[...] in Carcassonne, where I was driven by les sapeurs-pompeurs
Oh my....
![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif)
Sapeurs pomp and circumstances. Still preferable to the pompes funèbres.
You were faster with that one. But I have the story to go with it.
In the mid 90s, I had activities in the French city of St. Etienne.
After some visits as a kid, I had been giving that country a wide berth - that blasted language having endangered my Abitur was only the last straw of a reason. Now I had to go there, and despite having been assured that I would be fine with English at the company I was visiting, I felt the necessity to polish up at least some common technical terms. Voilá, I knew about fiches and prises, le courant continu et le courant alternatif, and I was quite sure that 'pompes' are pumps.
Now in Germany, we have some occurrences of industrial sales representancies having taken residence in a former retail shop and having the windows painted over or replaced by opaque glass, sometimes showing a logo of one or several manufacturers. There are two former shops of this type in Mannheim alone.
Now I drove through St. Etienne, and within a short time I had encountered not one but FOUR shops of this type, all of which seemed to sell pumps! I wondered whether this city suffers from a high water table or maybe a particularly deficient sewage system - and decided to investigate!
I entered this pump-peddling business and adressed the serious looking gentleman behind the counter straight away. I asked him, in more ore less correct french, but with the correct technical terms, whether he sells rotary (pompes rotatives) or plunger pumps (pompes à piston) and for which purpose they are?
Just to make sure that I would be understood correctly I did underlay the vocal communication with gestural depictions of the pumps mentioned. And I was puzzled by the fact that, as far as a furtive glance through the room yielded, not a single pump was to be seen there!
The (supposed) salesman of flow-inducing machinery looked at me rather aghast. Then my eyes fell upon the half-opened sliding door to another room, where some grieving relatives were pondering the offered selection of caskets. Suddenly I was able to make the connection from 'funèbres' to 'funeral', which had not occured to me before. I think that I managed to snort not too loudly and say something as well before I managed to leave the shop through the nicely etched glass door.
The story was quite a hoot with my hosts at GIAT. One guy told me that I got it wrong - before the deceased can be pumped away, it would be necessary to feed them into a macerator.