December 2011
The pressures of modern life mean that we eat convenience foods and the French plats préparés. I found this little documentary from France 5 interesting and amusing - especially the bit where they take some chicken wings to an expert to see if there are any additives, and are told, well it's all false, because chicken wings like that don't exist in nature... they stick bits of chicken flesh onto little bones. And then the lady who force feeds chicken cordon bleu to kids to find out which variety is the least revolting..
Yesterday evening was the Miss France competition on TF1. No point in being snobbish about this sort of event, which in France is done with a certain elegance. The girls are students, pretty, more intelligent and considerably taller than the presenter, Jean-Pierre Foucault, who next to them looked strangely furtive. One of these seven won the competition. I'll give you a clue, it wasn't the first, Miss Languedoc - but it should have been !
Nothing could be further from the world of Miss France than the KTO, short for Catho, or Catholique, the channel for those who profess that faith. I flick through it from time to time, and chanced across a documentary called La Tenture de l'Apocalypse, which you can see in the museum next time you pass through Angers. The interest is evident : the thing is enormous, and of great historical interest. Linguistically interesting also, this clip finishes with a flurry of vocabulary relating to weaving : did you know that métier, which we use every day in its sense of 'job' .. is also the word for 'loom' ?
I very much like the series of Doc Martin on TF1, which is that rare bird, a successful French situation comedy. It stars Thierry Lhermitte who is just right for the role. And the dialogue is delivered clearly
Both France 5 and LCP, La chaîne parlémentaire have discovered how to make political interviews palatable to the viewing public. The days when Jean-Pierre Elkabbach and Alain Duhamel interviewed George Marchais are gone. Now the interviewers are highly intelligent, articulate and extremely pretty young women. C politique, fronted by Géraldine Muhlmann is a case in point. Here she is gently putting Eric Besson off his stride
Here's the other presenter who makes it possible for me to watch LCP's evening round-up of French political news. Sonia Mabrouk is her name and she appears along with her faithful dwarf, Jean-Louis Gombeaud. M. Gombeaud is an economist, which must be one of the most uncomfortable professions possible in a country which has a traditional distrust of money and financial precision. Here he attempts to explain the Socialist Party's position on the age of retirement, and he quotes Cardinal Retz "On ne sort de l'ambiguïté qu'à son détriment". It does rather sum up French politics...
Le gang des Lyonnais was a highly professional, well-organised band of bank robbers, operating in France in the '70s. In this documentary, from Arte Télévision, they are spoken of with some respect. They did not kill, and their robberies were conceived with skill and indeed, genius. Rather different from our time, where for a few euros Marseille shop-keepers are murdered by youths carrying Kalashnikov rifles.
We end December with an extract from a Des Racines et des Ailes on Paris, in which we met Victor and Melina who every day live in the 1950's. I loved Victor .. this strange mixture of gentleman anglais, and Parisian pimp. A nice little piece, not always easy to follow
