Two things I love about Italy (see the second in today’s story…)
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clandestin(e) [klhon deh sten (steen)] noun
: stowaway
(adjective: underground, secret, illicit)
Example Sentence & Audio File: Download WAV or MP3
Au retour de Sicile, les enfants ont découvert quelques clandestins dans la voiture! On the way back from Sicily, the kids discovered a few stowaways in the car!
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A Day in a French Life… by Kristin Espinasse
On our long drive home from Sicily, Max and Jackie moaned and slapped at their arms and their knees. Ça pue et il y a des bêtes! It stinks and has bugs!
The kids were complaining about a couple of stowaways with which they had to share the back seat.
Jackie wrinkled her nose and Max leaned far away from the pest-ridden, poussièreux passengers, but the kids’ theatrics did not win them any sympathy from the driver.
“Your mom would like to keep those chairs,” he said, of the cobwebbed clandestins.
There, in the front seat, I heaved a sigh of relief. It looked as if those throwaway stowaways were truly mine to keep! I had not sorted through the Sicilian trash bins pour rien, had not tippy-toed past the broken glass, lifted the tossed toilet seat, the rotten tomatoes, and the rancid meat only to have to return the chairs to the trash heap.
Through a cloud of flies I had not in vain tried to save three rustic lives. But there was no way of saving us now from the stench coming from the back of the car….
“And your mom would like to keep the cabbage…” he explained, referring to the 7-day-old chou (one of the many garden gifts from our landlord, and while it was easy to know how to prepare the eggplants—as for that smelly chou… what to do, what to do?).
Home on the range… a temporary cover for the chairs until I figure out how to saw wood for some new seats. Wish I’d paid more attention in 7th-grade carpentry class.
French Vocabulary
ça pue et il y a des bêtes! = it stinks and there are bugs!
poussiéreux (poussiéreuse) = dusty, dust-like
clandestin (m/f) = stowaway
pour rien = for nothing
le chou = cabbage
Finding one of the chairs….
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Kristin, if you like scrounging furniture, you need to live near a university. At least here at the University of Minnesota at end of each semester, you can find all sorts of furniture in all different states of repair, sitting on the curb outside of apartments and rental housing for anybody to take.
Kristin, I think you and my sister have a lot in common! Although she does most of her retrieving at brocante sales and fle markets. She’ll have to tell you about her “finds” when we see you in late September.
Try caneing seats for them…very educational and worthy of your labors. Might have to make custom frames with holes to fit in the bottoms.
Kristin,
What a lovely pair of rustic looking chairs! Only “les sièges” (the seats) need some attention but the woodwork looks quite good.
What to do? “Rempailler” the seats, so, look for “un atelier de rempaillage” (not “cannage”). You might have to shop around for a good price, but “les chaises en valent certainement la peine” (= sure, the chairs are worthwhile). This is if you want to give them not only a new friendly home, but also a new lease of life!
For a quick fix: 2 cushion pads will do, covered with any cushion cover you fancy, or any cover you can cut and sew yourself with spare material. Great fun!
As for the third “chaise clandestine”, at the moment keeping company to the red and blue flowers, I can see the front leg on the right has got a poor and rather thinnish ‘ankle’. No “rempaillage” for that type of chair as it’s supposed to have a wooden seat, unless you fancy using the ‘hole’ to welcome a pot filled with… ivy perhaps (or…?).
As mentionned in my comments in the previous newsletter, that chair is (to me) the special “ghost” chair that drew all my attention. Kristin, I’d guess that, by now, you’ve received 2 photos of its “relative” found “sur un trottoir” along a little street leading to Greenwich Park about a month ago!
Oh! “l’odeur des choux” that are no longer fresh… and the little flies that quickly infest them. Max & Jackie, I do sympathise with your moaning! Hmmm, difficult to find a compost heap while travelling on a motorway, so… I would have left “le chou en question” somewhere along a Sicilian or an Italian field and it would have carried on with its rotting process without upsetting anyone. Did you keep it/them in the car all the way back home???
Hi Kristin,
I love looking for treasures! Do the French have a word for “looking for junk”? We used to love the one day in Germany where everyone would put all their unwanted “stuff” out on the street and everyone would get out early and go looking for someone’s unwanted treasures. We called it “Junking Day”. I forget the German word for it.
Are you going to sew some cushions for the chairs? The blanket you have folded on the chairs looks great with the sunflowers!