Postcards from an aggressively French summer
Before stepping into the Rentrée
Dear Friend,
I hope you are well.
First, please accept my apologies for not writing for a few weeks, practically taking August off in true French style!
I find that tardiness with writing Pen Friend letters is a compounding problem – the longer I don’t write it, the more shame I feel about being late to write it, and then when I think about writing it I think not about the writing, but the accumulating pile of shame.
Well, shame be gone: August is over and it’s time to get back to my desk! But first, let’s have a quick catch-up.
Earlier this month I celebrated my birthday with dear friends at ‘Chez Gégène’, a traditional ‘guinguette’ – an indoor-outdoor party venue most popular in the 19th century – in Joinville-le-Pont, a leafy suburb just east of Paris along the Marne river. The waterside restaurant, a long and low building with red awnings, traditional red-and-white chequered tablecloths and a huge, slightly disconcerting, cutout of a chef on the roof – has been there since 1918. The proprietors, a middle-aged couple, are an intriguing combination of hearty and gruff, and just for good measure there is an ambient accordion player. One friend described the location as “aggressively French”.
As I have written about before, I am currently in the process of applying for French nationality. At the moment I’m busy studying a booklet called ‘le carnet du citoyen’, which acts as a guide to subject matter ranging from France’s impressively complicated regional, departmental and local administration structure, to the values of the French Revolution.
Overall, I consider myself pretty well-versed in Frenchness, but even at this late stage I find there are always new mistakes to be made, as I discovered at Chez Gégène on my birthday.
After we scoffed down generous portions of moules-frites and confit de canard, the gruff proprietress asked our group if we would like a dessert. However, what I didn’t know was that she had already pre-arranged with my boyfriend to serve us a giant strawberry tart at the end of the meal as a celebration.
Ignorant of her plan, and taking her offer of choice at face-value, I replied, “Oui super,” following up by asking if we might see the dessert menu.
“Non madame, let me tell you what we have: we have a crème brûlée, profiteroles, a rum baba and an exceptional tarte aux fraises (strawberry tart).”
“Ah ok,” I replied, “maybe we’ll get the…”
“Non madame !,” she interjected, “you will get the strawberry tart. You will see — it is une tuerie” (killer/ a killing).
“Ok,” I said, defeated and confused.
A few minutes later, the proprietress came back with a phenomenally huge strawberry tart which was topped with a sparkler, while our table sang ‘happy birthday’. It was delightful. As the sparkler burned out, I carefully removed it from the fruity, gelatinous service, grabbed a nearby knife and started cutting approximative, rather messy slices for the table. It was my birthday cake after all.
A couple of minutes after that, a waiter came back to our table and with an elusive smile, picked up the large pie dish and removed it from the table, swiftly disappearing into the insides of Chez Gégene. My friend Fiona, who had been sitting closer to the waiters, said she had heard someone say they were going to bring us each a plated portion with chantilly cream.
But ten minutes later, no waiter had returned with the portions. We were dessert-less and waiting. Finally the same young waiter who had smiled on removing the tart brought it back and placed it in front of me. It was exactly the same as it had been when he took it, and unplated. As a group, we contemplated the tart, not too sure what was to be done next.
By and by, the gruff proprietress, clearly the restaurant’s highest authority, came back. By now I had inferred that I had committed an error with my enthusiastic pie-cutting.
“Sorry I cut the tart”, I said to the proprietor.
“Oh! C’est vous qui avez fait ce CARNAGE !?”,
she said -
“Oh, it’s you that made this CARNAGE!?”
“You are lucky it is your birthday…”, she continued, her face grave. “We have never seen anything like it. We were unable to plate it - it would not have been right.”
After a series of complex negotiations, the proprietress agreed to at least bring us some plates so that I could serve my own carnage to my guests. While this was happening, we saw some non-carnage portions come out for service, perfect wedge triangles with an elegant swirl of chantilly cream on each side. I asked if we might too have some of this cream for our now humiliated tart.
“Ok,” said the guinguette boss, “but I am afraid I will have to charge it as a supplement”. A sacrilege tax, which we agreed to pay.
It was a lesson, fittingly delivered on my birthday, to never get too confident or complacent, because when it comes to the eternal exigences and mysteries of being French, there is always more to learn.
Visiting Joinville
The leafy suburb is a short ride on the suburban RER A train from Paris. We walked along the Marne river to Chez Gégène on a path also populated by local dog-walkers and lycra-clad cyclists. We were 11 adults, a baby and two dogs. Next, our group migrated to the jetty of a little free taxi-boat run by a local charity, which took us across the river to Nogent-sur-Marne. Nogent is also home to Lighthouse, a wonderful cultural centre founded by my dear friend, writer and illustrator
.On my birthday visit, we went to see Pavillon Baltard, a huge steel and glass structure that was once the poultry and egg market at Les Halles, the food wholesale food market that covered the district of the same name in Paris for centuries until the early 1970s, when it was moved out to the southern suburb of Rungis. After examining this incongruous but pleasing sight, we sat for a few minutes in a little seating area called ‘Square de la francophonie’ (French speakers’ square). After this we walked back towards Joinville station along a more rustic path on the other side of the river.
On our way back to the station we made a short visit to Ile Fanac via a bridge, which has several dozen beautiful large houses with long gardens that back into the Marne. Most locals seem to have a little rowing boat to give them quicker access to the shore. We saw one family rowing themselves across the river with two suitcases in their boat. Reaching the shore, they merrily called across to us: “We live on an island but we’re going on holiday!”. They then removed their suitcases from the boat, loaded them into their car, which was parked on the shore, and set off for les vacances.
A sassy welcome in Cassis — and an unexpected friend
Just after the Olympics ended, I went with my dear friend Anna to Cassis, a picturesque fishing port town a few miles along the coast from Marseilles. According to locals, the last ‘s’ is not pronounced, in contrast to the fruit of the same name, whose ‘s’ is pronounced.
We stayed in an Airbnb close to the beach at which we were chastised on arrival by a woman resident in the compound, who seemed to be fighting an ongoing battle with holiday-let hosts, and maybe the world. As we retrieved the apartment key from a key-box in a bush, as instructed, she approached us with intent, asking the name of our host and then before we could answer, peering over my friend Anna’s shoulder to read her message. “Sorry!”, she said, “it’s not against you! But these keys should not be in the bush!”.
After this though, we found Cassis and its people to be lovely. We visited the same coffee shop, Grain de Folie, every morning, where my dog Babbet quickly became a celebrity and received treats on arrival. We went for a morning run through the vineyards in the back country and swam every day. We did a big walk to the Calanques, the specific name for the particular kind of cliff creeks found between Marseille and Cassis. We shopped at the local market and bought some extortionate but nonetheless delicious sun-dried tomato paste, which we then slathered on potatoes and green beans for lunch. We met a man who sells honey and mead who seemed to be a picture of contentment. We also watched a documentary of the opening ceremony of the Olympics, to allay our nostalgia.
I was writing this newsletter and drawing the illustrations on the train back from Nice and I got talking to the older gentleman sitting next to me, who was amazed by the capability of Procreate, the sketchbook application I use to do my digital artwork.
“I’m so sorry to bother you,” he said, “but this is magic”.
He explained that he used to work in typography and graphic design and that technology of this kind would have been unimaginable during his working life. Now 89 years-old and retired in Normandy, he says he still remains curious about new technology and enthusiastically took down the name of the app.
We realised that our respective birthdays were just four days apart in August. I explained that I had celebrated my birthday in Joinville-le-Pont at Chez Gégène, which he knew about from the famous song — and he told me that he marked his birthday by sailing to Guernsey, where I visited earlier this year for an article. “You had a French birthday and I had a British one!”, he commented.
As I made the Cassis postcard, we spoke about the town and he recounted a time he had sailed there 30 years ago. I showed him my photograph of the Calanques (the one I’ve used in the postcard) and he commented:
“Si c’est pas le bonheur, ça y ressemble beaucoup, quand même”
“If that’s not happiness, then it certainly looks a lot like it”
Looking down on the Riviera in Le Cannet and Mougins
This weekend I went for a second trip down south accompanied by my dog Babbet, with a work assignment and some plans to meet up with different friends. I spent two nights staying at MOB Hotel in Cannes for an article. It’s a new opening from a small hotel group I know from Paris, or more specifically Saint-Ouen, the suburb just to the north of the capital that contains the ginormous Les Puces flea market.
Their idea is to create chic but inviting spaces in areas that are outside of the main city, which means they are less expensive than an equivalent hotel would be more centrally. This new hotel in Cannes is located in a residential area up the hill about twenty minutes’ walk uphill from the glitzy coastline, with its high-end designer boutiques, casino and grand palace hotels.
In the other direction from the hotel is the small hillside town Le Cannet. It feels a world away from the riviera and much more like a Provençal village, with a terraced view and narrow streets lined with small, arty shops. On the hotel’s recommendation I ate lunch at Racine, a fancy bistro opposite the Musée Bonnard at the entrance of the town. I ate pasta with slow-cooked tomato sauce and a generous ball of burrata. It was delightful.
While staying in Cannes, I went over to look at another hotel, Le Mas Candille, further up the peaks behind the sea, by the village of Mougins. The sprawling provençal farmhouse hotel was previously under British ownership before being bought in a joint venture by a French entrepreneur and the Clarins cosmetics company.
The whole farmhouse has been sumptuously redesigned and is an elegant mix of Provence charm and polished Art Deco cool. There, I met up with my cousin’s cousin, Laura, who has also become my friend, and her husband Rich, as well as two dogs they’re dog-sitting, Harvey and Thibault. We made a lively bunch for lunch with our one-to-one dog-to-person ratio. We ate a top-notch salade niçoise, accompanied by pannise, chunky sort-of chips made from chickpea flour; for dessert we had a very swanky tarte Tropézienne, the creamy pastry reportedly invented by Brigitte Bardot while filiming ‘And God Created Woman’.
We then went and had a wander around Mougins village where we came across FAMM, a museum dedicated to women artists, featuring some lesser-known creations from very famous names like Frida Kahlo, Lee Krasner, Jenny Saville and Tracey Emmin.
Learning to leave a wake in Grasse
After this first section of the trip, Babbet, my baggage and I got onto the 662 bus, which we rode for a little under an hour to arrive at Grasse, where I was meeting up with my friends Colette and Taryl (I also mentioned them in my last letter as they visited during the Olympics). The town is famous as a centre for perfume production, the WORLD capital of perfume making, according to France at least. Flowers — such as roses, jasmine, lavender, mimosa and orange blossom — grow abundantly here thanks to its warm climate, ample water sources and hillside elevation. Huge companies like Dior and Chanel use essences made in Grasse, and it’s home to a prestigious school for trainee nez (‘noses’ - specialised perfume designers).
The town first specialised in leather tanning in the Middle Ages, producing a beautiful but rather smelly variety of hide. In the 1500s, Grasse tanners had the idea of creating perfumed gloves and offered a pair to the Italian queen of France, Catherine de' Medici, who in turn promoted them to the royal court and quickly had them trending. The tanners pivoted first to scented glove making (Louis XIII even set up a guild of glovemaker-parfumeurs!), before eventually specialising solely in perfume-making.
In the centuries that followed, famous perfume houses Molinard and Galimaed were established. Today the perfume industry is still the most significant employer in town, but not at the same level as before, as many perfumes are now made with a more industrialised process. The factories have also branched out into perfumes for household products, as well as food flavouring.
We visited the Musée Fragonard, which sits within the old town. Fragonard shops and even a Fragonard-branded little tourist train are everywhere in Grasse. The name originally became famous in the 1700s when Grasse-born boy Jean-Honoré Fragonard, son of a glovemaker, became a renowned court painter. It was in homage to him that entrepreneur Eugène Fuchs named his perfume business, which was founded in 1926.
The museum is free to enter and they even allowed my dog Babbet to visit too. Inside we learned about how jasmine flowers used to be picked by hand at dawn and placed one by one in a special glass frame containing animal fat, which would slowly extract their perfume. Our guide also told us some insider perfume tips, for example:
You should apparently spray perfume on the backs of your knees to leave a fragrant wake(!), and;
To re-set your nose after lots of different scent-sniffing, it is best to smell you own skin because the smell is neutral to you. Either this is strange but true or the guide got a chuckle out of watching us all sniff our own elbows.
The town of Grasse itself is criss-crossed with little alleyways and staircases and is a place of contrasting atmospheres: busy in the day, quiet at night; posh in the main squares and a bit dodgy feeling in the shaded side-alleys.
The views are magnificent.
You can read my Telegraph Travel guide to the French Riviera here. If you’d like tips on restaurants or etc. in any of the places mentioned, please feel free to write to me.
Thirty-second book club
I am pleased to be in a good reading rhythm recently.
I finished the Edna O’Brien ‘Country Girls’ trilogy, culminating with a volume ironically titled the ‘Girls in Their Married Bliss’.
After that I read a couple of books that I have been meaning to read for a while including La Carte Postale (The Postcard) by French writer Anne Berest. The book recounts the history of one branch of the author’s family, all of whom but her grandmother were deported and killed in Auschwitz during the occupation of France in World War Two. The story begins when her mother, the daughter of the daughter who survived, receives an anonymous postcard with the first names of all the family members who died. This strange event acts as a frame for the author to explore what happened to her grandmother’s family, as well as her own present-day identity as someone who is Jewish-ish (my term, not the author’s).
After that, I read the manuscript of a novel by a dear family member. I had the honour of being the first reader, I have now passed it onto a second, and I hope there will be more.
It is time now to get stuck in to my favourite Parisian time of year, La Rentrée! I wrote this about the season of re-entry back in August 2022, in the second-ever Pen Friend letter. This means I have now been writing the letters for two years! Thank you very much for being my pen friend, whether you’ve been reading since then or signed up more recently.
Harnessing the rentrée energy, this week, I will go to two Paralympic events — basketball and athletics — and enjoy the last of the joyful sporting atmosphere that this summer has brought.
In French politics, things are much less rosy. After calling a fractious parliamentary election at the start of summer, President Macron has spent the time since delaying the formation of the resulting fractious government.
At the time of writing, the president rejected the prime ministerial nomination of the Nouveau Front Populaire, the left coalition that got the largest share of the vote (though still far from a majority) in the elections. They had nominated Lucie Castet, a civil servant and economist. Since then, he has been summoning all-stars of the traditionally mainstream parties on the right and left for meetings, including former president and his own former boss François Hollande. It looks a bit like the finale of The Apprentice except the boss no longer controls the company he’s hiring for.
In the next Pen Friend, we will dive into these political machinations, and also lay out some things to look forward to this autumn in Paris, as it’s not only back-to-school season, but also a time for new exhibitions and plenty of cultural happenings.
Thank you for being my pen friend. As ever, if you found this letter interesting or diverting, please feel free to share it with a friend of yours. Please do also write back in the comments or by email.
Have a lovely first week of rentrée!
Yours,
Hannah
Happy birthday, Hannah!
Very much enjoyed reading of the pie incident. I would have done the same.
"Aggressively French" is a great saying.
For a moment, I totally thought the picture behind the honey man was actually the backdrop.
"the longer I don’t write it, the more shame I feel about being late to write it, and then when I think about writing it I think not about the writing, but the accumulating pile of shame." -- don't worry, I feel *exactly* the same with my own writing of late!
Happy Birthday!!!! This letter was worth the wait!!“
One friend described the location as ‘aggressively French’.” Great description! LOL!!!
The waterside restaurant, a long and low building with red awnings, traditional red-and-white chequered tablecloths and a huge, slightly disconcerting, cutout of a chef on the roof…
LOve the Big Chef!! https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-ITiwSl00L0T7kVWeJKpNPMECnE3h2JP/view?usp=sharing
“Non madame !,” she interjected, “you will get the strawberry tart. You will see — it is une tuerie” (killer/ a killing).” Soooooo funny!!!
“Oh, it’s you that made this CARNAGE!?” EVEN FUNNIER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
“Les Halles” Le Ventre de Paris
“Happy honey man. NB: His backdrop of the sea is a poster, but the nearby sea does actually look like this” Nota Bene! Well played, Hannah!! That makes a corner office overlooking Central Park look pitiful. Simply magnificent!
“If that’s not happiness, then it certainly looks a lot like it” I might paraphrase a line from the movie, “His Girl Friday”: “If that’s not happiness, it’ll do until happiness comes along.”
“You should apparently spray perfume on the backs of your knees to leave a fragrant wake(!), and…” WOW!! That woke up the ghosts!
I remember the PenFriend letter where you 1st mentioned rentrée!
Your sketches in this are wonderful and some of your best!!