My Four Seasons in France

by Janine Marsh

  ‘Non, happy Halloween.’ We were back on the ‘h’ issue again. I tried one more time, putting everything I had into a long, drawn-out hhhhhhh.

  ‘Hhhhhhhhhe,’ he went, ‘hhhhhhhhhhhhh.’

  He was red-faced and hunched over with effort. The sound coming from deep within his body sounded, at best, as if he was in the grip of major respiratory problems and, at worst, highly inappropriate. Churchill the dog certainly relished the spectacle of Bread Man heavy breathing all over my baguette. He already liked him. Now he was positively in love.

  The day of Paul and Delphine’s wedding dawned with a beautiful pale pink sunrise. The official ceremony took place in the early afternoon in a town hall near Béthune where Delphine’s family live. There’s no shimmying up a rollercoaster, teetering on top of a tower or barefoot nuptials on a beach in France. And you can’t even get married in a church. Here, every mariage, the French word that covers both wedding and marriage, has to go through a civil ceremony conducted by the mayor or their assistant in the local town hall. You can have a religious ceremony, too, but it doesn’t count as an official mariage.

  Going to a wedding is probably one of the few occasions when turning up on time is de rigueur, instead of plain rude and causing your hosts to suspect that you’re possibly not fit for polite company. We arrived at the municipal town hall with ample time, we thought, at least thirty minutes early, but we hadn’t considered that we would be meeting a lot of new people. Delphine and Paul, originally from the Gers department in the heartland of Gascony, invited forty close friends and family to join them and, as we knew only a few of them and there were a lot of introductions to be made and kisses to be given and received, we found ourselves sprinting round the guests.

  To bise or not to bise? Even in France nobody actually knows how many times is correct to faire la bise, to kiss. There’s even a website called combiendebises.com (How Many Kisses), which aims to help by allowing people to log how many kisses are appropriate in their region. Apparently, it’s only one kiss in Finistère in Brittany, while those in some regions claim three, four or even a lip-smacking five kisses are required. And which side first, the left or the right? That differs too according to where you’re from. It’s best just to watch and see how the person opposite acts, and if in doubt go with two kisses, right cheek to right cheek first, as that is most common.

  Everyone at the wedding was smartly dressed, but no tuxedos. ‘They’re only for meeting the president or going to a ball,’ according to Jean-Claude, whom Bernadette had squashed into a suit for the occasion.

  We crammed into the town hall and watched as Delphine and Paul tied the knot in a room with an open door, as is tradition, in case someone wished to burst in, object and shout ‘It should have been me.’ Since Paul’s former squeeze, Sylvie, now lived in Béthune with her new beau, a baker, I did wonder if it might happen. But no, all went smoothly, and thirty minutes later the happy couple received their Livret de famille, a booklet that records main events within the family such as marriage, birth, death and divorce.

  Leaving the building, they were subjected to a deluge of confetti, flower petals and rice before a group photo took place. We were all required to yell ‘oustiti’, the equivalent of saying cheese, which forces you into a smile position (it’s actually the French word for a marmoset). Some people think the French say ‘fromage’, but I’m afraid it’s not true.

  Paul and Delphine left first in their car, white roses tied to the wing mirrors, to a hotel in the nearby town of Gosnay, and we soon followed to join the evening celebrations. Everyone beeped their horns constantly for the entire journey. If you’ve ever been in France on a Saturday afternoon, you’ll probably have experienced this outpouring of hooter happiness. Its almighty racket is apparently a hangover from the Middle Ages when people had a habit of getting married in secret, prompting the authorities to declare that weddings should be celebrated with as much noise as possible.

  After we drove, still beeping, through the big wrought-iron gates of the hotel, we all parked in neat lines in front of the former chateau, noticing that every one of its grand windows was dripping with flowers. We dropped off luggage in a room that was decorated with richly patterned wallpaper in muted colours, plush, soft carpet and antique furnishings. The latticed windows of the hotel overlooked beehives. It was genteel, chic and charming but not remotely stuffy. The picturesque gardens were awash with early-evening autumn sunlight, and the sound of laughter and gentle conversation filtered through the wonderful ancient windows and doors. Candles flickered as the light started to fall, and immaculately dressed servers flitted in and out with champagne bottles and wooden boxes of succulent oysters.

  Delphine’s friends teased her that she was no longer a Catherinette and just in the nick of time, too, as St Catherine’s Day, 25 November, was just around the corner. In France (feminists look away because you’re not going to like this), unwed women used to be given bright yellow or green hats to wear on St Catherine’s Day. They would put on their best clothes to match their hat and attend organized balls and parties in the hope of attracting a potential husband. Wearing hats isn’t common practice any more, but shops do stock St Catherine cards to give to friends who have not yet found the partner of their dreams, and some people still wish their unmarried lady friends Happy St Catherine’s Day.

  Paul, who was looking very dapper (Delphine had expressly forbidden him to dress in any of his usual seventies gear), started his speech. We braced ourselves for a long night when he led us into an adjacent room in the hotel and fired up a PowerPoint presentation featuring mushrooms: Delphine picking mushrooms in the woods; Paul holding mushrooms up to his nose; mushrooms arranged in the shape of a heart on a table. All of the photos were captioned with romantic words by highly esteemed French people: ‘Entre deux cœurs qui s’aiment, nul besoin de paroles’ (‘Two hearts in love need no words’) from a poem by Marceline Desbordes-Valmore; ‘L’amour est l’emblème de l’éternité, il confond toute la notion de temps, efface toute la mémoire d’un commencement, toute la crainte d’une extrémité’ (‘Love is the emblem of eternity; it confounds all notion of time, erases all memory of a beginning, all fear of an end’) by nineteenth-century writer Madame de Staël. Paul read the words out solemnly, turning to gaze at a blushing Delphine, who looked as pleased as punch.

  Dinner wasn’t until a stomach-rumbling nine o’clock, but it was certainly worth the wait. The north met the south on the tables that night and it was a marriage made in heaven. Paul had informed us that the wedding date had been chosen specifically as it coincided with the optimal time for mushroom picking, so it came as no surprise that there were mushrooms of all shapes and sizes in the dishes. There was pork stuffed with chilli peppers and saucisse chorizo, vegetables from the hotel garden sprinkled with crystallized amaretto and quinoa tabbouleh with spices. Golden girolles sautéed in butter, mushrooms in cream and cognac, and warm chanterelles served with blackberries and Cantal cheese, a cousin of cheddar and a firm favourite in France for at least a thousand years.

  There were lashings of ice-cold beer made locally, Gascon wines and finally a snifter of Armagnac from the Gers, which was mellow and heart-warming. The grand finale saw the lights dimmed, indoor fireworks lit and unexpectedly, the Rocky theme song. Then in came a croquembouche, a soaring column of bite-sized profiteroles, stuffed with cream, held together by crispy caramel and elaborately decorated with spun sugar and icing flowers. It was carried with utmost care by a waiter whose face was completely hidden by the towering dessert.

  You would think by now we’d have all eaten ourselves to a standstill, but no, the night was young and dancing had to be done to an abundance of some of the worst music ever heard, personally chosen by Paul. When the obligatory ‘Le Madison’ was played, a tune that’s been a crowd-pleaser consistently since the late 1950s, even Jean-Claude made his way to the dancefloor, becoming increasingly red as he hopped about to the beat.

  In the morning, hungover but ch
eerful, we said goodbye to the happy couple who were off on their lune de miel, kissed all of our friends, new and old, and headed home to a rapturous welcome from cats and dogs, chickens, ducks and geese who, as much as they love babysitter Annette, seem to genuinely prefer me to clear up after them.

  When I had asked the waiter in the hotel about the mushrooms that had been served at the wedding feast, he found out from the chef that they had come from a shop in Saint-Omer, a quintessential market town with one foot in the past, just half an hour’s drive from Calais. They were honestly the best I’d ever had, and I knew I was going to have to seek them out. When it comes to markets, we’re spoiled for choice. There are so many street markets to choose from within easy distance that I could go to a different one every day for a month and still have plenty left over. But the memory of the mushrooms remained, so the next Saturday we headed to Saint-Omer’s morning market.

  Wandering through the cobbled Grand Place (Place du Maréchal Foch) dominated by the neoclassical town hall, we were surrounded by the tantalizing smells that came from the street-food stalls, of tartiflette and couscous, and spit-roasted chicken turning over potatoes cooked in the juice that trickled down. I wandered over to a stall to buy some apples, and was impressed when the young lad serving asked me when I was planning to eat the apples and then proceeded to pick out the ones that would be best for me.

  We bought a baguette straight from the oven at the boulangerie of Guy Delalleau, who sells the most divine cakes and breads. As we roamed the stalls I nibbled the end of it. Generally speaking, eating food in the street in France is considered a faux pas, but baguettes are the exception. No one has ever been known to have the willpower to resist the sweet aroma of a just-baked baguette.

  NOVEMBER

  Happiness is homemade

  THIS TIME OF the year French churchyards, normally dour places, are transformed into a riot of colour. The first of November is All Saints Day and friends and family of the dearly departed take pots of vibrant chrysanthemums to place on graves. I always put flowers on the tomb of a young First World War British soldier from London, killed nearby and the only Commonwealth soldier buried in our local church. We’ve never seen any flowers on his grave and think it is likely that he has no one to remember him, so we do.

  Armistice Day, 11 November, is a serious affair in France as well as a national holiday. At the eleventh hour, in my village, everyone gathers at the cenotaph in front of the church. This happens in villages, towns and cities all over France. The mayor lays a wreath and stands to attention alongside his deputy, who solemnly intones ‘Mort pour la France’, followed by the reading aloud of the names of villagers lost to war since the First World War. Alan Dundas Stewart, the twenty-one-year-old British soldier who died at the front, is also remembered, his name pronounced with a strong French accent. All is silent, other than cows mooing in the surrounding fields. It’s a poignant and sombre event, one that brings the community together, and it always makes me cry. Afterwards, everyone meets at the town hall and the mayor pours a vin d’honneur, a glass of wine, to honour the memories of those lost.

  The air starts to chill in November and generally it’s a quiet month, as in much of the country, before the Christmas season kicks off. Local supermarkets stock great balls of wool for keen knitters, and there is a flutter of excitement on Beaujolais Nouveau Day – not always in a positive way. It’s a tradition that has been around for more than fifty years, and producers of this vin primeur (young wine) race to get their wine onto the shelves of supermarkets and bars all over France and around the world (more than half the 25 million bottles produced head to the USA and Japan) for the third Thursday of November. Beaujolais Nouveau, a fruity red from Beaujolais in the east of France, has been around for centuries but the tradition of rushing it to outlets started in the 1950s. Then in the 1970s, a winemaker and businessman called Georges Duboeuf, who was also a major producer of Beaujolais Nouveau, started a publicity campaign. Banners proclaiming ‘Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé!’ became commonplace, and the race from Beaujolais to Paris gained ever-increasing media coverage each year with delivery methods becoming ever more exotic, including by Concorde, hot-air balloon and elephant. The legend of Beaujolais Nouveau Day seems to be more celebrated than the taste, which Jean-Claude describes as ‘simple, with no depth, no complexity’, though he never says non when I offer him a glass!

  If you read the papers here you’ll think that all French people loathe the tradition. Critics insist it’s nothing more than a marketing operation, a cunning ploy to rid Burgundian winemakers of undrinkable wine in large quantities. Wine snobs claim they would rather down a bucket of cat wee.

  And yet, to this day, wine bars and cafés all over France sport posters announce ‘Le Beaujolais Nouveau est arrivé’, meaning that someone must be drinking it, and there aren’t enough gullible foreign visitors or expats around to put away that much.

  We were in Paris on Beaujolais Nouveau Day. We weren’t there for the wine, but to celebrate my birthday. It’s actually in September, but we’d had too much work to get away, what with the roof being mended, and we had to wait for someone to be able to babysit the animals. We’re very lucky that despite living miles from anything, it only takes a few hours to drive to a station and take the train into the city. I have loved Paris since I stayed there as a fourteen-year-old exchange student with a family on the outskirts of the 13th Arrondissement. I remember being entranced by them drinking coffee from bowls, into which they also dunked their croissants. I’ve visited Paris many times since then, falling in love with each arrondissement, with hidden streets and secret squares, museums and markets, Notre Dame and the Eiffel Tower. Mark, on the other hand, was not such a fan. After one visit at the age of eighteen, when no one could understand his appalling French and declined to help him when he asked for directions, he had made up his mind that the hype about rude waiters, curt staff in shops and overcharging in restaurants was true. It didn’t matter that I’d told him it was rubbish and no more particular to Paris than London or New York or any other city. But when he asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I told him I’d like to spend a weekend in Paris. I was determined to show him the Paris I know and love.

  From Gare du Nord we took the Métro to Abbesses and Mark thought it would be a good idea to walk up the spiral stairs from the platforms to the surface. I’ve never done it before: most sane people take the lift at what is Paris’s deepest station. Two hundred stairs later we emerged into the fresh air, red-faced, sweating, gasping for breath and unable to speak, not even to comment on how fabulous the artwork was that wound its way round the walls.

  For three days and two nights we walked the streets, from Montmartre, where we bought sandwiches at a boulangerie and sat in a secret courtyard sharing them with the birds, to Saint-Chapelle, an 800-year-old jewel box with stained-glass windows that make your soul soar. From Notre Dame, via the historic flower market, we walked along the River Seine to the sparkling Eiffel Tower at dusk. We blew our budget on cocktails at the swanky Le Bar at the George V hotel, and at around 30 euros each, we couldn’t afford to choke on them when the bill came. The experience was worth every centime, though, and the exquisitely made cocktails came with bottled water, a bowl of ice and snacks. And never have I had such attentive service in my life – no wonder celebrities such as Mariah Carey and David Beckham are said to like to stay there.

  We people watched, nursing steaming cups of chocolat chaud at terraced cafés, wrapped up against the wind, which rattled round corners and chased leaves across cobbles. We picking out Parisians from visitors. Parisians, we decided, wear a lot of black, walk fast and are not big on smiling. We chanced upon a brasserie that looked medieval on the outside and as if it had been transplanted from 1965 on the inside. Dimly lit with low ceilings, its dark walls complemented dark wooden tables and chairs and, with feet falling off from the walking, we entered even though it was too early for dinner – no all-day meals here. The waiter invited us t
o sit and rest without so much as a hint of a ‘pfff’ – the sound that French people make when they’re at a loss for words at such a preposterous thing. He brought wine and olives over to us, and we sat and listened to two opera singers belt out numbers from Carmen.

  At the end of our city sojourn, Mark was as much in love with Paris as I am. There is something about the city that’s more than simply its architecture and the incredible culture there. Strolling, holding hands, through a freezing-cold park where pétanque was being played, drinking coffee that kept us awake all night and cocktails at a bar in Montparnasse where we met up with the Parisians, Hubert and Vava, we were struck by how many people we saw embracing, passionately kissing or just staring into each other’s eyes. We vowed to one day live in Paris, if only for six months, although not with the animals. What Parisian neighbours would make of a couple of Brits with three dogs, five cats, nine ducks, four geese and thirty-eight chickens doesn’t bear thinking about.

  Back home, those ducks and chickens apparently spent half the time sheltering from the rain and the rest of the time making dirt baths in the chill winter sun, digging holes all over the garden for us to fall into on our return. There were more wild birds flocking to the bird feeders than I’d ever seen before – I even spotted two giant white storks in the field at the bottom of the garden. ‘Sign of a bad winter,’ reiterated Jean-Claude hopefully.

  We’d never yet got through a winter without the pipes freezing. The November before we had a sudden and unexpected cold snap and only managed to thaw out the water to the kitchen after half an hour with a hair dryer aimed at pipes in the loft, keeping our fingers crossed that nothing would burst. But two weeks later, the pipes to the washing machine did burst and flooded the kitchen. We decided to insulate like we live in the Arctic, just in case one year Jean-Claude’s prophecy of winter doom comes to pass.