Musings

• I went to the grocery store in our village yesterday and bought two ribs of stalk of celery. (I had to look up the definition to be sure that I had the terms correct.) I don’t think I have ever bought celery by the rib before. I don’t know whether it is a French thing but I am sure that every time I buy celery in the states, the stalk comes in a plastic bag. You don’t slide the stalk out and break off some ribs. You buy the whole stalk in its plastic bag.

• If I wanted to make something with a pumpkin-like squash, I could tell the vendor to cut off as much as I wanted; I wouldn’t have to buy the whole squash.

• When the vendor has cut the piece of squash or I hand over the ribs of celery to be weighed, I put them in a bag which I carry and reuse with regularity. The French have gotten serious about the overabundance of plastic and do not permit merchants to provide plastic bags unless they are made of bio-degradable materials. No one at the checkout counter asks “paper or plastic”. You are expected to bring your own shopping bags. (Grocery stores have not provided shopping bags for purchases for as long as we have been coming to France but eliminating the produce plastic bags is relatively new.)

• The perils of plastic remind me of an Italian cartoon I saw on Facebook in which the fish monger is handing a whole fish to a woman and the woman asks: “No plastic bag?” to which the fish monger replies: “It’s already inside.”

• We recently had a mechanical problem with our French car: the power steering went out. We had to call a towing service to transport our car to a garage. First, I had to learn the term for power steering (direction assistée) so I could begin to explain the problem to the tow truck operator. Then, I didn’t know the term for tow truck (camion de dépannage, dépanneuse). The French terms – repair truck, repairer – are more generic than English which was a good thing in this instance as the truck that arrived was a flat-bed; not a tow truck at all.

• For all of the allegiance to supporting handicappers in France, there are few sidewalks in this village which would accommodate a wheel chair…

• I have written before that Vaison la Romaine is a tourist town because it has the most extensive Roman ruins sites in all of France. Being a tourist town means that the population changes from about 7000 in the winter to 14000 in the summer. Being here in the low season has its challenges. Several restaurants have only eight or nine month schedules. If the restaurants are open all year, it is certain that they close for several weeks in the winter for congé annuel – annual vacation. It is not rare to plan to go to a restaurant only to find a sign on the door saying congé annuel or fermeture exceptionelle (closed due to unforeseen circumstances). Add to that the regular weekly closings of all commerce (closed after noon on Sunday and many places stay closed all of Monday), one learns that it is necessary to have provisions in place because one cannot jump in the car on a Sunday and go to a store to pick up a forgotten item and expect it to be open. And don’t bother thinking about the concept of 24/7.

• Twelve years ago, someone staying at our apartment wanted to find a café or a coffee shop where he could order a take-out coffee. I don’t know whether it is a good thing but there are now a couple of shops that will sell a coffee to go and now there is also MacDo – the term the French use for MacDonald’s – in Vaison : (.