – or lack of it!  I do not claim that love is always returned for love, nor that money has not occasionally bought it.  But generally speaking people reap what they sow.  Perhaps the number of hospital visits are a better indication of a life well lived than the size of the house one leaves in one’s will?  And what is more likely to foster a swift recovery and renew one’s zest for life, loving relatives and faithful friends or children eager to inherit and friends who never visit?

So far I have focussed on the Survivor and the successful person, par excellence.  The essence of the survivor is that s/he has so many different interests, abilities, and internal resources that s/he always manages to somehow get by; not always brilliantly, but survival is assured.  The essence of the successful person, on the other hand, is the focussing of one’s entire energy on success - however defined - to the detriment of all other aspects of life, which leads to a life which is successful in one area but empty in all others.

It might seem to those who strive after success that the price for it as outlined above is worth paying – which leads me to the real tragedy of seeking success, viz that most of those who strive for success don’t actually obtain it.  Most of those who sacrifice everything for that one goal do not in fact achieve it, and are left in the end not with their dearly bought success but with nothing at all, having morally, emotionally, and physically bankrupted themselves.

Christmas Season – Disillusion is the last illusion

This is the day when I tend to clean up the Christmas mess and re-enter the real world.  ‘The Real World!’  When I worked at the Bank, whenever I returned from a holiday, colleagues would say, ‘Welcome back to the real world!’  I always thought, ‘actually, this isn’t the real world.  What I experience when I am away from my desk, that is the real world!’  All the recent insanity in the banking world and indeed the economic world more general does not really surprise me – I always thought they were mad.  Quite often I sat in a meeting earnestly participating in some inane discussion, when suddenly I would flip into a different frame of mind and realise quite how ridiculous and comical the situation was.  A very unfortunate habit, because as soon as one adopts a mind-set different from those of the other participants of any human activity one becomes an outsider, with all the dangers that entails.  And yet, also a very healthy habit – by becoming an outsider one can often see more clearly and avoid becoming entangled in the illusions and inanities which accompany most human activity.

A very common illusion is that people who are higher in the pecking order are better at making important decisions that those lower down – after all, they are more intelligent and informed, which is why they hold their exalted position.  We assume that the chairman of a bank is more likely to be right about the economy than the clerk who we meet at the counter.  What we forget is that luck, connections, health, and sheer dogged determination are just as important as ability to get to the top.  More importantly, we forget that few people are able to view an issue objectively.  The more personally involved they are, the greater their personal investment is, the less objective they tend to be.  So the chairman of a bank will be more likely to think that his huge bonus is crucial to the success of his bank than the clerk behind the counter, not because he is more intelligent or better informed, but because he personally benefits from his belief. 

Every situation requires a certain mindset; if the mindset of a participant does not harmonise with the situation, he experiences dissonance which has to be resolved; very few people are able to live indefinitely with the dissonance.  Sticking with our example, a chairman who starts out believing that he got his job by luck and connections will have to deal with the dissonance that he earns one hundred times more than the clerks who work for the same bank even though he is has no greater ability and works no harder than they do.  He can simply shrug his shoulders and think, ‘Tough luck on them!’ and leave it at that.  But most people have been raised in a culture that claims that we live in a meritocracy – some people are better paid and have greater privileges because they deserve them, because they have greater abilities than the rest of humanity.  So what is our chairman to do?  If he admits he just got lucky people will insist that he gets paid less, because rewarding chance is not as popular as rewarding ability.  So usually he abandons his belief that he just got lucky.  He has a job which only very clever and intelligent people have, ergo he is clever and intelligent.  Dissonance resolved! 

One of the problems with this is that this average chairman now believes he is really clever.  While he believed that he was just average he listened to other people’s opinions and took advice.  But now that he believes that he is the smartest person in his institutions he listens to no one but himself.  And because everyone around him subscribes to the same belief he is allowed to make more and more stupid decisions until the bank is in serious difficulties.

Why do the people around him believe that he has his job on the basis of his exceptional ability?  To reduce their own dissonance.  To believe that some people are massively overpaid just because they got lucky fosters anger and frustration and a sense of grievance which often leads to revolutions.  Since most people don’t like revolutions but just want to lead their life in peace and quiet they, too, adopt the belief that the chairman got his job because of his exceptional abilities.  And those that don’t believe it and can’t hide this belief tend to get fired – another reason to accept the company myth.  Nobody likes dissonance.

I don’t, incidentally, believe that any idiot can be a good chairman of a bank or other institution, even though looking at the current economic situation it is tempting to believe that a humble honest idiot would do better than our current batch of leaders, and be much cheaper, too.  I am simply trying to illustrate with this nice easy example how illusions come into being and damage the common good. 

These sorts of illusions are rife in all human interactions.  We believe that the doctor knows what is wrong with us because she is a doctor, and disregard what we know about our body from our own experience.  Instead of observing ourselves carefully and taking responsibility, using the doctor as an independent expert, we hand our health over to her and consider it her problem, conveniently forgetting that if she gets it wrong we are the ones who will suffer.  It is a form of laziness, of trying to avoid thinking thoughts and experiencing emotions we feel uncomfortable with.  That’s why these illusions are so widespread.

So what does all this have to do with Christmas?  Well, Christmas is full of illusions, both pro and con.  When the candles are lit and the fire burns brightly illuminating the colourfully wrapped presents, when the stomach is full of good food and wine, when there are carols in the background and the air is full of orange and cinnamon and pine scent, it is easy to believe that there is peace on earth and a God in Heaven.  But when encountering the same scene in cold daylight the following morning, when confronted with a cold hearth and heaps of wrapping paper and an insignificant tree losing its needles and perhaps nursing a small hangover while listening to the news, one’s belief may be quite different!  Yet which is right?  Did I experience an illusion on Christmas Eve, or on the following morning?  For surely, one must be an illusion, seeing as the feelings are so different on the two occasions?

Personally, I believe that they both are and are not illusions.  All experience is filtered through the abilities and limitations of the senses, and the needs and inclinations of the mind.  And all entities and situations are multi-faceted.  Human beings are capable of great love and peace, as well as unbelievable cruelty and constant strife.  Christmas Eve I was most aware of the former, Christmas Day of the latter.  I was both right and wrong on both occasions, because I focussed on only some aspects of humankind to the exclusion of all others.

Surely if one wants to understand the world as it really is, without any illusions whatsoever, one needs to consider it in its entirety, neglecting none of its aspects?  Exactly.  This is not possible for human beings, I suspect even God can’t do it.  The world is simply too complicated for this.  The best we can do is employ and juggle our illusions, choosing them carefully and always keeping in mind that we might be wrong.  More than anything, we must remember that the greatest illusion is the belief that we can make do without illusions!

I might add that personally I try to pick my illusions on a strictly utilitarian basis.  Believing in love, kindness, generosity, and the possibility of a happy ending makes me happy and is good for my soul – and somehow I think God shares the same illusions, so I am in good company.

Christmas Season – Christmas Eve, Part 2

Christmas by candle-light!



Christmas Season – Christmas Eve

It was a good one!  The 24^th is always a day of hectic preparation.  First I clean the house.  Usually my house-proud tendencies exhaust themselves in tidiness, when it comes to dust and slut-wool I favour the low-watt-lightbulb approach – if the lighting is bad you can’t see the dirt.  But Christmas is different, so I hoover and dust and wipe and scrub until the house is half way decent.

Then I bring in the tree and take the ornaments down from the attic.  I have a little tree in a pot.  For most of the year he lives in the garden and does not answer to the name of Theodor Gruenbaum, and every Christmas he comes inside for three days to celebrate with me.  I have lots of ornaments, every year I add to my collection.  I like little wooden ones made in east Germany, and painted lead ones from Bawaria.  There are also lots of straw stars and garlands, gilded pine cones, miscellaneous bulbs, etc etc.  And of course, real beeswax candles!  All these are laden onto my two feet high tree, and the rest overspill onto mantelpiece, chandelier, and just about every surface in the Parlour.  I never decorate any other room – one must not overdo these things!

Normally I have my bird Christmas after I finish the tree, but this year the birds looked awfully hungry so I decided to do their Christmas first.  I hung up all sorts of feeders full of seeds and dried mealworms and maggots and insect pellets, hung up numerous fatballs, heaped seeds, especially black sunflower seeds, wherever I found a surface, and halved a dozen pears and apples and deposited them around the garden.  A small plate of grated cheddar for the robins completed the Feast.  Finally I sang a few carols while scrubbing and refilling the birdbaths, and retreated tactfully.  Then I sat on my stove from where I can overlook the whole garden – all 300 square feet of it – and watched my guests arrive and help themselves.  I even let the wood pigeons and magpies partake, seeing as it is Christmas – normally I chase them away, my garden is too small for such huge creatures.

Satisfied at last that everyone has been provided for, I check the fire in the Parlour.  I laid it in mid-morning, it takes quite a while to get it going nicely and achieve a steady golden glow of the coals.  But it looks like I am there, so now I can attend to dinner.

Christmas Eve I always have a simple dinner of potato salad and Viennese style sausages, easy to make and not too filling.  I also start to make my Old English Tea punch, gleaned from an old German recipe book about baking cookies.  As a last touch I put some orange and cinnamon oil into my atomiser.  The whole house smells deliciously of orange, cinnamon, pine, and punch.  I am now ready to change into a nice dress and begin Christmas proper.

Dinner is a seven thirty and ‘Bescherung’ at eight.  The latter means that I go into the Parlour and light all the candles.  I go outside and close the door.  I ring a bell as a sign that Christmas is about to start.  Then I open the door and pretend I have not seen the room decorated before, and fairly swoon with pleasure at the sight before me!

I sit in an armchair and watch the tree and all the beautiful decorations, with all the glitter and shimmer, and feel truly blessed.  My life is very wonderful.  Then I take some photos – see below – and open all my presents.  They are particularly lovely this year, especially the ones I bought myself.  I start to buy presents in the January sales and then throughout the year, wrap them immediately in Christmas paper and put them on top of the wardrobe.  By the time Christmas comes around I have usually forgotten what I had bought, so have a nice surprise when I open my presents.

There seem to be any number of people out there who think being alone at Christmas is an awful experience, best gotten over as soon as possible and with as little fuss as manageable.  Quite a ridiculous attitude, in my opinion.  If for whatever reason one has to spend Christmas on one’s own, one should make the best of it and enjoy all the benefits it brings.  No arguments, no clash of different Christmas traditions, and one can eat all the best bits of the roast.  And if I listen to the recording of King George V Christmas Address to the nation I can do that, too, without snide comments and/or aspersions cast upon my sanity.

Now I am off to digest my enormous roast duck followed by Christmas pudding dinner while reading The Willows at Christmas by William Horwood, a Christmas adventure of the characters of The Wind in the Willows, next to my fire in the Parlour, illuminated by all the candles in the room.  Life is good.  God bless us everyone!

Before the Great Ornament Orgy

After the Great Ornament Orgy

For photos taken without flash see next blogpost!

Christmas Season – To Absent Friends

Today is Christmas Eve, so obviously I am way too busy to do a proper blog post.  Perhaps tomorrow.  In the meantime, I wish a very merry Christmas to lost and absent friends – you know who you are!  Take care of yourself and remember you are loved.

As Always

Your DB

Christmas Season – Christmas Markets in Oxford

Today I had a wander around the Christmas Markets in Oxford.  I counted three, but there are probably more.  They are dotted around the town centre, each is quite small, just ten or twenty stalls.  In the main they sell crafts and foreign foods – especially Glühwein (german spiced and heated red wine) which is becoming increasingly popular.

I started my excursion at the castle mound market.  It was cold, but no snow.  One of the first stalls I saw was this one, selling really beautiful hand made tiles.  I like them a lot, but never buy any since I have no idea of what to do with them – re-model the whole kitchen so I can fit some tiles into the splashback for my sink?

So I moved on to the German sausage stall to buy currywurst.  There was a long queue, and since I hate standing in line I decided to come back later and have my lunch backwards – first the sweet, then the savoury!  I had spied a waffle stall, and was wondering whether to try one with chestnut purée, when a family with any number of rugrats pushed in front of me and loudly debated what orders to place.  Back I went to the sausage stall, but the queue had grown even bigger.  So I had some caramelised nuts instead.  Not terribly healthy, but neither is standing around in the cold queuing for currywurst!

The market is scattered all about the castle ground, half a dozen here, three over there.  On a wall outside the castle I found this little bird, which probably looks better illuminated when it is dark but I wasn’t going to stick around that long.

 Having had my fill of no currywurst and nada waffles, I decided to go home via the central but station, intending to check some timetables along the way.  And what do I find there?  Another Christmas market!  This one is entirely French, a dozen stalls selling saussicon, baked goods, olives, cheese, dried fruit, and, weirdly, a huge stall selling woven baskets?!?!?!?  Oh well, why not.  I buy some saussicons – I always buy sausages of some sort at these markets – and leave before I get sucked into some unnecessary purchases.

 But I had not escaped yet!  There was another Christmas market in Broad Street!  This one sells mainly crafts, and I almost bought an amazing planter in the shape of a head (see last photo).  Unfortunately the cash machine I tried to extract some cash from proved uncooperative, and by the time I had found another one I had come to my senses and decided that I did not have space for the head after all.

Anyway, I need my money for tomorrow, when I am going to the London Christmas markets!

Christmas Season – Christmas Market in Bremen, Part 2

And here is the tallest ever candle-driven pyramid!

And to finish off my little report, here one of those homely heart-warming little stalls one finds all over German Christmas Markets.

Now I am looking forward to the London and Oxford markets!

PS  Seeing as I have started another blogpost, and can upload o few more photos, I am herewith adding a few Bonus Pics!

Christmas Season – Christmas Market in Bremen

I spent a few days in Bremen last week, and stuck to my resolution to haunt as many Christmas Markets as possible this year.  There was neither snow nor frost, which diminished the Christmassy feel, but I nevertheless enjoyed it immensely.

The main difference between German Christmas Markets and all other, lesser, markets, is that the German ones sell not only food and the sort of thing one can just as easily buy in the usual shops, but also all sorts of things one can only buy once a year – at the Christmas Market.

My favourites are the ornaments by Käthe Wohlfahrt, like the one below.  It is possible to go to one of the shops that sell them all year round, but these are few and far between, and the best way to buy these ornaments remains the Christmas Market.

The trouble with most Christmas Markets is that they are totally overrun with people, and it is impossible to take a decent picture of the market overall.  I usually get at least 50% heads!  So I settled again for using photos of individual attractions, rather than those that show a larger part of the market.  Just use the photos below to imagine the rest!

This jolly snowman is in front of the Cathedral – the Bremen market nests in its shadow.  I took some photos, but they are impossible leaning so I had to forget about using them.

I especially like the street lighting in Bremen.  This one depicts the Bremer Stadtmusikanten of Fairytale fame.  Incidentally, there is also a B –League, consisting of a pig, a chicken, a fish, and a butterfly!

Here is the Bremen take on Santa’s Grotto!  Loads of little children queuing to get in, of course. 

Another feature of many German Christmas Markets is the oversized decorations, like the snowman and here, the nutcracker….

Darn it, out of photo memory again!  To be continued!

Christmas Season – Christmas Market in Paris

Since this has been in some ways a bleak & dismal year, I took a management decision and resolved to celebrate Christmas in a major way this year and enjoy myself shamelessly.  The Christmas Markets, the Cookie Baking, the Present Buying, the Advents Season’s Rituals, the Get Together with all my Favourite People, I am doing the lot!  This Blog will bear witness to my excesses, as a warning and/or example to emulate for all.

So, this year I plan to go not to one, or even two, but to four Christmas Markets in three countries.  After all, what is the point of rushing around to see people in other countries if you can’t enjoy yourself why you are there?  Paris was the first stop of my Christmas Market Crawl.

The Champs-Elysees Christmas Market is said to be the biggest one in Paris, so that’s where we went.  The entire street is lined with little chalet-style white painted huts, each occupied by a vendor of some more or less Christmassy goods.  Taking photos was almost impossible, since there were loads of people who were almost as tall as the huts and five to ten rows deep in front of them.  I did manage to take a photo of the talking Christmas tree above, who was encircled by a little train full of small delighted children eating cotton candy, called Father’s Beard in French, apparently.

I also managed a photo of the home made chocolate stall, where massive slabs of chocolate were on display – obviously I felt honour-bound to buy some afterwards!  Very good chocolate, though hideously expensive.

Then we bought pretzels from the German food stall and continued to wander along the huts that sold hot wine, donuts, bonbons, candied fruits, sausages, cheeses, various woolly items of clothing, and so on and so forth.  There were even one or two huts that sold Christmas ornaments, though not the sort I would hang onto my tree – I am extremely particular in that respect, and only suffer hand-made originals from the depth of Germany on my Christmas-tree.

In addition to the huts we spotted several carrousels and similar funfair style contraptions, including a House of Horror and a Dinosaur Dungeon.  I dismissed them all as unsuitable for Christmas, and bought more food instead.

On the way home I happened across the cutest little Christmas trees imaginable!  Less than a foot high, extremely tree-like, made from real pine tree branches stuck onto a wooden central stake.    Never seen such a thing, I just love it!!!

I also took a few quick photos of a really beautiful Christmas display in a shop window, but the reflection was such that all my photos turned out to look like surreal triple exposure artistic avant garde street scenes.  But well, maybe you like to see one of them anyway!

How not to learn French - Lesson 5 - Watching French Movies

As all the other things I tried to learn French, this seemed a great idea at first.  Spend an evening at the flicks watching one of those avant garde French films, and effortlessly learn the lingo by letting it seep into your sub-conscience, thus combining pleasure with utility.  Unfortunately there were a few problems.

Firstly, I hate avant garde movies!  I have enough problems in my real life, thank you very much, and don’t need it in my time off from reality.  I want easy laughs and cheap merriment!  Difficult to come by in the French movies available outside of France.  The reputation of the French for being sophisticated and stylish and ‘out there’ means that any French movie that caters to my kind of tastes is dismissed as a non-French aberration and not stocked.  Actually, there exist hilariously funny and entertaining French movies – like Safari – but it is almost impossible to get hold of them in Anglo-Saxonia.

Of course, one can order them on Amazon.fr, and I have done that, but again have experienced a few difficulties.  (a) How do you find out about these funny French movies, which no one talks about except in French, which you don’t yet understand?  If you ask French friends, chances are they won’t tell you, because they don’t want to ruin their sophisticated image abroad and instead recommend the usual boring irritating problem movies to you.  (b) Every time I order something from Amazon.fr my credit card gets refused with some incomprehensible – well, French – blurb, to the effect that my card doesn’t work.  A week later I receive whatever I ordered in the post.  Go figure!

The other option is to watch American or British movies using the French language track, and/or French subtitles.  Again, this is fraught with difficulties.  The main being, that the people who translate the language track and the ones who translate the subtitles don’t communicate, which results in two different versions of the film.  So if you were hoping to learn how to correlate the written and spoken word in French by watching these movies you can forget it.

OK, let us assume you have gotten your hands onto some movies in French and are ready to spend an evening at home educating yourself.  This is what happens.

First attempt.  You watch the movie in French with English subtitles – hey, you want to understand what’s going on, right?  And what about your loving partner/cat who watches it with you and has no interest in learning French?  Exactly.  The trouble is, you focus on the subtitles and stop listening to the spoken words, except as a sort of background music.  Result, No French Was Learnt. 

Second attempt.  You watch the movie in English with French subtitles.  You become caught up with the action and quickly cease to pay any attention to the subtitles.  Even when you do read the subtitles occasionally, they rarely correspond word for word with the language track.  Result, No French Was Learnt.

Third attempt.  In a desperate effort to salvage the Learn French by watching Movies option, you watch the film in French with French subtitles.  You understand nothing, get bored, and give up.  Result, No French Was Learnt.

Actually, there is a way of learning French by watching French movies, and I have done it (to an extent).  I shall discuss it when I start my series, How to Learn French in Ten Difficult Lessons, sometime in the new year.

For now, watch French movies by all means.  Just don’t expect to learn French that way.  Your experience will be exactly the same as trying to learn French by listening to native speakers or taking French lessons.  OK, that was my experience, it may be different for you.  But this is a blog series for people who have tried everything to learn French and wonder why they did not succeed.  It is not a blog for people who have tried to learn French and have succeeded.

I am sorry – well, perhaps a tiny bit – if I sound defeatists and negative.  I am tempted to blame it all those avant garde French movies, but alas I have not watched any for decades.  It is just that I have been told so often how easy it is to pick up a foreign language.  All those comments by friends & relations - You have learned French for three years now, aren’t you fluent yet?  No, I am jolly well not, my French is still abysmally awful and I resent the implication that it is my own fault for not having tried hard enough.  Sure, if all you want is say Please and Thank you and Hand over a pint & a pickle sandwich, yeah I can do all that, but that hardly counts as speaking a language.

Learning a language properly is hard work and takes a long time.  Unless you have a really good reason to do it, don’t even try.  If you want to find out more about another culture, read a few books about it.  If you actually go to another country, learn to say in the native language, ‘I am terribly sorry but I can’t speak your language.  It is a scandal and an insult to your great culture, but my tiny brain couldn’t handle it.  Please do forgive me.’  Usually they reply, ‘Hey, no problem, I speak English!’ 

Of course, if you actually want to live in another country, or spend a considerable amount of time there, you must learn the language!  It could be a matter of life and death.  Just imagine being stuck up a lonely mountain side during a walking holiday in a backwater where no one speaks English, with an injured friend rapidly bleeding to death, unable to call for an ambulance!  That’s what I mean about being motivated; it is precisely this scenario that determined me to learn French.

Tadpoles in November? I am so bummed out!!!!

This being a beautiful mild Autumn day, I decided to clear up the garden a little.  Not too much, mind – I don’t want to disturb any of the creatures that have made their home there.  This is indeed the problem in the Little Garden; it is extremely popular with any number of small creatures, who take exception to just about anything I ever do there, so I must be careful.  I just tidied up a little, raked some leaves, guided a particularly wayward pyracanthia back to more orthodox growth habits, and fished some leaves out of the pond.  That’s when I had a major shock! 

Most of what goes on in the pond is invisible, on account of the black liner and floating vegetation.  It is unsatisfactory for me, but the pond dwellers prefer it that way and so I acquiesce.  However, partly to satisfy my desire to observe the pond creatures, partly to protect the pump from excessive mud, I installed an old wash bowl in one area of the pond.  It stands on a few bricks, and the pump is inside of the bowl.  Its rim is usually a few inches below the water surface.  Since the bowl is light coloured, I can observe any creature that swims around in it.  The bowl also functions as a nursery for the tapoles; when they are quite tiny, I keep the water level at just below the rim of the bowl, thereby keeping out predators.  When the taddies grow too big to be eaten by their fairly small predators, I allow the water level to rise so that they can colonise the rest of the pond.  However, the bowl continues to be popular with them, partly I suppose because the pump oxygenates the water, partly perhaps for nostalgic reasons.  Also, whenever I feed them little titbits – usually frozen water fleas – I put them into this bowl.

This bowl had become a little overgrown of late.  When the taddies grow limbs they become more skittish, and I try to leave the pond as undisturbed as possible until the froglets have left the pond.  Then I went on my long holiday, after which I suffered from a cold so spent little time outside.  So it had been quite a while since I had attended to the pond.  It was fairly choked with leaves, and had an overabundance of oxygenating plants.  I pulled out a few handfuls, and took out the bowl for cleaning.  When I returned it to the pond, I was once again able to observe its denizens.

And would you believe it, the bowl quickly became populated with tadpoles!  In mid-November!  Any self respecting tadpole turns into a froglet and leaves the pond latest by August, at least that’s what they had done in all previous years.  One or two, it is true, lingered on and refused to grow up – the technical term for this is Peter Pan Tadpoles – but I had never had an entire generation adopt this course of action.

What oh what have I done wrong?  In the middle of last year my neighbout had finally cut down a huge tree which shaded the pond, so I had expected the taddies to develop quickly and leave home in double-quick time.  I had fed them water fleas, turned on the pump in hot weather, re-stocked with oxygenating plants, and even added a few more marginals.  I had also introduced a few sticklebacks into the pond, to keep down the mosquito larvae after the tadpoles had left the pond, and long agonised over this decision, worrying that they would eat all the smaller taddies.

Stupid idiot me!  Far from having been eaten by the sticklebacks and whatever other predators haunted the pond, the taddies had become so comfortable they decided to stay for good.  Not for them the exhausting business of changing from tadpole into froglet, and of braving blackbirds and thrushes waiting to devour them when they emerged from the pond on a moist Summer evening for the first time.  No, they had collectively decided to put up a finger to evolution and remain as tadpoles in their nice safe pond, living happily ever after.  I suppose I can’t exactly blame them, but all the same I am appalled.  Who is going to eat all the slugs and snails and flies and mosquitoes in the garden if there are no more frogs?

I feel like a mother whose children refuse to move out of the parental home, preferring its convenience and full service environment to living on their own.  How on earth does one evict reluctant tadpoles from a garden pond?  And what is going to happen in spring, when the next generation of tadpoles emerge from their eggs?  Will the older tadpoles eat their smaller newborn siblings?  Will they suddenly hurry up and leave the pond before their siblings grow up and taunt them with their ‘mutton-dressed-as-lamb’ status?  Personally I blame the mother!

The culprit lurking near the scene of her crime ...

How not to learn French - Lesson 4 - Buying Hermes scarves

I love scarves and wear one every day.  Sometimes wool, usually silk, sometimes small or large, usually medium.  They are marvelously useful, in my opinion.  If I feel warm, I pull the scarf away from my neck.  If I feel cold, I drape it around myself in generous folds.  Much better than continually taking one’s pullover on and off.  I started out in my twenties, hunting for scarves in thrift shops, and occasionally receiving one as a gift from my Mother, completely unaware that even my best Liberty scarf was as nothing compared to the beauty of an Hermes one.

I might have remained in this blissful state of ignorance indefinitely, had I not taken to visiting France.  It was only a matter of time until I came across an Hermes shop during my wanderings around Paris.  I saw, I succumbed, I read the price-tag, I shrank back in horror, I looked again at the glorious designs and colours, I cautiously inched my way back to the scarf counter, I retreated again scandalised by such ludicrous cost for a piece of silk, I was reeled in again by the sheer beauty of the scarves, etc etc ad infinitum.  I knew it would be madness to buy such a scarf, an indefensible extravagance, a luxury not meant for us non-millionaires.  Besides, did I not have up to a hundred scarves already?  I had no excuse, and I knew it.  Sighing deeply, I smothered my scarf-lust and turned to leave the shop. 

Then I saw a remarkable thing:  each Hermes scarf had a title; a French title!  Might I not utilise this little shred of French for learning the language?  Hitherto the language had completely eluded me, so surely I would be justified to spend a small fortune to learn French?  Why of course I was!  The spiel was made, money changed hands, and I left with my first Hermes scarf.

Back home I laid out my new treasure, sat before it in a reverend attitude, and immersed myself in contemplation.  People tell me they queue for hours to see an exhibition of paintings by the Impressionists, or brave the crowds for a glimpse of the Athene of Phidias.  Me, I just look at my scarves.  Because, as you have guessed, I did not stop at the first one.

A friend calculated that I paid an average of £25 for each word, and predicted that I would either go bankrupt and learn French or survive financially intact and remain Frenchless.  But this did not deter me - I decided that I would rather know French than be rich.

A good example of learning French by scarf is one that depicts all manner of fantastic early planes and balloons, and is called Les Folies du Ciel.  I learned the words for folly and heaven, and had an illustration of how to form the plural of le and la and de.

La ronde des heures is another favourite.  It has a little rhyme on it:  Parmi les fleurs je compte les heures (among the flowers I count the hours).

Then there is l’Instruction du Roy – En l’exercice de monter a cheval.  Instruction for the king – an exercise (manual) for riding a horse.

One of my favourite language learning scarves is L’ombrelle magique – the magic sunshade (interestingly enough, the French l’ombrelle does not mean umbrella).  This scarf tells a story.  Each scene is depicted, and has some French words describing it.  So here it goes:

L’Ombrelle Magique (the magic sunshade)

Il etais une fois (once upon a time)

Un prince solitaire (a prince who was a loner)

Amoureux des oiseaux (who loved birds – or maybe he was beloved by birds)

Un beau jour (one beautiful day)

Le brouillard le surprend (he was surprised by fog)

Perdue dans la foret (lost in the woods)

Il demand son chemin (he asked the way)

Un vieil ermite lui repond (an old hermit answered)

Prends cette ombrelle (take this sunshade)

Quel que soit ton chemin (wherever you are?)

L’ombrelle te conduira chez toi (the sunshade will guide you home)

En route pour un voyage (while travelling)

Aux quatre coins du monde (to the four corners of the world)

Magie!  L’ombrelle soudain se change (Magic!  Suddenly the sunshade changed)

En princesse menehould (into a beautiful(?) princess)

De retour au palais (they returned to the palace)

On celebre l’amour! (to celebrate their love – see photo above)

As mentioned before, my French is pretty lousy so my translations must be taken with a pinch – or even a pound! – of salt!  By the way, I have not been able to find 'menehould' in any dictionary, but surmise it means something like many hold (hold being a German word for beautiful/attractive).

And finally, Dame de Coeur a Vous l’honneur!  A wonderful scarf featuring some rather unusual playing cards.

So, is buying Hermes scarves a good way to learn French?  Well, I learned all the words depicted on my scarves, but I hesitate to recommend this method on account of its expense.  Also not everyone is interested in scarves.  But personally, I cannot find it in my heart to regret my purchases – they are just too beautiful, and whatever sorrows might trouble my heart vanish when I contemplate my ‘wearable works of art’.  And that’s more than can be said for any book of grammar I ever encountered.