Spilling onto the page

Just thinking

As we reach mid-December it strikes me that my time in France is coming to an end soon.

I could be panicking at my lack of achievements during this period, but I came here for time out, so I am not panicking.  I could be wracked with regret at the thought of leaving, but I love Auckland, and I am happy to return to family, friends and summer. In fact I cannot wait to hug Amy, who has discovered she is pregnant while I have been away, and Laura, who has signed a lease on an apartment in my complex and will now be my neighbour.  And of course I will hug my sons in law Eric and Jason too, and everyone else who gets within hugging distance for that matter.

But I am starting to feel the need to take stock, and I am conscious that I still have some thinking to do and decisions to make.  So watch out for that folks, because everything gets spilled on the page sooner or later.

Food

You develop a different attitude to food when out of your usual routine.  It will be obvious to everyone who knows me that food and I have a perilous relationship, although it has improved over the last few years.  I am pretty sure I inherited it from my mother, who to this day describes every social event she attends in terms of the food that was provided.  But I also have irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), a vague diagnosis of a digestive condition that plays havoc with the process of digestion and elimination.  It can be benign for long periods of time, is not food specific, and until I consciously decided to live with its effects without embarassment, all but destroyed my self confidence as a young woman.

I am not sure why I just told you that.  The state of my stomach from day to day remains even now one of the primary arbiters of my mood and activities.  Well now you know.

The point I am coming to is this.  French food is both wonderful and terrible.  Daily life here puts me in a continuous state of low level, barely acknowledged stress.  I am hardly conscious of this, but my digestive system is fully aware.  I knew this would be the case.  So for me, living here in this gastronomic wonderland, is interesting.  I do not want to miss out on anything, and I have never restricted the type foods that I eat.  There is no point when I am as likely to be struck out by a sandwich as a curry.  But eating is not the pleasure you might think it would be.

Add to that the reluctance to eat in restaurants alone, and the laziness one develops about cooking for just one person.  I do eat out alone sometimes, but generally prefer to save this for the times when I have visitors to entertain.  Cooking is intermittent, and I am missing the wide range of fresh foods I would be eating at home at this time of year.  The cheese and patisseries are superb here, but hardly a staple diet.  A baguette and whatever is in the fridge is a common evening meal.

But essentially all the food rules have gone out the window, and with them my interest in eating has significantly waned.  If I am alone, I find it more convenient to forget about lunch altogether.  Unlike a day in the office, when lunch looms like a welcome beacon to help get you through the day, there is no pressure to eat in the middle of a day that is unstructured.  Hunger is not a problem if I have had a proper breakfast.   Other days create their own eating pattern.  Today for example, I skipped breakfast in favour of being the first client at the beautician (they don’t take appointments).  Afterwards I decided to have dinner for lunch, and I am going to have breakfast for dinner.  The lunch in town turned out to be a flop, and so I am looking forward to dinner.

But the thing is, I am questioning the need for three meals a day, and wondering if my aging body and digestive tract can even cope with that anymore.  It seems to me that perhaps the social element of eating with others is what is important, and the rest of the time  not a great deal is actually required.  Interesting to see how this develops when I get home.

Television

I have always used tv as a means to relax.  I often do other things while I watch television, but it is my default  evening occupation, especially when home alone in the evening.  Day time television does not appeal to me, and even when home sick I do not bother to turn it on.  It took me a couple of weeks here to manage to switch the tv from the mind-numbing English language programmes it had been set to by my kind landlady, back to ordinary French tv.  But since then, I have watched exclusively in French, and breaking all past habits, I have it on in the background throughout the day.  This was a conscious decision in the vain hope it would improve my French.  I doubt that it has, but it does provide a cultural window.

In the evenings, if no one is staying with me, I knit and watch television.  I cannot follow what is being said, but I do know what is going on.  I find actual language comprehension is quite unnecessary to follow a crime show or most dramas.  Certainly it is superfluous for current affairs or nature programmes.  The news and weather are self explanatory by and large.  I do not know to what extent French day time television differs from ours, but it is quite similar in the evenings.

It goes like this.  Although there are many channels available even without going to pay tv, only a couple are ever worth watching.  In the morning, while I do my yoga and eat my breakfast, there are morning talk shows, regional round-ups, nature programmes and the  shopping channel.  David Attenborough dubbed in French loses his calming, all is well with the world tone, and is therefore a little disappointing.  In the evening there are the usual dramas, crime shows and entertainments.  There are versions of all the big hits.  France has Talent is on at the moment.

There is, however, a problem with the entertainment shows.  The problem is that France really does not have talent.  That is to say it probably does, but French popular music is so bad that it is hard to tell.  Last night I watched the final of French Dancing with the Stars.  All three couples scored perfect 10s across all categories in their second round.  How they determined the winner I have no idea.  On the weekend the French mourned the passing of Johnny Hallyday with an 8 hour special.  The man, who was a great entertainer, did literally hundreds of covers of great English and US songs, and produced a plethora of generally awful French songs.  Come back Edith Piaf.

A good half or more of the dramas are in fact dubbed versions of  English or US shows.  Watching the Vera crime series in French is quite an experience, but I have found pretending it is set in Brittany helps.  What is extraordinarily good here, and totally lacking on NZ television, is in depth current affairs reporting.  They do not hesitate to spend time and money on first hand investigation, and two hour documentaries on topics as diverse as poor quality housing, the fraudulent claims of big brand garment manufacturers as to product origins, and the underlying causes of diabetes are common.  And riveting, even in French that I cannot understand.

Christmas decorations

The glacial speed at which Christmas decorations are going up is fascinating me.  Given that my daughter is a merchandiser at Smith & Caughey where Christmas starts in October, I find it astounding that in mid-December Aix is not fully decorated.  It is not that it does not have decorations.  They have been appearing since late November with the arrival of the Christmas markets in Cours Mirabeau.  But every day I wander around and see the Council men on trucks still putting up more.  I don’t know where it will end.  And assuming they finish by Christmas Day, when will they all come down again?  It is a mystery to me.  But here is a little of what is up so far.

Ok, ok … next episode in Grandma story next time, I promise.