Turning the Christmas tide – by playing blow-football

Geddit now? No? Oh dear…

This year’s crop was unusually challenging. I mean, as weary translator or expectant audience, what were we to make of this one, for instance: Q. How does Good King Wenceslas like his pizzas? A. Deep pan, crisp and even. Arf! Arf! (Cut to silent tableful of slack-jawed Breton relatives in their cracker crowns.)

But there were some surprises, too, some pleasant and some less so. My grown-up daughters finally accepted dear old Bing’s White Christmas. They still don’t like it all that much if the truth be told, or carols on Christmas Eve and the next morning too, come to that, but after 20 years’ relentless campaigning on my part, the music has now become as central to Morgane’s and Fleur’s celebrations as their going into Dinan to get the tree when they get back from university in Paris.

Then we nearly had an international incident when my brother-in-law from Brest, the one who always gives me a lovely peaty single malt, funnily enough, asked for a pre-lunch whisky-coca, as the French will, for goodness sake. Fortunately, I still had some Johnny Walker Red in the cupboard, but I mean, come on. He’ll be wanting an ice-cube in it next.

Mme Masstairmann ticked another of the boxes on my list of things still to do before I meet my maker by serving us ormers, bless her, which are something I’d never ever quite got round to trying before, despite 60 years of fervent Beanitude.

OK, they were distinctly pricey at 49 euros a kilo compared to three euros for the local scallops, but it was indeed a poignant moment, and I would like the record to show my gratitude to Mme M, who, it has to be confessed, often gets a very torrid time of it in the columns of this, your favourite evening newspaper.

(Talking of the JEP, may I just digress to pay tribute to another dear old friend who has just passed on. Yes, ever since my parents used to hide minor treasures in its pages when I was a PE student in Portsmouth – a packet of Germain’s Dark and Light hand-rolling tobacco, a ten-bob note or a few Guernsey sweets – the Jersey Weekly Post never failed to lighten my expat life. And I know I can go online now but, well, it’s just not the same as the inky-fingered, fish-and-chip paper version, is it, eh?)

Anyway, where was I? Oh, yes! By far the most successful present this year was a tuppenny-ha’penny impulse buy in the Lexicon when we made our traditional Yuletide dash back to the Rock for essentials unobtainable here, like mince pies, Christmas pudding and, well, crackers, drat us.

Yes, blow-football was a sport totally unknown to La Patronne, and still is to the rest of France, come to that. But on Christmas afternoon, the grumpy old man in me was quietly delighted to sit back in my own cracker crown and savour the way it soon drew all the younger nephews and nieces away from their more sophisticated, beeping and flashing gifts.

And not just them, either, because their slumbering uncles were soon down on the carpet, too, huffing and puffing and pushing and shoving. Lord only knows what kind of King Canute campaign I could have fought with a full compendium of games from the Red Triangle in the Central Market. Oh, well, maybe next year, eh?

AT WORK, I did miss inflicting Joyeux Noël, Monsieur Bean on all my classes, as I have done for years now, but I’ve only got it on a well-worn cassette, you see, and all the old video-players have been binned to make way for these new all-singing, all-dancing, interactive, internet white-board whatsits.

All of which is a bit of a metaphor for me as a teacher, too, now I come to think of it. Mind you, I did have a little chuckle when I saw this zippy young colleague and his class wandering the corridors looking for another room after his had crashed or whatever it is they do on a bad hair day. No, I can safely say that in all my 40 years at the chalk-face, no blackboard has ever gone viral on me.

But you’re right. It probably is just as well that I handed in my duster for the last time at Christmas, even if the kids were so nice in the last week of term that I almost changed my mind about going. The staff-room also gave me a great send-off, too, with a tragi-comic slide-show-powerpoint thingummy retracing my career.

In fact, it was all so pleasant that I nearly didn’t point out afterwards that, um, it’s only a minor detail you understand, but I’m from, er, well, Jersey, not Guernsey. ‘Does it matter?’ the new Senior Member wondered out loud to no one in particular. Oh dear. Will you tell her, or shall I?

The head was nearer the mark at the official do up on the stage later on in the presence of Mme Masstairmann as honoured guest, only he called me a Jersien, as did the article on the Dinan page of our local paper, when that should be Jersiais. Actually, the head gushed to such considerable effect that I nearly asked for a retroactive pay-rise backdated to 1985, the year the pupils at the Collège Notre Dame de la Victoire and I first set foot on each other.

SO where do I go from here? Well, first I’ll wait for the chalk dust to settle a bit. Then, although I’ve also been a translator on the list at the Cour d’Appel for 20 years now, shuffling round the region’s courts and gendarmeries, advocates and notaries, mostly down at the Rumpole end of the market it has to be said, I’ve never had any formal legal training, so it might be nice to do some kind of law degree or diploma and tidy up the bulging ragbag of knowledge, experience and anecdote that I’ve acquired on the hoof, as it were.

THEN again, maybe I could take a leaf out of Mikel Chaussepied’s book. He’s a retired teacher, too, and also a well-known painter and engraver down in the Finistère, Mme M’s home county on the windswept, spray-lashed western tip of Brittany.

In 2002, he was horrified to see that all the trees in his local park had been numbered, which he felt made them look rather like prisoners in some Stalag. So in reprisal, he decided to decorate the shells of all the snails passing through. Ten years on, he’s up to number 6,500, so you can imagine his excitement when he spotted dear old 890 slithering back through the undergrowth last June.

His noble work has just been officially honoured, too, by the Association Vacuus in Brest, which records and celebrates deeds and actions which are of absolutely no use whatsoever. Mikel said modestly that he couldn’t have been more touched if it had been the Légion d’Honneur.

NO, you’re right. There must be more to retirement than chasing snails, particularly as I was hoping to slow down a bit. And I can’t imagine it would do my ageing brain a whole lot of good, either. My doctor’s just warned me off jogging, too … again. But I don’t much fancy his alternative of spending a couple of hours every week face-down in a tepid chlorine solution, counting the sky-blue tiles at the bottom of the local pool, either. So I think I might join the Cercle Nautique down at the port in Dinan instead and give rowing on the Rance a go. We’ll see.

In the meantime, Mme M says to wish you Bloavez Mad! But then, as a proud Breton, she would say that, wouldn’t she? I’ll settle for hoping you all have a very Bonne Année!

Kenavo!