Living in Chamonix during the inter season can be quiet. It can be a little madness inducing, but one positive side is that I’ve had the time to re-notice that I live in France. The French locals don’t come to a complete halt in May and November andneither do I.
Driving my bling new van down to Sallanches this morning to go to one of the bigger supermarkets I was listening to a local French radio program. It was a phone in show and they were having a quiz. The interesting thing was that quiz questions were about the local area. Testing obscure local knowledge to see how paysanne the caller was.
It reminded me first of Sarah Turnbull’s book, Almost French. Sarah, an Aussie journalist moved to Paris with a man nearly a decade ago and wrote this book to explain the cultural seismic shift she went through to be accepted living here in France. Even if she is only accepted as a foreigner.
It also made me think of the word Typical.
It’s the same word in English and French, but it seems to have a slightly different meaning in French.
In English the word typical is used to express frustration. If a train is late, if you miss your bus, it’s ‘bloody typical’. It sums up the slightlysuperiors attitude of the English that if only there was a dictatorship with them in charge, things would run much better.
In France, the word typical means more like ‘how things should be’. ‘Cette charcuterie, c’est tres typique de Savoie‘ would roughly translate as ‘This cold meat cut is made by a traditional Savoyard method, in the alps by farmers who care about their produce. In short. It’s how things should be.
Laissez-faire. Ca marche plus bien comme ca.
