L'embarras du choix

Je croyais que ce serait facile ... 

A photo of something French or connected to France seemed, at first glance, a wonderfully straightforward challenge. I have many shelves of French books and teaching resources from my life as a student and teacher of French, more shelves of French films on DVD and VHS, old vinyl albums and CDs of French chanson, and assorted bits of crockery and batterie de cuisine accumulated during the two (separate) years I lived in France. I dithered... The salad spinner I bought in Prisunic in 1980 has lasted so well but its buttercup yellow charm would not translate into monochrome; the chipped white porcelain bowl was a bargain from a seconds shop in Paris in 1983, but I'd just finished eating my muesli from it, should have thought before I started; the earthenware jug I bought for my parents at Fontaine de Vaucluse in 1976 would need some flowers and I didn't have any available. Maybe an abstract shot of the balloon whisk I bought to make chocolate mousse in my Paris garret? Time was short, but a shelf of books would surely be too boring. The more I thought, the less I felt capable of deciding.

A browse of some of the more accessible shelves reminded me of La Fontaine's Fables. It's a nice, hard cover, illustrated edition, a gift from my French penfriend. Inside, I found the card with the author's portrait, with a dedication and the year, 1973, on the reverse. The card from the bookshop shows that it was bought in Château Thierry, about an hour by train from Paris and birthplace of the author, as well as the home of my penfriend. La Fontaine's Fables are among the best-known seventeenth century works of French literature. Many are familiar stories based on Aesop or Horace: the photo shows "Le rat de ville et le rat des champs", and the first fable in the book is "Le cigale et la fourmis" (The Ant and the Grasshopper in most English versions, though La Fontaine's carefree insect is a cicada). I wanted to include the first photo booth photos A sent me, but they are too firmly stuck in the horribly sticky 1970s album.

In 1973 A and I had been corresponding for about a year, conscientiously writing letters half in the language we were learning and half in our own. Plans for a school exchange quickly faltered, and soon we were the only members of the initial cohort still in touch, so in 1975, after some parental correspondence in my mum's stilted but grammatically impeccable 1940s grammar school French, we made our own arrangements. Her entire family brought her to Gloucestershire, courtesy of her cheminot father's free train tickets, and after a Sunday roast and strenuous efforts to communicate - her parents spoke no English - they decided they could safely leave A in our care for a fortnight before welcoming me to their home. It all worked astonishingly well: we had quite a lot in common and were soon good friends. Her parents were wonderfully welcoming and provided a fantastic induction into everyday French life. Everything fascinated me - the shelves in the supermarket (more different then than now), the mealtime routines, the names of the wild flowers. Three more wonderful summer exchanges followed, each a little longer than the last, with a holiday in the Alps, then the unforgettable experience of their ongoing renovation of a ramshackle old Provençal house as a holiday home. During our university years we visited each other independently, and when I spent an impoverished postgraduate year in a tiny chambre de bonne in Paris, A's parents were glad to welcome me for occasional breaks in the country and send me back with bags of fresh vegetables from the garden. I have a huge amount to thank them for, including their significant contribution to my success in my studies and subsequent career. A's father also fostered my nascent interest in photography, with encouragement, technical direction, the loan of a much better camera than the one I dropped and broke, and unfailing willingness to pull the car to a halt on hairpin bends and jump out for that perfect shot. A and I stayed in touch, attended each other's weddings, sent baby gifts... As life and work got busier the contact was less frequent, but Facebook plugged some gaps and in 2017 we met again when my daughter J's first commissioned animation was included in a festival of deaf culture in A's home city. 

My relationship with A and her family has been a key part of my relationship with France and all things French, and has taught me such a lot and given me so many wonderful memories. This is a quick, poorly lit photo taken too late in the day  and I didn't mean to write about it at such length, but the relationships which grew from that initial contact helped to shape my life.