Paris at a Certain Age

The Best Season for Paris?

It's perfect walking weather right now, just cool enough to keep you from getting overheated but not yet cold. It's still comfortable on the terraces without need of heaters. Blissful.

 

What's your favorite season in Paris?

Il était une fois - Once upon a time

Once upon a time (Il était une fois), more than 40 years ago in les années soixante, I started a Grandmother's Garden quilt.

My spouse and I were driving across country in a hippy van to San Francisco where we eventually settled. You didn't need a sewing machine for a Grandmother's Garden quilt top. This type of quilt is made by covering hexagon cardboard squares with fabric and then sewing them together by hand. Work proceeded slowly and when I went back to school, it stopped entirely. In quilters' parlance, it became a UFO (Unfinished Object). I think it's my oldest UFO.

This year I've been trying to resurrect and finish old projects. Now that Grandmother's Garden quilts are popular again, I thought it might be fun to work on my aînée (oldest) UFO. Only the name has changed. In quilters' blogland, they now call this a 'hexie'. I have a nostalgic fondness for this quilt despite the ugly 1960's fabrics in it.

However, the resurrection offered a hidden surprise on the underside of the hexies. Guess what these are from:

 

For young readers, these hexie inserts were made from a box that once contained Corrosable Typing Paper. Autrefois (In olden days) we used typewriters. And before Whiteout, we used erasable typewriting paper. Try to imagine when there was no spellcheck. When you made a mistake, it stayed unless you re-typed the entire page or paid for the more expensive erasable paper. Even then, you could only erase that mistake once because erasing removed the coating that facilitated erasure. And you had to be careful with those pages, because erasable paper smudged more than regular the cheaper typing paper.

Regardez! Take a look at this classic 1960's babe:

 

Somehow I went from making a Grandmothers' Garden quilt to becoming a grandmother. And the items from my life are so old they've come back into style.

Attention les freluquets! (Pay attention you whippersnappers), life and technology moves much faster these days and before you know it, you're désuet (out-dates, old-fashioned).

Bonus synonyms: désuet, dépassé, démodé, suranné, obsolète, vieillot, ringard, périmé, caduc, anachronique, archaïque.

The evidence:

 

 

Paris Secret

After walking ten miles a day in Paris, this is not what you want to see in the metro:

Instead, search for this sign:

 

Because it means you'll find this:

 

Save your knees for walking aboveground in Paris!

"Moo....."

I was about to toss this packaging until I 'Found French' on it. And a 'moo' word at that. Maybe now I can conquer my pesky 'moo' problem - I frequently confuse un mousquetaire (musketeer) with un moustique (mosquito). So now I either confront 'moo' in all its aspects or I add another moo (un mousqueton - a snaphook) to the muddle.

A moose (un élan) is not the same thing as la mousse (moss, foam, suds, lather). Bonus word: bubblebath is le bain moussant. In case you were getting cocky, did you notice the change in gender? Suds are feminine, but bain is masculine. And I sew and quilt and thus have to know that la mousseline is not a small dessert (à la mousse au chocolat) but muslin, a type of fabric used for draping a pattern. Don't forget that hair mousse is la mousse coiffante. I wonder if the French have to remind themselves that 'mouse' in English is not the same thing as their mousse with a double 's'?

And don't get me started on moule. Une moule (feminine) is a mussel, while un moule (masculine) is a mold or type of pan.

Oh,there are just too many French moo words! Un mou is slack (like slack in a rope) or colloquial French for a wimp, but une moue is a pout or a grimace. I'm not in the mood (moo-d) to go through the rest of my list so I'll end with one final moo:

- a French cow does not say "moo", it says "meuh". To moo is meugler in French and mooing is le meuglement.

Êtes-vous une pagilleuse ou une rangeuse?

Theoretically, I love clean, minimalist, zen decor. However, it's only an aspirational state, one that is completely unattainable for me. Entropy rules my life. A clear surface, an empty wall, any unfilled space soon attracts objects. I  continually fight this predisposition. Thus, I knew I needed to learn French synonyms for all things messy. I didn't need to take the test on this site to know I was une pagailleuse and not une rangeuse. This is my list so far. Please send additions or corrections. Merci!

'Messy' Mots:
un désordre              mess, disorder
désordonné/e           adj: untidy, disorderly, sloppy, uncoordinated
un bazar                  mess (familier), clutter (familier), bazaar, general store
une pagaille             shambles, mess, disorder
le fatras                  jumble, hodgepodge
le fouillis                 mess, jumble, confusion, trouble, also adj: untidy, messy
un encombrement     room clutter, bulky furniture, traffic congestion, blockage,
                                    glut
le foutoir                 shambles (coll.), complete chaos, dump (untidy place),
                                    disorder
une chienlit              havoc, chaos
la gabegie                chaos, muddle, mess (pej)
le capharnaüm         shambles (coll), souk, glory-hole
le chantier               mess (familier), building site, construction yard
débraillé                 sloppy, slovenly, messy
le bastringue            confusion, désordre, bedlam, dancehall
un embrouillamini    confusion, muddle
un chamboulement   mess
un chaos                  chaos, shambles
la débandade          complete chaos
un fourbi                 mess (familier)
un gâchis                 mess, waste, shambles
le tohu-bohu            confusion, disorder
un éparpillement     disorder, scattered   

French Films and Sainte-Nitouche

I know, I know, Gilmore Girls was a TV series, not a film. And they aren't French. But thanks to the miracle of DVD's and the 'language selection' option, I'm watching the shows for the first time and with French subtitles. The series is known for its witty repartee and teenage argot. So I am learning all sorts of new words, like Sainte-Nitouche for example. A Sainte-NItouche is a goody-goody or a goody two-shoes. It's derived from n'y touche, as in 'don't touch'. Along with watching French films (with or without English subtitles), watching American films with French subtitles is a great way to learn new vocabulary.

Magnetic Attraction

There are so many common French words that I don't know, the tools of everyday life that somehow don't show up in typical French courses. For instance, we learned la plume and le stylo, but I never learned the word for 'magnet' until I examined the packaging on a recent purchase. In my quest for 'found French' I scrutinize packaging and instruction manuals and thus made the discovery of the wonderful French word for 'magnet' Isn't it wonderful that aimant contains the sense of attraction, of aimer? So poetic! I am 'attracted' to magnets and have them all over my refrigerator. and also my hot water heater. Note: here in earthquake country we must strap our hot water heaters to the wall.

76 Trombones

Not this:
 

or 76 of these:
 

But these:

Don't you LOVE that paperclips are called 'trombones' in French?

 

Le Quotidien

French language books neglect a whole genre of everyday words. Sure, they cover le stylo and un réveil, but there are many articles of daily living that aren't mentioned at all. Today's word is Q-tip (or cotton applicator if you are a stickler for generic): un coton tige or un bâtonnet ouaté.