Linguistically Challenged Architect – A Totally French Project.

When this linguistically challenged architect advertised for a ‘benevolent bureau’ I don’t think there was any expectation of finding such a ‘winning’ office, let alone a totally ‘French’ project to work on.

I couldn’t have planned the total immersion experience into French architecture better.

Now that I have got to grips with the computers in this state of the art office, I find myself today, on my day off, wishing I was back at my desk to put some ideas together. I went to bed last night with my head buzzing, and solutions pinging at regular intervals from somewhere deep in my ‘cerveau’ (brain).

My benevolent bureau has me designing an extension to a Chaumière. And for those none the wiser, this is one..

A Chaumière is a typical thatch building. What makes this one typically Normand is the timber frame structure.

And what makes this project typically teasing is that I have never worked on a thatch building, let alone on an ancient timber frame. Although it looks like this isn’t going to be a project where I can demonstrate vast levels of experience and ‘know how’, I am actually delighted because I am working on something so typically French, rather than a ubiquitous factory or retail park.

To add to the experience, enough weeks have passed for my french counterparts to start ‘upping’ my challenge.

Yesterday, having already put me through my paces last week with a site survey, fellow project architect requested I phone the client for the phone number of the enterprise who had done the existing hatch. Phone numbers! Dimensions! Tape measures! Have I already told you about my mastery of French numbers – lets say I am pretty cool just to number 70, after that it all goes a little awry. I am sure that soixante dix (70) followed by soixante onze (71) is a tongue twister, quatre vingt seize to quatre-vingt-dix sept don’t come across as obvious bed-fellows. And who was the joker at Darty Telecom who gave me my phone number with 76 75 and 77 in it, but of course not in the right order so that I would learn them in a consecutive fashion. So you can imagine the basic confusion on site as fellow architect read out the dimensions and I carefully noted them on the plan. The client was wondering how a 40 year old didn’t know her numbers yet, and fellow architect resorted to repeating herself with individual digits. Oh and did I mention how the French use centimetres for designing and the British use millimetres. It’s not such a hard conversion to make, though a little bewildering, having drawn out the plans on Autocad in millimetres to come into work after a day off to find fellow architect has re-scaled it in one’s absence!

There was a definite quietening down of the hubub in the office once ‘fellow architect’ had requested I make THE phonecall. I was very aware that it was a test! A number test! Luckily for me then that I had the good fortune to get the answer phone. I confess to smirking a little!

Not content with my escape, an hour or so later my phone did ring and I was launched into a particularly confusing conversation with more twists and turns than the Seine itself regarding a missing ‘ordonance’ (prescription). I wasn’t sure what prescriptions had to do with Architecture. The office was amazingly quiet, a kind of bated hush had descended over the place as my counterparts listened with interest to how I made out…

…to their BLAGUE (practical joke)….

Thanks guys! Love working here!

‘En Route’ to Work

Going to work is worth it for the journey alone. I wonder how many can claim this much prettiness during their 20 minute drive to work. Sometimes I wish I could take my bike – but maybe 20km is a little too much considering the steep inclines up out of the seine valley, and the nasty sweat it would produce by the time I’d reach the office!

As I descend the steep winding forest road towards Orival I am daily ‘wow’ed by the stunning view of the Seine which hits me as I reach the bottom of the incline. After that it is a matter of turning right and hugging the Seine all the way to the office.

Sometimes there are Peniches (barges) and sometimes not, but there is always the drama of the steep chalk ‘falaises’ (cliffs) which leave a stretch of waterside only wide enough for a road and an occasional row of houses.

The cliffs are so typical to the Seine as it winds and cuts its way through the Normandie countryside. The Seine twists and turns on itself so rising to the region being known as the ‘Boucles de Seine’.

The chalk cliffs are really dramatic towering above our heads at the side of the road.

 

And I have a feast of Normandy timbered houses scattered along the route…

whilst the road passes between the church and the river.

But if the car breaks down…

…I can always get there on foot. It may be a little slow- but worth it.

Good thing the job is great too.. otherwise you’d never get me through the door!

Thanks to Google and Le blog de Remy for their pictures

Au Secours – Voleur!

In the spirit of Princess Di claiming that there were “3 in her marriage”, my husband has from time to time had occasion to claim that a third party was likewise also “enjoying” our bank account. The euro, it appears is startlingly easy to spend, and I have always rather ridiculed my husband’s claims, knowing full well that he lives with me, and I do have a particular penchant for flowers, nice wine and the not so  occasional box of chocolates.

Today I wandered down to my bank in our quartier and in the process of getting a ‘historique’ – a neat little mini-statement, noticed a rather bizarre cheque withdrawl. Puzzling over it for a few minutes, it was sufficiently strange for me to succumb to my husband’s theory that something was ‘not quite right’.

My local bank is fabulous. It’s esprit is something out 1980′s England where every bank manager knew his customers by name. No sooner my foot was over the threshold than the lone bank clerk welcomed me by name and tapped in to his computer my details without so much as a jog to his memory. I never cease to be amazed by their ability to do so – though my peculiar accent may have something to do with it.

Today I held up the offending ‘historique’ and explained that absolutely certainly I had not written this particular cheque, that in fact I had scoured my memory for at least the last six months and could not place it. I went as far as to explain that cheques weren’t much used any longer in the UK. The system for cheques in France is entirely different from that of England. To begin with, a cheque is considered to be cash. A cheque written one day will be cleared instantly the very next. A large proportion of the french public still use cheques to pay for everyday products. Frequently I find myself simmering in the supermarket check-out queue whilst a customer settles down to pay for their groceries by cheque – a lengthy process requiring production of a ‘Carte d’Identité’ and the recording of it’s reference number. Similarly, sticking with the ‘living in the 80′s theory’, extra curricular clubs and activities insist on a year’s fees and subscriptions being paid ‘up-front’ by cheque. Since the clubs have no facility for paying by direct debit, such cheques can amount to hundred’s of euros, relieved from the bank account the very next day. One of the French systems that in my opinion could really do with an overhall.

We have just had an extended bank holiday and as such the neighbourhood was pretty quiet with the majority of the city holidaying away in the country. The prospect of a crime was pretty exciting and it was not long before the manager and another clerk has exited their offices to take part in the investigation. Five minutes later we had noted that eight such cheques, all to the same value had been withdrawn at regular intervals, all in the the same part of town, and one not often frequented by me. It pointed to only one thing – vol et usage fraudulente d’un chequier. (theft and fraudulent usage of a cheque book). The cheque book was definitively no longer in my possession. Several signed declarations later, I left the bank under instruction of the manager to ‘porte un plaînte’ (make a statement) to the gendarmerie.

 

On arrival at the Gendarmerie, I handed in my identity card and reported my loss, handing over the bank’s documentation and we settled down to clarify matters and record it. A few minutes into the activity, a young police woman came into the bureau to take the officer’s lunch order, and we diverted activity to decide whether the officer’s sandwich would be ‘avec legumes ou crudités’ – much discussion pursued before coming to a decision between a ‘religieuse’ or an ‘eclair’. The general consensus was that ‘Chocolat’ was imperatif, and would they go to the maître boulangere, and not to Henri Bloggs au coin. I attempted to add my own order to the list, sounding much more impressive than anything back in my larder, but to no avail.

The ‘plaînte’ made, I signed yet more copious copies of paperwork, primarily for activating the insurance on my bank account and made my way back to the bank to hand it in.

I was no further than 100 yards from my bank when a cog in my brain made a slight shift – a slow dawning of conciousness, and I began to weigh up the possibility that it wasn’t so much a ‘perte de chequier’  but a ‘perte de memoire’. Some 9 months ago I had written a series of forward-dated cheques in order to spread the cost of a subscription to a club which we no longer attend. I passed by the bank very slowly weighing up the possibilities, making eye contact with the clerk who was pausing momentarily with his finger on the roller-shutter button to see if I was going to re-enter, before setting the shutter in motion.

And just as the shutter came to rest of the floor, and  the metal grill slid across the door to the gendarmerie for the  officer to tuck into his ‘poulet roti avec crudités’  and his ‘religieuse’, I concluded that I had just launched an attack for fraud by the Police Nationale on….

….my children’s ice skating club!

If only my memory had been as good as the bank clerk’s!

Eureka Eureka, Je l’ai Trouvé!

The last time I used AutoCad was 11 years ago!

There’s alot of change in 11 years!

What irony that my on first day back into the working world I was handed a paperprint and asked to transfer the housing plan onto the computer.  The imagery was just a little too symbolic of archaic meets future for my liking. A kind of personal modernisation programme!

The last time I was in an architects office, the work-surfaces were covered with paper plans, sprawled in every direction, the scale-rule more often than not lost underneath hundreds of layers, the drafting pens blobbing or blocked as they started to run out of ink, and razor blades lurking on the ‘parallel motion’ in readiness to correct errors. Yesterday, there was not a paper print to be seen, (well except for my one), the worktables gleamed impeccably white, not a speck of ‘out of placeness’ , the computers state of the art and each job file uniformly blue neatly placed on tidy white shelves. Worse of all – everybody knew what they were doing!

My internal laughter was a little hysterical.

Now I am not a dunce when it comes to computers, and in my day I trained the young technicians to use AutoCad, but 11 years brings with it change. A considerable amount it would seem! So when I sat down and realised that the mouse was some state of the art invention, with more knobs, dials and buttons than a pilot’s cabin, and that I couldn’t even find the return – I knew I’d had it. (Ok so it wasn’t quite as bad as the one above, but you get the idea!) When my friendly fellow architect came over to show me how to access the drawing menu, it wasn’t the screen I was watching, but her hand – but at least now I have found the return button. I’ll ask her about the drawing files on Monday!

300,50

As I said, I wasn’t bad at AutoCad, but one thing you need to know about the french keyboard is that to obtain a number one has to use the ‘caps lock’, and to use the comma, one has to turn it off again. Surely, surely the French architects don’t spend their time ‘offing’ and ‘onning’ the caps lock to type in one simple line command? Anyway, drawing that first line was the clincher – and the computer wasn’t having any of my commands.. it just kind of sat there motionless and then left me with a stream of HTML just as an embarrassing record of my failure to communicate with the modern age. I thought about turning the screen away to avoid observation. Enough is enough I thought to myself, and frankly in a bit of a internal temper hit return having only added the X coordinate..no comma..no caps lock…. and can you believe it, I had my first line!

Incredible!

- I found the little ruler icon, and checked the line attributes for accuracy. It seemed to be a breakthrough!

By this point I considered myself almost flying. All that’s left for me now is to remember the icon’s (did I mention that they are annotated in French), the shortcuts, the layers and …   …and then of course we have the 3D which didn’t even exist in the old days!

what’s the french for ‘offset’ again?

Watch out Monday computer!

Even under a black cloud the Loire is a prettier North/South divide than Watford Gap.

A few years ago, having arrived larger than life (as usual) at a cluster of gites in the Cahors region of France we met and befriended a couple of other temporary resident families after discovering an unbelievable string of coincidences. Of the six adults we had either been to the same university, the same rowing club, grown up in the same town in Africa, become architects, adored sailing, and ended up with children the same ages who all unbelievably liked each other. Understandably several further joint holidays have followed.

Last year we headed off for a gite in Le Loir together. Sometime during the trip, one of the husbands grumbled that his wife was always inspecting the meteo on her mobile in order to plan the sunniest trip for the day and what was wrong with encountering a bit of rain? Needless to say, I was too cowardly to own up to being her partner in crime! Despite our best efforts, a blazing blue sky and a lack of rainclouds was not always forthcoming. Whilst nodding sympathetically at said husband, I, and the female contingent bowed to the local advice that for consistently good weather one has to be South of the french version of the Watford Gap – the river (LA)Loire. Sadly we had picked LE Loir, the inferior and northern version, and strategically placed on that occasion too far North to make any inpact on the quality of sunshine.

With the vacances de Paques looming this year, and the return of my ‘husband a l’etranger’ I settled down to locate a gite south of LA Loire. Its location was significant, sufficiently south to provide a week’s blazing sunshine and in close enough proximity to Futurescope to enthuse the kids. I settled on La Grande Metairie near La grande Pressigny in Touraine.

The weather had other plans!

During the four hour drive the rain did not ‘let-up’.

Nor did it for the following two days: and then miraculously we woke to a clear blue sky and the beauty of the surroundings for a precious three days before the storm clouds rolled back in.

The owners house was beautiful with a huge beamed sitting room running under the roof. We were welcomed in with a glass(or two) of kir by the roaring fireside (Yes it was raining again!)

The overhang at the end of the barn sheltered a superb barbeque area. (Which was useful as it was raining!)

But when the sun did come out there was this delightful track to the pool..

..which the boys threw themselves into at the first opportunity despite the fact that it was only 14°

In case of boredom there was also a tennis court and a croquet lawn… and even  badminton to entice the idle!

and the long sweeping drive led down to the river for the fishermen …

But if all that wasn’t enough there were beautiful villages to explore nearby.

Angles de L’Anglin with its incredible chateau and river..

and La Grande Pressigny, a satisfyingly French little town with it’s imposing chateau converted to a museum of Prehistory..

Despite the rain La Grande Metairie was beautiful, enticing and welcoming…and I would have given my right arm to stay there another day, enjoying the gardens and the pool rather than visiting Futurescope.

But if you prefer not to give your right arm but have a nest-egg hidden away, La Grande Metairie is ‘For Sale’, though it is hard to think of it without it’s owners who added to its charm.

I’ll race you for it! Its just as good in the rain!