petite anglaise

I saw a t-shirt like the above on a middle aged French lady yesterday. Non-english speakers seem to be willing to wear anything with English words on, blissfully unaware of what they might be advertising/whether the words make any sense whatsoever/or mean something dirrty.

If anyone can enlighten me as to whether there is a sports team in Eastham (Cape Cod, US) sponsored by readymix (concrete?) I’d be most grateful.

August is almost upon me again. A tedious time of year to be in Paris, unless you happen to be a tourist and you can get away with wearing shorts and flip flops. My neighbourhood has effectively closed down for the next month: favourite clothes are trapped at the dry cleaners until September, there are no decent bread/croissants on sale within a 500m radius, and the tobacconist has now buggered off too. No more cigs for the Frog (he might actually have to stop smoking instead of just pretending now).

Temperatures are soaring, and I think it’s time to call on Holmes, my trusty butler fan, so that he can stir the stale, polluted air round and round the flat. Follow my advice: never rent a flat with only south facing windows. I managed to fry an egg on my balcony last year. Top temperature measured in my bedroom at midnight: 40°C (using the thermometer which my exercise bike kindly defaults to when in ‘idle’ mode, its preferred state).

During the 2003 killer heat wave that significantly reduced the pensions shortfall in France and kept undertakers in business, I was on maternity leave and trapped at home with shutters firmly closed.  I’m almost thankful to be at work this time round, even if the transition from 16°C in the air conditioned office to 30+°C outside can be a little brutal.

I’m the one you saw on the metro this morning with a cardigan on, blowing my nose.

My favourite dress ever was a short, gauzy, off-white miss selfridge number with lots of sequins on the bodice which glowed under UV lighting. Not the most tasteful of outfits, I readily admit, but this was 1994. It was always worn with trainers as I have never mastered the black art of walking, let alone dancing for hours on end, in strappy sandals.

Sadly, since I moved to France this dress has had only one outing, accessorized with a wand.  To a fancy dress party. It has now been reluctantly consigned to the ‘dressing up clothes’ bag for the toddler to marvel at one day. In Paris, at least in the circles I move in, dressing down is de rigueur, and something of an art form. Sequins are scorned as cheap and tacky (with hindsight I tend to agree), and are not even acceptable on club wear. Exposing swathes of flesh is also seen as ‘unelegant’. (Teenagers of the UK take note: showing your goose pimpled midriff in December when you haven’t been sticking to government healthy eating guidelines is simply not attractive).

In my years as a Parisienne I have acquired a wardrobe of boring discreet, mostly black clothes which leave a little more to the imagination. The Frog prefers me to dress down and would love it if I consented to throw away my make up altogether. Male insecurity speaks: “you’ve pulled, so now let me drag you back to my cave and you need never attempt to make yourself attractive to the opposite sex again And none of that nonsense about how you are doing it for yourself, not for other men.”

Clearly I do not agree with this attitude, but as it happens the Frog needn’t worry. Since becoming a mother, my idea of putting an outfit together consists of finding the least crumpled clothes in the ironing pile and praying that they will match.

Extract from an article in the guardian about a new French book called Bonjour Paresse – The Art and the Importance of Doing the Least Possible at the Workplace by Corinne Maier, “an anarchic anti-business bible”:

“…employees should shake off their shackles of loyalty and start footling around during office hours…”

I’m not sure what loyalty footling is, but am wondering whether an alternative translation could be “blogging”?

Note to my boss: please do not fire me. I have been a little distracted lately, but I’m not doing anyone any harm and I (nearly) always suspend all blog-related activities when something lands in my in-tray.

Dear Controller of Canal Plus

Why oh why do you insist on programming quality British dramas like Prime Suspect dubbed into French? ‘Spooks’ and ‘24’ are shown in both languages, so why not this? It is unwatchable in French. For your information, Jane Tennison is not supposed to sound like a French version of Hyacinth from Keeping up Appearances and your beautiful language does no justice whatsoever to her wry comments.

I beg you to accept the assurance of my most distinguished salutations…etc.

petite anglaise

I’m sure I’m not the only English speaker who detests watching dubbed television. I mean, it stands to reason that the quality of the original acting is lost entirely when a failed actor professional ‘dubber’ reads the lines into a microphone in a studio in Saint Denis.

Don’t even get me started on the rendering of non-speech sounds: you only have to listen to the moans and groans in a dubbed porn film…

Seemingly child labour is not permitted in the dubbing profession, as the voices of children are mimicked by adult women (regardless of whether the child is male or female). Designed to make Maman, j’ai rate l’avion an even less pleasurable experience.

From the guardian weblog page today:

Petite Anglaise
Blog pick: A rather elegant new blog written by a woman who describes herself
as ‘a British thirtysomething in Paris’.
·Jane Perrone

I don’t think I’ve been this excited since I was nine years old and my painting of a girl with an umbrella was featured on BBC Look East weather.

Every time I pass on of these high-tech loo pods in the streets of Paris, it calls to mind a story I once heard about a drowned toddler. I carried out some internet ‘research’, but found no proof that this actually happened, so presumably it is urban myth. Regardless, however desperate I might be, I can’t bring myself to use these automated contraptions.

Firstly, I am suspicious of the automatic door which closes behind you. Just how long would I have before it glides open? What if it malfunctions, revealing me at my most vulnerable, underwear around ankles, to a bustling Parisian street? And what if the cleaning mechanism kicks in and spray me from head to toe in disinfectant? Does the floor really open when this happens? I don’t think I want to find out.

The alternative of course is to use a café toilet. You don’t usually have to pay for the privilege, but you may get more than you bargained for. The queue for the cubicles is often directly opposite the urinals. Not exactly eye candy whether these are in use or not. This proximity is unlikely to be a source of distress/embarrassment to the average French male. Don’t forget, he has no qualms about relieving himself in the street in broad daylight.

What the French call “Turkish” toilets (i.e. holes in the floor) are still fairly common, even in Paris. Females beware: if wearing trousers, any minor miscalculation of trajectory will result in an unpleasant splashback effect.

On a more positive note, I did discover on my fairly extensive tour of Paris conveniences (when heavily pregnant) that metro/underground toilets are not as horrific as I imagined.  At Madeleine they are art nouveau, kept in pristine condition by the Dame Pipi (the attendant who takes your 30 centimes) and have shoe shine throne if you fancy a break and a bit of French polishing.

Starbucks recently opened their first Paris coffee shop a short distance from my place of work to great fanfare. I have been secretly hoping it would fail, as I rather like Paris the way it is, that is to say without too many global brands repeated ad infinitum on every shopping street.

However, I gave into temptation this morning on the way to work as I was feeling a bit low and managed to convince myself that a cockroach-free medium skinny caramel latte to go would help cheer me up.

The French have clearly missed the point of Starbucks. First of all, un café latte moyen avec lait écrémé, et sirop de caramel à emporter s’il vous plaît takes rather a long time to say. Then, after ordering, the experience is similar to French MacDonalds in that the global concept of fast food (or drink) has been translated in France into a “service” which is anything but. I was tempted to get behind the counter myself to speed things up.

The Frog in a suit in front of me wanted a café crème. When asked what kind of milk/coffee/sized cup he wanted and where he wanted to drink it, he looked vulnerable and lost, and stammered that he just wanted a café crème.

Bless.

What are you supposed to say when you see someone’s new baby for the first time, and he looks like a chubby, ruddy-faced, thirty-something car salesman?

I was at a loss for words and the best I could do without any advance warning was “what lovely chubby cheeks!” I do hope I managed to conceal my horror.

In the light of this new evidence, I’m tempted to believe in reincarnation (à la Britney Spears ‘Everytime’). Click here to purchase me a red string bracelet…

I have finally caved in to pressure and reluctantly abandoned the Tadpole for a week with the Frog grandparents (childminder is living the high life at my expense in Algeria for five weeks so alternative childcare solutions had to be found). Packed toddler off with a first aid kit twice her size as she seems to think the laws of nature do not apply to her, and is fond of hurling herself off furniture as an experiment to see whether she can defy gravity. At best she will come home covered in cute band aids with animals on and a few colourful French words in her repertoire. These will consist largely of expletives that the grandparents will unwittingly teach her when they see her poised to throw herself down the stairs.

In the meantime I’ll just have to cope with the long summer evenings of freedom stretching ahead of me and see if I can’t put some serious effort into getting my alcohol tolerance back up to a respectable level.

Wish me luck.

The frog and I speak a language understood only by ourselves, where sentences may start in French, end in English and include some words which hover somewhere in between. I’ve adopted some of the frog’s more endearing mistakes because they amused me: faulty plurals (feets, sheeps), creative past tenses (“I’m feeling hanged over”). He also does a very convincing faux Yorkshire accent when he says “fancy a cuppa tea luv?” and slips into it automatically (as do I) when he spends time with my family.

Mother called last night and asked the frog if he had any idea what she could get him for his upcoming birthday. I would give anything to have been a fly on the wall to see her reaction when he said that he could do with a pair of handcuffs.

Strait-laced mother must have been struggling to process this unexpected/unwelcome revelation about our sex life and his request was met with a protracted embarrassed silence. I was too busy choking with mirth on a sour cream and onion Pringle to put either of them out of their misery.

He meant cuff links.

When I was at school, the textbook we used in French lessons was called Tricolore.  Two cartoon strips provided a bit of light relief at regular intervals:  one was called Claude le Clochard (about a vagrant named Claude) and the other was Fifi la Folle (a madwoman). With hindsight I think it is a little odd that the French nation was represented by these two characters.* But having said that, there are plenty of Claude’s and Fifi’s in to be seen in the streets of Paris.

The difference between the homeless people I see in England and France is this: in England Claude is typically a cheeky chappy with the gift of the gab selling The Big Issue outside Marks & Spencer. In France, Claude is more likely to be found horizontal, sleeping/comatose on the pavement adjacent to a warm air vent, or in the metro with his belongings in a plastic laundry bag by his side, and a few empty screw top wine bottles. If you are unlucky he might be conscious and verbally abusive. One whom I see regularly in the metro calls all the ladies who walk past dirty whores. Verbal abuse I can deal with, but one of my greatest fears, particularly on public transport, is of being thrown up on by a drunk. It hasn’t happened yet, but give it time.

There are also ‘career’ beggars who spend the whole day riding the metro and giving their potted history over and over again. It must be soul-destroying stuff and so I am refraining from poking fun at them. But I am quite amused by the fact that when the euro became legal tender, their spiel changed overnight from asking for “un franc ou deux” to “un euro ou deux”. Nearly seven times more.

I wish my employers had applied the same logic.

*In my German book, Deutsch Heute, the cartoon strip was about a talking pig called Fränzi.

The French language has no equivalent for the English phrase “mutton dressed as lamb”. A puzzling oversight considering the army of Parisian moutons out there with their puckered, perma-tanned hides, escort-esque attire and make up applied with a palette knife à la Paint along with Nancy.

On a typical balmy summer’s day, flocks of moutons can be found sun-worshipping by the lakes in the Bois de Vincennes/Boulogne – parks on the outskirts of Paris where South American transvestites ply their trade at night and families picnic by day – exhibiting acre upon acre of leathery skin. Topless pensioners: not my cup of tea, although I don’t doubt that there are websites that can cater for your needs if that’s what turns you on.

I look upon global warming and the destruction of the ozone layer as a blessing in disguise. At least if I’m tempted to bare it all when I reach a ripe old age and my cleavage has migrated south of my belly button, exposing skin of any age to direct sunlight will be a thing of the past.

Help! I have the dubious honour of hosting google banner adverts for adult incontinence pants across the top of my page today. Mental note to avoid all future mention of nappies/diapers, because these are not images I wish to be associated with.

But since you asked, my pelvic floor is doing very well thank you.

The French females (FF’s) in my workplace are a very different breed to the Brits and need to be ‘handled’ with extreme care. The following tips are based on personal experience, and may not be applicable to all FF’s.  Let no-one accuse me of making generalisations…

• If you want an FF to do something for you (which incidentally is part of her job description and therefore by definition what she is paid for) don’t forget to prefix your request with the immortal phrase “I’m sorry to bother you, but could you possibly…”. Acknowledge the fact that she is doing you a favour by merely breathing, and don’t be afraid to resort to (c)overt flattery. If you follow these steps, the work should get done. FF does reserve the right to moan about you behind your back to other FF’s. This is unfortunate, but sadly unavoidable.
• Be very careful when communicating in French to FF’s, verbally or by email. You cannot assume that sarcasm and irony will translate or be understood. Nor can you assume that FF has a sense of humour/can relate to yours. You are playing a very dangerous game if you adopt a tone which implies criticism. The punishment is generally being “sent to Coventry” by every French female in the office. Voices will drop to a whisper every time you enter the room and the atmosphere will be glacial. For months.
• If you choose to communicate in English, which generally gives you the advantage, obviously you must be prepared for FF to claim to have misunderstood you when she misses the deadline/f***s up. Note that although FF has chosen to work in a British environment and said in her interview that she welcomed the opportunity to improve her English, it was all lies. She resents having to make the extra effort and will make you pay (see above). This tactic is therefore to be used sparingly.
• Avoid using the bathroom after a thin FF, especially after lunch. She has invariably been using the two-finger technique to prevent the grated carrot salad she had for lunch from making thigh contact. Similarly if random foodstuffs go missing from the communal fridge, particularly items that no-one in their right mind would pilfer, like the two crabsticks and one soft cheese square which went AWOL last Tuesday, then look no further for your culprit.

To be continued…

Don’t ask me why, but I have just been entertaining myself by calculating what I could buy from ebay if I had one euro for every nappy/diaper I have changed over the past thirteen months. The result is this, which I’m sure would better equip me to do my job. The frog would be able to buy this, with the paltry sum he would have at his disposal. He’s not exactly what you would call a ‘new man’.

I suppose I should be thankful he’s not auctioning me [broken link to German model girlfriend being auctioned on ebay - I guess the e bay police deleted the entry!] on ebay though.

Spent a bit of time looking at old photograph albums today, as you do on a rainy day when you are trapped indoors with a toddler (who still has the runs).

Realised that the Frog had some hair when we first met and looked quite dashing. Attempted to convince myself that I am still as fresh faced and slim as I was at university (well if I kind of squint it’s almost true).

Themost worrying thingwas seeing myself pictured with people I know I knew really well only four or five years ago and not having the faintest idea what their names were.Not even their first names.I seem to have less brainpower than your average goldfish. The synapses just don’t . . . . link up.

Now I am trying to suppress a nagging feeling of anxiety about what other consequences the many and varied recreationals I so enthusiastically sampled in my youth will have on my mind and body… Not that I have any regrets however. My pearls of wisdom for anyone else who plans to take clubbing very seriously are:

• Always write people’s names on the back of photographs, along with optional extra information like whether or not you liked/slept with them. If your paths cross again, this information will be priceles
• Annotate your Glastonbury festival brochures. You’ll feel like a right turnip when someone asks you if you saw Primal Scream when they played in ‘91 and you say you definitely were there but can’t remember.
• Start blogging now. At least some shreds of your current life will be documented (and embellished) for future reference.

Now, there was something else I wanted to write about here but I’m afraid I can’t remember what it was.

I learnt a new French expression today which I feel like sharing.

Péter dans la soie = to live in the lap of luxury. Literal translation: to fart in silk. Delightful image, I’m sure you’ll agree.

I think I have all the French idioms involving the passing of wind covered now. The other firm favourite being: to be too big for one’s boots, which is vouloir péter plus haut que son cul (literally: to want to fart higher than one’s own arse). Nice, non?

Incidentally, as I seem to be on a toilet humour roll here, my frog refers to updating my weblog as “dropping a log”.

There is a coffee machine in the kitchen at work, quite a serious beast which grinds its own beans accompanied by a sound not unlike an electric drill and with the coin slot disabled so that caffeine is free to the masses. A double espresso is my drug of choice, and without it I am of limited use to anyone before midday.

I opened up the machine one morning to fill it up with fresh coffee beans and water and noticed that the dried blob of hot chocolate paste I had seen out of the corner of my eye had legs and was moving. Just as I found a suitable implement with which to remove the intruder, it scuttled off to hide inside the machine. Presumably it lives there. With its extended family.

A casual enquiry at the café downstairs confirmed what I had feared – cockroaches (cafards) frequently take up abode in coffee machines in Paris because it is nice and warm and there are coffee grounds to nibble on when they get peckish. I was assured that they don’t find their way into your cup of coffee and in answer to my question “how do you get rid of them?” I got a typical gallic shrug. Which means that they don’t do anything. Live and let live…

Mine’ll be an instant from now on then please. With a pro-plus chaser.

So, why petite anglaise?

Well, it’s a long story. I first arrived in France, many moons ago, as an exchange student attempting to teach English conversation classes in a Lycée, that was what French people called me. Possibly because they couldn’t pronounce my name (which has a “th” in it and is therefore tricky). Not because I am particularly small, because although I’m no Goliath, I have heard it used to describe girls of every conceivable shape and size. To French people, every anglaise is a petite anglaise.

The poster from the well-known French film below suggests to me that there are other connotations. I think we are all meant to be easy lays. “Petites américaines” are tarred with the same brush. It’s a cross we have to bear.

I have now been blogging for one week, and I’m mildly amused to see that I have had a handful of visitors. As I have told no-one of this site’s existence, and currently the only way you can find me on google is by typing “calpol and suppositories” or “Percival Goldman Esq”, I’m not entirely sure how people end up here. I even had one (albeit pervy) comment! My fifteen minutes of fame are upon me and I must use them wisely.

Am currently considering ways of attracting new visitors, and they include:

Including a (bogus) link to the Solomon/Hilton video (bogus as I think they are both making enough money out of that already)

Changing the description text to “diary of a nymphomaniac in Paris” (clearly not true, but the end justifies the means)

All suggestions welcome…

The French revolution’s kick off is celebrated every 14 July with a very long (televised) military parade on the Champs Elysées [stifled yawn]. Good old Chirac showing off his tank and plane collection. Boys will be boys.

The ‘festivities’ start the night before with firemen’s balls [insert double entendre here] held in fire stations nationwide. These are allegedly a good place to pull if:
a) you can stand the distressing music (think bad wedding dj and multiply by a cringe factor of 10),
b) you are partial to being groped by lairy, pissed Frenchmen, and
c) you are not too worried about someone puking on your shoes.

The next day Paris will smell even more strongly of urine than usual, as to a Frenchman, heavy drinking = a licence to relieve himself anywhere he chooses. If you are lucky, he will turn his back before he gets his hose out and your feet will not be on the receiving end of an unwelcome golden shower.

I’m at a loss to explain how any of this is related to the storming of the Bastille.

Personally, as the babysitter and her Dior handbag [more about her another time] have gone on an extended holiday I have a watertight excuse not to get involved in the ‘revelry’…

My workplace is an oasis of Britishness in Paris. Like in the British embassy, all French rules are suspended upon entering the building and you have to set your watch to GMT.

There is a framed portrait of Her Majesty QE2 in the entrance hall. We got a day off for the golden jubilee. We have Tetley tea and fresh milk in the kitchen (as opposed to nasty French UHT, which makes a terrible cuppa).

When writing to clients we have to address them as “Esq”, e.g. Percival Goldman Esq. The dictionary tells me this is “a title of respect for a member of the English gentry ranking just below a knight”.

It’s a bit tricky to know who ranks just below a knight these days and who doesn’t. The only explanation anyone could venture when I asked for clarification was “it’s a class thing”.

Makes one proud to be British.

My metro ride to work this morning was très surreal. A very earnest busker killed me softly with “Yesterday” sung ever so slightly off key and with a French accent (“my trobbles seemed so far awaiy…”) and played with odd little extra flourishes on a saxophone. He alternately sung a couple of lines and then continued with the sax. All this to a taped backing track played on one of the little portable amps the buskers all seem to have these days. He was so into his performance that he had his eyes shut. I hope his takings were somewhere safe from the pickpockets.

At the other end of the carriage, a group of Japanese/Chinese with surgical masks on. Do they know something I don’t? Has SARS hit Paris? Or like me, do they have trobble coping with collective French morning mouth in confined spaces?

Wish I hadn’t handed in the packet of Xanax my toddler found on the floor of the departure lounge at Charles de Gaulle airport this weekend.

Just back from a weekend away in Toulouse with friends of my long-term live-in, commitment-phobic Frenchman. Highlights included barbecued octopus (!) and slightly more clement weather than Paris has been ‘enjoying’ of late. Lowlights included mosquitoes the size of pigeons, undeterred by an anti-mosquito plug that allegedly works by emitting a noise that mosquitoes have an aversion to (the insect world’s equivalent of Emma Bunton perhaps?)

I saw a mosquito sitting on the bloody plug so I want my money back.

I realise this blog may not be quite as gripping as belle de jour. I could take a leaf out of his/her book, e.g.

“today I am wearing white cotton mini briefs from a Tesco value multi-pack”

Or maybe not.

Have been doing my blogging homework. With reference to the diagram above, I am not (at least not on a conscious level) writing this to get laid, I’m not one to be moved to prose by the situation in Iraq and I haven’t had a pet since Pixie the tabby cat (incidentally, I have a fantastic porn star name) went to live on a farm when I was five. My mother still maintains to this day that she was sent to live on a farm. But with the wisdom of hindsight I think she was probably sold to a taxidermist or a Chinese restaurant by the ‘farmer’. Luckily in those days, porn films involving pets and butter (cf popbitch) were not yet all the rage, otherwise her fate might have been porn kittenery and a cholestorol related death.

“Incoherent rant”? Only time will tell.

At home today with hot flushes, cold shivers, exhaustion, aching joints … – probably a virus but I daren’t go to see a French GP as (s)he would call for intravenous antibiotics and present me with a ten item long prescription. Probably including something “par voie anale“. Ever tried a menthol eucalyptus suppository? The expression ‘ring sting’ was invented for this purpose. Don’t ask me how that can unblock your nasal passages, it’s a mystery to me.

Called The Boss to apologise for not being able to make it in to work. He sounded reasonably sympathetic until he realised mid-way through our conversation that another member of staff was going on holiday at lunchtime and he would be without ’support’. No-one to type his dictations. The end of the world as we know it.

Personally I’m convinced it does him the world of good once in a while to have a day sans moi. He is invariably very appreciative of me the next day, because he has remembered why I am so indispensable. Must remember to schedule a few days absence just before my next evaluation and pay review.

So, I thought today was a good day to start the weblog. I am however rather drowsy, having run out of grown up paracetamol. In my desperation I worked out that 10 spoons of infant calpol would do the job. Feel rather queasy and am regretting it…