In which Doris muses on the capacity for people to not like people.
When Sid was much younger, and the majority of his hair was still on the top of his head, he went on a school exchange to Ribiers. He and his family have visited the area irregularly ever since, and in fact almost 100101 years ago (I thought I’d put it in binary as it looks even more enormous in decimal) S&D went there on their honeymoon and stayed in Les Terraces in Larangne-Monteglin, which is why we put in a small sentimental deviation on this trip.
Anyway the point of telling you that, is that Richard’s adopted family had Granny Imbert who was one of those ancient French village ladies (allocate the adjectives to the nouns in a way that suits you) and she used to say to Richard darkly, pointing with her gnarled finger to the village directly across the river valley: “Nous n’aimons pas les gens de Mison”.
So we were amused in Pont St Martin by the explanation of a cafe name “Trempe Q”. The letter Q in French sounds identical to the word “cul” meaning ahem bottom. (You may also be interested to know that the truck company GPT never really succeeded in France because G P T is pronounced j’ai pe-tait which means I have farted. Of course this digression will take us onto the subject of car models that translate somewhat poorly, like the No-va and the Mitsubishi Starion and the Mazda Friendy Bongo but I have a serious story to tell here so let’s get back to business.)
Trempe culs, or damp ahem bottoms was the name that the villagers high on the cliff on the other side of the river gave to their neighbours on the inside, lower bit of the bend, as they regularly got drowned out in the flash floods which exist to this day.
I hope that the intensely local rivalry in both cases was accompanied by a complete commitment to go to the other people’s aid whenever bad things did actually happen. I’m gathering pictures for another post to celebrate the many strangers who have given us spontaneous and totally unexpected help on this journey.