Mr Cuitetruinee!!

(Pagnol + Friends)

There is a type of character,created largely by the cinema director Pagnol, which simply expresses exactly the type of male personnage one is very likely to meet here in the Provence, or in the Midi de la France.
Rather in the style of the Cockney for London, or the cloth cap for Lancashire or Yorkshire etc., this character is more lovable than ridicule, and this is the story of my meeting with one of them, very recently.

For two whole days we had been molested mentally by a complete army of Doctors, Nurses, Diaticiens, Psychologists, and goodness knows what more. "We" is me and my little group of fellow sufferers in a "re-education" treatment course for people who, like myself, had suffered an operation on the heart. The idea of this one month long course was to prepare us for our "new" style of life, which imposed itself upon us. New diats, new habits, avoiding old habits etc., etc., etc. Since the average age of the group was somewhere around 60-65 years of age, changing all these things in one month, was a difficult, if not impossible, undertaking, and accordingly, all the staff involved hadn't stopped preaching and hammering in the golden rules, no smoking, no drinking, no eating fatty foods, basically not doing anything we all liked (and like) to do!

One of the members of my group, a typical Pagnol character, both in appearance and accent, had said nothing during two whole days! Now we were at the end of the second day, and were looking forward to going home shortly, all we had to do was finish the last of this last lecture, entitled "Causes and Results of Heart Disease".

The lecturer, a Doctor specialised in various things apart from Heart conditions, like smoking cures, dietary specialities etc, had a particularly annoying habit of interjecting almost every 2 sentences the phrases "I would say" or "one could say" or "if you like" (apart from that he was a nice fellow) finally got to the end of his lecture, and announced to the room in general that "I would say, if you like, that I'm finished, anybody got a question or a comment?"

After 2 whole, long days, finally came a distant rumbling from my neighbour, which terminated in a deep, loud voice which said "What you mean, Doctor, is that we're cooked!" (this translates in French to something like "on est cuite").

This comment, the way it was said, with the accent of the midi/provence, simply made us all explode in gales of laughter, and I immediately baptised the person responsable as "Mr Cuite". Later on, when we got to know each other much better, he added a further word to his statement, which became "On est cuite et ruinee". (We're cooked and ruined!)

Hence the title of this article, which is intended as a sort of "get you ready" for a couple of stories regarding this month passed within the confines of a hospital re-education course, and a couple of little anecdotes of things that happened!

For the moment, you have made connection with Mr Cuitetruinee!

(Pagnol characters)





(Mr Cuitetruinee et amis)