François Théodore Thistlethwaite’S Frenglish Thoughts Barry A
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François Théodore Thistlethwaite’s Frenglish Thoughts Barry A. Whittingham Copyright © 2012 by Barry A. Whittingham 2 The moral right of Barry A. Whittingham to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrievable system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. Nor can it be circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without similar condition including this condition being imposed on a subsequent purchaser. 3 To Renée With grateful thanks for her daily efforts to stop me from taking myself too seriously. ‘Sans divertissement, il n’y a point de joie, avec le divertissement il n’y a point de tristesse.’ Pascal, Pensees. 395 4 Author’s Pre-Word This seriously humorous look at the French and English belongs to the relatively new genre of what I would call reality- fiction (I believe the commonly-accepted term is creative non- fiction): an inextricable interaction between that world of imagination which exists only inside an author’s head, and what actually goes on outside it. Some characters, names, events and dialogues, therefore, as the usual disclaimer goes, are products of my imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons or occurrences is purely coincidental. With others this is not entirely the case. It might be thought that the main protagonist, François Théodore Thistlethwaite (FTT), a ‘Frenglishman’ through whose frequently disconnected eyes the themes of this work are viewed, can have no existence in reality. This, also, is not completely true. Some manifestations of his dissociated condition bear comparison with those symptoms characterizing Multiple Personality Disorder, a very real psychiatric pathology, frequently originating in childhood trauma, by which a host person can carry within a number of disparate selves, each of whom take recurrent control of the identity of the whole. And though I myself only occasionally hear voices, being born and educated in England, before spending the following four decades in a country so radically different as France, has provided me with the opportunity of living two lives separate enough for me not to perceive myself as altogether the same person in the one as I do in the other. And is my inclusion of a third, rational, moderating alter ego, in the personage of Théodore, as far removed from reality as we might think? Do not the majority of what we agree to call normal beings have conjoined within them two contrary, yet mutually dependent forces? Is there not in most of us, at 5 least, a reciprocal action between involuntary mental inclination and feeling, and that which is sourced in rational discrimination and choice? Do not what convention requires us to call ‘normal’ people carry within them a set of scales on which they seek to bridle preponderant impulse by a compensatory weight of rational judgement, with the aim of bringing harmonious equipoise to the whole? Though it would be a dreary man who had only reason in him, would not he who followed only the urgings of sensibility fall into the pit of his unguarded desires? The difference between the person of François Théodore Thistlethwaite and those among we mortals considered to be in the norm is that his middle role of reason has a far more delicate task: in FTT’s three-part configuration Théodore finds himself part of a precarious see-saw arrangement obliging him to counterbalance two separate, contra-balancing weights by his central, pivotal one. Though I have attempted to lend to this book what might be termed a philosophical dimension which I am pretentious enough to believe is not without relevance to the guidance of our day-to-day lives, I am inclined to think that true philosophy begins by taking that distance necessary to mock philosophy. In reply to those who might be critical of, or even enraged by the impious nature of some aspects of this work, I would ask them to consider whether much the same attitude could not be adopted towards religion. Most of the anecdotes I have related also have a firm footing in reality. They are based on incidents and events gleaned from the news media, or drawn either from personal experience, or the testimony of friends and acquaintances whose sincerity I have no cause to doubt. The organizations and entities described are also real enough and, even though my caricaturist treatment may have twisted these a little out of shape, I insist on thinking it has not quite wrung all the truth out of them. And though I am optimistic enough to think that some of the aberrations I have related are far from representing the norm, I am fully conscious of the fact that, 6 in an era where the smokescreen of correctness frequently masks a reality painful to admit, the disclosure of certain practices can disturb. It can also, for lack of tangible proof (which, when a question of personal experience it is, of course, difficult, if not impossible to provide), expose their author to the wrath of their perpetrators. I sincerely hope that there are still people honest, responsible and courageous enough to seek remedies by examining the causes rather than choosing to ignore the symptoms, or penalizing those who make them public. In any case, this is a risk I have chosen to take. Given both their frequency and importance, I have considered the parenthetical comments and explanations of the host person, FTT, as being an integral part of the main text, and consequently, rather than relegate them to the bottom of the page or, even worse, despatch them to the ignominious seclusion of the back of the book, I have boldly placed these as near as possible to the subject they allude to. Finally, though the town of Saint-Clou does not figure on any map of France, it is only partly a figment of my imagination. And even though some of the anecdotes relating to it may be considered strange, I did not wish to give the impression it is so grotesquely apart from others that readers should imagine these could not have been based on what might take place in any French provincial town of 10,000 inhabitants or so. Barry A. Whittingham Autumn, 2012 7 Table of Contents Title Page Author’s Pre-Word Chapter One – Who Am I? Chapter Two – The Dream Chapter Three – Liberté - Egalité – Fraternité Chapter Four – La Fonction Publique Chapter Five – The Puritan Factor Chapter Six – The Frog and the Bulldog Chapter Seven – The Rule of the Exception Chapter Eight – At the Wheel Chapter Nine – The Art of Un-Queuing Chapter Ten – Le Système D Chapter Eleven – A Sporting France Chapter Twelve – Feminist or Feminine? Chapter Thirteen – Food (and Drink) for Thought 8 Chapter One Who Am I? My psychiatrist told me I had three alter egos. I asked how much I owed him and he replied, ‘That’ll be £30.’ So I gave him £10 and said, ‘Get the rest from the other two.’ François Théodore Thistlethwaite A copy of an entry of birth records that I became a certified member of the human race on the twenty-ninth day of February, 19.., name(s) and surname of father: Theodore Thistlethwaite; name(s), surname and maiden name of mother: Françoise Madeleine Thistlethwaite, formerly de Laissy-Tignancourt. Deposited at the foot of the document, in testimony to the fact that this was an official copy of an entry in a register, the signature of the Registrar, a Mr U.R.A. Featherbraine, the tremulous, blotched configuration of which seemed to indicate that, at the moment of inscribing his name, the man to whom the writing hand was appended had been under the influence of strong emotion (unless his calligraphic vacillations can be attributed to the inceptive phase of Shaking Palsy, Alzheimer’s Disease, or other manifestations of precocious senility), whose causes must remain hypothetical but may perhaps be sought among one (or more) of the following: 1) Being a man of great sensibility, he was fully aware of the traumatizing effects a span of four years from one birthday to the next would inevitably have on a child. 2) Having himself inherited a surname which had been a lifelong source of mirth to others and utter misery to himself, he had been overwhelmed by an empathetic anticipation of 9 the future sufferings of this lispingly-named innocent, so recently pushed out into a cruel world. 3) The dreadful truth had dawned on him (the explanation I tend towards) that he was signing into official existence a monstrous aberration of nature, the product of a fusion between two mutually repellent cells: an Anglo-Frenchman. And throughout the length of my boyhood, the antagonistic nature of my conception was confirmed by unremitting parental strife, where the ferocious battles of past centuries – Hastings, Agincourt, Crécy, Poitiers, Trafalgar and Waterloo – were re-enacted over half a score of years. FTT: In spite of the uneasy truce which exists today, any study of the history of Anglo-French relations inevitably brings to mind words like ‘natural foe,’ or ‘hereditary enemy.’ Apparently, this has not always been the case. In times long past, when the British Isles were joined to the Continental mainland, contacts were frequent and relations amiable – so much so that whenever a French and Englishman met they kissed each other affectionately on the lips, in much the same way as Russian men do today.