West Yorkshire Graffiti Artists Invade Sleepy French Village!

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Artwork, cultural differences, France, French, funny, Graffiti, Humor, Journalism, kids

TRANSLATED FROM ARTICLE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN FRENCH NEWSPAPER ‘LE MONDE’

 

A sleepy French village was rocked to its foundations this week, after it was invaded by English Graffiti Artists. St Nectaire, famous for its relaxing spas and beautiful views, is now synonymous with this ‘art form’ thanks to the efforts of the two spray-can-wielding Brits.

 

The defacing duo – Big Daddy Pimp (AKA Cumberland Sausage) and his sidekick Lil Bitch-Slapper (AKA Chipolata Sausage) – have claimed ownership of the ‘Ladybird’s Delight’ (their words) which now adorns the abandoned tennis court in the hills of the village. The artwork, which depicts a ladybird on some leaves, is said to highlight the difficulties facing the ‘urban artist’ in modern France. And also West Yorkshire.

 

Lil Bitch Slapper, with the artwork in full.

 

“It’s about being true to yourself, yeah” Said Big Daddy Pimp, when he was interviewed earlier this week by the UK Graffiti Bible, Take A Break, “You can be all the colours of the rainbow – as long as they are mainly black and red – but it don’t matter but a ‘ting if you ain’t in touch with where you are coming from”. When asked to translate this into English, Big Daddy Pimp just said ‘Peace. And stay away from the yellow ladybirds, yeah? ‘cos everyone knows they is poisonous”.

 

“Also dere is a grasshopper” he expands “Because I bought too much green spray paint”.

 

The duo were raised in the UK, in an ‘Urban Ghetto’ as Pimp refers to it, called Wakefield, West Yorkshire. “Growing up on them streets was tough, yeah” says the urban warrior “Some weeks we was having to work 35, sometimes 37 hours, just to be able to put food on da table” Tears well up in his eyes as he recalls the depths he sometimes had to sink: ” Some weeks I had to work bank holidays…and even Christmas Day…for triple time”.

 

“I remember that Christmas” chimes in Lil Bitch Slapper “Daddy bought me a Lego Police Station”.

 

Big Daddy Pimp and Lil Bitch Slapper first met when Big Daddy Pimp’s Fiancee gave birth to him in 2010. The two, while not immediately close, soon formed a bond that developed into a collective love of art. This love found an outlet in graffiti, with the two going on to ‘decorate’ numerous walls around their area. Together the duo went on to form the graffiti collective known as The West Yorkshire Whippets (AKA The Alotment Boyz).

 

Feeling the heat led the duo to move away, in an attempt to break free from the underground graffiti scene which was threatening to endanger the lives of not just Big Daddy Pimp, but his family too. “We had run ins wiv da police, and a collective from Barnsley – The Flat Cap Pork Pie gang (AKA Revenge Of Kes) – and it was just getting too much”.

 

“Dey even keyed me car once” He recalls”I had to get it fixed at Daz’s Chips, Dents and Scratches in Chickenley. It Cost me £130. We only ate two takeaways that week”

 

So the family upped sticks and moved to France, and for a time it seemed that their completely-illegal artistic-activities had been left behind. But for ‘Cumberland Sausage’ the call of the streets was too strong. “I see a wall, empty, unused and it touches me inside. And if that wall is attached to a tennis court that is rotting away…well I iz going to sort it out and make it magical”.

 

“Daddy was going to do a lady boy at first weren’t you Daddy?” ‘Chipolata’ chips in “But then I asked him what a lady-boy was, and he went all quiet, and said we should do this instead”.

 

Following allegations that the artwork featured is not the property of ‘Big Daddy Pimp’ or ‘Lil Bitch Slapper’ and in fact that they are not graffiti-artists, but are just two ex-pats standing in front of someone else’s graffiti, Le Monde would like to apologise to our readers for any confusion caused.

The Dangers Of Giving Nicknames To Miserable Neighbours…

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angry, cultural differences, France, French, funny, Humor, Language-Barrier, Manners, Neighbours, Relationships

 

So since moving to France I’ve made an effort to get to know, and get along with, my new neighbours in our village. We live in a block of six houses – kind of like a row of terraced ‘cottages’ – and by and large everyone is nice and friendly.

 

With three exceptions.

 

I have taken to calling these three exceptions Chicken Head, Turtle Head and Bland. Chicken Head and Turtle Head live together, in the house next-door-but-one to us. Bland lives on the house at the opposite end to us (we live at the other end). On many occasions have I said hello, good evening or tried to make eye-contact with these three, but have been met with grudging replies or, if I don’t make the first move, nothing at all. A stark contrast to the other neighbours.

 

Being the petty-minded person that I am (hey, I’m a big enough man to admit I’m a small man about some things) I have taken this personally and given them the above monikers. Why those names I hear you ask? Well it’s a straightforward case of ‘if the shoe fits’. Thus Chicken Head has a head like a chicken, Turtle Head has a head like a turtle (maybe more like a terrapin, actually, but that doesn’t roll of the tongue as easily) and Bland is, well, bland.

 

It wouldn’t be so bad if they were all rude and ignorant in their own individual ways, but they do it together. Yes, in a threesome or, as we are in France, a menage a trois. They only talk amongst themselves, which is unfortunate as they both have children and one of them is in school with my son, in the same year. She’s absolutely adorable, and very friendly, so thankfully the miserable-gene seems to have skipped a generation. But still it’s doubtful my son will be getting invited round for play-dates.

 

At first I thought it was just me, maybe they don’t like the British. But then I observed their behaviour with the other neighbours, and realised they were just very ‘cliquey’. Oh and did I mention Bland is pregnant? At least that’s what my partner thinks, I personally hope she’s just fat. Why hope? Well because she smokes like a chimney, and I refuse to believe in this day and age, and with already having a child, that she would be putting herself before this new life.

 

But yes, she may be pregnant, and the only man she spends any time with, in fact all of the time with, is Chicken Head’s husband. That’s not to say that it’s just her and Turtle Head, they aren’t ducking away to do their seedy business, at least as far as I’m aware. No, it’s always all three of them, all of the time.

 

This ambiguity over the possible-pregnancy’s possible-parentage has also  led to them being collectively labelled as ‘The Sect’. I wouldn’t risk the wrath of the internet by putting up pictures of them, I’m not that small a man, but believe me when I say, this is not a sect you would want to join. Unless small, bald men or round, sturdy ladies is your thing.

 

So yes, I have given them these nick-names, and have clearly been using them with a bit too much abandon. This was brought home to me last night, when the kids and I were out at the front of our house in the glorious sunshine, just messing around on bikes. After finishing work my partner joined us, and we were sat chatting with a girl who lives next-door to one of the aforementioned neighbours (they have a swimming pool but, this young girl informed us, they don’t let her play in it as ‘They have enough with their own daughter’, nice people, eh?).

 

It seemed like this mention of the neighbours was enough to call them forth because, like a trap-door spider, one of them popped out and immediately began puffing away on a cigarette.

 

My son pulled up on his BMX in front of us, and maybe a few yards away from where the  miserable neighbour was stood, smoking away. ‘Daddy, daddy’ he called out to me ‘Look, it’s Chicken Head!’.

 

Things to note: 1) in future don’t use your secret names for your neighbours in front of your kids and 2) be grateful they don’t speak a word of English*.

 

 

*I hope

Now We Are Five…

Tags

angry, animals, Cats, Family, funny, Humor, Relationships, stay-at-home Dad

So we said that we would get a cat when we moved to France. It all seemed so abstract when we said it, even the idea of actually moving to this lovely country seemed like a dim and distant dream. But here we are. And now so is he.

 

His name’s Jesse, he’s a black cat. Just a generic one, nothing fancy, thought it best if we start out with a standard model, before looking at something else in ten years time (that’s how long they live, right?).  I wasn’t all that bothered to be honest, I’m more of a dog person. But then I was constantly beaten about the head with this promise we’d made to the kids.

 

That plus my son already has the name picked out.

 

As luck (depending on your viewpoint on cats) would have it a colleague of my partner had just found a stray kitten, abandoned and alone. What a heartbreaking story. My partner approached me and, using her largest eyes, convinced me to take it on. After all, we had promised the kids.

 

He settled in well on the Sunday we brought him home, he was already trained to do ‘his business’ where he should so that was one box ticked. Then the next day my partner went to work, and it was just me, the kids and a cat. Approximately two-hours after she’d left I sent her the following text:

 

START ASKING YOUR COLLEAGUES IF THEY WANT A CAT. THAT CAT HAS TO GO. WE DIDN’T THINK THIS THROUGH. IT’S TOO MUCH. IF I HAVE TO PUT UP WITH THIS FOR THE NEXT SEVEN WEEKS I’LL GO MAD.

 

Oh yeah, did I mention that this is the start of the 8-week Summer holidays, here in France? Well it is.

 

So after that frantic text I sent both kids to their rooms in a bid to de-stress. It may not sound like much, but after being used to coping with two kids, settling into that groove and knowing how to run things smoothly, you introduce an 8 pound (I’m guessing, I haven’t weighed him) ball of fur, claws and teeth into the mix and things go to hell.

 

I came down into the living-room, full of plans as to who we could give him to, who would need a cat…anything to get him out of the house as quickly as possibly. I sat on the couch and who came up to me, purring like the world’s smallest lawnmower? Of course it was Jesse.

 

He stayed like that for ten minutes, purring away, until he fell asleep. I think it was right then that I decided he was part of the family. I quickly sent a text to my partner, in a bid to erase the earlier one, knowing full well that she would never forget it and bring it up, again, and again, and again….

 

He’s alright. I like him. He doesn’t half sleep in some funny positions too, which is amusing..

 

But on the other hand, he’s curious about everything, which can mean it’s difficult to get any work done…

Computer restart due to cat jumping on all keys, in case you were wondering.

 

So yes, our relationship got off to a rocky start, but now we seem to be firm friends. You know, as long as I feed him, water him, clean up his poo and give him lots of cuddles.

 

I’ve got a third child haven’t I?

 

Oh and for the record? I still want a dog.

The French School Holidays Start With A Good News/Bad News Scenario…

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Family, France, French, fun, Humor, school, stay-at-home Dad

The bad news? It’s raining cats and dogs…

 

The good news? The pool’s filling up nicely!

 

What a start to the 8-week ‘summer’ holidays, eh? Fingers crossed that the weather picks up or, speaking just for myself, I’ll be a dribbling wreck in two-month’s time!

Happy holidays everyone!

A Selection Of Conversations I’ve Almost Had In French…

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France, French, funny, Humor, Language, languages, Learning, stay-at-home Dad

 

I pass a gentleman on my daily run, I’ve passed him before and exchanged pleasantries with him. I’m actually walking today though, due to the heat, and he questions this and then, realising I am English, asks me how I came to be here.

WHAT I THINK I SAID:

‘I’m walking today as it’s too hot, so I’m doing a mix of walking, then running and so on. Yes I live in the village, my partner is French, and we’ve got two kids. We used to travel here a few times each year but it was a long journey for the kids, 13 hours!’

 

WHAT I PROBABLY SAID:

‘IT’S TOO HOT FOR ME, I’M ENGLISH, I WALK IT RUN LIKE THIS I AM LIVING HERE AT THE VILLAGE CENTRAL MY WOMAN IS HERE, MY KIDS ARE HERE THEY COME WITH US BUT IT IS LONG FOR THEM 16 DAYS OF JOURNEYS SOMETIMES A YEAR’

 

One of the other dads at the maternelle (the French equivalent of nursery) that my daughter goes to has noticed there is a problem with one of my car tyres, he shows me that there’s a rather scary looking split in the tyre.

WHAT I THINK I SAID:

‘My wife bought the car, the seller assured her that the tyres were new, clearly they aren’t. I’ll show this to her when we get home and get her to call the garage’

 

WHAT I PROBABLY SAID:

‘MY WOMAN BOUGHT THIS, SELLER TYRES NEW, HE SAY TYRES NEW, THEY NOT NEW? SHOW WOMAN TYRES WHEN I GO TO HOUSE. CALL THE MAN LATER’

 

I’ve decided to buy some flowers for my mother-in-law as a personal thank you from me to her, for looking after the kids and just generally being brilliant. I head to the local flower shop and browse, the lady who owns the place comes out to offer me help.

WHAT I THINK I SAID:

‘I’m wanting some flowers for my mother-in-law, not too expensive but pretty. I don’t have long to look though as I have to pick up my daughter from nursery. Sorry about the French, I’m English, do you take debit cards?’

 

WHAT I PROBABLY SAID:

‘I WANT CHEAP FLOWERS, FOR THE MOTHER OF THE MOTHER OF MY KIDS, CHEAP FLOWERS? CARDS OK NOT CASH? CARDS CASH? CHEAP FLOWERS? I AM ENGLISH MY DAUGHTER HAS TO BE PICKED UP, SORRY ENGLISH, CHEAP FLOWERS?’

 

I’m at the post office, I’ve bought a faulty item from England and want to return it to the seller, but I need to know that it will be tracked and signed for at the other end, I also don’t want to pay yet as I need the seller to pay me the postage first.

WHAT I THINK I SAID:

‘Hi there, I’d like to send this to the UK, it’s a faulty item and I need to get it back to the seller. I need it to be tracked and signed for at the other end. I don’t want to pay today though as the seller has to give me the money first’

 

WHAT I PROBABLY SAID:

‘HELLO HOW ARE YOU? I HAVE PACKAGE FOR SEND TO ENGLAND, BROKEN IT IS. SIGNATURE AND TRACKING? I NEED SIGNATURE AND TRACKING? WILL IT HAVE SIGNATURE AND TRACKING? IT WILL HAVE SIGNATURE AND TRACKING? GOOD. I AM NOT PAY NOW. I PAY WHEN MAN WHO SENDS IT TO ME BECAUSE IT IS BROKEN PAYS ME MONEY TO SEND IT TO MAN WHO SOLD IT TO ME BROKEN. I AM ENGLISH. I NOT PAY TODAY. WILL IT BE SIGNED FOR?’

The Top Five Tips On Learning French From A Stay-At-Home Dad…

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Culture, France, French, funny, Humor, Immigrant, Language, languages, Learning, Parenting, stay-at-home Dad, training

 

There are many ways to learn the French language: go to college, listen to audio tapes, watch all Luc Besson’s back catalogue sans subtitles or get arrested for smuggling drugs into France – you’ll have plenty of time to learn the lingo then.

But for other, less obvious ways to pick up the language then read on as I – a fully fledged resident of the country for a whopping four months! – impart my meagre advice.

POWER RANGERS

Yes, you read that right, Power Rangers, the kid’s TV show featuring teenagers in lycra body suits that leave little to the imagination, fighting badly dressed aliens in poorly plotted episodes.

My French partner gave me this advice when it came to learning the lingo: ‘Just watch the news in the morning for half an hour, it’s what we did when we were learning English, and we soon picked it up’. I immediately dismissed this as I find the news A) Depressing and B) Boring. So I picked Power Rangers as an obvious alternative to this.

Yes for an hour-or-so a day (pah! more than the 30 minutes I would have spent on the news) I watch these 7 – 12 (I’ve lost track of how many there are) young kids fight the bad guys while talking in a context that I can understand. Each day I pick up more and more snippets and the phrases filter in. Not only that it gives me some daddy and daughter time, as she loves watching it with me too.

OK, OK, so I am now more prepared to respond to an international invasion by poorly designed monsters (and then fight them in a quarry/car-park/industrial estate), than I would be to say, discuss the Geo-political situation in the Middle East. Have you read any of my other blogs? That was clearly never going to happen anyway.

PLAY ONLINE GAMES WITH THE FRENCH

I play Belote. I play it a lot (copyright Phil, 2017). It’s available to play for ‘free’ on Facebook. I say free like that, in inverted commas, because they give you an initial amount of 2000 chips for nothing and, while you can get free chips everyday, there’s a definite sales tactic pushing you to actually invest in large amounts of chips.

Don’t do that, just get good at it.

Anyway, playing with the French is great because, as well as an array of emojis to indicate your mood at any given time, there’s also a text input option. This small window enables you to converse with your fellow players. And by converse I mean insult.

Yes, the only time this small text window is used is for insults to be hurled at other players. You will quickly learn what the following words are in French: Stupid, idiot, useless, dickhead, fuckwit etc etc.

Your education doesn’t stop at words though as the French are more than capable of string whole phrases full of insults together too, such as:

 

Vous etes debutante? – Are you a new player?

 

Vous ete  un batard inutile! – You useless bastard!

 

Pourquoi avez-vous choisi cette carte stupide? – Why did you choose that card stupid?

 

J’ai eu des rapports sexuel avec votre mere! – I have had sex with your mother!

 

Et votre pere regardait aussi! – And your father was watching too!

 

Yes the French take their Belote games very seriously.

BUY AND SELL ON FRENCH EBAY

I went through a phase, back in 2009, of buying vintage Transformers. I had a man-cave, in the loft. Then I had kids. Bye-bye man-cave, bye-bye Transformers. Something good that came from this though – apart from having kids of course, ahem – is that in the brief period between buying and selling these items, they had increased in value and thus I turned a tidy profit.

I’m applying the same rationale to vintage video games, I’m buying them with a view to selling them at a later date for a profit. They are also much easier to store as they are just games in tidy little cases, not robots with 18 legs that will break if you look at them funny.

One of the great things about using eBay France is that – surprise, surprise – all the item descriptions are in French. Thus you will increase your knowledge of words you didn’t know you would ever have a use for, but that can come in handy in many circumstances.

A word of warning though, when selling your own items you may be tempted to use Google Translate for the item description, this will get the point across, but a true French person will spot it a mile away. One item I sold led to me conversing with the buyer (or ‘acheteur’ as they are called, ooh! Look at me!) in order to garnish them with more information, and he actually told me that I ‘Could respond in English if I preferred’.

DON’T BE A COWARD AND GET YOUR FRENCH PARTNER TO DO IT – TAKE THE ITEMS YOU SELL ON EBAY TO THE POST OFFICE YOURSELF

Yes, pretty self explanatory this one because, if like me you live with a native French person the temptation is to just coast along and get them to do all the ‘hard work’ i.e: interact with actual French people. You must resist this and force yourself to ‘get out there’.

It may sound like a scary proposition, but once you start doing this it gets easier, a bit like taking the training wheels off your bike. It also helps that more than likely the people you deal with at the post office will be the same people that deliver goods to your door, so you will recognise them, and they you.

The rewards you get from this kind of interaction are priceless. My favourite, this week anyway,  was dealing with two different people at the post office on two different days. I had to return an item – to the UK – as it was faulty. But I first had to get the costing for it, then notify the seller, who would then reimburse me, and then I would be able to post it.

Two different interactions over two days with two different, and very helpful, French people, with little to no confusion on either side. All under the watchful eye of the work-experience boy who has picked a VERY bad week to be stuck in a not-particularly-well air-conditioned room.

Item successfully posted, language-skills and confidence boosted.

GO OUT TO THE SHOPS AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN AND TALK TO PEOPLE

This is not difficult for me, I have two kids, and they seem intent on eating their own body weight in bread, biscuits and fruit each day and drinking enough smoothies each week to drown a herd of cattle in.

When I say ‘talk to people’ here, I don’t mean strike up a deep, meaningful conversation – let’s not get ahead of ourselves just yet! But you can certainly pick up on the little things, the social niceties.

Also just looking around and listening to other people while you are queuing is a great way to improve your lingo-skills. You will have a lot of time to do this in French supermarkets as, for some reason, they seem to abhor the thought of putting more than two people on the tills at any one time – even though our local Intermarche has an army of staff members.

Even just reading the different signs, leaflets, posters etc will aid you in your training. Does that sound patronising? Sorry if it does but this is the thing you must remember – everything you read, hear or see can help you learn, everything. Just keep at it, it will get better.

Oh No! It’s The Food Police!

Tags

children, food, food and drink, funny, Humor, kids, Parenting, stay-at-home Dad

 

My daughter looks at me as I step out into the glorious sunshine, I’m eating a lemon-sorbet ice-pop, just the thing to cool me down on a day as hot as this. ‘You’ve had two of those today’ she says to me ‘Why have you had two of those today?’. It’s like this all the time at the moment, my daughter has turned into a food policeman/woman/child (delete as appropriate). You can’t put anything in your mouth – nothing edible anyway – without her noticing and commenting on it.

 

I was making her some food the other day, one of her favourites, sausage and chips, and I – as is customary for me – took a small piece of the second sausage, for what I refer to as ‘Daddy Tax’. This is a tax I levy on all foodstuffs (except cauliflower, bleurgh!) that I prepare for my kids, just a little off the top to keep me sweet (It is not, I repeat NOT ‘protection money’ in the form of food). She noticed straight away.

 

‘Why did you eat a piece of my sausage’ she said, her dark eyes fixed on me from beneath a furrowed brow. Was she in the room when I ate that piece of sausage? I don’t think she was, and as I break her sausages up into pieces, there shouldn’t really have been any way for her to notice. But notice she did.

 

I suspect that at night, when everyone else is asleep, she creeps downstairs and takes inventory of all the food in the house. She notes down all the different foodstuffs, the different quantities and then, if in her eyes you go over your allotted quota for the day, that’s when the interrogation, the questions, the accusations…that’s when it all starts.

 

Or I could just be being paranoid.

 

She’s always there, whenever food is being prepared, and if she isn’t, she magically will be as soon as she smells or hears it. It’s like one of those horror movie cliches, you know when you open the fridge-door, and then close it and there’s a mass murderer waiting, where previously there was nothing. Except it’s not a mass murderer, it’s a two-and-a-half foot tall munchkin who wants to know what you are doing with that pack of ham. And if you don’t respond then the consequences could be as dire as in the horror movie.

 

That’s if you equate being stared at for ten minutes, with the phrase ‘Can I have some’ repeated 278 times, to as bad as being stabbed to death by Michael Myers/Jason Voorhees/Freddy Krueger (delete as applicable).

 

She can also hear packets of crisps being opened from up to a mile away. I once opened a packet, downstairs in our house. I was alone, everybody else was off doing something else (together I should add, we don’t let our three and six year old wander the village on their own – we wouldn’t put the villagers through that). I hadn’t put one crisp in my mouth when I turned to see a pair of dark eyes staring at me through the patio windows.

 

They were my favourite flavour too.

 

I’m in the house on my own now too, and I think I might have an ice-cream. I’ll be ok though, she’s at nursery today. There’s no chance she can get me. Is there?

 

Hang on…I think I heard something….

Why Would Hundreds Of French People Spend A Day Waiting For A Cow To Take A Dump?

Tags

Culture, France, French, funny, Gambling, Gaming, Humor

‘He’ll be waiting a while, I had eggs for breakfast’

 

How do you like that for a title, eh? But down to business, why would anyone, with half a brain, spend a gloriously sunny Sunday watching one of our bovine friends waddling around, keenly anticipating a fresh, steaming cow-turd being delivered?

 

Because you can win a car if it craps in the right spot.

 

Yes, you read that right. You win a car. If a cow craps in the right spot.

 

Don’t believe me? Then have a look at this:

 

 

Just when I thought I’d seen every bizarre game going, the French come up with a lotto game involving cow shit. You pay your 5 Euros, you take your ticket with the randomly assigned numbers, and you cross your fingers and hope that Lady Luck (or should that be Muck?) is with you.

 

There are many prizes to be won – TVs, day trips, home cinema gear etc – but the big draw is obviously the car. I could not, for the life of me, work out how they would justify this. How can a lotto game generate enough revenue, in a fairly small village, to cover the cost of a car AND turn a profit? How big is this field?

 

Also, as someone pointed out, what if the cow shit covers more than one grid? Will the winners have to car-share?

 

There are so many questions regarding this game, none of which were answered on the day. Do you want to know how they worked out the winners? Have a look at this board:

 

 

That’s cleared that up then hasn’t it?

 

No, not at all.

 

It looks like hell for someone with a morbid fear of Sudoku puzzles. I think whoever came up with this looks at the Enigma code machine as ‘child’s play’. I stared at it, and stared at it but it made less and less sense to me. But after 30 minutes I think I did start to see some sharks swimming around a sunken ship*.

 

We were told by the guy who deciphers this numerical-bollocks that we were ‘quite close’ to winning the day trip. What ‘quite close’ constituted with regards to all those numbers and a big steaming pile of cow faeces is anyone’s guess.

 

‘When weel zees cow take a sheet? Ah ‘ave been standing ‘eer for an hour!’

 

Seriously, how do you plan a game based on cow dumps? You wouldn’t want to have everyone standing around in the blazing hot sun, waiting for Daisy’s sphincter to deliver the goods, only for it to remain resolutely shut. I’m obviously showing up my glaring lack of knowledge in this area, and can only apologise (note to self, research cow’s bowel movements ASAP). I can only assume that the farmers have a few tricks up their sleeves.

 

Either that or they just pop them full of industrial strength laxatives, and then shove them out on to the field.

 

Note: electric wire – the only thing standing between the crowd, and a dowsing of cow-shit.

 

I was informed by my partner that there had been three rounds of this cow-poo fun during the day, and that they had sold three thousand tickets. So I then understood how they got the money for the car. We had arrived for the final round, not wanting to spend all the day watching this ‘entertainment’. Also because the final round was the round where you could win the car, and I wanted to win the car.

 

Who doesn’t want to win a car?

 

It dawned on me that narrating a game involving cows taking a dump was a horrible job. The DJ made this plain with his terrible dialogue. My French isn’t perfect, but when you’re complimenting a cow for running for approximately three seconds, you know you’re in trouble.

 

He perked up though, when the cow actually did have a dump:

 

Two men, looking at a cow turd.

 

There was further excitement caused when the turd in question seemed to be covering two grids – perhaps a car-share was indeed on the books. The chap who checks the poo, who had already called another chap to check the poo, then had to call in the top, top man to check the poo:

 

Now there are three of them – and one of them has a measuring tape.

 

They seemed to be some disagreement on the placement of said poo, so they then used a scientific technique known around the world as ‘Walking away and standing in the distance so that we look like we now what we are doing’. They also started using a measuring tape – you wouldn’t want to borrow that afterwards would you?

 

So if you stand there, and I stand here, we’ll look really professional so then hopefully, when they announce that the winner is the mayor, nobody will complain.

 

They finally made a decision and announced the winner. They read the numbers of the winning ticket out in reverse, thus making my already fragile mind, all-but spent from trying to make sense of the number-grid-from-hell, start to ooze out of my ears.

 

We didn’t win.

 

But, as Jim Bowen used to say, let’s have a look at what we could have won:

 

 

 

Stupid bloody cow, shitting in the wrong bloody place….

 

*That’s a joke from the 90s, remember those ‘Magic Eye’ posters? You stared at them for a while and then a fantastic image would slowly appear, depicting cats flying planes, or unicorns dancing in a golden stream. Or, if you are me, absolutely nothing except a load of squiggly lines.

Cultural French/UK Similarities: Aldi’s Aisle Of Random Crap

Tags

Culture, France, French, fun, funny, Humor, kids, Parenting, shopping

I couldn’t believe my eyes when I first saw this: an Aldi in my new French village! Tucked away in amongst all the boulangeries, brasseries and other things beginning with ‘B’ was this delightful example of German budget-shopping. OK, so it’s actually ‘tucked away’ on a small industrial estate, between lots of trucks and a public toilet, but that doesn’t paint a very pretty picture, so I lied.

 

The interior is just a cosy as the equivalents in the UK i.e: not cosy at all, and in fact very, very grim. They do the job though. Another fantastic similarity to the UK stores is the legendary aisle of crap. So named, by myself and many other Brits, for the random assortment of goods that can be found there. The aisle of crap is always, always located in the middle of the store.

 

But as pictures paint a thousand words, let me take you on a tour of this cultural gem.

 

I will also add words too, so therefore will be painting more than a thousand words per picture. Aren’t I nice?

 

 

 

In case you didn’t know, that little bit of French means ‘low prices’. Note presence of an item of Star Wars merchandise. Aldi stores are regularly checked by upper-management in disguise*, if the aisle of crap is found to be lacking in at least 48 different items of Star Wars merchandise, the manager of the store in question is fired on the spot.

 

*Generally a middle-aged man in three quarter-length, khaki shorts, who parks his 4×4 in the ‘parent and child only’ parking space at the front of the store, to make sure he fits in.

 

Nothing screams ‘keeping up with trends’ like Halloween decorations in May. Place your bets now, will they still be here this October?

 

 

Books that nobody wants to buy are a common theme in the aisle of crap. In the UK it’s generally Lego Annuals that have had their ‘Exclusive’ Lego Figure stolen, and thus are doomed to gather dust till they are incinerated. Here it’s this interesting oddity, with a title that translates as  ‘Football, Champagne and Evening Glitter‘. What does that even mean?

 

There’s a hint of sunshine in the sky, and you know what that means don’t you? SOLAR LIGHTS!!!!! There are approximately 4,567 variants of these per store. If the quantities ever dip below this figure then the manager of the store – they and they alone – must immediately restock the quantities. They generally do this while the queue – which had been snaking past the tills and up the aisles – heads towards the fire-exit.

 

Can’t decide between completing a jigsaw puzzle, or putting up some curtains? Well, why should you have to? Here at Aldi, you can do both. So don’t delay, come in today and within mere minutes/hours* you can be sat next to a window, while your freshly purchased curtains blow in the gentle breeze, knocking your half-finished jigsaw all over the floor.

 

*Dependant on queue-length

 

 

 

I want a treasure box for the kids’ toys, but I also want to strim the grass…if only the option of finding both of the answers to these quandaries was relatively close together…

 

Another feature of Aldis-worldwide are the cabinets crammed full of electrical items, with prices that have been plucked from the sky. They occasionally reduce the prices, with equal disregard for any kind of structure:

 

 

Yes, just stick a 50 Euro yellow sticker on it, that’ll shift it*

 

*I have never, ever seen anyone buy from one of these cabinets, here or in the UK. I suspect the manager doesn’t actually have a key.

 

 

The gap between the…cage/basket/thingies. This achieves two things. 1. It allows you to have a ten-minute stand off with a lady with blue-rinsed hair, who has approached the gap with her trolley at the same time as you, and will not budge to let you through first. and 2. Allows the goods to make the leap from pillows, to car accessories.

 

Can you think of anywhere else where sets of knives and bed-linen live together in perfect harmony, side-by-side, on their basket/cage/thingies? Oh lord why can’t we?*

 

 

*That noise you just heard was Paul McCartney picking up his phone to call his lawyers.

‘There’s a bit of space here boss, what should we do with it? Put some more shoes there? Or maybe some insoles?’ ‘Sod that, stick those game packs there for the kids’

‘Daddy, daddy!’ ‘Yes darling?’ ‘Why is that lady naked?’

Kill my partner, deck the garden or go on holiday..Kill my partner deck the garden or go on holiday? Choices, choices. Yes if you have ever been struggling with the difficult choice between upgrading your garden/burying your partner under the new decking or going on holiday/disposing of your partner in suitcases then come to Aldi. You can do both here!

 

 

And here, at the end of the mockery the legendary Aldi queue awaits you. I know what you are thinking ‘maybe if I just go for my 37th tour of the store all those people will go away’. But they won’t go away, and you know what? More people will come. But they won’t open another till, not till the queue reaches critical mass (90% of people in queue over 70 years of age, and the queue now has its own Facebook page).

 

And they want you to go for another tour of the store, because by that time your resolve will have been weakened. So that swimming pool for 15 Euros? The one you wouldn’t buy before? Your son’s constant whining will have finally eroded your will, and you will take it, from a cage/basket/thingy, from the aisle of crap, and put it in your trolley.

 

Then you take your place in the now even longer queue, and look at all the other unmanned tills.

 

Oh and the manager won’t care, he’s too busy restocking the solar lights.

The Seven Strangest Things At Today’s Brocante…

Tags

children, Culture, France, French, funny, Humor, kids, Sales

 

Ever had one of those ideas that you immediately regret? Like taking a moped out for a spin in Greece, without taking out insurance? Or maybe accepting that drink from the slightly too friendly guy, that keeps touching you? Or maybe going along to that ‘it’s not timeshare’ presentation, with the promise of a free trip on a glass-bottomed-boat afterwards?

 

Or how about deciding to man a stall at a French brocante, and taking along your three and six year-old children? Doomed to failure that idea, a non-starter if you are seeking a peaceful, profitable day.

 

Regrets aside this is what brought us to the huge brocante in our home village of Aubigny sur Nere today. I don’t use the term ‘huge’ lightly either. The brocante dominates the place to such a degree that traffic has been shut down throughout and there’s nary an alley, or sidewalk, that doesn’t have somebody selling something.

 

It’s not long before the kids start to act up (2 micro-seconds to be exact) and so, after the requisite amount of paternal caring (3 micro-seconds to be exact) I bugger off and leave the kids with their mother, Grandma and Grandad, and take a look at what there is for sale.

 

There are lots, and lots, and lots of interesting items, the usual medley of guns, knives, rusty farm tools, knives, dead animals and more knives. The stand-outs for me, today, are the following seven deadly deals…

 

MUSCULAR GNOME-IN-A-THONG

This combines two of my least favourite things: gnomes and (male) thongs. What’s going on here? What message are you sending out if you buy this and display it on your lawn? If I bought this, the Peter Stringfellow of garden ornaments, and put it outside I wonder how long it would be before the gendarme came knocking at my door?

Also note his accessory: alarmingly phallic mushroom – I don’t think the plan here is for him to get his fishing rod out. Well, obviously that depends on your interpretation of the term ‘fishing rod’.

I think the plan is actually for the placement of these in the garden to attract ladies inside, with the suggestion of virility, muscularity and…well, a great big mushroom. The only slight hitch will come if it actually works, and the ladies knock on the door only to find a 9-stone-man with a stoop and halitosis…

 

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

GOAT/COW/SOMETHING’S FEET LAMP

Yes, yes so I’m clearly not an expert on what foot comes off what animal as the title of this segment demonstrates. I don’t know about you, but my first thought if I cut off this animals legs and started wondering what to do with them, would probably not be ‘Hmm, you know what? They’d make a lovely lamp’. What the hell do you buy to complement this? A buffalo leg coffee table? Or maybe a set of four deer-leg coat-hooks (they actually had those, in case you wondered what happened to Bambi)?

If nothing it’s definitely a conversation starter. A conversation that would probably start with ‘What the f*ck’s that?’

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

NOT THE JOY OF SEX BOOK

My closest encounter with flagellation came in 2006, when I sat through the interminable The Da Vinci Code. You remember? That albino monk kept whacking himself when he thought he’d done something wrong. Or he might have enjoyed it, I forget which one.

Anyway, I didn’t realise it was actually a thing, or that there were even guide books for it. Needless to say, this was as close as I got, I really didn’t want to bump into one of my children’s teachers whilst ‘browsing’ Kinky Flagellations…t hat could open up a whole new world of problems. It would certainly make parent/teacher evenings interesting.

It’s nice that the producers of this book have thoughtfully included a warning that it is ‘not suitable for minors’. I would have thought the image on the front of the book, of the woman wearing S+M gear, and exposing her breasts would have done that job, but maybe that’s just me.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD 

JOHN CARPENTER’S THE THING DOG-LAMP

Fans of the seminal 1982 classic John Carpenter’s The Thing (to give it its full title) will recall the standout scene early on, where the husky dog that has seemed to be normal reveals its true colours, goes bat-shit crazy, and starts melting and attempting to assimilate the other dogs. If you could turn those melted dogs into a lamp, it would look like this.

At least, I think it’s supposed to be a lamp. My French isn’t yet at the stage where I can confidently pose the question ‘What the bloody hell is that supposed to be? Is it a lamp?’, but I’m getting there. Where does the light bulb go? In its mouth? Or are you supposed to finish that part off yourself? The mind boggles.

This…thing, won the award for the day of being, in my partner’s words, ‘The scariest thing I have ever seen’. It’s so like The Thing, in so many ways that I’m slightly regretting not buying it now. It looks like something trying (and failing) to look like something else, part-dog, part-lamp: all-horror. That being said, If I had have bought it I’m fairly certain that the kids would never enter the room that it was in…bah! Yet another reason to have purchased it!

 

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

An Obviously Stolen Road Sign

This lady had some balls on her I can tell you. Stood there, in plain view of any passing gendarmes – of which there were many – with a stolen road sign. Just consider, for a moment, the lost motorist, adrift betwixt Gracay and Vatan. ‘How far is it now my love?’ grey-haired Elsa says to her beau, Francois ‘I don’t know’ he says, taking off his glasses and peering at the mound of upturned soil ‘Someone’s stolen the f*cking road sign’.

As uninteresting as the actual item is, it still garnered inquisitive looks and questions from passers-by. My partner heard her setting her stall out, price-wise, when she responded to a query on the matter with ‘let’s look at 350 euros, then we can start to talk about it’.

She also tried, unsuccessfully, to photo-bomb my picture when I took it. Like I said, she had balls.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: NOT SURE, SHE DROVE OFF

COCK-SWITCH LAMP

‘Eh!’ said the lady who owned this ‘tasteful’ item when I took its picture ‘You take a photo of it, you buy it!’. I just hid behind my foreignness, gave her the thumbs up, and said it was ‘Tres bon!’.

When what I actually wanted to say was ‘How do you turn it on? By flicking the penis?’.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD

GORILLA-MECHANIC WITH BOTTLE OF WINE/OIL & ADJUSTABLE WRENCH THING

So I’ve no idea on this one. What’s the purpose, the point, or the message? The bottle clearly used to be a bottle of wine, but now it’s been re-covered to look like a bottle of oil. With nuts at the bottom of it.

The wrench is touching the bottle, so is it implying that the two go together? Mechanics use oil and wrenches a lot?

What’s the gorilla got to do with anything? He looks like he wandered in from another set. Oh, and if you can’t see he’s also eating a banana. Is this the view of mechanics in France, that they are apes?

Maybe it’s an actual depiction of a ‘Monkey-wrench’ or…you know what? I’m giving up on this one. I personally think it’s someone’s art degree effort, probably means something really deep and cool. For me it just looked really weird, and faintly insulting for some reason.

STATUS AT END OF BROCANTE: UNSOLD