Perception?

[Peter Crowe]

Hi everybody, What are your perceptions of France? Is it beret wearing, striped shirt, selling onions from a bike or is it something else? All views appreciated and I won't take offence, this is tongue in cheek not serious. Kit

My experience of visiting France is limited to Bordeaux when I was a small boy in 1970, travelling to Switzerland through eastern France with an overnight stop at an hotel about an hour south of Paris with the Scouts at age 15 in 1981, and a week's break in Paris in February 2000 with my wife. I have French relations by marriage and Franco-Scottish and Franco-English second cousins. I also have French friends with whom I studied at the University of Glasgow.

My impression of France is much like a lot of Scots, a place I regard with affection which has a culture with which I find links to my own. For example I was brought up within the Church of Scotland which owes much of it's reformed tradition to a Frenchman (Jean Cauvin/John Calvin), I studied for an MA Honours and LLM degree at an Ancient Scottish University and can see the influence of French civilisation on Scotland's traditions of philosophy and law (Duns Scotus, John Major/Mair, George Buchanan and David Hume all spent significant time either at the University of Paris or frequenting Parisian salons, and in law terms like Advocate/Avocat etc.).

In short I regard France as a major centre of western civilisation in thought, manners, gastronomy, fine arts, fine wines, brandies and aperitifs, and like central and northern Italy in joyous good living. Purely a coincidence but the French language form of my name is the same as a famous French dramatist from Normandy, Pierre Corneille.