French people based on my interactions to date are as friendly as anyone anywhere. Walking around our little town most people greet with a ‘bonjour’. The supermarket assistants are consistent across different stores at wishing one, ‘une belle journeé’. They have the friendliness of the financially secure, call it euro-friendliness, observable also in Ireland and other prosperous nations: we greet our fellow travellers on the journey of life, other well fed and watered good souls who need nothing from you and ask for nothing but a moment or two of human companionship. Where are all the rude French people I’d been forewarned about? Now the locals tell me that this area is particularly friendly but still? It is clear enough to me, even if I am unclear as to its delineation, that the French have been the subject of a character hit job by the English speaking world. Their battlefield losses in WW2, following on from a 19th century in which they had played second fiddle to Britain after the battlefield losses of the Napoleonic wars, had set the platform upon which was built an edifice of post WW2 derision, and I suspect wilful miscomprehension. What is it about the French that makes the British particularly but more broadly all the English speaking countries including Ireland need to put the boot in and denigrate. The ‘surrender monkeys’ of the Gulf War get under the anglo skin. And somewhere in the French psyche I am pretty sure this trauma is reciprocated, after all they too had an empire, still do in fact, and the words, ‘amour propre’, are as French as madeleines. A question I ask myself is: are the French more traumatised by their history with the Germans or with the British? I realise that the very question is Anglo centric. The French psyche is one I Iook forward to probing, for I sense reflected in it will be some insight into my own. Everyday is a school day. And the interesting interaction between host and guest, between immigrant and host country, which leads often to a version of Stockholm syndrome where the pervasive occupations of a place and people are adopted wholesale by the interloper, or its opposite, whereby the new boy in town offsets his disquiet at being a traveling supplicant for shelter, food, and visa by denigrating the mores and modes of the place he chooses. Nothing is straightforward when it comes to humans, heck, it’s not even straightforward when it comes to canines, those four-legged creatures, who when compared to cats, are typically characterised as loyal and true. They have their own preoccupations, with other dogs with humans and with their condition of dependance on and worship of another species, it’s a dog’s life.
This morning as I walked the canal I came across a group of fisher people sitting on plastic chairs under the sun drinking wine at 10 in the morning, ah, la France. I’d seen them before on a previous weekend and they greeted me as an acquaintance of these parts. They invited me to join them for a glass of rose. I did. We talked about the dogs and the weather and the fishing. It is the 25th of March and according to my new friends it feels like May, such is the heat. I got to try out a French sentence I acquired last night, the way to say, ‘I’ve been here for a month’. The Google search led me to a page explaining the different usages of ‘depuis’, ‘pendant’ and ‘pour’. The article correctly pointed out that English speakers speaking French overuse, ‘pour’, as to our ears it seems the most direct equivalent of ‘for’. What I learned and applied today was how ‘depuis’ plus the present tense equates in French to our old trusty structure ‘have been doing…’ in English. Thus, ‘je suis ici depuis un mois’ equals ‘I’ve been here for a month’. J’étudie Français depuis deux ans equals I’ve been studying French for two years. Trés handy. So I dropped that into my conversation with the fisher folk and I do believe the woman at the table who was mostly concentrated on her phone and not the least interested in the charming Irish man had her ears perk up on hearing a correct and reasonably well enunciated French sentence from an unlikely source.
France is being racked by worker strikes and demonstrations, some violent, against retirement age reforms pushed through by Pres. Macron. It’s not something I’ve come up against in any magnitude. I think we passed by a trade union demo in Avignon and I heard that there was a shortage of petrol and diesel at filling stations, but that’s it. The analysis appears to be that France is in some danger of pulling itself apart. The scenes I saw yesterday of two sides battling across a flat field had an almost medieval flavour to it, as if I was watching a reenactment of Agincourt, with lines of police vehicles, some on fire, being repeatedly charged by groups kitted out in helmets, masks, scarfs, googles, black clothing and day backpacks. The reportage claimed that groups from outside of France, primarily Italy, had arrived to bolster the more militant sections of the demonstrators. It did look quite structured, quite organised, like for neither side was it their first rodeo, their first encounter. Both sides seemed to know what to expect from the other and set up accordingly. It was this ‘staginess’ that induced the resemblance to medieval warfare, not as medieval warfare truly was, for how would I know?, but as it is depicted in movies with generals supervising a pitched battle from a commanding and secure height. The violence is shocking and some of the footage I’ve seen of the French police is disturbing, protestors being beaten with batons in never a good look for the upholders of the law in a democracy. France’s decades long effort to ‘reform the retirement system’ is something I was aware of before coming here. It is the emblematic battle that is proffered as evidence that France politically is irredeemable, that reform is impossible, and that France will continue its decline as an economic power. The image of the aggressive striker dumping rubbish on the lawns of politicians and burning buses, forcing the government of the day to back down on reforms urged by gatekeepers of sound macro financial policies such as the IMF, has been for a long time exhibit A in the case prosecuted by Anglo-Saxon commentators that France is a hot economic mess. And they are right. Raising the retirement age from 62 to 64, when compared to other European countries, is not a radical step. Enactment will merely reduce the gap between the higher retirement age in peer countries and France.
Along with watching footage of demonstrations I’ve also been watching football on TV. Qualification for the next Euro finals has begun, and over the last week France has played two games, against Netherlands and Ireland. The Netherlands game was at home for for the French. They won 4 – 0 and such a commanding win against a respected rival prompted scenes of contented celebration, of a job well done, and what struck me about it, as I watched it on TV, was how united and happy the multi-cultural, multi-racial French team appeared to be. These were confident young men from a confident country. It leaves me with plenty to ponder as I am forced to grapple with the ugly term, Anglo-Saxon, and what in the name of all that is merciful and kind it means for me, an Irish man in my fifties.
Price du jour
Baguette €0.59 Super U