French Lessons

En Grève

“Going local in the land of fêtes, grèves and boulangeries”

 

It’s the deck, or subtitle, of this blog.  I reckon that – even without understanding the words fêtes (fairs) and grèves (strikes) – most folks would tag this land as France.  And yet in this blog, I’ve wholly failed to broach the second of these attributes.

 

Overlooking the incidence of strikes in France could actually be a sign that I’m thinking like a local.  The French find certain topics worthwhile for discussion.  One of these topics is weather.  The fact that it hailed enormously on Monday night – leaving remains of the seven-to-thirteen-centimeter hailstorm on the roads for a good couple days – now, THAT is newsworthy.  First time since 1986!  Fourth time in 56 years!  “Monstre” highway tailbacks!  Abandoned cars near the public pool!  And then the inevitable:  How come our government failed to deal with the problem properly?  How DO those Canadians and Swedes manage it? 

But les grèves?  Strikes?  Those happen all the time.  They’re hardly worth comment.  

Jessica, a forthright, local twenty-something, chatted incredulously about the night’s snowfall as she mopped Bellevue’s living room floor Tuesday morning.  It was the first time I heard the statistics.  I then asked her about last week’s flurry of strikes.

 

She shrugged her shoulders.  “C’est novembre.  C’est toujours comme ça,” she said.  It’s November.  It’s always like this.  Jessica’s chocolate-brown eyes glanced at the window, where bright sunshine sparked off newly whitewashed pavements. 

 

“Octobre, novembre – et puis mars,” she said.  So next it will be March.  “La Poste.  Les pompiers.  Le train….”  Her voice trailed off.  Postal employees – firefighters – rail workers.  All the usual players.

Everyone seemed to have a bee in their beret last week.  The French don’t just strike when something is wrong.  They strike when something could go wrong.  Or when folks think that other folks might start thinking about things that could cause life to go off kilter sometime in the future, near or distant. 

In short, the French strike when something in their world might possibly CHANGE. 

In most countries around the world, last week’s business-halting conduct would’ve splashed across newspapers.  It would’ve brought flash news reports with urgent voices and serious faces. 

But not in this part of France.  Here along la Côte d’Azur, the local TV channels carried a degree of coverage, but the (English-speaking) morning radio programme that I follow gave only perfunctory mentions of what joy we could expect in the coming days.  And except for the teachers’ strike on Thursday, the local Nice Matin newspaper spent few column inches on les grèves, showing just how hum-drum another round of chitchat has become. 

I daresay this list is not complete, given the certain lack of media interest in the grève stories.  But here’s at least a partial line-up of last week’s delights: 

Monday – Air France employees completed a three-day strike over a government attempt to reform their special pension plans and to increase the retirement age from 60 to 65.

Tuesday – A national SNCF train strike was postponed at the 11^th hour (surely, if I may interject, after affected folks had made alternate travel plans).  Meaningful overnight discussions about the reform of freight transport – the union’s bone – meant that the new strike deadline was set for Friday.

Tuesday and Wednesday – Instead, la Côte d’Azur’s regional trains went on strike.

Tuesday again – First some backstory.  L’Oreal announced in September that it would close its Monaco factory in March 2011.  (Yes, 2011.)  Most of the factory’s 198 employees have been on strike since November 11 (so if you ask me, L’Oreal might close up shop right now).  To the present:  Salaried workers in Monaco – folks who hold good, Euro-paying jobs with other companies – marched through the streets to protest something as fuzzy as corporate restructurings and closures, in general.  They strike, one worker explained, “car nous sommes dans le flou.”  They “are in the haze.”

Thursday – Teachers went on strike nationally; here in les Alpes-Maritimes, 40% of instructors walked out.  One local union leader explained that this strike wasn’t “une grève ordinaire.”  No sirree, it was hardly one of those ho-hum, everyday walkouts.  This strike was important because it railed against government plans for high school reforms:  cutting class hours, axing specialist teachers’ aids – and generally failing to listen to teachers. 

Here’s the part I love:  One local teachers’ union thought, hey, why not make a party out of the strike – like they do in Paris?  So the union hired a rock group to perform throughout a 4,000-strong demonstration in Nice.  And why stop there?  A local newspaper reported that the whole atmosphere of this righteous aim was “festive” with multi-coloured balloons, flapping flags and rounds of song.  (For friends and family:  No, Laurelle’s school was unaffected by the nationwide strike as it’s outside the public system.) 

Friday – The train workers decided, again, not to strike.  (Do folks even bother arranging back-up transport around here, I wonder?)  The unions called the next strike for Sunday night into Monday (which did go ahead but with rather light disruptions).

Saturday – The Post Office went on strike – following sharply on the heels of another walkout one week ago – because of European directives that contemplate restructuring and liberalization.  Oooo, ahhhh, the nasty head of competition might possibly disrupt a bit of the coziness in the nanny state sometime in the future.

And for scatterings of days throughout November, les pompiers – those essential firefighters and rescue folks in France – have been on strike.  Fire-engine-red trucks, vans and jeeps with blue sirens circled area streets in unusual force during the past week, or maybe I just noticed them more frequently as the vehicles were all tarted up with brushstrokes of white paint declaring “EN GREVE.” 

Les pompier‘s complaint?  That they’re not paid for every hour of work.  Translation?  That they don’t receive overtime pay for overnight hours.  The history?  Several years ago the (higher) nighttime rate was applied over ALL 24 of the pompier work hours, so now overnight hours fail to accrue higher benefits. 

As far as I can tell in the sporadic news flow, no one has reached any sort of settlement in this case.  So what do les pompiers do in the meantime?  They keep a minimum service running while on strike.  One evening last week, for example, I witnessed a red van (advertising the ongoing grève, of course) and five attendants aiding a casualty victim at the foot of Old Town Antibes’ carousel.  Otherwise, given the physical nature of their work, les pompiers engage in more sport than usual.  This explains the frequent parade of red jeeps along Antibes long beaches, just outside Bellevue, where droves of muscular Baywatch hunks bound onto the sand to execute series of pushups in straight ranks before storming into the sea.  On second thought, let’s keep the strike going…. 

[Postscript one day later:  I now learn that the pin-up pompiers are actually pompiers-turned-students.  They are taking a week out to learn about maritime rescues while their peers are en grève.  Whatever.  Keep up the good work, chaps!]

Ah, life in l’Hexagon during the sweet month of November.

Les grèves, the whole world seems to know, contribute to the lifeblood of French society.  The right to strike is, indeed, a favorite clause established within the French Constitution.  Striking and demonstrating are a Frenchman’s favoured means of engaging management.  Put on another level, they’re the time-honoured means by which subjects of a highly centralized democracy can make their voices heard on high.

The need for certain essential services, such as les pompiers, to maintain a minimum operation during strikes is hardly a new idea in France, but it gained increased attention within the (sometimes) more right-leaning Sarkozy government. 

Schoolteachers also fall into this critical service zone.  Under a recent law, if teachers want to strike, they need to declare this right 48 hours beforehand.  If more than 25% of any school’s teachers choose to walkout, the local mayor’s office must commandeer appropriate personnel to ensure that un service minimum d’accueil – literally, a minimum welcome service – is available for affected schoolchildren. 

Last Thursday brought the first national test of this service minimum d’accueil.  Most regions, both nationally and within la Côte d’Azur, observed the new rule.  Some places tried to comply but couldn’t find suitable folks to run the service. 

A few, more socialist areas of France, however, refused to apply le service minimum d’accueil.  In our department of Alpes-Maritimes, for example, it was the leftist city of Carros that declared a resounding “non” in principle to the new law.  In acts of chest-beating defiance, the government of Carros opted for la “désobéissance civique.”  Setting up le service d’accueil for schoolchildren (and their busy parents), the mayor’s office reckoned, undermined the Frenchman’s right to strike.  A childcare backstop diminished the leverage of a teaching strike because parents could get to their jobs.

In a word, the government of Carros found le service minimum d’accueil flatly unconstitutional.

The French need to strike just as the Americans need to bear arms.  Guns and strikes are somehow so engrained in the respective population’s bloodstreams that the idea of banning these rights creates a whole bunch of hoopla.

Today’s edition of the Nice Matin newspaper carries this banner headline:  Antibes:  la grêle jette un froid!  Antibes:  the hail flings a cold!  A colour photo of a man shoveling snow from Antibes’ sidewalks covers half the tabloid’s front page.  The snow story and all its possible angles – the highway debacle, public reactions, a closed school, a sunken sailboat – command pages two and three of the newspaper, and another three pages inside.  Now THIS is news worth talking about.

Meanwhile the snow clean-up proceeds at the pace of un escargot.  Temperatures remain unusually chilly for a Côte d’Azur November.  Rather than shovels, some folks use brooms to scrape the snow aside – so as not to crush the leaves underneath.  And at one of the major roundabouts in Old Town this morning, I watched a municipal government employee scoop snow out of the streets with the type of shovel I’d use to plant a bush.  His buddy wore shorts and flip-flops.

But as I watched them, I had a simple thought:  At least these guys are working.

Bon Appétit

I’ve noticed lately that Laurelle’s table manners are improving.  She still has difficulty resting in place for more than four minutes, to be sure.  But when she’s actually seated at the table, she begins every meal with a polite “Bon Appétit.”

 

What’s more amazing to an American mother who was raised under the long arms of McDonald’s and Kentucky Fried Chicken, is that my three-and-a-half-year-old drama queen is tasting more new foods. That’s not to say that she’s eating heaps of these curiosities, but she at least TRIES them.

 

In September, at the beginning of the school year, I was keen to understand Laurelle’s daily schedule at St Philippe.  Lunch takes place in the school’s cantine, an echoing chamber with rows of long tables and kid-sized, wooden chairs.  Students dine in shifts.  The little ones like Laurelle sit down at an early 11:15 a.m. , while the older kids come later – after some ill-fated janitor scrubs the cantine chairs, tables, floors and possibly walls.  Older kids select their food from the daily lunch line; smaller kids are served out of big pots at their seats. 

 

Early in the year I also was eager to note St Philippe’s rotating lunch menus.  Food, I should mention, is prepared on premises in a kitchen situated beside la cantine.  Fridays were often fish days, a real slog for finicky preschoolers.  I rationalized that St Philippe IS a Catholic school.  And frankly, the next day would be Saturday and I could fill Laurelle’s growling belly with good, American-friendly mac ‘n’ cheese and chicken nuggets. 

 

But outside Fish Fridays, I was comforted by the menus’ frequent use of words like “omelette” and “pâtes” (pasta) and “poulet” (chicken).  My baby would manage.

 

As the school year rolled on, I became less aware of what my little one ate at noon.  Having noted Laurelle’s more progressive taste buds, I gained a renewed interest in St Philippe’s lunchtime menu.  After yesterday morning’s school drop off, I glanced at one of the yellow and orange printed pages that hang in strategic places around the school.  

 

I suddenly appreciated Laurelle’s willingness to taste new foods.  In addition to the daily selection of “Salade Vert” (Green Salad!  Every child’s favourite!), my preschooler’s lunchtime table looks like this:

 

MONDAY

Salade de Soja  (Soybean Salad)

Tomate a Ail  (Tomatoes in Garlic-Infused Oil)

Tortellini

Saucisse Lentilles  (Lentil Sausage)

Pâtes  (Pasta – an audible sigh of relief)

Lentilles  (Lentils)

 

…plus, as is the case every day, a choice of yaourt ou fromage (yogurt or cheese) AND the daily dessert trolley:

 

Dessert du Jour

Fruit

Yaourt Aromatisé  (Flavoured Yogurt)

 

TUESDAY

Salami

Salade au Surimi  (Crab Stick Salad)

Croûton au Fromage  (likely a Small, Toasted Slice of Baguette with Cheese)

Quenelle Sec Tomate  (Pasta with Sundried Tomato Sauce, I think)

Pintade Rôti  (Roasted Guinea Fowl) (!!)

Frites  (Fries)

Haricots Plat d’Espagne  (Scarlet Runner Beans)

 

Au revoir to foot-long hotdogs and – my personal, junior high school favourite – braised beef and potato buds with lumpy gravy! 

 

I know.  It sounds as though Laurelle is attending culinary school at a very young age.  “What hardship!” I can hear you cry, sarcasm failing to evade your words.

 

But St Philippe is a French school.  It is like all French schools, as far as I know.  I just have a tough time imagining my American, three-and-a-half-year-old, peanut butter and jelly addict facing a steaming plate of guinea fowl. 

 

Yesterday after school, as Laurelle and I walked toward the car, I asked her about lunchtime.  What did she eat?

 

As usual, Laurelle couldn’t remember.  I prompted.  Some meat maybe?  Frites?

 

Yes!  Frites! 

 

Ah, frites!  What a surprise!  And some meat, too?  Did you eat something like chicken maybe?

 

Yes, some meat.

 

Did you try it? 

 

Uh-huh.

 

Was it good?

 

Yes, it was good.

 

Ma petite gourmande.

 

Today, Wednesday, is always a day off school in this region of France.  But I’m already anticipating St Philippe’s lunch table for rest of this week.  I had to consult my unabridged dictionary for this line-up:

 

THURSDAY

Œuf Dur Mayonnaise  (Hardboiled Egg with Mayonnaise)

Potage de Légumes  (Vegetable Soup – but this soup will be a velvety purée rather than the contents of a Campbells can)

Pomélos  (Oversized, Grapefruit-Like Fruit)

Boulette d’Agneau  (Lamb Meatball)

Sauté de Sanglier  (Wild Boar)

Boulgour  (Bulgur Wheat)

Sauté de Légumes  (Sautéed, Mixed Vegetables)

 

FRIDAY

Jambon Beurre  (Ham on a Baguette)

Tomate Mais  (Tomatoes and Corn)

Salade au Concombre  (Cucumber Salad)

Beignet de Calamars  (Calamari Fritters)

Filet de Lieu  (Filet of Pollack, a type of fish – of course)

Pomme de Terre Vapeur  (Steamed Potatoes)

Macédoine de Légumes  (Diced, Mixed Vegetables)

 

Lamb?  Wild boar?  Pollack?  CALAMARI?

 

Pierre thinks this diversity in my preschooler’s palette is wonderful.   It goes back to the French people’s love affair with cuisine, he says.  They start their kids early.

 

Pierre’s mother, remember, was a celebrated Quebecoise chef.  Pierre basically IS French.

 

I’m not.  I grew up among the braised beef, American cheese and Pop Tart-munching brigade.  I’m not ready for my child to demand fois gras.

 

On further reflection, perhaps Laurelle’s new willingness to taste Mommy’s pumpkin soup and artichokes and marinated salmon at dinnertime stems from another, more fundamental need.

 

Maybe when she says “Bon appétit” at the dinner table, she really does have un bon appétit.  After facing lunch at St Philippe, it’s simple. 

 

My kid is probably starving.

 

Monsieur 90%

Pierre, Laurelle and I returned last week from ten days in Marrakech and London.  If I could do one thing over in preparing for those adventures, I’d have repacked my bags.  More woolen sweaters.  Maybe some long underwear, too.

 

Which means that flying back to la Côte d’Azur, we were thrilled at the prospect of soaking 18C-degree sunshine back into our veins.  Instead we found Armageddon-style thunderstorms that swept the Med’s angry waters straight across le Bord de la Mer, the seaside road we drove home. 

 

Once at Bellevue, we discovered chunks of mud on the pantry floor, remnants of a ceiling leak.

 

We found our swimming pool on the crest of streaming into the backyard. 

 

The End-of-Days thunderstorms, we surmised, were nothing new.  We soon heard that during our absence the storms had rendered the entire coastline black, without power, for three hours.  “La pluie!  I’ve never seen anything like this for eight years – huit ans!” the mother of Laurelle’s classmate declared to me, almost apologetically. 

 

Ah, November along the feted Côte d’Azur.

 

As the daytime temperature began to dip that first evening back, we discovered Bellevue’s heating system was on the fritz.  The main floor was warm, but funnily enough heat didn’t rise within the rest of the house as science says it should.  The bedrooms were brisk, and I could virtually see my breath in the top-of-the-turret pigeonnier where I write.

 

A couple days later we came across another system that was cresting toward its brim:  Bellevue’s septic tank.  That morning I asked Pierre whether he really, truly needed a shower.

 

But writing about construction ills that continue to plague Bellevue – while underlining certain ongoing themes around the place – would be a smidge too easy.

 

I could change tack and write about François’ Law again, my Frenchified version of Mr. Murphy’s that crops up time and again for us in Antibes:  When it does go wrong, it goes wrong at the most perfectly imperfect time. 

 

Thanks to François, it was after hours last Friday when Pierre and I again were dialing for doctors, this time in hopes of curing the pounding eardrum of our howling three-and-a-half-year old.  (A mere two phone calls and 45 minutes later, I am most pleased to report, Dr. Bloch arrived at Bellevue.  He speedily diagnosed the problem of a then-pirouetting princess who – on mere sight of the good man with brown jacket, brown trousers, brown shoes, brown doctor’s bag and a brown circumference of hair – had decided that she was perfectly well.)

 

But no!  This topic may further establish the refrain in Bellevue’s signature song, but it’s just an itsy-bit too obvious.

 

Let’s broaden our scope.  This blog will hit at the intersection of what’s broke around here and – get this – the world economy. 

 

Despite the fact that, by the looks of it anyway, much of the Southern Circus marches on fairly unfussed by the world’s massive destruction of wealth, we have detected at least one sign of the times.  And in this single circumstance, the financial crisis actually helped us out.

 

The day before our family flew to Marrakech, the elusive Jean arrived at the house with a newly fabricated door.  It was a momentous occasion at Bellevue.

 

Jean is not just any construction chap. 

 

Known in both affection and ribbing as “the little man,” Jean is our wiry, 70-year old menuisier.  This carpenter keeps a scooter in his garage just in case the police should decide to take away his license again.  Now he boasts a young, new girlfriend.  Don’t get me wrong:  Jean does solid work – but only when he gets around to working.

 

And Jean’s newly made door is not just any door. 

 

The little man specially fabricated this door with a steel plate integrated into its very fiber.  The structure would replace the damaged, exterior door to Bellevue’s pantry – gouges clustered at the door jamb – caused by the earlier burglary that still plagues my security-conscious soul.  Not that the remaining, re-jigged door was unsafe.  It was, in fact, bolted shut after the theft.  But the beat-up wood at the barrier’s jamb was a continual reminder of a most rattling crime. 

 

Jean reported that his new creation, this steel-plate-reinforced door, had been ready for installation for ages.  Absolutely ages.  Which is entirely possible given that the break-in happened in June 2007, nearly one-and-a-half YEARS ago.  Jean just hadn’t found the time to install our new door.

 

So to what did we owe this delightful, if long-overdue, visit?

 

Put simply, we could thank the credit crunch.  It literally drove Jean to fix our door.  Two big construction projects in Cannes had run out of money.  Work had stopped.  Jean suddenly found his time a little freer.

 

More precisely, about a month earlier Jean’s menacing bank pulled the EUR 8,000 line of credit it had extended to his two-person carpentry company.  Carrying inventory, like our steel-plated pantry door, had become too costly. 

 

Whatever the stimulus that brought Jean to our door, we didn’t mind.  We were just happy to see the little man in his baggy chinos.  And we were especially delighted to see our new door.

 

Two-and-a-half hours after he arrived with our coveted door, it hung on Bellevue’s hinges, a new bolt mightily securing its steel plate to the house’s frame. 

 

But from the inside the whole ensemble still looked a horror.  In fact, it looked worse than it did before Jean fixed it. 

 

The new door still displayed modest hollows around its lock.  Rather than Bellevue’s eggshell paint, the new masterpiece flaunted its industrial white, drywall-like guts.  Also unfinished was the trim, a nut brown wooden arc where the new door met Bellevue’s bulk.  What’s more, new gouges had migrated straight into the plasterboard of Bellevue’s frame. 

 

Minor points, indeed, but the new door looked wholly more shocking from the inside than the old one did.  Our invasion some 17 months ago spooks me all over again.

 

It was noon.  Jean would not work later.  He was going fishing.  He promised to complete his work after we returned from Marrakech and London.  He’d ring on November 4 or 5.  He even jotted our number on a scrap of paper.

 

As only a French construction worker can do, and with such perfection, Jean finished 90% of his job without completing it entirely.  But – or so we thought – we are now wise to these French ways.  Jean would ring us; we knew it.  We’d not yet paid him a single Euro.

 

Jean, in fact, did not ring.  We are still waiting.  So is his bank balance.

 

Happily, we at least are one step closer to blotting out the long-running pantry door fiasco.

 

Happily, too, the tripped electrical system attached to the septic tank’s “automatic” pump is fixed.  The stinking mess has receded.   Once – or rather, if – the rain subsides, evaporation will take care of the pool.  And the pantry ceiling leak has been corked, or at least a broken tile replaced on the roof.  Now we just need a quick re-plaster job.

 

Oh, and the heat.  It’s about 90% fixed, of course.  The bedrooms are blissfully warmer, but as November howls into la Côte d’Azur with particular vengeance this year, it’d be great to have a little heat up in my pigeonnier, where at least I’m now down to wearing three sweaters.

 

It’ll happen.  All of these construction jobs will happen.  Just tune into this blog space around May 2010.