...and so the day would arrive when it was time to go home. By now there would have been so much rain that a local farmer would be called upon to tow us off the site and we would bid farewell to 'Le Camping Merde de Cochon' with mixed feelings (of joy and ecstasy). Armed with nothing but a personal stereo, some new batteries and a 'Best of Meatloaf' cassette I would settle back and resign myself to the journey ahead. This would invariably include a breakdown somewhere near Limoges(the car, not the passengers amazingly) giving me even longer to reflect on all the new phrases I had learnt over the fortnight such as...
'Merde alors, tu pues!' (Bloody Hell, you stink)
'Tu n'as pas entendu parler de savon?' (Haven't you heard of soap?) and my personal favourite
'Le mec anglais sur l'emplacement numéro 38 est complètement fou' The English bloke on pitch 38 is completely mad.
(Please forgive the errors - bit rusty - de savon or du savon?)
We would eventually arrive back in England to find that they had been experiencing the hottest, weather for decades whilst we'd been away, and that the whole country was walking around looking tanned and gorgeous. Still, at least we were back and it was all over for another year. I could have a shower, sleep alone again and set about tracing my real parents.
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Showing posts with label France. Show all posts
Friday, 26 July 2013
Wednesday, 24 July 2013
Family Holidays Part Four: Warning, Contains Scenes of Adult Nudity
So, as we all huddled in the caravan with the rain lashing down outside, tensions were running high. Poor weather and three teenagers with no TV or gadgets to amuse them is not a good recipe for a perfect holiday; in fact you have all the ingredients for total family breakdown and years of messy legal wrangling.
Such was the pressure that my dad decided now would be a good time to do some yoga. Picture the scene. A smallish caravan, three disgruntled adolescents playing their 97th round of pontoon and a 50+ man doing yoga, NAKED, in the very tight confines of caravan floor. 'Why naked?', you may ask. Well don't. Just one of my dad's little idiosyncracies, a penchant for letting it all hang loose. We were all used to it but others, such as the cleaner and my Japanese student friend, were not. I'm amazed that my dad has reached his mid 70s with not so much as a restraining order to his name.
Anyway, the yoga was over, so my dad got up to put the kettle on when he spotted a French man outside walking back from emptying the toilet. My dad is a friendly sort of chap so he stood at the door, gave a cheery wave and shouted "Bonjour, Monsieur". "Merde alors!",came the reply, as the poor man scurried back to the safety of his own van. You may be fortunate enough not to be familiar with the intimate workings of caravan doors, but many of them are those 'stable door' designs where you can have the top part open and the bottom section closed. My dad claims to this day that he thought the lower part was shut but, needless to say, 'Monsieur le campeur' got a full frontal he wasn't expecting.
I don't know if it was the poor weather or whether word got round about the flasher in the van on pitch 38 but we soon had the site pretty much to ourselves.
Such was the pressure that my dad decided now would be a good time to do some yoga. Picture the scene. A smallish caravan, three disgruntled adolescents playing their 97th round of pontoon and a 50+ man doing yoga, NAKED, in the very tight confines of caravan floor. 'Why naked?', you may ask. Well don't. Just one of my dad's little idiosyncracies, a penchant for letting it all hang loose. We were all used to it but others, such as the cleaner and my Japanese student friend, were not. I'm amazed that my dad has reached his mid 70s with not so much as a restraining order to his name.
Anyway, the yoga was over, so my dad got up to put the kettle on when he spotted a French man outside walking back from emptying the toilet. My dad is a friendly sort of chap so he stood at the door, gave a cheery wave and shouted "Bonjour, Monsieur". "Merde alors!",came the reply, as the poor man scurried back to the safety of his own van. You may be fortunate enough not to be familiar with the intimate workings of caravan doors, but many of them are those 'stable door' designs where you can have the top part open and the bottom section closed. My dad claims to this day that he thought the lower part was shut but, needless to say, 'Monsieur le campeur' got a full frontal he wasn't expecting.
I don't know if it was the poor weather or whether word got round about the flasher in the van on pitch 38 but we soon had the site pretty much to ourselves.
Sunday, 21 July 2013
Family Holidays Part Three: The Weather or Mon Dieu, il pleut!
The journey down through France would always have been spent in an uncomfortable, pre air-con sweaty haze as the hot French sun blazed down on us. The further south we went the stronger the sun's heat would be; a fiery orange ball in a clear azure sky beating down relentlessly. We would pass fields blackened by drought and heard the locals talking about how it hadn't rained in five months. There were hose-pipe bans, water shortages and the army had been placed on high alert due to the risk of wild fires. The elderly, infirm and very young were in grave danger as temperatures soared to previously unrecorded highs.
Like most teenage girls I was desperate to return to school in September with a nice tan and stories of a wonderful holiday romance. As the latter was totally out of the question on account of my smelling worse than a Russian weight-lifter's crotch (no shower - see previous chapter for full details) then the tan was my only hope of proving I'd had a decent summer.
So, despite all the traumas of the journey, arrival and sleeping arrangements I would wake up on the first morning full of adolescent expectation and pull open the curtains to be met with ... cloud. "It's not very sunny", I would say to my mum in that uniquely teenage way, which manages to convey to the addressee that you hold them totally responsible for whatever miserable state of affairs you find yourself in. "It's early yet", she would reply "I'm sure it will get out nice later on".
It didn't. It stayed overcast all morning, drizzled at lunch time and then the heavens opened in the afternoon. The locals were overjoyed, out doing rain dances, shouting 'il pleut' and sacrificing small animals in grateful thanks at makeshift roadside shrines, when all I wanted to do was to worship at the altar of St Ambre of Solaire. The rain would continue pretty much unhindered for the next fortnight, clearing only temporarily one afternoon when we were inside visiting some sodding Benedictine monastery.
This would happen EVERY year. Had Dragon's Den been in existence in the 1980s we could have marketed ourselves as some kind of rain making device. 'Not had any rain for 9 months? Crops failing and your entire population on the brink of starvation? Don't worry. Call 'The Bennett Family' and see those clouds start to form within hours of their arrival'
And so I would return to England pasty and unloved (at least not by anyone French, male and aged 14-17). I never did achieve that 'just cuprinol-ed' look but now, aged 42 my skin is very grateful that I didn't.
Like most teenage girls I was desperate to return to school in September with a nice tan and stories of a wonderful holiday romance. As the latter was totally out of the question on account of my smelling worse than a Russian weight-lifter's crotch (no shower - see previous chapter for full details) then the tan was my only hope of proving I'd had a decent summer.
So, despite all the traumas of the journey, arrival and sleeping arrangements I would wake up on the first morning full of adolescent expectation and pull open the curtains to be met with ... cloud. "It's not very sunny", I would say to my mum in that uniquely teenage way, which manages to convey to the addressee that you hold them totally responsible for whatever miserable state of affairs you find yourself in. "It's early yet", she would reply "I'm sure it will get out nice later on".
It didn't. It stayed overcast all morning, drizzled at lunch time and then the heavens opened in the afternoon. The locals were overjoyed, out doing rain dances, shouting 'il pleut' and sacrificing small animals in grateful thanks at makeshift roadside shrines, when all I wanted to do was to worship at the altar of St Ambre of Solaire. The rain would continue pretty much unhindered for the next fortnight, clearing only temporarily one afternoon when we were inside visiting some sodding Benedictine monastery.
This would happen EVERY year. Had Dragon's Den been in existence in the 1980s we could have marketed ourselves as some kind of rain making device. 'Not had any rain for 9 months? Crops failing and your entire population on the brink of starvation? Don't worry. Call 'The Bennett Family' and see those clouds start to form within hours of their arrival'
And so I would return to England pasty and unloved (at least not by anyone French, male and aged 14-17). I never did achieve that 'just cuprinol-ed' look but now, aged 42 my skin is very grateful that I didn't.
Friday, 19 July 2013
Family Holidays Part Two: Sleeping and Hygiene Arrangements.
So, once the evening meal was over came those fateful words 'We need to make the bed up'. Now, this had to wait until the evening meal was over for the simple reason that the table formed the main base of the afore-mentioned bed. The bedding was retrieved from the cupboards (which were underneath the seats), the table collapsed and the cushions arranged to make a nice, comfortable, King Size bed. Lovely, nothing wrong with that, until you remember that I have two brothers and all three of us had to sleep in this space.
OK, here's the thing. When we first got the caravan we were 7, 9 and 11 and this arrangement was fine. We were small, there was plenty of space, and it wasn't in direct contravention of any EU laws regarding right and proper sleeping arrangements. Fast forward several years and you are presented with a very different and altogether less satisfactory scenario. Now, we were not the kind of children who had cool parents who allowed you to go off on holiday with your friends once you reached your mid teens. Oh no, we were still doing this aged 13, 15 and 17. I kid you not. Whilst this kind of behaviour might be acceptable, dare I say practically obligatory in parts of Norfolk, it is probably more frowned upon in other more sophisticated sectors f society.
So it was that I would settle down for the night with one brother prone to talking in his sleep and the other singing along tunelessly to Buddy Holly (I told you we weren't cool) on his personal stereo.
We would be woken at some ungodly hour the following morning by Dad grinding coffee by hand for his breakfast. Remember last night and having to clear the table before you could make the bed? Well, in the morning we had to get up before breakfast could be served.
All you wanted to do, as a teenage girl, following a stuffy night spent in the warm embrace of her younger brother was to have a shower and make herself look presentable for all those gorgeous French boys who were also staying at 'Le Camping Merde de Cochon'.
Memories of what I am about to recount can, 25 years on, cause me to cry real tears of pain and embarrassment. I know I have a few Psychiatrist/Physchologist friends reading this blog. If any of you could come up with an effective form of therapy for dealing with trauma suffered as a result of holidays then I would gladly try it. You could call it S.H.I.T - Sian's Holiday Intensive Therapy. Boy, would it need to be intensive. You see, my dad had bought a caravan with its own toilet and shower cubicle and for this reason was loathe to go to a site with any 'facilities'. Unfortunately he was also loathe to let us use the shower in the caravan. End result - you were allowed to have a shower 2 or 3 times during a 2 week holiday. When I say a shower what I actually mean is a dribble of water, tepid at best, cold at worst standing in a space which is smaller than the surface area of an average TV. Everyone in the caravan knew if you were using the water as the pump made the most god-awful noise, akin to a cow going through a particularly difficult labour. If you ran the pump for more than a few seconds Dad would be shouting through the door for you to turn it off.
Needless to say I never did pull on any of those family trips to France.
OK, here's the thing. When we first got the caravan we were 7, 9 and 11 and this arrangement was fine. We were small, there was plenty of space, and it wasn't in direct contravention of any EU laws regarding right and proper sleeping arrangements. Fast forward several years and you are presented with a very different and altogether less satisfactory scenario. Now, we were not the kind of children who had cool parents who allowed you to go off on holiday with your friends once you reached your mid teens. Oh no, we were still doing this aged 13, 15 and 17. I kid you not. Whilst this kind of behaviour might be acceptable, dare I say practically obligatory in parts of Norfolk, it is probably more frowned upon in other more sophisticated sectors f society.
So it was that I would settle down for the night with one brother prone to talking in his sleep and the other singing along tunelessly to Buddy Holly (I told you we weren't cool) on his personal stereo.
We would be woken at some ungodly hour the following morning by Dad grinding coffee by hand for his breakfast. Remember last night and having to clear the table before you could make the bed? Well, in the morning we had to get up before breakfast could be served.
All you wanted to do, as a teenage girl, following a stuffy night spent in the warm embrace of her younger brother was to have a shower and make herself look presentable for all those gorgeous French boys who were also staying at 'Le Camping Merde de Cochon'.
Memories of what I am about to recount can, 25 years on, cause me to cry real tears of pain and embarrassment. I know I have a few Psychiatrist/Physchologist friends reading this blog. If any of you could come up with an effective form of therapy for dealing with trauma suffered as a result of holidays then I would gladly try it. You could call it S.H.I.T - Sian's Holiday Intensive Therapy. Boy, would it need to be intensive. You see, my dad had bought a caravan with its own toilet and shower cubicle and for this reason was loathe to go to a site with any 'facilities'. Unfortunately he was also loathe to let us use the shower in the caravan. End result - you were allowed to have a shower 2 or 3 times during a 2 week holiday. When I say a shower what I actually mean is a dribble of water, tepid at best, cold at worst standing in a space which is smaller than the surface area of an average TV. Everyone in the caravan knew if you were using the water as the pump made the most god-awful noise, akin to a cow going through a particularly difficult labour. If you ran the pump for more than a few seconds Dad would be shouting through the door for you to turn it off.
Needless to say I never did pull on any of those family trips to France.
Thursday, 18 July 2013
Family Holidays Part One: Journey and Arrival
So, as I stagger towards the end of term (I've always thought that Gok Wan's efforts would be much more profitably spent on a series called 'How to Teach Good Knackered') I begin to reflect on that greatest of oxymorons 'The Family Holiday'.
The majority of my childhood/teenage holidays involved the caravan, trekking off with my parents and two brothers to various corners of the UK and France towing this mobile torture cell, sorry I mean 'home' behind us. If it was ever in front of us then we knew we were in trouble.
As we know, every holiday begins with the journey. Now, I am sure that this points to a huge character flaw in me, possibly even a personality disorder, but when I'm going somewhere I just like to get there. The less time spent in the car/air/train/sunshine community minibus the better. Unfortunately my father does not share my point of view, preferring to take his time, stop every hour and shun major roads. Don't forget, these were the days before Sat Nav so we would spend many a happy afternoon getting lost on country roads with pensioners on push bikes overtaking us and probably covering about 15 miles in the process. On this basis driving down to the South of France could take several days.
Eventually, after days spent in a hot vehicle (no air con in those days) with precious little to do (batteries on 'personal stereo' went flat at Calais) we would arrive at 'Le camping Merde de Cochon' or similar. Great, time to get out, stretch your legs.... Oh no! We children had to remain in the car until dad had 'put the stays down'. To this day I am unsure what exactly this means, but it seemed to take an intolerably long time and involved much bad tempered shouting from Dad and encouragement and placating noises from Mum. We would finally be allowed in to the inner sanctum, with stern warnings to take our shoes off. The kettle would go on, tea would be made and for a few glorious moments all would be well with Famille Bennett. It would, dear reader, be all too short-lived...
The majority of my childhood/teenage holidays involved the caravan, trekking off with my parents and two brothers to various corners of the UK and France towing this mobile torture cell, sorry I mean 'home' behind us. If it was ever in front of us then we knew we were in trouble.
As we know, every holiday begins with the journey. Now, I am sure that this points to a huge character flaw in me, possibly even a personality disorder, but when I'm going somewhere I just like to get there. The less time spent in the car/air/train/sunshine community minibus the better. Unfortunately my father does not share my point of view, preferring to take his time, stop every hour and shun major roads. Don't forget, these were the days before Sat Nav so we would spend many a happy afternoon getting lost on country roads with pensioners on push bikes overtaking us and probably covering about 15 miles in the process. On this basis driving down to the South of France could take several days.
Eventually, after days spent in a hot vehicle (no air con in those days) with precious little to do (batteries on 'personal stereo' went flat at Calais) we would arrive at 'Le camping Merde de Cochon' or similar. Great, time to get out, stretch your legs.... Oh no! We children had to remain in the car until dad had 'put the stays down'. To this day I am unsure what exactly this means, but it seemed to take an intolerably long time and involved much bad tempered shouting from Dad and encouragement and placating noises from Mum. We would finally be allowed in to the inner sanctum, with stern warnings to take our shoes off. The kettle would go on, tea would be made and for a few glorious moments all would be well with Famille Bennett. It would, dear reader, be all too short-lived...
Tuesday, 9 July 2013
Monolingualism Can Be Cured
"If you speak to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you speak to him in his own language, that goes to his heart" - Nelson Mandela.
As a languages teacher, who has to do daily battle with the linguistic prejudices of the average English teenager, I find this quotation beautiful and inspirational. I have it on my classroom door hoping that, if I fail to do so, then at least the great Madiba might inspire them to open their minds just a little bit. If I had a euro for each time a child has said to me "Why do we have to learn a foreign language? Everyone speaks English anyway", then I would probably be comfortably able to bail out most of the Eurozone with a bit left over for a nice holiday.
As it happens most of the world does not speak English. Just 6% speak it as their mother tongue and only 25% speak any at all. That's three quarters of the world excluded. I know, I'm showing off - I can do Maths too!
I have been hugely thrilled to see that my posts are being read in France, Russia, Germany and Serbia as well as the USA, Canada and UK. When I told Bryn that I had page views from America and Serbia he said "That will be Obama and Djokovic!" Who knows? Whoever you are, wherever you are, thank you for reading and please do leave comments on any of the posts.
As a languages teacher, who has to do daily battle with the linguistic prejudices of the average English teenager, I find this quotation beautiful and inspirational. I have it on my classroom door hoping that, if I fail to do so, then at least the great Madiba might inspire them to open their minds just a little bit. If I had a euro for each time a child has said to me "Why do we have to learn a foreign language? Everyone speaks English anyway", then I would probably be comfortably able to bail out most of the Eurozone with a bit left over for a nice holiday.
As it happens most of the world does not speak English. Just 6% speak it as their mother tongue and only 25% speak any at all. That's three quarters of the world excluded. I know, I'm showing off - I can do Maths too!
I have been hugely thrilled to see that my posts are being read in France, Russia, Germany and Serbia as well as the USA, Canada and UK. When I told Bryn that I had page views from America and Serbia he said "That will be Obama and Djokovic!" Who knows? Whoever you are, wherever you are, thank you for reading and please do leave comments on any of the posts.
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