Finessing Your French

Most people, when they arrive in France, have enough French to negotiate shopping adequately enough. Je voudrais ('I would like') followed by reading the name of the item off the label and pointing will get you what you want most of the time. The trickiest bits of the transaction when you are a newbie are remembering to say bonjour before making your request and working out how much it is if you have bought multiple items and there isn't a cash register readout to take a sneaky peak at.

Fairly soon, especially if you live here, you realise that shopkeepers and market stallholders are asking you questions too. Usually these questions are easy to get the gist of because of the context, but what are they actually saying?

• avec ceci? -- literally 'with that?', meaning 'anything else?' The problem is it sounds like avec soucis?, which would mean 'with worries?' and doesn't make any sense at all. This one had me so bemused in the early days that I eventually asked a bilingual friend to explain.
• ce sera tout? -- literally 'that will be all?', meaning 'will that be all?' This one sounds like ça ce ratou, but 'ratou' isn't actually a French word, so it doesn't mean anything. It took me ages, but I did eventually figure this one out myself. It can also be used as your response when asked 'avec ceci?' -- 'non, ce sera tout, merci'.
• ça va aller? -- literally 'that's going to go?', meaning 'is that alright?' You hear it a lot, not just at the market, and it too can be either a question or a response depending on intonation. It usually sounds like ça va les, which I couldn't make mean anything particularly sensible, although I got very quickly that the phrase meant something similar to ça marche ('that works') when used as a statement. This one took me the longest to figure out, but it finally dawned on me, without having to ask anyone.

 And then there is the question of how to pronounce the names of the supermarkets. Here is my take on it:

• Auchan -- pronounced Oh-shuh, with the stress slightly on the second syllable. As an Anglophone you will really struggle not to give it a nasalised 'n' on the end, but try your best. It is not pronounced 'ocean', and doing so (not by me, thank goodness) has been known to make French people laugh.
• Carrefour -- pronounced Carr-foor, with a slight stress on the last syllable and a proper gargling French 'r' in the middle, but not too much 'r-ing' at the end. It is not pronounced 'carry four' or 'care for'.
• SuperU -- pronounced Su-pair-u, with fairly even stress on each syllable and the final 'u' pronounced so you are almost whistling. It is not pronounced 'super you'. The 'u' is a sound that doesn't exist in English and you will just have to listen to native speakers and practice it.
  
• Intermarché -- pronounced uhn-tair-mar-shay, with a slight stress on the last syllable. It is not pronounced 'intermarsh' or 'intermarshay'.
• LeClerc -- pronounced luh-klair, with the stress on the second syllable. It is not pronounced 'lee-clerk'.

Note: This is a reworking of a post I wrote more than a decade ago. The main changes I've made are to incorporate some points made on the original post by linguist Ken Broadhurst regarding how one could express in non-technical writing the pronunciation of the supermarket names.

Walking Around la Roche Posay

On Monday 20 January Simon and I joined Fabrice, Monique, Danielle, Aline, Beryl, Annie, Jane and David on a 5 kilometre walk in 4°C sunshine. The route took us in a circuit from the carpark in la Roche Posay, through the golf course, past l'Oréal's spa, laboratory and magic water collection plant, down to the greenway (Fr. voie verte), across the viaduct and around over the road bridge back into the old centre of la Roche Posay.

 

The former Hostellerie du Prieuré, a wobbly old house at the entrance to town as you come over the bridge. Sadly such a patchwork of materials today that it is rather ugly.

Looking upstream along the Creuse river, from the bridge towards the viaduct.

The Castel, a grand 19th century house built on medieval ramparts overlooking the River Creuse.

Looking towards the church from the bridge.

This sign says you may fish for Black Bass from the bridge and along this stretch of the Creuse River, but strictly on a catch and release system. There is clearly no French expression for this, and they use the English 'catch and release' or 'no kill'.

The bridge and the Castel seen from across a flood meadow.

The viaduct across the Creuse River, once a railway bridge, now part of a greenway.

Looking from the viaduct along the Creuse River towards la Roche Posay.

The Creuse River, with quite high water.

Awwww....an abandoned child's Croc...along the greenway.

L'Oréal's facility, with magic water storage tanks in the foreground, the spa behind. The original spa is the pink building in the distance.

French Bars, Cafes and Bistrots

The numbers of cafés in France have tumbled, according to a recent study. In 20 years over a quarter of Parisian cafés have disappeared. A symbol of the French 'art of living', they have gone from 1907 in 2002, to 1410 in 2022. France wide, there were 600 000 bistrots in 1960, and 35 000 in 2016. Similar has happened to the roadside restaurants known as routiers. In 1980 there were 4500, today only 700. These types of cafés which operate as bars and bistrots are one of the most iconic aspects of French life, and if they are on the way out, then so is the morning coffee taken at the comptoir, the demi of draught beer in the late afternoon after work and the aperitif in early evening. In the old days this is where you picked up a 'casse-croute' (snack) such as a jambon beurre (ham in a buttered baguette) if you were pushed for time and needed to eat. Another popular snack was a hard boiled egg, which you took from a rack on the bar and banged against the 'zinc' to shell, until it was deemed unhygienic and the practice ceased. Children might have a boiled egg and a glass of milk with grenadine syrup, or a diabolo menthe (mint with limonade). Adults might have a vin limé (wine and limonade) in the summer, or a café-calva (coffee with calvados) in the winter. (Limonade is a still clear sweet drink and is not lemonade.)

Preuilly was briefly amongst those villages that had lost all its cafés and bars. This is the good old days, at l'Image, with the Chedozeau brothers behind the bar.

And it is where innumerable conversations on innumerable topics between friends, strangers, and visitors take place. It is where French people would have had their first taste of Coca Cola, in the 1950s. And in the 1960s, televisions appeared, so clientele could watch press conferences with General de Gaulle or the horse races at Longchamp. In the mid-20th century, people would not have had a coffee machine at home and only have consumed Coca Cola at the café, not at home.

This bar, offering casses-croutes, is in the market hall at Saint Jean de Luz. It offers a robust ambiance not for the faint hearted tourist, but beloved by the regulars.

The 16th arrondissement in Paris is the most affected, with the loss of 68% of its bars and cafés, followed by the 19th (60% loss) and the 8th (58% loss). Only two arrondissements have increasing numbers of bars and cafés. The 2nd has 17% more and the 3rd has 15% more, due to how popular with tourists they are. Concurrently, fast food outlets and coffee shops are multiplying, and it is this which is contributing to the demise of the bar/café. In the 8th arrondissement there is a 90% increase in the number of fast food outlets, and in the 3rd, an 86% increase. Nowadays, the clientele of cafés and bars are not so much workers, who can't afford them any more, but tourists. The bistrots have become brasseries, the cafés have turned into trendy tea rooms.

A galopin (125 ml) of draught beer at a bar restaurant in the Touraine.

But the rise of fast food outlets is not the only reason bars and cafés are disappearing. French workers are taking less time for lunch, not working in the centre of town, and the pandemic didn't help. Many clients have not returned to their old haunts because they now work from home. Even when bars were allowed to reopen once it was deemed safe, initially customers were not allowed to stand at the bar, and that changed consumption patterns too.

A typical local bar in Preuilly, now also closed. L'Esperance is, or was, opposite the Abbey, and closed in August 2022.

Ironically, one of the great advantages of the old style bar is the speed of service. Nowadays it is more usual to seat yourself at a table, then wait for the server to come to take your order, and again for them to come with the card machine at the end of your sojourn. Not so good for anyone who just wants a quick drink and has told their wife they are just nipping out to get the daily baguette. 

Le Garage in Saint Jean de Luz, a modern bar which succeeds in being both community oriented and buzzy enough to entice tourists in.

Sometimes the problem is that bars are in rented premises and the landlord decides to sell the real estate for re-development.

The bar counter is known as a comptoir, often referred to as le zinc. These 'zincs' appeared at the end of the 19th century. They were always set up so they were exactly the right height for a man standing at the bar to lean his elbows on, 110 mm. Even once drunk, men could retain a dignified appearance, propped up by their elbows. Typically the 'zinc' covered bar would be equipped with a beer pump and behind the bar, underneath, there would be refrigerators, with a coffee machine on the other side. Nowadays, many bars are set up in such a way that does not encourage customers to stand propping them up in the old way. Now they are expected to take a table.

Le Caravagge in Loches, where they do intimate jazz concerts and great mocktails.

The 'zinc' of the bar is in fact galvinised (zinc coated) steel. Many old 'zinc' bars didn't survive the German occupation of the Second World War.  They were requisitioned by the Germans to melt down for munitions. They made a bit of a comeback in the Trente Glorieuses (the 30 years post-World War Two, when France experienced economic growth) but by then formica was the fashionable work surface treatment. Nowadays the 'zinc' (or brushed stainless steel) is back in fashion and formica out, and the patina and lustre of the metal much admired for its practicality, durability and attractiveness.

A restored zinc bar in Berry.

In the 1930s there was one bar/café/bistrot for every 85 people. Nowadays it is one for every 1500 people. In the inter-War years these places were where you went for life milestone celebrations (promotions, weddings, birthdays, retirements).

In the early 20th century, absinthe was cheaper than wine. The outlawing of absinthe in 1914 brought a significant reduction to the prosperity of bistrotiers (café owners), as did the outbreak of war and the mobilisation of their clientele (not to mention that so many of them never came back...).  It prompted the Pernod brothers to develop the first aniseed flavoured pastis.

Some of the drinks were creatively named (or nicknamed). A 'fond de culotte' is the bitter orange aperitif Suze with cassis (blackcurrant liqueur).  It's a sort of French version of Cockney rhyming slang: 'car le fond de culotte ne s'use qu'assis !' (because the seat of the trousers only wears out when sitting, and 's'use qu'assis' is pronounced the same as 'Suze cassis'). A 'soutien gorge' was milk with strawberry syrup, so named because it was the same colour as bras (Fr. soutien gorge) of the time, although sometimes this drink was called a bébé rose (pink baby). A beer is usually a chope (500 ml) or a demi (250 ml), but could be a galopin (125 ml), and can be adulterated with a syrup or cut with limonade like a shandy, in which case it's called a panaché.

Generally speaking, a bistrot is a bar which offers simple dishes, which could be served at the bar. In other words, a pub which offered counter meals.

The etymology of the word 'bistrot' is still disputed. Some people think it is a corruption of a regional word which arrived in Paris in the 19th century. It might come from a Poitevin word 'bistraud', which initially meant a domestic servant, then came to mean a wine merchant. Or it might come from the northern French word 'bistouille' which is a coffee with eau-de-vie added. Or maybe it is from 'bistingo' a slang word for cabaret.

But the popular legend of the word's origin is that it comes from the Russian occupation after the campaign of 1814. The cossacks, stationed in Paris after the fall of Napoleon, would while away their time in the cafés. Fearing discovery by their officers they would cry 'bistro! bistro!', meaning 'quick! quick' when they wanted a drink. The exoticism of the word appealed and many cafés were renamed. The problem with this explanation is that it appears that the first usage of the word only dates from 1884.

And maybe it is 'bistroquet', which is actually a portmanteau word, combining 'bistrot' and 'mastroquet' or 'troquet', a 19th century word from the Flemish for 'cabaret master' or 'bar', and first used in 1926.

Women who remember the good old days of traditional 'zincs' are not always so overcome with nostalgia. They were a haven for alcoholism, and definitely male dominated. And of course, the smoking ban has inevitably altered the atmosphere in these places, with conversations being interrupted whilst the smokers exit for a quick desperate drag (or no longer frequent their local bar at all).

Ciclic

Ciclic is a government agency created to provide a cultural service to the public. They offer a wide variety of activities designed to encourage the creation and diffusion of books, digital arts and images. Probably their most high profile activities are their mobile cinema, and their amateur film archive.

Their remit is to encourage diversity and emerging creators in the fields of cinema and the audiovisual arts, from creation to diffusion, throughout Centre Val de Loire. They host a short film festival, a documentary film festival, have a special section for animations and provide grants and a mentorship programme for image makers, authors, producers and technicians.

 

The headquarters of Ciclic, in Chateau-Renault.

As well as the mobile cinema in a semi-trailer, they have an art class truck and an essay writing truck.

Their education and teaching division gives young rural students access to significant cultural works, gets them involved in artistic practice, and develops their critical sense. There are programmes for senior high school students and apprentices to write and develop a series or an animated film, with both workshops and YouTube training videos. There are also special programmes for the vulnerable and disadvantaged. Students can learn about image creation and the use of images in the media, using their voice, writing for screen or publication, or gain insight into becoming a librarian.

There is a section for 'living literature' and support for authors. Ciclic helps to promote living authors, involving industry professionals including libraries and bookshops with authors who aren't well known, to get their work noticed by the public. 

An important part of Ciclic's work is to collect, safeguard and promote the amateur films made in Centre Val de Loire so that they a regional audiovisual 'living memory'. These films are available to view on line and they form an important archive of material showing daily life as filmed by ordinary families in the Touraine.

I'm a big fan of their amateur film archive [link], and of their 'Mille lectures d'hiver' ('a thousand winter readings') programme (which, sadly, Covid seems to have put a stop to).

Further reading: Ciclic have produced a 5 page infographic in English to describe what they do [link].

Flapi

I photographed this memorial in the park of the chateau/town hall in Chateau-Renault, in case the subject turned out to be an amazingly interesting person. I couldn't be sure at the time though because I'd never heard of Yves Leroy, and had no idea why his nickname might be 'Flapi', or what a crossman was or the USR.

The memorial says: Sports trail Yves Leroy called 'Flapi'. Cross country runner national level. Facilitator at the USR from 1947 to 1978.

It turns out that the memorial was erected for the centenary of the Cross Country and Athletics Sporting Union of Chateau-Renault, in 2020. Yves Leroy was a great cross country champion who devoted his life to the club, from 1947 to 1978, becoming a trainer, and then the president. So, 'cross' is French for cross country running, and a 'crossman' is a cross country runner. So far so good.

Leroy was dubbed 'Flapi' because at the end of a marathon in 1927 he declared to a journalist that 'je ne suis pas flapi'. It would be like an anglophone athlete saying something like 'I'm not knackered'.

The USR is the Union Sportive Renaudine, ie the sports club to which he belonged all his life.

Tomber dans les pommes

Recently Simon had a vasovagal faint and passed out just before having an angiogram. The colloquial phrase for fainting in French is 'tomber dans les pommes' and I wondered why. Various people told me various things, so here it is.

It appears to be widely believed that the phrase comes from being overcome by the fumes when distilling calvados or fermenting cider. Whilst at first glance this seems plausible, there doesn't appear to be any real evidence for it being the origin of the phrase. It smacks to me of a back formation, conflating the strong green apple smell of malic acid you get when fruit is fermenting (including grapes for wine) and the danger of CO2 in the process, then associating it with a phrase that mentions apples.

Organic heritage apples at our local market.

According to another explanation, it comes from an expression by George Sand to indicate extreme fatigue. George Sand apparently wrote about 'etre dans les pommes cuite' (to be in the cooked apples) in a letter to a relative. In her day it was common for disgruntled theatre goers to chuck apples (baked or spoiled) at performers. Tomatoes were too expensive in those days to consider chucking, but it might have been baked potatoes (pommes de terre)... The idea is that cooked apples are structurally weak, collapsing easily. It just doesn't seem a satisfactory explanation to me as the two phrases don't seem close enough in meaning to me. I feel George Sand's intent was more like 'pédaler dans la semoule' (to pedal in semolina -- to be working hard but getting nowhere).

The most convincing explanation I have seen is that the expression is a corruption of the medieval phrase 'tomber dans les pâmes', which means to lose consciousness. The only reservation I have is that the medieval expression went out of use in the 15th century, and 'tomber dans les pommes' doesn't appear in the lexicon until 1889. On the other hand, there is still the literary phrase 'tomber en pâmoison' which means the same thing and continued in usage into the 17th century before becoming obscure but not disappearing entirely.

Homegrown apples.

The 'proper' French word for fainting is 's'évanouir' (to faint).

Brief Encounter

Recently this man emailed me. He's been a blog reader since the day I took this photo, which was 8 February 2017. We met on the train to Paris and he was reading the famous French satirical newspaper Le Canard Enchaîné. He says he has never missed a day's post since that date.

He emailed me to point out that I should have said that goats 'chevrote' in French when I talked about Marie-Claude and my recent conversation with her about the noises goats and sheep make. I have, of course, updated the post in question [link].

I was much amused, and delighted to hear from him.

Sheep and Goats

 

Solognote sheep, increasingly used for conservation grazing in the Loire Valley and the Brenne.

According to my friend Marie-Claude, sheep go 'bê' in French, and goats go 'mê'. At least, that's what you say when you are imitating the animals. The English equivalent would be to say sheep go 'baa' and goats go 'maa'. But if you make a sentence giving the sounds they make a name, both animals 'bêle' ie bleat. 

Dairy goats in the Touraine Val de Loire.

I'm afraid this level of conversation indicates how long we had been sitting around waiting for the rain to stop last Monday. We had started to get a bit silly.

UPDATE: French blog reader JMB has emailed me to point out that technically 'que le mouton bêle, mais que la chèvre chevrote'. Both bêle and chevrote would translate as bleat in English though. I'm surprised that CHM didn't get in first with this comment -- it's right up his street :-)

Walking Around the Etang du Louroux

The Etang du Louroux is the largest hand dug dam or lake in Europe, fed by the Echandon River, which is little more than a trickling stream. The dam was build by Benedictine lay brothers associated with the Priory on the other side of the village. Remarkably, it is still used in the traditional way to raise fish for the table. On the outskirts of the village of Le Louroux the dam wall holds the water back until fish harvesting time in November. Then the sluice is opened and the water pours out in a controlled way down a channel barricaded with grills to catch any escaping fish and debris. Nowadays it is also run as a nature reserve and our Monday 6 July walk was to circumnavigate it. I can highly recommend it as a surprisingly varied walk, all on the flat. Here are a few photos to show you what we saw.

Marsh Mallow Althaea officinalis (Fr. Guimauve officinale).

From ancient times the roots of this plant was used to make a confection that was both medicinal and a treat, and in some very poor areas, it was cooked as a staple vegetable. We know the confection today as marshmallow, but modern marshmallow confections don't contain any of the wild plant. The plant is still used in Eastern Europe as a herbal remedy for respiratory conditions. At some point French cooks combined the root with meringue and a recogniseable ancestor of the modern marshmallow was created, called guimauve in French and traditionally flavoured with rosewater.

Looking towards the dam wall and the village.

Pheasant feathers.

My friend Henri called me over to look at these feathers. He told me that the fact they had been cut, not plucked, meant that the predator that got this pheasant must have been a fox. Henri is a retired pheasant farmer, so he knows about such things.

Beehives.

Sunflower crop.

Mute Swans (Fr. Cygne tuberculé).

Water Mint Mentha aquatica (Fr. Menthe aquatique) and 

Lesser Water Parsnip Berula erecta (Fr. Berle dressée).

These two vigorous plants were entirely filling up a roadside ditch. The mint stinks in a characteristic pepperminty way if you crush the leaves (whoever thought it was a good flavour to add to confectionary clearly had different tastebuds to me!). The Lesser Water Parsnip is poisonous, so make sure you can identify it if you are foraging in damp places.

Common Restharrow Ononis repens (Fr. Arrête-boeuf).

Henri asked me if I knew the name of this plant in French. When I admitted I did not he was delighted to tell me. It took me a few minutes to realise that the names in both English and French are referencing the same thing. That is, that in the old days, the robust and extensive root system of this plant could bring a plough to a halt.

Common Club-rush Schoenoplectus lacustris (Fr. Jonc des chaisiers).

This plant is the true bulrush, used to make rush matting, baskets and upholstery, but it is rarely called that these days, due to confusion with plants which should more properly be called cattails Typha spp. Once upon a time every village would have had an artisan who made rush matting, an affordable and disposable floor and wall covering with a wonderful fresh hay scent, ideal for bedrooms. Nowadays only a tiny handful of people know how to process the rush and make household items out of rush. To see some beautiful rush wall coverings, I recommend you visit the Chateau of Azay le Rideau, where curators reconstructed Philippe Lesbahy's bedroom and had rush wall coverings made to a pattern discovered behind a skirting board in Hampton Court Palace.

Marsh Woundwort Stachys palustris (Fr. Épiaire des marais).

Series of grills designed to catch fish and debris when the dam is emptied.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Toughening up Language Laws

... but this advert leaves me somewhat baffled.

If the idea is to be all trendy and anglo, why not use real english? And why the strange franglais mix and baffling translations? At least it gave us a laugh when we were in Paris for Retromobile a couple of years ago.

Because of this strange melange of almost english and french the french government has declared it will take action and toughen the laws which govern advertising. Currently the laws say that advertising must be in French, but it is a law only observed in the breaking. This isn't one of those "french language purity" things, it's making sure that cosumers understand the adverts.

Ces carottes sont cuites

Sunrise over the Forest of Preuilly at about 6.15 am.

Actually, the carrots are only 'cooked' in the sense of the French saying which means 'it's too late now, we can't recover the situation'. The real carrots in question were 29 rows of little seedlings at the Jardins Vergers de la Petite Rabaudière that needed weeding. But due to staff holidays there was no one to do it. A call went out for volunteers -- a couple of hours of weeding would earn you a veggie box.

The weed infested carrot bed. Either side of the cultivation are strips of rough fallow to encourage biodiversity and allow crop rotation.

So right in the middle of the heatwave, Dotty and I drove out at 6 am to do our weeding shift. Sylvain, the farm owner, had decided that the carrots were now too weedy to be saved. Only two rows had been done in time. He was going to cover the carrots in black plastic to kill the weeds and resow those rows later. Dotty and I were put on celeriac seedling weeding instead.

Crown Vetch Securigera varia (Fr. Coronille bigarrée) growing in the fallow strips.

At that hour of the morning, the temperature was pleasant and the birdsong raucous. No other sounds disturbed my two hours on bended knee. Dotty and I started at opposite ends of the rows, so there wasn't even any conversation. Very meditative.

Dotty weeding the celeriac.

After about half an hour Dotty went off to do some admin work in the office and I was left alone in the field. At around 8 am she texted me to say she was ready to leave. The farm interns had loaded up the van with crates of vegetables for the market and we needed to go set it up in the Place des Halles in Preuilly.

Newly hatched Fox Moth Macrothylacia rubi (Fr. Bombyx de la ronce) caterpillars in a fallow strip.

An early morning well spent as far as I was concerned, as I helped myself to chard, new potatoes, beetroot, kohlrabi, green beans, peppers, tomatoes and a lettuce. I hope there will be other opportunities to help out at the farm.

Some of the veggies we took to market.

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For details of our private guided tours of chateaux, gardens, wineries, markets and more please visit the Loire Valley Time Travel website. We would be delighted to design a tour for you.

We are also on Instagram, so check us out to see a regularly updated selection of our very best photos. 

Lay Broonies

French native speakers really struggle with 'ow' in English. They tend to pronounce it like the French 'ou', which sounds, more or less, like the 'oo' of 'soon'. So brownies, which are very popular here, is pronounced 'broonee'. There is no French word for brownies -- they've adopted the American English word for these delicious squidgy chocolate squares, spelling it the same, but pronouncing it completely differently.

Artisanal hazelnut butter.

I've been working on recipes to use the locally manufactured hazelnut butter made by La Berrinoise and sold by La Croisée des Terroirs at the Saturday market in Preuilly. Chocolate hazelnut broonies seemed like a possibility and in a recent Clandestine Cake Club newsletter there was just the recipe.

 The brownies straight out of the oven.

Substituting the Berrinoise Praliné Noisettes makes a great alternative version of this recipe and it was easy and successful.

A Thousand Winter Readings

A couple of weeks ago we went to dinner at my friend Nathalie's. Also at the dinner was her friend Chantal and she invited me to an event she was hosting. Chantal told me she had recently retired from working in the theatre as a costume maker. She grew up in Montrichard but had spent much of her career in Paris and La Rochelle. When the time came to retire she searched the Touraine for a house that had a barn suitable for staging workshops and performances.

 D'Argile et de feu by Océane Madelaine.

Chantal's event was part of a programme called Mille Lectures d'Hiver (A Thousand Winter Readings). It is designed to offer a convivial gathering to people who are interested in living authors. For each event a host invites 20 or so people to a venue of their choice. It could be their house, a library, a hospital, a village hall or a café. The guests might be friends, family, neighbours or colleagues who want to discover some modern literature. The programme runs from 1 January to 31 March every year and is co-ordinated from the Orléans library service.

 The audience mingling after the reading (my friend Bénédicte looking stylish on the right).

The host doesn't get to choose the text. The programme is all about discovery, and you can't choose what you don't know. Many writers are barely known. They can't compete with the heavily promoted publications of celebrity authors and are marginalised. Allowing the hosts to choose would simply result in many of them choosing already well known authors.

 The buffet. Chantal on the left, Marion centre.

In the case of the reading at Chantal's it was the reader, a professional actress called Marion Minois, who chose the text. She works often with the Mille Lectures programme and chose a book called D'Argile et de Feu by Océane Madelaine. It's a slim volume from a tiny publisher. The book is about two women, one contemporary, one 19th century, who are linked by fire and clay. One grows up in a rural pottery and makes a name for herself as a skilled artisan in a man's world. The other finds her diaries and notebooks containing recipes for glazes when she inherits a cabin in the woods. The author is herself a potter.

 Marion reading.

The readings last about an hour and are followed by a question and answer session. The audience are encouraged to freely express their opinions. After all, it's a lottery, and the book might not be to everyone's taste. Luckily, everybody in the audience I was part of responded positively to the book. They were also very curious about the reader. They wanted to know how much she had practiced (3 days intensive work and 3 weeks of reading through it once a day), why she had chosen the book (she had friends who were potters and thought the story evocative), what else she did (works in a company of 40 players in Vendôme, does workshops in schools with two male colleagues).

After the reading there are drinks and nibbles or a meal. The audience was asked to contribute and brought wine and cakes (sweet and savoury). I brought root vegetable crisps. The host is expected to feed and accommodate the reader.

The Mille Lectures is funded and administered by Ciclic. They pay the readers, cover their expenses and the royalty payments. They organise the circuits and put the hosts in touch with the readers. Ciclic is part of the library system in our region of Centre Val-de-Loire and they are also responsible for the film archive of  the region.

This event was in Barrou, population 492 and was free to attend. Chatting to one of the audience, she passed on to me that this sort of cultural event started happening in 1970s in the provinces. Before then the Touraine and other rural areas were hopelessly rustic and unsophisticated. But in the 1970s the educated classes started buying rural properties and reclaiming their heritage. They spent all their weekends restoring these old places, and then later retired here. They provided the impetous and connections to organise local theatre, exhibitions and concerts.