La gastronomie - encore une fois.

Mais qu'est-ce que c'est que ça?

Caption competition!

 The B.B.C. reported, as a trade delegation was sent to Paris this week, that British food exports to France have doubled since the year 2000.  To investigate this matter, a scheme of the utmost audacity was executed. The B.B.C. loitered outside the Louvre with Scotch eggs, cheese and pickle sandwiches and Bakewell tarts, offered them to a random sample of citizens of the République Française and filmed their responses.

I have two questions:

a "Trianon".  I think Alain Gié ought to be canonised!

1)  Were the interviewees merely being polite?  After all, as I have mentioned once or twice, the French are accustomed to, and indeed expect, dishes which it is beyond the English even to describe, let alone forge.  The image to the right shows an example:  click for a double portion. 

The result of a gathering of English people

2)   Actually, what am I saying?  I am rather partial to a Bakewell tart!  Why could they not have conducted this experiment a week ago?   I was at this very spot with a good friend, who was visiting.  We were soaked in accordance with the ubi Anglorum ibi pluvia rule, but it was no hardship that a cheese and pickle sandwich, prepared by the B.B.C. no less, could not have eased substantially.  Students are always hungry!

The good friend (Edward), who has hopefully dried off by now, is spending his year abroad as a language assistant in Reims (N.E. of Paris).  He blogs prolifically and much less ponderously here.  It is remarkable how different our year abroad arrangements are to each other, though neither will have been less profoundly formative than the other  for it.

Quelquefois, Cambridge me manque...

One of the many things which make me miss Cambridge sometimes:

The glorious Collegium Regale Te Deum and Jubilate (or the Morning Canticles) by Herbert Howells - he of the Hymnus Paradisi from whose Proms performance I am still reeling - will be sung at Matins in their namesake King's College Chapel at 10.30 a.m. this Sunday, the 21st.  They will sound just as magnificent as the above.  I will be sorry not to be there, but perhaps I have enough blessings!  If you do not have time for the whole video, make some at least for the almighty finale of the Te Deum (O LORD, IN THEE HAVE I TRUSTED: LET ME NEVER BE CONFOUNDED ! ! ! ! !) - from 7 minutes and 20 seconds onwards, and make sure to fasten everything around you securely to the ground.

As if this were not treat enough for the congregation, the Organ Postlude will be Crown Imperial by William Walton.

Bonjour / bonsoir

I am surely not the only Anglophone to have agonised over this gravely important question: when does evening begin in France? In our eagerness to dispense with formalities in ordinary conversation, we English speakers have allowed 'Good evening' or the constabulary 'Evenin' all' to decline in favour of the temporally neutral 'Hello', 'Can I help?' or 'Yo wassup?'.

The French remain refined in this matter, as is to be expected. The first choice to be made upon greeting somebody is to distinguish between day bonjour and evening bonsoir (I acknowledge the exception of the informal salut). I, the hapless anglais, have watched the advent of eventide with trepidation. What if, I ask myself, in this grey area between four and seven, I have to converse with someone? What if I am obliged to begin the exchange? What if, after the exertion of making this decision, all my French vocabulary evaporates again?

It's that time of day / evening again...

I have set off with bonjour at five and received bonsoir in reply. My consequently supremely confident bonsoir at six has been met with a bemused bonjour. I wondered whether evening was determined by the illumination of the Tour Eiffel. A bonsoir in broad daylight put paid to that theory. What difficult waters grey areas are.

Then, as I sought my daily bread one day / evening, the answer was revealed. The boulangère - whose vocation is so noble that she must be right - greeted me with bonjour, and then the gentleman after me with bonsoir. This, I understood at once, thunderstruck, was the moment of truth. The time! What was the time‽ (not easy to check when laden with bread). Dear reader, I can disclose the French nation's second most closely guarded secret, after the supernatural secret ingredient of the baguette: the official time at which bonsoir replaces bonjour is fifty-seven minutes and twenty-three seconds past five o'clock. I shall go forth with a greater spring in my step.

C'est parti!

First floor, centre Censier (Sorbonne Nouvelle)

Lectures and seminars have just set off at full steam, in full-speed French, and full of knowledge, at the Sorbonne Nouvelle.  In my folly, I had believed that my capabilities in French were already being healthily stretched, but, as it turns out, this was only a prelude.  Seminars last for at least ninety minutes and sometimes for as long as three hours, and the lecturers make no linguistic concession to foreign students.  I feel like a 2CV at Le Mans as I try to block out the booming lecturer next door (in English, of all languages!), to figure out what that was that came after 'Il faut absolument...' or 'Vous êtes obligés de...',  and to conceal the steam hissing from my ears!   In comparison to one-hour lectures generally delivered in English - and here come two words which are, with good reason, not usually juxtaposed - Cambridge seems almost easy.  (The word 'almost' is important).  The apparent confusion of some of the French students is some consolation, although turning to ask me if I understood does not improve matters!

It must be added, even in the midst of the madness, that this is how it ought to be.  Among the very important things which this year abroad is designed to teach me (by fire, it seems), and which I must learn now if I am ever to do so, is the true and authentic use of French.  If this be at ninety miles an hour (perhaps I mean 144,8 kilomètres par heure), I must say 'So be it' through gritted teeth!

At any rate, if henceforward there is a slight decline in my posting frequency (wherefore on the Internet there shall be much gladness and rejoicing) it will be either because I am in a lecture, or because I am recovering from it.

Promenade parisienne: ubi Anglorum, ibi pluvia!

Musée d'Orsay.

In the fortnight before the beginning of lectures, even as I basked in the prospect of a whole year to sift through the city at leisure, I decided to become a tourist, complete with map, camera and gape.  And who can blame me, or anybody else, in this city of wonders?

My most obviously touristic ramble took me from the Musée d'Orsay on the rive gauche, across the river for the first time to the Louvre and the rue de Rivoli; thence east to Châtelet and back over the Seine via the Ile-de-la-Cité, on a remarkable day of alternate buoyant sunlight and drenching showers.

rue de Solférino

A barge forges upstream.

A view downstream of the Seine: the Grand Palais in the distance.

My ambitious plan to execute a rapid visit to the Musée d'Orsay, a former railway station whose exhibitions follow the Louvre's chronologically, fell to pieces when I beheld with dismay the early-afternoon queue.  I very much want to go, but it will necessitate an early arrival.  So I spent some time on the Pont de Solférino, whose steel parapets, like others in Paris, have been turned a gold colour by thousands of padlocks inscribed with lovers' names.  Of course there were a few opportunistic padlock-sellers there!  The keys are also accumulating on the river-bed, but no doubt there are still a few weeks before they block the river entirely and Paris is flooded.   The Seine is a much plied water-way, not only by bâteaux-mouches and pleasure-craft but also by hard-working barges carrying freight.  Further upstream they navigate the islands and the narrow bridges with remarkable agility.  It is good to see use being made of the Seine in this way.

A  bâteau-mouche - Plenty of water around!

rue de Rivoli

A 'batobus'

The apparition in the south-west of clouds  bulging with the colour of slate sent me scurrying over the river to the Louvre, where thousands of motorists seemed in a terrible pickle.  (Did I really use a word like 'discretion' to describe Parisian drivers?).  I saw again the marvellous view westwards, slicing through the city down the Champs-Elysées, to the Arc-de-Triomphe and beyond to the Grande-Arche at La Défense.  Just as I arrived at the rue de Rivoli, the rain swept in with gusto (and gusts).  I hurried on past the mixture of gaudy gift-kiosks and hopelessly expensive stores to Châtelet, at which point the sun, that great astronomical wind-up-merchant, re-appeared as if nothing had happened. Thence I wound my way past the Hôtel de Ville and onto the Ile de la Cité, where stands the glorious cathedral of Notre-Dame: Our Lady of Paris.  

Pardon?  Mais qu'est-ce c'est que ça?

During this walk, I think I heard French spoken on no more than five occasions.  Everybody else seemed to be speaking English: British, Americans, and even French people themselves.  Perhaps the rain had brought it out? How strange it is that the very heart of the city which is the heart of the petite couronne, which is the heart of the Ile de France région, which is in turn the heart of France, is awash with a foreign language.  I could make this Year Abroad very easy if I wanted to!

Exposition Véritable Océan (2nd instalment)

Rue de la République

Rue de la République

Gare de Meudon.

Rue Terre Neuve seen from the Grande Terrasse.

Parc de l'Observatoire.

Rue de Paris.

Rue de Paris.

Exposition Véritable Océan (1st instalment)

As promised in my post about Meudon, here are some more pictures of the town.  Each can be clicked to be viewed more clearly in a slide-show.

ave. Jacqueminot, with the Tour Montparnasse in the far distance.

rue de Paris.

Observatoire de Meudon.

Always consoling to have a ferroequinological view from one's window, even if it can only be admired from a perilous position.

Some blocks of flats below the Observatoire.

Rue de la Croix du Val

Rue de la République (brings back fond memories of the Blantyre flag)

Paris from the Observatory at Meudon - J. E. Renoux (1921)

Ditto (2012)