L’Enfer C’Est Les Autres returns to the subject of pedestrian etiquette, addressed on more than one occasion in the past. While Jean-Paul Sartre might have come up with the title, the sentiment is skewered far more neatly here. Thanks to Lee, Jim, WG Lincoln, Jon D, James, Neil and Owen – all much appreciated!
See lyrics to L’Enfer C’Est Les Autres
Jason
This cover of L’Enfer C’est Les Autres was my first effort to mark the album’s release. Think of it as my digital version of a commemorative plate with Lady Di on the front. Except not.
I left my perfect pitch in the practice room, unfortunately.
5 September 2011
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
J’incline mon chapeau, monsieur.
5 September 2011
Chris the Siteowner
In many ways, your finest yet, my friend. And it’s always a thrill to read one’s name in the credits, very gracious of you. Hasn’t happened to me since Star Wars Episode VI (although that may have been a namesake).
6 September 2011
nigeyb
I appreciate Nigel’s clarification on the correct etiquette for drivers to allow a pedestrian to cross the road in L’Enfer C’Est Les Autres. Don’t use your index finger (drives me mad too). Nope, make your invitation with an outstretched palm.
29 September 2011
Paul Rodgers (Crimond)
Out driving today I got to use my outstretched palm on two or three occasions and it made me feel good. Do you think one by one we could change the world for Nigel? As long as we don’t shoot men in Tesco just to watch them die.
17 October 2011
Jim Wickham
Sometimes I hear “…not that difficult…”, other times I hear “….not dead difficult…”. Is it time to have my ears syringed?
30 October 2011
Steve Nicholls
I think Nigel’s being a bit harsh on the driverr’s pointing gesture. Having used this myself on numerous occasions I can honestly say it is only used with good intentions. I can only apologise for being presumptious to all pedestrians and cyclists in the past.
Suitably chastised, I have, like Paul above, now taken to using an outstretched palm at all times.
30 October 2011
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
Intention – singular.
Reading the grid doesn’t sound right to me. Sounds more like The Grig or The Crib.
A couple of lyric changes from the 6Music session which IMHO don’t improve this song.
Oh and on the subject of driver / pedestrian communication; any driver who signals his (or her) desired requirement for my movement using a single finger will invariably get two in return.
30 October 2011
Sherpa Relaxing
Today, walking back from town and humming this tune, I was about to cross the road when a car slowed down and so I waited to see the tell-tale finger, but the nice lady offered showed her intention with an expansive wave. Then 20 yards up the road a woman and toddler waited for me as the pavement was semi-blocked by parked cars. I honestly think HMHB’s message is already getting out there, praise be.
30 October 2011
Chris the Siteowner
“Intention – singular”? Really?
30 October 2011
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
Indubitably.
30 October 2011
dagenham Dave
I agree with the singular ‘intention’.
I think it’s reading ‘the grid’, I’ve assumed that refers to a crossword or even sudoku.
30 October 2011
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
Interesting ideas Dave. When I was trying to get my head around the grid, so to speak, I was thinking much more literally, perhaps something like the bottom, middle here; http://www.solentroadmarkingsltd.co.uk/our%20gallery
My Asperger interpretation being the reason perhaps why I think that it might be something other than ‘the grid’.
30 October 2011
Third rate Les in his Burberry fez
There is quite definitely a “s” sound at the end of “intentions”.
30 October 2011
dj
i believe nigel is inspecting a drainage grid on the highway, quite possibly reading who the manufacturer was and ensuring it’s BSI kitemarked
30 October 2011
Charles Exford
Hadn’t spotted the “s” on the album version until now, as after awhole year the 6Music version was thoroughly engrained, but yes, it’s plural “intentions”.
Not sure why there is any doubt about “grid”. But @DJ, he probably isn’t reading it; he’s just saying he could be.
31 October 2011
Martin
I’d always taken The Grid to simply be a London map. Having already established we’re in the smoke (the duke and his wife own the streets), the grid would be a tourist map of London, and he’d be reading it in a traditional tourist-y way as a visitor from merseyside might?
Maps with lots of parallel streets/avenues are often known as grids. It had never struck me that this could be anything else.
2 November 2011
Martin
Oooh, please pardon my shocking lower-case ‘m’ in the previous post.
2 November 2011
Charles Exford
The Duke of Westminster owns more of Lancashire & Cheshire than any other individual including a lot of L’pool & Birkenhead centres.For example it was Grosvenor Estates (i.e. the Duke) who waited 60 years for the right moment and turned a bombsite into billions, by building the Liverpool One centre.
As for B’head, for example it’s the same Duke who owns so much empty property in this recession that he recently gave premises to the new Wilfred Owen museum. I’m sure there are even pavements round there (especially in the precincts) that he owns.
2 November 2011
john burscough
When I were a lad (in Preston) there was only one possible meaning for ‘grid’, which was a drain cover at the edge of a road, into which one might conceivably slip and disappear “down the grid”. I doubt that it has any other meaning here.
2 November 2011
Rubber Faced Irritant
I’d wager that ‘reading the grid’ is shorthand for checking the grid reference. Or simply consulting an Ordinance Survey map which is a grid map. You can also use a handheld GPS nowadays.
“I’ll give you the grid ref, you might like to go…”
3 November 2011
Charles Exford
He must despair.
3 November 2011
Martin
@Charles Didn’t know that.
Ah well, maybe not then… or still maybe?
3 November 2011
chris from future doom
I just assumed the ‘reading the grid’ line was that he was inspecting one of those big, grey metal electrical box type thingies you see at the side of the road (not sure what they’re called), as an electrician might do. After all why would he be reading a map standing at the side of the road?
3 November 2011
John Burscough
We are all in the gutter, but some of us are reading the grid.
3 November 2011
Charles Exford
I’m starting to think we don’t all call the same thing a “grid”.
I’d be interested to know from those who _don’t_ automatically realise that he’s saying he could be (but almost certainly isn’t) standing on the kerb reading the writing on the iron drain-cover beneath him in the gutter, whether their lack of realisation is because they call the iron drain-cover by another name than “the grid”?
i.e. is there anyone who does use the term “grid” for that common everyday meaning, and who is aware that grids in every road everywhre have writing on them, who doesn’t think that’s what the word means in this song?
(seems similar to the fella who didn’t think “polar neck” made sense because it wasn’t in his vocabulary)
3 November 2011
Charles Exford
John – once again we post simultaneously, and in many ways complementarily, on the same subject.
I shall have to resist asking your star-sign.
3 November 2011
Dagenham Dave
Having read the above I think the OS map suggestion is a very good one although I’m not discounting my crossword idea.
3 November 2011
Charles Exford
Taking your obvious bait far too seriously I know, but nobody ever uses a grid ref anywhere where there’s a road with pavements.
3 November 2011
John Burscough
@Charles: I think we’re being played here, mate. At least nobody’s suggested it’s a reference to the MI5 nerve centre in Spooks.
Ref the end of your comment in post 19, I wouldn’t be surprised if NB57 had heard the 18.4.08 episode of R4′s You and Yours on the Duke of Westminster taking ownership of the streets of Liverpool One (see this thread from the Yo! Liverpool forum)
3 November 2011
Martin
I’ll happily concede the ‘grid’ thing now. In 43 years on this earth I’d simply never heard a drain cover called a grid, but now after finding out that other folks do, to my mind it’s by far the most likely to be ‘right’.
I was perfectly happy with my map thing though too…. I’ve always known city maps as grids.
I somehow can’t imagine the JLS lyrics project website hosting these kind of debates.
4 November 2011
Charles Exford
I feel like the Counsel for the Drain Cover in an Alice in Wonderland court, rising again, but aware of mixed emotions. In view of Martin’s gracious concession/confession there, will I come across as smug? Will I lose the sympathy of the assembled court if I labour the point? What would m’learned friend John Burscough do? Or more to the point, what visual exhibit would he pass around the court, saving a hundred words? Should we just rest our case?
But I can’t help choosing the smug option and the regionally-focussed summing-up. Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jukebox Jury, it is surprising how often we in the North West are the true guardians of the English language. ‘Pants’ do I hear you say? Still means ‘trousers’ as far as I’m concerned, as it originally did nationwide. After one more generation even Merseysiders may refer to their undies that way, who knows, but I’m still holding out. ‘Polo neck’ ? Almost universal now, but don’t we owe it to those brave explorers who fought to reach the poles, those frost-bitten sailors & squaddies who were issued with ‘polar neck jumpers’ in the misguided Arctic campaigns against (and later with) the Russians, to preserve ‘polar neck’ for a little while longer ?
We feel great sympathy for you if you didn’t previously realise that all other meanings of ‘grid’ are derived from the old French words ‘grille’ or ‘graille’, an iron mesh used for cooking / barring windows/ covering drains, etc. I.e. ‘grid’ is derived from ‘grill’ via ‘griddle’. Hence a chrome ‘grille’ on your car or the iron ‘grill(e)’ on your jail bars is the same origin as your ‘grid-iron’ draincover. All originally from the mesh in your grill pan or on your barbecue.
From your grid-iron draincover come (in the early 19th century) the metaphorical uses of the word, such as: a grid-iron street plan (Birkenhead itself being a pioneering early 19th-century example); your grid-iron sports pitch; your grid pattern on paper or on a map; only in the 1920′s do we get ‘grid’ for other kinds of network like ‘the National Grid’. The Victorians built their empire quite literally on the drains. We could perhaps say the same of this particular etymological family tree.
Now I’ll shut up.
4 November 2011
John Burscough
I’ll also shut my grid.
4 November 2011
Charles Exford
PS – what is JLS?
4 November 2011
Dagenham Dave
You’re better off not knowing. Trust me.
4 November 2011
dj
in scotland they are generally referred to as ‘gullies’ or ‘gully covers’ the gully actually being the pot or chamber into which the surface water drains, a road gully
13 November 2011
Hartychoke
Is there a hidden ‘cache of Cash’ in the ‘wristwatch/flies’ couplet ? or are we to assume that our subject knocked off the man in black bothering Rugger type in the supermarket and is now on a stretch ?
16 November 2011
Rubber Faced Irritant
I’m sure most pedants here recognises the couplet is a modification of the first two lines from I Walk the Line. It doesn’t seem to be mentioned on this thread but I feel so nervous about pointing this out that I can hear the hooter from QI ringing in my ears. The original goes ‘I keep a close watch on this heart of mine, I keep my eyes wide open all the time’
19 January 2012
Rob
“Grid” is definitely a drainage cover. But “reading” one? Some of them do have writing on, at least a manufacturer’s name, but this is far from universal.
I can’t be sure of this, since my memory is generally atrocious, but I think I recall being asked, as a child staring too closely at a grid, if I was reading anything interesting down there. Have I simply imagined this, or was this something that people actually said in the Merseyside of the 1980s?
2 April 2012
PV
I assumed that with ‘reading the grid’ he’s comparing the queue of cars to the starting grid of a Formula One race. The word ‘reading’ here seems more fitting used as a racing term than reading map references or drain covers to me
As a pedestrian, beckoning drivers are usually in a queue of cars at a junction or roundabout (double lane here, as we know he doesn’t want to be run down by someone in the outside lane).
Fantastic site by the way. Regular visitor, first time contributor.
4 April 2012
Priceless
Yep, you’ve nailed the zeitgeist there mate, that’ll definitely be it.
I just can’t decide whether it’s one of John Wayne’s wives or one of Davie Bowie’s who he’s standing aside for, as an alternative to his analysis of that fascinating motorsport moment. What do you reckon?
5 April 2012
Third Rate Les
He’s coming up with a reason why he might be standing at the edge of a kerb, facing the road, but not actually wishing to cross. Really the only reason is if he’s looking intently at something next to the kerb. A grid, most likely.
And I like reading grids too – gives you a surprising flavour for local history sometimes.
The ones in Rome, for instance, have “SPQR” written on them, presumably as they have for about 2,400 years now. Stands for “senatus populusquam romanae”, although jokingly “sono pazzo questi romani”, which is why Asterix says “ils sont fous, ces romains” (or “these Romans are crazy”). So there you go – a whole train of thought that I discovered just from reading a grid.
5 April 2012
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
I’ve been convinced by ‘the grate grid debate’ over the last few months that ‘grid’ refers to the bloody drain cover, however one thing I love about this site is that it remains a place to test out the mental musings that spring unbidden to the mind on listening to the wonderful lyrics of HMHB. PVs vision of rows of cars revving impatiently, waiting for red to turn to green, whilst you stand there judging (or reading) if you have time to nip across the front row without getting mowed down by a scowling youth in an uninsured 15 year old Ford Escort RS Cosworth who thinks he is the reincarnation of Ayrton Senna, seems a reasonable interpretation to me. Without the lyrics, on hearing the 6Music session, I heard ‘Crib’ rather than ‘Grid’ and assumed a newspaper abbreviation or nickname such as ‘Chron’ or ‘Pink’un’, and thus presumed our hero was distracted reading a paper as he tried to cross the road. Made sense to me as that’s what I tend to do. – walk down the street without due care and attention, as I’m reading the paper I’ve just bought. Interpretation is all.
By the way, very little genuinely astonishes me these days, but I do wonder with a sense of inverse awe how, for example, Justin Bieber can rattle up 724 million views of a single youtube video, whilst some HMHB vids can languish there for a year and not clock up a thousand hits. What is wrong with people?
5 April 2012
John Burscough
I saw a grid outside the Ritz in Manchester at the weekend with Cooper Clarke stamped on it.
5 April 2012
Vendor of Quack Nostrums
I can’t go back to Salford
The cops have got me marked
Enter the Dragon
Exit Johnny Clarke.
5 April 2012