Jacques Brel. If ever there were a reason to learn French (other than to be able to talk to lovely French people which is good enough reason in itself) then giving yourself the ability to enjoy the songs of Jacques Brel is that reason. He’s not just a bit good, he’s really very good, or was at least prior to his death. I went to Toulon to buy (achète – that’s French for buy) my host a present (un cadeau – see now you know another French word. Easy isn’t it?) of a DVD box set containing about 7 hours of Brel’s TV performances and have spent a couple of very good (très bon – that’s two more) evenings drinking some bottles of red wine (des bouteilles de vin rouge – that’s some very good ones) and watching the genius at work. Britain, or in fact the English language, really doesn’t have anything to compare with the kind of troubadour type songs that he did covering life, death, drinking and love with excellent lyrics and that’s a shame because we’re really missing out on something extraordinary. Don’t just listen to me (moi) listen to some for (pour) yourself.
Now let’s practice what we’ve learnt so far…
Achète moi des très bon bouteilles de vin rouge pour un cadeau.
See how you’ve progressed?
That’s either the biggest fox I ever saw or a weird looking dog. He was very friendly though…
So yeah… errrm… oh yes, didn’t sleep much last night so I got up early and watched the sun come up across the Mediterranean (not a bad thing to do and worth losing sleep for) and am now sitting with the sun streaming in through the window, a smell of burnt toast on the air (oops) with the roar of French Navy jets flying low over the house doing some sort of practicing I guess. Did I mention that there’s a bloody great big naval base that takes up half of the island of St Mandrier? Well there is and a fair few of the people stationed here long term actually have properties in the village. Now when you think of your average British military type, certainly the lower ranked ones, I don’t know about you but I tend to think “Oh dear, here comes a big fight in some poor little home counties town which just happens to have the misfortune to have a base nearby. I’ll be off in the opposite direction if you don’t mind.” On the contrary (or Au Contraire as we all learnt from Blackadder) French Navy blokes tend, in my experience, to be very mellow people, certainly up for a chat and generally with pretty liberal views about the world in general. This still surprises me. How many British Navy people do you know who are paid up members of Greenpeace for instance? I’ve met two French ones which is a little ironic since the French Navy blew up the Greenpeace flagship in New Zealand a few years back.
Anyway I digress. The combination of no sleep and military jets flying about noisily took me back to my never-to-be-repeated couchette experience a few days back and the fact that one of the people who shared my taste of Hell turned out to be a naval submariner (The toughest of the tough. Calm yourselves ladies.) . He couldn’t sleep either, so, at about 4 am we both gave up on the couchette and went and had a natter and a fag in the trains corridor, nice fella, offered me a lift to St Mandrier too which beat the hell out of the idea of hefting my rucksack (for now I am a proper traveller type) through Toulon to get the early boat over to the island (It would have been a very nice thing to do without the luggage.) The point being, I’m pretty sure that submarines are not well known for their comfortable living conditions, in fact the word “basic” springs to mind, closely flowed by the words “cramped” and, after a few minutes of cold sweats, the words “get”, “me”, “out”, “of” and “here.”, so if a submariner can’t sleep on a couchette, that kind of gives you an idea of how bleedin’ uncomfortable they are and why I’ll never use one again. That was my point but I got a bit lost on the way.
Talking of lost on the way, I’ve noticed my posts are getting a little longer and more rambling. Is that a good thing or do you prefer short, snappy and just bare info? This is all for you, you know… Vote, why don’cha? (Oh yeah, and the beard is coming along nicely…)