..a
television for a week we had no idea what it meant. My French is adequate enough
to cause confusion, invite strangers to go roller skating or to admire the buttocks
of my neighbour’s goat, but collapses entirely when the speed goes above
the very slow and deliberate pace which one uses when addressing the mentally
handicapped. Therefore I could deduce there was a problem but had no idea of
the detail.
We reached Paris Gare Montparnasse and were travelling by taxi to a hotel on
the north bank of the Seine, (the excellent Cite Rougemont), when I was surprised
to see police in full riot gear; Perspex shields, carbon fibre shoulder pads
and a stern Gallic demeanour emerging from numerous vans on the Boulevard Saint
Germaine. Nothing I had done, not even the massacre of the irregular verbs,
merited such a response, so it must have been something else.
The ‘something else’ was a series of strikes and demonstrations
against the government’s intention to raise the minimum legal retirement
age from sixty to sixty-two. Even the young were demonstrating, realising that
(a) there were going to be fewer employment opportunities with more old farts
working on into a sad grey eternity and (b) that they were going to work longer
too.
Even with a workforce that is only 8% unionised millions turned out, but curiously
only 39% of people between 55 and 64 are working in France anyway, which might
indicate ageism in employment but more probably denotes significant early retirement.
The unions organised demonstrations, which meant that there were very, very
large numbers of people milling around the Marais and other parts of the city
for no apparent reason. Everybody seemed to be having a good time – the violence
and industrial disruption fortunately happened after we had gone on to Spain.
The French have always done mass demonstrations and social upheavals with a
degree of enthusiasm and panache, but this time they seemed to be making a gesture
against the inevitable. I get the feeling that even if they don’t want
to go there they are resigned to the fate decided for them by a lot of American
financiers with clever ideas and no realisation of the consequences. The spirit
of 1968 was has become only a pale simulacrum.
The slight disruption of the local and national train timetables was the only
impact on we travellers who already are subject to a 65 and rising retirement
age in the land of chronic over-work. The French don’t know how lucky
they are.
The fact that I knew anything about what was happening was that I buy ‘The
Economist’ magazine whilst travelling, but that isn’t available
in little hamlets in the Dordogne. Unsurprisingly in the three editions that
I bought, Australia rated one column and two paragraphs, which should give you
some perspective on where we rank globally. Australia and New Zealand don’t
exist. But, as I said, ‘The Economist’ has only limited availability
so you tend to see it only at airports, trains stations or in major cities.
It’s a good read because its bias is clear, and it has good though brief
science and literature sections. Unless you want to translate ‘Le Point’
or ‘La Gaceta’ you have limited choice. Elsewhere it’s the
lingua franca or nothing.
But despite our belief that English is the language that everybody should speak
it most certainly isn’t. The French speak French as if they had grown
up with it and the Spanish speak Spanish as if they had been taught it on their
mother’s knee. The fact that in the cities that many are multilingual
doesn’t disguise the fact that everywhere else the population probably
isn’t. Even if you were taught another language at an early age if you
don’t use it you at best lose confidence at worst forget everything. We
may think that they go home and say in the best unaccented English that at last
they can stop having to speak that difficult Finnish language all day, but in
fact they not only speak but think in their native tongue with all its unique
nuances, words adjectives, tenses and adverbs.
The language defines the culture and the cultural grouping. The clan may be
large but it has a common language and creates the separation from other tribal
groups.
As people realise that one of the few remaining points of differentiation they
have is the language they speak, so there is a proportional desire to hang onto
their native tongue, to become a splinter on the path of increasing sameness.
And if the splinter means that we too should learn a few words of another language
it is a small price to pay. If nothing else we may give someone in the nether
regions of a far off country the niggling worry that antipodeans only want to
see their grandmother’s newly washed underwear. We wonder why we are presented
with large flesh coloured bloomers every time we order a cup of tea.