On Holiday from our Holiday

I haven't been able to post a blog here for a couple of weeks - first we had visitors, and then we've been on holiday for a few days leaving some of the visitors looking after Cleo. We went to the Atlantic coast, stayed at Cap Ferret on the Arcachon basin and also near Hourtin, farther north in the Medoc. I wanted to go somewhere flat and beside the seaside. We took bikes and cycled around forest tracks. We went on a boat trip. We ate ice creams. We paddled and watched the sun setting over the sea. We went to a chateau vineyard and tasted wine and bought a few bottles.

We watched the French on holiday - being together, being organised and being relaxed. No baggy tee shirts or socks and sandals. It was brilliantly sea-sidey and summery and great to get away and to be looked after, but, like all holidays, some of it was hard work. Strange beds, rich food and drink, driving, having to enjoy yourself all the time, sand in your knickers.

It was weird coming back here. I can't say coming home because it doesn't feel quite like home although we were happy to be back to trees and stillness, the empty roads, the telly - we were also homesick for a home to come home to. Our neighbour came out to greet us as we unpacked the car. He said he wondered if we'd gone back to England as there'd been a French car outside our door all week - [ the visitors' hire car}. I felt touched to be known and noticed enough to be slightly missed, but sad that he thought we were the kind of people who could leave for good without saying goodbye.

All the time I've been living here in France, I've been struggling with two opposite inclinations - On the one hand: this desire to compare the French to the English, to search out the differences, good and bad; On the other hand I resist the idea of'Frenchness' or 'Englishness', as stereotypical, over-simplifications, too sweeping, et cetera. For example - the idea that French women are thin is not true: well-off French women may be thin, but poorer women are becoming just as fat as English and American women are - you can see this in supermarkets. The French are a few years behind that's all. Men too: plenty of big French bellies on show on the beach. Also the myth of French people as gourmets and wine buffs: plenty of people buying junk food in Champion; the French couple who shared our Chateau wine tour in the Medoc were just as hopeless as me and him were at tasting and describing the wine. None of us had a clue.

Still, visiting the Gironde, so different from Correze: younger, richer, more urban and urbane,has made me think that there maybe are some aspects of French culture that are shared and, if not universal, at least more emphasised than in England. I don't think this is to do with 'being French' genetically or nationally but in the values and ideas of the whole society. Perhaps it's to do with Catholicism and Protestantism. Or the weather. Or wine rather than beer. Or a bigger country and fewer people. Anyway here's a very tentative list of my perceptions:

1] Happiness and pleasure are human rights - they don't have to be earned.

2] Work is good but only as long as you don't have too much of it. A lot of work goes on here, things are very ordered and organised but it definitely isn't a workaholic culture. This is probably not true for Paris or the other very big cities - but France is not as dominated by city culture as England is.

3]It's OK to feel that your own country is beautiful and the best place to live.

4] Serious conversation is good. To be educated and/or to have ideas is a good thing.

5]Children are people like the rest of us, not aristocrats or royalty. They don't need deference, over-indulgence or false praise.

6] Drunks are not funny but embarrassing.

7] All men can have hair-styles and wear pastel-coloured clothes, not just gay men.

I know a lot of English people believe these things but here they seem embedded in the culture - central not peripheral.

Feel free to disagree.