Under the Daisies’ Sign
French Language Periodical –
This is our May issue. If you want to listen to the audio instead of reading the text or while reading it, click here. The audio is only on the French page.
The famous saying, “In May do as you please!”
Under the daisies’ sign
This is also the month where you will find a multitude of daisies in the meadows. It is customary to remove the leaves or de-leafing, both words are used, that is to say, removing each petal one by one, which of course leaves the yellow button without its fragile white corolla.
We strip them off saying, “I love you, a little, a lot, madly, not at all!”, while repeating until all the petals are gone. But this must be torture for the poor daisy.
Did you know that the daisy is a compound flower? In fact, a daisy is a composite of composites. Let me explain.
Each white petal is a flower as well as each disc that forms the yellow button in the middle which is rightly called a capitulum.
The word comes from the Latin capitulum which means “little head”. The definition of a capitulum is as follows: A set of countless small flowers inserted side by side on a large receptacle.
And these two flowers (the white petal and the yellow disk) form a flower by themselves and all these composites form a daisy! Phew, I hope you follow me. It’s amazing! Nature will never stop to amaze me.
If you want to know more read this article which goes into all the details! Link on the French page.
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French News
We start with a tour in North America. From April 20 to August 20, 2023, there is a big Marquee called Cirque du Soleil ECHO on the old port in Montreal, Canada. It offers a new show: a tale based on the principle that the world becomes what you decide to create and represents the evolution and symbiotic links that are essential to our survival by illustrating the evolution of man and animal through a combination of acrobatics, poetry, technology and choreography. 
Photo Michelle Raponi
We then fly to the French Riviera in Cannes, where the seventy-sixth film festival is being held between May 16 and 27, 2023.
While you’re there, don’t forget to attend the Formula 1 Grand Prix on the Monaco circuit on the 23rd.
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Songs corner
For May we will listen to “L’oiseau et l’enfant”, written by Joe Gracy and composed by Jean-Paul Cara. The song, interpreted by Marie Myriam, won the Eurovision contest in 1977. You can find the lyrics here. Check the French page for the link to the French text.
May by Victor Hugo
I will not let the periwinkles wither
Without listening to what is said under the branches
And without watching, among the infinite branches,
The conversation of leaves and nests.
Love is only a god; April is its prophet.
I will suppose myself a guest at the feast
That the singing finch gives to the golden plover;
I will flee from the city, and fly away
– For the poet’s soul is a wanderer –
In the ravines where May full of roses abounds.
There the white butterflies and the blue butterflies,
As the divine mingles with the fabulous,
Come and go, crossing their gay and light spirits,
So much so that one would take them for celestial gleams.
There, the birds chatter, seeking each other, avoiding each other;
There, Margot comes when it is Glycère that one waits;
The unmasked ideal shows its feet of clay;
One finds Rabelais where one sought Virgil.
O youth! O naked breasts of the women in the woods!
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Vocabulary
Finally, here are some clarifications of terms to avoid any mistake in your appointments.
A fortnight = 8 days + a week of 7 days – equivalent in English to “a couple of weeks” or “a fortnight”.
“I’ll see you in two weeks”
When we speak, we can say, “I’ll see you Monday in 8”. This means: not the Monday that is coming but the following Monday (in two weeks).
If you want to say the coming Monday, you say: “I’ll see you next Monday” or “I’ll see you in a week.”
A week from now is the same day of the following week. “The paper will be signed within a week.” (In a week or less)
We also have “a dozen” or “a dozen” to express either about 10 days or 12 days, or anything else that is approximate: there were a dozen participants (more or less), I bought a dozen eggs (definitely 12 or the customer would not be happy!)
In the same way, you will find “twenty, thirty, forty, fifty, hundred”.
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