TouteFrance

May - the time that most of France seems to shut down for the various holidays that they have. The French have three public holidays in May - 1st May which is the ‘Fête du Travail’ (labour day), 8th May which is ‘Victoire 1945′ - the day World War 2 ended and finally 12 May ‘Lundi de Pentecôte’ - Pentecost. The day of the week the holiday falls on is a holiday, whether it falls on a weekend or not, so if 1st May or 8 May are a weekend, then they don’t get the day off during the week.

However, many French take the opportunity to ‘faire le pont’, which means they bridge to the weekend if the holiday falls on a Tuesday or a Thursday. Two of this years’ holidays are on Thursdays, so no doubt most French won’t work on 1st or 2nd May. To add to their holidays even more, the 8th May holiday will no doubt turn into 5 days as they’ll take off 8 & 9 May, plus 12 May. Oh, to be in France in May!!

So, not only do the French do very well with public holidays, they are also the world leaders in the number of days holiday they have per year, according to the Daily Telegraph - 37 on average in total!

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!

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.

It must be that time of year when we’re all getting fed up with the British weather and thoughts going to sunnier climes and a bit of long awaited ’soleil’. Yesterday’s Jeremy Vine show on Radio 2 had a phone in about moving to France, which is definitely worth listening to if it’s something you’re thinking about. (the re-run of the show will probably only be on the BBC site for about a week). You can also read comments from some ex-pats who have made the move.

The Guardian also had an article about moving to France last weekend, again worth reading if you want to know more about moving there, the cost of living and most importantly, finding employment which isn’t easy:

Why France still has that ‘Je ne sais quoi’

This is our first post and we’d like to welcome you to this brand new blog site! The idea behind ‘TouteFrance’ is anything and pretty much everything to do with France, so you’ll find posts on ‘toutes’ sorts of subjects.

So why have I set up a website about France? Well, I used to visit France a lot as ‘une petite fille’ as my uncle lived there as well as on family camping holidays (sadly my uncle died when I was 17). However, I kept my interest and studied French at university and had a couple of jobs out there afterwards. I still keep it up with weekly conversation classes and speaking to my French friends when I can, and decided it was about time I set up a website about it.

Enjoy it, read it & comment on it!

A TouteFrance!