This afternoon I decided to pull out of Facebook? Why? Well I’m sure there are lots of answers… but mostly I was finding it all a bit of a pointless waste of time. Not alone there then. But the crazy thing is that out of the “friends” on my contacts list, only about 10% of them ever bothered to interact. Not that I am ungrateful to that 10% of course!

So for me it is a case of… Wanna stay in touch? Then you are more than welcome to send an email and TALK to me. Wanna be all voyeuristic and just look at my photos? Then fuck off.

Shortly before this decision I also brought to an end 10 years of my expat group “English Speakers in France”. We had some great times and meet ups, but in the end, like Facebook, I was spending too much time on it trying to keep it going. OK we had over 1,000 members on Facebook – but did that really do any good? No.

So I can sit here remembering the lovely people I’ve met out there during our occasional meals in Paris and those who, sadly, are no longer with us. Knowing that at least the project brought people together over the last decade makes me feel it was at least worthwhile.

So RIP English Speakers in France…

Today both Thumpah and me have been to the Doctors as we’re both down with the trachea equivalent of broncitis. Thumpah is getting over it, where as I’m still coughing well. We’ve both been in abdominal pain and having headaches from the fits of coughing – but it has also set my back pain off again. Dontcha just love this time of year?

More seriously… the question has come back to the surface about what we should do about Chipie, our dog. Earlier today we were even considering having her put down this evening… or at least as soon as possible. We’ve now decided to wait until the weekend.

Some of you may know that she had a stroke back in July, and has had a couple of small attacks since then. As a result, her hind quarters are very weak and she has a lot of difficulty getting up from a lying position. Occasionally she just cannot get up. When that happens Thumpah tries to help her, unfortunately Chipie tries to bite when she does that. Even if it does actually help her to get onto her feet. It gets even more interesting when Chipie needs to go to the toilet but can’t get up.

My usual ploy to help her up indoors is to put a doormat under her front paws as she tries to drag herself up, to give her some grip. But as her rear end is almost devoid of muscle she sometimes struggles even then.

The sad thing for us is that she is eating well, and doesn’t really appear to be suffering. True, she isn’t really “with us” like she used to be – and we are often worried when Rémy goes a bit to close to her.

Sooner or later it is going to happen, but we’d much sooner get it over with before she gets to the stage where we have to carry her outside to do her business or even worse… carry her to the vets to have her put to sleep. At the moment you’d only have to try and put your arms around her to lift her for her to turn on you!

No, nothing to do with Michael Bentine (if you are old enough to remember his show on ATV), but something rather more mundane.

We started Rémy on the “pot” back in the Summer – but he just wouldn’t have it, screaming as soon as we put him on. Then in August he spent 2 weeks with Thumpah’s parents down in the Périgord Vert – all by himself. His Mamie started him off now and again, so when he came back he was at least used to the potty (I’m English so I call it the “potty”).

Since September we’ve systematically started training in earnest, but he still screams on the rare occasion he does a poo/caca – and still isn’t enthusiastic about the potty – a BIG nooooo. In fact, come to think of it, he has only ever done a poo once in the potty and that was with me a couple of weeks ago.

I still have a bit of a kerfuffle when saying “Have you done a pipi… errr… I mean weewee…!” Very confusing for me and for him!

But being a bloke, what I didn’t realise was that all this pipi… I mean, weewee causes a whole lot more washing. The “pull up” nappies are really rubbish at keeping in liquid. It isn’t like the cheapo ones from Lidl or Netto are any better than the more expensive Pampers (we’ve tried the latter once). The result is the same – a leak meaning that I have to completely change his clothes twice, sometimes three times a day!
Already I have to change his bed sheet once a day because during the sieste he always leaks.

Added to that, with poor Chipie – who is peeing in her cushion basket each night I’ve just about had enough of pipi…. errr… sorry… WEEWEE… )

Rémy started riding his scooter properly this morning.

It seems that the last couple of days I’ve been thinking about the question “How integrated am I in France?”

I have been living here now the last 12 years, yet I still feel an outsider in some situations. Now, is this a British thing? Other nationalities living in France seem to intregrate well into French society, a good example is the Portuguese.

Often I can be at a gathering “pour faire la fête” where I meet total strangers. Upon hearing that I am an “anglais” I am often treated as if I arrived in France last week at first, then a certain surprise when they find that I can speak French fairly well. Added to this total bemusement.

It seems that French people just don’t expect us to speak French. That said, listening in on some conversations between people I feel I may as well be on another planet! I can understand what is being said, but can contribute absolutely nothing to the subject matter. Is this all somesort of enrypted French code?

Despite my number of years here, I expect that however long I live in France I’ll always be “l’anglais or le rosbif” and that I won’t be accepted totally.

More reading… (thanks to Tish Bogdan for the link).

Rémy is becoming a big fan of Wallace & Gromit, so much so that he tries to repeat what is being said in English by the characters, hums the music and spreads his hands out and says “CHEEEEEESE” as well. But the funny thing is that yesterday he watched “Ivor the Engine” on DVD, for the first time in a couple of months. He did the repeating trick there as well.

Just goes to prove he is taking English on board.

I thought… should I blog this or not? Then I thought soddit, blogit.

For a little while now, I’ve been in a French père au foyer group. Having made a suggestion about them creating a database of members I was told by another member “if I’d bothered to look at the group page, then I would have seen one was already there” – which I thought was unecessarily rude. Then someone else wrote “Il faut pas emmerder le avec ça”. Which I also interpreted as being rude. So I left the group.

This was the result via email from the group moderator literally minutes after I left…

“Mon cher,
Saches qu’il n’y avait rien d’impoli dans cet email chez les Pafs [Pères au Foyer], il faut vraiment que tu te mettes au français de façon sérieuse car ton incompréhension de notre langue va te poser d’autres problèmes si tu souhaites vivre en France et comprendre la culture, les gens, la France quoi…

Donc rien d’impoli dans nos emails, par contre saches que de quitter un groupe comme tu viens de le faire, d’un simple clic, sans même expliquer ni dire aurevoir, ça c’est très impoli,
Adieu donc!”

My reply…

“Bruno,

Je vis en France depuis 12 ans, donc je connais bien la langue française. Je vis avec une française et biensûr ma belle famille est française. Alors arrêter d’utiliser ça comme une raison pour vous couvrir….

C’est vrai, je fais des fauts d’orthographe – mais je trouve qu’il y a beaucoup de français qui les font aussi.

Je vous souhait bon chance avec votre groupe. Je sais bien que ces groupes sont plutôt en train de decliner – dommage. Mais les modes sur le net changent, comme ceux qui prefer Facebook et pas l’email.

Bonne journée,

John.
His reply…

“Nous “couvrir”… ça vire à la parano là, tu m’en vois désolé pour toi.
Pour info étant webmaster je connais bien l’évolution du net, merci.
Et quoique tu en dises je continue de penser que tu es très impoli, et ça ça n’a rien à voir avec la langue, tu en conviendras!…
Très cordialement,”

My reply…

“Heureusement je connais les autres français qui sont très sympa.
Malheureusement, vous êtes l’exception.
Bye bye,

John.”

I think the above sums up the sort of person running a group that is supposed to be a “support group” for us pères au foyer in France.

Probably a side of me that few people know, but my Mum suffers with Schizophrenia. She started showing signs when I was around 8 years old in the late 1970’s.

Mum has been a recluse since the early 80’s. I can’t tell you how many attempts we’ve made to try and get her outside over the years. Due to this alone, I rather prefer to say that I’ll never see her in France a sort of “self preservation” from disappointment.
It can be near impossible to get her to the Co-Op supermarket round the corner from her place. For something like 6 months in the early 90’s she would go outside if I really pushed her, but then eventually she went back to how she was before. 
I can’t tell you the frustration of just trying to get your own Mother to go outside just to do simple tasks.

She is under medication. But there are a number of other problems. My Mum had injections for about 10 years from the late 80’s, a Psychiatric Nurse used to come round every two weeks to administer that.
Then the health authority decided to stop the visits, and make set appointments for my Mum to see a Doctor at the local Mental Health Unit, at the same time ending the injections and changing her medication to tablets.

These are on prescription.

The problems here are two-fold. Ensuring my Mum takes the medication as she should. Unfortunately she doesn’t always. Her cancelling the appointments with the Doctor at the local mental health unit, or not being ready when a taxi or her brother comes round to drive her there.

She also has had periods at a day care unit – but then she started with the same “not being ready trick” when the ambulance came round for her.

Compared to how she was when I was a teenager, the injections she had subdued her a lot. Up until about 1989, she was confining herself to her bedroom and crying/screaming EVERY day – much of the time ALL day (I am not exagerating here – on a couple of occasions our neighbours called the Police). She then started to get worse by crying/screaming and smashing up her room. There were deep pock marks and holes in the wall plaster where she had thown things.

On two occasions she was sectioned to a mental hospital in the later 80’s. Very traumatic when “the men in white coats” came to take her away. Each time she bluffed her way through her hospital stays, making out she was normal. Then of course as soon as she came home she’d go back to how she was before.

She used to lie a lot as well – me and my Dad (and after my Dad died, just me) did the shopping, household chores etc etc – we did everything. So it was frustrating that when she was interviewed by a Doctor or Psychiatric Nurse, saying that she did everything. When in fact she did absolutely nothing at all. Guess who they believed?

So, as we are talking about this? How is she now? Well we got her moved into a nice sheltered bungalow – where someone calls her on an intercom every morning to see how she is. The area is quiet – has no anti-social behaviour, which she/we had to put up with where she/we lived before.

That said – she doesn’t go anywhere. Sits in the kitchen smoking like a chimney and drinking 20+ cups of tea a day. When we visit with Rémy find ourselves in the sitting room while she sits there in the kitchen. At least these days she does do a little cleaning and she does cook for herself. She goes through periods when she doesn’t eat as she should, then her weight plummets. In the early 80’s she had anorexic tendences.

When we stay there, she’ll perhaps make a couple of meals for us the rest of the time we cook. We also pay our way – we buy groceries for her and us. I don’t really mind doing that.

She was declared bankrupt 5 years ago – we had to pay for 50% of the court proceedings. It has limited her spending, but in the past we have had to step in to help her financially. Since Rémy was born we’ve been unable to do this. She went through long periods doing “competitions” this partly contributed to her bankruptcy. AFAIK she still does them, can’t tell you how many times I’ve told her that they are all a con. But then again, anything I say goes in one ear and out the other.

So there you go, a big part of my life out in the open – and about time. I’ll be 40 in January, I didn’t know my Mum had schizophrenia until I was 20.

Friends say I should distance myself from my Mum and concentrate on my own family here in France. Perhaps they are right? However, when we do go to see her accomodation is a problem, added to that my Mums smoking around Rémy. We’ll probably stay in B&B from now on, but that will severly curtail the time we can spend in Leicester. Not a cheap option believe me!

Due to getting the usual accusé de réception for a parcel I was expecting during the week, I ended up having to go to the local La Poste over in Mennecy.
Upon arriving near the entrance, a table had been set up and I was soon stopped by a friendly looking postman asking me if I had voted yet. Wondering if I could – I said: “Je sais pas si je peux parce que je suis pas française”. The reply was quite heartwarming “Mais c’est pas grave ça! Vous utilisez la Poste non???”.

So I voted – with pleasure.

Now what was the vote for? It seems that the French government want to totally privatise the service, which I’m sure most French people think is an horreur. We’ve seen what the same sell off has done to the Royal Mail back home, and it seems that this is why the Postmen & Women are taking this action here in France. At least it will give a true picture.

So how did I vote? Ahhhh….

Unfortunately between the common AR’s in my letterbox, for parcels I’ve paid to be delivered to my door and the mostly unfriendly staff at the local La Poste (I’m not talking facteurs ni factrices here) – I think they’ll have their job cut out. Not forgetting that we actually bank with La Poste too.

Which leads me to the mess I found upon entering the building. Inside is very small and just cannot cater for the volume of people that use it. It took me 20 minutes of waiting in a disorderly queue this morning just to pick up a package that should have been delivered straight to me at home.
A lot of the time they open a guichet just for those like me, picking up parcels – but they didn’t this morning, and considering banking operations are combined with those wanting to send parcels or buy stamps it was total chaos. One customer was complaining to anyone that would listen “Je ne comprends pas pourquoi ils font les operations de banque ici, ce n’est pas une banque!” Well, in fact it is!
Meanwhile another small queue had formed for the automated machine where you can weigh and then buy a lable like stamp to send letters. The idea being that you can save time not going to see someone to be served at the guichet.

Unfortunately, it didn’t work this morning as one bloke found that the machine ate 2 Euros, and even the 50 Centimes he’d put in to try and get his 2 Euros back – so he complained to an employee, who didn’t look a bit bothered that a client had been put out. As he said over and over again “Vous devez mettre une papier pour prévenir tout le monde que la machine n’accept pas les pieces!”

La Poste privatised? What do you think???