Un skonk de pew
My mother believes in age-specific child raising: when you hit a certain age and she deems you too old for something, you’re done.
She tried to steer me from Looney Tunes cartoons that – horror – I still enjoyed watching past the age of 12 (maybe I should have been a more sophisticated child in her mind and read the Economist instead?). With one exception: the marvellous, flamboyant and frisky Pepe le Pew. He made her laugh and we watched him together many times. She actually does a fantastic Pepe impression to boot.
So when I think of Pepe I am not only rolling around laughing at his accent, at the signs in the cartoons saying ‘Le’ everywhere, but I am also picturing my mother saying ‘Weeeere ah-re yoo peegeon?’. If you have never heard her say that, something in your life is missing. Honest.
(Image is from here – how could such a cute little creature have such an evil stink?)
PS: My sister just reminded me in a comment of this absolute classic, so for those of you who don’t read French here is the lowdown: mother goes to rubbish bins. Mother hears someone coming, mother thinks it’s my sister. Mother screams: ‘Weeeere ah-re yoo my leeetle peeeenk rah-beet??’. Mother comes face to face with neighbour. Is it more evil than Pepe’s stink to find deliciousness in her embarrassment?
Removing lentils and the art of being understood
There have been many things to adapt to for me since moving from France to Australia, and this is the beginning of an attempt to explain.
Some misunderstandings at our house are epic. Most of the time, Christian knows what I’m saying – I might construct my English sentences on a French grammar model, invert the order of things, use strange expressions, but he still manages to get my drift. He corrects my inversions, or sometimes yelps for mercy with a ‘That sentence was way too long!’, and explains for the millionth time that English is about brevity (I still don’t get it).
But one time, goodness, I innocently hit the cryptic mother-load and got a full minute blank stare with matching frown – by saying the most natural thing in the world to me: ‘I need to remove my lentils because my eyes are feeling really sticky.’
What do you mean you don’t understand lentils? Those transparent things you put in your eyes to correct your vision? And they get sticky at the end of the day, so that is when you take the lentils out?
Now he knows, so he is no longer concerned about my sanity when he hears me mentioning my lentils and my eyes in the same sentence. But he still reminds me they are called ‘contacts’ in English from time to time. I think he has disturbing mental images of me mushing legumes onto my eyeballs he’s not telling me about.
(Puy lentils – my favourite – from here)
A little French number
There have been many things to adapt to for me since moving from France to Australia, and this is the beginning of an attempt to explain.
Christian says the concept of ‘bis’ puzzles him. Even after having lived in an 11th arrondissement Parisian apartment located at number 30 bis.
I don’t think I can explain because for me it’s one of these things you accept exist and never question: two houses or buildings have the same street number and the second one is ‘bis’ so as not to be confused with the first one. It’s not a weird urban planning concept, a strange way to divide land lots (all Christian’s chain of reasoning and probably valid points), it just is.
And it makes for pretty signs mixing numbers with letters.
This one is from a house in Albert Park and I always slow down to look if I’m driving past, or clap my hands and go ‘French number French number’ when Christian is driving. It doesn’t get old for me (for him, probably).
Memories from childhood: shaking that coconut
Having grown up in different countries, Christian and I sometimes have no common childhood references (boo sad!). For example: Sesame Street means nothing to me*. It was on telly in France for a couple of years (translated to ’1, rue Sésame’) but no more by the time I was born. So when Christian says ‘I want-a to suck-a your blood!’ when he sees someone wearing a polo shirt with their collar up, I giggle (because I’m highly excitable and he uses a funny voice) but I also go ‘Whaaa?’.
And he is not familiar with the French institution that is ‘Cocoshaker’. Cocoshaker was on channel 2 at 8:30, and was part of my bedtime ritual when I was about 3 or 4. It is basically a tropical version of ‘spy vs. spy’: two creatures (a blue one and a pink one) vie for supremacy, which is achieved by climbing a palm tree and sitting atop holding position for as long as possible. The one still on the ground does everything in its power to unsit the one in the tree. And they don’t speak in intelligible words, but in a high pitched jibberish that makes me laugh so hard I’m in danger of snorting (if that sounds funny, you have seen nothing until you have heard my sister do an impression of it).
So while I try to show youtube videos of Cocoshaker to Christian, I am brushing up on my Sesame Street characters. And let me say, it is very surreal to have your husband explain to you who’s who in the cast of a colourful puppet show…
*But we had Fraggle Rock and the Muppets! Go figure…
I make more sense than you
There have been many things to adapt to for me since moving from France to Australia, and this is the beginning of an attempt to explain.
Sometimes, I win. And by I, I mean French and by winning, I mean scoring points (in my head) over the English language (which is supposed to be soooo much more to the point and say everything with soooo much less flourish – have you detected the sarcasm yet?).
But today, look what I’ve got: en français, we say ‘poisson rouge’ while you, English language, choose to say ‘goldfish’. Well they ain’t gold! They have a goldish sheen, yes, but they’re clearly coloured red (or off-red, like a reddish orange). So who’s being poetic and all flourish now, describing something in not such a straight to the point manner, huh?
So I win. Cue my little victory dance (in my head).
Lamb chops
When I’ve had little sleep and an inverse amount of coffee, it does something to my head. Something delightful: it makes me remember hilarious things.
So today, I attempted to negotiate fits of laughter while trying to drive my car, and if I could help it still look dignified. The culprit is a memory taking me back 18 years ago (crikey!).
My family and I lived in Australia for about a year when I was 12. Being in a smallish Queensland town, we were the only French people there and the French teacher at our local high school thought she would take advantage of that. How? By asking my mother, brother and I to read out French words from children’s memory games into a tape recorder (to have good accurate pronunciation for various words on file, she explained).
One afternoon, we sat down and for a couple of hours we read words out in turn. Except, my mother wasn’t happy with the quality of the audio, or the quality of our performance. ’Louder children, we can’t hear anything you say when we play it back!’. So my brother and I tried to oblige, but Maman was still not happy. ’Here’ she said, ‘do it like this: LAAAAAMMMMBBBBBB CHHHOOOOPPPSSSSSS!!!!!’*. Lamb chops: forever in my mind associated with my mother, screaming the words ridiculously loud. And 18 years later, it still makes me laugh.
*If you are curious about what ‘lamb chops’ is in French, it is ‘côtelettes’.
How to tell if you’re French
There have been many things to adapt to for me since moving from France to Australia, and this is the beginning of an attempt to explain.
Since moving to Melbourne I have noticed some interesting things about me. Namely, that I am more French than I ever realised.
Which sounds silly since I very much knew I was French before moving here. But what I didn’t realise was how much it was at the very core of my person, this Frenchness. I have just made up a word (according to spellcheck at least) but it is the best way I can describe it. It’s not patriotism (or not completely), it’s not arrogance (again, not completely), it’s something else and it makes me well, me. A 30 year old French girl with a name I have to spell a lot.
Some books may have been written on the subject (some of them making me very angry indeed, but that’s a story for another time), but ‘How to tell if you’re French‘ has to be the most accurate and funny account of ‘Frenchness’ I have read in a while. Read it and tell me if you are more French than you thought.
And we shall call him ‘Astro’
Me (grating courgettes): ‘If I had a robot, I wouldn’t have to do this by hand.’
Christian: ‘??’
Me: ‘A kitchen robot. Can’t you say that in English?’
Christian: ‘No. It doesn’t fit the definition of a robot.’
Me: mumbled complaints about English language.
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