It seems to me there is a lot less roadside peeing nowadays, this trend appears to have started about ten years ago. Maybe there are regulations to control this kind of thing or maybe the later generations are more prudish than us oldies ?
The way french children whisper in the streets and in doctors waiting rooms. The way parents tell off their children for speaking too loudly in the street.
The way children will say hello to you in the street. I left the UK because it became unthinkable to recognise the existence of a child in the street, much less have the temerity to say hello.
I sometimes work in a restaurant and always remark how quiet and whispering the french clients are. My english dad is very formal in restaurants so we eat politely then leave. (I unearthed his book about wine from the early 70s which had a huge section about wine and food etiquette - I think my OH would throw it out of the window). When we go to a restaurant we are very noisy (mainly OH) and our teenage kids tell him to speak quietly.
Many of my swiss relatives spend their time eating linseed seeds etc or have other digestive disfunctions bulemia/anorexia/laxative abuse. Perhaps it is also because they don't eat soup - they are from the german speaking cantons ;)
Don't be talking about it Rachael, yerra. Nearly every big family reunion meal we have is ponctuated by a wide expansive gesture at some point, followed by knockings-over and pools of vin, hurried standings-up and moppings and cluckings :)
Ian the wine glasses don't last very long chez nous because with everyone speaking with their hands they get knocked over and smashed over the table cloth ;-)
and they insist on placing the wine glass above the plate in the centre. Each time I set the table for our family reunions (my in-laws) at the country place in the Ain near Lyon, I do it as my Lancashire granny taught me ; my wife's aunt follows me, clucking, to overturn the forks and move the glasses :)
Maybe it was because you didn't have any onions hanging around your neck Mike? You hadn't completed the look ;-)
There are some French habits that I have no problem in avoiding carwise:
1. Tailgating
2. Pulling over to the right before turning right
3. Cutting the angle of the corner from 90° to 45° (or proportionately) when turning left
4. Cutting the apex of left hand corners on open AND blind bends
5. Fiddling about in order to get another lit ciggy in mouth
6. Steering with just one hand on wheel - even smokers
7. Parking badly in supermarkets
8. Not giving a sh*t about careful opening of doors in same location
9. Rarely washing car
10. Not checking light bulbs are ALL functioning until day before CT
etc., etc..
I tried the bicycle, beret and baguette look - they only laughed........!
Instructions for looking French whilst eating: -
Hold your knife in the opposite hand to what you would normally, preferably holding it like a pencil, and the fork you grasp very awkwardly in your fist (like the killer in the film Psycho), again using the opposite hand to what you would use normally :)
The French spoon for eating dessert - a teaspoon ! Most of us are used to eating a tart or large gateau with a fork, and several times I have catapaulted the crust of an apple tart over the meal table whilst using a teaspoon.
Claude Levi-Strauss noted food very often in his work, in fact ultimately it is food along with sex and violence that are the cornerstones of his ethnographic work that is heavily influenced by his French way of seeing the world. There is nothing wrong with that, but he opened the way to many other people to look at eating as part of social environments. British anthropologist Robin Fox wrote that: 'Shovelling food into the mouth with a fork would be seen as the height of indelicacy by some; the absence of forks as the height of barbarity by others. Fingers may have been made before forks, but ever since Catherine (and Marie) de Medici brought these essential tools for noodle eating from northern Italy to France, the perfectly useful finger has been socially out, except for fruit and cheese.' On reflection, the fork is an absurd tool but practical, however the refinement into several different types for different stages of eating is ultimately weird. That even changes from culture to culture, thus some people never know what to do but import their own 'table manners' which make them stand out. Eating with fingers is still complicated. If eating quail one is allowed to lift a leg and take it from the bone with teeth, if it is a chicken then take it from the bone with knife and fork. Why? Fingers win every time.
Then there is the question of salad: The French eat salad after the main dish, the Americans and Italians steadfastly before, the English, to the horror of all others, put it on the same plate as meat, with no bread available to boot. Scots and Irish, unless very cosmopolitan, glare at salad as if it was an alien invader. On visits to family in Scotland I have noticed that salad is only served as a main dish when it is 'too hot' to eat cooked food. I wonder how they would cope with a boiling hot 'curry' on a steaming hot day on a first visit to India?
If there is bread and butter it has a separate plate that is placed at the upper left of the dinner plate with the butter spreading knife horizontally across the plate. The slices of bread are then halved or cut to triangles and usually only served with soup. Therefore, having had my early years in Frankish Cologne I obviously learned 'European' habits because I never held the spoon so that I could put it in to the soup by the edge, continue that motion toward me and take in the stuff from that side of the spoon. Our college feasts usually had bisque or things like oxtail with chunks in them. I broke bread into pieces to aid getting the chunks on my spoon and was more than once told it was impolite. I also did not mind taking savoury at the end of a meal after dessert but if it is served the other way that is fine by me. However, the normal rather than formal Anglo-Saxon insistence on finishing with 'pudding' with a cup of foul, strong tea that does noting to cleanse the mouth gets me. As for no water on the table or not drinking it when there is, do those people not need to clean their palates?
Restaurants can be an ethnographic experience. I am now getting to be able to tell English, Dutch, German, Scandinavian and Latin visitors (and sometimes residents) apart from French diners. It is really fascinating stuff and I ought to read lots more about it for amusement if little else.
David Gay got it. The French soup spoon is pointed because you fill it point down first and put it in your mouth point first Now, do you want to speak about salad (I mean french salad, ie: lettuce in large uncut leaves that you cannot use a knife on) This is when the bit of bread comes in, As I keep telling my husband the bread is not to eat but an eating implement.
My daughter complains I am too English when I send her to bed at a reasonable time on a school night rather than half past nine. This is in primaire by the way.
Oh, the firm grip rather than the delicate two finger Anglo-method ;-)
Is this the French equivalent of U and non U? I suppose it must be.
err, no, it was more about the way one fills and holds a soup spoon.............
Sluuuuurp, clean mouth after with napkin dumped unceremoniously on table, say 'Ahhh' then tell the service how good the soup was... It never fails to get the chef on our side. My OH being a Latin anyway, says that it is no wonder the English are always constip.... In her view, appreciation of food must be seen and heard, even above talking whilst eating, which still gets her when watching a couple eating silently and far too carefully.
forearms good, elbows bad. and I will not mention soup..............