Monoprix madness

Reaching the end of our first week was a little disconcerting. I was struck by how much more I need to do to feel at home. Of course my French isn’t up to much yet and it is frustrating not being able to communicate very well, but what brought on my feeling of unease was a trip to the supermarket.

Back in the UK, nothing is more relaxing than having a walk round Waitrose and buying a few bits and pieces. I know the shop really well, know where everything is and hardly need to engage my brain. If I’m feeling little poorly, but want to get out for half an hour it’s a good place to go.

It’s probably a sad indictment on me or on our consumer society that a walk to the beach is slightly nearer, but that I choose to go to a supermarket to relax…

Anyway, my favourite supermarket in France is Monoprix. I guess it’s a bit like an old-style Co-op maybe edging towards Waitrose. When we’ve stayed in Paris, Toulouse or Caen it’s been the place I’ve gone to buy provisions and Becky’s mum absolutely loves their smoked duck.

I have been to the Monoprix in Caen a few times. It’s quite big and has a clothing section, a toiletry section and an excellent stationary section as well as food and household goods. Sadly, I have a thing about stationary shops too, so Caen’s Monoprix should be heaven for me.

However, this was the location for my first bout of culture shock. Actually it was more like a bout of existential angst straight from the pages of Sartre’s Nausea. Perhaps it’s just a Normandy thing.

Here I was in a supermarket and I didn’t know where everything was or, indeed, what everything was. Worse, I couldn’t ask anyone anything and expect to understand their answer. And worst still, I wanted to buy a bottle of Normandy cider but all I could find was a three-pack of litre bottles on offer – buy one get one free (can’t remember the French for that) – but there was no way I could carry six litres of cider home.

I was a supermarket nightmare and I ended up feeling all clammy and the fluorescent lights looked a bit weird.

But I got over it, and I actually had a conversation with another customer in a boulangerie while I was waiting for my croissants to be wrapped.

So, my lesson is – don’t go to supermarkets. They are too big, impersonal and only reinforce your isolation. I now realise that going into small shops and to the market might mean I have a very clumsy conversation, but the personal interaction will be far more important to helping me feel at home. And we’ll eat better food.

Le 14 juillet

Yesterday (July 14) was a public holiday in France, celebrating the fall of the Bastille and the start of the French revolution in 1789. Like a Sunday, Caen was quiet and its inhabitants had a very leisurely day.

We decided to go to the local shopping centre and buy all the things we need to make our apartment more homely – like an ironing-board cover and a potato-peeler – but not breaking the bank. Shopping centres are usually heaving on UK bank holidays, but this one was virtually empty.

Mission accomplished, we returned home, unpacked our shopping, had a rest and prepared ourselves for an evening of festivities in a local square and a huge fireworks display at the racecourse nearby.

Spending the evening the Place Saint-Saveur was delightful. The square has been pedestrianised for the summer with a stage built at one end of the square.

Last night there was folk music and people were being taught various folk dances. All ages were getting involved and having fun. Around the square, hundreds more were eating and drinking in the various bars and restaurants.

There were two exhibitions the council-run gallery at the end of the square. One was a really interesting display of photographs and press cuttings documenting the student and workers’ upheavals of 1968 in Caen.

We didn’t catch the other – a video work by a local artist, but we can see that another evening when we go back to listen to music, watch a film or enjoy some street theatre.

We realised that we don’t go out much in the evenings in the UK. If we do, we spend the evening with friends, but avoid going out in the town centre because it is too hectic. I think it will be different in Caen.

It was still light at 10.30pm when we all moved off to see the fireworks. It was only a 10 minute walk to the Prairie – a vast open space with a horse-racing track, a park and an exhibition centre (but no little house).

We had assumed that fireworks weren’t being sold in the shops because we hadn’t heard any over the past few days. However, that wasn’t true. People were letting off fireworks and flares from about 10 o’clock at the Prairie, I guess as a disorganised ‘warm up’ for the main event.

The official firework display started just after it got dark enough – around ten past eleven. The display was magnificent. There must have been a few tens of thousands of people there at the Prairie and we all headed for home at a quarter to midnight.

There were traffic jams and hundreds of young people cycling home on the council ‘Veol’ scheme bicycles. Everyone was very good humoured. Certainly most people will have been drinking during the day, but no-one was ‘drunk’ as we would recognise it in the UK. It was just a great festival atmosphere and our first July 14.

A day of rest

Sundays are traditionally days of rest across Europe and in France they remain so. Today, hardly a car went past and there was no sign of life on our street until after midday. No-one was spotted washing their car or carrying-out DIY.

This is the third Sunday I’ve spent in Caen over the past year, and what the caennias seem to do is visit the market in the morning and then have a leisurely lunch at home.

The market is huge – the biggest in the region – and is based around the port in the centre of the town. The stalls are similar to those at our local Friday market, but just more of them. There are also more stalls with cooked food – roast chickens, paella, couscous, tartiflette and Asian and African dishes.

We had pencilled-in going to the market yesterday, but decided on another restful day at home – we had enough food to cook, although Becky went to the boulangerie for bread.

I’m sure we will discover other typical Sunday pastimes, like going to the cinema, the beach or a museum. However, it’s nice to feel under no social pressure to go out and be busy on a Sunday.

The only sound to break the Sunday silence are the local bells. One set is definitely from the famous church of St Etienne at the end of our road. The Abbatiale Saint-Etienne is where Guillaume-le-Conquérant (or William I of England) was buried and we definitely need to pay a visit.

We’re not quite sure where the other set of bells are – there are several other churches nearby – but both ring on the hour from 8am to 8pm and Saint-Etienne each half hour. We really noticed them to begin with, but now they are becoming just normal background noise – a good sign that we’re settling in.

Le week-end

The plan for this first weekend was to have a rest. We knew we would be tired after the journey, but it was important to start the ball rolling on bank accounts and telephones before the weekend (Monday is a public holiday).

During the next year, we both expect to have times that we don’t leave the apartment due to ill-health or because of the fatigue related to our health conditions. So this was a good opportunity to test out our new home.

Our apartment isn’t that big compared with where we live in the UK and our bedroom, living room and study are all combined into one room. Fortunately it is a large, bright and airy room. The kitchen is small, but does have a table to eat or to work at.

With the front door shut there is enough room in the hallway for another comfortable place to sit and read or listen to music. And the bathroom – a place I am likely to spending some time – is roomy, warm and quite pleasant as bathrooms go.

There is even a tiny courtyard out the back, overlooked by dozens of other flats, but a place to get some fresh air and sunshine if we don’t feel well enough to go out.

Today we read, slept, watched TV and used our laptops. I popped out to buy a newspaper and some food which took about 10 minutes - a shorter trip than back in the UK.

Probably the highlight of the day was watching a stage of the Tour de France. I usually follow Le Tour avidly, but have missed out on the first seven days due to our busy week moving to France.

It was easy to catch up on the race, thanks to the local paper which has two or three pages on Le Tour each day. Today’s stage was full of drama with rain and a determined four-man break-away. Eventually Mark Cavendish from the Isle of Man won a magnificent sprint - much to the delight of the spectators and the French media team.

So, a comfortable day resting and the apartment passed the test with flying colours – but I do feel a little exhausted after watching a 170 Kms cycle race.

Market Day in Caen

The market was fantastic - as one would expect of a French market that dates back to the 1300s. I’ve been to markets in France before, but that was as a holiday-maker and was only sight-seeing.

Going to a market as a resident is a different experience altogether - I was planning meals for the next week and I was also thinking about what might be good to eat in the future and looking at some vegetables, fish and animal parts and realising that I need to look at some recipes and cook books to find out how to eat them.

Back in the UK I have learned to be kind to my guts but, at the same time, not let my Crohn’s ruin my culinary pleasures entirely. I know what food is safe, what is hazardous and what I can expect if I eat something that doesn’t quite agree with me.

Moving to France means a whole new exploration of these categories. There is no way that I’m going to stick to what I eat in the UK – not with what I saw in the market today. But neither am I going to be entirely reckless, that would just be stupid.

So I have Julia Child’s iconic ‘Mastering the Art of French Cooking’ to help me through some of the cooking techniques of France. Soups and sauces are great for my small bowel strictures – as is drinking plenty of wine with my meals.

The fish on sale in France is far more bountiful and diverse than in the UK and I intend to make the most of it. A popular diet book for Colitis and Crohn’s by James Scala suggests that people with IBD should eat only the flesh of animals that swim or fly – so fish would be a good choice.

However, even on the dozen fish stalls at the market, there was a bewildering variety of fish, some I recognised, but others I will have to write down and look up in the dictionary. Then I can look them up in Rick Stein’s excellent little ‘English Seafood Cookery’ and find out how to prepare and cook them.

So what did we come home with today? We bought apricots and a melon, tomatoes and courgettes, onions, fresh garlic and potatoes. And we bought a vase in the bric-a-brac section and some flowers to go in it. Not much, but we do have another 50-odd weeks to sample other delights.

Plans become reality

We’ve had an exciting couple of days. Plans that have taken several years to concoct are now being turned into reality.

I have gradually formed images in my mind about how our life might develop here - especially after three fact-finding trips to Caen and visiting our apartment and new neighbourhood a couple of months ago.

My partner, Becky, has been receiving email bulletins about the town since we visited in April and I have been following the local football team for the past year. All this is good preparation and helps give a context to the world we dropped into less than 48 hours ago.

Because we have prepared our trip, we are very aware that we are here to live, not just on a long holiday. So opening a bank account yesterday and organising a telephone, internet and TV package today are really exciting and meaningful – they are not holiday activities.

There are also small but important details we have thought about - like how we keep in contact with our 32-month-old niece so she remembers who we are! We decided on sending her a postcard each week (supplemented by phone calls and visits) and today we bought her a lovely postcard of a Normandy cow.

A certain degree of planning is important for us because we both have long-term health conditions. We need the basics of life to run as smoothly as possible so we can be spontaneous and grasp opportunities as they present themselves. Planning also means that if our conditions play up we are able to rest, recover and get treatment if we need to.

So, given that we do both have serious health problems, it is frustrating that issues around benefits and health care entitlement are taking longer to resolve than they could. I am promised a call from the UK Department of Work and Pensions overseas office in Newcastle, but I have to say that our dealings with the DWP so far have been less than satisfactory. But more on that another time – we have our first market day to prepare for tomorrow.

Crossing the Channel

Our adventure has begun. After months of preparation, we arrived in France at 7.30 this morning.

We caught the overnight ferry, so went to sleep just as we left Portsmouth and woke up shortly before we arrived at Ouistreham.

Neither of us slept particularly well but we have managed to catch up during the day, in between paying our rent, buying insurance for the flat and opening a bank account. These first few tasks in France all went smoothly.

We were very sensible with our travel arrangements, getting a taxi from our home to the ferry terminal. Given that we had two heavy suitcases and a guitar, we didn’t want to be hopping on and off of trains or buses.

We asked the ferry company (Brittany Ferries) for disabled assistance as Becky walks with a stick. Although we had to wait around a little, we had our own mini-bus and could move at our own pace. The staff were really friendly and couldn’t have been more helpful.

After breakfast at the Ouistreham ferry terminal, we were picked up by our new landlord and driven into Caen and our new home.

At the end of our first day I am struck by how at home I feel. France isn’t unfamiliar and neither is Caen – I’ve been here three times before today. I suppose it does feel a little bit like being on holiday, but I am well aware that I’m here for a year and that our tasks over the next week or so are not the sort of things you do on holiday.

The weather is the same – sun and showers – and we can pick up a number of UK radio stations, including BBC Southern Counties Radio with news about Brighton and Crowborough.

There will, of course, be thousands of little differences between life in the UK and life in Caen. Rubbish collections are one thing we need to find out about and understand. Then there is the very important issue of health care, which is becoming a somewhat epic saga...