5th July -
Quite a lot of things are on points or tickets. Bread, fats, cheeze, meat, sugar, knitting wool, underclothes.
Last night we went and drank coffee with a friend - they all want to know if I am engaged yet!
This morning we drove to Creil to change my cheques, but alas the banks were closed. However, we wandered through the market - bigger than Pont's - where I could have spent hours. (I cannot feel that it is natural to be on the right side of the road, tho' many other customs seem natural already.) The roads here are very dusty, and tortuous thro' the villages. We passed a horse-drawn funeral - just the one coach and the folks on foot. M. Durand immediately doffed his beret. The policemen on point-duty are like drum-majors with their white truncheons [directing the traffic]. This right side of the road business is really a fallacy. Everyone from dogs to lorries - except of course oneself - goes in the middle of the road, and one must have one's finger on the horn almost without relief on these roads between small towns.
This evening we are going to the local cinema. We had to book seats this morning.
Not being able to speak the language naturally is like being blind or on crutches. You can never act on impulse, and the minute you relax your attention you are completely lost. Thus, a lot goes unsaid and one does not attempt half so many arrangements or adjustments as one might, because of the difficulty of doing so easily. Tact is an art at the best of times, and in an alien language ... ! Not that I require more than average tact here. It already seems natural to hear French spoken all round me - it is only when I have to make the effort to speak that it seems hard.
These folk have nowhere really comfortable to sit down. The kitchen is lived, eaten and cooked in, and only has hard chairs. The dining-room is used as a sort of study, and the two bedrooms are full of beds. I get an impression of not being able to relax - to retire somewhere and stay put for a bit. Even the poorest Bethnal Green families (and the people of Pont that I have met are not really poor) seemed to have a comfortable chair or two.
I am absolutely covered with bites. Partly thro' bathing, and partly, I suspect, thro' sleeping with my shutters open.
Lucette makes a cake by mixing the sugar, salt, melted fat and egg, and then adding the flour etc. It remains to be seen how it will taste - just the same I expect.
I have great difficulty restraining myself from buying everything which seems different from English. However, so far I have only bought writing paper and a purse to cope with coins and notes. The greater part of the currency is in notes - approx. as low as 3d. I find it very difficult to adjust not only to money, but measurements as well.
6th July -
I went to sleep yesterday afternoon, and DREAMED IN FRENCH for the first time! Not as tho' I was speaking naturally however, but with great difficulty.
We went to the pictures. Not a very good film, and I didn't really understand it. The cinema is a little hall transformed somewhat crudely into a cinema. There is a very small balcony of sorts, formed of open boxes with loose chairs. The films are only shown Saturday evening and Sunday afternoon and evening, and don't begin till 8.30 - ending at 11.00. After the news and the supporting film there is an interval of about 20 minutes, and if you want to go out you are handed a 'SORTIE' ticket, to enable you to come in again.
Today we had lunch with friends - and what a meal. By the time we had finished eating, drinking and smoking, we had sat there 2-1/2 hours. To begin with a piece of ham and some russian salad. Then a bit of luncheon sausage, then a bit of tomato in dressing, then a bit of some other sort of meat, then a bit of carrot in dressing. Then some lamb with cauliflour. Then lettuce in dressing. Then bread and cheeze. Then meringue and biscuits, then cake, then fruit. As for drink, we began with an aperitif before lunch, drank wine for the first part, then I was given beer (they think all the English drink beer), then some so-called Burgundy, then some Bordeaux (wine?), then coffee after the meal and then "un tout petit peu d'eau de vie de Mirabelle" [a very small plum brandy] and then a small portion of Chartreuse. And the amazing thing is I didn't appear to be drunk, tho' I must confess to being a little sleepy. I certainly wondered if I was wise to eat and drink so much, but felt I wanted to try the whole "kaboosh". [There was a similar occasion about which I seem not to have written to my parents at all - perhaps understandably. It must be rare for children not to censor letters to their parents to some extent, though there was not much I held back. You can read about it here however.]
They all seem to drink coffee and tea without milk. This family we lunched with are perhaps a little better-class (through lack of a better, I use that not well-liked term) - anyway the meal was presented more gentilely, and they still use one plate for most courses, and a knife only when necessary, (tho' knife rests like we have (or don't!) for carvers were provided, and use bread as a "pusher", so maybe such customs are national. I wouldn't care to make a generalization however.
It is quite true that thee French people talk far more than us with their hands and faces. And they don't hesitate to say if you seem agreeable to them, or are looking attractive.
Lucette and Janine (the girl we lunched with) both have copies of "Forever Amber" translated into French. However, they didn't think much of it. They all seem to have a great many translations of English classics and modern novels. I don't seem to notice the same in England of French books, tho' I may be wrong.
The time has come when I find myself making mistakes in my English (yes, dears, more than usual!) They tell me I speak with the least possible accent, which is cheering.
7th July -
Lucette was at school in Pont till she was 17, then (I suppose at a sort of college) at Compiègne till she was 20, then a year in a chemistry college at Paris. Jaqueline has just taken an exam to try to get into college at Paris to read English, but she hasn't the result yet. Janine is a secretary in a timber firm in Pont.
Well, it is time to end this awful scrawl, so that I can start another one!
A bientôt,
Judith
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