It’s so quiet here today.
Leona and I have just been up the road to the local café and it was about as calm a lunchtime session as I can remember. A couple of coffees and a nice chat. I suppose that’s one of the reasons we chose to come and live here!
Of course, the sun was shining. This part of France always gets more than its fair share of bright days, although today, for the first time in a goodly while, it wasn’t warm in the shade.
Now, I’m back in the house and ready to post the latest Merrie England strip! And remember, I’m posting enough strips to give you the recent story line, so the one furthest down is the latest and the ones at the top have already been posted before.
The story so far…
As you can see, Brother Ralph is The Abbot’s gopher and as the story develops, you’ll see him running back and forth on various errands and tasks.
Now for a little story from France.
As usual, it’s about getting the words wrong.
There are those people out there who think that the French hate us English. Honestly, they really do. These types see the French as truculent chauvinists who sneer at anything English.
But it’s just wrong.
What the French can’t stand is English people - and it is usually the English rather than the Scots, Northern Irish and Welsh - behaving in a superior way and insisting that actually, everyone else is the foreigner. I’ve actually met English people like this. They truly believe that everywhere in the world, the English are at home and everyone else is a foreigner.
The greatest victims of this portable arrogance are those who work in hospitality. Hamstrung as they are in their need to remain polite and welcoming without ever responding in anger or pride, they have to smile patiently as the English tourist shouts his or her request loudly, often at a distance of less than a metre. Or yard, as our English tourist would prefer. It doesn’t seem to occur to them that if they offend the person who is to bring their food or drink for them, they are leaving themselves wide open to being fed something that really isn’t quite intended with the best sentiments.
Now, I don’t intend to embark on one of those nauseating tales in which the unsuspecting tourist is fed something unspeakably foul, something that would not be edible except perhaps by an adenoidal four-year-old boy with no handkerchief. No, nothing like that, I assure you. But the enraged but quietly smiling French waiter has other weapons at his command..
I am thinking of a lunch I once had in Martel, a quiet medieval town in the Lot department here in France. The day was ablaze with humid sunshine, perhaps around 30 degrees. (That would be in the high 80s for those more used to fahrenheit.)
The sun being almost directly above, there was practically no respite from the heat, so my wife and I - that’s my first wife, not the newest one - decided that lunch might be a good idea, less for the food and more for the prospect of something liquid and charged with plenty of ice.
Once inside, I addressed the waiter, a corpulent ball of eager hospitality and asked him for a table for two. I must have got it right, as he ushered us to a lovely spot by a huge open window, offering a view of the town square below.
This square had just entertained us with its bright and vibrant market. Again, it had been a pleasure to look at the stallholders’ wares if only to stand for a minute or two in the shade. From my vantage point, I could see below me the African chap with all the products made out of cork. It’s surprising what you can make out of cork and this stall was piled high with every type of bag, container, wristband, bangle, spectacle case, pencil case, espadrille, belt, ball pen and a thousand other examples of ingenious craft and dexterity.
I had remarked to my wife, knowledgably, of course, that it was a wonder what people could make with cork. It’s so versatile, strong, attractive and natural. However, I had made a great error, in my ignorance. An error which would soon render me unspeakably foolish.
As we had stood marvelling at these hand-made goods, the stallholder had come up on my elbow, smiling and offering to explain anything I wanted to know.
I beamed at him and said,”What do you call this material?” I said it in French, of course. No “shouting at foreigners” for me! Oh, no..
He had told me that it was called “cochonnet” and so I was now delighted that I had learned another new word. After all, learn a new word every day and you’re very soon almost a native speaker.
As we sat at the table perusing the menu, I was still thinking about this new word, the word that meant “cork”…
I could tell you the whole tale of the meal but in truth, it’s not the point of the story, really. The point is about language and assumptions.
We ordered our food and accepted the proprietor’s advice for the wine, a tasty red from the local area. We chatted a while, me struggling along with my halting French, and the afternoon took a more friendly and convivial turn.
As we neared the end of the meal, the proprietor asked me if I was Irish. I explained that I was English but that my mother was half Irish and that that would probably account for my foxy hair colour and pallid complexion. He seemed quite surprised and immediately slipped into perfect English, albeit with a very charming French accent.
”Oh, yes, I speak English,” he confided, picking up a few crumbs from the tablecloth with a clever roller-type gadget. “In fact,” he smiled, “I lived for several years near to Twickenham, which was great for the rugby.”
I complemented him on his English, which really was close to faultless. He sat down in an unoccopied chair at our table and watched us sipping at our wine.
”I don’t usually let on that I speak English. Not at first, anyway. I wait to see if the customer is one of those who just shouts rudely in English.”
I said that I knew the type.
”If you had been rude, the meal would have been quite different.” he said. “It’s a very hot day, so I would have recommended all the things that are full of fat. Greasy food is terrible to eat on a hot day but it’s great fun to get your revenge on the rude client with a smile on your face. You would have eaten a duck stew, I think, or a fat pork cutlet.”
I must have laughed and he started laughing, too. He liked to laugh, that much was obvious.
”In those situations, when I have inflicted misery on the little Englishman, I let him struggle to make me understand, all the while understanding everything he’s saying to his wife about this stupid frog who can’t understand the simplest thing. Then, after he has paid the bill - and only after - I reply in perfect English, saying, ‘Thank you very much for your custom. I hope you enjoy your time here in France’. It’s just so funny. So, you see, serving fatty food on a hot day to an arrogant Englishman really does disprove that old saying about revenge being best served cold!”
He was so pleased with his story and I must say that we thought it was a hoot, too. Time was moving on, though, and so I thought it best that we pay up. The only trouble was that we had only drunk half the wine. I was thinking that it was a shame to waste it and then it hit me: I could use my new word!
I summoned up my best French, confident in a perfect end to a joyful lunchtime interlude. I managed to get my new word in as well, as I said that we would have to leave but would take the rest of the wine with us if he would be so kind as to put its “cochonnet” - its cork, of course - back into the neck of the bottle.
He looked at me in silence. It was as if he had a question mark above his head. “You know, the cochonnet,” I said, pointing at the table in mounting unease. He looked blankly at me. “Cochonnet?” he said, his hands now spread out in confusion.
I picked up the corkscrew from the tablecloth. It still had the cork on it. I pointed..
Well. I thought he would burst. I really did. He spluttered like a pressure cooker and eventually bent double in quivering silence. Then he just roared. He laughed like a man about to explode. He couldn’t get the laugh out fast enough and he went purple.
I stood uselessly, waiting for him to subside.
Then, he picked up the corkscrew and put his index finger on the cork, looking at me and still barely controlling himself. “You call this a little pig?” he gasped, a tear on his cheek.
”No, it’s a cork”.
”That’s right,” he wheezed.
”I got the word from that African chap selling the cork products in the market below,” I offered, by way of excusing my idiocy and hoping to blame the stallholder. He went and looked out the window.
”They are selling leather. No, not leather,” he said, correcting himself with a finger raised triumphantly. “Pigskin!”
And so, dear reader, I had been undone by my own ignorance. I had looked at pigskin and seen cork, resulting in a great and funny misunderstanding.
Even today, if you go to Portugal, you will find shop after shop selling cork products just as that stall holder was. And they look just like his stuff. Honestly, pigskin looks like cork.
It does, I tell you!
Thanks for reading this to the end and I’ll be delighted if you’d like to comment. Perhaps you’ve embarrassed yourself trying to speak a foreign language? Let me know. Maybe I can make it into a cartoon..?