All around the houses

I have yet to find a phrase in French to express 'all around the houses.'

A very nice man in the office of the Greffe de la Tribunal la la la la la used the phrase 'vous avez baladé' which touches on it but doesn't quite capture the frustration and futility.

Let me explain. I need to declare my earnings from last year. To do this, I must register my activité and get the ball rolling. Once I have done this, someone will send me my Siret or Siren number (no idea what the difference is but I don't think it matters) which I can then put on my declaration des revenus and all shall be well.

Simple, providing you can find the right place to register.

So far we have been to five different offices, all in different towns at least 30 - 40 minutes drive from home (in opposite directions). At each encounter, we have been met with much scratching of heads. Finally, we found a helpful young lady in the Centre de Impôts in St Brieuc who directed us to the nice man I mentioned above.

He, it turned out, is not the right person either but he did at least have the right form for us to fill in and furnished us with the address of the office we should deliver it to. In St Malo. A brief look at a map will tell you that St Brieuc and St Malo are approximately 100 km apart.

You can see why I am searching for a French equivalent to 'all around the houses'.

Lolita

We have acquired a donkey.

I have long hankered after one but never thought I would ever actually own one.

Lolita comes to us with a bit of a sad history from a family who can no longer keep her due to ill health.

She is utterly lovely and I am in awe of her.

She's way stronger than me and could break my toe just by stepping on it. She has huge teeth and a proclivity for nibbling pockets and sleeves, presumably in search of edible morsels, but you never know.

As I was leaving, she followed me up the field and gave me a hearty nudge on the bottom. I am taking it as a gesture of friendship. I have learnt from the screeds of information I gathered on the internet these last few weeks, that donkeys communicate with each through nudges and shoves.

I hope we learn to be friends very soon. I'll keep you posted!

New Life

I am beginning to grow things.

As mentioned in earlier posts, gardening is not my forte, but I yearn for things to be burgeoning around me and to be instrumental in their blossoming.

To whit, I bought some dirt cheap mini hothouses from Lidl (in effect a plastic lid over an average seed tray) and have planted some seeds.

I don't have any suitable windowsills, so they are sitting on the worktop, next to the kitchen sink. It is inconvenient for them to be right under my elbow as I wash up, but it does mean I can't forget them.

For a week or so I have been gently watering them and mopping away the condensation. The basil have thrust into the light with vigour, waving intense green leaflets at me and bending this way and that towards the sunshine.

The chillies are more reticent. But yesterday I spied a tiny white frond, still curled into the soil, arching its back into the daylight.

I feel peculiarly maternal towards it. I have examined it several times in the intervening twenty four hours and am delighted to report that the tiny green specs of the first leaves are just visible. It is so exciting.

Elsewhere, other things are obliging me by growing. A while back I planted some tulip bulbs I found at the back of the cupboard. I have watched them impatiently as they labouriously pushed up their long green leaves. Its taken them weeks and I was giving up hope of ever seeing an actual bloom. Everyone else's tulips are just about over, having given a marvellous display in the spring sunshine. Mine are pillywally. The two or three flowers that are just now unfurling look drained of colour. It probably as a result of having spent many seasons at the back of a cupboard.

All this makes me grow bold and I have purchased more bulbs from Lidl. I have put a few tubers in the ground, although I have forgotten what and where they are. I am working on the theory that they will surprise me when they arrive. The strawberry plants I bought from a nice lady on the market are thriving despite the fact that the cat has upended them on more than one occasion. I am guessing that cat poo is a good fertiliser as they are showing signs of fruit already. Not too sure I shall want to eat it though.

Z is for Zen and the art of living in France

It has been just over a year since we came here to live and the magic is still very much alive.

Granted we are blessed to be living in a particularly lovely corner of France, but even without rose tinted spectacles, the positive aspects of life here far outweigh the negatives.

Plenty of expats will spin you stories of interminable red tape and inflexible bureaucracy. A plethora of fora (or is that forums?) has sprung up, affording the disgruntled and jaded the opportunity to moan about shortcomings of the French way of life.

My feeling is that in being here we have chosen this life. Granted, we can't vote so have no power to change the status quo. But we can practise the gentle art of gratefulness. We can appreciate the slower pace of life; enjoy the finer points of French cuisine and wine; participate in the community around us.

Zen may appear to be a cop out in the search for a topic beginning with Z, but I actually believe that to benefit fully from this life in France, we must be detached from the potential frustrations and focus on the joys of the French way of life. Acceptance brings peace and in the true spirit of Zen practice, observation brings understanding.

I hope my 27 observations this month have enlightened you a little and given you a taste of this life in France.

Post script: Z is also for Zut!

I cannot pass by Z without at least a brief reference to that marvellous word - Zut!

As expressive as any of our more vulgar anglo saxon expletives, it captures perfectly every moment of frustration or disgruntlement.

And it's not even rude. How cool is that?

Zut alors!

Y is for Y

Y. The shortest word in the French language and yet so very, very useful.

Y means 'here', or 'there'. It means 'of them', 'of it', 'of whatever it is you are talking about.'

Who would have thought such a little, one letter word would have such far reaching consequences?

"How many biscuits are there?" "Il y en a trois." I rest my case.

X is for XL

I am a big bird. I always have been.

One of the things I admire about French women is their sveltesse, their élégance.

It is probably true to say that the majority of French women are still slender. I say still, because I have noticed a marked increase in the last ten years in the number of overweight French women.

When I first started coming here for holidays, any fat woman would be guaranteed to be either British, American or German. Or sometimes Belgian. Now, if you spot a lady with a bit of avoirdupois, she is just as likely to be French. (This is not a sexist observation; there have been porky French men since forever.)

There is a marked difference in attitude to food amongst the girls we have staying here from the boys. Rarely will a boy shun a biscuit or dessert (though I have had some pretty faddy male eaters). But the girls are nearly 90% guaranteed to make a fuss about anything that might be perceived as 'fattening'. I know this is probably the case all over the Western world, but it is interesting to observe that the girls with legs like sparrows whose mothers are slender and élégante eat like sparrows too.

Macdonalds here highlights something too. Where franchises elsewhere in the world are maxing it up and offering bigger and bigger portions, the French version scales it down. There is a whole section of the menu devoted to petite faim and the children's happy meal has a compulsory bag of fruit or compote. They used to do a goats cheese wrap (sadly no longer on offer) and the petite salade comes with a hazelnut oil dressing.

The increase in the girth of many French women has brought one advantage. Years ago I would walk into a boutique to be greeted by a gazelle in thigh length leather boots, appraising my generous form with one haughty glance and declaring there to be nothing in my size in the store. Now at least, there is more available for ladies like me. And I notice the XL is no longer just big enough for an eight year old girl; it is slowly growing to meet the increasing demand.