A Sunday in Paris

We venture into Paris each weekend, for the cultural edification of our English exchange student (otherwise we would be at home, doing the garden, decorating, continuing on our epic saga "Requesting Planning Permission for improving our Gate 3" writing letters of complaint and calling in guarantees on broken electrical goods etc).

Today We went to Saint-Paul "Marais" (marais means 'marsh, it was originally reclaimed marshland) on Metro 1, and walked to rue des Rosiers,  sat outside a baker/delicatessen in the SUN (a rare day) and ate savoury strudel (finely chopped courgettes, eggs and goats cheese with carraway seeds, according to my taste buds), aubergine caviar, vine leaves stuffed with rice, potato latke, cheesecake, apple and red fruit strudels, really really good.  (I deliberately miss the bit where R moaned vigorously about everything.  Continually.  Even though he was bought off with a can of coke).

Delicious fare...truly madly excellent food and service, loved it

We peered in the window of the Chocolatier Georges Larnicol  where you can buy chocolate red stiletto shoes filled with multi-coloured macaroons for 30 Euros.

Yes, it's all chocolate;  Chocolatier Georges Larnicol

So we went to Starbucks for coffee at Rs "request"  where he had a vanilla frappaccino without coffee and a dose of expresso to pour over the vanilla frappuccino but he changed his mind and didn't use the coffee, even though I had had to go through a Harry Met Sally salad routine to get it customised just how he thought he liked it.     Then he wanted to go home.  We forced him to walk with us to the Beaubourg, the moaning reached catastrophic levels and was accompanied by tears but I do not dwell on this.

Designer fountains, Beaubourg  

Impromtu amphitheatre in the Place Georges Pompidou

There we watched someone doing football dancing and in the impromptu amphitheatre in front of the Centre George Pompidou we sat on the sloping cobbles which had been sun-warmed and watched an etremely talented and well-built clown do a sketch where he pretended to be a director shooting a scene from a film, using volunteers from the audience.

After this R and B went home and JC and S and I walked on and shopped in a discount book shop (2 Euros for a book on Provençale Cooking which included 2 recipes for blette, the largely inedible swiss chard which is one of the only things that grows really well in our garden), paused at the Parc de la Tour St Jacques, a starting place for the Perilinage de St Jacques de St Compostelle (St James of Compostella to us), and on past the flower market lit up with strings of orchids of every colour and pattern,

Strings of orchids at the Marche aux Fleurs

past Notre Dame, paused at the Square Jean XXIII where  a jazz band performing on the bandstand  had a look at the bridge with lots of padlocks attached (Pont de l'Archevêché)  and onto the Pont St Louis where we paused to admire more street performers, and once on the Isle Saint Louis where we had the best ice cream in France (and I contend, the world) at Bertillon.

Verily the best ice cream in France (if not the world?)

 I had one ball of caramel and ginger, and one of banana.  And then we admired all the buildings and the wonderful roof profiles, and the bridges and bought a 2nd hand book from one of the dark green wooden boxes attached to the railings, and then, we went home.

Strange Doctor Encounters

I have a strange karmic relationship with the medical profession, and I seemed to have passed it on to my son by proxy.  Whenever I'm ill, by the time I've finally and begrudgingly hauled myself to the Quack's (having put on make-up and dressed carefully so as not to look ill) I'm already feeling better, and by the end of the consultation I can't remember why I went in the first place and pause to place the prescription in the bin on the way out.

Following an illness where he had 38 degrees of fever for one day, B still had a slight sore throat 2 weeks later and complained of being tired.   I peered down his throat with a bicycle lamp and was horrified to see horrible bulging red lumps the size and shape of neurofen caplets coating the back of his throat.  For three days I insisted he gargle with cider vinegar, spray propolis at the back of this throat, take 500mg vitamin C and Vitamin D, drink Kombucha suck echinacea and grapefruit seed oil pastilles at all times in between,  but on the 3rd day the blobs were as bad as ever and I realised I would have to take B to meet our Doctor, 'Mad Dog' Bastille, because if it was untreated strep throat all sorts of complications might set in.

'Mad Dog' Bastille works from home, his deaf tom-cat sleeps on the windowsill inside the front door and sometimes does the rounds in the waiting room, and his wife shouts 'Bonjour' from the kitchen and sometimes interrupts consultations for domestic reasons.  The chemist tells me 'he is at least 14 years past retirement' and sends her antiquated prescriptions,  but I like him and choose him above so called competent modern doctors who are not deaf and forgetful.  He never remembers my name, or anything about my past (something which I appreciate) he has large comforting ears, a benign sense of humour, always has a tale to tell and his latest theory to share.  I always feel better once I've seen him, and often leave with tears of laughter streaming down my face.

While I parked the car B went in and by the time I got to the consultation room, he was Cured.  'Tell all your friends to come and see Dr Bastille' said Dr Bastille as he wheezed his way back to his chair,  'Instant cure guaranteed!".    I huffed and puffed and disbelieved this so much that Dr B passed me his lamp (one designed for peering in ears) and invited me to look for myself.  Apart from a few red marks, everything had disappeared.  We had a good laugh about this and he said he would write a prescription for a swab and analysis to reassure the mother, suggested that the battery of alternative products may have provoked an allergy, refused to believe that the blobs were there before the products, and moved on to his favourite subjects of conversation;  his eccentric and successful family members, the Revolution (disgraceful) the British Royal Family (hurrah), what B's ambitions were for the future and anything else that sprang to mind until I had to put a halt to it all to go and collect our  English exchange student from school.

Rafting

They go Rafting

Getting in...

The young in wetsuits bob off hugging the rubber sides;  one will fall into the living flow, one will jump off, one will jump five metres down into it for the hell and the heaven of it and be rescued by ropes.  The raft will spin and jump high and plunge under and sail over rapids.  Feet will be waterlogged and numb, and the rafters will grow to love the river and their raft mates for a moment or two.

Falling in...

Hurried goodbye...

Setting off...

...for the open river...

Our Trusty Heros

Rafting KAYAK CLUB à SOUEIX Ariege Pyrenees,

Paris: Manifestation

The French love a good manifestation...

We took our English exchange student S to see the Eiffel Tower where we got a birdseye view of Paris, and also a birdseye view of another French classic;  la manifestation;  that is people take to the streets shout NON about something and wave flags, blow trumpets and bang drums, traffic is stopped and a vast police presence is called for.

French manifestation;  when people take to the streets shout NON about something, wave flags, blow trumpets and bang drums

Great stock is taken of a demonstration which is thought to be a good indication of what the People think and has been known to topple governments.     This one was superbly orchestrated;  participants wearing shocking pink and shocking blue which showed up a treat from the air and made the assembled throng instantly recognisable.    They had small groups planted all over central Paris, then then the ant trails merged into one big ant hill aux Invalides - one million according to organisers.

We went right to the top for 14 Euros, where we were on a level with the helicopter which must have taken this picture

I love climbing the Eiffel Tower, the view never fails to breath-take.

Looking towards La Defense and beyond it, home...

Outside Musee D'Architecture, view Eiffel Tower

The urge to climb the walls...

 The last time I went to the Eiffel Tower,  R was two and spent the entire trip scrambling out of his McClarens and scaling the safety fences and consequently I spent the entire visit with him in an elbow lock dragging him back to the walkway,  while the wind howled and tore at our clothing, and I vowed never  to go back with him to the Eiffel Tower until he was at least 20, a vow which I have kept so far, 8 years to go.  However S was very pleasant company.

Getting Your Bacon in France

CUNNING "FRANGLAIS COOKING" BACON TIP you will find this hard to believe but tasting is believing!

After over 15 years of being largely deprived of bacon it took a French woman from Alsace to share with me acunning and simple method to achieve English style bacon on demand, without the expense, delays and difficulties of importing from England.

Take some ham, (eg jambon de Paris) and fry it gently, serve with your egg;  looks like bacon, smells like bacon, tastes like bacon - and no watery bits or bothersome rind.  Also works with 'roti de porc', and for a different taste,  'raw' ham  eg (jambon de Bayonne), a bit of a waste, but if you've got some to use up...

15 years of deprivation...for nothing!  tchshhhniya

Franglais Cooking; lemon mousse recipe

FRANGLAIS  LEMON  MOUSSE

A creamy mousse, could be called une crème au citron

I have developed a Franglais style of cooking, using ingredients that can be found here in France, yet pandering to my English taste and tendencies.

Easy lemon mousse, Franglais style

Until recently I was unable to buy pots of lemon mousse;  for some reason the French only sell chocolate, coffee or vanilla (with chestnut in season).  This has caused me a certain amount of frustration over the years.  Just recently big business has introduced it to our supermarkets, but I'm not keen on industrialised food in terms of health, taste and morality, and also you never know when things will be unintroduced.  For example Lindt introduced a lemon meringue chocolate to French supermarkets.  I was ecstatic, at last an alternative to praline, and fruit with milk chocolate (here the limited supply of fruit centred chocs limit themselves to plain chocolate which I don't like).  But this trial presumably revealed that the French preferred to stick to their bally old praline, so Lindt withdrew it.   With this sort of experience, I decided to make myself independent with my own easy recipes, satisfaction guaranteed.  

FRANGLAIS LEMON MOUSSE RECIPE
Ingredients, collect together:

Ingredients; 1 lemon, 2 eggs, creme fraiche, petits suisses, sugar

Pot of creme fraiche, good and firm (try local market, or good health food shop, not watery fluffy stuff in supermarkets)

6 petit suisses (nature)

One lemon and a good zest grater (I'm glad I invested, I use it constantly)

Sugar

2 eggs

Method
The wonderful thing about creme fraiche is that you don't have to whip it, and the petits suisses are also good and solid, so take 3 large dollopy dessert spoons of the creme fraiche and 5 petit suisses and mix them together in a bowl with 4 dessert spoons of sugar (you can add more if not sweet enough).  Juice half a juicy lemon, or a whole not so juicy lemon and add, along with the zest of the whole lemon.

Separate the eggs and whisk the whites into peaks, and fold in to mixture.  VOILA!

"Les Profs"; portrait of a failing nation

As part of our English exchange student's cultural education (well it has been pouring with rain for the month since his arrival) we took him to the cinema to see 'Les Profs' a film of a cartoon which bears the same name, which promised to wise him up to the realities of French education.

The producers had the 'witty' idea of combining atrocious cartoon-book violence with realism;  that is real actors, only mildly exaggerating the real situation in French Lycée.   The acting of the students was particularly convincing;    the mass obedience, lip biting in the face of abuse; lip curling of ineffectual rebellion, severe trauma in the face of extreme physical and mental violence - it was like watching child abuse whilst struggling to emit a lame laugh.

The film also extolled the anti -virtues of:

Racism (eg:  jokes about cous-cous and pulling at a student's afro hair and shouting 'take off that wig')
Sexism (eg:  a teacher whose sole attribute was to dress pornographically and cause all red blooded males to drop their jaws and fall backwards off their chairs)
Violence, physical, mental, group, all unchallenged and pointless
Defeatism
Dishonesty
Sadism
Theft
Substance abuse in school (legal and illegal)
Helplessness in the face of utterly immoral absolute power (School Inspector, Authorities)

There were no actual virtues and no heros and everyone was dragged down together.  Things only turned around when one of the defeatist anti heros decides not to walk out (the promise of love with a ravishing German teacher persuaded him to stay) and instead climbs onto the roof clutching a Napolean hat, where he leaves the audience guessing;  is he going to  throw himself off, or rally the troups, pourquoi pas?  He decides to rally the troups (I think) by declaring 'Nous sommes tous nuls...Ensemble!'  (We are all stupid, useless failures utterly lacking talent of any kind...together).

The school then rallied, for reasons which aren't entirely clear to me as an Englishwoman, and achieved success (measured statistically) by raising their exam pass rate from 3 to 50 percent.  Any other aspects of what one might call 'education' were studiously ignored, and the possibility of an 'alternative' pedagogy rendered risible.

The joyous climax - the absutely 'nul' (stupid useless failure etc) student who had failed his Bac for 3 years running was thrown out of the school by the Powers on High (school informed by letter) which meant the school achieved a 50 percent pass rate, whereas with him still on the books it would have been 49 (this is all about figures not fairness).

Then the 'bad' teachers refused to accept transfer to the Cote d'Azure which they had been offered as a reward for raising the pass rate from 3 to 50 percent, and said that 50 percent could be improved on and they would stay on at the school to finish their duty.    Then teachers and pupils did a wild rap dance in the playground, filmed from above, The End

Surely the audience would be left flat I thought.  Not at all, the cinema was full to capacity, people were sitting in the aisles (where were the usherettes, the health and safety standards,  the social responsibility of the audience to shove up and give them a seat?) 8 showings a day, and the audience gave a standing ovation.  The French must be really desperate for education therapy.