petite anglaise

Well, I don’t suppose any of you thought I’d let another opportunity to talk about food pass me by. Especially cheese of the ‘akin to socks worn for ten days with trainers and athletes foot’ variety. I am nothing if not predictable.

To get to the kitchen from the bedroom in our apartment, one has to cross the living room, walk down a corridor, and turn to the left. It is 45 fairy steps from bed to fridge (I just checked – the Frog thinks it’s still the drugs). However when the Frog opens the fridge door, I can distinguish from my bed whether there is an unpasteurised Camembert Le Rustique skulking in there. Or perhaps a couple of goats cheeses lurking out of sight. The little egg shaped plastic thing which also lives in the fridge and claims to neutralise all forms of pong, whiff and odour remains powerless against the pungency of these cheeses. Emprisoning the cheese in a tupperware container works, but creates a ticking time bomb: it is advisable to wear goggles/nose-peg when you decide to liberate the contents.

The cheeses mentioned above are freely available in our local Franprix supermarket. Kept refrigerated, and securely wrapped in clingfilm. In a proper cheese shop, or at an outdoor market they are just sprawled out on a counter, and ooze merrily in all directions. I would probably be able to smell those in my fridge if I was collecting the post from my letterbox five storeys below.

Coming from a family of mild white (or red) Cheddar eaters, who might also treat themselves to a slab of Wensleydale with their Christmas cake, I think my palate has made considerable progress since living in France. It has been more of a slow progression than a sudden epiphany. First I learnt to appreciate cheeses similar to English and Dutch cheeses with which I was already familiar, like Cantal, Emmental and Swiss Gruyère. Later I was introduced to proper non-pasteurised Brie and Camembert during my year in Normandy. The family I stayed with had their cheeses on a platter in a cupboard, never in the fridge, and it all looked worse for wear when it emerged at mealtimes, tough outer crusts with lots of messy oozing in the middle. But once I got past the offputting pong and appearance there were some surprises in store. (Sometimes blocking my nose and letting my tastebuds continue unbiased helped.)

Traveling around France has also been a source of inspiration. On my regular trips to the Jura I have been initiated to regional cheeses: runny garlicy Cancaillotte, made in a factory where Mr Frog once had a holiday job, Morbier, Mont d’Or, nutty earthy Comté. I’m now also very partial to ewes milk cheese from the Basque region (Ossau Irraty, Etorki), and Brocciu from Corsica.

I do have my limits though. Green veined Roquefort I can handle. But anything which has a layer of festering mould on the outer skin, or that ressembles a sheeps dropping someone found at the back of the barn several months later is unlikely to meet with an enthusiastic response, no matter how good the glass of red that accompanies it. A cheese with worms crawling inside it is not making it onto my plate. (I didn’t make that up – read ‘Almost French‘.) I’m not much good when faced with washed rind cheeses. I just can’t get past the odour of the rind, I don’t care how good the innards are supposed to taste. So I don’t think the Vieux Boulogne (the cheese with the title ’smelliest cheese’ was bestowed upon) would be my cup of tea.

Extract from the Guardian article by Patrick Barkham, “Smelliest Cheese Honour”, 26/11/04:

“The odour of rotting vegetables and the scent of a goat on heat wafted down Farringdon Road a full five minutes before the cheese strolled in the door. “It’s gone to the post room,” said the man in the courier hut. “It was smelling the place out.”

…

Unwrapped from its plastic covering the Vieux Boulogne sent an aroma of six-week-old earwax floating through the Guardian’s offices. From a safe distance of 50 metres, the cheese emitted a pleasant eau de farmyard, replete with dung and Barbour jackets. Close up, its firm orange flesh, flecked with a delicate mould, recalled varnish.”

However I might be willing to sample it for a price, especially as it is described as ‘a cure for winter colds’. How about I add a paypal button and when the price is right, I’ll broadcast the Vieux Bologne sampling fest via webcam?

I feel I have to warn you though, it might end up looking like the Jackass egg eating competition.

Tadpole has started singing. Mostly nonsense words, but it sounds incredibly cute all the same. She has a little electronic nursery rhyme book which sings to her in French. I had a problem with this at first, as it sounds like my mother in law’s voice on the recording, but I’m over it now. Anyway, I thought I’d have a look for the full lyrics of some French nursery rhymes on the interweb, as the book sings the first few lines and then just plays the music and I don’t know how the songs are supposed to continue.

Mr Frog, needless to say, can’t remember any of the words. I sometimes wonder if he really is French? Or whether he had a childhood. Maybe he’s actually an alien masquerading as a French person. I haven’t seen any evidence of super powers so far, but if I do you will be the first to know.

What I like about English nursery rhymes are the references to comforting things like tea – ‘Polly put the kettle on’, ‘I’m a little teapot’. Of course I am aware that some of our best loved nursery rhymes were inspired by rather unpalatable historical events: ‘Mary Mary quite contrary’, which appears to be Tadpole’s favourite, allegedly recounts the persecution of protestants during the reign of catholic Mary Tudor (the garden being a graveyard and the silver bells and cockle shells being instruments of torture according to one source). But let’s face it, to Tadpole it is just song about a garden with pretty things in it.

I can’t help however being a little perturbed after reading the full lyrics for Alouette, one of the best known French contines.

Alouette, gentille Alouette,
Alouette je te plumerai,
Alouette, gentille Alouette,
Alouette je te plumerai,
Je te plumerai la tête,
Je te plumerai la tête,
Et la tête, et la tête,
Alouette, Alouette,
O-o-o-o-oh,
Alouette, gentille Alouette,
Alouette je te plumerai…

So what do we have here? A song about a lovely lark. Getting plucked.

Lark, lovely lark,
Lark, lovely lark,
Lark, I’m going to pluck you,
Lark, lovely lark,
Lark, I’m going to pluck you
I’m going to pluck your head,
I’m going to pluck your head,
And the head, and the head,
Lark, lark,
O-o-o-o-oh,
Lark, lovely lark,
Lark, I’m going to pluck you…

The song can be repeated substituting the word ‘head’ for other body parts (nose, eyes, wings, whatever). I cannot help but be reminded of all those bucolic French films with close up shots of rabbits being skinned and pheasants being plucked. But are larks even edible?

I am not looking forward to the day in the not too distant future when Tadpole inevitably asks me to explain what ‘plucking’ means and why the poor lark is getting it.

The upshot of all this is that I think I’ll stick to my English nursery rhymes after all. Preferably the ones about making tea.

*I think I may be delirious – I have an ear infection and sinus infection and am taking very strong drugs today – so please bear with me if this is utter nonsense. But I was getting blogging withdrawal symptoms.

I would describe myself as an agnostic, I think. I don’t have any strong beliefs about the existence or non-existence of some kind of deity. But I don’t have any certainty either, so I don’t think the word ‘atheist’ is appropriate.

I was christened Church of England, and as a child went to both the C of E and Methodist Sunday schools in my village. Not simultaneously, I hasten to add. I ‘defected’ to the Methodists because my friends went there and it was more laid back; I crossed back over to the other side when I was too old for Sunday school to join the choir. The Methodist choir in the village church was made up of old ladies with pink rinses and thin, reedy voices, the attraction of the C of E choir on the other hand was the ‘proper’ flowing robes and wooden crucifixes on a string and that musically they took themselves rather more seriously. And if my memory serves me correctly I think there may have been a boy I was interested in. Although quite how I thought I’d make an impression wearing my NHS glasses and choir robes I really don’t know. I quite enjoyed the singing, but I remember the Sunday services being particularly tedious as the priest wasn’t much of an orator and his sermons were long drawn out affairs.

My subsequent fall from grace came about for several reasons.

I got lazier and I started to want a lie-in on a Sunday. I also started to resent being ‘forced’ to do anything. On principle. I was entering a phase where I questioned everything, religion included. I wasn’t at all sure I believed in any of it, and even if I did, I failed to see how attending church every week was necessary.

And then there was the A-Team. Choir practice was on Friday evenings. So was the A-Team. Everyone at school watched it and I hated feeling left out. Faced with such powerful arguments, and after I’d accidentally overslept three Sundays in a row, my mother realised there was no point forcing the issue. I was eleven years old. I’ve attended a couple of weddings and carol services since. Other than that, I tend to visit churches to admire their architecture when we’re on holiday.

Now I am a parent. We live in a country where catholicism is the main religion, but state institutions (and therefore all schools) are secular. The Frog is a non-practising Catholic, although he did attend a private Catholic infant school with real nuns (ostensibly because it was close to his mother’s place of work) and even went on a school trip to the Vatican to see the Pope one Easter.

My dilemma is this: what do I teach the Tadpole about religion? Should I buy her a book of bible stories some day – for her general culture and because I think many of the principles taught by Christianity are sound guidelines to live by – and explain that some people believe in God, but that I’m not one of them?

Am I going to deprive her of the magic of seeing a nativity play at Christmas and singing carols? The right to have a crush on a guitar playing Sunday school teacher or choirboy? How will I explain to her what happens to people when they die when the time comes without upsetting her if I’m going to leave angels and heaven out of the equation?

Clearly the Frog and I both had some religious education and then were free to make up our own minds when we were old enough to do so. How can I give Tadpole the same freedom?

The 22nd of December 2001 was a black day for English expats in Paris: Marks and Spencer finally closed down their Paris Haussmann and Rivoli branches.

In a last desperate bid to stock up on crumpets, English breakfast tea and mature cheddar I braved the closing day 40%-off-sale hordes. Anarchy reigned. Protestors were making their anger felt by tearing the wrappers off triangle sandwiches in the food hall and scoffing them without paying. The clothes section looked like a jumble sale. Extra security guards had reportedly been taken on for the day to keep the peace.

Once the store closed, I began to fully comprehend what I had lost. Never again when feeling a bit low or homesick could I turn to English comfort foods like toasted teacakes and hot cross buns to munch in front of Eastenders. There were to be no more properly spiced chicken biryani ready meals. Crispy duck with pancakes, plum sauce and a side order of crispy seaweed was a thing of the past. (Parisian Chinese restaurants don’t seem to serve this, my favourite dish, more’s the pity.) Rice pudding, custard, cheddar and stilton were definitively off the menu. I would have to learn to recover from hangovers without the help of a bacon and tomato ketchup sandwich.

When I first moved to Paris, I started off terribly enthusiastic about all things French. Thus I watched the French terrestrial TV channels, read only (terribly serious) French novels, and ate 100% French food. As the months stretched into years and it was clear that France was to be my permanent home I started to crave a bit of English food, English language literature and television programmes. Nowadays I have gone to the opposite extreme and watch exclusively English/American films and TV programmes on cable TV (apart from the odd good French programme on Canal+ like ‘+Clair’ or ‘90 minutes’) and order English/American fiction via Amazon. I watch Eastenders religiously every night, even when it is going through a bad patch. I read Heat magazine when I can lay my hands on it (even though I’ve never seen the English version of any of the reality shows they harp on about ad nauseam). In my former life in the UK I wouldn’t have been seen dead reading a gossip mag and I didn’t follow Eastenders. I suppose I clutch at any Englishness I can get my hands on these days.

Don’t get me wrong, my love affair with France is by no means over. I just missed my English side a little bit. Especially during the period where I worked for Franco-French companies and spoke only French all day long. My Englishness is an important part of who I am, and I want to preserve it.

And I feel the best way to cultivate this is by eating crumpets and drinking tea.

Once upon a time, I had a holiday job working in a Thomas Cook foreign exchange bureau on the rue de Rivoli, opposite the Jardin des Tuileries.

It is fortunate that I do not suffer from claustrophobia, because this involved being locked in all day behind the (probably not) bulletproof glass (because the safety instructions mentioned ducking as well as pressing the panic button) until a security man came to let me out in the evening. And the office was rather cramped.

Fun aspects of this job were that I got to open a proper combination safe every morning – like in a James Bond film: 10 to the left, 100 to the right – to get my hands on the cash stash. Then there was the fact that I could read a book when there were slack spells, or sing along to the radio, and no-one saw/heard. I also got an (albeit small) thrill from wheeling and dealing. The French Franc was in its death throes and consequently the exchange bureaus were all in fierce competition with one another to make as much money as possible before the introduction of the euro wiped out half of their business. In order to win over customers who were wisely shopping around before changing their money I had to haggle. The rate shown on the board was for mugs. My goal was to entice people to change more cash so that I could give them a (slightly) better rate. I pretended to do lots of complicated sums on my calculator and this usually did the trick.

Bad things about the job were that I had to deal with a lot of very dodgy/ignorant people on a daily basis. There were the gypsy ladies who probably put Romany curses on me when I refused to change their huge bags of centimes into Francs (I wasn’t allowed to) and hassled my customers. Being in a glass bowl like a goldfish makes you rather impotent in such situations . There were shifty looking men (pimps?) who came to change vast amounts of low denomination dollar bills late at night, and didn’t take too kindly to my confiscating the forgeries that they had slipped in for good measure. (I was trained to recognise forged dollars: a missing tree here, insufficient detail on a president’s face there.)

Then there were the tourists. Some of the things they came out with left me speechless.

Female tourist: ‘Honey, I don’t understand. Can you tell me why the restaurant over there won’t accept dollars?’
Petite : ‘Ah. That’ll be because you are in France and the only legal tender in France is the French Franc…’

I then proceeded to change her dollars at the rate on the board because clearly this customer would not be doing any negotiating.

or

Female tourist to French colleague: ‘Oh my gawd, isn’t it cute the way everyone speaks French here? Y’all are so clever.’

I struggled to make sense of this one. Finally realisation dawned that she thought that every human being was born speaking English and that French people had learnt French as a second language from an early age. No really. That was what she meant.

The most distressing part of the job was however the International Money Transfer service. How I hated taking hard earned cash from some poor immigrant worker and sending a tiny fraction of it home to their needy relatives. Those services are outrageously expensive, but people without bank accounts have very little alternative but to use them. When I was working alone I broke the rules by trying to explain the cost of each transaction, but either I couldn’t make myself understood or the customer knew but wanted to send it regardless.

If you are travelling to France with large amounts of cash or travellers cheques, a word of warning. Life is harder for exchange bureaus these days, and they are consequently meaner. Don’t assume that because you have euro denomination cheques they will be exchanged without commission. I learnt this to my cost when my well meaning mum gave Tadpole some money in M&S Travellers cheques. There was a 10% charge. I was livid. No negotiation possible. Walking away and pretending to go to another agency didn’t have the desired effect (i.e. of them calling me back over to make a new proposition).

Evidently the rules of the game have changed since I last played.

I have a song called “Ice Pulse” by the Cocteau Twins stuck in my head.

This is because I went to see ‘Tarnation’ at the weekend with Mr Frog. We had seen a documentary about it on Canal+ and I felt it was a film that definitely deserved to be seen on a big screen with surround sound. I wasn’t wrong.

Of course if you live in the UK/US/anywhere but France, you probably saw this flim aeons ago. For some reason it has only just been released here. If you haven’t seen it, I urge you to do so.

The director, Jonathan Caouette, has assembled footage of his family from the past twenty years (photos, Super8 footage, video) and set it to a soundtrack of music, answering machine messages and letters to tell the story of his life so far. Caouette had a disturbed childhood to say the least: his mother Renée suffered from mental illness (possibly caused by a series of shock treatments ill-advisedly administered in her teens) and was repeatedly institutionalised; infant Jonathan was abused in foster care before being adopted by his grandparents. Having spent a very brief spell in foster care myself, before my adoption as a baby, I cannot find words to describe how livid it makes me to hear of children being abused when they are at their most vulnerable and desperately need support from the adults entrusted with their care.

In spite of the subject matter, ‘Tarnation’ is a very uplifting film: Caouette has faced his demons and although a lingering fear remains that one day he too may suffer from mental illness like Renée, he seems to be in a good place right now with a very supportive partner and, in his own words, he is closer to his mother than ever before.

Unfortunately, four things were nagging at me during the film and marred my enjoyment somewhat.

The first was that I was trying in vain to remember the name of a semi-autobiographical novel I had read which reminded me of this film. I’ve finally found it, after a few google searches that I hope my employer will not hold against me (search terms “trailer trash rent boy”). The book I was thinking of was ‘Sarah’ by J T Leroy. Apparently I’m not the only one to have made this connection as I found an article on the interweb where Caouette and Leroy are interviewed together.

The second thing was that the complete stranger on my left and I laughed at all the same things (in particular, Caouette’s staging of a musical version of Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’ at high school, to a soundtrack of Marianne Faithful songs), while the Frog didn’t react at all. I started to wonder whether we were soulmates after all. But then I reminded myself that he is and will always remain a philistine (he has never read a work of fiction in all the years I have known him and generally prefers films which have a car chase/a shoot out/both) and I don’t suppose he will ever change. And if I’m honest, I quite like feeling culturally superior to him.

Thirdly, the Frog had purchased a large tub of (salty) popcorn and this was not a popcorn film. The French, you see, take their cinema rather seriously. Small art-house cinemas abound in the capital where popcorn is not even on sale. In this instance, although we were in a UGC cinema, which ressembles a Warner Bros or similar in the UK, most people in the audience were not eating and drinking. There appears to be an unwritten rule about the type of film in which popcorn is permissible (e.g. a Hollywood blockbuster) and the type of film where it is not. So I found myself snatching handfulls of popcorn surreptitiously during the loud music bits (because we hadn’t yet eaten and it was too tempting) but feeling very guilty and conspicuous and un-French for doing so.

And to top it all off, I needed the loo. From about half an hour into the film (it was 88 minutes long). And when the final credits rolled, I couldn’t even sprint to the bathroom because I needed to see what the name of the Cocteau Twins song was.

And that brings us full circle…

Not all Americans are francophobes. Especially not those who read this site regularly.

Nevertheless we have all heard about prominent figures calling for a boycott of French produce on the other side of the Atlantic, about cancelled French exchanges and the renaming of Freedom Fries and Freedom Toast. During the US presidential electoral campaign some Republicans used the fact that John Kerry speaks French as a way of implying that he was somehow ‘un-american’.

You certainly don’t have to delve very deeply to find examples of American hatred of all things French on the interweb. The over-simplistic reasoning that the US drove the Nazis out of France, therefore the French are ungrateful for not returning the favour and supporting the US intervention in Iraq crops up over and over again. The anti-French tirades I have read are so dreadful they are almost (but not quite) funny and in my opinion the authors generally come off looking worse than the French.

Take this article for example, which I came across quite by accident when googling Chirac yesterday. Ron Marr, ‘journalist’, wrote an article called ‘Why I Hate The French’ for American Daily in February of last year, dripping with vitriol. Below is an extract:

‘The French invented a critically acclaimed style of cuisine which utilizes copious amounts of goose blood and involves hideous concepts such as boiling trout in spoiled cream. In truth, you’ll find better fare in the dumpster behind a Red Lobster. The French eat horse. They eat glands. They eat bugs. I know this because they rarely brush their teeth. Their women whine and complain and braid their armpit hair. Their men are beret-wearing twig-boys with bad complexions. All French people consider themselves intellectually superior, and I suppose they are if the comparison is to an incontinent house cat.”

I’m (almost) speechless. It is to be hoped that too many people didn’t take this display of puerile ignorance to be gospel truth. I don’t wish to dwell on this further by responding to the individual ‘points’ raised, other than to say that I thought the cultural stereotype (true or otherwise) about hairy armpits referred to German ladies?

I hate France is a website unashamedly devoted to francophobia, including a selection of ‘jokes’ about the French, mostly following a rather unimaginative pattern similar to this one:

Q: What is the first thing you are taught when joining the French army?
A: To say “I surrender” in German

A helpful list of French products is provided for boycotting purposes. Francophobes can even get their own @I-Hate-France.com email address. Similarly another boycott site sells bumper stickers (as pictured above) and T-shirts.

American francophobia attempts some analysis of the phenomenon, explaining that the French have long been the butt of American jokes (like the English with their anti-Irish jokes, and the French with their anti-Belgian jokes). It would appear that the Iraq/Chirac situation simply stirred up existing deep-seated prejudices.

The writers of the Simpsons, for example, have been working little anti-French jokes into their scripts from day one, as these examples from episodes aired in 1994-5 testify:

“Secrets of a Successful Marriage”: desperate for reconciliation, Homer pleads to his wife:
“Marge, look at me: we’ve been separated for a day, and I’m as dirty as a Frenchman.”

Acting as a substitute French teacher, in “Round Springfield”, Groundskeeper Willie tells his pupils: “Bonjour-r-r, you cheese-eating surrender monkeys!”

I just can’t help worrying that for many Americans, some of whom will never set foot outside their own country, this version of the facts is the only version they will hear. And that makes my skin crawl.

To my lovely American readers – please do not take offence. I would however love to hear your views on this subject!

That crafty old fox Jacques Chirac is over in Blighty for a spot of fish and chips and amour violent to mark the end of the Entente Cordiale centenary celebrations.

Not being someone who watches the news or reads newspapers on a regular basis (there are simply not enough hours in the day, so I have resigned myself to remaining a bit of a political philistine), I admit that my opinions about Chirac are just that: personal opinions formed on the basis of tuning in to the odd documentary or presidential speech and following the guignols de l’info, a parody of the eight o’clock news which uses Spitting Image style puppets.

I was rather pleased about France’s position on Iraq, but not convinced that Chirac’s personal motivations for adopting this stance were altruistic. I cannot abide watching the President address the nation. I always have the impression he is forcing himself to s p e a k r e a l l y s l o w l y, in the hope that this will inject gravitas into his subject matter. Mr Chirac and his wife Bernadette were almost certainly involved in a grand scale misuse of taxpayers money during his stint as Mayor of Paris. Various inquiries have taken place into the funding of the RPR political party, the awarding of lucrative business contracts and the (literally) millions of francs siphoned from the town hall budget/allegedly spent on feeding the couple while Chirac held this office. But, regardless of the weight of the evidence against him, Chirac cannot be prosecuted for any of the above as long as he holds the highest office in the République. By the time he stands down, given that the French seem to expect (and even respect) corruption in their politicians, all will probably have been forgiven.

The French press is making much of the fact that Mr and Mrs Chirac will be staying with QE2 at Windsor Castle this evening and watching ‘Les Misérables’ in the ‘Waterloo Room’, which has been rebaptised ‘The Music Room’ for the occasion, so as not to run the risk of offending French sensibilities.

Across the Channel, the English papers are gleefully airing the best soundbites from previous confrontations between Blair and Le Worm (sic The Sun (news)paper). I’m afraid I did a double take when I saw the Sun headline, ‘le Worm raps Blair’. Maybe I’m focusing too much on that amour violent quote.

I seem to have teeth on the brain at the moment. Tadpole is simultaneously cutting a few molars, with the usual accompaniment of unpleasant nappies (why the two are connected I have never managed to establish) and puts up as good a fight as ever when I try to approach her with a baby toothbrush before bedtime. As for me, I keep having that recurring dream where all my teeth come loose and I spit copious amounts of blood and several teeth into the bathroom sink. A dream which is allegedly not related to anxiety about requiring a set of premature dentures, but in fact can be interpreted as relating to children. According to this website, dreams about losing teeth are actually quite common and tend to be triggererd by one of the following scenarios:

• I’m approaching the menopause and will no longer be able to have children (unlikely at 32, and I’ve been having this dream since puberty);
• I have a physical problem leading to an inability to have children (not that I know of, thank goodness, I wouldn’t mind another Tadpole at some stage);
• I’m not feeling capable of raising a child (does anyone ever feel really confident in their ability as a parent?);
• my child is ready to leave the nest (possibly a bit premature at 17 months, even if she is a bit precocious);
• I want a child but my partner doesn’t (n/a unless the Frog is keeping something very important from me);
• or, I am in a situation (at work, for example) where I cannot assert myself and am feeling frustrated. (I don’t think my boss would agree with that one. Not being assertive enough has never come up in my evaluations. Quite the opposite).

So, sorry to disappoint, but I remain convinced that my brain works in far less mysterious ways and this dream is in fact my unconscious mind’s way of reminding me that I really must get around to making an appointment for my annual dental check up.

In the French language, the word ‘tooth’ crops up in several rather colourful figures of speech, some of which I rather like because of the images they call to mind.

An ambitious person is said to have long teeth (avoir les dents longues), while an extremely ambitious person has teeth which scratch the floor (les dents qui rayent le parquet). Presumably ambitious people ought to look something like bugs bunny. I’d be interested to hear where this association between teeth and ambition comes from, andwhether it crops up in any other languages. I don’t think ambition is associated with any part of the human anatomy in English?

Negative uses of the word ‘tooth’ in French include the phrase ‘to bear a grudge’, which translates as to ‘have a tooth (against somebody)’. To ‘be scathing’ in French, you ‘are hard toothed’ (avoir la dent dure).

The Frog’s favourite threat when I do something naughty is: ‘je vais te faire voler les dents.’ What a charmer. No wonder I fell for him.

I went out to lunch in a very down to earth bistrot close to my office yesterday, and I can still smell the smoke which permeated into the fibres of my coat as we ate. Arriving at the restaurant our eyes and noses were greeted by what I can only describe as a ‘fug’. More worrying than this is the fact that after approximately five minutes acclimatisation and one glass of wine, I ceased to notice the smoke. Unwittingly I must have passively smoked the equivalent of ten gauloises over the course of the meal.

While the English press is today bemoaning the fact that an outright ban of smoking in enclosed public places has not been proposed in the government White Paper on health, I can’t help thinking what an outcry a similar proposal would provoke in gauloise country, where most restaurants haven’t yet complied with the little enforced Loi Evin of 1991, by introducing a non-smoking section for their clientèle non-fumeur.

Smoking here is the norm. Twenty million plus French smokers fervently believe that their right to enjoy a cigarette is more important than a non-smoker’s right to breathe clean air. I recall two occasions in all the time I’ve spent in France where a person at the next table in a restaurant asked me if I minded them smoking while I ate. Usually after they had already lit up, which means I inevitably said ‘of course not, no problem’ whilst internally seething. Given the cosy proximity of tables in many restaurants I often literally have an ashtray right under my nose. If someone does dare to object – which I did occasionally when I was pregnant – they are seen as an unreasonable health freak and killjoy and will be the object of much discontented muttering. The fact that levels of cancer are higher here than elsewhere in the EU (20% higher among adult males than in the UK) does nothing to deter smokers, nor do the extra large warnings on cigarette packets or rising tobacco prices.

I know doctors who smoke. I have witnessed with my own eyes a heavily pregnant woman rush out of her final ante-natal class to light up in the hospital courtyard, and a young mother smoking a Gitane a few centimetres above the head of her newborn child, whom she was carrying in a sling at chest level. All of the above shocked me profoundly, but you’d be surprised at how often I have heard the bizarre argument that stopping smoking whilst pregnant was more harmful to the mother than it was beneficial to the baby.

The Frog is one of those rather foolish people who only took up smoking in his mid-twenties, when clearly he should have known better. He is what I would call a stress smoker, and I’m sure he smokes far more at work than he is willing to let on. Smoking at his desk is permitted, as he works in a closed office (as opposed to an open plan office) with other smokers. As long as this is the case, I think the Frog and many others like him will be fighting an uphill battle to kick the habit, despite his best intentions following the birth of Tadpole.

If I was going to be cynical, I’d say there is not much chance of the French government taking much action to address this major health problem. Especially given that the state is a major shareholder in the Franco-Spanish group Altadis, purveyor of fine tobacco products such as Gauloises and Gitanes…

I did most of my Christmas shopping in the UK this weekend.

This has less to do with the fact that I am arguably the most organised lady in the Northern Hemisphere, and more to do with yuletide hazards such as overshooting airline baggage allowances and dislocating shoulders. I am thoroughly fed up with only being able to buy lightweight, non-breakable presents for my family and then having to cart them across the Channel for our Christmas visit to Yorkshire. This weekend for a four day stay in the UK with Tadpole (but sans Frog) the unwieldy bag weighed in at a healthy 15 kilos. As usual, I only had a couple of changes of underwear, the rest belonging to Tadpole. Steering the pushchair with one hand upon arrival at Charles de Gaulle airport, we then proceeded to do 2 laps around circular terminal 1 (one clockwise lap inside the baggage hall, followed by an anti-clockwise lap outside to reach the taxi ranks) during which I could feel my right shoulder straining to leap out of its socket.

A mound of presents is currently residing (wrapped and labelled, so I don’t forget which is which) at the parental home. But certain aspects of Christmas shopping in the UK made the experience rather less pleasurable than I had hoped.

Firstly, in a trend which seems to be worsening every year, the high street shops have given over the lion’s share of their floorspace to ‘Christmas tat’: arrays of shiny, nasty looking gift boxes, with a pink aisle for the ladies and a black/silver/navy aisle for the gentlemen. You would have to be so uninspired to buy one of these items: everything screams ‘I don’t know you/like you very much/give a toss and I have no imagination.’ But, irritatingly, these offending items were of course occupying the very floorspace where the very thing I was looking for should have been. And was no longer as it has clearly gone into temporary hibernation. Grrr.

In the unlikely event that I did manage to find what I was looking for, I then had trouble paying for it. The UK has finally got around to introducing a chip and pin system, in an attempt to curb credit card fraud. My French (debit) cards all have chips on them (in French such a card is called a carte à puce, as puce means ‘flea’ and ‘dearest’ but also ‘microchip’) and I can’t remember a time since I’ve lived here when this system was not in operation.

But here’s the snag: the UK chip readers don’t read French cards. So inevitably in every shop, the assistant would:

1. try to read the chip with the spanking new card reader
2. get an error message
3. look very puzzled*
4. try again
5. scratch his/her head
6. (optional) ask for another (French) card
before 7. eventually swiping the first card successfully in the old style reader and obtaining my signature.

Explaining that I had encountered the same problem five minutes earlier on a different floor of the very same shop did not speed up the process at all. Instead of proceeding directly to step 7, they just continued to perform the same elaborate ritual. On one instance my card did not function at all and I was obliged to go to the nearest cashpoint and withdraw cash (which of course my French bank will enjoy charging me extra for). In the face of such adversity I had to be very motivated indeed to complete my shopping marathon undeterred. Which is where all the junk food snacks listed in the ‘post’ below came in handy.

The remainder of my Christmas shopping will take place in classy Parisian shops with a backdrop of a bare minimum of tacky Christmas displays and a free gift wrapping service. Vive la France!

Now all I have to do is work out a cunning strategy for transporting all the Christmas presents we will receive in the UK from our extended family (mostly large toys for Tadpole) back to France again. We have a 50 kilo baggage allowance between us and are staying for a week.

Something tells me I will have to make a noble sacrifice and manage without a change of underwear…

Below is a list of what I’ve eaten during my stay in the UK (so far). This is a note to self to remind me what a lump of lard I would become if I lived here permanently…

Thursday

lunch somewhere over the English Channel:
2 bacon and ketchup rolls (free plane food – one for me, one ‘for Tadpole’)

afternoon snack:
1 cadbury’s flake
1 chocolate covered flapjack bar
2 cups of tea

dinner:
fish, chips, mushy peas and bread and butter, with ketchup
2 cups of tea

Friday

breakfast:
banana fruit loaf and tea

in town shopping, lunch scoffed while walking around:
sausage roll
pork and apple mini sausage roll
bacon and cheese mini sausage roll
iced bun

afternoon tea:
apple doughnut
several cups of tea

dinner at tapas bar:
tapas
crema catalana
too much red wine

pre-bed munchies:
apple doughnut

Saturday

breakfast
2 crumpets dripping with butter (yum!)

lunch in town:
quiche, coleslaw and pasta salad
half a (huge) slice of lemon meringue pie (shared with my mum)

tea, tea and more tea

I think I should take a leaf out of ‘The Hungry Caterpillar’ and think about having only salad tomorrow. But in the meantime, maybe I’ll stick the kettle on and see if there are any doughnuts left…

From time to time when I look at Tadpole’s lovely little face I remember that she will soon be needing glasses. And I pray that the optician made a mistake in her diagnosis. She is a carbon copy of Mr Frog in every way, except for a defective pair of blue eyes, a genetic gift from her mummy.

When I imagine Tadpole in glasses, I cannot rid my mind of a mental image of myself wearing hideous National Health standard issue spectacles, available in a choice of blue, flesh pink, brown or transparent with bottle bottom lenses. I wore these from the ages of four to sixteen and the lenses got thicker as I became more short-sighted. The lenses were so heavy that the frames slid down my narrow nose and perched precariously at the bottom. Other kids thought I was stuck up because I looked ‘down my nose’ at them. Unsurprisingly I only like photographs of myself taken pre- and post-spectacles: the powerful correction distorted my face, my eyes seen through the lenses looking much smaller, my mouth and nose disproportionately large. I felt ugly. I was painfully shy and lacking in self-confidence.

Glasses were the reason why I hated swimming (couldn’t see the people I was with) and one of my excuses for being crap at sport (paranoid about getting hit in the face by a ball). If I ever fainted or fell, it was my evil glasses that did me the most damage. A vivid memory of a wasp once crawling onto the inside of my right lens right next to my eye still makes me shudder. In nightmares I am likely to ‘lose my glasses’ at a crucial moment so that everything becomes frustratingly blurred and I can’t find the person or thing that I’m looking for.

At a school disco when I was about thirteen, one of the rare occasions when our girls’ grammar school fraternised with the neighbouring boys’ grammar, a boy tapped me on the shoulder to tell me his mate ‘fancied me’. I didn’t have my glasses on that night, so to this day I have no idea who ‘his mate’ was or what he looked like. I had my first boyfriend only after I was allowed my first pair of contact lenses at sixteen. Without glasses I was a different person: I felt confident and desirable for the first time in my life, and set about making a damn good job of making up for lost time where boys were concerned.

I’m the first one to poke fun at those cringeworthy American teen movies where the hottest boy in school (always played by Freddie Prinze Junior) takes the nerdiest girl to the high school prom for a bet, but ends up falling for her when she takes off her glasses and shakes her hair out of its poneytail. Undeniably though, shedding my glasses did make a huge difference. I felt attractive and that alone changed other people’s perception of me. While I skulked around with them on, feeling ugly, that’s how people saw me.

I have promised myself that no expense will be spared to make sure Tadpole has the most fashionable glasses money can buy when she is old enough to care. Progress means that these days they are lighter, prettier, with thinner lenses – a fashion accessory that other little girls are jealous of (or so I’m told).

But the truth is that I’m the one who will have a problem with her wearing glasses. I’m going to need to find a way to exorcise all these negative feelings so that I don’t unwittingly pass all my hang-ups on to Tadpole. It’s not going to be easy, with taunts of ’speccy four eyes’ ringing in my ears as if it were only yesterday.

Commenters: Don’t.You.Dare.

It’s distressing when the Frog tries on my clothes, because he invariably looks better in them than I do.

A story in last weekend’s Observer amused me no end. The ‘French paradox’: how is it that French women are so slim despite putting away ‘as much ice-cream, rich pastries and steak frites as they want’.

Excuse me while I laugh so hard I eject hot tea out through my nostrils. I have never seen a French woman stuffing her face with fatty foods. Ever. When we go for dinner with French friends, I tend to be the only female who doesn’t order salad, the woman with no will power who caves in and orders dessert. Watching me with a mixture of jealousy and contempt as I scrape the last of the fondant au chocolat from my plate, the French girls take a long hard drag on their cigarettes.

My main problem (apart from not being a smoker) is that I may have lived here for many years now, but my tummy still thinks I’m just here on holiday and an evil little voice in my head tells me I really should try that exotic, foreign foie gras mi-cuit, or treat myself to a confit de canard while I’m here.

The thinnest French girls I know are covert adepts of what I call the ‘herbal tea method’. In every office I have worked in, there has been a girl who put on the kettle after lunch and then disappeared into the toilets for ten minutes or more, presumably to purge herself of the steamed broccoli she had just feasted on. Resurfacing, she would take her herbal mouthwash tea back to her desk wearing a smug expression. And tight white trousers which clung to her bottom-cheeks-which-had-never-met. Trousers which would never make a rubbing sound when she walked.

There is only one French person I know who does live out the French paradox without cheating: Mr Frog. With his aversion to all things vegetable, he gorges himself on a high sugar, high cholestorol, high carb combination of cheese, charcuterie, bread, fraises tagada and liquorice shoelaces and never puts on an ounce. The way he eats radishes is a thing to behold, each one carefully paired with a knob of butter as large as the radish itself and a liberal sprinkling of rock salt. Thereby cancelling out the merit of having eaten a healthy foodstuff. And he doesn’t even have high cholestorol – although it will catch up with him in the end if there is any justice in this world.

So when he puts on my Chinese dress and feather boa and dances to the Scissor Sisters I admit to feeling rather piqued at the injustice of the French paradox. And jealous of his shapely legs.

But I’m also thankful that there is no danger of him stretching my clothes out of shape.

As of tomorrow Tadpole and I will be back in the UK for a four day weekend of fish and chip eating and relatives cooing ‘ooh hasn’t she grown?’ Hopefully the latter will be in relation to Tadpole and not my hips.

The parents have some interference on their phone line and so not only is broadband down, even the museum piece dial up slow-mo(dem) is unavailable. Aarrghh! Cold turkey!

The Frog is therefore responsible for publishing Friday’s post. If it doesn’t materialise, I apologise, but computers don’t like him much. I just hope he doesn’t take it into his pretty little head to publish a post of his own…

Lock up your livestock, Rebecca Loos may have been ‘bothering’ farm animals again.

The French cockerel is now an endangered species, according to articles published by the BBC and the Telegraph (the latter I don’t read, I hasten to add) on Monday. Thanks to Céline for bringing this to my attention.

Le coq has long been a semi-official emblem of the French nation, originally adopted because the Latin word ‘Gallus’ meant both ‘Gaulois’ (note for non Astérix readers: the Romans called France ‘Gaul’) and cockerel. The French people adopted the rooster as their emblem, appropriate as it rather conveniently symbolised qualities like vigilance, courage and fighting spirit. The Telegraph also mentions arrogance, but unsurprisingly that particular character trait is not alluded to on French government websites. A popular symbol during the French Revolution, the bird fell out of favour temporarily during the reign of Napoléon, who wasn’t convinced that a farmyard animal constituted a regal enough emblem and replaced it with an eagle. The bird has featured on coins, stamps, the flags and uniform buttons of the Garde nationale and can be seen on the entrance gate to the Elysée presidential palace. And, last but not least, it adorns my lovely coq sportif trainers.

The recent discovery that only two hundred of the brightly coloured French roosters remain prompted measures which would not have been out of place in a science fiction film. French scientists have cryogenically frozen sperm samples from the most handsome of the remaining birds so that should the breed be wiped out by avian flu, for example, it would be possible to ressurrect le coq by inseminating ‘normal’ hens and cross-breeding their offspring.

Does that mean coq au vin is definitely off the menu?

Call me a prude, but there’s a saucy ad campaign running in the métro at the moment which really puts me off my croissants first thing in the morning.

The Galéries Lafayette department store has been working with photographer Jean-Paul Goude (think Vanessa Paradis on a trapeze for Coco de Chanel) and Corsican supermodel Laetitia Casta for the past couple of years. Personally I’m not a big fan of the campaign, which has shown an elongated, photoshopped-to-within-an-inch-of-her-life Casta (or a body double with Casta’s head, it depending on who you choose to believe) in various states of undress, disguised as a man, and giving a piggyback to Henri Salvadore. The Galéries have undeniably forged themselves a distinctive brand identity, whereas the other department stores – La Samaritaine, Le Bon Marché, BHV and Printemps don’t do a great deal to differentiate themselves from one another. But what I don’t need, at 8am when I am feeling a bit queasy wearing my heavy winter coat in a packed and steaming métro carriage, is Casta/some Brazilian floozy’s rear, liberally greased with baby oil, mooning down at me in every station. I shan’t be shopping there this Christmas.

Obviously having lived in France for some time now, I have had time to get used to the ubiquitous breast and bottom shots. Show me a shower gel/moisturising cream TV ad which does not show a lady rubbing a creamy lather on to her chest (full frontal or profile shot) and rounded buttocks (any shot permitted as long as the front bits are obscured by the aforementioned soap suds).

I am in two (or more) minds about how to react to this. On the one hand, using images of naked women to sell just about everything is wrong on so many levels. These people specialise in protesting against the sexual stereotyping of women by running counter campaigns; other protestors specialise in tagging sexist adverts on métro billboards and they have my full support.

On the other hand, at least the French are not a mass of contradictions. I wouldn’t want to live in the hypocritical climate of post-Nipplegate America. The French documentary ‘90 minutes’ recently devoted an episode to prudishness in the US of A. It amazes me that in a country where Xtina can make a video like ‘dirrty’, a law was being submitted to a state legislature which sought to outlaw the wearing of visible g-strings with hipster trousers. This crime against decency would be punishable by a prison sentence. Now I’m not partial to visible g-strings, but these people are victims. Fashion retailers insist on manufacturing trousers cut in such a way that sitting down without mooning is impossible. What is a girl supposed to do?

I also wonder whether the readership of the Sun newspaper in the UK would be vastly reduced if L’Oréal were allowed to show a bit more flesh during advertising breaks. Would you still buy the Sun ‘for the sports pages’ then boys?

But tell me, am I the only prude girl around here who finds the greasy bottom cleavage shot above a little bit unsavoury?

The integrity of the French language is defended by the Académie Française, an institution created in 1635 consisting of 40 immortels, who are not immortal, but do wear a very attractive green ceremonial sash and sword when they pose for photographs.

The mission of the académiciens is to protect the French language from the threat posed by English, or rather American English. New words appear in the French dictionary by their consent only.

Le rayonnement de la langue française est menacé par l’expansion de l’anglais, plus précisément de l’américain, qui tend à envahir les esprits, les écrits, le monde de l’audiovisuel.

The academy strives to keep apace with developments in science and technology, fertile breeding grounds for English neologisms, and for every new concept they invent an equivalent French word.

In 1994 the controversial Loi Toubon aimed to curb the widespread usage of anglo-saxon. A blacklist of proscribed English words was published by the Academy with recommended French alternatives. Many of the latter I have never seen in print (une frimousse for a smiley? un fouineur for a hacker?), so it would seem that this has not been a resounding success.

The law also introduced a minimum quota of French music on the airwaves, but that subject is deserving of a full post in itself. Let’s just say for now that I am not a big fan of French radio.

Surfing French (we)blogs of late I noticed that there is some (occasionally heated) debate among bloggers as to what they should call themselves and their output. The terms un blog or un weblog currently co-exist with un carnet web or un journal web, shortened to joueb. Strictly speaking as the Académie dislikes the word ‘web’, preferring ‘toile’, surely that should be un carnet-toile? In French speaking Canada on the other hand, their equivalent to the Académie has opted for un blogue.

I’ll let you know when the Académie makes up its mind… Given that the word fax (although télécopie is the preferred alternative) made it into the official dictionary in 2000, I’m not holding my breath.

apologies to anyone flying in from luc sainte-elie’s site expecting something ‘désopilante’. I realise, after reaching for the dictionary, that today’s post doesn’t live up to that very flattering description.

Back by popular demand, the final instalment on how to survive the Paris métro.

poised to pounce

Most, but not all, metro carriages have blocks of 8 seats in the centre, separated by an aisle. If the metro is crowded, your best bet is to aim to be standing at one end of this block so that a) you will be marginally less intimate with your fellow passengers and b) should someone get up, you will be well placed to grab the vacated seat. Typically there will be a face off between two challengers at each exit of the block of seats.

Unfortunately here it is not speed which determines the outcome. Your fate is entirely in the hands of the person vacating their seat. Should he/she choose to leave via the exit route you are blocking, you will be forced to beat a retreat away from the seat you covet and your opponent will triumph. To avoid this outcome, cunning and vigilance are required. At the merest twitch of a hand on a handbag or closing of a book you must temporarily position yourself firmly in the middle of the seat block. You may have a little trouble keeping your balance, but the seat is as good as yours (unless your opponent plays it dirty and makes a last minute charge).

unwelcome attentions

In rush hour, during strikes or when there has been yet another problème technique or incident voyageur (i.e. an inconsiderate soul has hurled themselves onto the tracks) the metro can get extremely crowded. This uncomfortable proximity can also be hazardous. First, keep your hand on your bag and keep it in front of your body, in case any members of a child pickpocket ring happen to be in your carriage. Second, breathe through your mouth. For obvious reasons. Third, don’t hesitate to ‘out’ anyone whose roaming hands find their way inside your coat, preferably by grabbing the offending hand and shouting ‘anyone lost a hand?’ After countless experiences of public transport frottage, I am now a little paranoid and have occasionally swung round angrily only to find that the guilty party was in fact an umbrella or the edge of a handbag. But you can’t be too careful. Unless you like that sort of thing.

making your exit

This should be the easy part, but rarely is. At peak times drivers don’t leave the doors open long enough for passengers to get off, let alone get on. When you are packed in tighter than sardines (but without the lubricating properties of olive oil) there is no question of anyone moving aside until the doors actually open. Don’t try to maneouvre yourself closer to the door until the train stops, it’s futile and will annoy everyone around you. But as soon as it does stop, don’t hesitate to holler ‘la porte s’il vous plaît’ (if no-one opens the door) or ‘pardon, je dois descendre!’ whilst simultaneously shoving people out of your way. If there are imbeciles on the platform waiting to get on but not even leaving you space to get off, put your head down and charge through the middle. If they try to get on while you are attempting to get off, use your elbows and anything you are carrying as a weapon.

Welcome to the urban jungle. No points awarded for being nice here.

At the In Laws’ house last weekend I made a discovery: the Tadpole speaks French.

When I say speaks, I mean mostly disconnected words, like she uses in English. Her favourite party trick at the moment consists of pointing at ears, mouth, nose etc.and naming them each in turn. ‘Eye’ is rather hazardous and for once I’m relieved to wear protective glasses. I wasn’t too surprised to discover that she can also do this in French. I was astonished however to hear her say, in the correct contexts, ‘parti papa’ and ‘assieds-toi!’

It is all to be expected, given she spends ten hours a day with a French speaking childminder and two French toddlers, but I had never before been confronted with quite so much evidence of her abilities. And, as we were sleeping in the same room as her, I heard her talking in French in her sleep.

You may be wondering how it is that I don’t hear Tadpole speak more French at home. Her daddy is a Frog after all. Well, if the truth be told he only really sees her for any length of time at weekends, as she is in bed by the time he gets home from work, and he is uncommunicative, to say the least, in the mornings. But the main reason is that the Frog being a man, he doesn’t specialise in giving a running commentary about everything he is doing, the things he can see out of the car window or what Tadpole can see from her pushchair. Men just don’t do that as much as women, in my experience. So although Frog and Tadpole do spend time together playing, there is less actual talking going on than when Tadpole is with me, or with MIL last weekend.

Faced with a French speaking Tadpole/tétard, I got my first taste of what it is going to be like bringing up a bilingual child.

Whenever she used a word in French that she also knows in English, I was pleased to see that she had taken on board two words for that object or concept and rather proud of her progress.

However, when she came out with a word in French (case in point maison) that I hadn’t yet taught her in English, I felt a bizarre stab of jealousy that she had learnt it in French first and not in English. I couldn’t restrain myself from taking immediate remedial action by saying ‘yes, that’s right, but mummy says house.’

I think Mr Frog must feel something similar, because he has started saying ‘oui, mais papa dit…’ It’s starting to feel like a competition to see who can teach her the most words in their own language.

I have always known that living here means that French will be Tadpole’s mother tongue, regardless of the fact that I’m her mother and my tongue is English. But I think this fact is only just starting to sink in…

On a day where 75% of blogs worldwide will be devoted to pondering the question of whether the American election organisers can count or not, petite anglaise is proud to bring you some light relief.

Do’s and Don’ts of Métro Etiquette – Part I

Turnstile trauma

It is not unusual when approaching the turnstiles to be asked by an unsavoury looking male who appears out of thin air: ‘est-ce que je peux passer avec vous?’ This is a rhetorical question, because regardless of your response, you will find a crotch pressing uncomfortably into your rear as you go through the narrow turnstile together.

People who do this are perverts in my opinion. Normal fare dodgers just jump over the barrier altogether, no crotch rubbing necessary. I haven’t worked out how to prevent this from happening yet. Any suggestions welcome.

Platform positioning

Take care when choosing your patch on the platform. Seasoned travellers will be positioned exactly opposite the place where the doors will open in the carriage of their choice, to facilitate a swift exit route in their destination station.

Other variables do have to be taken into account however, such as the proximity of an abusive drunk shouting connasse at every female passer by (métro Pyramides, line 7) or a pool of vomit/suspicious wet patch that might just be urine.

Stake your claim

French metro carriages are typically made up of normal seats, some of which are supposed to be reserved for priority use by the old, infirm, expectant mothers or people accompanying small children. Then there are strapontins, fold down seats used only when the carriage is not too full. If you are intent on claiming a seat, a good knowledge of métro étiquette is indispensable.

If you qualify for a ‘reserved seat’, don’t expect anyone to surrender their seat to you willingly. They will hide behind their books and newspapers, fleeing eye contact to protect their hard won seat. The best tactic I found when pregnant was to butt someone on the nose with my protruding belly and state, ‘I need to sit down please.’ Without the merest trace of a smile or any attempt to appeal to their human kindness, which would only have translated as weakness on my part. Ideally it is best to brandish some sort of official card proving that you really are old/infirm/or an ancien combattant because anyone who has queued up to get one is deserving of maximum respect in this country.

If you approach a free seat at the same time as another person, be prepared for a duel to the death. Don’t assume for example that if you are a woman and your challenger is male that he will give in gracefully. Chivalry is by no means dead in France, but the métro is governed by a different set of rules entirely: the survival of the fastest. So, lower your head, under no circumstances make eye contact, and foncez!

special cases

Beware of the shrewish French lady in her 50’s or 60’s. You may have reached the seat first and staked your claim, but she will make such loud and indignant noises that you really have to weigh up whether you want to sit down but endure her elbow/handbag poking in your ribs and your cheeks flaming at her muttered insults. Calculate the length of your trip, your fatigue levels and the thickness of your skin and act accordingly.

A particularly annoying woman, in one of those horrible fur coats of which some aging Parisiennes are so fond, pulled that stunt on me last week. Moving from a strapontin (immediately pounced on by someone else) towards the seat I had won fair and square, she coughed and spluttered and exclaimed at my ‘rudeness’. Rather than endure her insults, I stood up just as the metro was pulling into the next station and said sweetly: ‘oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t realise you were entitled to a reserved seat. You look fantastic for 75, it’s amazing what plastic surgery can do these days’.

Then I turned, fled, and changed carriages.

Coward? Maybe. Deathwish? Definitely not.

(to be continued)

The Frog read Friday’s post (he reads, but not regularly, as he is a particularly busy amphibian) and he was quite shocked that I (still) felt such animosity towards his parents.

Strangely though, this weekend went off without a hitch. I took a step back and left Tadpole alone with her grandparents for much of the time, taking the opportunity to catch up on some much needed beauty sleep and going shopping without a pushchair for the first time in aeons. I think I have been letting the bad experiences I had when Tadpole had just been born cloud my judgement somewhat, and maybe the fact of ‘emptying my bag’ (as they say in French) in Friday’s post finally enabled me to put all those bad feelings to bed. I still plan to stay away altogether next time, but for more positive reasons and as someone pointed out in my comments, a healthier relationship with the In Laws will be better for the Tadpole, who was probably picking up on all those bad vibes flying around.

The only negative thing about the weekend was the amount of food I managed to bring back (in my rather painfully distended tummy). MIL pulled out all the stops and we feasted on winter warmers like choucroute (sauerkraut, speciality from Alsace with various meat and sausages), a raclette (melted cheese heated in little shovels and poured over spuds, eaten with cold meats), pintade (guinea foul?) with wild mushrooms picked by the In Laws in the woods and served with big wedges of polenta… All lovely dishes provided you are going for a spot of skiing afterwards. But if you are going to be lazing around and you already have a well-developed case of ‘blogger’s behind’, possibly a bit too calorific.

As the Frog has always been rather a picky eater the In Laws make a big fuss about how great it is to have someone around who ‘enjoys her food’, piling on extra helping whenever I pause to pick up my wineglass.

I may now have cause to bring the exercise bike/thermometer out of early retirement.