LAiffricaine

Did anyone know (for those living in the UK) that there is a channel on satellite entirely devoted to French cinema. It's called 'Cinémoi'  and is only available on subscription at about £7 a month. Virgin media Channel 445 or SKY channel 343. Very affordable I think, as for me a trip to the 'bioscope' is a round trip of 45 miles.  

[quote user="Christine Animal"] ...... Now we'll be off for an intellectual nitpicking debate.    [:P]   [/quote]   Let's have some semantics [:D]   Une gonzesse is  a man's broad or his moll Une salope was once a moll (or broad)  but has committed the cardinal sin of having an 'extra currilar activity' with some other bloke, so now she is relegated to the gutter were she is dirty product to be left well alone.

Here in Wales they remedy the lack of good farming Mafanwys who can drive a tractor by going to the Philippines and catching a willing girl who would like to own a fair chunk of UK. Once one farmer has is hot water bottle sorted (winters are mighty cold in them valleys [;-)]), the new Mafanwy-on-the-block will recruit all the eligible girls of her extended family and will matchmake them to all the Welsh lads in her husband's acquaintance.   Like bees to a honey pot! There was a spate of Russian/Ukrainian girls for a while but that seems to have dried out now that the EU is pouring money to enable them  a sprucing up before they become full members one day.

[quote user="Quillan"]Frenchie - you won't get an email notification that you have a PM so you will have to login and look in your PM's manually to see if you have any.[/quote]   [8-)] really ?.. I sent a PM to a couple of people a few weeks back and did get notifications on both the PM in my Email box.   and I too have had no notifications of subsequent posts in any of the threads I had posted, certainly since last Friday. I thought it was only me and went to moither poor Russethouse. Sorry [:$]     

Sending you a PM! Frenchie [:D]

[quote user="LEO"][quote user="Chancer"]"The room is clean, ............. the maid is dirty" [:-))][/quote] was it half bored?   [/quote]   [:D][:D][:D] [6] [:$]

[quote user="Simon-come-lately"]And....the best place to live in the world would be..........??? Simon :-)[/quote]   One's own head where the world is just as it should be. The physical being will have to put up with the inconvenience of sharing this planet with people, situations and places the head does not like.

[:D][:D][:D]   It would have been so handy to me last night. I had to cater for 15 people and they were having such good time that they ran their own provisions (of 3 bottles each) dry !   I am definitely writing to Father Christmas for one of those in my stocking [:D]

[quote user="woolybanana"] ...  Kevin ... [/quote]   Kevin !! [:D] I can never read or hear this name without remembering the day that my son was born. His English grandmother gave us, in no uncertain terms, her opinion about what her first grandchild should be named. None of the names we'd chosen were good enough for her and pointing out the fact of an extra criterion that the French grandmother had to be able to pronounce it without too much difficulty. Endless arguments it caused to the point that English grandfather retorted : 'Just call him gnikcuf Kevin !!'  [:'(] That's it. The argument was settled and I won and English grandmother didn't speak to me for quite a few weeks thereafter ...    

I did and yes it was very good. So good that I recorded it to see it again ... and again ... and again ...

[quote user="Chancer"]  ... The most honest opinions on the Picards have come from those born and bred here but through a mixture of intelligence/education/get up and go have managed to escape its clutches and make their lives elsewhere, they still return to their roots for family gatherings etc but are treated as total outcasts ....  There is however nothing at the moment that would make me want to remain in this area.[/quote]   I find this of this area of Wales. My 2 children for example, both born and schooled in the town have now no longer any connexion with any of their contemporaries. They find that the odd encounter with any of them at the supermarket or in the street, a most cringingly difficult moment. Sometime when they are with me shopping, I can hear them muttering 'Oh gawd! so and so ahead, he/she etc...' and dart quickly into the nearest shop in such an obvious way to avoid embarrassment. Is it embarrassment for them or for their contemporaries they are averting from? I suppose as they come from a mixed nationality marriage, they were already with a (dis)avantage to go travelling far and wide to see and experience the world in full knowledge that dear old Mum is keeping a warm welcome back in the hillsides for them. Should Mum have had more of a choice though, she certainly would not have wanted to settle here...   ... but I too feel an outcast when I return once a year to the little corner of Deux-Sèvres that was my home for all of my childhood and teenage years and where now my parents are waiting for the Almighty to call them up to the big younder. My sister lives no far from them and she really thinks that I am a total weirdo (in her case it takes one to know one). My brothers too are strangers to the place as they went away to carve out their lives. I keep looking at the place and can't think how anyone could contemplate to live in that village for ever ...   Seems that some of us have a gene for wanderlust, whether it manifests itself in a physical or mental way, it will make us 'different' from our neighbours and never at ease with the present surroundings. I wonder how nomadic tribes feel of such attachment to a place and how they view those that do settle in for ever?

[quote user="EmilyA"] ... I think it is true that people in touristy areas can be cross and tired in the height of the season. Certainly in Bournemouth we resented the grockles cluttering up the place in July and August![/quote] Yup! I concur ... I live in Mid-Wales and by end of September we are so glad to regain our little town back to ourselves. Grockles are a necessary evil unfortunately as they do provide us a crust for the winter be it a hard crust to earn for Mr and Mrs Average and their kids can be rather trying at times.

[quote user="Frecossais"]... Re names: when my sister was expecting her first baby, she bought a book of names. We all liked "Avashag", but she called him Martin.  [/quote]   Avashag [:D] Howzat for a sense of humour!      What nationality is this name ?...     So funny the criteria defining a name in different nationalities. My daughter taught at a school in Thailand for a while and 2 of her pupils who were brothers were called Bank-Bank and Bonk-Bonk. She could never speak of them and keep a straight face !    

[quote user="Frenchie"]  I love long names. I named my son Guillaume, because 1. it is a medieval name, 2. It can't be shortened , really. Not like Alexandre, which often becomes Alex, Benjamin becomes Benji, etc.. Guillaume is and remains Guillaume . .... [/quote] Have any of his school/lycée friends try to shorten it to Gui - as in the French 'guee' not the English 'gaille' - sorry no phonetic keys on this qwerty thingemejigg so trying my best to write the sounds I wish to convey ... Not read all the thread but from its title, it seems to have strangely veered off along the way. So how for strange name to shorten or not or to change or not ... My daughter is called Aline. Her name has been shortened to ... B! That is real lateral thinking.  The English just don't get this name at all, just can't pronounce it correctly, yet there is a loch and a town in north Scotland named so ! I didn't name her because of that geographical point but because it is a good old French name I have always liked and I thought it could never be shortened.    Awfull Mother I am ! my poor girl, she has the proverbial mick taken every day over her name ... At least her French grandmother can say it properly! and my son is named Christopher. He answers (and has been known to do so since school) to Wissington! Go and figure that one out ... I am afflicted with the name of Blanche. Of course pure as the driven snow [Www] [;-)]

Happy all of you ... with your heatwave [8-)] Left home this morning under a slight drizzle which promised to dry up and travelled 30 miles east of home to go to work. There, all is near enough a heatwave with a bright blue sky and lovely sunshine and Assurancetourix's law : I am stuck inside an office [:(] ... Had the afternoon off, so called my friend to go to the beach with her 2 grand-daughters. The beach is about 12 miles to the west of this town where we live. She told me "You must be capital B-bonkers !!" because it was as if Noah had just finished boarding his boat and waited for the end of the floods. Indeed when I arrived home I just couldn't see the house from the yard where I normally park my car, I got soaked through just running 25 yards to the house ...  and that was at 2pm. It is now past 7pm (time for a pastis! can't think of nowt else better to do to cheer myself up[:)])  and it still hasn't stopped raining ... Il pleut des cordes ! [:(] [:(]  To top it all my friend just rang this minute and said that her son (the 2 little girls'dad) had just come through the coast and [:'(] ... he said it was wonderful there, he hadn't seen a drop of rain all day [:'(][:'(]     

An American, a Frenchman and an Englishman are about to have one last wish granted before they arrive at the Purley Gates. The American : My wish is for my country to be safe and free from any bad ideology and I want an army to fight against these malefic ideologies and keep my country free. The Frenchman : I too want my country to be safe so I'd like a wall built right around it. The entire perimeter of the Hexagon. Stop all these illegal immigrants and all the rosbifs that pay no taxes to my country. The Englishman thinks for a moment and asks the purveyor of wishes : 'How tall is that wall the Frenchman wants around his country?' The purveyor of wishes tells him that it will be a good 12 feet tall to stop illegal immigrants jumping over it. So a few more moments of thought pass and the Englishman decides : 'OK that is my wish : Make sure the wall is water tight and fill up that vast pool with water so I can have a nice swim !'   

Wouldn't it be nice if Nato's airfleet could stretch to over the Equator and put that tyrant out of the way. But what does one do with diamonds, you can't really convert them into fuel for your industries, they are only of value to fill up one's own suisse bank vault... I weeped when I visited this country last Xmas. I first visited it some 20 years ago and at each returning visit, it is in a state of further decline. I have seen massive grain silos absolutely empty, fertile farm land now reverting to jungle/savannah and growing but a few rows of corn and in between that a few plants of marijuana. People on the street are more and more edgy, skittish. Free conversation that we take over here for granted whilst having a coffee sitting in a restaurant, is non existant. Beggars are more vicious. Road infrastructure .... oh! best get to work now or I'll cry a river again over this such a beautiful country ... [:(]

"We're havin a heat wave A tropical heat wave The temperatures rising, it isn't suprising"            as Marilyn Monroe sang it ...    I wouldn't say lucky you all that have so much sun and heat as I know you are desperate for a drop of water... Still I am envious as here, in this part of Wales, it's been a non-stop drizzle and rain for about 2 months or so. About one day in 4 has been dry ...ish. Or in perspective this is the 5th summer in a row where I haven't been able to sit outside in the evening [:(] and enjoy watching the swallows, the swifts snooping, fleeting around the garden and the field below, darting in and out of their nests under the eaves of the barn.  They'll soon be gone too as they normally leave this area around 2nd week of September back on their long flight to Africa. I might follow them as one of my fledgeling lives over there ...

I read the book and very much enjoyed it. In all the various moments telling of the master-servant situation in 1960's Mississipi context, the most hilarious one for me was when the truth came out for 'that cake'. One of the white ladies had to produce a cake for some function and delegated her maid to make it.  [:D] Did the film replicate the incident ?   ...... Don't say ... I will have to get the DVD and find out. A very good read indeed.

This was an interesting article to read in yesterday's edition of the Daily Telegraph : http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/law-and-order/8711621/UK-riots-Its-not-about-criminality-and-cuts-its-about-culture...-and-this-is-only-the-beginning.html IMHO he is right and was, as Wooly suggests, too subtle for that audience.

With a name like Eldred, it sounds like he is from the deep valleys of South Wales ...

'Vipère au poing' by Hervé Bazin. The trilogy by Robert Sabatier : 'Les allumettes suédoises', ' Les sucettes à la menthe' et 'Les noisettes sauvages' 'Un sac de bille' by Joseph Joffo 'Le blé en herbe' by Colette 'Les petits enfants du siècle' by Christiane Rochefort I remember having to study these in French literature classes during my 5ème/4ème/3ème. And I am reading them again now. I see few more things in the books now that I am grown up, I didn't quite see then. They are easy to read for those of you who feel that your language is not quite up to reading the whole of H. de Balzac or V.Hugo.  I am just mindful/thoughtful that not all on the forum may be at Bac+10 standard on their French.  

[quote user="just john "]   He was just sorry to have to put it back in the bottle, .... [/quote] How did he manage that now that airlines have banned anyone carrying on board a bottle bigger than a 100ml which is really not that very big [8-)]  but then som'it else comes to mind that can't have been very big either [:$]

[quote user="Russethouse"] ..... No one with a car going back from St Malo on the 17th by any chance ?[/quote]   Doing night time crossing Portsmouth to St Malo on 14th September and back (also night time) Caen to Portsmouth on the 23rd, with a car, if it helps ?....

[quote user="Judith"]  .... Racist?  Well I do remember being told by a black person - what's wrong with describing us as black?  We're black - you're white.  Simple. [/quote]   My daughter-in-law is black and she told me herself that there is no more racist/xenophobic on earth as black people pitted against each other. White man do not separate black people fighting on a matter of tribe or race. Just walk on  ...