Category: France

France and the euro: The time-bomb at the heart of Europe | The Economist

The economist thinks that the French economy is a time-bomb at the heart of Europe. French politicians are not happy about it. French people are probably too blind to think objectively. I hope it’s not true. But I think they could have a point.

France and the euro: The time-bomb at the heart of Europe | The Economist.

A Welsh chapel in Brittany! Paimpol Baptist church

On Monday morning, I had the great privilege to attend a meeting in Paimpol Baptist Church. It was built by Caradoc Jones, a Welsh missionary. It’s modeled after Gabalfa Baptist church in Cardiff, where Caradoc Jones had been a Pastor. It looks exactly like a Welsh chapel. I really felt at home.

 

 

The problem with French secular culture

French people have a very strong sense of privacy. Many things are private, and according to proper etiquette you should never ask questions about these. Often, you don’t ask for people’s names when you meet them. You certainly won’t ask them what they do for a living, how much they earn… When you grow up in France, you learn to discern these things and to work them out for yourself indirectly, from the clues you can gather, or from someone else.

But there is one subject that make people really uneasy. this subject is religion. You never talk about religion with anyone. This is one of the most private things. It means that unless the people you meet follow a religion that has some visible outward signs, you just can’t know if people are religious or not. It makes talking about spiritual things very awkward I find.

On Friday morning, I was with our stand on the market when one of the dad’s from our children’s school came up to me and started chatting; He is very friendly guy, knows half the school. He is always a gentlemen with ladies. But I would never have thought the guy and his family were practicing Roman Catholics. They are involved in te local Parish and go to mass regularly. I can’t say I am surprised, but I would never have imagined this man was religious.

Having been brought up in a context where you never talk about faith with anyone, I just take it for granted that most people are not going to church anymore. But meeting that guy on the market was encouraging.

 

French schools and health and safety, an experience

I am still laughing about it. When I went to get the children in school on Monday at lunchtime, Maxime’s teacher came out to apologize and let me know he had cut himself while preparing a crumble. There was not much to be honest, so I just smiled. What will be of interest to the British folks is that we had not been told that they would be cooking that morning.

I imagine that if we had been in the UK, we would have been asked if Maxime could take part in the cooking that morning. We would have been asked if he could taste the result of their cooking. Then, after he cut himself, I would have had a note about what had been done as a result. That’s crazy.

That’s one of the things I like about being here. There’s much less fuss on health and safety than there is in the UK. That doesn’t mean people don’t care about health and safety. They do. But they are much more relaxed about it and accept that accidents do happen. And when an accident happen, we let the insurance deal with it.