French Letters Read online

  CAPOTE ANGLAISE

  Contraceptive

  The French slang term for a préservatif (condom). A capote is literally a cape or hood. In English, oddly, a condom is sometimes referred to as a French letter.

  CATASTROPHE

  A storm in a teacup

  When a French person declares unecatastrophe, do not worry. It is not a nuclear power station melting down, or a war being declared. In French, catastrophe is likely to mean that someone has curdled the hollandaise sauce. Or more likely, in the land of ubiquitous McDonald’s, spilled the ketchup. An example of a faux ami (false friend) - a word that does not mean exactly the same thing in English and French.

  CDD, CDI

  The two types of employment in France

  The local computer repairman, like almost every French tradesman I know, works alone. Hiring someone is just too risky. ‘I would have to take a pay cut to hire someone and then if they were no good I couldn’t fire them,’ he explains. The French talk constantly about the evil of the so-called zero-hour contracts used in the UK but their own system encourages an equally precarious situation for employees. A contrat de travail à durée déterminée (CDD) is a fixed-term contract uniquely for temporary employment. A CDD employee can be used as a temporary replacement for a permanent employee on parental or sickness leave, to fill a gap in case of temporary increase in activity, for seasonal employment or in the case of specialists, to fulfil a precise and specific activity for a duration not to exceed 36 months. It is forbidden to replace a striking worker with an employee on a CDD. All other employees must be covered by a contrat à durée indéterminée (CDI), which guarantees a job for life except under specific circumstances when the employee may be terminated or made redundant. These circumstances, and the compensation payable for termination, are rigorously regulated. Employers prefer to employ workers whenever possible under a CDD and young people are disproportionately employed under these arrangements, if they are employed at all. Many are forced to accept jobs as sub-minimum-wage stagiaires (interns), for a duration not to exceed six months. CDD contracts and employment as an intern are typically not recognised by banks as a basis for a mortgage loan hence those employed under these arrangements are significantly excluded from home ownership. Although the objective of the French law is to promote employment stability, it perversely produces both high unemployment and precarious temporary employment.

  CDG

  France’s filthy gateway

  Arriving from Bamako, Mali, at 6 a.m. at Charles de Gaulle airport is one of the most dispiriting experiences I can remember. CDG features crumbling buildings, scowling officials, chaotic security lines and filthy food. This is unfortunately the first view of France available to its 65 million passengers a year. The old Terminal One, a rat’s maze of concrete and perspex tubes, is almost unnavigable, but at least still standing. A chunk of the newer Terminal Two simply collapsed shortly after it opened, killing several passengers. All the contradictions of modern France are on display. Eighty baggage handlers have been arrested for stealing from passenger luggage in six years, Air France or the air traffic controllers or the taxi drivers are frequently on strike, the toilets are dirty, the catering disgraceful. Aéroports de Paris (ADP), owner of CDG, also controls the second Paris Airport, Orly, which is also grim. Even after allegedly privatising the airport, the almighty state owns 52 per cent of ADP’s shares.

  C’EST COMME ÇA

  Passive aggressiveness

  This infuriating French expression is akin to ‘whatever’. It means literally, ‘that’s how it is,’ sub-textually can also mean, ‘so, fuck off.’ A French person tried this line on me at the airport in Kourou, French Guiana, trying to cut into the queue at the check-in desk. ‘Non, c’est pas comme ça,’ I told him, blocking him with my suitcase. He pushed in front of me anyway. Being British, I avoided further confrontation.

  CENTRALES NUCLÉAIRES

  fragile prowess

  Une centrale is a nuclear power station. I am acutely aware that there are three of them within an uncomfortable distance from my house. All told, France has 58 nuclear fission reactors steaming away at 19 sites, generating 75 per cent of France’s electricity supply. So far they have avoided a disaster (or have successfully covered up any that they might have had). But the French nuclear miracle is looking pretty fragile these days. The French nuclear champion, Areva, is a financial basket case and the heavy exposure of the French electricity grid to nuclear plants is looking less clever. The arrangements by which the nuclear estate has been financed and accounted for are opaque. The fundamental problem is that this glorious symbol of French technical achievement is not in the bloom of youth. Two stations are being expensively dismantled and the impossibly costly project for decommissioning the rest has been kicked into the long grass.

  CHAMBRES DE COMMERCE

  fetters of THE ECONOMY

  There are chambers of agriculture, trades, dentistry, lawyers - chambers of everything. They bear no relation to an American chamber of commerce, which sees its function as the promotion of commerce. French chambers often occupy themselves inhibiting commerce. The chamber is where you must go to get permission if you wish to start a business. And to get this, you will expose yourself to the full panoply of French rules that crush enterprise, punish investment, make it impossible to fire anyone and cost a fortune. These chambers must not only approve the business you intend to operate but must approve any change in the business. A farmer who wants to diversify by, for example, converting a redundant building to a livery stable, must obtain permission from the chamber of agriculture. Comparisons to the UK are always provocative but in England you can register a company online and go into business on the same day.

  CHARLIE HEBDO

  national hypocrisy

  Islamist massacre at this weekly magazine provoked a huge and ongoing display of French hypocrisy, from the streets of Paris to the Place de la République in my own village. In 2006 Charlie Hebdo provocatively republished contested Danish cartoons of Muhammad, adding more of its own. Its offices were firebombed in 2011 after the paper published a further drawing depicting him complaining that it was ‘hard to be loved by cons.’ In January 2015, 10 members of staff and two policemen died after two terrorists penetrated the magazine’s feeble security cordon. Eventually, 10 more people died after a chaotic pursuit of the gunmen brought much of France to a standstill. That it could have been worse is no comfort to any of the security authorities in Europe.

  The affair exposed failure at every level. Nobody at Charlie Hebdo was properly guarded nor was their office. The entrance to the building was minimally protected. The cops on the scene were woefully vulnerable and unsupported. After the slaughter, the perpetrators casually killed one of the policemen, already wounded, before getting into their Citroën and driving away, eluding any police effort to stop them. It ended when the two brothers were cornered at a printing works and shot dead and a third gunman was killed in a Jewish supermarket in Paris after killing four people there.

  CHASSE, LA

  Shooting at everything that moves, including cats, cyclists

  French people who do not hunt say that while not all cons (variously translated as arseholes, cunts and dumbasses) are hunters, all hunters are cons. The hunt is either (a) a glorious manifestation of Republicanism in which anyone can participate, not just the nobility, or (b) a system, insanely regulated, that produces ongoing horror in the French countryside. I go with (b). In the royal Hexagone (France), hunting was the preserve of the aristocrats. After the revolution everyone else got the right to hunt, a right preserved to this day as each autumn, as soon as there is a brief stirring of revival in the local fauna, signs of the occasional bird, perhaps a rabbit, male villagers go out to slaughter it. Thus each autumn there is the scary sight of heavily armed men, who have paused at the village bar to tank up on pastis before setting off to terrorise the local wildlife, letting off their guns at anything with the temerity to crawl, fly or otherwise pro
pel itself. Armed with shotguns and heavy caliber rifles, the hunters’ bag included 57 people killed in the 2012-2013 season, with 89 wounded. Almost but not all of those killed are themselves hunters. Criminal sanctions for hunting accidents tend to be absurdly lenient.

  ‘CHEESE-EATING SURRENDER MONKEYS’

  never elegantly translated into French

  Coined by the American TV series The Simpsons. In a 1995 episode, budget cuts at Springfield Elementary School force the janitor, Groundskeeper Willie, to become a French teacher. Expressing his disdain for the French people, he says to his French class in a Scottish accent: ‘Bonjoooouuurrr, ya cheese-eatin’ surrender monkeys!’ None of the efforts to translate this into French are convincing. The literal gloss, singes capitulards, bouffeurs de fromage, hardly does credit to the poetry of the original. The French have never understood Les Simpson in any case thinking it to be a rather ordinary cartoon for children and entirely missing its sardonic parody of middle America, which does not survive dubbing.

  CHEVAUX

  The French breed excellent horses, the not-so-excellent they eat

  French racehorses and competition horses (showjumping, dressage, eventing) are among the best in the world and the selle française (French sport horse) is celebrated everywhere. But where the French truly excel is the cheval de trait (working horse). The most magnificent are the Percheron horses of Normandy, where the bloodlines are carefully conserved at the Haras national du Pin (national stud farm in le Pin-au-Haras), a temple to the breed with its own chateau. It was constructed by Louis XIV to produce horses for his army. Émile Zola described the fate of many of these horses in La Débâcle (The Downfall, 1892) in passages that bring tears to the eyes of all horse lovers. My own Percheron horses, Manet and Rodin, weigh a tonne each. They are gentle but with an occasional fiery disposition, a consequence of their Arab bloodlines. They can be ridden, driven in harness, plough a field, haul timber from the woods and Manet can even manage a little dressage.

  France exports thousands of racehorses and working horses all over the world. The Percheron thrives in America, where Amish farmers continue to prize them for their steadiness and appetite for hard work. The French have even re-imported Percheron horses from Michigan and Ohio from stock originally exported in the 19th century, to broaden the genetic diversity of their domestic breeding stock. Manet and Rodin share an American grandfather, Silver Shadow Sheik, born in Michigan (like Mrs Miller). I visited this magnificent black stallion in Normandy, where he was living in glorious retirement. The Comtois horse bred in eastern France is another exceptional working animal, equally versatile and now also becoming a major export with dozens starting to arrive in Britain where they are prized for their docility, power and compact size.

  Fifty years ago there were 300 horses in my village, working in the vineyards. Only a couple are still employed this way, by a centenerian vigneron (wine grower) who manoeuvres his animals through the vines simply by talking to them. He is universally known as le dernier des Mohicans (the last of the Mohicans). I have visited other winemakers in Champagne who also use horses, but there can only be a few hundred vineyard horses left in France. Still, the French have been careful to preserve the heritage of their working horses, increasingly prized for carriage driving. Every few years, there is a spectacular relay between Boulogne and Paris, La Route du Poisson (Fish Race), in which working horses compete to transport fresh fish from France’s leading northern fishing port to the fish market in the capital. Teams come from all over Europe to participate in the spectacle. I am not a sufficiently talented horseman to compete myself, but did join the British team as a translator. We rattled through French villages in the middle of the night, where thousands lined the streets to cheer us on.

  The French, who eat anything, remain partial to horse meat, which has not always been labelled as such. Much of the frozen lasagne on sale in French supermarkets contained horse but claimed to be beef until the government belatedly cracked down on this deception. Some of this ‘beef’ was exported to Britain. A horse butcher comes to my village market every Friday and his cuts are especially prized by the old widows, who eat it raw, to give them strength. Appalling as the British find this, it does result in an exceptional advantage for French breeders. The French simply consume the lesser beasts, and breed from only the best.

  But the lot of the horse in France can be unhappy. An explosion in French leisure-horse ownership has not been matched by universal aptitude in caring for them. A few months ago, a German neighbour came to my door in tears and begged me to accompany her to a small paddock next to a house on the outskirts of the village. Here she pointed out a stunted, crippled horse, evidently in pain, its leg fractured. She had reported the animal to the police three days earlier and they had done nothing. The animal was emaciated and had evidently been suffering for some time.

  I knocked at the door of the family who were keeping the animal. They refused to acknowledge ownership or say where the animal had come from. It was clear they were lying. I told them that they must give me permission to take the animal or I would summon the gendarmes. I had no idea if the gendarmes would even show up, but I put on my most menacing manner. Sullenly, they agreed. I phoned a vet on my mobile phone. She came almost immediately and agreed that the animal was beyond help. There was no alternative. I held the poor animal’s head and stroked its neck, and she euthanised the creature. The vet said it was the worst thing she had ever seen. We wept.

  CHIENS

  Dogs have rights, in principle

  Janet Langman, a British dog owner in France, says there are four types of French dogs. ‘There are handbag dogs, hunting dogs, tied-up dogs and dogs on the loose.’ Her taxonomy is incomplete. There are also howling dogs, starved dogs and dogs who foul the pavements. The handbag dogs are the privileged elite. Norman, an American who has many decades of experience dining in France, tells me of an evening at the upscale Maison du Caviar in Paris. A well-dressed lady arrived with her handbag dog, which installed itself on its own chair at her table, awaiting its dinner. Two women, evidently foreign, dining a few feet away, cast a dirty look at the dog, which, detecting their hostility, started barking at them. The women summoned the maître d’hôtel. He listened to their story without much apparent interest, offered a very Gallic shrug of the shoulders (shoulders elevated, arms outstretched, palms forward), and suggested that if they didn’t like the dog, they could leave. ‘The dog was obviously a regular customer,’ observes Norman.

  Walking my dog Ringo, formerly a dog on the loose and found abandoned at the side of the road, and who is correctly said by my French friends to have bien tombé (well fallen), I meet plenty of owners with well-nourished, clean and happy dogs, enjoying the freedom of the countryside as much as we do. Yet there seem to be many dogs in every French village who are ignored and abused and the further south you go, the worse it gets. The French say the English spell GOD backwards. But it’s not just the British who are horrified.

  Vast numbers are simply abandoned, usually without the legally required tattoo or microchip or even a collar with an identity disc, making them impossible to identify. Although animal abuse is technically a crime, it can be hard to prove and is not a priority for the police or the courts. Walk through any French village and listen to the dogs howling. In 2014 France adopted a new recognition of animals in the Civil Code as ‘living and conscious beings’ which in theory gives a better legal basis for animal protection in France. But little seems to have changed. The national animal rights group, 30 Millions d’Amis, struggles to educate the public. Cats are more self-sufficient but still vulnerable. A friend’s cat was shot by one of the madder local chasseurs (hunters) and it cost her 1,000 euros in vets’ fees to save its life. The hunt offered a paltry 250 euros compensation, without admitting liability.

  Ringo’s favourite restaurants are the Louis XI steak house in Bourges, where the owner always presents him with a plate of raw beef, and Yumi Matsui’s sushi restaurant in Pézenas, whe
re he prefers a melange of tuna and salmon sashimi. He is never charged for these snacks; neither am I.

  CHINE, LA

  The super rich

  A Chinese businessman recently bought a house in the old quarter of our village. Another just bought a vineyard near Béziers. This has provoked tremendous excitement among those hoping to flog their decaying houses and exhausted vineyards to a rich Chinese. The Chinese are seduced by everything about France, from wine to luxury goods. Li Jinyuan, a Chinese billionaire, recently treated 6,400 of his employees to a holiday in France, booking 140 hotels in Paris and 4,700 rooms on the Côte d’Azur. Perhaps the solution to French economic malaise could be to simply sell the entire country to the Chinese as a job lot.