Le Franco Phoney

Compared with the average French woman, I’m a fashion disaster. I do not, at least, get out on the street in twenty-year-old clothes that are faded and out-dated. Nor do I get on the piste in ski gear from the eighties, but plenty of others do. I know, I know: ski clothing is expensive, and if you go once a year, you can’t justify buying new gear every year. But maybe even every ten years would do. I’ve snapped lots of bad outfits, but I’ve chosen these three as examples (unfortunately similar in colours, but different in other ways) of how not to style yourself on the piste.

One-Piece Number 1

This couple still use skis from the late eighties/early nineties. At least they match the outfits. The outfits don’t look like any others around them, but they haven’t seemed to notice. What really gives them away, apart from the colour distribution, is the big pocket in the front of her outfit and the giant triangle pointing down on his. Advances in both ski technology and waterproof material (Gore-tex, anyone?) mean that this couple are doing themselves a bit of a disservice: shaped skis that have been around since about 1999 really are much easier to use, and well-worn twenty-year-old fabric is never going to have the warmth or protection of today’s material. And if anyone wants to defend their choice of ski by saying it’s ‘real skiing’, then they should probably be on old wooden skis with telemark bindings. Ski technology moved on with fashion.

If you must wear a one-piece please pull the trouser legs down over your boots. This will keep your buckles and boots dry and protected, stopping the buckles from icing up on cold days (they’re difficult to adjust like that), and saving your feet from getting wet from that ice melting and seeping through the shell.

One-Piece Number 2

Here are more unprotected boots, but this time at least the one-piece wearer has tried to pull the trouser legs over the boots. Many older one-pieces (like this faded one) suffer from this problem and I really don’t know why. The leg tightness unfortunately extends to other parts of the outfit, and the owner, a lady would you believe (head cut off to be kind), has done that common eighties thing of attaching a bum bag to store whatever it is she needs to take with her for the day. Bum bags were indeed all the rage in the eighties! I had two: a pastel purple one, and one made of black leather. When they went out of fashion, I took them to the charity shop. What makes an every-day fashion accessory that lost popularity by the nineties timeless if worn with a ski outfit? NOTHING. I’d like to ask this woman if she wears it down the street, perhaps in summer when she has no pockets available (much like the result of this figure-hugging one-piece), and if not, why not. What’s the difference?

One-Piece Number 3

This one is actually a man (heads again cut off on purpose, and thanks to my friend Tom for the photo) who isn’t even on the piste. In fact, he’s in St Jean de Sixt, which really is a village down the road from Le Grand Bornand and La Clusaz ski resorts. So why is he wearing a rather scary one-piece? Maybe he went skiing earlier, but what I don’t understand is that if he’s bothered to leave the resort and change his shoes, why not change out of his one piece at the same time, especially when he’s considering eating in a restaurant. I’ve seen this often recently: people will be shopping in La Clusaz in their ski outfit and with a dog on a lead, but no sign of ski equipment. Maybe they’re worried they’ll fall?

Don’t get me wrong: I’ve been all these people: I still have my 193cm straight skis in my shed, and I owned an O’Neil one-piece back in the nineties because I’d heard that one-pieces keep you extra warm, and, given Australia’s often wet snow conditions, I saw the value in that. Mine was a fluorescent mix of colours. I wore it once. It was badly designed (it didn’t keep me warm because the zip down the front wasn’t protected, leaving me with a wet line down my front); going to the toilet was very awkward; I was mistaken as a man by my own boyfriend at the time, and when I looked around even back then, I noticed that nobody else was wearing anything remotely similar. I’m not saying I want to conform, but at the same time, I don’t get around in Elizabethan dresses or Cindy Lauper hairstyles.

So, my advice, if you believe an Australian for fashion advice, is to throw away the one-piece and either buy a new one-piece if you must, or better still, settle on a jacket and pants. And if you’re still using your old straight skis, I dare you to hire some shaped skis just for a day and not love them.

Still to come: kid fashion, over-blinging it, and possibly something about novelty hats.

Shops here in the French Alps keep strange hours. For example, the supermarket in La Clusaz is closed from 12.30pm to 4.30pm, and rumour has it that the reason for this is so that tourists have to buy their lunch from the bakeries and restaurants and thus spend more money in town. In fact, most of La Clusaz closes for the inter-season months of May, October and November. And as I’ve written about in the past, convenience stores are more like inconvenience stores, while “fermeture exceptionelle” (unexpected closure) is a sign well used here in France, and one I’ve struck when attempting to go to a Chinese restaurant in Annecy, the post office in Bonneville and of course, the government office in Annecy for car registration. When I made it to the post office in St Jean de Sixt before it closed for the weekend at midday on a Saturday, I was then told that my item wouldn’t leave until Monday because nobody picks up the mail on the weekends. Shop keepers apparently have a comfortable life and they don’t need to open as often as I’d like them to.

So why am I still surprised to see this sign? Pictured here is a sign for a shop in Annecy called “Espace Déco” (a home decorations shop). The sign then reads:

Opening hours

Tuesday, Thursday, Friday: 12.30pm - 2.00pm

Monday, Wednesday, Saturday: by appointment or call (number blurred out by me)

So, that’s a total of four and a half hours per week for customers to just happen to walk past while the shop is open. Does anyone ever really bother to call a number just to touch an item for sale and discover its price? I’d feel kind of obliged to buy it if I hauled the shopkeeper out of bed or wherever just so I could browse a few serving trays. How are these shops still in business? The only reason I can think of is that people must think it’s more exclusive if the shop stays closed most of the time and then they make the effort to come back. I think I’ve found the most exclusive shop in the Alps.

This picture says it all. The French just take extra care with things. I’ve seen the painstaking preparation and presentation that can go into even the simplest of dishes served in a restaurant and the way that no roundabout can be left undecorated, but I really wasn’t prepared for this. Is there anything in the world more mundane than a drain pipe? Normally, no. This time, plenty.

If you’re curious, this drain pipe hangs from an equally ornate restaurant in St Jean de Sixt.

The Winter Olympic Games (les Jeux Olympiques in French) are in full swing, and I’ve been following the sports on French television. The French athletes have been a bit unlucky so far, and at first the commentators blamed it on badly-made courses. I think they’ve given up on that angle now but they certainly haven’t stopped saying: “Ooh la la”, nor the variation: “Ooh la la la la”, nor the variation of the variation: “Ooh la la la la la la”. Seriously, the commentators are la la laing so many times that I’m losing count. As the Men’s Cross-country Relay went on (and on and on)  last night, the commentators became more and more worried, using more “Ooh la la”s, when the Norwegian approached from fourth place, and eventually made it to second place, ousting the French team to fourth place. Vincent Vittoz from La Clusaz was in that team, and it was pretty much his last chance of winning an Olympic medal after many years of trying, so the commentators were hoping for him as much as I was that he would get at least a bronze. There’s still a chance he might get one because the French team have complained about Sweden (or is it Norway?) bringing two pairs of skis instead of one. If their complaint is successful, Vincent and the French team will move up to win bronze. And the commentators are sure to la la la themselves into oblivion if that happens.

Between the Ooh la las, it’s often difficult to hear much else because the commentators like talking over each other. During the replay of some figure skating last night, I wondered if they’d forgotten to turn off a few microphones as there were no less than four people talking at the same time. Really, I’m not joking: four people at once. The French do seem to have a knack of being able to talk and listen at the same time in everyday life, so such commentary probably shouldn’t surprise me as much as their moment of absolute silence when Ladies’ Downhill hopeful Marion Rolland hurt her knee and fell just seconds after she started her run. The French commentators had been excited about her run and they switched directly to her when she was getting ready to leave the gates. Bing! Off she goes! As she veered directly to her right and off the course, only one commentator let out a single, sad “Non”. Ten seconds must have passed before any of them could muster up the ability to speak. The catastrophe of another French athlete going down was just too much.

As I write this, the French are ranked equal sixth in the medal tally. Compare this with my native Australia — a country renowned for producing sporting champions, which has a whole three medals, putting them in sixteenth place. We’re better at summer sports really. Us Aussies are rapt with our best ever winter Olympics medal tally despite it being nowhere near the top-ranking countries. So, France, don’t fret: you’re doing alright. And may Vinny get that bronze.

St Jean de Sixt isn’t a big ski resort: it has one drag lift and one rope tow and nothing else. The five pistes include two greens, two blues and a red. Despite its diminutive size, I discovered that St Jean has its very own snow park, pictured.

I found this mini-kicker, which actually turned out to be a small toboggan course, behind St Jean Sport, one of the two ski shops in town. The guys who work there talked me through it. Bored on their lunchbreak but without enough time to properly hit the slopes, they decided to bring the snow to them. They invited me to test it, which I declined, citing the rubbish bin as an obstacle I’d likely hit. “No!” they insisted, “that’s not where you land.” I could believe them, but there doesn’t seem to be all that much space between the bin and their toboggan “course” and when I suggested they could show me, they all declined. I’m guessing the fun was in the building. Bonus points for their usage of a sponsorship flag at the top of the run.

Months ago, I wrote about the noisy church bells in my friend’s village and how annoying they were at 7am on a Sunday morning. You’d think that, just a few months after that experience, I’d be wise to moving near a church, and yet here I am in St Jean de Sixt, close enough to the church to be heard by the bell ringer if I yelled out to stop that noise if only he’d stop ringing the bells. And yes, apparently, the church bells are still rung by a local here. Thankfully, the bells don’t go off at 7am on a Sunday morning, but they do go off at 8am on a Sunday morning, and every hour after that until 10pm. There’s also the “It’s lunchtime!” ring at midday, and the “It’s hometime!” ring at 7pm. Friends say: “Oh, you get used to them,” and I guess I have to a degree. Hearing the DONG DONG DONG is in fact great for time keeping: I’m much more aware of the hours ticking past, but as a light sleeper who rarely enjoys a sleep-in, the Sunday morning bells are still annoying, so I now have ear plugs on my bedside table at the ready.

What ear plugs cannot fix is funeral parking traffic. The surrounding streets are lined with illegally-parked cars, and my usual car park is jammed to the point that some of those cars are wedged in behind other cars which hopefully only belong to other funeral-goers. I know it’s wrong of me and a terrible thing to have a whinge about funerals: somebody has died, and all I care about is the fact that I have to lug my skis fifty more metres because my usual parking spots are taken. So, deceased people, I’m sorry. But then, the church should be sorry too because when I first heard the funeral chime, I presumed it was a wedding with all its cheery major key chiming. Church, shouldn’t you be more solemn? Like me when I’m grumpy carrying my skis past all the people wearing black?

I can see into the cemetery from my house, and after each funeral, the attendees walk slowly through the cemetery before leaving the church grounds and waiting in their cars of other funeral-goers to move theirs out of the way, but the body never seems to get buried there. In fact, the cemetery seems pretty full — and a bit sad for its occupants during winter, for although the path is kept cleared by a lawn-mower-sounding snow clearer, the snow on the graves remains, and fresh flowers are a rare sight (where can anyone put them?). On the upside, they get a great view of the mountain. I took this photo from the cemetery, with the lovely view of the l’Etale peak of La Clusaz, when I walked through it the other day for signs of fresh flowers. There were none, nor any funeral goers, nor any signs of the bell-ringer, but I’m going to check that out with the local tourist office. And if he does exist, does that mean he never gets a sleep-in?

So, here at Le Franco Phoney, I provide a written commentary on life in the French Alps, and from an ex-pat’s perspective. I’ve discovered an illustrated version of life in the Alps from a true French person, Caro (that’s Madamoiselle Caroline to us), who I had fun skiing with last week in La Clusaz, and who has since illustrated that particular day on her blog, including a stick figure of me on telemarks. Although her entries are in French, the illustrations mostly speak for themselves and she’s not scared to make fun of herself in order to give the rest of us a laugh. And now that she’s mentioned it, our mutual friend, Tim, does indeed look a lot like Sam Neil.

Although we don’t share the same language, nor her talent for drawing, we do share a love of snow, and the photo of her planted next to a tree, deep in snow is something I’d experienced just one day earlier on my snowboard (being waist deep in powder is more of an aerobic workout than you can ever imagine). And looking at her older blog entries, there are plenty of amusing illustrations of what life is all about here in the Alps, along with life in general (like having a husband who says he’s helped because he’s put the washing machine on after she’s spent the day cooking, shopping for her kids’ clothes and looking after her kids). She’s my new favourite illustrator and new favourite blogger. Enjoy!

A French friend of mine once told me she had no idea that the rest of the world did not say “Ooh la la” and that she was surprised to discover it was a stereotype of what French people say. I remember in Australia, there was a chain of fashion accessory shops called “Ooh la la”, and my friends and I pronounced it “ooooooh la la”. It turns out it’s a bit more of an “oh la la” in French, or at least, somewhere between the two. It’s a phrase that, to me, sounds cheesy when anyone but a French person says it. An American friend says it with a total American accent that sounds as wrong as the shop name in Australia, and hearing her say it was enough to prevent me from using it as anything more than a joke.

That all changed last weekend when the pistes got busy with people. I managed to use it twice when people got too close to me and it came out naturally both times. I was talking to a different French friend about how good it felt about being able to use it so naturally, and he said he doesn’t really consider it a word in French as much as a saying, like “Oh” in English. Except, of course, “Ooh la la” covers so much more. It can be used for surprise (”Ooh la la! or “Wow!”), disgust (”Ooh la la” or “What a terrible cheese”), injury (”Ooh la la” or “Ouch!”), admiration (”Ooh la la” or “The bride looks beautiful”), uncertainty (”Ooh la la” or “This big pile of paperwork might not be enough to change your address with us”) and regret (”Ooh la la” or “Damn, I’ve taken a gouge out of my skis”). There are probably plenty of other meanings to it because when I hassled my French friend about it he said: “I don’t know: it comes out so naturally that it’s hard to think of any examples”.

So, now you know: if ever you’re stuck in one of those situations where someone is speaking to you in French and you have no idea what they’re saying, just say “Ooh la la” and you’ll probably be okay.

French imagery in advertising, roundabouts and even pizza boxes is something I’ve discussed many times on this blog, but this image is the most provocative I’ve seen in a public place. Apologies for the lack of quality: I took the picture temporarily on my phone a few days ago and the poster has since disappeared.

So, here we have a poster for the Lalu nightclub in Le Grand Bornand, featuring smurfs (called ’schtroumpfs’ in French). I remember Papa Smurf there in the red, and Lady Smurf is of course the woman next to him. The post says ‘Smurf me’ in French (they’ve made ’smurf’ into a verb), so I guess it’s a party where people dress up as smurfs. And what is that smurf doing below that, with the scissors and the comb? Is that hay being taken away? No. Look more carefully, and if you’re pre-teen, just skip the rest of this entry: it will only add to the teenage angst that you’re destined for.

I’d say to look closely, but you don’t really need to. Can you see anything amiss in this poster? Anything slightly wrong, considering the poster was placed at the height of a kid’s eyes? That’s not hay that the smurf is carting off. It’s pubic hair. That’s not a hill with a house in the distance, it’s a breast. As you can now see, there isn’t much left up to the imagination in this poster.

Admittedly, I stared at this poster, pointed out to me by my friend, for a good minute or so without noticing anything odd. If this poster was in the nightclub itself, I wouldn’t even blink an eye; but it was placed outside the lift ticket office in Le Grand Bornand, right by the ski stand, where parents tell kids to wait with the skis, and as I mentioned, right at kid height, with all these cute, lovable smurfs on display to attracts kids’ attention. Perhaps most kids just overlook this for the love of smurfs the way I did. Still, could any other country be so open to Hairdresser Smurf giving a human an alternative Brazilian? And is that really how you make a human into a smurf? I reckon Painter Smurf with his can of blue paint would have a strong opinion about that.

Well well well, January is over. Where did it go? To match the speed of the month, I’m speed writing this entry as I have lots of observations to tell you about. So, first up, the Christmas tree. Not only did I kill it as I mentioned a few days ago, but then the snow dumped overnight (see photo) just to add insult to injury. It’s as if the mountains are laughing at it, rejecting it from the outside after I rejected it from indoors. I still feel a bit guilty.

Next up: today’s not-normal-ness. Today, I saw:

• not one, but two cars parked across different roads, blocking all traffic
• two women with prams walking side-by-side on a road with no footpath — and on the side where cars approached them closest from behind
• a man in a bright, almost neon purple one-piece who was not skiing and two monoskiers
• a Swiss-registered car going down a hill with its front wheels locked

Drivers, would you park across a busy street in your own city? No? Then don’t do it in mine! Parents, would you turn your back on traffic when in charge of a baby? No? Then don’t do it on slippery, snowy roads! Men in bright purple one-pieces, and monoskiers, just….why would you? Man in Swiss car, pump the brakes rather than keeping your foot on them, or better still, if you want to drive out of a ski resort when the roads are covered in snow, either have snow chains or snow tyres, or wait until the sun has melted the snow: it’s only a few hours!

Beginner style: both hands on handle.

More advanced: feet used for braking, steer with one hand, other hand out for balance.

It can hurt if you fall the wrong way...

In January, La Clusaz opens a piste by the ice rink on Thursday nights for night skiing. They switch on the flood lights and you can borrow a local sledge called a paret (pronounced “paa-ray in French”) as long as you have some identification. I’ve added some photos showing how it’s done. With friends visiting this week, we decided to have a go. We got to the ice rink but the flood lights weren’t on. The paret man wasn’t there, but plenty of people with their home-made parets were.
Eventually, we heard that the event had been cancelled “because of the storm”. As you can see from the photos, the few snowflakes that were falling were tiny. There was no wind. What storm? Well, apparently, the same storm that stopped La Clusaz from hosting moonlit skiing last night. If there are clouds hiding the moon, there’s no light, so that’s fair enough. I heard there wes going to be floodlit night skiing instead. So how can a storm stop the regular night skiing and not Saturday night skiing? My friends had unfortunately gone by Saturday night, so they didn’t have the chance to try a paret for themselves, but part of me wonders if the cancellation of the Thursday night skiing session had anything to do with the tourist office not wanting to run the same event twice in one week. Obviously, Saturday night is more profitable.

Finally, the snow. It snowed lots this week and I decided to head up for first lifts this morning with my snowboard. It was -15, not including the wind chill. Despite the snow being fluffy and powdery — and almost as knee-deep as it was yesterday, the extra-cold snow on my boots made my toes numb, and my nose was also numb, being the only exposed part of my body. I chickened out after one run and waited for a few hours at home before returning with the telemarks. Still cold, but not like 9am with its long shadows.