Communal meal for over 72s

Thanks SO much, Stella. This is invaluable background knowledge stuff that is absolutely necessary to avoid ghastly misunderstandings and pratfalls.

My next-door neighbour also clues me up about things I could never learn anywhere else. Today he suggested I might sell some of our kiwis at the local market when they are ripened up a bit - we estimate a crop of about 5-600 all being well.

He told me any householder who produces her own fruit or veg can sell it on the fringes of the weekly market, but you have to give the ‘placeur’ a fee that is negotiable, but takes into account the Christmas pourboire you tip him. You just supply your own small table, and fix your own price. But you must be the producer in person and you can’t sell for anybody else.

BTW in the barber’s chair this am I was telling the coiffeuse about sitting next to the very nice Chtimi man at the repas cheveux blancs, and he walked in to the salon with his little granddaughter! What an amazing coincidence! Turns out his wife was under a dryer in the Ladies section, so we all met up again. Insolite!

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It sounds as if you are really settling in well…good luck with kiwi fruit…you sound like a major supplier…

(In our area we have to pick them as the first frost hits… then store them until they ripen later in the winter. The school gets first dibs on everything, of course, and they have the storage space. )

I reckon that a chat with the locals at the hairdresser’s is definitely the icing on the cake… :relaxed: you are now “one of them” :hugs:

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You’re very kind, Stella, and my confidence is growing but it’s still early days and I want to take things cautiously and not over-reach myself. I got the impression at the meal that older French folk don’t have as high an opinion of English migrants as the English seem to have of themselves! I may be wrong, but that’s my intuition.

You’ve earned your place in the affection of the community, it seems to me, by having a finger on the pulse(s) of French life. I say pulses, because in Chinese Traditional Medicine there are three pulses at the wrist, and three distinct levels at each of the three different pulses = 9. I think French life is like that, and you are an expert practitioner! I’m very happy to have you take my pulse now and then.

I’ll bear in mind your kiwi ideas. There is a large Maison de Retraite down our avenue, and two schools with children at infant, junior and intermediate levels attending also. The school buses use our house as a gyratory point every day during term time!

French folk will take to their hearts anyone who is appreciative of France and shows a willingness to join-in local activities… if you can mumble a few words of French… they will be over the moon… and encourage you to greater feats… :hugs:

Many Brits do not make the effort and are (perhaps wrongly) considered snooty/stand-offish etc… and sadly we are all tarred with the same brush…

Already, you will have given your locals good reason to revise their blanket opinion. Well done… keep up the good work… you can bet that your presence at the meal will be discussed and chewed over… so just keep smiling and “bonjour’ing” everyone you meet … :relaxed:

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There is that of course, but there is also the underlying notion that there must be something slightly amiss, maybe family problems, because otherwise why would an older person cut him- or herself off from his or her family.
This is something French people will never tell you but it applies even to French people who change regions.

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Certainly applies to French from other regions… who are around here…

One dear elderly lady confided to me that she had more English friends than French… because she had come from another region as a young girl… and married a local man… but never been truly welcomed/accepted… :thinking:

Another … a man… said that we (English) were friendlier than the folk in his village (quite some miles from us)… as his neighbours were all related to one another and he and his wife considered as outsiders even though they had lived there some 20 years. They simply close ranks, he explained… :unamused:

At first, we were asked why we had moved from UK… but our answer obviously met with understanding and approval… and the number of family and friends who visit us from UK has upheld our explanation…:hugs:

Nowadays… we are greeted with compassion… as folk ask us if/how we are affected by Brexit… :thinking:

Moving to France is not like going to live on the moon… :roll_eyes::wink::relaxed::relaxed:

Around here it seems everyone is someone’s cousin, banjo time :thinking:

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:scream::notes: “If you go down in the woods today you’re in for a big surprise…!” :notes::astonished::grimacing:

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I am very much alive to this, Véro, and it’s dilemma that doesn’t yield to easy solutions.

One doesn’t want to disclose too much about the intimacies of one’s life until some level of trust is established, appropriate to local cultural expectations.

My wife and I emigrated so that our two sons might enjoy some well-deserved and necessary freedom from parental oversight, as they lived - out of economic necessity - at home with us. In their late 30s and early 40s, and both unmarried, they felt emotionally oppressed, although loved and cared for us totally. When we retired it was worse for them.

Our youngest has a serious mental illness (schizophrenia) and has never worked, nor is he capable of supporting himself unaided and without empathic support and supervision. The state offers him no support at all. Our elder son cares for him, and works as a docker, although he has a good academic degree and is s talented author. He is endlessly supportive of his brother, and his role has precluded his chances of finding a wife to love him, and be his companion, and could share his burden of care. This is also our sorrow.

This is a lot for strangers to digest, and we have a debt of loyalty to our sons, who need to be able to preserve their dignity. We live in callous or at best unsympathetic times.

But life is as it is served up, and one does one’s best to manage it. Elderly parents can be an encumbrance to their off-spring, and we shall not impose our infirmities on others who have no duty of care to us under the impossible circumstances fate has delivered them, or even if circumstances were fair.

C"est comme ça.

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Good heavens Peter… you don’t give out all the info… just a few gems… :relaxed:

As always… tell the truth… that is all you need. “The French” are just ordinary folk (like us) and they understand the pressures and turmoil of family life…

If someone really has a go… (not everyone loves Brits)… wanting to know why we are here… :thinking: I tell them and have never had a bad reaction.

Firstly, I say that our UK Doctor recommended France as the best place for OH to live out his few remaining years…

Then I mention how my French Grandmother lost her sweetheart in the trenches at Ypres… and how she fled, broken-hearted, to England… where she eventually met and married an Englishman…

Finally, I tell how I am trying to locate my estranged French relations, who never accepted Grandmother’s English husband…

By this time, if they are not drowning in tears… they are enfolding me in a bear-hug and swearing undying friendship and support… :hugs::hugs::hugs:

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Not all of us have gems to display, Stella. Could look for a few pebbles and paint smiley faces on them. :thinking::grinning:

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You can do it Peter. (As I see things… you have a close-knit, caring, family unit.)

Your family are pleased and think you are very brave to retire to France and experience the wonderful French lifestyle.

For both of you, keeping active and working at a foreign language is beneficial to the brainbox…

You coming here, allows your adult children to relax in their own space… and gives them the opportunity to visit you in France… if and when they can.

Those three ideas … or something along those lines… that can get a meaningful understanding between you and your neighbours.

(As time goes by you can open up a little more if you choose to do so. You will probably find that some folk you get to know… have family members with needs not unlike that of your son… etc etc… and you will form tighter bonds of friendship as a result…)

Yes, we’re well aware of that. A nuisance really as don’t really feel we want to to continually have to justify our existence here. We just make it clear that despite sounding english neither of our families are english in the first place, so England is really not our home.

Actually, this attitude in international… it is not sinister… it is simple curiosity :roll_eyes::thinking::zipper_mouth_face:

Nothing unnatural about it either… most folk would wonder …and eventually ask a foreigner… why they have decided to settle there ??.. and it is a good “ice-breaker” :joy:

It is curiosity, Stella, but I’m not so sure that it is simple. Because I think it stems from self-preservation, an atavistic response to the stranger amongst the tribe or clan. People need to get the bottom of who you are and what you want, where you come from and what yarn you spin isn’t going to satisfy them. Indeed, it may play to their prejudices, stereotypes, and anxieties.

That keen curiosity cuts through any efforts to charm or persuade the other of one’s lack of guile or harmlessness. Besides, I’m hopeless at playing the all-round good guy, people see through it and it taints the relationship, unless it’s a very brief encounter.

I’d rather be upfront about things from the start. Living even a small lie is corrosive and needs constant refreshing and embellishing to withstand curiosity, because the lie is turned over in many minds outside my control, and it isn’t worth the effort.

If French people don’t want to know the real me (and I’m not out to shock anybody or dramatise my very humdrum life) I can live with the consequences, and my conscience.

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Peter… I have not suggested you be anything other than yourself. … and I would never suggest lies be told. I’m not quite sure where “living a lie” comes into things…

If you want to tell folk your whole personal life-story straight away… go ahead… I was merely suggesting a précis… :thinking: which would probably be easier for you, given your level of verbal French at the moment…

In so many ways, folk are the same the world over… yet, we are all different in how we read one another’s actions and words…

and what one person might consider an intrusion/nuisance… another person might simply see as a gentle attempt at a conversation… :relaxed::relaxed:

Quite right, Stella, and wires perhaps crossed but “living a lie” is your words not, I think, mine.

Of course one doesn’t pour one’s heart out over aperos or coffee, and ‘opening-up’ is always a matter of timing, and sometimes mutual consent,
but I’ve always been that way. Perhaps that’s why I’m not overkeen on social occasions where small-talk is the rule. And I sometimes find that some men only ever talk about sport, which has never interested me much, though I enjoy a football match occasionally in good company, and a live cricket match with my son, who’s a real fan and a walking Wisden.

But I do learn from your guidance, as I’ve mentioned before, I think. And I mean it, or I wouldn’t say it/write it :memo::joy:.

My French conversation has taken a steep upward curve, as is usually the way when learning a new skill, there a periods of ‘latency’ when no progress seems to be the case, because the data has to be quietly organised and installed in the right parts of the brain before it can operate properly. Clever old brains we’ve got, even old ones work well, and old dogs do learn new tricks :dog2::+1::blush:

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Peter, I was so gobsmacked by your reply… especially when you talked about lies…

fair enough I misquoted… but it was because I was upset that we were so obviously misunderstanding on something to important to me. All who know me, know that Truth plays an important role in my life…

Smalltalk… kiwi… and all things gardening… DIY ??? the weather… Toussaint… 11 november… all these are good topical subjects…

Oh and Halloween… you may have kids/ghosts knocking on your door… ???

Did last year, very good too, proper scary and very polite! Thanks for the reminder. xx

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Just an update.
According to the Connexion we will be losing the right to vote in both European and Commune Elections, so if you are not on the Electoral Roll you will not get an invitation anymore.