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

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

Make the most of it...

 .... from our favourite cartoonist Perry Taylor

La Résidence - THE French Property People

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

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

La chasse aux champignons....

.... from our favourite cartoonist Perry Taylor

 La Résidence - THE French Property People

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

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 bandstand

.... from our favourite cartoonist Perry Taylor

 La Résidence - THE French Property People

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

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

La chanson française avec La Résidence - 8: Edith Piaf - Milord

La Résidence - THE French Property People

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