The Paris Episodes : Turning water into wine

Photo from HERE

You thought I'd never get back to my Paris Episodes didn't you? Ha! Here is the latest installment as I just couldn't let my first Christmas go by without a fond mention. One simple (but never ordinary) day out of 365 taught me a lifetime of lessons!

Etiquette lesson N° l: Always wait until EVERY ONE has been served their wine before you make an innocent comment ...Remember,  mincing your words makes it easier to eat them later!

There I was, rescued by the Ex and his Guardian Angel family for Christmas dinner. Phew! This was no 'mince affair' as Christmas is very strictly reserved for family in France so I was most grateful and priveleged to have been included, especially as the guest of honour. As Mr C, a graceful and stately gentleman, served me a very noble wine (wasted on me at the time I'm afraid), I noticed he'd made a mistake and poured it into the water glass, and not the wine glass. Quickly glancing around, I observed also that, not only had no one else made a remark - but they appeared not to have noticed. So I very brilliantly kept my mouth shut for once and watched as he continued the round... My pride has thanked me for this profusely at every major event that I have since attented in France. (We won't do the 'trials and tribulations of affecting the right attitude for the wife of a military aircraft salesman' till next year... I'm still getting over it!)

When we finally all raised our wine glasses to the 'santé' of those present and absent (that was you Mum and Dad) I had the epiphany that one pours the wine into the SMALL wine glass in France - and leaves the BIG wine glass for water. This was a major revelation for me at age 25! And one I'm still fighting with I assure you, hahaha!

While I was reeling from that narrow escape (5 year's experience in various restaurants between Mooloolaba, Brisbane and Auckland had never taught me THAT), Madame C served the asparagus entrée. Let me warn you now that I did, and still do, have a hearty appetite. And not wanting to be impolite, I of course accepted an extra serving every time the asparagus plate passed by... But there was still room for more (this Aussie girl did NOT survive on cigarettes, lite yoghurt and coffee as most Parisiennes did at the time).  Did I THINK to ask myself at the time why no one else, even the men, accepted a second helping of this? NOPE!

The foie gras was then passed intently in front of my nose.

Photo from here

ALERT ALERT! Animal cruelty!!! Let me tell you: Mr C was a VERY big wig in Nuclear Energy. I was a nobody pacifist who strongly protested against it (Born and mostly raised in NZ - what can I say?). However, I was also smart enough to know that I wouldn't win any friends or influence people with my 'extreme' views on the risks of nuclear waste at the dinner table. Foie gras wasn't high on my list of 'politically correct' foods either but hey, my 'breeding' got the better of me. After all - it is bad manners to bite the hand that feeds you, n'est-ce pas?

Between keeping my mouth shut on the wine glass fiasco, the dangers of nuclear energy and the injustice of force feeding geese in order to eat their livers, the green salad arrived. You may, and justly so, wonder how I managed to eat so much with my mouth clamped firmly SHUT! But EAT I DID! Just when I was starting to feel a bit full - and looking forward to dessert, Madame C brought out the first meat dish. I distinctly heard the word 'first.' You mean there is MORE THAN ONE meat dish??? My wee stomach started crying out to bring in the reinforcements...

Etiquette lesson number two: ALWAYS only take a small amount and politely refuse seconds of ANY dish, even under threat of tears from your hostess! THIS IS A TEST OF CHARACTER! REPEAT! THIS IS A TEST! ;-)

At Christmas especially, you can be deliciously subjected to as many as 6 different dishes before dessert, of which some regions boast thirteen of those as well!! And, as the guest, you will ALWAYS be targeted. This is dangerous even in the face of a voracious appetite, like mine. If you must, mumble some excuse about feeble health or an impending stomach operation so as not to offend your hostess. As an adventure racer and triathlete, this has rarely worked for me but age is now starting to have some pull as a valid excuse. Remember, every Parisienne worth her salt still wears a size 8, even after 15.3 children!!

I have learned many other 'Etiquette lessons' since that very first Christmas (Podge would say it was high time!) - but I'm afraid they'll have to wait for another episode as it's time to go and prepare my own 13 desserts!

Christmas is being held La Rivière this year and it's time to take my revenge ;-). Rejecting the traditional almonds, nougat and marzipan-stuffed dates, I have opted for Pavlova...

photo from here

...some of those great Panettone adaptations for my FiL who is Italian from Millie's Blog and this Ice cream cake from a very JOYFUL blog I had the good fortune of stumbling across yesterday...

Needless to say - the wine here shall be served in BIG glasses ! I figure that I'm allowed to be a rebel now that I'm nearly 40 and I understand what I'm rebelling against ;-)

Extra big glasses for an EXTRA big "Santé" and this extra special toast to you all and your loved ones (and mine)... wherever you are in the world. Below is my Wishcasting Wednesday wish for YOU this festive season and for the coming year ...

Wish star christmas tree by Cécile Lebert

Le seul fait de rêver est déjà très important

  Je vous souhaite des rêves à n'en plus finir..

     Et l'envie furieuse d'en réaliser quelques uns

       Je vous souhaite d'aimer ce qu'il faut aimer

       Et d'oublier ce qu'il faut oublier

    Je vous souhaite des passions

     Je vous souhaite des silences

                 Je vous souhaite des chants d'oiseaux au réveil

 Et des rires d'enfants

             Je vous souhaite de résister à l'enlisement

           A l'indifférence, aux vertus négatives de notre époque

         Je vous souhaite surtout d'être vous....

Jacques Brel

                                                            

Translation:

Merely to dream is already important in itself

I wish you endless dreams

And the furious desire to go and make some of them come true

I wish for you to love what needs to be loved

And to forget what needs to be forgotten

I wish you passions

I wish you silences

I wish you birdsong when you wake

And children's laughter

I wish for you to resist indifference, resignation and the negative traits of our times

Most of all ... I wish for you to BE YOU...

Much love

Ange

The Paris Episodes: Create Memories!

... if you want to keep your memories, you first have to live them.

Bob Dylan 

If I remember rightly, last week, we were sitting on the floor of my wonderful crumbling apartment at 18 rue St Séverin, using the blue and white striped sofa as a back-rest watching the leaves fall off my honeysuckle plant.

But I was in Paris to create my LIFE! And that meant getting out. I had to anyway, for during my first 6 months in Paris I had sooo many visiters back to back that the apartment was clearly no longer big enough to house me as well! That and the inconvenient lack of a personal washing machine meant I took the TGV 600km to Grenoble practically every other weekend to see Ex with my suitcase full of... dirty laundry. But that's another excuse story ;-)

Most times if you dropped by my apartment after work, I wasn't there. This prompted many of my new colleagues to wonder WHY I had insisted on renting such a HUGE apartment... I was still coming to grips with the conflicting international definitions of 'size,' but with respect to the price, I conceded that they had a small point. Whatever! I had joyfully taken up residence on my own back doorstep, somewhere between the Port and Quai de Montebello with its wonderful melting pot of artists, very few of whom were (and to this day still aren't) French!

Sacha was from Russia. The young blonde in the photo is indeed moi même at 24, LOVE those flattering high-waisted jeans! and the painting behind me is not my portrait ;-) For Sacha, unlike many, was a very talented artist. He could always be found together with his gentle, mustachioed giant of a Russian friend, Albiert, who was obviously the one taking this photo. The three of us would spend many a late afternoon chatting away into the evening hours as Sacha worked on portrait after portrait, explaining to me that he would one day paint a real 'Shedurvre.' As I was still only just babbling French, he was particularly patient in enunciating the term 'chef d'oeuvre' with all its syllables. Mind you, he couldn't say much else in French either!!

"Tis verimportan no' to zay ze F, Ang-ela. You mussay, 'shedurvre.'"

With my 1st major French lesson over and done with then, he and Albiert went on to explain their painting techniques and the art of capturing a soul on canvas. I was in heaven. Penniless all three were we, but survive we would on grand ideas and throat-wrenching wine! It wasn't until one night when I casually asked them where they went when they packed up shop that I realised there was Penniless ... and PENNILESS. They were living in quite a precarious situation in a type of dilapidated backpacker's shelter that they could only return to if they had earned enough during their day's work. Dinner was usually at a soup kitchen for the homeless. But, they assured me, things were fine - during the summer months...

That was it! I quickly did a PERMANENT mental redefinition of the word PENNILESS,  and promptly invited them both back for a home cooked meal of stewed pasta (find out why here) and a huge fresh salad. I gave them my address, code and all, and they arrived around 9pm- all smiles - with a bottle of real 'wodka.' Yes, the W is on purpose!

Now, I am quite partial to a glass of wine, and especially champagne, but spirits I don' like... Goodness knows that between the Farigoule, the Chartreuse, the Absinthe, the Génépi, the Prunelle,  la Calva and the ever sacred Pastis - I have had ample opportunity to acquire a taste - I just can't do it. So I politely left them to their Vodka, which they happily polished off over the course of the evening - regaling me with tales of beautiful St Petersbourg: Home & Heartland.  You can imagine that the stewed pasta went down no worries!

So what do you do the next day when your colleagues casually ask you what you did that previous evening? You giggle away telling them all about it. It wasn't till I hit the wall of dropped jaws and incredulous faces at the part where Sacha and Albiert both left my building joyously raucous and raucously joyous at 2am that it dawned on me! This was obviously not a very French thing to do - spontaneously inviting two men of whom I knew nothing except their first names and their wonderful art back home for dinner.  Had I been reckless and incautious?

Canty, our local plain clothes policeman and practical joker extraordinaire thought so. He used to lock his wife in each night when he left for work... in the streets around MY building. But I'll tell you more about his 'practical jokes' another time.
I still say that you have to go on your gut instinct, assuming you know yourself well enough!

As for Sacha and Albiert - we continued to meet down on the Quai de Montebello up until the end of October when the nights got too cool for the tourists to stay out late and their funds dwindled off. This also coincided with the arrival of 'the boyfriend,' whose love of art extended as far as auction houses and galleries, but not the street.

I came home one night to a garbled and teary goodbye message from Sacha on my answering machine which just appears trite if I write it down here... So I shall just have to leave you as they left me, hanging ...

...  for next week's episode!

I wonder if Sacha ever did paint his Shedurvre. I think of them both often as I paint mine!

The Paris Episodes: The Plague

Sorry friends, there's an unplanned intermission between acts (read: chapters) I have come down with a case of SST (severly sore throat). Feels like the plague ...

'Should this prevent you from using your fingers for typing?' I hear you ask... 'Do you have to repeat every thing out loud while you type???'

No - but head is pounding too (it's from hearing that little voice telling me to go to bed with a hot lemon toddy and look after myself).

Then, the Adventure Racer in me says "YOU WOOSS! Get over it and get writing, you have a deadline to meet! You've done 500kms non-stop with 7hrs sleep and a dislocated shoulder blade before, this is peanuts next to that! Not to mention other people, like Julie for example, who work sooooo much they start talking backwards! You're a poor excuse! "

Then the WOOSS in me says, 'Yes but I don't want to get really sick and spend a week in bed and get behind in my blog art, with all the Chrismas orders to get off, (scoff scoff, you're a mother, who'll give YOU time off to have a week in bed anyway?) so maybe if I went to bed before 11pm just once I would feel a bit better and then I would make up for it by getting up earlier in the morning...

The WOOSS wins! The Adventure Racer can only win if she is outside and still has 400km to go to get to the finish line. When you don't have a feather bed in sight, it's much easier to brave the rain and make radical decisions like that!!!

See you first thing tomorrow with la suite aux Paris Episodes.

The Scaffolding, the Stalk, and Smell of Greek food...

PS, Found this little book when rummaging through the garage - may take it to bed for a read and see what a 'Parisienne' was in the mid 1700s!!

A demain...