just one of iwmpop's articles from other sites.
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« madeleine: Tock, tick, tock
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a Centre Ville story by mr. le Marquis who lives in France
for sites.jpg
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Adventures – not so long ago!
I remember a time (like many of you, without doubt) not so long ago, when a voyage was an adventure. In the space of a couple of days, within Europe, we changed systems, languages, currency, standards of living, among many other things. I recall when even a trip to France was fraught with problems, difficulties, amusing situations, dangerous situations.
Starting with the very vehicle we were using, which then were not really up to scratch for such voyages. Their reliability was limited, if you were coming from UK, the steering wheel was (and still is) on the wrong side of everything (roads, petrol pumps, motorway payment booths etc). Sometimes one wondered whether the petrol was the same and the guaranteed breakdowns meant that we (reluctantly) made contact with the indigenous natives, always to be considered as dubious, suspect and not entirely trustworthy, from the fact that the spare parts required would not be immediately available, but (by hazard) the owner of the garage either possessed a hotel near-by, or someone in his family did, so there would be no problem of overnight (or even longer) accommodation, whilst waiting for the faulty pieces.
It was guaranteed that even the simpler things in life, like spanners or screwdrivers, would not fit into the Imperial scheme of things, and these episodes tended to end with the hairy sight of an oily, garlic smelling French mechanic belting your motor block with a hammer, muttering things about “merde des Anglais!” This could not work, one said to oneself, muttering things (at one’s turn) about “frogs” and stuff.
The surprise was there, however, when the motor (which until then had refused to even cough) suddenly started to splutter! Greater was the astonishment, when after another couple of hefty blows (generally with a larger and heavier hammer) the same motor suddenly decided to start purring, like a contented cat, and had never worked so well EVER!
Then the very disagreeable start of the end, Monsieur estimated the price of all these physical efforts, hotel rooms, and talking about “so many millions”. My God, thought most of us, not only is the holiday finished, but we’ll have to sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids, and even then we’ll stay highly in debt for the rest of our 8 lives!
That was just the start of the end, because the end of the end was that we all found out that he was talking in centimes, and not francs! Nowadays, even if he was talking in centimes, they would be centimes of euros, and we WOULD be in trouble! However, those days were still in a distant future, and we finally coughed up the millions required (always in cash, since Halifax Building Society savings books were not acceptable) and went off on our holiday route, singing a little song, pleased with oneself, the motor purring along, just sufficiently to get out of France, and into the really dangerous realms of Espagne, where centimes became pesetas, and the whole thing started again.
Nowadays, we would roll comfortably in air-conditioned houses on wheels, from the outer Hebrides to the most Southern point of Spain, on enormously expensive, enormously wide motorways, with no bumps, not a hole to be seen, ready to break your front or back (or both) axles!
Even if we crossed the demarcation line of Europe to Africa, we would still continue to roll on the same style motorways, and not even the colour of the people we see, would change! Only when we finally hit the Sahara Desert would it be BINGO – adventure!
Well, that is – if we weren’t overtaken by one of the desert “raids” or “ Safaris” or “motor Rallies” which have now replaced the Tourag and their camels on 4 hoofs.
Even they have changed to a large degree, swapping in the camels for 4 wheel drive Range rovers. Some of them regret it, because you can’t eat a Range rover, and you have to give it both food and drink much more regularly!
This is all called “progress” but are we happy with it?
No more contacts with the little Spanish guy who offered us all sorts of things, from sheepskin bladders full of obnoxious (mainly) red wine, more like octopus ink, to wash down something which we didn’t dare ask the origins of. After such magnificent episodes, how happy we were to drift off – following our noses – to relieve ourselves in the hole in the ground behind the wooden building, beating off the flies with a rolled up copy of the Times, or the Telegraph (old copy of course) and then cleaning ourselves with neatly cut up squares of “El Mondo” without realizing that the ink NEVER dried, and was full of lead.
We were happy, we didn’t know what could have happened, so it didn’t happen.
Nowadays, an ice cube in the hotel cocktail bar is regarded with suspicion-how many bugs does it contain, just waiting to attack our (no longer sturdy) immune systems? Hotel toilets? No, no, we don’t use them anymore, we get our key (or card) to go back to our room, where we use our own – CLEAN toilet!
But we are no longer as happy and as carefree as once upon a time.
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–mr. le Marquis is from Scotland and has lived in France for 18 years. You can read more about him here or email him at iwmpop@gmail.com.
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This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 9:12 pm and is filed under stories: Read them, Centre Ville, Travel, stories from France. You can follow any jottings to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a jotting, or trackback from your own site.
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…for writing and reading stories about life abroad…
« madeleine: Tock, tick, tock
madeleine: Pallindromic moments »
a Centre Ville story by mr. le Marquis who lives in France
for sites.jpg
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Adventures – not so long ago!
I remember a time (like many of you, without doubt) not so long ago, when a voyage was an adventure. In the space of a couple of days, within Europe, we changed systems, languages, currency, standards of living, among many other things. I recall when even a trip to France was fraught with problems, difficulties, amusing situations, dangerous situations.
Starting with the very vehicle we were using, which then were not really up to scratch for such voyages. Their reliability was limited, if you were coming from UK, the steering wheel was (and still is) on the wrong side of everything (roads, petrol pumps, motorway payment booths etc). Sometimes one wondered whether the petrol was the same and the guaranteed breakdowns meant that we (reluctantly) made contact with the indigenous natives, always to be considered as dubious, suspect and not entirely trustworthy, from the fact that the spare parts required would not be immediately available, but (by hazard) the owner of the garage either possessed a hotel near-by, or someone in his family did, so there would be no problem of overnight (or even longer) accommodation, whilst waiting for the faulty pieces.
It was guaranteed that even the simpler things in life, like spanners or screwdrivers, would not fit into the Imperial scheme of things, and these episodes tended to end with the hairy sight of an oily, garlic smelling French mechanic belting your motor block with a hammer, muttering things about “merde des Anglais!” This could not work, one said to oneself, muttering things (at one’s turn) about “frogs” and stuff.
The surprise was there, however, when the motor (which until then had refused to even cough) suddenly started to splutter! Greater was the astonishment, when after another couple of hefty blows (generally with a larger and heavier hammer) the same motor suddenly decided to start purring, like a contented cat, and had never worked so well EVER!
Then the very disagreeable start of the end, Monsieur estimated the price of all these physical efforts, hotel rooms, and talking about “so many millions”. My God, thought most of us, not only is the holiday finished, but we’ll have to sell the house, sell the car, sell the kids, and even then we’ll stay highly in debt for the rest of our 8 lives!
That was just the start of the end, because the end of the end was that we all found out that he was talking in centimes, and not francs! Nowadays, even if he was talking in centimes, they would be centimes of euros, and we WOULD be in trouble! However, those days were still in a distant future, and we finally coughed up the millions required (always in cash, since Halifax Building Society savings books were not acceptable) and went off on our holiday route, singing a little song, pleased with oneself, the motor purring along, just sufficiently to get out of France, and into the really dangerous realms of Espagne, where centimes became pesetas, and the whole thing started again.
Nowadays, we would roll comfortably in air-conditioned houses on wheels, from the outer Hebrides to the most Southern point of Spain, on enormously expensive, enormously wide motorways, with no bumps, not a hole to be seen, ready to break your front or back (or both) axles!
Even if we crossed the demarcation line of Europe to Africa, we would still continue to roll on the same style motorways, and not even the colour of the people we see, would change! Only when we finally hit the Sahara Desert would it be BINGO – adventure!
Well, that is – if we weren’t overtaken by one of the desert “raids” or “ Safaris” or “motor Rallies” which have now replaced the Tourag and their camels on 4 hoofs.
Even they have changed to a large degree, swapping in the camels for 4 wheel drive Range rovers. Some of them regret it, because you can’t eat a Range rover, and you have to give it both food and drink much more regularly!
This is all called “progress” but are we happy with it?
No more contacts with the little Spanish guy who offered us all sorts of things, from sheepskin bladders full of obnoxious (mainly) red wine, more like octopus ink, to wash down something which we didn’t dare ask the origins of. After such magnificent episodes, how happy we were to drift off – following our noses – to relieve ourselves in the hole in the ground behind the wooden building, beating off the flies with a rolled up copy of the Times, or the Telegraph (old copy of course) and then cleaning ourselves with neatly cut up squares of “El Mondo” without realizing that the ink NEVER dried, and was full of lead.
We were happy, we didn’t know what could have happened, so it didn’t happen.
Nowadays, an ice cube in the hotel cocktail bar is regarded with suspicion-how many bugs does it contain, just waiting to attack our (no longer sturdy) immune systems? Hotel toilets? No, no, we don’t use them anymore, we get our key (or card) to go back to our room, where we use our own – CLEAN toilet!
But we are no longer as happy and as carefree as once upon a time.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
–mr. le Marquis is from Scotland and has lived in France for 18 years. You can read more about him here or email him at iwmpop@gmail.com.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 at 9:12 pm and is filed under stories: Read them, Centre Ville, Travel, stories from France. You can follow any jottings to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a jotting, or trackback from your own site.
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Home
Read the stories
o Beaujolais Day
+ Info Bit
o Halloween items
o Election Day-USA
o Thanksgiving
o Christmas
o Easter
o madeleines and jottings
o stories: Read them
+ Centre Ville
# Welcome!
* stories from Venezuela
* stories from France
* stories from Nigeria
# Regulars
* stories from France
# Food
* stories from France
# Creators
* stories from France
# Travel
* stories from France
+ Wine Stories
# wine stories from Italy
# wine stories from France
# wine stories from Korea
o Notes about Writing
o blueVicar: Updates
o “quotations”
*
Write your stories
o jottings (a.k.a. comments)
o WRITING stories...what you need to know
+ The Types of Stories
# Got a WINE story? Write it!
# Centre Ville: Write a story
+ Thinking about your story
# Story formats
# Author profile
# Pen names
+ Writers' Rights
+ Editorial policy
o Lit quotes--Suggest one?
o ABOUT blueVicar.com
+ Expat Tales on expatica.com
+ WHY blueVicar.com?
+ "blueVicar"?
o What's in the design phase?
o blueVicar Online
o Suggestions?
o Contact Us
*
*
expat info
o Angloinfo
o expatica
o Expatriates.com
o ExpatStuff
o International Herald Tribune
o Just Landed
*
expat/repat writers with blogs
o Alison Wonderland
o An American Pipemaker in Brittany
o Azur Alive
o BigHominid's Hairy Chasms
o Britt-Arnhild's House in the Woods
o Chez mr.le Marquis du Galipot.
o Chez Odile
o Cyberfrance
o David Lebovitz
o expat-blog
o France Tales
o French Windows
o Frenchless in France
o From France
o Inside the USA
o ktismatics
o L'Ombre de l'Olivie/The Shadow of the Olive Tree
o L.A. en vie
o La France Profonde
o Le Blagueur à Paris
o Learn French with the Bible Weblog
o Living the Life in Saint-Aignan
o Marco Mazzei
o Minter Dial's Blog
o Nice Days
o Paris Parfait
o Petanque & Pastis
o Polly-Vous Francais
o Possumworld
o Provence from Fayence outwards
o relevantblog
o Rue Rude
o Run Around Paris
o St Bloggie de Riviere
o the languedoc page
o the same only different
o Tomate Farcie à San Francisco
o Tongue in Cheek
o Woman Wandering
*
other blog keepers
o Baking and Books
o Blog Award
o Good Wine Under $20
o lessons, loves, regrets, and do overs
o Paris Breakfasts
o The French Journal
o The Golden Ass
o The House of Simon
o The Theos Project
*
Other sites by me
o Drawing Attention to Life
o More about Drawing Attention to Life
*
Site Meter
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Comments
For a long time I here was not.