As you may know it is considered polite here (i.e. obligatory) to greet the person you meet upon entering any store, restaurant, practically anywhere. The greeting above is appropriate unless the proprietress is actually a proprietor. Let me explain. During a grueling climb up the Stairway of Death (it actually sounds much better in French) I met a person going the opposite direction. I sang out my usual greeting, “Bonjour madame,” only to be met with a gasp of surprise as if I was wearing no clothes. Now, persons of a certain age in Europe can, at times, dress so that gender identification is simply beyond me. The uni-sex hair style, the dark coat, and the lack of make-up provide no clues. I have missed more often than I care to admit.
After a year’s absence we are back in our favorite village in France. We stayed away for so long so that we could be part of the arrival of three darling granddaughters during 2016. I had forgotten how having babies in the house can make one feel so young. Thank you Petra, Fia, and Juniper for that special gift to us.
As I settled into a favorite seat in a favorite café, having already successfully made the appropriate greeting to the hostess, I took a moment to let my French catch up before I attempted to order. I am once again faced with the ‘le or la’ dilemma. If I just mumble the article I am almost always corrected by the server. That is a big ‘ouch’ to the male ego. Scanning the card in front of me, to my surprise I understand everything on the menu. Then I noticed the English subtitles. To paraphrase Julia Child, “And I thought I was reading in French.”
On a past visit I met a former MI6 intelligence officer. He did not seem much like James Bond, but his stories were stimulating. He writes about his adventures too under the pen name of Nicholas Anderson. He introduced me to the seafood pizza here at Les Palmiers. I prefer to call it la pizza fruit de mer. See, doesn’t everything sound better in French? Well, almost everything.
