Se tourner les pouces

Le chat bureaucrate se tourne les pouces // The cat bureaucrat is twiddling his thumbs

After a few soul-destroying experiences with Spanish bureaucracy I felt a sudden urge to draw a pic dedicated to this excellent subgroup of the population — governmental workers in public admin. Those of you who don't know anything about it — those are guys and gals who get a contract for life and are practically impossible to get rid of. I will stop here because the rant could be endless.

Anyway, some goodish while ago a symbol of such a person in Russia was a specific item of clothing — black oversleeve (protège-manche in French), protecting the sleeves, mostly in the elbow areas, from being worn out.

Short research by Kirill showed that at least in Germany the oversleeves have a similar connotation. Not sure about France, but we are not trying to be accurate here, just following the string of associations.

One of the things that public servants can't be fired for is doing nothing, or, of course, twiddling their thumbs. To our delight, the expression proved to exist in French too.

Of course, there are at least two incongruencies in the pic above. First, the cat doesn't have elbows, so there is little to protect. Second, he doesn't have thumbs either, so there is nothing to twiddle.

Three, actually. The cat is way too cute to be a bureaucrat in the first place.

Occupe-toi de tes oignons

Occupe-toi de tes oignons! // Mind your own business!

Another “vegetable” expression.

Looks like his onions need minding quite literally — one started sprouting while he wasn’t looking.

Pictures related to cats and onions @ Shutterstock.

smells scorched

ça sent le roussi // I am in trouble

Literally "Ça sent le roussi" means "it smells scorched", but it is an idiom, meaning there is a trouble brewing.

I am not sure why he is ironing shirts at all, he doesn't wear them. Maybe it is his meditation method. 

When pigs fly

Quand les poules auront des dents // Never

Day 5 of Inktober gives us "chicken" as a prompt. That comes two days after "roasted", I guess someone was hungry.

Anyhow, here is a lovely french idiom "Quand les poules auront des dents" - "When chickens have teeth", meaning never. Or, as it were, when pigs fly.

And here is a chicken, all ready for a Halloween party, looking rather splendid in his Dracula costume.

Dormir à poings fermés

Le chat peut dormir comme une souche. Il peut dormir comme un loir. Mais il ne peut pas dormir à poings fermés. Cette situation le dérange.
// The cat can sleep like a log. He can sleep like a dormouse. But he can’t sleep like a baby. This situation bothers him.

We are going through “your daily routine" theme. One expression came up while talking about sleep — “dormir à poings fermés” — “sleep soundly”, “sleep like a baby”, but literally something like “to sleep with clenched fists". (Although it doesn’t sound very relaxed, babies really do sleep like that).

Now, the cat, due to his configuration, can’t clench his fists. He feel rater bothered by it, since he always thought himself an expert sleeper.

I used this site to look up sleep-related French idioms. “Dormir comme une marmotte”, “to sleep as a marmot” is my favorite because we have exact same expression in Russian — «дрыхнуть как сурок».

Pictures related to cats and sleep @ Shutterstock.

meterse en berenjenales

Today, I'd like to take a breather from French and talk about a funny expression our teacher used. It was in my french class, so it fits here, sort of.

We have only been doing french for a month, so we can't handle any complex concepts. I did have a go at one though; when my teacher finally understood what I was trying to say he said "Te metes en berenjenales". The meaning was immediately apparent from the context - "you are getting yourself into trouble", but I thought the expression he used was funny. Literally it means "you are getting into eggplant patches".  

Explanation, as I later found, is as follows - eggplants' stems have spines, so if you somehow get yourself into an eggplant patch it will be difficult to get out. 

First I couldn't believe that there is such a specialized word as "berenjenal" (eggplant patch), so it made me imagine a sort of jungle of eggplants. Alas, the word does exist, but I still prefer to think of it as an eggplant jungle.


And here you have it. Sumo wrestler cat has gotten himself into an eggplant forest; he doesn't like it at all, I am afraid.