The French Foreign Legion

Bulletin mensuel novembre 2017

Chers Amis,

The next meeting of the Cercle Français de Belfast will be …

on Mercredi (Wednesday) 8 novembre 2017 à 19h.30 

in Dark Horse Coffee House, 

30-34, Hill Street Belfast BT1 2LB

Topic: The French Foreign Legion

Speaker: Ray LARGAN 

Ray reflects on the origin, key events, both real and imagined, and the ongoing contribution of the Legion and its international recruits. 

Quiz Night … and there's more!

Thanks to all those who came to our table quiz on 25 October. For the picture that seemed to stump everyone, on Louis XV's "petite maîtresse", you may be interested in this article on Marie-Louise O'Murphy: http://www.leparisien.fr/informations/le-tableau-qui-a-enflamme-le-roi-03-01-2015-4415259.php

If you enjoy quizzes, please do support our friends at the Belfast Frenchie Club who are also hosting a quiz on Wednesday 15 November, at 19.30 in the Dark Horse Café. See their Facebook group for more details.

Bal Feirste: Ball

Annette from Bal Feirste has been in touch to remind us that their next Workshop/Bal is on ...

Date: Sunday, 12 November
Venue: Sunflower Club, Union St, Belfast (upstairs)
Dance workshop: 17.00-17.30
Bal: 17.30-19.00
(this is a free event, donations welcome - live music throughout)
Dance workshop - no experience or partner needed. This month the workshop will focus on the Mazurka.

Bal - a time to practise your moves, not just the dances of this month, but others covered to date, guidance will be given where necessary. 

Staying on a musical note …

The William Kennedy Piping Festival (16^th - 19^th Nov.) in Armagh has an evening devoted to the ..

Sounds and Tastes of France

A musical and gastronomic tour through the French regions 

on Thursday 16^th November.

For more information and to book tickets see: 

http://www.armaghpipers.com/wkpf/thurs.html 

Looking forward to seeing you on Wednesday 8^th November.

À bientôt, Philip

Le plus grand quiz français de Belfast

CfB Présidente, Allison awards trophies after the quiz. Also pictured is Jim Holland of les perdus

The café-causerie event this month took the form of a quiz night billed as le plus grand quiz français de Belfast. It was a thoroughly enjoyable evening which made for plenty of social interaction.

Our présidente Allison Neill-Rabaux was in charge of proceedings and was ably supported by her husband, Sylvain, and by colleague committee member, Drew Miller who managed the scoring process and kept tally on the various team positions.

Language

If anyone had been concerned that their level of French might have been insufficient for the rounds of questions then such doubts were quickly dispelled by the engaging format of the quiz.

Allison and Drew arranged for attendees to form themselves into teams and to give themselves a group name.  We ended up with half a dozen teams and a pad of response sheets was allocated to each. One of the rounds was picture-based and before the quiz got underway discussions about who was in the pictures got team members talking among themselves.

Rounds

Bringing us to attention, Allison quickly explained the quizzing process.  There would be several rounds of six questions in each. The questions would be announced by Sylvain and be simultaneously displayed on screen. Plenty of time was given for teams to reach agreement on their group response and once recorded the response sheets were passed from one team to the other for checking. Allison returned to each question providing the correct answer on screen.  For a few of these she took the opportunity to explain the response so the quiz was also an opportunity to learn something new. Drew then collected all the scores and compiled them onto a tally sheet. We had rounds among others on Culture, Cuisine, History, Sport and as previously mentioned a picture round with items of Franco-Irish connections.  

Stumped

It was this last round that threw up an item that stumped the whole room. The picture was that of la petite maîtresse de Louis XV and Allison later was kind enough to share a biography of the woman in question to the Cercle’s Facebook group. If you haven’t yet subscribed connect here.

As the evening progressed it was obvious just how much those present had relaxed into the quiz.  There was a little tension as teams vied with each other for the top places but eventually Drew had calculated the winners, confusingly self-labelled as les perdus.

Allison had thoughtfully provided little trophies to mark the successful outcome. It was a pity that trophies weren’t provided for Allison, Sylvain and Drew for their running if the quiz which was great, good fun and not in the least intimidating. Readers might like to remember that when it next comes round as we’re sure it will. 

When exactly?  Now there’s a question.