29 November 2007

The firemen pay a visit

No, we didn't set the house on fire. Every year at holiday time, the local fire department sends out a small delegation of its sapeurs-pompiers to sell calendars from door to door. You feel pretty much required to buy one. It's a fund-raising campaign, and you wouldn't want to be seen as a Scrooge.

The Saint-Aignan fire department sends
its best wishes for the new year.


This year the fire brigade delegation came to the house in mid-November, which seems very early to me. Buying calendars is something I usually associate with Christmastime. I guess the firemen are trying to beat the others to the punch.

Une voiture de pompiers

Who are the others? Our factrice (letter carrier) and some representatives of the local sports association will make their rounds soon too, if past years are any guide. We'll end up with three or four calendars showing all the Catholic saints' days for 2008.

Here's a calendar you can look for your saint's day on.
Click the image to enlarge it.

5 comments:

  1. I don't mind giving money to the firemen, but this year, I am refusing to give to our factrice. I am less than impressed with her service - especially how for the first two weeks she just didn't deliver our mail since she didn't know where the mailbox was. I wonder if we ever would've gotten any mail if I hadn't stopped to ask her about it?

    And now she's started only putting our letters half-way in the mailbox...which wouldn't be a problem if we didn't live in the RAINIEST PART OF FRANCE!! So every time it rains (pretty much on a daily basis now), our mail gets soaked and I have to spend hours drying it out before I can open any of it (if I even can, since half the letters are stuck together).

    So I hope she comes to ask for money, because I've got a question or two for her, starting with "What on Earth is so hard about putting the mail all the way in the box so that it closes?"

    Whew. Rant over. ;-)

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  2. I dearly love those little calendars! They also have school holidays marked for the different regions- so handy.

    If my birthday were to be a day earlier, I wouldn't have a saint at all, just AUTOMNE since Fall comes on the 23rd next year. And just who is St Thècle anyway.

    My brother has the best saint's day I think- his first name that he doesn't use is Sylvester which is always NYE and celebrated well.

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  3. Evelyn, since my first name is Charles, I have two saint's days. One is November 4. But I'll take March 2, which is close to my birthday and after all, this saint is known as Charles le Bon ;^)

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  4. Yes, this time of year seems to come earlier and earlier every year!

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  5. Interesting to note that several of your sapeurs-pompiers are women. It's a job that's theoretically now open to women in the States, although often not without difficulty. Nice to see France being progressive.

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