French Lessons

French Lessons is enjoying les vacances d’hiver (winter holiday) or les vacances de la neige (winter sports holiday) – or whatever else you want to call this excuse to give kids another two-week holiday from French schools!

Special Treatment

“Ahhh, Madame L……”

 

The deep, slightly gravelly voice on the other end of the phone said the “ahhh” like he knew me well.  And he did.  I’d talked to him many times in the past week.  And yet I was still Madame, never Janelle.  I would always be Madame.

 

I could tell, too – simply from the rhythm of the baritone voice, as the man employed no receptionist – that he did have a moment to talk.  He’d engage himself in my concern, but I couldn’t dawdle.  There were others like me who sought his attention.

 

Many others like me.  ‘Tis the season when the whole world, it seems, converges in the doctor’s cabinet, or if not in his office directly, on the other end of his telephone line.   

 

Those associated with Bellevue have, as the French would say, y ont lassé des plumes during this winter season.  Translated literally, we’ve left our feathers there.  Meaning, we’ve not come out of this season unscathed. 

 

Until very recently one of our household has been visiting, or at least speaking with, our dear Dr. Laurent every other day.  He’s a nice man and all – don’t’ get me wrong – it’s high time that our routine correspondence diminishes.

 

This “Ahh, Madame L..….” recognition – three short words – left much unspoken.  Yes, it was me, another call from la maison jaune (the yellow house).  That’s how he’d always remembered us early on.  During the last few days Dr Laurent had heard from Pierre and from our nanny Jennifer.  He’d also examined the flaky skin of our four-year Laurelle.

 

This call was actually about me.  My right eye keeps tearing, I told him.  It won’t stop.  But it isn’t red.  And the left one is absolutely fine.

 

Last time I’d seen Dr Laurent in his one-man cabinet along the Boulevard Albert 1^er thoroughfare, it was, funnily enough, about my left eye.  It was July, and my eyelid emitted an occasional but reoccurring tremor.  Calcium and magnesium tablets, the white-coated doctor had prescribed for me. 

 

That was when I looked up the specialization noted on Dr Laurent’s card:  mésotherapié.  “An alternative medicine treatment of injecting chemicals just under the skin to stimulate or break down tissues in the mesoderm,” my dictionary said.  Ouch. 

 

Oddly enough anyway, the simple tablets seemed to worked.

 

This time Dr Laurent’s voice prescribed eye drops.  I should tell the pharmacy that he’d sent me.  And call him tomorrow. 

 

Thus continued the long line of flu-season correspondence between the occupants of la maison jaune and our local, family practitioner.

 

First into his office this flu-season had been Pierre.  Regular wear and tear (or to be honest, too many games of golf) pained his right shoulder.  His rotator cuff surgery had been two years ago, in Denver, and now Pierre feared a repeat.  Like a good hypochondriac, he began contemplating whether he should fly back to Denver, or to his Canadian homeland, or just launch into the hospital network here in France.

 

Inflammation of the tendon, Dr Laurent said.  That’s all it was.  He administered seven – seven! – shots around Pierre’s shoulder – a mésothérapeute in fine form – and stuck a huge, medicine-dispensing patch over the area.  A good half hour of the doc’s time, plus the treatment and prescriptions, cost a mere EUR 50 ($63 – a veritable boon to an American), but Dr Laurent did caution that Pierre might need a second go.

 

Or maybe the first 2009 visit to our good doctor was by Jennifer.  Nagging congestion and a sore throat.  Two telephone calls and various medicines turned into a cabinet visit, where Dr Laurent diagnosed an infection of the pharynx.  Out our nanny walked with a sheaf of papers to deliver to la pharmacie, where each box of tablets cost only a few Euros. 

 

A shoulder, a pharynx, flaky skin, and now an eye.  A few check-up phone calls and another prescription later, I had an appointment to see the man in person.  As I entered his one-man shop, Dr Laurent offered me a fleshy hand.  His broad form ushered me into his office, his dark eyes warm but incisive.  He could see that my right eye had stopped its constant “raining” (as I’d unfortunately explained in unrehearsed French), but something still wasn’t right.  He suggested un ophtalmologiste. 

 

(This ophtalmologiste would check me out and finally ask whether I was fatiguée.  No, no more fatigued than usual, I would say.  He then would write a prescription for eye drops (only if I wanted them).  He would write me another prescription for 12 sessions of rééducation orthoptique (huh?) with a suggested orthoptiste.  And then – after discovering the prescription currently inhabiting my sunglasses – le ophtalmologiste would prescribe a new set of lenses at less than half the strength.  All for EUR 55.  In the five years since I’d had my eyes tested (my bad), I’d obviously crossed the threshold of middle age, and my eyes were headed back toward zero again.)

 

Having nothing else to offer me during this cabinet visit than the name of another doctor, Dr Laurent suggested painkillers.  Did I need any painkillers?

 

Uh, no.

 

Was I sure?

 

Uh, yes?  Why, I’m thinking, do French doctors so adore doling out pharmaceuticals?  Even if they are practically free?

 

How was Jennifer doing?  Our family doctor then enquired.

 

Okay, but not perfect.  Still having trouble getting a good night’s sleep, I told him.

 

How about Pierre’s shoulder?

 

Not perfect either, I said, but you know.  He’s a bit of a – do you have that word in French – un hypocondriaque?

 

Dr Laurent smiled.  His gravelly voice told me it’d say nothing, but a playful glance indicated that I’d already said everything. 

 

The proximity and openness of it all!  In Denver, if I even had mentioned a prescription of my husband to our shared GP, he had clammed up.  Doctor-patient privilege, you know.   The medical charts of someone else, spouse or otherwise, were simply off-limits.

 

As I turned to go from Dr Laurent’s cabinet, he offered again.  A prescription for painkillers?

 

Non.  Non, merci.

 

Meanwhile Jennifer’s throat and congestion spiraled the wrong direction, and that would be down into her lungs.  Regular phone calls and visits were making Dr Laurent and her good friends.  They would take des mesures extrêmes, he told her.  She needed un grand choc to her système.

 

As Jennifer awaited the paddles, soon began a series of no-mess-around prednisone pills – and daily visits from a nurse.  Yes, visits each and every day for six days by a nurse who came straight to Jennifer’s apartment – to her apartment! – and all for a miniscule EUR 100.  To prepare for these visits – and this bit will sit oddly with Yanks and many others – Jennifer was to take a new prescription to la pharmacie, this time to purchase six injectable vials.  The visiting nurse would jab their contents into Jennifer’s alternate hips. 

 

Now our nanny was adding to her circle of friends a mothering nurse and a revolving regiment of pharmaciens.

 

At 8:00 p.m. on the final day of her injections, it was Dr Laurent who called Jennifer at home.  How was she?

 

Wiped out.  Hopefully on the mend.

 

If this series of injections didn’t work, Dr Laurent advised, the next step would be a pulmonologist.

 

Meanwhile, two weeks after his round of seven shots (and, to be honest, a couple games of contraband golf), Pierre’s shoulder still ached.  He phoned his former Denver surgeon on the sly. 

 

The surgeon’s assistant answered.  Take two weeks of such-and-such OTC meds, she said, then come in and see the doctor if it still hurts. 

 

I’m not in Denver now, Pierre admitted.

 

 When are you coming back?

 

Well, never really.  [Note to dear Denver friends:  We will come back to visit!]

 

(I should note that Pierre is working on getting an MRI to send to his trusty Denver surgeon.  He has managed an appointment here in France for some sort of scan, but even this fluent francophone isn’t exactly sure what he’s getting.)

 

Shortly, I phoned Dr Laurent.  Again.

 

“Ahhh, Madame L……,” he said.  Again.

 

It’s about Laurelle this time.  She has a bit of a fever and a cough.  A really bad cough.  (I’m thinking Jennifer Take Two and searching for words to explain that shots and prednisone are not an option for my preschooler.)

 

Laurelle coughed into the phone receiver.  We agreed a regime of American and French medicines.  Back to la pharmacie with another couple Euros.  Pierre would bring news to Dr Laurent – but of course – as my husband was seeing him the next day.

 

The next day Pierre reported that yes, Laurelle was improving.  Then the good doctor pummeled Pierre’s shoulder with the second battery of shots and sealed the worksite with another massive patch.  Finally came the admonishment.

 

“It was like he KNEW I was still playing golf,” Pierre told me back at la maison jaune.  “I mean, he asked me the question directly.  So I had to tell him.”  My husband sounded like a boy whose best toy was taken away for fighting on the playground.  “Now I’m off golf for 10 days.” 

 

That evening, as I chopped vegetables for dinner, Jennifer recapped the medical front.  Yes, she was getting better.  She was sleeping again.

 

Yes, Laurelle had received her regime of cough and fever meds.  Her cough was, indeed, becoming more productive.

 

And Pierre – could I believe, she wondered, that Dr Laurent didn’t know he was still playing golf?

 

Well, yes….

 

…that it had slipped out when Dr Laurent asked her – our own nanny – about Pierre and his shoulder?  …and that Dr Laurent had just about flipped out when she confirmed that, yes, Pierre did still play?

 

Jennifer replayed the scene.  She reclining on his examination table, Dr Laurent interrupted his work to declare that he couldn’t do magic.  “Je ne suis pas un magicien,” he said.

 

The doctor paused.  “Est-ce que vous connaissez David Copperfield?”  Or are you too young?

 

Yes, of course, Jennifer knew of David Copperfield.

 

Well, he said, switching to English, “I’m no David Copperfield!”

 

Submitting ourselves to French medicine – and I affirm we are very happy for the presence of Dr Laurent and his compatriots – we get sent on re-educational sessions.  We receive shots and prescriptions as if Armageddon is tomorrow.  And doctor-patient privilege has withered to a trace of its former self. 

 

But somehow – with Pierre now off golf, Jennifer and Laurelle on reducing meds, and me in new specs – somehow the folks occupying the thick, limestone walls of la maison jaune are all feeling a lot better.

 

Talking Shop

A few days ago in Tunisia, having stomped around the Star Wars’ film set in the morning, Pierre and I found ourselves ambling through a street market in Jerba that afternoon.  A weedy bloke with white speckles around one eye tried to sell Pierre and me three small, factory-made, ceramic candleholders for a princely sum of 50,000 dinar ($35).

 

Pierre asked the guy if he thought we’d come from another planet (Star Wars and desert planet Tatooine aside).

 

Truth be told, that’s exactly how I’ve felt when I’ve gone shopping in France recently.  Extra-terrestrial.

 

France is just emerging from its season of les soldes, the famed, semi-annual shopping extravaganza that basically puts the whole country on sale.  By law, les soldes came to a halt yesterday.

 

Yes, by law.

 

In France, there is no Boxing Day sale.  People don’t flood the shopping districts on the day after Christmas.  No, around here the purchasing craze is far more measured. 

 

This year the Government dictated that France’s winter sales, les soldes d’hiver, would begin on January 7.  At 8:00 a.m., to be exact.  They would last five weeks, ending on February 10.  Precisely.

 

And I have to tell you, what sales they were!  Just off Christmas, our stockings still overflowing, Pierre and I couldn’t help but hit the Rue d’Antibes shopping district in nearby Cannes.  Banners streamed across virtually every storefront declaring 20%, 30%, 50% - even 70% off! 

 

How could we possibly resist?  I suddenly needed that pair of short, black boots.  (Given traffic within Cannes’ shoe shops, I think every woman along la Côte d’Azur needed new, little black numbers, too.)  Laurelle, our preschool lover of all things pink and girly, always could use more dresses – and look!  The feted Catamini and Jacardi shops were practically giving stuff away!

 

And so Pierre and I purchased.  We bought a few things anyway, even as I wondered how come this stuff was worth so much more during the rest of the year.  We did our bit to push along the sputtering French economy.  We joined the party – though in truth, it seemed the only out-and-out frenzies this year unfurled inside women’s shoe shops. 

 

That any government can dictate the terms of sale pricing to such an extent sits oddly with those living in most Anglophone countries.  Sure, we have rules; sure, we have subsidies.  But for the most part, if a shop owner or major retailer chooses to hack down his prices, he simply pulls out his red marker and away he goes.  Done and dusted.

 

Not so in l’Hexagone.  Here, the Government has some rather unusual powers.

 

For one, Le Ministère de l’Economie fixes the timing of the sales.  The winter ones, les soldes d’hiver, begin – precisely – on the Wednesday of the second week of the year.  Summer sales start the third Wednesday of June.  Only from the beginning of 2009 have les soldes been dictated so uniformly throughout the country.  Previously the task was left to le préfet, the regional State representative, leading to small differences among France’s 100 départements.

 

The celebrated sale seasons must follow other rules, too.  Goods included in les soldes, for example, must have been available in the shop for at least a month before the sale begins.  More pedantically, an original price must remain visible but be struck out in favour of the new sale price.  Of course France has another government ministry to oversee these legalistic goodies and more:  the tongue-twistingly labeled Direction Générale de la Consommation, la Concurrence, et la Répression des Frauds.  More compactly, “La DGCCRF”.

 

(Unsurprisingly, this environment is fertile territory for a widely-circulated story about the price of a venerable French baguette.  That the Government would subsidize this symbol of life is hardly a long-shot.  After all, nine out of ten people in France buy fresh bread daily.  And what simpler way to popularize any political regime!

 

In fact, the old French bread subsidy is more folklore than fact.  Yes, the French provide agricultural subsidies to wheat production, and thus indirectly to bread – but then which country doesn’t harbour agricultural subsidies of some sort?  Truth is, since 1978, the French Government hasn’t dictated a maximum price for the humble baguette.)

 

All this price-setting seems a touch anti-competitive.  The idea is that no shop can cut its price to an unseemly level in order to scoop customers from the competition.  Oh happy, group-hugging days for the fraternity of French shop owners!  And it has been this way, or a variation of this way, since the first law defining the application of France’s soldes appeared in 1906. 

 

Put another way – taking the side of the consumer for a change – the Government sponsors cartels in the name of social justice for shopkeepers.  The higher prices are borne by consumers.

 

Why we inhabitants of France don’t endure continuing rounds of grèves and manifestations over this injustice – as we do for train driver salaries or the mere sniff of privatisation – absolutely eludes me!

 

But hold on a minute.  There are winds of change in France.  In an overt push of la modernisation de l’économie, the Government has been pushing through new measures.  Shopkeepers will have a bit more say in the future, it seems. 

 

 As part of last August’s law that unified France’s semi-annual sales structure, le sénat approved a rule that will allow shopkeepers to set two additional weeks of sales each year.  The timing is at their discretion – as long as the sale doesn’t fall in the month preceding a big, semi-annual event. 

 

The fine print seems to provide wiggle room, too.  Shops can advertise des promotions of products if they follow such-and-such rules.  Goods usually cannot be sold at a loss – unless this-and-that happens.  Sales for the purposes of destocking are, believe it or not, okay all year round.  (Hey, isn’t that the point – getting stock off the shelves?) 

 

Blah-de-blah-blah.  It’s too easy to get bogged down in the ample pamphlet library of the DGCC-whatever-it’s-called.  But all this wiggle room means that things are becoming less rigid in the Fifth Republic.

 

What’s more, the DGCCRF admits that less rigidity is actually better.  As explanation for the recent changes, it offers this nugget:  “Ces mesures permettront aux commerçants de bénéficier d’un assouplissement notable du système actuel …. Les consommateurs bénéficieront quant à eux de davantage de réduction de prix tout au long de l’année.”  Shopkeepers benefit from “a notable relaxation” of the current regime.  Consumers get lower prices all year long.

 

Great!  So what took so long?

 

All this awakening – but then an episode that belongs on The Three Stooges.  For the whole month of December, Old Town Antibes’ charming, old-fashioned toy store Pierrot la Lune took advantage of the special destocking provision in the sales legislation.  They offered an official soldes de liquidation.  There was renovation work to do, and so voilà – up popped a well-advertised and marvelously timed sale for a children’s toy shop.  Business, I can tell you from many jaunts into the store during the month of December, was nothing short of vigorous. 

 

And so earlier this week, I nearly didn’t swing by Pierrot la Lune while shopping for my daughter’s birthday.  They were closed for renovations, right? 

 

Wrong.  Commerce hummed as usual.  And so I had to ask.

 

The renovations, which involve fixing the stockroom’s wall, would take the store out of action for a week or so.  A whole week!  But the works have yet to begin.  The mairie (basically the mayor’s office) had postponed the January building works authorization until February.  A couple days ago, Pierrot la Lune received a further official letter stating that February’s works authorization was delayed until March.

 

The shop attendant, an animated woman with sparkling eyes and long, tousled black hair, laughed and shrugged her shoulders at the incongruity of it all.  And I made a birthday purchase from the officially destocked shop – a music box so new to Pierrot la Lune that it didn’t yet have a price tag.

 

And so, having fled France’s extra-terrestrial sales regime last week, Pierre and I found ourselves in another.  The Tunisian open air market with outer space prices. 

 

Incidentally, we did buy those three, ceramic Tunisian candleholders – but not from the cheeky dude who tried to flog them for 50,000 dinar.  A short jaunt away from the open air market, we found a “fixed-price” store that offered the same product, in more bountiful selection and hospitable surroundings, for a mere 3,000 dinar a piece.  Pierre and I carried out heaps of other crafts, too, from the three matronly women who ran that fixed-price shop.  The attendant even tossed an elliptical serving plate into our bag for free.

 

It was only a stone’s throw from Luke, Leia, R2-D2 and C-3PO’s stomping grounds, but somehow shopping in this free-flowing, Tunisian craft store made terrestrial sense.  Even more so than shopping in France.

Jeudi Noir (Black Thursday) has done me in. 

 

With thinly veiled overtones of 1929’s “Black Thursday”, the day of Wall Street’s initial crash, French public and private sector workers went on a nationwide strike last Thursday over rising unemployment and the government’s handling of the economic downturn.  A quarter of France’s five million public sector workers walked out.  Over a million folks took to the streets.

 

Here’s my personal vignette:  Tuesday after school, Laurelle’s teacher passed out a flier saying that Thursday’s class was not assuré.  (There are no intervening Wednesday classes.  Let me also insert that Laurelle’s school is private.)    

 

To Pierre, our nanny Jennifer, and me – three North Americans – the teacher’s words meant that class on Thursday wasn’t assured.  It might happen.  It might not.  Swing by and find out.

 

Which is exactly what Laurelle and I did. 

 

First thing Thursday morning Maria, the classroom assistant, met Laurelle and me at the door.  Maria was alone.  I mean, literally, she was all alone in a classroom that normally houses three adults and 33 kids.

 

Laurelle – the foreign girl with the American mother – was the only child that even bothered to check in on Jeudi Noir. 

 

Yet another unwritten, French rule. 

 

And what was the typical local response to this particularly pervasive round of strikes?  C’est la France.  This-is-France.

 

French Lessons is going on a short holiday to recover.  I’m off to check out our neighbour across the Med:  Tunisia.