French colonies de vacances threatened

Today's French paper says that fewer children are going to colonies de vacances - a holidaying tradition of the French for decades, perhaps for nearly a century. These camps, lasting three to four weeks , are organised and run on a day-to-day basis by moniteurs and monitrices, themselves young people on the cusp of adulthood, people who love children, love enlivening their holidays with games, crafts and songs and are willing to spend 24 hours a day, seven days a week with them for all the holiday, eating with them, sleeping in their dormitories. The only break the moniteurs get is a half day off once a week.

It's hard work, and you have to enjoy it. If you're English, you get a unique opportunity to live and speak the young French culture. I know. I did it in the 1970s. Watch "Nos jours heureuse" for a reflection of the episodes of frustration, worry, joy and love that being a monitor on a colo can bring you. Excerpts of it are on YouTube and it was a hit movie in France in 2006.

But now fewer French children go to colo as more parents take them on more exciting trips.

An even bigger threat is European employment law that requires minimum wage (SMIC) and longer breaks.

It's arguable that the provision of board and lodging makes up some of the wage, but even so, it is appallingly low for the 24/7 job that monos do.

Worse than the wage, to my mind and memory is the time off - hardly time to go anywhere (if you had the transport, money or remaining energy) or to sleep (if it were quiet enough). But the French 35 hour work week might put paid finally to this unique tradition.

Shopping and nos jours heureux

Bordeaux has the longest pedestrianised shopping mall in Europe. See photo. For other super photos of the town see this blog.

Rue St Catherine is full of shops both small and large: children's clothes, fashion, all of odd things, chocolate, DVDs. If you want to go shopping, come here.

We stopped at a DVD shop to look for a film that came out three years ago: Nos Jours Heureux, a comedy about a colonie de vacances - French summer holiday camps for kids. The film was a great hit in France in 2006 because so many have been to colonies de vacances. I was a monitrice myself in a colonie in the 1970s, so I wanted to see the film, which I cannot get in England and amazon.fr will not sell me. So we looked for it in this small shop. It wasn't there, but the manager thought Fnac might have it. Fnac is a big book shop, a bit like Foyles, renowned for similar qualities. So we asked at Fnac - a huge three or four storey establishment, but they didn't have it in stock this week. We bought some music CDS: Moustaki, Brassens, Graeme Allwright and Prévert. I'll play them in my new car, when it arrives.