New week, and a bit of fun, for whilst in England, and many other countries in the Western hemisphere, it will be April Fool`s Day on Wednesday the first of April, in France it will be a whole different thing.
You see in France the day is called April Fish, or "Poisson d`Avril", and it was first recorded in 1508 by a poet, from the Loire Valley, called Eloy d`Amerval. He is a shadowy figure, about whom almost everything is conjecture. Even his surname is not, it just means that he came from Amerval, an area near Calais. His birth is estimated simply because he is listed as being part of the choir at the chapel at Savoy in 1455, and so he must have then been younger than fifteen. He then appears in various references to the French Royal Court, but suddenly disappears after the publication of his most famous poem, `Le Livre de la Deablerie" in 1508; however this caused a great deal of controversy, for it was, in the main, an imaginary dialogue between Satan and Lucifer. So it may have been that he simply laid low, or even changed his name to avoid getting into trouble. That means we do not even know when he died.
For our tribute to the April Fish, we thought we would start you off with three cards that each contain two clues... and they were as follows
Saturday the 28th of March saw us feature Chris Waddle.
The first, easy, clue was the fact that he played for the French team of Marseille, and that club is mentioned on the reverse of the card. However there was a reason not mentioned, nor shown, and that is that he was renowned for wearing a mullet - hairstyle - whereas a mullet - fish - is very popular in France, especially around Marseille.
As for the hairstyle, it is one in which the hair is short at the front, top, and sides, but is very much longer, and sometimes fatter, at the back. Its name has nothing to do with the fish, and it seems to have originated with the 1994 song, "Mullet Head" by the group The Beastie Boys. And it was pretty popular with footballers, which may account for its alternative name, of the soccer rocker. However research proves that it was a popular style way back amongst the Romans, with both Tiberius and Caligula sporting them.
On Sunday the 29th of March, the clues were equally tricky, though both appeared on both sides of the card.
The largest clue on the front was that the card was issued by Salmon and Gluckstein, the salmon, called saumon, being the most popular fish of all in France. And the most popular sort of the fish, oddly, is saumon fume, or smoked salmon - which you probably connect more with Scotland.
The other clue was the fact that this man is Major-General John Denton Pinkstone French, shown here at the Boer War, where he was a cavalry commander, butw who would go on to become the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force, and the 1st Earl of Ypres.
Monday the 23rd of March closed us off with our last two clues
Firstly this was a card issued by Chocolat Guerin-Boutron of Paris in France. That was reasonably easy, especially if you had already fathomed out the French link.
The second one was a bit more of an observational task, in that here we have a shoemaker, and bottom left is a pair of boots, one of which is on its side, revealing of its sole And a sole is yet another popular French fish, most often used in Sole Meuniere, where it is floured, buttered, fried, and then topped with lemon.
Today it is a classic dish, but its name proves its true origins, for a Meuniere was the wife of a miller, hence the flour with which the fish receives its initial dusting.
On which note, if anyone else would like to send us any information or scans from their collection which relates in any way to our theme of the week, please do - simply email us at webmaster@card-world.co.uk - and this is the same for any corrections, or for general cartophilic correspondence and chat.