The Agatha in question being the Marple yarn about running a borstal in the garden of a stately home, picked up with another at the secondhand bookshop which is more or less opposite the Catholic Church in Ryde High Street. A store with an extensive stock, although rather cluttered with piles of books all over the place. But I can always find something to pay my way there, hence the couple of Agathas at £2 a pop, both translated into French for 'le Club des Masques' by one Jean-Marc Mendel. With the title of mine, in English 'They Do it with Mirrors', rendered into French as 'Jeux de glaces'. Fair enough.
The word in question is 'billevesée', which seems to mean a bit of nonsense, as in 'that was just a bit of nonsense'. It caught my attention as I wondered whether this was another case of the French being much freer with body parts and body functions in their slang and idiom that we are. In this case with 'bille' being quite close to bile and 'vesée' being quite close to bladder. However, Collins tells me that gall bladder is something quite different, so wrong about that.
'Bille' seems to be ball, pure and simple, while 'vesée' does not seem to be anything, although the nearest real word is indeed 'vessie' for bladder.
Internet, once again, fails to help, so I still don't know where the word comes from.
On the other hand, bing turned up a blog of this name at reference 1, from which I have clipped the illustration above. It seems that the Anne of Green Gables, serious reading for generations of Canadian children, and others, has been made over. Has it been updated to the extent of dragging in child abuse? Maybe we will investigate, given the interest a few years ago. See reference 2.
A chap who appears to have been blogging for about the same time as I have, although I think I do more posts. And dipping at random, I turn up reference 3, of present interest given the production of the 'Tempest' at the Barbican. Of which more in due course. As they so often say, it's a small world.
PS: an example of bodily functions in French would be the expression 'pet-en-l'air' picked up from the Maigret story 'l'Homme du Banc', which seems to be a short rain coat, fashionable in Paris for a while in the relevant period. But an expression which bing suggests has a long history. I can't see us naming a sort of coat in this sort of way at all.
Reference 1: http://billmadison.blogspot.co.uk/.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=green+gables.
Reference 3: http://billmadison.blogspot.co.uk/2011/12/enchanted-for-new-years.html.
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