Part 64
Rattling around in my head, looking for a new blog, I came up with an unexpected idea. Since the age of nine I have visited France no more than four times, but there’s something about France and its people that has always fascinated me.
So, today I’ve decided to revisit, in my head at least, those occasions. Forgive me if I touch on some of the events that I’ve written about previously, but I’m hoping to approach them from a different angle.
World War II ended in Europe on the 5th of May 1945, which was known as VE Day. However, the Japanese only surrendered on August 15th of the same year. The occasion was known as VJ Day. Looking back, I’m surprised at how fast my parents decided to leave Britain and head for South Africa. We left early in 1946, stopping for a few days in Paris staying at the George V Hotel, considered at the time to be one of the five best hotels in the world.
For a nine-year-old boy fresh out of the deprivations of wartime England, the hotel was a wonderful, luxurious palace but, above all, my parents later told me, it was the place where I made the metamorphosis from a skinny child with an indifferent appetite to a ravenous little monster that ate everything in sight!
I do remember discovering the joy of eating at that time. I wasn’t sure at first whether it was because of the French cuisine or if I was simply throwing off the shackles of British rationing. Later, I realized that it had quickly instilled in me a lifelong enjoyment of French food.
We travelled on to Switzerland spending a few weeks in a village outside Lausanne called Pouilly, where both the language and the food were distinctly French. Somehow my Dad befriended a chef, who invited the three of us for lunch at his home. It was literally a staggering event. He cooked at least five courses over a period of about four hours, which firmly entrenched my love of Gallic gastronomy.
Our eight months in Switzerland is recorded in an earlier blog, so I won’t go there again. I would rather move onto the time when with my pal from Namibia, Alan Louw, and I arrived in France in 1956, having hitched a lift on yachts racing from St. Helier in Jersey, one of the Channel Islands, to St. Malo in Normandy. After celebrating with the winning yacht for a day or so, we hitchhiked some of the way to Paris before giving up and catching a train because of the bulky bags we carried. We had two collapsible Kayaks which broke down into one long bag each for the framework and big fat bags for the Kayak “skins” and our personal belongings. I had crazily packed a sports jacket and a tennis racquet into my bag quite apart from more essential clothing and toiletries. No wonder nobody stopped for us. However, we did have a chance to eat at a “Routier,” one of the small cafes dotted along the major roads for travellers and truck drivers. Once again, the food was simple but superb. A surprising aspect was the way they served a delicious steak and pommes frites (chips, or French fries); and only after we had finished that, did they deliver a plate of vegetables which we were expected to eat separately. Very strange but not unpleasant.
After working on a building site in Paris for a few weeks, we set off in our kayaks on the river Seine, another adventure in a previous blog. Looking back, it was interesting to compare my previous journey with my parents in the grand style and now coming down to earth and meeting with the working men and women of France who were mostly delightful and full of fun once they got used to the fact that we were South African rather than the dreaded Anglais. Our diet ranged from a daily long loaf of bread, camembert cheese and a bottle of wine for lunch, to an evening meal cooked by an obliging Algerian chap in the youth hostel where we stayed. Lots of couscous and Arabic flavors. The youth hostel was a rambling old place and adjoined a nursery school where we were amused to see a shed with a long row of tiny little toilets sitting side by side without any partition between them. We never saw them in action, but it must have been quite a sight to see a couple of dozen children all going through their “motions” together!
Regarding our canoe trip, I would add that travelling through the Loire Valley was the highlight of our journey between Paris and Lyon. It is a stunningly beautiful area with charming little historic villages and a huge number of chateaux scattered along the valley. The French kings, in around the 15th and 16th century, built chateaux in the Loire Valley variously described as the “Cradle of the French” or the “Garden of France.” The river itself is the longest in France, eventually reaching the ocean at the Bay of Biscay, near Saint Nazaire.
Noblemen quickly followed their kings, not wishing to be far from the French seat of power with some 300 chateaux being built in the Loire Valley. It was regarded as reflecting the ideals of the “Age of Enlightenment.” Travelling along the river and later the “Canal Lateral de le Loire,” we saw some of these spectacular chateaux, many of which were built on the tops of hills.
Because of our impecunious situation, we lived on porridge and fruit that we “borrowed” from the abundant orchards along the riverbanks. The valley is famous for its fine wines and fruit, especially cherries, as well as artichokes and asparagus fields. In heart of the valley, we ran out of porridge and, although we doubted if the French had ever heard of porridge, a Scottish invention, we looked for some in a little grocery store in one of the villages. I had learned the words for porridge in French and asked for “flocons d’avoine” (flakes of oats). The storekeeper looked completely blank, so I looked on the shelves and was delighted and amazed to find a packet of “Quaker Oats.” When I presented the package to the storekeeper, he smiled in recognition and said, “Mais oui, Kacker Outs” (a phonetic version of what he said). He had no other word for porridge. We were just thankful that it existed in the heart of France.
We had put aside enough money for one good meal before we left the Loire Valley and chose a small restaurant in one of the many delightful villages. I forget what we ate but, once again, the French cuisine was superb. Am I writing about France or about food? Food, I guess, but it is so central to the character of the French and their culture that I am unapologetic about it. By the way, I enjoy many other national cuisines. I don’t know how I’ve managed not to resemble the Michelin Tire man logo, but I have, over the years, cut down on quantity in favor of quality where available.
In the late 1980s, I revisited Paris to film one of the offshore directors of the South African Foundation, an organization funded by big business to maintain commercial communication links with French commerce, despite the Apartheid regime. The four directors of the Foundation in Paris, Bonn, London and Washington did a valiant job for South African commerce and industry, but the increased sanctions against the South African regime made it a tough sell.
The Foundation’s Director in France (whose name I sadly forget) took our film crew and myself on a tour of Paris as well as a good interview on the relationship between French and South African business interests. He gave us a fascinating insight into the position of France globally in respect of its commerce and industry as well as insights into the then cultural aspects of the nation and living in Paris as a foreigner. Once again, we were treated to some exceptional French cuisine at the Director’s favorite restaurant.
I visited France once more in 2014 with my American film partner Eric Karson and his wife Tara. We attended the Cannes Film Festival, something that Eric did every second year but it’s worth a blog on its own and will follow this one.
Lastly, I’m currently reading a novel written by Michael Bussi called Black Water Lilies. It is translated from the French and is a current murder mystery set against the backdrop of the village of Giverny near Paris, the home of the Impressionist painter Claude Monet. Monet was obsessed with water lilies and built a number of ponds in the village to grow these lovely plants.
I’m loving this read. The translator has kept faithful to the style and pace of the author. Reading it brings back so many memories of the subtle differences in speech patterns and thinking between French and Anglo culture. I’m not suggesting that either one is better or worse. They are simply different and it’s refreshing to dip into another lifestyle and thought process. As I read, I can practically reach out, see, feel and even smell the aroma of the local bakery with its long loaves and delicious pastries. I can see the water lily ponds and the old men drinking coffee at tables outside the local cafe.
I’m not claiming to be an obsessive Francophile. It’s just one of many countries I’ve visited whose way of life, particularly in the villages, is so appealing.
Some knowledge and understanding that ExoBrain will be able to save for humankind are the vanishing cultures of the world. Every ExoBrain, linked to its Mother ExoBrain will absorb data to be recorded in perpetuity. The cultures and traditions of the world will be preserved through people’s observation as the ExoBrain learns all about the world around us.
An ExoTech Ltd shareholder, Chris is currently authoring two of the four books to be published the day ExoBrain launches and has helped to create ExoBrain’s introductory video to the Confidential Technical Briefing. Chris has spent his working life in the film and television industry, starting with BBC Television in London, then ATV in Birmingham becoming, at the time, the youngest Studio Manager in Britain.
Later, in South Africa, he wrote and directed film and TV commercials, having four South African entries at the Cannes Advertising Festival. After a number of years of writing and directing or producing documentaries (eight international awards) and corporate videos, he concentrated on writing feature film screenplays (five screened) and television series (seven screened). He has a novel, ”Pursuit of Treachery,” with a literary agent and is currently obtaining finance for an action adventure feature film he has written and is co-producing. He is a published poet and has given many readings.