Friday 23 December 2011
Wednesday 21 December 2011
Cadeau de Noël
Une femme, peu avant Noel dit à son mari qu'elle aimerait recevoir quelque chose capable de monter de 0 à 100 en plus ou moins 4 secondes...
Il va de soit qu'elle voulait une nouvelle voiture..
Le mari, très consciencieux va lui acheter ce qu'il faut..
Pour Noel, elle reçoit donc.. UNE BALANCE!!!
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 19 December 2011
Noël Mafia
Le petit garçon d'un mafioso voudrait avoir une bicyclette neuve pour Noël.
Alors il prend un papier et un crayon et écrit :
- Cher petit Jésus, j'aimerais bien avoir pour Noël une bicyclette neuve car mon vieux bicycle...
Il arrête, regarde sa lettre la déchire en disant que ça ne marchera pas.
Il prend un autre papier et écrit :
- Cher petit Jésus ayant été sage, j'aimerais pour Noël, avoir une bicyclette neuve...
Il s'arrête, regarde sa lettre, la déchire et dit que ça ne marchera pas celle-là non-plus...
Il regarde sur le bureau de sa chambre, prend la statue de la Sainte-Vierge, prend la roulette de papier collant, enrubanne la statue comme il faut, la dépose dans une boîte et entoure la boîte carton, descend dans le sous-sol dépose la boîte dans une valise, barre la valise pour ensuite la déposer dans le coffre-fort et barre le lec offre-fort avec deux cadenas.
Il remonte en haut prend un papier et sa plume et écrit :
- Cher petit Jésus, si tu veux revoir la madone vivante...
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Saturday 17 December 2011
Wednesday 14 December 2011
Blagues de Noël - 2: Blondes et sapin de Noël
Deux blondes décident d'économiser un peu et se rendent dans les bois pour trouver un sapin pour Noël.
Au bout de deux heures de recherches intensives, la première harassée s'exclame:
- Bon j'en ai marre, le prochain qu'on voit avec ou sans boules; on le prend !
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 12 December 2011
Blagues de Noël - 1
Nous sommes fin décembre et le juge du tribunal correctionnel est de bonne humeur. Il demande au prisonnier :
- Quelles sont les faits qui vous sont reprochés ?
- On me reproche d'avoir fait mes achats de Noël trop tôt!
- Mais ce n'est pas un crime ça. Et comment ça, trop top !
- Ben, avant que le magasin n'ouvre...
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Friday 9 December 2011
Wednesday 7 December 2011
Le presseur de citrons
Un garçon de café a été sacré champion du monde des presseurs de
citrons. Un jour où il en a pressé un jusqu'à la dernière goutte, un client lui
dit :
- Je vous parie 500 euros que je fais mieux que vous.
- Pari tenu !
L'homme saisit l'écorce du citron entre le pouce et l'index et, sous les
applaudissements de l'assistance, il en tire encore un demi-verre de jus.
- Ça alors, fait le garçon, éberlué, vous êtes sans doute un confrère ?
- Moi, pas du tout : je suis percepteur !
citrons. Un jour où il en a pressé un jusqu'à la dernière goutte, un client lui
dit :
- Je vous parie 500 euros que je fais mieux que vous.
- Pari tenu !
L'homme saisit l'écorce du citron entre le pouce et l'index et, sous les
applaudissements de l'assistance, il en tire encore un demi-verre de jus.
- Ça alors, fait le garçon, éberlué, vous êtes sans doute un confrère ?
- Moi, pas du tout : je suis percepteur !
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 5 December 2011
C'est un canard qui va dans un bar
C'est un canard qui va dans un bar. Il demande au Barman :
- As-tu du lait ?
- Non, répond le Barman.
Le lendemain, le canard revient :
- As-tu du lait ?
- Non, répond encore le Barman.
Le troisième jour, le canard revient encore :
- As-tu du lait ?
- NON, s'impatiente le Barman. Là, si tu reviens me demander du lait, je te clou le bec avec un marteau.
- Ok.
Le lendemain, le canard revient :
- As-tu des clous ?
- Non, dit le Barman.
- As-tu un marteau ?
- Non.
- Mais je peux-tu avoir du lait ?
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Friday 2 December 2011
Wednesday 30 November 2011
A French joke to offend civil servants
Le gouvernement a décidé d'adopter un principe japonais, soit l'exercice physique pendant les heures de boulot afin de garder les fonctionnaires en bonne forme. Premier essai : une cassette vidéo distribuée à tous les fonctionnaires. En voici un extrait :
- Et un, en haut… Et deux, en bas… Et trois, en haut… Et quatre, en bas… Parfait ! Maintenant on change de paupière…
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 28 November 2011
L'humour...
Once installed in your new French home, you'll want to integrate with the natives! To help you in this process, La Résidence now offer a series of French jokes for you to memorise and trot out at a suitable occasion. (La Résidence accept no responsibility for possible consequences of repeating any of these jokes.)
Madame est sur son lit de mort. Son colonel de mari lui pose la question qui lui brule la langue depuis trente ans: "M'as-tu trompé?"
D'une voix douce elle répond:
- Oui. Oui mon amour. Mais deux fois seulement.
- Deux fois! Pas plus! Mon Dieu, et moi qui pensais que tu passais ton temps dans le lit des autres. Pardonne-moi ces pensées affreuses. Avec qui ?
- Avec qui? Une fois avec ton général...
- Oh! Le salaud.
- Et une fois avec ton régiment...
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Madame est sur son lit de mort. Son colonel de mari lui pose la question qui lui brule la langue depuis trente ans: "M'as-tu trompé?"
D'une voix douce elle répond:
- Oui. Oui mon amour. Mais deux fois seulement.
- Deux fois! Pas plus! Mon Dieu, et moi qui pensais que tu passais ton temps dans le lit des autres. Pardonne-moi ces pensées affreuses. Avec qui ?
- Avec qui? Une fois avec ton général...
- Oh! Le salaud.
- Et une fois avec ton régiment...
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Friday 25 November 2011
Wednesday 23 November 2011
U-boats and angelica
The medieval port of La Rochelle is capital of the Charente Maritime department and, over the years, has been besieged more time that you've had hot dinners. It was a German U-boat base in the war and was the last French city to be liberated. Just offshore is the island fortress of Fort Boyard, made famous by the Five TV gameshow of that name. The producers agonised for minutes over casting before settling on Leslie Grantham as a sadistic gaoler and Tom Baker as a deranged sea captain.
The capital of the Deux-Sèvres department is Niort, which used to make leather breeches for the cavalry and is now France's risk-assessment capital. Seems a logical progression. Angelica (that green stuff your Gran used to put on cakes) is grown in the nearby Poitevin marshes. Angelica can boost the immune system and cause local anaesthesia. Brilliant.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
The capital of the Deux-Sèvres department is Niort, which used to make leather breeches for the cavalry and is now France's risk-assessment capital. Seems a logical progression. Angelica (that green stuff your Gran used to put on cakes) is grown in the nearby Poitevin marshes. Angelica can boost the immune system and cause local anaesthesia. Brilliant.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 21 November 2011
Ellie, Lou and the second crusade
Eleanor of Aquitaine was born in Poitiers, and first husband was the French king Louis VII. In 1146 they embarked together on the Second Crusade, referred to in subsequent accounts as 'Ye Terminal Fyve of Crusades'. Half way across the Phrygian mountains, Eleanor and Louis started a 'domestic' over the amount of luggage she'd brought (plus ça change).
While they were still bickering, the Turks attacked. Surviving the attack but somewhat discouraged, Ellie and Lou decided to go for an easier target and attacked Damascus - much to the surprise of their allies, the Damascans. An act of indiscriminate slaughter and pillage can often bring a couple closer together (Relayte Handebooke, 1178) but not the Aquitaines, who eventually returned to Poitiers on separate ships.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
While they were still bickering, the Turks attacked. Surviving the attack but somewhat discouraged, Ellie and Lou decided to go for an easier target and attacked Damascus - much to the surprise of their allies, the Damascans. An act of indiscriminate slaughter and pillage can often bring a couple closer together (Relayte Handebooke, 1178) but not the Aquitaines, who eventually returned to Poitiers on separate ships.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Saturday 19 November 2011
Wednesday 16 November 2011
Eleanor of Aquitaine and courtly love
Poitiers-born Eleanor of Aquitaine was the eldest daughter of William X (the tenth, not a radical pseudonym) and granddaughter of Countess Dangereuse (they're making this up!) The court in which she grew up was the most cultured in Europe and the birthplace of 'courtly love' (no sonnets on the first date).
Her first husband was Louis VII, and in 1146 they embarked together on the Second Crusade.
See next week's exciting blogs for the full story...
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Her first husband was Louis VII, and in 1146 they embarked together on the Second Crusade.
See next week's exciting blogs for the full story...
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 14 November 2011
Vital statistics in Poitou-Charentes
Poitou-Charentes is half-way down France's Atlantic coast. The capital is the ancient university city of Poitiers. One in every three people in Poitiers is under the age of thirty and one in every four is a student. It follows then that two in every three people in Poitiers are over the age of thirty, though some of them may still be students. Of these, it is believed that as many as one in seven may be statisticians.
The first Bishop of Poitiers, from 350 to 367, was Saint Hilarius. The name of the second bishop is not recorded.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
The first Bishop of Poitiers, from 350 to 367, was Saint Hilarius. The name of the second bishop is not recorded.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Friday 11 November 2011
Wednesday 9 November 2011
Stand by for the End of the World
François Édouard Anatole Lucas was good with numbers. He was born in Amiens in 1842 and invented the Tower of Hanoi puzzle (you know, five discs, three poles, you've got to move all the discs onto another pole and you can't put a larger disc on a smaller disc). Apparently, the puzzle predates Lucas in Indian legend: the Priests of Brahma have a similar game, still with three posts, but with sixty-four discs. According to the legend, the world will end when the puzzle is completed. There is, however no immediate cause for alarm. Even if the legend is true, AND if the Priests of Brahma can move a disc every second, we've still got six hundred billion years to go.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 7 November 2011
Peter the Hermit makes a bad business decision
Peter the Hermit (who, you'll remember from last week, was an Amiens vicar, called by God to lead a Crusade) then made a really bad business decision and joined forces with another crusading contingent led by Walter the Penniless. Tip - never enter into a business merger with anyone whose nickname is "the Penniless". Walter's mob were starving and immediately plundered Belgrade. This enraged the Balkan Slavs, who are not a people to mess with, even when they're not enraged. The Peter/Walter Group then attacked the very first Turks they spotted. And lost, reducing their numbers even further.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Thursday 3 November 2011
Wednesday 2 November 2011
Peter the Hermit
It wasn't all bloodshed in Picardy, though. Sometimes, armies set out from Picardy to shed blood somewhere else. Peter the Hermit was working as a vicar in Amiens when God told him to organise the First Crusade. He'd been hoping for something easier, like a jumble-sale. In one of the earliest back-to-work schemes, he assembled an army of 40,000 paupers and set off for the Holy Land (for details of the logistically-challenged Second Crusade, see our forthcoming Poitou-Charentes blog ).
In July 1096, Peter arrived at Constantinople with just 30,000 followers. To lose 10,000 sightseers en route might appear careless, but the tourist industry at that time was not governed by today's stringent regulations. The Eastern Roman Emperor Alexius I Comnenus, ruler of Constantinople, was less than pleased to have so many extra mouths to feed, and complained to Peter when food started disappearing from his fridge.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
In July 1096, Peter arrived at Constantinople with just 30,000 followers. To lose 10,000 sightseers en route might appear careless, but the tourist industry at that time was not governed by today's stringent regulations. The Eastern Roman Emperor Alexius I Comnenus, ruler of Constantinople, was less than pleased to have so many extra mouths to feed, and complained to Peter when food started disappearing from his fridge.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 31 October 2011
Choose Picardy for all your warmaking needs
Picardy was named after its inhabitants, the Picards (rather than the other way round). In the thirteenth century, students in Paris who came from this area had the reputation of being troublemakers (picards) so the region these stroppy students came from was named 'Stropshire'. Over the centuries, Picardy has hosted more battles than any other French region. With easy access to England, the Netherlands and Germany, and with nice flat fields for fighting on, Picardy offers location solutions for all your belligerent needs (irony alert!)
Satisfied customers include: Edward III: "I wouldn't start a Hundred Years' War anywhere else."
The Dukes of Burgundy: "Picardy is rightfully part of Burgundy. And so is Mallorca"
General Fernando Alvarez de Toledo: "¿Qué?"
Field-Marshall Prince Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutusov: "Pikardi? Da!"
and, most recently, Kaiser Wilhelm II: "Grandma Victoria would love it here, it's so flat, you know she has this place at Sandringham..." (that's enough Norfolk jokes, Ed.)
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Satisfied customers include: Edward III: "I wouldn't start a Hundred Years' War anywhere else."
The Dukes of Burgundy: "Picardy is rightfully part of Burgundy. And so is Mallorca"
General Fernando Alvarez de Toledo: "¿Qué?"
Field-Marshall Prince Mikhail Illarionovich Golenishchev-Kutusov: "Pikardi? Da!"
and, most recently, Kaiser Wilhelm II: "Grandma Victoria would love it here, it's so flat, you know she has this place at Sandringham..." (that's enough Norfolk jokes, Ed.)
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Saturday 29 October 2011
Wednesday 26 October 2011
Holiday promotions in neolithic France
Little is known about the timeshare agents of this period, though it’s reasonable to assume that there would have been good and bad ones, as there are today. A good agent would have had no trouble finding buyers for The Great Hall of the Bulls or The Painted Gallery, though The Shaft of the Dead Man might possibly have required a harder sell. Here’s where the bad guys come in. Prospective clients would be lured to a cave-share promotion with free stone axes, and would then innocently hand over their hard-earned sabre-tooth-tiger, er, sabre-teeth, in return for a draughty, damp cave in an unfashionable part of the complex. With a dead man in it.
Some prehistoric human remains found in the caves show signs of violence and even cannibalism. This strongly suggests a Holiday Club hotel promotion which went badly wrong. Today’s hapless victims of promotional scams often find that they’ve parted with thousands of pounds for non-existent timeshares. At the promotion, they are subject to aggressive sales techniques, and then find that they are, for whatever reason, unable to obtain legal redress. Cro-Magnon man was more direct in his response. If he discovered he’d been ripped off, he simply ate the promoter.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Some prehistoric human remains found in the caves show signs of violence and even cannibalism. This strongly suggests a Holiday Club hotel promotion which went badly wrong. Today’s hapless victims of promotional scams often find that they’ve parted with thousands of pounds for non-existent timeshares. At the promotion, they are subject to aggressive sales techniques, and then find that they are, for whatever reason, unable to obtain legal redress. Cro-Magnon man was more direct in his response. If he discovered he’d been ripped off, he simply ate the promoter.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 24 October 2011
Lascaux cave-share
The Lascaux caves can be found in the Dordogne department of France, and contain beautiful and elaborate wall-paintings from the Upper Paleolithic era (about 16,000 years ago.) The Lascaux cave-system contains several chambers, including The Great Hall of the Bulls, the Lateral Passage, the Shaft of the Dead Man, the Chamber of Engravings, the Painted Gallery, and the Chamber of Felines.
This immediately suggests a condominium arrangement, whereby individual owner-occupiers were at liberty to paint bulls or cats on their walls, whilst general responsibility for access, draughts, cold running water and bats would have fallen to a housing association. It is only a short step from here to realise that these luxury apartments, set in a breathtaking location in a highly-sought-after part of France, would quickly have attracted the interest of the Paleolithic leisure industry.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Friday 21 October 2011
Wednesday 19 October 2011
Innuendo in the Pas-de-Calais
The entire Nord Pas-de-Calais region is now mercifully free from innuendo. Composer Alexandre Guilmant (1837-1911) was born in Boulogne-sur-Mer and died of exhaustion after years of playing on his organ. Also born in Boulogne were the actor Benoît-Constant Coquelin (1841-1909) who was famous for his outstanding Hamlet, and engineer Frédéric Sauvage (1786-1857) inventor of the first propellor, which had an enormous shaft. The city of Douai, meanwhile was the birthplace both of sculptor Jean Boulogne (1529-1608) who was very skilled with his tool, and also of politician Charles Alexandre de Calonne (1734-1802) who once stood as an independent but lost his deposit.
Honi soit qui mal y pense.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 17 October 2011
Honi soit qui mal y pense
The French don't have a word for double-entendre. Well, they do, sort of, but it's not double-entendre. Several years after the business with the Burghers of Calais, Edward threw a ball in Calais. The extremely attractive Joan of Kent was there, and during a particularly energetic Pavane, her garter slipped down to her ankle. After a few moments of shocked silence, several guests began to giggle in a distinctly smutty way. Gallant Edward stepped forward, slipped the garter back up Joan's leg and said "Honi soit qui mal y pense" (roughly, "You lot have got dirty minds"). After the ball, Joan asked Edward for a double-entendre, so he gave her one.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Friday 14 October 2011
Wednesday 12 October 2011
Booze cruise
Every year, hundreds of thousands of devout English make a spiritual pilgrimage to Calais. They usually return on the same day, with much fuller cars. The first, and greatest booze cruise, which lasted 116 years, was made in 1346 by Edward III (see our Lorraine blog). It took Edward eleven months to get into Calais (it's much quicker now) and when he finally did get in, he was in a really bad mood. Edward's first inclination was to massacre all the inhabitants, but after some deep-breathing exercises he'd learnt on his anger-management course, he decided to kill just six prominent citizens. The six Burghers of Calais bravely stepped forward, nooses round their necks (you can see Rodin's sculpture of them in the main square.) Fortunately for the Burghers, Good Queen Philippa persuaded hubby Ed to be lenient, and suggested they both just do a bit of shopping and find somewhere nice to eat instead.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 10 October 2011
Brush up your Picard
Nord Pas-de-Calais is considered by many to be the second-least-poetically-named French region (see our Centre blog). The locals want to call it "Hauts-de-l'Artois", which is a bit like saying The Heights of Norfolk.
If you go there, and if you haven't already alienated the entire population with cheap jokes about Norfolk, you could impress them instead with your stylish and idiomatic command of the Picard dialect. "Un n'incrach' pon chés pourcjiaux à l'iau claire " means "Round here, we don't fatten pigs with tap water." This will lend you an air of mystery. Or get you locked up. If things look like heading in the getting-locked-up direction, you can usually save the situation with "Armettez nous ches verr' comm' y' z'étott !" (Landlord, another round!)
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Saturday 8 October 2011
Wednesday 5 October 2011
Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa
Artist Henri Marie Raymond de Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa wasn't equal either. He was born in Albi, into an aristocratic family which claimed lineage from Chorso, Beggo and Odo (see Monday 26th September blog.) After 1000 years of strict in-breeding, the Toulouse-Lautrec Monfa gene pool was in pretty bad shape. Poor Henri had weak bones and, when he broke his legs as a teenager, they never grew again. Undeterred, Henri threw himself into the bohemian life of Montmartre (see our Ile de France blog) where, in a brief 20-year career, he created 737 canvases, 275 watercolours, 363 posters and 5,084 drawings.
Henri is credited also with the invention of Tremblement de Terre (Earthquake) a light, refreshing apéritif of half Cognac and half Absinthe (see our Provence blog). Henri's last words (possibly referring to his doctor) were "Le vieux con!" Way to go, Henri.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 3 October 2011
Montauban's revolutionaries!
A certain amount of defacing went on in the 1968 Paris student riots. Daniel Cohn-Bendit (born in Montauban) became the students' leader and spokesperson by advocating anarchy and sexual freedom. Visit any Hall of Residence today and you'll agree, he probably achieved those things. Cohn-Bendit's first revolutionary act was to interrupt a government minister (who was opening a swimming-pool) to demand free access to the girls' dormitory. He is now a respected MEP. David Cameron take note.
Less fortunate, politically, was playwright and journalist Olympe de Gouges (also of Montauban,) who advocated equal rights for women, but made the mistake of doing so during the French Revolution. The climate of Liberté, égalité, fraternité might have seemed favourable for her feminist ideas, but instead, she was sent to the guillotine. Some revolutionaries are more equal than others.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Friday 30 September 2011
Wednesday 28 September 2011
Amnesia, Maths and book-defacing
Mathematician Pierre de Fermat (1601-1665) was also born in Toulouse, but unlike Count Odo of Toulouse (886-918) Fermat wasn't absent-minded, he just ran out of space. He scribbled in the margin of a book "I've found the answer to this seriously-difficult maths problem ("Fermat's Last Theorem"), but there isn't room in this margin to tell you what it is." Of course, if he hadn't written all that stuff in the margin, there might have been room to tell us what the answer was. And in any case, scribbling in printed books is hardly a thing to be encouraged. Let's hope Toulouse Library fined him for defacing public property.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 26 September 2011
Chorso, Beggo, Odo and Harpo
Unlike, for example, Franche-Comté, Midi-Pyrénées doesn't relate to a historical French region. It was created in the 1970s so that Toulouse could be capital of it. Job-creation on a grand scale. It worked, and Toulouse, formerly a bit out-of-the-way (think Taunton) is now Europe's fastest-growing city. In 1999 Toulouse paid off its debts and became France's first large city ever to achieve solvency. Toulouse is now exempt from overdraft charges and probably gets free ski insurance and AA membership.
In the Middle Ages, Toulouse was ruled by the Counts of Toulouse, including Chorso (c.790) Beggo (806-816) and Odo (886-918). No mention is made of Harpo. Little is known about these early rulers, except that Odo married Garsenda, daughter of Ermengol of Albi, and "probably had three children" - which suggests a degree of absent-mindedness inappropriate in a man of high office.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Saturday 24 September 2011
Friday 23 September 2011
Thursday 22 September 2011
Saints and helicopters in Lower Normandy
In more recent times, Lower Normandy has produced a saint and a helicopter pioneer. St. Thérèse of Lisieux was born in Alençon, and is the patron saint of florists, tuberculosis, Cheyenne (Wyoming) and aviators. The connection is obvious.
Talking of aviators, Paul Cornu, also of Lisieux, achieved the first manned helicopter flight in 1907. As the pilot, crew and only passenger of his pioneering craft, Paul had to do all the flight announcements himself: "In the event of an emergency landing, the exits are located here, here, here, here and here. Everywhere, in fact. We will be flying at an altitude of 30cm and arriving at our destination of that gorse bush just over there in approximately 20 seconds."
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Tuesday 20 September 2011
Sex and violence in 11th century Normandy
Mystery surrounds one tableau of the Bayeux Embroidery, in which a priest is seen slapping a lady called Ælfgifu, while two naked men crouch nearby, one of thm shamelessly displaying his meat-and-two-veg. One theory is that the scene may depict a well-known celebrity sex scandal of the day. If this is so, it suggests that prurient, invasive journalism was already rife in the eleventh century, though unlike today's paparazzi, the Bayeux needleworkers would have had to embroider really quickly to be sure of getting a scoop.
A Victorian reproduction of the Bayeux Embroidery hangs in Reading Museum, and is accurate in every detail, except that they gave meat-and-two-veg man some pants. The Victorians weren't great turnip-eaters. Even more mystery surrounds the Embroidery's missing panels. Apparently, two sequels were planned, provisionally entitled The Bayeux Supremacy and The Bayeux Ultimatum.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Saturday 17 September 2011
Tuesday 13 September 2011
Willy, Tilly and the Bayeux embroidery
Willy and Tilly co-star in the Bayeux Embroidery (yeah, you needle-workers, I've done my research.) In the world's first embroidered comic-strip, Norman-Man does battle with evil mastermind Harold Godwinson. You can tell the good guys from the bad guys because the Saxons all have droopy moustaches, while the Normans shaved the back of their heads. Mmm sexy.
How Harold actually met his end is the subject of some debate. The Latin text "Ladies and gentlemen, we got him!" appears over three mortally-wounded Saxons: one (as you know) with an arrow in his eye, one with a spear through his chest, and one with his legs chopped off. One modern theory is that they're all Harold, which suggests that the Norman army was nothing if not thorough.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Friday 9 September 2011
Wednesday 7 September 2011
Willy's left leg
Willy (the Conqueror) and Tilly (Queen Matilda) were cousins, and the Pope was not at all happy about their normal-for-Norfolk union. Will soon smoothed matters over by building the Pope the Abbey of Saint Étienne at Caen. Everyone has a price, even the Pope.
Will was buried at Saint Étienne, but his bones were scattered twice, once during the Wars of Religion and again, just for good measure, during the Revolution (see our Ile-de-France blog). Despite all this upheaval, the Abbey custodians are pretty sure they still have his left leg.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 5 September 2011
William the Bastard
Lower Normandy is France's leading producer of turnips, and breeds more horses than any other region. They must like the turnips. The region also leads in the production of butter, apples, leeks and flax, but has yet to combine these into a successful regional dish.
William the Conqueror, Duke of Normandy and was also known as William the Bastard. William's dad was Robert the Magnificent, so Will's nickname must have come as a disappointment to him. Will's missus, Matilda, was only 4'2" tall and in 1066 she became England's smallest Queen. Matilda was famous for her long pig-tails. (Though, Matilda being vertically-challenged, they may in fact have been normal-length pig-tails). Legend has it, that Will courted Tilly by dragging her off her horse by her pig-tails. It must have been the turnips.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Thursday 21 July 2011
Aaahh...
... a heartwarming illustration of porcine parenting from our favourite cartoonist Perry Taylor
La Résidence - THE French Property People
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Wednesday 20 July 2011
The Illuninati in East Oxford
By 1307, the Templars had invented modern banking, and effectively controlled the financial infrastructure of Europe. Many people, including Philip IV of France owed them an awful lot of money. Philip's solution to his personal credit crunch was to order the destruction of the entire order, and thousands of Templars perished (as you'll know if you've seen the film The Da Vinci Code) in a series of horrifying flashbacks. The overnight disappearance of Europe's entire fiscal infrastructure (and the ensuing chaos) have been put forward as an explanation for the extraordinary mystique which has since grown up around the Knights Templar.
Conspiracy theorists maintain that the architecture of present-day Cowley is rich in Templar-and-Masonic symbolism (let's not quibble.) The outlines of many of Cowley's rooftops closely resemble the Masons' pyramid-with-its-top-cut-off, and apparently, the entrances to Templar's Square shopping centre were covered, until a few years ago, by parapets that incorporated not only the truncated pyramid but also the all-seeing eye. You can find this symbol on the reverse of a one-dollar bill, where the unfinished pyramid symbolises the fact that the USA is a nation still in the process of being built. (Maybe when they've finally finished building it, they'll have time to turn their minds to human rights and the Geneva Convention? That would be nice.)
Meanwhile, back in Cowley, it seems that all this Masonic/Templar symbolism has been left by the Illuminati, the ultra-secret society intent on establishing a New World Order. Now, you may well ask, "If the Illuminati are so secretive, why would they leave big eye-catching symbols all over Cowley?" You might also ask, "If the Illuminati are intent on imposing a New World Order, haven't they got more pressing matters to address than decorating shopping centres in East Oxford?" And you may have a point. What is beyond doubt is that Templar's Square is Oxford's largest shopping centre and is probably the best place for all your shopping needs.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 18 July 2011
Ye Trucke Festyval
The Domesday Book records the population of Cowley in 1086 as only 47. This surprisingly low figure may simply have been a careless monk's mis-scribe. Alternatively, it has been pointed out that the Domesday survey was carried out in July, when many Cowley inhabitants would have been away on holiday or possibly attending the Trucke Festyval in nearby Steventon.
Next up were the Knights Templar, who gave their name to Temple Cowley and Templar's Square shopping centre. The Knights Templar, you'll recall, were a twelfth century travel-courier-and-private-security outfit. Think Group Four meets Thomas Cook, or Securicor meets Saga. The First Crusade in 1096 had opened up the Holy Land to tourism, but many of the early sightseers failed to read the small print: "Pilgryms maye in facte be massacred by heathen before they reach their holidaye destination." The Knights Templar quickly spotted a market opportunity, and set up shop in Jerusalem in 1129, offering "Bespoke Pilgramage Solutions for the Discerning Penitent." By the end of the twelfth century, they had grown the Templar © brand to an impressive degree and had branches all over Europe, including at Temple Cowley.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Friday 15 July 2011
Wednesday 13 July 2011
Cuffa's Meadow
Mesolithic public transport in Cowley was frankly inadequate. The initial novelty of canoeing soon wore off when it became apparent that you could only go where the Thames went. Day trips to Abingdon remained popular, but Wheatley was out of the question. The inhabitants of Cowley would have to wait patiently for the Neolithic era in another 4,000 years for the wheel to be invented. Today, by contrast, you rarely have to wait more than five minutes for a bus.
Cowley kept very quiet during the Roman occupation. True, the Romans built the imaginatively-named "Roman Way" from Dorchester to Bicester, but the inhabitants of Cowley largely stayed indoors. This may be because of the noise of construction traffic or because they were worried about the adverse effect the increased traffic would have on the value of their property.
It was the Anglo-Saxons who gave Cowley its name, which can mean either 'Cow-Meadow' or 'Cuffa's Meadow'. Cuffa also crops up in "Cuffa's Wood" so it's reasonable to assume that Cuffa was a local and therefore Cowley's first named inhabitant. (Not that the others didn't have names, you understand, that would have been highly impractical.) The word cuffa comes from the Old French coife, meaning 'hat', so it's reasonable also to assume that our Cuffa either had a conspicuous hat or possibly even owned a hat-making concern in Cowley. Either way, it paints a vivid picture of a sophisticated, colourful and fashion-conscious society living in Cowley twelve hundred years ago.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 11 July 2011
Mesolithic Cowley
This week, we take a break from our romp through French history, to investigate the distant past of La Résidence's home town of Oxford....
It was cold in Cowley 10,000 years ago. Very cold. The sunny, carefree Paleolithic era, when they'd discovered fire and sat around together making stone tools, seemed like a distant memory. Now Cowley (and coincidentally, most of the Northern hemisphere) was covered by several metres of ice. Luckily for Cowley Man (and Woman) better times lay ahead and before they knew it, the Mesolithic Era had started.
The first thing they noticed was that they had flint tools and canoes. Living near the Thames, the canoes were a real bonus. And they took to flint-knapping like a hunter-gatherer to water. Later on, they discovered to their delight that they also had the bow and arrow and could finally throw away their old-fashioned atlatls (SO last ice-age.) (The atlatl is a hand-held spear-throwing device, and examples can still be seen in use in Cowley today, usually for throwing tennis balls for dogs.) To his (and her) discredit, however, Homo Cowleiensis was not nearly as tidy as his (or her) modern counterpart. Unwanted and broken flint tools were simply left lying around outside Tescos, where they remained until archaeologists tidied up the mess in the 1920s.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Friday 8 July 2011
Viens ici!
another cautionary cartoon from our favourite ex-pat Perry Taylor
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Wednesday 6 July 2011
Esperanto speakers don't eat quiche
Paul Verlaine didn't eat quiche. He was a symbolist poet and drank Absinthe (see our Provence blog.) Paul was born in Metz in 1844, led a somewhat colourful life and wrote lots of hippy-trippy poems. The first line of 'Autumn Song' - 'The long sobs of Autumn's violins...' was broadcast to the Resistance in the build-up to D-Day. The second line '...wound my heart with monotonous langour' was the signal that invasion was imminent.
Also born in Metz was Raymond Schwartz, a full-time banker and part-time poet and novelist in the invented language of Esperanto. 'Esperanto' (in Esperanto) means 'one who hopes', and the hope was that the nations of the world could banish misunderstandings and strife if they all spoke the same language. Esperanto is still used today. William Shatner spoke it in the 1965 horror B-movie 'Incubus'. In 1967, Italian engineer Giorgio Rosa built a 400m² oil-rig-style platform in the Adriatic Sea and declared it an autonomous republic. Rosa was to be President and the language, Esperanto. The Italian government responded by hiring a small boat and sending two policemen and a tax inspector.
Ayatollah Khomeini urged Muslims to learn Esperanto to promote understanding between the faiths. He then discovered that the followers of the Bahá'í Faith had had the same idea, and banned it. Useful phrases in Esperanto include "o falis el la sranko" (something fell out of the cupboard) and " Homoj tiaj kiel mi ne konadas timon" (Men such as me know no fear.) Esperanto speakers don't eat quiche.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
Monday 4 July 2011
The Quiche of Lorraine
The Cross of Lorraine has belonged to the region's heraldic arms for centuries. Local girl Joan of Arc adopted the cross as her emblem in the struggle against "ze feelthy Eenglish", who'd come to France in 1337 for an away match and refused to go home. Joan was born in the village of Domrémy in Lorraine. In 1429 Charles VII granted the village tax exemption in gratitude for Joan's victories. Domrémy's tax-haven status persisted until the Revolution, whereupon the Inland Revenue sent two bowler-hatted inspectors to demand 364 years' worth of tax arrears.
The Quiche of Lorraine is a different matter altogether. The word quiche is related to the German 'Kuchen', meaning cake, and the true Quiche Lorraine contains no cheese. If you find cheese in yours, then it's strictly a Quiche Vosgienne, and if you find onions, it's a Quiche Alsacienne. If you find Spam, send it back. Quiche got a bad name in Bruce Feirstein's 1982 book 'Real Men Don't Eat Quiche' (they eat Freedom Flans.) Real men might, conceivably, if they were really hungry, and if they had an impaired sense of smell, eat Lorraine's other delicacy, Andouille. Andouille is a sausage in which every part of the pig is used, except the grunt. The grunt, meanwhile, as well as the pig's entire gastrointestinal system, is used in the even-more-hardcore Andouillette. Come and have a go, Mr Feirstein, if you think you're hard.
La Résidence - THE French Property People
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