Order, chaos, and mockery on parade

Spring continues to deliver new leaves, flowers, bird songs, lizards (lots actually) and visitors. Grandma Linda, Grandpa Hugh and sister Jeanne stepped off the TGV from Charles de Gaulle airport on Thursday with the calm self assurance of daily commuters (however it will be more than a week before they ply this skill again). I tell myself they must have benefited from previously posted accounts of our TGV foibles -- an "if nothing else, one can always serve as a bad example" sort of thing.

Apocalypse Tapestry (wild things 1373) vs.
'Wild Things... (1963).
Go to your doom vs. go to your room.

Getting right into it with new visitors is easy here in centre ville.  Even on my third visit to the Château d'Angers in two months, there's a lot of chât to look at. (Photos) And really, I think it took three visits to connect with the Apocalypse Tapestry which is housed there -- the world's longest tapestry and most famous true tapestry in France (since, tapestry buffs will have you know that the Bayeux "tapestry" is actually embroidery). Some revelations take longer than others. But creatively delivered reminders of how treacherous and scary life can be are always worth waiting for. And even walking around town, it's easy to wonder if old-world perspectives on uncertainty (such as the fairly decent chance that a seven-headed devil dragon could descend from a fire-cloud at any moment and bite your head off) still inform the region's notion of public safety. The château itself is actually a perfect example of this. The moat, a 40-foot drop, is separated from the sidewalk by a 2-foot wall.

Jardin des moat. Looks
steep but, it's all about
balance.

Is more left to chance in France? Or, are some places, like the United States, obsessed with certainty? Is adaptability a virtue or a symptom of low self esteem? To describe societies we often cite the relative amount of order imposed on various aspects of daily life. They put barriers between opposite directions of highway traffic. They eat raw meat. Their trains are never late. They never care what time it is. They'll let anyone see a doctor.

In France: Accidents don't happen

to toddlers, mindless parents do.

I'm guessing it's more the case that all societies try to impose about the same amount of cumulative order and standards on their worlds. How that instinct to master the universe is divided and applied to civic life is, I think, a basic component of culture. Consider the intersection at our address: 33 Rue de la Roë. Among the four signs there are different layouts, parsings, fonts, and spellings. In the U.S. this would be an inconsistency in need of correction--it could cause the Publishers' Clearinghouse Sweepstakes envelope to get misdirected. But, it works. It's enough that all the signs are blue with white letters. The conformity forgone with street-lettering is applied to other categories--like window treatments.

Out with the old, in with the eww. I mean, you think you
know a country and then they start with the volets roulets.

And that would be shutters. Pretty much all windows have shutters (volets). And, it seems like all shutters (sadly) are gradually being replaced with volets roulets (rolling"shutters") which look like miniature warehouse doors. Our apartment's windows are fully equipped with "voolay roolay." Fancy ones are motorized. Ours are hand-cranked with seven-foot poles. We rarely roll them down for some reason. Maybe it just seems too much like a signal that we've withdrawn to the bunker. I'm pretty sure through that they would stop flaming arrows.

Our apartment according to the

Angers Fire Department.

And what if a flaming arrow? On the public safety front, while smoke detectors are nowhere to be seen, outside every apartment door is a detailed floor plan with the gas-shutoff location marked. While this helps party crashers find your fridge, it's also a good snapshot of those charming asymmetries from the days of Donald Rumsfeld -- when you built a building along the angles of the streets you have, not the streets you wish you had. These schematics also help the roulet voulet sales reps have an estimate prepared before they even ring your bell.

I'm sure that everyone's shutters have been opened/rolled up this week in order to see all the festiveness outside. Friday (April 1) was Poisson d'avril (Fish of April). We've been trying to track down a verifiable explanation of this variation (or some sources would suggest origin) of April Fools' Day. The outcome is basically similar, though. People play jokes on one another, the most traditional of which is to attach a paper fish on someone's back. This apparently started when the celebration of the new year shifted to align with the calendar year and people who were out of the loop, and still expecting traditional "new year's" gifts of food on April 1 (most commonly fish since it was Lent) would be mocked by being given a fake fish.

Figure 1: Life Cycle of the Poisson d'avril au Chocolat.

So, not quite in the same way that I think it would be funnier to switch back to giving people a real fish at 8:30 in the morning, the choclatiers have intervened to solidify the metaphor with cocoa, sugar, and... wait for it... butter. As the diagram at left shows, the larger fake fish often swallow a joke whole and it can be extracted and enjoyed before eating the fake fish which, funnily enough, costs much more than real fish. So the punch-line is both the end and the beginning. I'm sure the choclatiers are laughing with me.

Poisson d'avril also means young school children dress up and are lead on little parades through the neighborhoods in the morning. Top five categories of chosen costumes are sword-wielding pirates, mermaids, princesses, superheros with hyperbolic muscle inserts, and tomahawk-wielding Apache. The teachers feign obliviousness to the 20 or so paper fish taped to their backs.

Moving on to real food, it's a bit more real here. The Saturday markets don't only remind us that other animals can be on the menu (rabbit, horse, eel, etc.) but also remind us that all of these creatures can be dead and still have heads, eyes, and feet. This apparently dates back to the days when you were supposed to be skeptical of what you were buying unless you could look it in the face and make a positive ID. It was hard to be a vegetarian because, let's face it, carrots don't smile. The fact that chickens are sold without heads and feet in the U.S. (save dinosaur-shaped chicken nuggets) obviously shows how much more Americans trust each other. And, really, what do we care as long as there's dippin' sauce?

The parade theme carried into the weekend with Carnaval d'Angers. The extra fun thing was that the carnaval (parade) went right down Rue Saint Laud, underneath our balcony, continued for five or six more blocks, and rounded back up to Place du Ralliement, just up the street. A drum corps, Bloco Chango, self-described as Afro Brazilian (so... south of the equator) certainly gave a high-energy start to the carnaval (and never stopped for three hours now that I think about it). (video below)

I have some pictures of the parade which I will be sharing with organizers of the ski-to-sea parade back in Bellingham--a parade that year after year conjures up the same formations of public safety hardware, anachronistic fraternal orders, and SUVs towing overtly commercial "floats" that they dwarf.

Equally as fun, since it was a tremendously nice day, was the people-watching from our balcony as the time for the carnaval drew near.  If you're curious about current French fashion and styles, check out my paparazzi Spring Fashion Review via the Rue Saint Laud cat walk.

Carnaval goers get hungry and for that, there're Nutella crepes. We were happy to see able-baker Charlie back in the groove with his crepe-making setup out in front of Le Grain de Malice--the closest boulanger up the street from us. Jack and Kristin saw "Charlie" having a bad morning a couple of weeks ago. As they walked by on the way to school, an unhappy customer was yelling about his sandwich and simultaneously throwing it at the baker. The sandwich bounced off the glass case into pieces. Unhappier still, perhaps due to his poor aim, the customer charged behind the counter and punched Mr. Baker in the eye. Numerous other customers had already flagged down nearby police who, by the time J & K were rounding the corner, already helping Mr. Cranky think about his choices. After few days, Jack reported that the baker was back in action, behind the counter with his big black eye. But he looks pretty good in this video--the crepes of wrath.

Bon appétit Au revoir. Bonne soirée.