La fête de la Musique

Now please understand, I was hoping to be writing this entry about yesterday’s ‘La fête de la Musique.’ I was thinking that I would be able to tell you how Lyon (and all of France plus 100 or so other countries around the world) was a wall of different sounds celebrating the diversity of music. And that all of this music is free.

I thought I might be able to tell you how I was able to wonder around the town on my way home from work and stumble across different venues and performances. On this street corner there was a group of French rappers, round the corner a blues band was playing outside a restaurant, further up the road a rock band was playing on the terrace of a local bar, in the big places stages had been set up with official running orders of bands and DJ’s covering all types of music – world, classical, choirs, orchestras. Buskers had set themselves up on street corners. The huge brass band (that regularly entertains the weekend shoppers at the Croix Rousse market) was wondering around the streets of Vieux Lyon, creating noise wherever they went. That there was music by the rivers, music on the hills, music in the parks, in fact music everywhere.

I would have loved to have told you about all the enterprising people who had set up makeshift stalls on rickety tables, selling hotdogs, flatbreads and pizzas to the crowds. The bars and pubs who had set up outside beer taps and were selling cold drinks at outrageous prices. It would have been fun to let you know that all the bars were actually empty but the terraces and streets were packed with crowds of people listening to this huge outdoor concert. It would have been great to comment on the variety of people in the crowds, the young, the old, the children, the couples, the families, the grandparents, the groups of friends. I’d loved to have told you that I meet up with my friends and we wondered from place to place and that I saw some friends of mine play in a bar and how great they were. (I have seen them play before and they are great.)

It would have been informative to let you know that la fête de la musique started in France in 1982 and has been going strong ever since. Every city, town and village holds some event to celebrate the day. It is held on June 21st, being the 1st day of summer in the Northern hemisphere. It has gradually caught on internationally and is celebrated in countries as diverse as Vietnam and Namibia. Though some countries move it to the weekend, here in France it is always held on the actual day itself. The first one I celebrated a few years back was on a Saturday, which allowed great fun to be had by all into the early hours. I am also in no doubt that there are the diehard few who celebrate into the early hours every year!

But unfortunately I can’t tell you about any of this because due to the following disasterous combination I didn’t go.
I was on the late shift at work
I was on the silly o’clock, early shift this morning
It was pouring with rain and there were thunderstorms.
The rain didn’t stop everyone and I take my hat off to you if you did brave it out, party till the early hours and go to work this morning! Me, guess I’ll just have to wait another year.

Wedding Bells

I was fortunate enough to attend a French wedding last weekend. Actually, I’ll rephrase that, it was an international wedding held in France. As with all weddings it was a great day, the sun shone and the bride looked stunning and the groom looked dapper and everyone had a great time.

One lovely aspect of it was just how international it all was. The bride was half French, half Irish. The groom was French of Belgian descent. The witnesses were German, Canadian, English and ‘Un vrai Lyonnais’! The guests added even more to this hotchpotch of nationalities.

It was a very relaxed service and the mayoress explained about the tradition of weddings in France and how the doors had to remain open as the mairie is considered a public place and everyone is allowed to enter. She also explained about the wedding contract the couple had chosen to enter. It is like a pre-nup and a wedding rolled into one. (This has been a new concept to me and I first came across it when some English parents at work were telling me the difficulty that had had when buying a house. They had been asked which type of wedding contract they had and they had to explain to the notaire that they were just married, full stop.) During the service friends provided translations of what was happening for the non French speaking guests, which had its own comic moments. Then the bride and groom were married and we were released into the sunshine and the subsequent photo taking.

Apparently there was only one difference of opinion in the organisation of this wedding and that was over exactly what a 'wedding apero’ should be. Traditionally in France after the wedding at the mairie, you can then choose to have a church blessing (France being a secular country) and then there is the wedding apero, to which all the guests are invited. After an hour or so, the main wedding party leaves and goes and has a meal. This is in direct contrast to an English wedding, where the select few attend the meal first, then the big shindig is after that and goes on till late evening.
This wedding was slightly unusual in that the meal was first and then the apero in the evening and this is what lead to the apero’tiff’, as the bride later referred to the argument. The groom was convinced that everyone would respect that it was a wedding apero and leave after a couple of hours. The bride was insistent that various guests, including the Irish contingent and her anglophone friends in Lyon, would be expecting to party to the wee small hours.

Anyway, it was a fantastic evening, everyone partied to the wee small hours and there were hangovers aplenty the next day.
I was going to give a word of warning about partying with Irish and paying for it the next day but have remembered it was actually a Scotsman who was buying everyone the evil Chartreuse that caused the worst of the hangovers.

Hangover Hell

Chartreuse is evil. Fact.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chartreuse_(liqueur)

Making the Bridge

I have been very busy this weekend – making a bridge. Though you won’t be able to see any physical evidence of this bridge….

France has plenty of public holidays and a quick flick through the calendar will reveal 11 of them. Not bad going, but then you realise that one is Easter Sunday. Then (unlike the UK) you find out that they are taken on the day itself, so if it falls at a weekend it is not transferred to the nearest weekday.
Spring is a good time for holidays and May normally has 4 days of holidays and is normally considered to be the start of the summer wind down with the thought that if a project isn’t finished by the end of April, you haven’t got a chance of it being completed in May.

This year however is a bad year for public holidays in France. For a start both Christmas Day and New Year’s Day fall on a Sunday. Then, shock horror, there were no weekdays off in May!!!! This was due to a devastating combination of the 1st (May day) and the 8th (VE day) both being on a Sunday and the really late Easter that pushed Ascension and Pentecost into June.

Which brings us to the French tradition to Faire Le Pont. The literal translation is to make a bridge. If a public Holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday, then traditionally people take a days holiday on the Monday or the Friday to make a bridge to the weekend.

So this weekend was the second weekday holiday of the year and the first in which it was possible to make a bridge and most people seem to have taken that opportunity. The crèche was closed for the long weekend and though a few of the parents made pointed comments along the line of ‘Enjoy your long weekend.’ most of them were also taking time off work.
I was on the closing shift and a couple of parents were late picking up their children and said that the roads in the town were gridlocked with everyone leaving.

So I have enjoyed a long weekend and noted the fact that there are plenty of parking spaces available on the streets. Back to work on Monday. And before anyone from the UK goes on about the French having lots of public holidays, please remember that back at the end of April we had to put with you all gloating about your two 4 day weekends in a row.

Gym Hamster

Firstly I would like to thank Catherine for the term gym hamster, it was too good not use!

I joined a gym the other day and again have begun to experience a lot of differences and similarities from my days as a gym bunny in the UK.
For a start I didn’t really get much of a hard sell from Grégory, who seemed more interested in showing off his English and conducted a tour of the gym in Franglais. As we strolled around the gym and a wave of the left hand showed me the cardio area and a wave of the right hand showed me where the weight machines could be found and a pointed finger showed me where the changing rooms were. We wondered upstairs to the free weight area and he decided that it was the men’s area, so we wondered back down again. In my previous incarnation I would have got angry with this, but as I probably won’t frequent the free weight area, I couldn’t be bothered to get uptight.
When I joined a gym in the UK I was shown every area in detail, the state of artness of the machines was explained in great detail, the qualifications of the gym personnel was highlighted, the cleanliness of the changing areas emphasised in an amazing sales pitch.

So anyway, I signed up, paid by writing a series of cheques (no direct debits here, thank you!) and started to turn up for some classes.
I was intrigued to see how these would compare and again similarities and differences. Les Mills has taken over the world so the ‘Body’ classes are here too. I went to body pump, curious to know what the French called a dead row and was disappointed to find out that I couldn’t hear. The male instructors have the music turned up high and microphone turned low, so I was watching to follow along. Eventually (after a class with a female instructor) I find out it just ‘Tirez’ – pull. So disappointed.
In one class I had zoned out and was mortified to realise that the instructor had been trying to talk to me and was eventually saying ‘You do speak English, don’t you?’ Apparently my knees were too far apart.
The one big difference with these classes is that in the UK the instructors tend to mix and match the music from older routines, here they stick strictly to the entire latest release. Possibly the French obeying the instructions to the letter, whereas the UK instructors think to themselves that Les himself is unlikely to walk in and they have a bit of freedom.

I also seem to be the only person who goes into the steam room, but that suits me fine and the only major criticism is that the sauna seems a bit on the warm side rather than hot side. It is a small gym and the staff are friendly and do seem to know all the members and hopefully, over the next few weeks I’ll eventually be able to call myself a gym bunny again!

Living in an aviary

For a few weeks each spring the swallows come to town. In vast numbers. Then one of the advantages of living in a tall building, with large windows and on a steep hill comes to the fore. Every evening the swallows fly around looking for insects and because we are so high up they come swooping past the windows. They look so beautiful as they fly through the sky, reeling and changing direction as if in some kind of dance. The sky provides a magnificent backdrop as it slowly changes from blue to a pinky-orange in yet another glorious sunset. With the windows open and the rush hour over, you can hear them calling and singing to each other. It really is like living in an aviary, nature at its best. I do miss them when they go and look forward to them coming back each year.

Tis the season to eat cherries, fa la la la la la la la la!

The market is inundated with summer fruits. There are piles of strawberries and now the cherries have arrived! A few early peaches and nectarines are appearing as well a couple of cantaloupe melons…yum.

It has been over a week since I was last able to go to the market in Croix Rousse and a rare weekday off work and I was able to wander through the Tuesday market today and the changes in the produce on sale seem very dramatic.
It is lovely shopping in a seasonal market and you can get very smug and all eco friendly about it. There are some market stalls run by local producers – these are easily identifiable as the produce tends to be unwashed, limited and displayed in old wooden crates. By buying from these farmers you know that what you are getting has been locally produced and has low food miles and therefore low carbon footprints. However you do get to a point in mid February when you have been looking at the same fruit and veg for several months (potatoes, pumpkin, leeks, apples, pears and quinces) and being eco friendly isn’t so attractive.
Then suddenly there is a splash of red amongst the browns and oranges of winter and the first strawberries have arrived. OK, so they come from Spain, but that is only over the Pyrenees, what the heck and you just have to buy them.

Now the soft fruit season is really getting started. There will be cherries galore for the next few weeks, which you can even buy in various states of ripeness, as well as French kiwis (which seems an odd thing to write), strawberries and raspberries. Then as the cherry season wanes the peaches, nectarines and finally the apricots will arrive. The French still make a lot of jams and preserves and will buy kilos of fruit and the supermarkets will sell preserving kits and kilner jars. One enterprising stallholder has a clafoutis recipe written on a tatty piece of cardboard box proudly displayed next to her cherries.

Then seemingly, within a blink of an eye, it will all be over and as the weather turns cooler, pumpkins and other autumn foods will start making a reappearance and apples will seem a novelty and worth buying again.

Anyway, today I brought some cherries and I may make a clafoutis, provided I don’t eat them all first.