Ici Londres

When I was in London last weekend I had a couple of hours to spare one afternoon. I decided to find out more about the French community in the city.

I'd got interested a few weeks ago when I read Marc Levy's novel 'Mes amis, mes amours' which is set in South Kensington and follows two thirty-something, single-parent Frenchmen in their search for lurve. The novel portrayed South Ken as being rather stuffed full of French, which was news to me; I do remember lots of coach trips to the Institut Français there to see the latest French film when I was a student, but I've not been back to that area for years (bit posh for me, since you ask; I'm more of a Shepherd's Bush type).

A bit of research told me that there are now around 400,000 French people living in London. Wow. And that London is in fact France's 5th city in terms of its number of registered voters (they're even going to get their own deputé - Member of Parliament - in the next French elections). Let's put that into context: apparently somewhere around 300,000 Britons own houses in France - but a lot of those are second homes, and the number of 'proper' immigrants - those who live here full time - is largely unknown: there's no official means of collecting such information - even the census asked us only to tick a box saying we're of 'other EU origin', which I thought sounded a bit like a food ingredient.

So who are the French in London? Well, it's a very different demographic to the typical Brit in France, that's for sure. Whereas the latter tends (with exceptions, naturellement) to live in a deeply rural area and to be retired, the French in London seem to fall into two main categories. There are those in high-powered jobs, often in the financial sector, particularly banking, here on three or five year secondment (though more and more are, it seems, staying on); and then there are increasing numbers of younger people, often single, who come to improve their English, to get away from the restrictions and red tape that they experience in France where they find themselves in a difficult and closed employment market where (I quote) they need the correct diploma even to sell flowers, and just to experience something new. Favoured areas, particularly amongst the BCBGs, are South Kensington itself along with other suitably leafy, genteel parts of west London such as Chiswick, Ealing, Holland Park and and Barnes, with newer outposts in Kentish Town (where a new French school has just opened), Clapham and - um - Hackney.

As I arrived in South Kensington - known as the 'twenty-first arrondissement' - and wandered into Bute Street - known locally as Frog Alley - it was as if I'd come back home: all the shops, cafés and restaurants were French; I only heard French being spoken around me, so I too lapsed quite naturally into French. I stopped for a drink (ahhhhhh - first decent coffee for three days!) at a café near the French Lycée (4000 pupils) and found myself deep in yummy maman territory. It became very apparent very quickly that there is a real expat/immigrant community here (the kind of community that I do my best to avoid in Ariège - and that is often disapproved of here by many  French people who see it as evidence that the British don't want to integrate! Hmm. Interesting, non ...?). There are magazines like Ici Londres, what seems like hundreds of internet forums to help incomers find their way round and make contacts, and even a local Francophone radio station, French Radio London. There are French doctors, dentists, pharmacists (who'll make sure you get French drugs!), opticians, plumbers, builders, therapists, computer experts; people who'll set you up with French TV and people who'll look after your children and make sure they speak French. And from what I can gather from my earwigging session over coffee there are also masses of groups, classes and clubs set up specifically so that the French community can interact with itself.

It was all very illuminating, and very fascinating. Most fascinating of all though was the abiding sense that I was left with that, just like the fabled Dordogneshire British expat community with its cricket clubs and English pubs, the French community in SW7 actually seems more French than it would be if it had stayed in France ........

An ordinary life

As I was ruminating on my sunbed late yesterday afternoon (yes, it finally stopped raining), I got to thinking about the kind of life that we've begun to settle into here. As you do. Or at least I do. And I realised one thing in particular. We're ordinary. 

For many years living in England, I felt my own sense of What Really Matters becoming more and more out of kilter with the prevailing ethic. As a person-centred therapist, for example, I was - and remain - shocked and angry at, and disturbed by, the ceaseless moves towards statutory regulation of the practice of counselling and psychotherapy. (If you want to know why, you could do worse than visit The Alliance for Counselling and Psychotherapy and watch the video talk by Brian Thorne, who was my tutor and mentor. I can't put it better than he does. Never could, actually ...). As a restaurateur, I was saddened by the general belief that we must be motivated by, and in it for, profit ... and exhausted by continually having to explain that we didn't see things that way. I lost count of how many presumably well-meaning people told us how much more we could earn by opening on more days or for longer hours, or turning tables, or cramming more people in, or using wholesalers instead of small producers, or any number of so-called 'normal' trade tricks; explaining that we were simply interested in creating a life that sustained us and was sustainable usually led to (at best) disbelief and (at worst) pity. And as a person, the things that most inspire me - growing things, creating things, sharing things, community and communities, meditation, nature, creating space for people to be and discover themselves and others, living a simple but not a plain life - were certainly not those that surrounded me on a daily basis. 

Here in rural France, and in particular in Ariège, I'm no longer counter-cultural. As everyone well knows, the French work to live rather than live to work; in spite of Nicholas Sarkozy's best efforts to get everyone to "work more to earn more", the nation remains singularly unconvinced: earning enough is what it's all about. Commuting is rare, and despised - a last resort, to be dispensed with as quickly as possible. Almost everybody grows their own vegetables. Credit cards are all but unknown: you want something, you pay for it, now. Houses are bought as homes, not as investments, and mortgages are strictly and legally regulated. The consumer society is muted: shops are closed for two hours at lunchtime, and on Sundays. Cars go on for at least twice as long as they do in the UK, other machinery even longer; there really is no pressure to have the latest equipment or the fastest PC or the trendiest trainers or spend the most on your child at Christmas or dress in the most stylish fashions (if you've visited a rural market and seen some of the clothes on offer, you'll understand what I mean and wonder why on earth the French have a reputation for being elegant ...). In spite of la crise, the essence of daily living continues to be dominated rather more by simple pleasures than by desire or by fear. What Really Matters here is living a life of quality not quantity; living well, and appropriately.

And so, blessedly and with a great sigh of relief, I find myself finally to be living an ordinary life, just one amongst countless others doing the same. 

A hole in the ground

Winter has arrived at Grillou. Several centimetres of powdery snow fell yesterday - a day when the other side of the valley disappeared completely from view, and it barely bothered to get light at all before dusk fell again. Today, the skies are still heavy, there are occasional snow flurries, and our highest temperature has been minus 4 degrees. Mind you, that's positively balmy compared to the north and east of France, which is shivering under temperatures of minus 15. Cold air streams from Scandinavia and Siberia, I gather. We've been amusing ourselves trying to identify all the animal tracks which have been left in the snow overnight and which show just how busy things are here when we're out of it all under the duvet. Oh yes, and topping up the birds' food (there are around 40 of them on and around the feeders at any one time today) and breaking the ice in their water bowl every hour.

Knowing that the cold spell was on the way, we'd spent the last few days turning over the new bit of potager. Actually, we've got ourselves into a bit of a hole here, so to speak. Last spring we decided to mulch the whole area (it's an extension of one of our current beds) with left over cardboard removal boxes and straw - sound permaculture advice which we've followed before to really good effect. Huh! When we took what remained of the mulch off in early November, we were faced with a slimy, smelly sea of sludge that you could skate on (when you were bored with alliterating, that is). It bubbled, gurgled, ponged to high heaven and was distinctly not diggable. I remain baffled to know quite what went wrong, but after two months it was still looking decidedly dodgy and Something Had To Be Done. So we set to with the spades, turning over ton-weight clods in the hope that the frost would do the rest ready for us to rotovate in February. All very fit-making. I'm told that one day I may even be able to walk upright again.

This was, as you might have gathered, not a pleasant experience. A treat was therefore in order. So. Bottle of something bubbly? Some posh fish? A nice bit of saignant steak? Nah. I decided to build a fire pit.

One of the things that happens when you've just got so many essential things to do on your house is that only the essentials ever get done, so doing something just-for-the-hell-of-it becomes fun. I've wanted to build a fire pit in the area we call the willow garden for a year now - there's a kind of natural mini stone circle there that's just crying out for a fire in the middle of it, with people to sit round it, and cook on it, and sing, and tell stories. To me there really is something magical about a campfire: people who'd lose interest in a TV programme in minutes are transfixed for hours staring into its flames, and sharing a fire - sharing light in the darkness - is one of the fastest, oldest and deepest ways to create community. I lived for some time in a small community in England whose raison d'être was running alternative camps - dance, song, meditation, healing, celebrating the ancient festivals - and for several months of the year I would smell indelibly of wood smoke, as camp life takes place within circles of tents pitched around fires. Each circle becomes a community within a community, sharing daily life, cooking, stories, support and an incredible amount of relational depth, with the fire holding the space at the centre. I miss it.

So Grillou's garden now has a hearth. If you're inspired and want to build a fire pit yourself, here's how I did it:

I lifted the turf (if this were to be a temporary pit it would be replaced when I'd finished using it) then dug a circular hole, around a metre and a half wide and 40 centimetres deep, and flattened out the bottom.



Then, to help with drainage, I covered the bottom of the hole with some gravel that was knocking about.



On top of the gravel I set down several flat rocks to make a base for the fire, then spread around some old building sand to bed them in. Finally, I built a kind of retaining wall inside and around the circle using some of the thousands (I'm not kidding) of rocks that litter our land. It's not essential to do this - I wouldn't do it on a temporary pit, for instance - but as well as holding the shape it makes for a more attractive pit.



Then, on a chilly but just-about-sunny afternoon, I made a baby fire, and we sat round gazing at it for a couple of hours ... Next step will be sawing up a couple of tree trunks to make some seats, then I can look forward to some smoke-and-song-filled evenings this year and onwards ...



So, a very happy, healthy and (as far as can be) sufficiently prosperous 2009 to everyone. For us this will be The Year of Grand Disruption: the major work on our guest accommodation starts, finally, in spring, ready for all of you this time next year ....