Page 55 - APT_2
P. 55
RCICES
Read carefully and translate.
I met someone recently. I knew her from the past –she used to live close
to my place in a small town between Caen and Lisieux in Normandy. The
name of the place is Mézidon. A place where half the population was
small shopkeepers and the other half mainly working for industries such
as the SNCF (National French Railway Society) or the ‘Biscuiterie
Normande ‘(a biscuit factory) or the ‘usine plastique’ (a plastic factory)
and where sport was almost the only way out for kids to get away from
the everyday rythme of social violence.I had never had the opportunity to
talk to her much. We weren’t the same age nor doing the same things,
but I had unconsciously kept her in mind because from where my wife
and I were living, we were seing her often as she was running up and
down to the stadium between 6 and 7pm.From what I heard, she wasn’t
the kind of girl to talk much. She was quite reserved when happy and
excepted the fact that she mainly had male friends-who were calling her
Dédé ; a name sort of saying that she was ‘one of the boys’- she was
also going to church regularly and was known in the village as someone
who was collecting medals and when we were not physically seeing her,
we could follow her news in the Pays d’Auge’ paper when reading it at
the week-ends. She was blue belt in Judo, champion both in the regional
education authority in basket ball and in athleticism where she used to
beat her college records every race competing under the ASSU flag in
the Hélitas stadium in Caen before participating to the French
championship in Alès and Périgueux the following year. She was
esthetically remarkable. Not the prettiness that we see in beauty
magazines but one that draws attention. Known to be clean, polite and
also for loving people, she compelled respect.
Although her parents had built their house just before I first saw her and
had a spacious garden at the back, it was heard in the village that no one
there had the chance to live a peaceful life. The old man was very
authoritarian leading to perpetual familial arguments and these conflicts
affected her performances at school. She was totally unable to keep
quiet and to concentrate enough to listen properly. So, later on, as soon
as it was possible, she took the first opportunity to vanish. This led her to
England and later on, to work as a ‘GO’ in a few Club Med villages for
instance (...)And the funny thing is that, I recently ran into the same girl.
She now lives at the same distance from my place as before but this time
on the Côte Fleurie thirty miles away from where we used to live. She
settled as a freelance teacher in 2000 earning her living teaching French
to foreigners living in France and English to French here in Villers sur
mer and she is still a happy go lucky kind of girl as she has always been.
55
Read carefully and translate.
I met someone recently. I knew her from the past –she used to live close
to my place in a small town between Caen and Lisieux in Normandy. The
name of the place is Mézidon. A place where half the population was
small shopkeepers and the other half mainly working for industries such
as the SNCF (National French Railway Society) or the ‘Biscuiterie
Normande ‘(a biscuit factory) or the ‘usine plastique’ (a plastic factory)
and where sport was almost the only way out for kids to get away from
the everyday rythme of social violence.I had never had the opportunity to
talk to her much. We weren’t the same age nor doing the same things,
but I had unconsciously kept her in mind because from where my wife
and I were living, we were seing her often as she was running up and
down to the stadium between 6 and 7pm.From what I heard, she wasn’t
the kind of girl to talk much. She was quite reserved when happy and
excepted the fact that she mainly had male friends-who were calling her
Dédé ; a name sort of saying that she was ‘one of the boys’- she was
also going to church regularly and was known in the village as someone
who was collecting medals and when we were not physically seeing her,
we could follow her news in the Pays d’Auge’ paper when reading it at
the week-ends. She was blue belt in Judo, champion both in the regional
education authority in basket ball and in athleticism where she used to
beat her college records every race competing under the ASSU flag in
the Hélitas stadium in Caen before participating to the French
championship in Alès and Périgueux the following year. She was
esthetically remarkable. Not the prettiness that we see in beauty
magazines but one that draws attention. Known to be clean, polite and
also for loving people, she compelled respect.
Although her parents had built their house just before I first saw her and
had a spacious garden at the back, it was heard in the village that no one
there had the chance to live a peaceful life. The old man was very
authoritarian leading to perpetual familial arguments and these conflicts
affected her performances at school. She was totally unable to keep
quiet and to concentrate enough to listen properly. So, later on, as soon
as it was possible, she took the first opportunity to vanish. This led her to
England and later on, to work as a ‘GO’ in a few Club Med villages for
instance (...)And the funny thing is that, I recently ran into the same girl.
She now lives at the same distance from my place as before but this time
on the Côte Fleurie thirty miles away from where we used to live. She
settled as a freelance teacher in 2000 earning her living teaching French
to foreigners living in France and English to French here in Villers sur
mer and she is still a happy go lucky kind of girl as she has always been.
55
