‘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

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!

Egg Hunt at Miromesnil and a Souris of Lamb.

What to do with a couple of adolescents on a  damp Easter sunday afternoon? Offer plentiful chocolate  with a ‘catch’ of course.

I had been promising myself a trip out to the Chateau de Miromesnil, near Dieppe since I first came to France. Its potager is legendary; and what better opportunity than an Easter egg hunt to make the visit accessible  and appealing to adults and adolescents alike!

It was disappointing  to wake up to a Normand mist this morning after a week of glorious sunshine.  It was the kind of mist that seeps into every corner and dampens every last bit of undergrowth, plant and flower, and yet sparkles on spiders webs without a drop of rain actually falling.

The Chateau of Miromesnil, near Tourville sur Arques is famous as the birthplace of Guy de Maupassant in 1850. I have just put down ‘Pierre et Jean’, his novel written in 1887, wonderful for his depiction of the values and hardships of society, and his colourful descriptions of  the towns and villages of Normandy in the late 1800′s and early 1900′s.

The chateau was built in 1600 in the style of Louis XIII. The generosity of Armand Thomas Hue de Miromesnil, its owner during the 18th century, to the local population allowed the chateau to pass unscathed through the Revolution.

Plan in hand we headed off to decipher the first clue.

Enticed by the knowledge that 2kg of  cacao were used to create the prize draw chocolate egg, the adolescents of the party engaged internet access on their mobiles to determine the exact distance from the chapel to the chateau. ….400m.

The goats were protecting the pink eggs hidden in the undergrowth….and the next clue was hidden behind the woodpile.

The identity of the ‘recolte des tetes blanches en été’ (gathering of white heads in summer) gave us a few problems…. we narrowed it down to mushrooms. Another family asked us for the french translation for dandilion. (Aren’t dandilions yellow?) There was some foot shifting, no-one was quite sure whether to discuss the clues.  The prize egg was, after all, pretty enticing. We were inclined to give them the translation rather than share the mushroom theory.

Google translate and Wikipedia came in very handy in determining the vegetable under the plant genus ‘Alliacé’ ….. onion. We noticed another competitor reach for his mobile.

Over to the younger members of the family to count the  54 shutters on the rear face of the chateau which the butler had had to close daily. Though by the looks of the concentrated expressions, the adolescents were keen to check the numbers.

The spring garden was in full bloom.

and I caught my first glimpse of the potager…

and admired the view back to the park where we’d collected the moss, bark and feather.

We changed our mind about the mushrooms and decided on garlic, before impressing on the staff that we live just down the road and that collection of said egg would not be a problem…..

‘Were we really there two hours’, said the adolescents ‘ we thought it was only one!’

The beauty of a good day out is to arrive home damp but rosy cheeked to find dinner ready and waiting. What better than slow roast ‘Souris d’Agneau’, with tomato and avocado salsa, couscous and mint yoghurt, and a generous glass of wine.

As for pudding, we’re waiting for the phone to ring…

Happy Easter!

Au Nom de la Rose – Atelier d’art floral à Rouen.

Version Français – click ici

It was indecent, the number of bags I was carrying. People were staring – women particularly, and should I ever win a million, I should like to carry this many flowers home with me every day. But then if I was so abundantly overwhelmed with roses every day maybe it wouldn’t be so delicious, so perfumed or so heavenly. Don’t let my husband read this lest he get the wrong idea – an abundance of roses everyday is the direct route to my heart – but this isn’t carte blanche for investing in a rose farm in equatorial Africa – at least not yet!

We spotted the notice tucked between the glorious display of roses.

…cours d’art floral!

This is absolutely my favorite flower shop and usually as I pass I take a peek at this little round table. If I am lucky, they have bouquets of  ’Roses du Jardin’,usually about five blooms that they consider past their prime, charmingly arranged, but which often last longer than a week.

But today there was no skulking about the edges, wishing and hoping; I entered ‘Au nom de la Rose’ with the assurance of a habitual customer. I was going to participate in the Atelier d’Art Floral…absolument gratuit!

The first shop ‘Au Nom de la Rose’ was opened in Paris in the 6ième arrondissement in 1991, the store being supplied by its own rose bushes in Provence. Now there are are about 80 boutiques worldwide and their roses are grown in Provence and Brittany, and on the equator. The roses from France are notable for their smaller blooms, whilst those from the equatorial regions, profiting from increased sunshine and humidity are substantially larger. The amazing scent of the blousy tea-roses assailed us the minute we stepped across the threshold; and the quantity and variety of blooms were stunning.

The equatorial blooms are now sourced from African run rose farms.

First we select our choice of blooms from large buckets. We then watch as the stems are cleaned and de-thorned.

Once done we are shown how to start laying the roses and feuillage (greenery) stem by stem in a rotating spiral.

The boys have finished before the girls!

The youngest seems to have found a natural talent..

“‘Ee’ is better” says the proprieteur proprietorially, reverting to a foreign language to disguise his comment. Unfortunately he chooses English.

“I heard that” squeaks the older one indignantly.

After a bit of raffia know-how for the boys,

We are shown our next arrangement.

We are instructed not to force submerge the ‘mousse’, shown how to cut and place the stems and head off to select a pot.

It’s time for the girls raffia training!

But the afternoon doesn’t end until we try some other rose products, Rose perfumed tea, Syrop de Rose, and Gelée de Rose. The Rose Tea is subtly fragrant, whilst the Rose Syrop (cordial) which is recommended diluted with water or added to Kir(now there’s a thought) and the Rose Gelée on brioche remind one of Arabian Nights and Turkish Delight.

It’s time to pack up, and we discover what happens to all those petals we discarded earlier..

as we liberally sprinkle them over our bags..

These aren’t any old shopping bags, they’re rose filled, rose scented, rose adorned shopping bags!

We splashed out a little so that we could have a rose perfumed apartment every day of the year…

even on our impecunious days!

I wonder if one could have too many bags of flowers?

My mantle-piece doesn’t seem to think so…

and nor do I!

Linguistically Challenged Architect Seeks Benevolent Bureau!

image of Elbeuf and surroundings thanks to bordabord.com

image of Elbeuf thanks to Landry Lechevre

The simple stone exterior of the building just before the Pont de Guynemer in Elbeuf hides a chic bureau des architectes. I know so because I went there yesterday.

Several months ago a friend in the school playground had handed me a piece of paper with the web address of the ‘Ordre des Architectes’ in France. I have procrastinated for quite some time, and finally one evening last week I took a look. Why the procrastination? Well it all comes down to a case of ‘self-registration’ of disability!

After my post on the availability of Tiers Temps, I have had a few comments expressing disappointment that it is necessary to register oneself as handicapped in order to gain any benefits. However, if I self analyse, I can only come up with one diagnosis – that fundamantally, in the absence of fluency, I, and anyone else in the same position are indeed handicapped and opportunities in the working world are limited. My view is that one has to be honest about ones limitations and do whatever one can to overcome them.

And so it was with that in mind that I placed an advertisment on the ‘annonces’ section of the website – for a ‘handicapped’ Architecte Anglais, never imagining that anything would come of it! I did of course divulge that my handicap was linguistic. Two days later I received two replies to my advertisement, one of which, having forwarded my CV, resulted in an entretien, or interview.

I have had four interviews in France. My first and second as part of a group for mundane unskilled work, and all that I couldn’t understand (essentially everything – it was early days) was conveniently provided on a flip-chart. The hardest part of the interview had been the phone conversations before hand trying to decipher the addresses. My third interview was for a job that I had already pretty well decided I didn’t want. I was asked to meet the prospective employer at a garden centre in Rouen where I was being interviewed to be their Normandy representative for stock supplies for all garden  centres in Normandy. The employer was half an hour late, and without a word of explanation,  proceeded into a half hour interview of which I understood nothing at all thanks to the interviewer’s incredibly ‘thick’ accent and ability to merge all words together at such a break-neck speed that each sentence came out in a meaningless jumble of words. I was relieved to withdraw from the post, and he was most likely relieved not to have me on the team.

There was a 50/50 chance that my linguistic ability was going to let me down this time, and ever conscious of the excruciating garden centre interview, I kept realistic as to my chances of success, leaving the preparation of my portfolio to absolutely the last minute with a  blasé esprit of nonchalence that would have left my husband (if he’d been there) in a complete state of shock. Such lackadaisical approach backfired of course when I turned a page during the interview to reveal an upside down photo!

The architects bureau was a fabulous example of turn of the century french architecture;  decorative mouldings, parquet, panelling and superb marble fireplaces beautifully modernised and offset with modern furnishings and chalky traditional paint colours. Where interior and exterior design was concerned – jackpot!

Preliminaries over, I found the director clear, informative, frank and interested in fresh ideas and directions. Things have moved on since my last days in a practice (other than my own) – for one thing, half of the architects were women and the bureau youthful. The director found the idea of a portfolio very unusual, the french have ‘le book’, which is an individual  bound representation of all their work. A ‘must’ for the future!

Thanks to www.graphiquesonline.com

So what had I advertised for? This is the reality. Getting a foot in the door of a professional enterprise in France is nigh on impossible, the French mistrust the qualifications of other nationalities and rely heavily on contacts, kudos of universities – or rather the superior ‘grandes ècoles ’, as well as merit. What one forgets in moving overseas is that the the same profession has a different game-plan, rules and method and without knowing what it is, a foreign professional is at a severe disadvantage in addition to the linguistic handicap. I requested a ‘Stage de Decouverte’ – essentially an unpaid entry into the architecture profession, the value of which will be unknown until I start – because yes, thankfully I was sufficiently competent to appear lucid and comunicative in an interview situation and the director was prepared to give me an opportunity. So what is my salary –  ’CPD’ training in communication and vocabulary,  in french architectural building regulations, and in french ‘informatique’ (Computer Aided Design systems) and of course the ever vital methodology. The  future? The bureau has an opening for an architect and i’ll have a foot in the door.

If I make it, it cannot fail to be another window into French life.

If not, at least I can leave all those French women architects knowing that English women architects have great taste in handbags…..

‘C’est mignon’ they said all gathering round – who cares about the portfolio!