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The Local News


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My local newspaper here in France is not like anything I've ever seen in UK. Instead of pages of news about crime, house prices, 'celebrities' and rich peoples' nimby protests, it tells me about the real issues of the day in these parts.

This week's edition featured a story about a local farmer's oddly shaped potato – complete with picture. This fascinating piece of investigative journalism was soundly trumped on the next page however, by a story about a rabbit with an exceptionally long tooth which stuck forwards out of its mouth like a tusk. A picture of the rabbit, dead, illustrated the piece with a caption explaining it had been shot by a local chasseur.

The page on road traffic accidents is also tremendously informative. Apparently this week almost none happened, but the driver of an unknown vehicle callously sideswiped a roadside dwelling, knocking the letter box clean off the wall.

And people ask me why I like living in France….

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Yes - you echo my thoughts entirely - the headline in one of our French local papers was that someone had tried to buy goods in a local shop using a stolen check book - shock, horror, probe!?

... but I find this all rather reassuring and comforting  i.e. that this sort of thing is still considered front page news in rural France whereas here in Newbury it is often about local murders or people dying of drugs overdoses and the like.

Valerie

 

 

 

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Not to mention the all-important topic of livestock prices!

 

I was struck by one article about a market trader convicted of drunken driving; he was banned except between 6 a.m. and 3 p.m., which seemed a remarkably fair balance (don't want to deprive a fellow of his livelihood, after all).

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I love the local papers too!  I subscribe to two weeklies.
One has a whole page each week of photos of new babies at the local hospital; the journalist manages to use a different phrase in each caption: "Kevin fait la joie de sa maman..."  "Natasha a poussé ses premiers cris..."  "Emilie est attendue impatiemment par son grand frere Jerome...". 
And of course the car accidents "...pour une raison indéterminée le conducteur s'est déporté sur la gauche..." (for some unknown reason the driver veered off to the left), and sad tales of people drowning on the causeway to Noirmoutier because they didn't pay attention to the tide-tables (a couple of these incidents per month, at least).

All these "Faits divers" (miscellaneous stories) are classified by my posher French friends as "les chiens écrasés" ("squashed/run-over dogs")!

Otherwise there are endless golden weddings, triumphs and disasters of village football teams, opening of new factories etc.
Dreary photography though. Always people sitting at a meeting, or standing self-consciously,with their arms folded.

Oh, I have to share this one...   My daughter and some other musicians put on a concert of baroque music a couple of years ago in a Vendée church that included a Purcell song "Dido's Lament". In French the title is "La mort de Didon" (bizarrely, with an "n" on the end). 
Yes, you've guessed.  In the local paper's enthusiastic appraisal of the event, the song was cited as "La mort du dindon" ("Death of the turkey")! 

Angela

http://www.the-vendee.co.uk

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[quote]My local newspaper here in France is not like anything I've ever seen in UK. Instead of pages of news about crime, house prices, 'celebrities' and rich peoples' nimby protests, it tells me about the ...[/quote]

Careful! You'll have a pack of rabid Francophobes sinking their metophorical teeth into your ankles if you go on like this. It is nice that the only story I've read so far in our local rag about someone getting shot was a bloke who shot himself in the foot while cleaning a shotgun. This week we've had a story about the price of heating wood (lower due to a wet summer, it seems, which I cannot understand) and an article about a sheep that thinks it's a dog. If you ever feel the need for anything less cheerful, you will be reassured to hear that the nationals are as full of death and destruction as you could ever want! I'll be sticking to the locals for the important stuff though.
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Ours manages to give virtually equal billing to court cases involving serial paedophiles or large-scale drug dealers and the fact that a key has been found and can be reclaimed at the mairie, or somebody left an unbrella behind after the old folks' lunch. Everything is reported with the same eagerness and sense of drama. As far as La Manche is concerned places like Iraq are just not newsworthy. I'll have to be careful in my critique, being a journo myself, as well as living in a house previously owned by the proprietor of one of the local rags.

Mind you, they have excelled themselves this weekend with a front page story about the Bretons wanting to steal Mont St Michel - now where have I read that argument before?

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Because we're between 2 cities (thinks: potential book title in there somewhere), we get a mixture.

Reasonable amount of stuff about cars being set alight, tabac owners being shot in hold-ups, riots and murders, old couples being attacked in their houses etc, and yes, then those little Faits Divers.

The expression that often comes up in ours is "plus de peur que de mal".   A biker came off his bike at the junction between x and y, but plus de peur que de mal, he got away with just a bruised shoulder.  And it's nice, you feel happy for him.

 

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Lol this is funny. We don't have a weakly, we have a daily in this region. There are these Mary Poppins papers with local news for local people all over France.

ie I'll be in ours, photo with the kids from the club I help run, they've just started lessons again and there will be a little article about it. This is what they do, it is usually very cheery, nice and banal, although one will see the odd article about something that isn't nice.

 

Our local rag, I am told was initially started by the resistance, but somewhere along the line, it lost it's teeth, although I did suceed once to get them to be couragous enough to do an article about a very bad local problem................ which was picked up by Le Monde.

 

And beware, some of these local rags have specific laws (I suppose) applied to them. You want your local footy team's photo and an article shown well you have to see the agent from your village if there is one. I know someone who mentioned having an article in the rag to the agent from the next village and the agent from our village went to the gendarmerie and did a porte plainte and they were within their rights to do so.

 

So francophobe, give me a break, this is an interesting subject for many reasons.

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[quote]"Mind you, they have excelled themselves this weekend with a front page story about the Bretons wanting to steal Mont St Michel - now where have I read that argument before?" I wonder!!!!![/quote]

Steal !! It has merely been out on "loan".................

Now if some clever sod could arrange for the the probable new arrival by train to start from a tinsy bit West of the Couesnon, that might just be enough to put it back in Brittany    

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Yes, much more pleasant the daily newspaper in France, you can always find something cheerful, whereas our daily in UK just recently "snipers shooting at local schoolchildren with airrifle" "12 year old boy shot in the head walking his dog" "brick thrown at driver from motorway bridge! (all within 10 miles of us). Give me "hat blows off in strong gales" I will be less depressed.

 

Georgina

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[quote]It was not on loan! It was won fair and square from that daft ****** Conan by a mixed force of Normans and Saxons.Oh it's all gone quiet over there![/quote]

The Referee was bent, everyone knows Saxon Norman Rovers paid off the supposedly unbiased Picardie officials...................must be true the Daily Mail sports reporter said so at the time

A rematch I say..........

 

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The ref was the Pope (Alexander II), and boy was he bent! Completely in hock to the Holy Roman Emperor (Henry IV). Also, he wanted the Normans out of the way because they were so troublesome, hence his support for the invasion of England and Urban II's calling for the 1st Crusade a few years later...
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