How Do You Do? I Am Very Pleased To Meet You.

This is a phrase I have taught my children from early days and with a ditty that ends "Shaky, shaky, shaky, shaky, shake" as I teach them how to greet and shake hands.

I meet people because I am prepared to meet people. I suffer--less and less, I will say--a lot of BS about communication. But, I feel pretty clear about how it works and wonder what it is that some of life's 'gurus' are spinning with what they offer as communication skills.

Sitting in a little corner section at the US Open tennis yesterday, I was doing what most black patrons do at that tournament, I was watching a black player in action. This time, the athletic Frenchman, Gael Monfils (pronounced mon feec). I was rolling out the French expressions as much as anything because I knew that Americans are enamoured of a little bit of the exotic and sounding foreign is very much that. So, "Allez, Gael!" (Go, Gael!) I shouted often. It was funny because Monfils was playing his countryman, Jeremy Chardy--who was having a day of hitting the net too often. A group of young American men was behind and they asked if I was French, and I explained. We then talked a bit about the tournament and how much fun it always was especially watching in the smaller show courts, as now, in Grandstand.

My wife went off to get coffee, and then a black man in front of me, turned to me and asked me if I was francophone. I told him no and asked him from where he came. He told me Guadeloupe. I smiled and we did the fist bump and hand clasp. He added that he now lives in France, in Marseille. As islanders together, we joked a bit. He seemed very gentle and explained that this was his first trip to the US Open. He added that he would be there for the full two weeks. Coffee arrived and we had another round of introductions. We then needed to leave to see yet another French player in action--"The Magician", Fabrice Santoro, now 36 touching 37 and retiring this year after 20 years as a professional. His game is all guile and slice and frustrating the opponent, and smiles and colour.

As I headed off to an outside field court, I felt a touch on my shoulder. Mr. Guadelopean had followed me and wanted to offer me the chance to visit him in France. I warned him that I take up such offers readily. He smiled and fiddled to find an e-mail address and gave me his telephone number in France. Then he mentioned that he needed to call his wife and let her know all was fine. I offered to inform her immediately by sending an e-mail from my mobile phone. He was thrilled. I went off to see a magic show.

Before getting to the court, nature called. I looked at no lines for the tennis so joined one for the loo--a long one. When I had relieved myself, I was not relieved to see the tennis line was now 40 people long and not moving. Drat. I did find a gap in the hedge and peeped in to see the start of play. Santoro had his opponent, Juan Ferrero dangling on a rope, but not long enough to stay ahead for long.But, it was fun to see. I sent the e-mail while waiting. Within minutes came back a reply, full of surprise that an 'American' could be so willing to help a foreigner. I disabused the man's wife (no crime) and told her my origin. All was simply understood now: Antillean people together. We exchanged more messages during the day and she told me which matches she was watching from Marseille.

I'll dedicate this piece to yet another lovely chance meeting. I do not know if the French couple read English, but I may have to do a little translation for them.

Your number's up.

France will go into a new Dark Age. Starting in 2009 new vehicle registrations will be in place. The current system has licence plates with a two digit code at the end that signifies the département (regional adminstrative area) of the current owner, for instance 1111-XY-95, with the 95 signifying one of the suburbs of Paris (see example alongside). The new brain child of some egoistic bureaucrat in the Interior Ministry will no longer require designations of automobile owners' home district, but geographic appellations will be voluntary. The new plates, to be adopted over time, will instead follow the life of the vehicle. Like a born-on date, every new automobile in France will have a licence plate specific to the vehicle. Automobiles will keep their licence plates even if they are sold or their owner moves to a new part of the country. The coming design has two letters followed by three numbers followed by two letters. With 13 million address changes per year, the current system is running out of new combinations. Owners may chose to add numbers and regional logos to the right side of the plate, indicating a specific place, and people will be free to choose any location they wish for their license plates.The new registration model is the same as that successfully introduced in 1994 in Italy; now administrative ideas from Italy are not usually those to recommend. If vehicles currently licensed are not sold they can keep their current registrations. So, France will have a dual system for many years to come. Interesting.

The current plants have been unchanged in structure since heaven knows when and are as much France as are baguettes, Gauloises, frogs legs, and berets. One of the fun aspects of travelling the roads of France is to hail vehicles from the same area, similar to what is possible in Barbados with the letters of the parishes, or in the US and Canada with the state or provincial plates. Under the current system vehicle owners must re-register their vehicle if they relocate permanently to another département. There used to be a once-per-year tax on cars, called the vignette, whose rate depended on the département. This tax now exists only for corporate-owned vehicles (and there exist exemptions for small numbers of vehicles); it is thus no longer important to know the département of a car on sight. Furthermore, computerized files allow large national databases to be maintained without the need for them to be split at local level. A side effect of the vehicle tax system was that many corporations registered their vehicles in départements, such as Marne (51), with lower rates. Regulations aimed at preventing such schemes were passed in 1999.

But is this change necessary? Many schemes exist for knowing the uniqueness of a vehicle, not least its chassis number, which is usually located prominently and visibly near the dashboard. Technology also allows for many forms of electronic tracing or registration without the need to invent new licence plates. Some French people mentioned to me that bureaqucrats like to leave their trace. It was funny when the new designs were shown to a French government minister this week: he asked where was the département number, and had the system explained to him. No. He was not happy and was not going to change. Who did the bureaucrats talk to?

Still, with 7.5 percent unemployment in France and a tendency to complain it's understandable that this fluffy system is around. New jobs. New reasons to groan.

Round and round it goes.

My first visit to France was to a small village called Thésée-sur-Cher, in the Loire Valley. The nearest city is Tours, which I remember for its magnificent cathedral that I visited some 10 years later on one of several car-touring holidays. My first visit was in 1967, if I recall correctly. I had started to learn French the previous year, after going to grammar school and had found it easy-peasy. Going to France made sense to try and speak to "the natives". I never had then nor now plans to do more with French than be able to be understood. The fact that I did not not follow the natural route and become a French scholar is a story of what can happen when one finds things too easy and is brought up to seek challenges: I started to study economics, instead. The fact that more than 30 years after stopping study of French I found myself having French lessons again at work is proof that things go round in circles. The fact that I then went to work for three years in a French-speaking country is testimony to the great teaching I had as a boy and the value of learning a language when you are long; it's cemeneted into the brain. The fact that I encourage my four year old to keep speaking French as well as English as she grows up in Barbados is part of my belief that children have enormous capacity for adaptation. More on the reminisces.

Before my school group got to France I had to deal with that indescribable feeling that comes from being tossed around on the waves of the sea. Not long after the white cliffs of Dover were receding into the horizon, the sense of breakfast rising in the stomach came upon me and many others. The sight of others hanging their head over the side groaning and convulsing often brings on the same action. Two hours or so of horror to travel 20 miles.

On arrival, I met so many things that were different. First, everyone spoke French so fast and with accents different from that of my Scottish teacher. Second, the French have some clear ideas about what food you eat and when, not that I really minded, but I could see my schoolmates shrivelling. I ate and still eat most things so long as they are not moving on my plate or in my mouth. I had heard that the French ate frog legs and snails but I thought it was a childhood joke, like pretending to eat worms; but no, they really ate these things. More simply, they love to eat loads of bread and with every meal and every course except dessert. From an early point, I fell in love with baguettes, with their crispy crusts, and was always happy to break off a chunk to eat--with jam, with cheese, on its own with Nutella chocolate spread, to dip into a bowl of hot chocolate, to wipe up the sauce. Third, they drove on the right: I had grown up learning "Look right; look left; look right again. Cross." So, there I was trying to be like the chicken, just wanting to cross the road, but I was in grave danger of just becoming road kill. The first time that a big truck (poids lourdes) nearly wasted me my pants had a nasty wet feeling: near-death experiences can be like that. But I am a quick learner. Look left first. Why didn't we have a course on this before leaving England?

All these experiences left me feeling a bit mixed up about whether I would like France. But that soon changed after I met some French children. Though the French style of study is more rigid than the English--France is a very centralized country and it used to be said that on any day you could go into any school and know that every child in a particular grade was being taught the same thing wherever that was in France. But, even with our poor French and their poor English, we seemed much the same. We got to know each other playing around what I thought was a billiards table; they played a game called "cannon"--essentially the same but different rules. We went to a bar--unimaginable for a child in England at that time--not to drink alcohol but to drink diablos (fizzy lemonade either with mint syrup, or strawberry or raspberry syrup). I met a girl, whose name I remember as Sylvie, and we tried hard to understand each other; we stayed pen pals for a few years after the trip. I don't really remember now if she was pretty; but I recall she was tall and we spent a lot of time together. I was fascinated by how she wrote, in that single national cursive style of the French system, that has served the test of time; they even have a document showing the correct strokes for forming and joining letters. I remembered that like in my school class, everyone else I met was white; I had no knowledge at that time of France's history as a colonial power or anything about French speaking islands in Africa or the Caribbean.

All of this passed through my head as I drove east from La Rochelle to Paris yesterday to watch the French Open. I saw signs for the great Loire valley French chateaus--Amboise, Chenonceaux, Chambord, Saumur--and was transported back 40 years. Swimming in the river Cher. Riding a bicycle down the village street. Seeing children just a few years older than me riding a mobylette--a motorized two-wheeler, with a two-stroke engine, invented in the mid-1940s, for which the legal age to ride alone is 14. Seeing many people older riding one with a baguette or newsaper or chicken under the arm--a standard image of France. I started to remember the many trips I had made to France and places I had visited. Trips to the south --Pau (famous for rugby) and Tarbes, where I had a Guyanese friend studying to be a linguist. To the east, bordering Germany and very different for that--Mulhouse, in the Alsace. North-eastern towns--Charleville-Mézières--bordering Belgium. Mimizan on the south west Atlantic coast. The many places in between, such as La Bourboule in the Auvergne, near Clermont-Ferrand. Visits to the Bordeaux or Burgundy areas to taste and buy lots of wine. Living for two weeks in a farmhouse near a town called Casteljaloux, to the east of Bordeaux, with a bunch of other students from my college. Lots of memories.

Travel is wonderful for what you discover and what you retain. It's also splendid for who you meet and who you hold in your memory, often barely known yet long remembered. Here I am in France, spending two weeks with a family I met in Africa just two years ago. I regard them as friends and am just getting to know them. Life is so interesting.

Which witch's wich?

Six degrees of separation is usually too many to connect people I know. The connections, I find, turn out often to be based on basis life links. Here's one set that just popped up during my present visit to France.

My hosts' elder children spent a week in England recently to improve their English. With English as my native tongue, they were glad to get a chance to practice. After a few words, one of the parents mentioned that the children had been based in "Nor-wich". I took the teaching moment and said that the stress is different; the town is called "Norich", with the w silent. I added that there are other places in England like Nantwich and Middlewich where the "wich" is clearly pronounced. Grateful for the correction, the daughter quickly wanted to impress with her knowledge: "So, it's 'witch', like a wizard?". I had to tell her no, and then explain the origin. In medieval England a "wich" was somewhere with a brine spring or well, that produced salt (see link), and as with many place names had Roman origins (in this case "vicus").

Now, where does this family live in France? They live in La Rochelle, right next to L'Ile de Ré, which is famous as an old salt harvesting area, where people collected "white gold" (see reference).

And from which part of the world does my wife hail? Well, on the maternal side her family is from Great Inagua in The Bahamas.This large island, about 4 times the size of Barbados and just north of Cuba, has the main facilty for the Morton Company's production of sea salt (see reference).

So, we did not have to go far to find some good connections. Although salt is an essential ingredient to human existence, and used to be an important basis for economic activity, that's long changed. So, it's quite strange to find this saline solution to a six degrees puzzle, which has its answer stretching across continents, cultures, and several thousand years.

French lessons.

Here I am in France. Land of Voltaire and men of great writing and learning. Land of Roquefort and Pont l'Eveque, the cheese that smells so bad yet tastes so good. Land of women of great style and elegance. Land of all the wines I love and men of great learning, accents of romance, et cetera, et cetera. France is for the French and if you are not French or do not speak French, too bad. The French guard their ways and their language ferociously; they have l'Academie Française (the French Academy) for this purpose--the language police. They have rules about what names can legally be giiven to children at birth. So, you cna't just name your child Raswhanda or some such now loved as "super black"; even the simple Megan does not work for the Frnech because it's the name of a Renalut car model. The latest battle to save the language is in the realm of text messaging. Even the president was forced to comment as young and old texters write A2M1 ("à demain"—à-deux-m-un, meaning "see you tomorrow"), or Koi29 ("quoi de neuf?" = "what's new?") on their phones (see others). The French like their language use to be orderly.

But in all that love of order there is often chaos: they are often on strike, for example. Last week the fishermen were on strike: picking bones about something like scales for pay. Next week public sector workers will be on strike. The truck drivers and teachers seem to be on strike very often. Don't be surprised to find the farmers blocking traffic with cow dung heaps in the road. But France functions.

Many other aspects of la vie française demand quite an adjustment. I forget but am quickly reminded that in France it costs (a lot) to go to the toilet, and if you have no money or no change, you had better be carrying spare underwear. So, at le pissoir be accustomed to be told to piss off if you have no euros, and don't be a jackass and ask if they take credit cards.

A lot of France is high-tech, so at the Metro stations there are no people selling tickets only machines. No cash? Too bad. But entrepreneurs are there. They buy the books of 10 tickets at reduced prices and sell them at euro 1.50 each (US$ 3) as for individual tickets from the machine. That way you avoid the queue, and if you are a tourist with pounds or dollars then you can get a ticket without having to find a bank, ATM or exchange bureau. Bajan dollars? Get real. I gave US$ 2 in bills and the seller did not want coins, so I got my ticket at reduced rate. Yes! But high-tech France has old time Paris as its capital, and like London it is largely in the 19th century. So, again, at the underground train stations one has lots of stairs to climb and descend . I am now very strong but my arms are very tired. (I think that's why my tennis had less game this morning, not my inability to slide on clay courts.)

So, when I got off the high train from London at Gare du Nord, I took the Metro to Gare Montparnasse and found my way from the Metro to the grandes lignes (main lines) for the TGV (express train), heavy suitcase rolling alongside like a dog. But after two hours or so on the train I was dying for the toilet. I had tried on the train but a lady had decided to sit and die in the toilet nearest my seat. No, I did not have 50 euro centimes. So, where is the guichet (ATM)? Oh, over there. Found it. Thank goodness for ATM cards; not those from Barbados, which work only in Broad Street or Sheraton, but my US bank card. Cash in hand, I quickly bought un sandwich (sorry for the French language police who have no word for this). Armed with change I hit the stalls. There's no need for too much detail, but I immediately had a moment of fright and regret. I remembered that it was in France that I had first come across “squat box” public toilets, where there is only a hole in the ground, and the fast-running river nearby, was fast-running for good reason. That first experience, in my student days, had been traumatic, not for me but for a friend, who in squatting forgot that she had her purse in her back pocket and down it went into the hole and into the river...all of her money gone. “Oh shit!” she had screamed. Expensive shit, I had thought. A very interesting police report and a story for life. But, we have moved on since. Thankfully, in Paris, WC now means water closets not wallet catcher. But, imagine, in France you pay to drink the beer and you pay to get rid of the beer afterwards--in for a pound out for quite a few pennies. In Barbados you pay for the beer, get rid of it for free afterwards and get a refund on the bottle.

But for all its quirks I love France. I used to go there for holidays often as a boy. I had learned French easily as a boy at secondary school--we don't realize in the Caribbean that speaking patois and stardard langauge makes us effectively bilingual, and learning a third or more language is easy. I love many things French, especially the food. My weakness is French patisserie. But I love things like all the varieties of sausages--both those which are dried and eaten cold, and those that have to be cooked. The regional varieties of wine, especially if I can spend two weeks touring and tasting all day. The sea food--mussels, sardines, oysters. Real French fries. There is a good reason why the French can say "bon appetit" and English does not have a similar phrase.

I love the gentleness of French manners. Do not be surprised to see people greet each other warmly. That means at least a kiss on the cheeks, between everyone, even on first meeting. We in the Caribbean would blink hard to see a father kiss his son as well as his daughters and wife when they meet. It is regarded as very rude to enter a room and not greet people; this is a common thread with Barbados' "you find me here so it's you who should greet me".

So, I will enjoy my next 10 days here enjoying again the quirks (including the many complications of using my friend's French keyboard) and all the things I like.