We're All Going on a Summer Holiday

They are setting up the sound systems at the fire stations across France for tonight's Bastille Day dances. President Chirac is holding his annual garden party at the Elysée Palace tomorrow and Paris is leaving town for les grandes vacances -- at least in spirit.

For all France's horror of being forced to conform to a globalised world, it still manages to keep its tradition of switching off in summer. In reality, people are taking shorter holidays than the old days when families would spend August at the country house, hotel or campsite. The average grandes vacances have fallen to two weeks from three weeks a decade ago and factories no longer shut down for the duration. People make far more trips in other periods of the year, thanks to the world's shortest working hours.  Yet, happily, the rituals of French summer remain unchanged. Even if people are at work, the country is mentally off duty from mid-July to la rentrée in the last week of August.

The ritual starts when the media open a truce with the politicians and television, radio and newspapers switch to summer schedules, playing music and running features on sex, travel and culture instead of news. The Tour de France cycle race is on to remind the French of their sumptuous geography. Stock market reports are replaced by waves on the seashore, the call of cicadas and the click of boules. Chat show guests are asked: "Etes-vous plutôt plage ou plutôt montagne?" (Are you a beach or a mountain person?)

Tonight the great southward transhumance gets seriously under way. With a gorgeous country of their own, the French mainly vacation inside their frontiers, like Americans. The drawback is being joined by millions of foreigners escaping from less blessed lands --  and often pulling caravans behind them if they are Dutch, Belgian or British. France receives more visitors than any other country in the world. The sheer number partly explains the country's reputation for welcoming non-French-speaking tourists with something less than enthusiasm. 

The great Gallic summer may be a bit of an illusion, since one third of the French take no holiday and a majority are at work for most of la période estivale. Yet the pretence -- kept up in the capital by Mayor Delanoe's Paris Plage -- is healthy. People slow down. They are more civil and everyone takes a little more time to enjoy life. This even applies to the upper reaches of the business world which have adopted the 24/7 mentality of les Anglo-Saxons -- including pre-dawn meetings and zero lunch-break. In New York or London you pretend to keep up the normal pace. You minimise your absence and put in extra hours to cover the break. In Paris it is still okay to take time out with the family and the cicadas.....

Which I shall be doing for a couple of weeks from Saturday. But, being a good Anglo-Saxon, I should point out that I'll while away I'll be on call for any urgent stories, I shall be following the news from my place in the Cévennes and of course keeping up the blog.

Comments

[Frank Schnittger]

You deserve a Knighthood, Sir Charles, for the sacrifices you make for us mere bloggers. I had a word with Lord Levy, but he appears to be otherwise preoccupied.

Please make sure your family see a bit more of you - and also get more time on the computer to play games etc. I see you’ve really been winding down since the end of June – writing about football and such like. I wouldn’t knock it, if it saves you from having to moderate over 100 intemperate posts per thread!

When you return to your desk, can I suggest a feature on why Mosquitoes only bite at dusk and dawn, and why they don’t carry the Aids virus from host to host. Perhaps something on the joys of nudist bathing and the inroads made on French cuisine by various ethnic and “fusion” based imports. A contemplation on the finer delights of local vintages and cheese would be acceptable, but spare us your thoughts on whether one should shave bodily hair as one grows older.

Pace yourself, break yourself back in gently, and do not concern yourself over much as to whether De Villepin’s (who?) goose is truly pâté/passé.

If you need someone to stir things up in your absence, give me a call. Otherwise just treat yourself to some diversions. As they say in the Anglo-American vernacular - you’re worth it.

[Newscoverage]

How well analyzed. Living abroad and watching the French news, I am always fascinated by the seamless switch in topics for ANY vacation period (summer , winter, easter, long week-ends) from world or country-impacting topics to the mandatory 3 or 4 topics on vacations : ritual views of the train stations with harried travellers, ritual shots of campsites, ritual reports of farmer's markets. Very effective to carry on the fiction that : French travel by train or car (flying if for Americans); they spend vacation in a caravan on a campsite (we are poor yet bold you see); and we do good food. WHich after all brings $$$$$ and keeps the deficit manageable.

[Peter]

C.B.
Do enjoy your time off, but please, if you or another of the bloggers might post something about the social relationship between fire companies and the Bastile day dances. I have seen photographs of these by Cartier-Bresson, Doisneau and others and as a volunteer 'sapeur-pompier' I am interested if this continues as a community event.
Enjoy!

[Tara Lane]

You wrote that "of course" you'd be keeping up with your blog, and I feel I'd be remiss were I not to point out that there's nothing "of course" about it; we'd all be sad - - but we'd understand- -were you to put family and holiday before work.

I enjoy every chance I get to check in on this blog, but even I'm not so selfish that I couldn't live without this blog for a few weeks, nor so fickle that I'd forget about your writing in the space of a month.

[colin grayson]

anyone else noticed the arrival of the non-family holiday ?
here in the countryside 20 years ago, the arrival of families for a month was the norm ; now that the country is increasinly divided into the privileged [ functionaires ] , and the non privileged , the reality of 2 working parents has brought about the necessity for them to take their holidays at different times in order to provide adequate child care in the school holiday period
not doubt in the bourgeois circles in which times correspondants move this is not necessary , but we hoi polloi ........!

[Rishi]

Good one.

[GAG]

Official figures show that France receives more tourists than any other country in the world. Apparently many of these visitors are only travelling through France. For instance; many Northern Europeans travel by car to reach other destinations such as Spain and Portugal. Some experts believe that up to 20% of visitors to France every year are itinerant and stay for a maximum of 2 to 3 days, having no other choice.
GAG

[Richard Jones]

Dear GAG,

Often there is no choice because something is on strike - SNCF etc. etc. Worse than Italy in the 80's, wherein one was often touristically incarcerated on one's way to Greece.

[Robert Marchenoir]

Have a nice holiday, Mr. Bremner.

I am sure we would all love to see you post regularly this summer, but I am told that slavery has been abolished, even for blogging journalists. So we will certainly not be antagonized by your going into snooze mode for a while.

If the Times people object, you could always use the no Wi-fi/no broadband/no Internet access/no electricity/no running water-in-this-backward-corner-of-French-wilderness excuse.

[Francesca Tereshkova]

Lucky you, escaping from Paris for the summer. For some uniquely Parisian summer holiday adventures (thanks to the artifical beach), see my blog at http//goodbyelafrance.blogspot.com

Francesca

[Edward Johns]

It's a shame that the long summer break mentality in France is gradually being diminished by exposure to the "corpocracy" led states elsewhere in the Western World.
The more relaxed, less Mammon-driven world that the French once enjoyed is disappearing at a worrying rate. The French did very well to resist for so long. That's economic reality I suppose.

[Robert Marchenoir]

"The long summer break mentality of the French" originates partly in the need to free children from school, in order for them to help with harvest in the fields.

Hardly "anti-Mammon" stuff, rather "pro-work", you see. And children's work at that, which would have contemporary do-gooders howl with outrage.

Of course, children have stopped helping with harvests eons ago, huge machines do it instead, only a tiny part of the population is employed in agriculture, and wheat growers are big corporations, rather than romanticized, small-time peasants.

But the looong summer school holiday remains, and gives the beat for the whole country.

People do not even use it any more. Rather, they tend to leave for two weeks, three at the most. No more one-month escapes, or even two months for non-working mothers and children. That particular sub-species of humanity has all but disappeared, anyway.

That is not a novel form of slavery imposed by biiig corporations, either. Most people chose to take looong extended weekends and one-week vacations during the rest of the year. Their holiday trips are shorter, but more frequent.

These combined tendencies have been at work for roughly a century. French schools have yet to notice. That is French conservatism for you, supported by neo-marxist justifications ("We are against Mammon and always will be", etc).

At the same time, French pupils struggle to master the basics of education during a schoolyear which is too short, and parents routinely break the law and aggravate the situation by taking their children out of school before the official summer recess, in order to profit from lower rates for holiday packages (same thing in Britain). That is where Mammon really kicks in.

Also, parents struggle with elaborate arrangements in order to look after their chldren during school holidays, which are totally disconnected nowadays with the country's work practices, since two-job families are the norm.

And nobody even suggests the only reasonable thing, which would be to shorten the school summer holiday, and bring it on par with people's actual practices.

That would be too easy, too pragmatic, too Anglo-Saxon.

Incidentally, it would also shorten the holidays of teachers, one of the most formidable union strongholds in France.

Which explains that even airing the idea is a big taboo.

[Frank Schnittger]

People used to come to Ireland for their holidays for the friendliness of the welcome and the much slower pace of life which was apparent throughout the countryside. In those idyllic days we didn't have a word which conveyed quite the sense of urgency of the Spanish word "mañana".

My father, a German engineer and industrialist, couldn't get used to a culture where half his workforce wouldn't show up on a fine summers day. "They're out saving the hay" was the usual explanation - although often it seemed more likely they were having a flutter on the horses or saving themselves after a hard night on the beer….

A well known Labour politician is famous for having made two predictions, at least the second of which never came to pass. “The seventies will be socialist” was the first. The second was that the advent of new technology would free people from the “tyranny of work”.

Where once there was one ”bread earner” in the family (if he happened to be employed) and a full-time “housewife” to make the tea and raise innumerable children. We now have both parents employed full time – spending several additional hours stuck in gridlock commuting increasing distances to and from work. Child minding is increasing “outsourced”.

The welcoming smile of the waitress or barman is more likely to be that of the Polish immigrant. The countryside is dotted with new houses which are going up at the rate of 100,000 a year (compared to 200,000 for the whole of Britain – which has over 15 times the population). On one measure we are now the second wealthiest country in the world (after Japan) with an average net worth per Irish resident of 150,000 Euro compared to 90,000 for Germany. (The Irish figure is greatly inflated by a bubble in the property market, but nevertheless the turnaround over the past few years is astonishing).

And yet, and yet…. Have we lost more than we have gained?

Don’t get me wrong. The Seventies were anything but idyllic. High unemployment, emigration, inflation, huge inefficiencies in the public sector, rampant restrictive practices in industry, and the festering sore of sectarianism and terrorism in Northern Ireland. Perhaps the welcoming smile was more a sigh of relief that we were meeting someone from beyond this benighted Isle.

But we have also lost a sense of a more measured pace of life not dedicated almost exclusively to achieving all the things that a consumer society says we need in order to be happy. The French should hang on to the tradition of a longer summer break in the countryside for as long as they can. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, but for me, a trip to the sea side is still what life is all about.

[GAG]

Robert Marchenoir is quite correct. The idea that the average French person takes a long Summer break is pure fiction. Two weeks is the norm. Except for teachers of course. Long summer holidays appear to be their God given right. But there again, everyone knows that the education system is constructed around teacher’s requirements. The children always come second. And no-one speaks about parent’s rights.
GAG

[Edward Johns]

Hi again Robert,
my friend here in Brittany(she is English) is trying to complete the construction of holiday accommodation in time for the booked clients who are due in a couple of weeks.
The plumber who she took on for this project is about to take a five week summer break. Only one example of the difference between France and other parts of the Western world I know but my own experiences here tend to support the feeling that the provider of services dictates to the customer what will be done and when.
(I once contacted a dozen roofing companies for work on my house--only one of them provided a devis, not surprisingly he got the job, not surprisingly also,it was substandard) Perhaps Brittany differs from the remainder of France ?

[Robert Marchenoir]

Hello Edwards,

You are right in saying that service providers here work mostly according to their needs, not the client's. Plumbers are a very sought-after species, so I am not surprised yours takes a five-week holiday.

However, refusing to submit a devis for a job exceeding a few hundred euros is very unusual, and probably even illegal. I have never seen that in Paris, where tradesmen are not easy to come by. Is it possible that there might be a whiff of "let's rip-off the foreigners" here? Have you checked with the locals about the standard practices in your place?

On the subject of tradesmen, though, I have to say that the horror stories filtering from British shores seem much, much worse than the habits of our local plumbers, electricians or painters, however objectionable the latter may be.

[Frank Schnittger]

I can only speak for Ireland where tradesmen are also often very difficult to find - especially for small/messy jobs. It seems to me that the capitalist laws of supply and demand don't always work - certainly the supply seems inadequate given the demand. Perhaps prices will have to rise even further for supply to match demand - or else we will have to become dependent on the "polish plumber" to do all those jobs nobody else wants.

However I also find the whinging about the difficulty of getting good tradesmen a little hard to take sometimes. There is, of course, no excuse for substandard work, or for tradesmen not showing when they said they would. However the people who do most of the whinging are often from the "professional" classes who think nothing of charging well over 100 Euro an hour for their services. And have you ever tried to get satisfaction if a doctor, solicitor, accountant or other white collar professional does a bad job? Even downright incompetence or corruption can be impossible to confront unless you have a lot of time and resources at your disposal.

It seems that services inflation - everything from the hairdresser to the dentist - is destined to rise ever higher. You have no idea how lucky you are that the NHS (and the French?) healthcare systems are largely publicly funded. People are flying from Ireland to Hungary to get dental treatment they can afford.

Having said all that, I can't agree more about teachers and the education system. Obviously from the point of view of families where both parents are working, school holidays should match working holidays and even working times as closely as possible - staggered regionally so that everybody isn't trying to go on holidays at the same time - and the sky high holiday prices that would produce.

However I wonder how children would feel about 5 weeks off school in a year? I think we would also have to move away from a very classroom centric concept of education. Lots of kids just can’t handle the classroom very well even as it is now. They would go berserk if they were confined to school for even longer hours/periods. Personally I think the internet offers huge opportunities for student centric learning where students follow on-line learning programmes at their own pace in a teacher supported/supervised environment.

Teaching used to be about the transmission of large volumes of “facts” at a standard pace to classes of mixed ability – and where the pace suited only the “middling” students. Covering coursework online would allow students to work at their own pace and allow teachers to focus more on those who need most help. Of course the teachers and their Unions might feel threatened by a change in the education process which put students first and removed teachers from centre stage.

You have teenage kids Charles - perhaps a topic for a future column?

[John Hornsby]

Teachers in France are always moaning - about marking, filling in reports, preparing lessons - even 'lycée' teachers doing an 18-hour week, no out-of-school activities, no supervision. Such grumblers should be packed off to a London comprehensive for a year. Not that working in a 'lycée' is so wonderful: one has to put up with awful colleagues and awful pupils (with notable exceptions).

[john gregory Flinn]

I'm afraid our summer holidays this year have been dramatically curtailed by our young dog, who became pregnant, resorted to living in a cardboard box, is single and likely to have black offspring!
This is a great worry for us who want to do the right thing by our errant youngsters (minature Dachsund)!
As if to add to our woes I had the misfortune to be struck down with severe toothache just before the Assumption weekend. I could not find a dentist open let alone one that would do emergency treatment!
I ended up asking my 'Medecin Traitant' where they did dental emergencies in France. He gave me a gallic shrug and advised me to buy the Voix du Nord and check the 'Dentiste en Garde' in the Arras area ( but only 'en garde' for the ferié, 15th). Which I did but she shut up shop at 11 hrs!
Luckily the medicaments my Doctor prescribed in case the problem was a root infection have worked, and I can afford to wait until next week when my Dentiste returns from her hols.

[john gregory Flinn]

Really Mr Bremner, your 'moderating' has rendered my first anecdote in my last post as arid as a Guardian censor's thesaurus.
What on earth is wrong with the feminine gender for the canine species? How can a dog - the male - get pregnant? What about the process leading to this condition?
Yours disgusted....!