TouteFrance

Since the French President’s visit has been all over the newspapers this week, we won’t go into detail about his visit or about his wife’s outfits! However, according to The Telegraph, some French ex-pats haven’t been too keen on the idea of their President visiting the UK.

This follows on from my last post that more and more French people are choosing to relocate to the UK because work opportunities are so much better. For them, perhaps it’s not so much ‘vive la France’, but ‘vive l’Angleterre’!

I was reading an interesting article in yesterday’s Observer about the number of French people who are choosing to live in the UK. Most of them are  here because employment prospects are much better here in the UK, and setting up a business is such a bureaucratic nightmare in France.

I have several French friends over here and their main reason for staying is work. One friend has been looking to return to France but hasn’t found any jobs anywhere near as good as his job here, so it’s just not worth moving. Another friend has a high flying job over here and knows she would never have got such a well paid job back in France. Another friend of mine’s husband works in the States as a software engineer, no doubt earning far more there than he ever would back in France.

There are many positive things about France such as the quality of life, traditions, food, beautiful countryside that are so appealing to us Brits. I think many more of us would like to live in France if it weren’t for the fact that earning money could be so difficult (including me!). Just have to make do with holidays there for the time being!

It’s made me laugh since I was a child that the French have a sweet pastry called ‘Pets de Nonne’, literally translated means ‘nun’s farts’! They’re small deep fried dough shapes, rather like small doughnuts (without the jam).

Here’a recipe if you’re interested in making them, though definitely not for those of you on a diet!

I was reading an interesting article in The Times this morning about a website that has produced a list of people who were beheaded during the French Revolution. The site, Les Guillotinés de la Révolution Française, has been created by an amateur genealogist called Raymond Combes who estimates that up to 5 million French people have ancestors who fell victim to the blade of the infamous guillotine. From his research, there could be a lot more people who fell victim to the violence than the 17,500 which is the official figure.

It looks like the French are just as much into genealogy as us Brits, and for those of you who have French ancestors to research, Cyndi’s List has a lengthy list of websites to help in your quest to find out more.

Today sees the local council elections in France in thousands of communes across the country. Communities will be voting for their local ‘maire’, but what’s interesting is that with the number of British expats now living in France, one ‘commune’ in Normandy has already had a British ‘maire’ for 13 years and in another community in the Dordogne, in the village of Eymet, 5 Brits have been nominated to stand for council elections. It’s nice to see that British expats are now integrating themselves into local communities and wanting to influence life in their new home.

 This may all change though if Sarkozy has his way as he wants to abolish the many thousands of local communities from 36,000 to 6,000 ’super communes’. As you can imagine this isn’t going down very well with most communities. Sarkozy isn’t exactly a popular President and may well make things worse for himself! It’ll be interesting to see how life in France may change under the new President.

Friday (7 March) sees the beginning of a two week long French film festival in select cities in the UK. I would go along, but unfortunately there isn’t a venue near where I live. The venues include Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen, Dundee, Inverness, Birmingham, Manchester & London. If you’re in easy reach of any of these places then make sure you go along!
Visit the website to find out more.

For those of you who live near where I do, which is on the south coast between Chichester & Portsmouth, the Chichester Cinema at New Park often shows French films and will be showing the award winning ‘La Vie en Rose’ from 29 April - 1 May, so I must try and see it. Again, you can find out more on their website. Other upcoming French films include The Singer (Quand J’Etais Chanteur) with Gérard Depardieu.