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.

How not to learn French - Lesson 3 Taking French Lessons

Taking lessons in a foreign language is generally assumed to be the best way to learn it.  Initially I, too, had made this fallacious assumption and decided to enrol in an introductory French course.  The urge to learn French seems to run deep in the subterranean level of the English psyche, because no sooner had I announced my intention to enrol in a French class that several of my friends decided to do likewise.  Great, I thought, we can do homework together and generally encourage each other.  Full of hope and expectations I signed up for the class and paid my fees upfront.

Unfortunately my friends’ enthusiasm was short-lived.  Having encouraged me to go ahead with the venture, they considered their job done, and left me to it, never signing up to the course themselves.  Never mind, I thought, I have enthusiasm for three and brains for five, so I’ll crack this French thing – in a year or two I’ll be reading Le Monde!

Eager to get a head start before classes began, I bought all the books needed for the course and settled down to do some serious studying.  That’s when I discovered that the books were all in French.  No English whatsoever.  Apparently that’s the new modern method of teaching languages.  The theory goes that if you force someone to read enough words in a foreign language, eventually the penny will drop and they’ll end up being fluent.

Before the course even started I had read all the books cover to cover – twice.  And understood nothing.  Oh well, I thought, that’s why I am taking a class – the teacher will explain things to me!  I put the books aside and waited for the classes to begin.

The teacher was adorable and taught me my first French insult in break time:  Mechant Crapaud (Nasty toad).  Unfortunately she taught French the modern way.  She spoke almost exclusively in French for most of the class, so I understood nothing.  Then she played us a story on tape, also in French.  I understood nothing.  Then she taught us some grammar, which I immediately forgot – I always forget grammar, it is my one intellectual defect.

The second part of the lesson was different.  We were divided into groups and told to talk to each other in French.  Unfortunately we spoke either no French at all or very bad French with a heavy English accent, so succeeded only in contaminating each others scant French even further.

I stuck it out for three or four lessons, and then dropped out.  I had learned nothing, absolutely nothing.  It was a thoroughly dispiriting experience.  I had hoped for something along the lines of this:  This is a knife!  C’est un couteau.  See this fist?  Voir cet poing?  You get the idea.  Simple useful words in easy sentences, said in both English and French, and repeated until they became firmly entrenched in my memory banks. 

After I dropped out I tried to do lessons at home, by listening to the CDs by Michel Thomas, who teaches languages by the deductive method.  It is a good method, and I did manage to remember a little, but his bullying and patronising manner put me off, and after the second CD I stopped listening.  I also found his accent rather annoying – I already have traces of German, English, and American accents, the last thing I need is a Polish one to contaminate my French even further.

I did obtain another CD of introductory French, which used English to explain the French I was supposed to learn, and I managed to absorb a modicum of French.  Again, no grammar, but I learned to count and say a few simple sentences after having listened to the CD about twenty five times.  Not a total loss, but considering that I longed to discuss Kant’s categorical imperative and world trade with my French friends not very satisfactory, either.

I finally concluded that taking French lessons, whether in a class or by interacting with a CD, was not a good way for me to learn French.  But, ever undaunted, I had already identified another method of (not) learning French.  Stay tuned for the next instalment!

PS  I hope whoever reads this isn't going to be mad enough to believe that the occasional French words and sentences I quote in this blog are actually correct French - I sometimes get lucky, but don't bank on it!

Insulating the Little House Part 2

(5)  The woollen blanket is still hanging from its regular curtain rod.  I pull it close when I am inside.  So, useless when I am outside, but keeps in warmth when I am inside.  And it is well hidden behind the next item!

(6)  Curtain Lobby!!!  I am very proud of this idea.  I did not want to construct a lobby, because the parlour is small enough already.  But every time I opened the door heat escaped.  Solution?  A lobby made of fabric!  I affixed hooks to the ceiling in a semi circle around the door, and hung a thick lined velvet curtain from these hooks to form a lobby.  In Summer I just take it down, in Winter it stops the cold from coming in whenever I open the door.  Pure genius! 

(7)  Secondary double glazing.  This is great stuff, packs can be bought from iron mongers etc.  Basically, a thickish cling film is affixed to windows with the aid of double sided sticky tape.  Use a hairdryer to chase away the wrinkles in the film.  Not as good as proper double glazing, but helps keep the house warm.  And not really noticeable in daylight.  At night it is more noticeable, but I draw the curtains at night so am not bothered.  The only drawback is that one can’t open the windows any more, but I leave the bathroom window upstairs and the kitchen window downstairs uncovered, which is enough for airing the house.  When Spring comes I just rip off the film.

All the above mean that the house is between 18 and 20° C, with minimal only heating.  Not hot enough to lure back my houseguests, but plenty warm for me!

Insulating the Little House

The Little House is old-fashioned and almost devoid of new-fangled devices.  It lacks double-glazing, central heating, an entrance lobby, and cavity wall insulation – my walls are solid, thank you very much.  As a consequence it is, arguably, a little chilly.

When I first moved in there were two storage heaters, one upstairs and one downstairs.  They stored heat at night when I was asleep and released it during the day when I was away.  By the time I came home in the evening they were a spent force, so when they finally broke I did not miss them much and resolved not to replace them.  Instead I opened them up, salvaged the firebricks and used them to build a little veranda.

Despite their general uselessness the heaters had made some sort of impact, and after their demise the house was even colder than before.  Luckily the Little House is in the middle of a terrace, and my neighbours on both sides have central heating, so I managed for a year or two without any sort of heating except what the house managed to siphon off from my neighbours.  The temperature rarely fell below 15° C, and I consoled myself that the Victorians had considered this to be the perfect temperature for the drawing room.  When it got really cold I lit a fire in the parlour on the weekends when I was at home.  As for upstairs, who ever heard of heating a bedroom?

Unfortunately my occasional house guests were united in their opposition to my old fashioned lifestyle.  I can assure my readers that I am an excellent hostess, and offer every amenity to my weekend guests, including:

• A housecoat, which looks like a bathrobe made of wool, only more elegant; Sherlock Holmes, for example, can be seen of wearing one in some the illustrations of his adventures.  However, my ungrateful guests tended to refuse to wear them and talked darkly about an aversion to ‘Slumber Parties’.

• An indoor bonnet, again made of a woolly material and amazingly warm, though somewhat destructive to hairdos of the upstanding variety.
• Woollen shawls and serapes of all shapes and sizes.
• Hot water bottles.
• A cup of early morning tea, complete with a biscuit.
• Hot water for showers and shaving.

I could go on, but I believe I have made my point.  However, my guests refused all these winter-warmers and insisted on real heat.  In the evening they would huddle provocatively close to the fire, and frequently refused to go to bed without at least two hot water bottles.  In the morning they would emerge shivering from their beds, pointing accusingly to cold noses and casting aspersions on my moral status.  But I refused to install central heating, bought additional blankets and put my faith in Global Warming.  One by one my visitors stayed away, and even warned off others from staying with me in the colder months.

However, when the winters became colder and longer in the last few years even I had to admit that something had to be done.  I bought two portable radiators, one for upstairs and one for downstairs, and set about insulating with a vengeance.  There is quite a lot one can do, even without involving builders and piling up debts.  I have evolved and perfected both new and already existing methods, and outline them below – may they prove useful!

(1)  Astro-foil; about 1cm thick, looks like bubble wrap stuck between two layers of aluminium foil.  I used it to line the attic, and it works a treat.  One lightbulb warms the whole attic!  With the leftovers I lined the walls behind some of my curtains and bookshelves.

(2)  Insulating / black-out curtains; about £20 per window or door.  I bought one for every window and the front door, and hung them up behind the regular curtains.  Undetectable, and make a huge difference!

(3)  Magnetic strips!  I attached them to both the insulating curtains and the walls next to the windows/door.  On cold nights I press the strips on the curtains to the strips on the wall and hey presto! I have a tight fit that lets no draughts in!

(4)  Swinging curtain rod across front door; my front door opens into the parlour, so keeping heat in is essential.  At first I had a normal curtain rod with a curtain (an old wool blanket) above the door.  When I was inside, I pulled the curtain and this helped keep the heat in.  But since I can’t pull the curtain from the outside, the curtain remained pushed to the side and cold got in through the gaps in the doorframe.  Having considered the problem extensively, I bought a swinging curtain rod.  It is attached on the same side as the door hinge, just above the door.  The other, free-swing side, is attached to the door with a piece of string.  As the door moves, the curtain does.  As I pull the door close from the outside, the door curtain is also pulled against the door.  And voila, less heat escapes!

To be continued