petite anglaise

It is Saturday morning, and I am not yet sure whether I have a hangover. By rights I should: two G&Ts, a Kir Royal, a beer and a Cosmopolitan would normally be a toxic enough mixture to lay me low. Thankfully, as I open first one cautious eye, then another, exposure to light doesn’t herald in a searing headache. Nor does breakfast cereal cause any queasiness. This is fortunate, because there are few things worse than a trip to the hairdresser’s when one is suffering from mal au cheveux.

I apply foundation, not feeling brave enough to stare at myself in the mirror under fluorescent lights without it, and thank the lord for the absorbent powers of sushi rice. Taking a final long look at my hair, which perversely always looks particularly fetching the day I decide to have it cut, I wrap up warmly and hurry to the metro.

I rarely enjoy paying a visit to the hairdressers. It’s disappointment guaranteed. The only variable is the actual degree of that disappointment, which can vary from utter despair (the haircut inflicted on me days before the birth of Tadpole, which I describe as my “racoon with mange” look, little documented in the photo album) to a feeling of having been cheated (no difference discernible to the human eye, for the price of a mid-range digital camera). Scarred by past hairdressing misfortunes, I dread that final moment of truth when I must replace my glasses, hands trembling, and behold the results. Adopting my most convincing “oh, a pair of socks with polka dots on, that’s exactly what I wanted for Christmas” face., an expression which remains frozen in place until out of sight of the salon, where my bottom lip starts to wobble and then I crack, barely stifle a howl.

I give my name to fiftysomething facelift on the front desk, presumably the salon owner. She gives me a resentful glare when I confess I cannot recall the name of my hairdresser. I suspect she is worried about spoiling her perfect manicure by typing my name into the database. As I haven’t been back for eighteen months, having tried a couple of places on visits to the UK in the interim, I am not what you would call one of their esteemed regulars.

My colourist is called David. Something of a misnomer: Goliath would be more fitting. David boasts rippling muscles, and an all-over fake tan, the buttons of his white overalls straining to contain his hairless, brown hulk-like torso. His mouth looks oddly inflated, and I spend the next half-hour (€ 107) trying to work out whether he has had collagen injections, or just has a terminal pout. Unfortunately, David also has rather rough hands, and a tendency to pull each strand of hair painfully taut as he applies the white paste. I wince, quietly, and wager that the wealthy forty and fiftysomething ladies around me with their generous tips and insipid conversation about their next trip to Mauritius get somewhat gentler treatment. Thankfully I am permitted to keep my glasses on throughout this part of the proceedings so I escape the vapid chatter by burying my nose in a Japanese ghost story.

The time comes for rinsing, and I dare to hope that I might, at least, get a head massage. But no, instead David manhandles my scalp with his large, hulk-like hands, roughly applies a soin(€ 14) and disappears without a word, after twiddling a dial at the side of my reclining chair.

I sit and wait. And wait. Look at my watch. Cross and uncross my legs. Sigh. Begin to worry about the fact that I have left my handbag out of sight at the other side of the room. Wish I had my glasses. Wonder where the toilet is. And why there is a concealed rolling pin inside my chair, working its way up my back. Indeed, I am being massaged by a chair. A warning would have been nice. And although the feeling is soothing at the outset, it gets a little stale after twenty minutes have elapsed. And makes me painfully aware of my bladder.

A few more interminable minutes pass, and finally an apologetic junior appears to rinse off my conditioning treatment. David, it appears, does not do rinsing. The shower spurts into life; I cross my legs tightly.

Rinsed and turbaned, much relieved after a visit to the ladies’ room, I am ready to face the last hurdle: Jean-Francois, hairdresser extraordinaire. He claims to remember me, but allow me to remain inwardly sceptical. I am asked to stand, something I have only ever experienced in France. Ten snips later (€ 77) a junior is enlisted on blow drying duty. J-F dries the last few strands, and shows me how to do a zig-zaggedy parting.

I replace my glasses.

The results are surprisingly good. Goliath has done a decent job with the highlights - subtle, but not invisible - and J-F Superstar has at least respected my wishes, leaving my hair mid-length and layering the front, as instructed. So far, so good. I am escorted to the front desk to settle my bill. Studiously ignored by the surgery queen for a full five minutes while she tries to persuade my hairdresser to take more appointments, despite the fact that his last four clients have all complained about the long wait.

Finally, she deigns to turn to me, compliments David on the colour (causing me to wonder if maybe it is’t a bit too brassy, after all?) and calculates the grand total. I gulp. We are in digital camera territory and I am having a flashback to the last time I stood on this spot and vowed never to darken their doors again. How could I have forgotten?

But the worst is still to come. With a vinegary smile, like bile wouldn’t melt in her mouth, Madame Nip Tuck continues:

“Dis donc, vous en aviez besoin, hein?”

It is probably A Good Thing that I don’t have a pair of scissors to hand.

I can hear the gynecologist talking on the phone in the next room. A personal call, judging by her cooing tones. Despite the fact that she is ten minutes late, that I am the only person in the tiny waiting room, sitting awkwardly on the overstuffed leather sofa, glancing at my watch periodically to see just how late back to work I am going to be, she is clearly not it any hurry to call me in. Classical music plays on invisible speakers, but does not have the desired soothing effect.

Finally, five minutes later, I am summoned in. I shake her hand, trying not to think about where it spends much of its time, and take a seat, opposite her desk.

“Now, remind me of your name,” she says, looking not nearly as bashful as she should, under the circumstances.

I comply, puzzled as to why she doesn’t have my notes in front of her. What does her secretary do all day? Blog?

“I seem to have misplaced your notes,” she continues, rising to paw through her filing cabinet half-heartedly, but apparently still drawing a blank.

I sigh, and refresh her memory as to the subject of our previous appointment, less than a month ago. Explanations out of the way, I am invited to strip naked (bottom half only) and take up the habitual position on my back, feet in stirrups.

My mother always told me that once you’ve had a baby, any inhibitions you used to have will disappear. I found this to be true during my pregnancy, largely because due to my burgeoning belly, I couldn’t actually get a clear view of what was going on down there anyway, but shortly afterwards, my inhibitions returned to haunt me with a vengeance.

Suffice to say that the snap of latex gloves being pulled on is not a sound I look forward to. Nor is the fact that French gynéco’s all seem to be rather fond of checking for breast lumps with their bare, cold hands, which is not dissimilar to being groped by a particularly inept sixteen year old boy.

Thirty seconds later it is all over, and when I return to my seat, a prescription awaits me. I pull out my cheque book and pen.

“Sixty five euros?” I ask, wondering if my memory can be serving me correctly.

“Oui, Madame, c’est exact,” comes the reply. Her nose is already in the next person’s file, signalling that I have been dismissed.

Inwardly fuming, I write my cheque. Sixty five euros for five minutes of her precious time. Sixty five euros to see a doctor who has misplaced my records, has no idea of my history, and yet feels qualified to make a snappy, thirty second diagnosis. Sixty five euros, all because she has a double-barrelled name and a tiny cabinet from whose windows you can almost, but not quite, make out the Louvre.

I mumble the usual niceties and take my leave, vowing never to cross her threshold again, even if she is within spitting distance of my office.

Three things offended my delicate sensibilities today. In the following order:

First, the grafitti in the lift which takes me into the bowels of the earth to catch my morning métro:

“Pas heureux chez nous? Allez donc crever de faim chez vous!”

Glad to see the spirit of fraternité is alive and kicking in the twenty first century.

Second, old greasy bum is back on a billboard near you (shameless recycling on the part of the Galéries Lafayette) and almost succeeded in putting me off my brioche.

Third, work. I don’t talk about work. It’s my new rule. But if I say I decided it might be prudent to revamp the CV today, that’s not really talking about work, is it?

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that separating from someone you were not married to is actually more expensive than divorce.

Take France Telecom for example.

A couple of weeks ago, it occurred to me that my phone number was still registered in Mr Frog’s name. As I have always harboured a burning, secret desire to see my name in print (even if it is only in the pages blanches), and didn’t particularly want to speak to any old flames or schoolfriends that might look up Mr Frog at some point in the future, I decided to have the entry amended.

The lady from France Telecom who explained the procedure to follow was uncharacteristically helpful. A fax, signed by Mr Frog, authorising a transfer of the line, plus a copy of my bank details was all that was required. A couple of days later, I noted that my name already appeared in the online phone directory.

That was fiendishly simple and efficient, for France, I thought to myself.

And then I received the first bill bearing my name.

€ 55.00 - Services ponctuels ou occasionnels (ouverture de ligne)

I phone France Telecom, to report what I am - in my misguided optimism - determined to see as an error. I haven’t just moved in, and I don’t have a new telephone number, so I can’t possibly be charged a “connection fee”, can I?

First, I explain my problem to the service clients in a calm, almost cheerful manner.

“But you were informed of the cost when you enquired as to what the procedure was to carry out the name change.” states the lady, voice dripping with boredom.

“No, absolutely not. I was informed of no such thing!” I splutter, suffering from an acute sense of humour failure.

My call is transferred to the service facturation, where I have the pleasure of starting my complaint all over again from the beginning, minus the cheerfulness.

The man ascertains that I have not changed my telephone number, and (pretends to) consult with a supervisor. When he returns, he tells me it is absolutely normal to have been charged in this way.

I am livid. “It’s daylight robbery,” I shout, trying desperately to think how to say “preposterous” in French, but making do with a forceful “c’est aberrant!”

Getting worked up like this makes no difference whatsoever to anything except my life expectancy, which is considerably shortened.

When he can get a word in edgeways, Mr France Telecom gleefully delivers his parting shot:

“There are some cases in which the transfer of a line is free. If a line is transferred between spouses, or if you were PACSé for example.”

I knew Mr Frog and I should have got married.

I open the letterbox, and, to my surprise, pull out two identical envelopes, both containing train tickets. Upon closer inspection, I realise, with a sinking feeling, that they are duplicate tickets for the same journey.

I curse the SNCF and their wonderful, shiny, new website.

Later that day, I phone 3635 to see how the situation can be remedied. First, I am told that it has nothing to do with the SNCF whatsoever, as the website is run by another company, “Voyages SNCF”. Well I never! A French fonctionnaire merrily* shunting the responsibility for my problem onto another person/department/company. How novel.

I persist, undeterred, and manage to establish that although any complaints about the shortcomings of the website should be addressed to Voyages SNCF, to obtain reimbursement of my ticket, I simply need to take it to any station, before the date of travel.

This was yesterday. Date of travel being today. After which I would no longer be able to obtain a full refund of my € 100.

I resolve to spend my lunch hour in St Lazare station, the nearest mainline station to my office. As I approach the guichets grandes lignes, I am not a little relieved to note that there are only three or four people in each queue. This should be painless, I think to myself, idly wondering which sandwich I will by from Paul for lunch once I am done. A Dieppois? A fruit tart, to celebrate?

The employee listens patiently to my explanation, without interrupting, and when I have finished points silently to a very small sign: “Départs Normandie uniquement”.

I am not going to Normandy.

Nor can I strangle this man with my bare hands, because he is protected by bulletproof glass.

I make my way, stomach growling, to the opposite end of the station, where there is another sign marked “Billeterie Grandes Lignes“.

Oh. My. God.

Picture a large, windowless, dimly lit room with ticket desks lining three sides. The room was last refurbished circa 1960. The colour scheme is brown, on brown. There are fourteen desks, lining three sides of the room, of which only six are open. The queue zigzags back and forth across the centre of the room, in a decidedly orderly fashion for France, the irritated, overheated people having been shepherded into submission using barriers and red tape. I start to count how many irritated, overheated people must be served before it is my turn. I stop at 50, deciding, on balance, that I’d rather not know.

The time is 13.20; I left the office at 12.50.

Some people in the queue came prepared, and nibble on baguette sandwiches, or read books. I have no such means of sustenance or entertainment at my disposal, so I content myself with fuming inwardly at the number of SNCF employees who are milling about behind the ticket desks seemingly unoccupied; chatting, or just standing around with their arms folded, calmly surveying the mayhem, in full view of the people queuing. Hardly very tactful behaviour.

Occasionally, an employee comes on duty and deigns to sit down at one of the empty desks and pull up the blind to start work. But not before they have sauntered around the room at the speed of a snail and kissed both cheeks of every single fellow fonctionnairein the room.

For every blind that is pulled up, another is lowered, elsewhere in the room.

I finally reach the front of the queue at 14.02. A pleasant and efficient young gentleman with a ponytail refunds my ticket in seconds. I smile, pathetically grateful, as all along I had been imagining what I would do if once I got to the front of the queue, I was told that I was in the wrong place for refunds.

I arrive back at the office at 14.20, looking forward to consoling myself with a sandwich and a strawberry tart.

I see that my boss is back from lunch, looking pointedly at his watch, so I return to my desk, stomach still protesting, crestfallen, and consign my lunch to the recesses of a desk drawer.

At that precise moment in time, I would gladly have paid in excess of € 100 to be able to eat my fruit tart in peace.

*a figure of speech. There was nothing merry about the voice of my interlocuteur. Disinterested, slightly dim and very bored would all be more apt descriptions.

For today’s post, kindly follow me.

And my I point out at this juncture that I categorically do not wear red nail varnish.

My secondary school French teacher could barely contain his excitement when we got to the section in our textbook devoted to French hypermarkets. He hopped from one foot to the other and gesticulated enthusiastically as he extolled their virtues. They were vast! You could buy a TV along with your weekly grocery shop! They constituted a shopping revolution! All of his sentences ended with exclamation marks!

Well, I moved to France ten years ago and I must confess that thus far, I haven’t manage to work out just what it was that my teacher was getting himself worked up about. I think that the most sensible explanation for this - the one not involving my teacher being in need of sedation - is that in the meantime, Tesco and Sainsbury’s superstores in the UK caught up with French hypermarchés, overtook them, and raced on ahead, turning only to make a triumphant bras d’honneur in the direction of the rapidly receding Auchans and Leclercs.

I can’t claim to have frequented many proper hypermarkets, as living in central Paris and not owning a car, I have always been more likely to shop in the Franprix/Leader Price that seem to be located every 500m or so throughout the city. The choice of products is relatively limited, but they do sell all the basics we need, and the prices are somewhat more reasonable than slightly more upmarket Monoprix. But when we visit the Evil In-Laws (as we did this weekend), and it rains (as it always seems to, making the promises we have made to Tapole about being able to play in the garden/on the slide/in the paddling pool/on her bike null and void) I can usually find a reason to visit Géant Casino at Chateaufarine for some much needed respite from the Evils.

Chateaufarine is one of those soulless industrial estates which exist the world over, populated with sweaty sports shops and ‘bargain’ clothes stores, housed in vast hangars, interconnected by a labyrinth of roads and a roundabout every 20 paces. Invented intially as a traffic jam free alternative to town centre shopping, these trading estates are now a victim of their own success: the enormous carparks are always full, the access roads are choked with stationary traffic. I curse myself every single time for forgetting just how depressing the Chateaufarine experience is.

Just because Géant Casino is located in a gigantic hangar, doesn’t, in this case, mean that I stand a better chance of finding just what it is I’m looking for. Vast does mean that the yoghurt aisle is ten times longer than the one in Franprix. But all this really means is that the same flavours are repeated over and over for again for the length of an Olympic sized swimming pool, the only difference being that they have different brand names on. Shopping becomes exercise. As far as I can see, there doesn’t seem to be any more real choice than in Franprix. On this occasion, there was no Thai green curry paste to be had for love nor money.

It also proved to be nigh on impossible to buy a regular-sized pack of nappies for Tadpole’s use at the In Laws’ house. The optimist in me shied away from buying a 92-pack of huggies, just in case we are successful in potty training her before the end of 2005. But the only packs on sale were of the “mega multi family value bulk buy” variety. If this principle is applied to the rest of the merchandise on offer, these places must be every singleton’s nightmare.

And last of all, I could not help but compare the in-house store fidelité cards, a relatively recent phenomenon in France, with their equivalent in the UK. My parents, through astute use of their Tesco credit card, recently managed to wangle themselves a week away in the Channel Islands, all flights and accommodation courtesy of Tesco Plc. When I consult the balance of my s’miles points (Monoprix, Galéries Lafayette and Géant Casino), they serve only as a grim reminder of the indecent amount of money I must have spent shopping there to get them, only to be rewarded with a free cinema ticket for every 1,000 points accummulated. If that is all my fidelity is worth, I shall be sleeping around from now on.

The only upside to visiting the souless trading estate is that I immediately felt like a fashion goddess, conspicuous in my understated, but oh so terribly chic, Parisian clothes. Now far be it for me to say that country folk have inferior dress sense, but if my options were limited to the best that Kiabi, Pimkie and La Halle aux Vêtements had to offer… [sentence best left unfinished so as not to cause offence to rural readers]

Anyway, I would like to point out at this juncture that I wasn’t the one muttering “pramface!” and “chav!” at fellow shoppers. I didn’t know whether to chastise Mr Frog for making the risky assumption that no-one in Chateaufarine speaks fluent English and regularly reads popbitch, or to be proud of his impressive knowledge of English vernacular.

Perhaps Mr Frog should be awarded honorary British nationality?

We are driving on the péripherique (translation: ring road of death) in a borrowed car and I am talking too much, as usual. Mr Frog rudely interrupts to enquire whether we needed to take the direction Charles de Gaulle exit which I can now see receding in the wing mirror. Clearly it was a mistake to assume that as we have already made this journey several times, my navigation skills would not be required. Never underestimate Mr Frog’s lack of a sense of direction. I remember one of our first dates, where he pointed at Notre Dame and asked me which church it was. He had been living in Paris for four months at the time, and lived nearby, a stone’s throw from the Jardins de Luxembourg. I hastily pull out the Ikea (French pronunciation: “ee kay ya”) catalogue and improvise. We’ll try to the one at Paris Est instead. For a change. Anything is better than having to retrace our steps.

Leaving the A4 at Champigny, as instructed, we drive around the roundabout four times before spotting a helpful Ikea advert on a bus shelter. I am very thankful for this, because even with my superior navigation skills I cannot make any sense of the relationship between Ikea’s map and the actual lay of the land in front of me. We find the right road, and sail past the carpark entrance, taking an impromptu tour of Villiers sur Marne. Finally, at 11.30 am, we pull into the carpark. Not at 10 am, as I had hoped.

The layout of Ikea Paris Est is cunning. Arriving at the top of the stairs, a delectable food smell greets your nostrils as you pass the restaurant. After visiting the vast showroom level, flagging somewhat and thirsty from the dry, air-conditioned atmosphere, there it is again, as welcome as an oasis in the desert. I resolve to stop there for a Tadpole lunch break before the lunchtime rush starts. We only need to buy a Tadpole bed, a Tadpole-sized bookcase and a mini table and chairs (also for Tadpole), but somehow we end up looking at everything, as usual. I release Tadpole from the confines of her pushchair in the children’s section, so that she can test her new bed for size. At first it is fun, watching her try out rocking chairs, a small wooden tractor and a wendy house, all the while clutching a large plastic piggy bank. I give other, equally powerless, parents a conspiratorial wink when Tadpole finally puts the pig down, attention caught by a wooden train set, and spirit piggy away, hiding him in a bin full of plastic plates. It soon becomes clear that there will be no way of getting her out of there which doesn’t involve kicking, wailing and a runny nose wiped on my clothing. Her flaming cheeks have teething pain written all over them, and when she starts crying on red-cheek days, she sometimes forgets to stop.

We arrive at the café. There are approximately fifty people in each queue. Tadpole is incapable of standing still, so this is a Very Big Problem. Mr Frog storms off back to the children’s section with her, leaving me to queue and make important lunch decisions alone. He motions to me that I should phone him, but when I do, I get his voicemail. I look around me and realise with a sinking feeling that I have missed my chance to grab a special tray-carrying trolley, resigning myself to either not eating very much, or pioneering precarious new methods of plate stacking. I pray that my credit card payment will be accepted at the till (in France there is often a minimum amount, usually € 15 - approx £ 10.00), as I have precisely 24 centimes in my purse. Some time later, I make my way unsteadily towards a table carrying a couple of salads, some bread rolls, a plate of heart shaped chocolate covered biscuits and some D’aim bars (Dime bars in every other language). Luckily Mr Frog chooses this moment to haul the still protesting Tadpole over. I ease her chubby thighs into the snugly fitting high chair, which has the advantage of immobilising her legs altogether, then stuff a piece of bread in her mouth, for some temporary respite from the howling. I sit back with my cup of tea, priding myself on my parenting skills, but wishing that this could all be over.

Lunchtime in Ikea is odd. I suspect some people must make the journey just to eat there. I see a suspiciously large number of unaccompanied adults carrying 2 euro kiddie meals off to remote corners of the dining area. Someone (who probably doesn’t have to spend the whole day in there) has had the bright idea of placing a piano in the middle of the dining area. I dread to think how much decomposing food is trapped between the keys. Lunch is eaten to a soundtrack of ‘chopsticks’ and random plinkety plonking as every greasy-fingered youngster takes their turn. Mr Frog and I snap at each other, toddler-stress getting the better of us. Tadpole, on fine form, refuses to eat everything but a breadroll and two chocolate biscuits.

After queuing for the (one) baby changing area, we descend wearily to the lower level, bracing ourselves for the moment of truth. Will they actually have Tadople’s lit évolutif and table and chairs in stock? I fear that if they do not, I may have to be dragged out of Ikea kicking and screaming. And foaming at the mouth. Luckily all is where it should be, and we unload our bounty at the checkout. Somehow along the way we have also amassed one wooden train set, two flower cushions for Tadpole’s chairs, plastic beakers, plastic plates, a throw for the sofa and a picture frame for my vitriolica thumbnail poster. It could have been worse: to our credit we have resisted both the scented candles and the ‘fun’ ice cube trays for the first time.

I giggle at a family struggling to stuff a king-size matress into the back of their small hatchback car. I feel a little less smug when we attempt to load the Tadpole bed into our borrowed Yaris verso. The front of the box arrives at gearstick level. I secure some rope around the seat headrests and across the front of the carton in a pathetic attempt to make the car less of a potential deathtrap.

FOUR WHOLE HOURS from door to door. I give thanks to the Lord that this bed can be extended to a maximum length of two metres, and may even see Tadpole into adulthood.

I don’t plan to repeat that experience again in a hurry.

I note, with some amusement, that the HM Post Office has been rapped across the knuckles for installing fee-charging cash machines in three quarters of its branches. Especially as the offending machines bear a sticker stating that they are free, when in fact only consulting your balance or last few transactions is free. Withdrawing money is not. Four out of ten UK cash machines apparently charge a minimum fee for cash withdrawals these days.

Ten years ago, when I arrived in France, employed as an English assistante at the none too aesthetically pleasing Lycée Raymond Queneau, I recall having to be very careful about using only Crédit Lyonnais ATMs (or DABs, as they are known over here) when I wanted to get my hands on my paltry paycheck. I ranted and raved that this was not, and would never be, the case in the UK, bragging that UK banks had a far superior grasp of the concept of customer service. However, over the past few years, banks in the UK seem to have been taking steps in the wrong direction. One can only hope that the mercenary French banks are not being used as their role models.

On the other side of the Channel we have to pay for the ‘privileges’ of receiving new cheque books by post, having a visa (debit) card and access to on-line banking facilities (a necessity, as I rarely now need to set foot in the horrible 70’s monstrosity that is the Caisse d’Epargne, place Léon Blum). There have been rumours that soon there will be a fee for every cheque written or cashed, and some banks are reintroducing charges for DAB withdrawals. Just when I thought it couldn’t get any worse.

Account ’services’ are bundled into a helpful little package (forfait), which every bank concocts to a different recipe, making it tricky/impossible to compare charges between banks. Helpfully, services which I do actually use, like for instance drawing money out in the UK or making international bank transfers, are stubbornly opaque, and not detailed in the convention de comptefrais de dossier (loan processing fee), should you decide to accept their terms. It can be up to € 1,000. The French banks cannot be persuaded to lend you as much as you would get in the UK, as the repayments are capped at 33.33% of your monthly earnings before tax, and you will be expected to repay over only 15 or 20 years. 25 year mortgages exist (but banks are often reluctant to offer them) and 30 year mortgages are simply unheard of. Which is why Mr Frog and I have been priced out of the Paris property market, unless I fancy raising Tadpole, plus future potential mini-Tadpole, in a small broom cupboard.

The French do seem to have a completely different relationship with credit. They generally limit themselves to buying what they can actually afford. I do see this as A Good Thing, given the weight of credit card debt many families are struggling with in the UK, where consumers are constantly tempted to take on more debt and splash out on that three piece suite today (but pay nothing until December 2006).

Supermarkets like Auchan and Carrefour and companies like Egg (who have seriously struggled to convince the recalcitrant French that online banking is the way forward) have gone some way towards changing this mentality recently, introducing store cards which double as credit cards. My bank only offers a direct debit or a deferred debit card, however. Not that I’ve ever been able to actually obtain a credit card here. Several department stores have refused my applications, with no justification forthcoming. I suspect having a entirely blank (or ‘virginal’, as the French would say) credit record in this country and being ‘foreign’ may have something to do with it.

Vive l’Europe!

I recently discovered skyblogs. To my horror. These are for the most part teen blogs and are hosted by shouty French radio station Skyrock. The mothership’s homepage has so much busy flash animation (advertising) that I can’t actually look at it for more than five seconds without triggering a migraine.

It sets the tone nicely for what is to come.

Imagine if you will a blog written entirely in mobile phone textspeak, littered with a few low resolution photos uploaded from a cheap cameraphone, and you are getting to the essence of what skyblogging is. Indecipherable unless you are a teenager yourself, or happen to have a teenage translator to hand who understands all the slang, verlan (backwards slang, or sometimes backwards backwards slang - meriting of a post in itself one day) and teen cultural references whch are thrown into the mix.

The following text was lifted from p-a13 and I reproduce it here along with my attempted translation into French, and then English:

voila sa c théo 1 gro pomé du bahu lol!!! g d cone mdr!! c mon meilleur pote il tro s1pa on c clate tro o bahu enssemble top d lire mdr!!! a+ mek by !!!

Voilà ça c’est Theo un gros paumé du bahut. LOL!!! Je déconne MDR [Mort de rire]!! C’est mon meilleur pote. Il est trop sympa. On s’éclate trop au bahut ensemble. Top délire MDR!! A plus mec. Bye!!

This is Theo a fat loser from school. LOL!! I’m joking LOL!! It’s my best friend. He is too nice. We have too much fun together. Top fantastic LOL!! See you soon mate. Bye.

Other sites abound which are completely beyond my limited translation abilities. Especially those written by French teenagers with North African parents or grandparents, who use a smattering of Arabic words or French/Arabic hybrid slang in addition to French textspeak. At least I imagine that’s what they are.

The skyblog community is so vast that the volume of traffic the most popular skyblogs attract is phenomenal. Take this graffiti blog, for example, where visitors can leave their name and colour preferences and the blogger will create and publish a personalised tague . The site has seen a staggering 132,000+ visits since its creation in February 2005 and the most recent entry attracted 17,462 comments.

However, closer inspection reveals that many of these are a new form of comment spam: fellow skybloggers promoting their own blogs. I suppose I’m as guilty as the next person for having left the odd strategic comment on a high profile site in the hope that I might pique the curiosity of a few of their visitors. Dooce’s daily photo entry is basically a competition to see who can comment first (unfortunately this paves the way for meaningless comments in the vein of “cute photo!”), as apparently pole position on her comments page translates into a not insignificant number of hits on the statcounter. But skybloggers are even less subtle: no beating about the bush, no semblance of interaction, just the blog address.

Vierge Insolente, who from her picture looks like an all too familiar patchouli scented gothette, is one of the few skybloggers I have found so far who forms actual sentences with grammar and punctuation. In her recent farewell post she laments the fact that being in the skyblogs top ten means that no-one actually reads what she has to say any more, most simply dropping by to leave ads in her comments box.

Ce n’est plus personnel, c’est ennuyant… Ne plus être livre d’écrire ce que l’on veut à cause d’une certaine célébrité. Ce n’est pas un avantage d’être dans ce top 100… Du moins dans les 10 premiers. Tout le monde se fout de ce qu’on peut bien écrire, les gens sont un peu égoistes au fond, genre je te balance ma pub et j’en ai rien à faire de tes trucs…

I hope that this isn’t where the rest of the blogosphere is headed. It takes me long enough to delete my trackback spam, without having to start filtering mindless ads from fellow bloggers as well.

I received the controversial form from the social security today: the formulaire de déclaration de choix du médecin traitant.

Unlike the UK, where you are registered with one doctor or doctor’s surgery, who have your file detailing your every ailment from childhood to the present day, the French have always been able to consult whomever they please, whenever they please, as often as they please. There is nothing to prevent someone who is horrified at the appearance of four insolent blackheads on their nose from making an appointment to see a dermatologist directly. Or someone suffering from a mild bout of indigestion from missing out the GP middle-man and opting to see a gastroenterologist instead. No system of referrals has hitherto existed to ensure that taxpayers’ money is not wasted by hypochondriacs electing to visit several specialists for their maladies imaginaires, and soliciting a second, third or even fourth opinion.

The social security system has unquestioningly picked up its share of the tab all this time (the same amount for every patient, no means testing required), while mutuelles, private health insurers, whose policies every worker subscribes to as part of their employment package, pay some or all of the rest. Or very little, in the case of dental work. Serious financial planning is advisable if, say, you need a tooth crowning in this country - you may have to forfeit your holiday plans or that nice Ipod photo you had set your heart on in order to pay the dentist.

The eminently sensible change being wrought by the innocent looking form is that everyone now has to choose a GP to be their first point of contact: their médecin traitant. The only specialists that people will be able to consult without a GP referral are gynecologists, dentists, ophthalmologists, paediatricians and psychiatrists. Other appointments can presumably still be made, but will no longer be reimbursed. Which is very dissuasive indeed.

Understandably perhaps, there is a lot of opposition to this new measure. Old habits die hard, and many people resent having to go and see a GP, who might be a complete stranger, just to obtain a referral to the specialist they have been frequenting for a decade or more.

Personally I’ve never seen a French GP more than once. Depending on where I was working at any given time I tended to see someone close to my office, and I’m very British about ailments like colds that the French invariably to see a doctor about, preferring to dip into my large stock of generic UK supermarket cold cures. Tadpole has a doctor she sees fairly regularly, a GP chosen mainly because the local paediatricians recommended to me were taking on no new patients. She is lovely, and less heavy handed with the antibiotics than most French physicians I’ve crossed paths with, but I have no idea whether she will consent to signing Mr Frog’s and my forms. Doctors are under no obligation to accept everyone, and do not have to give any justification for their refusals. As she happens to be very popular in our neighbourhood, she is undoubtedly fully booked already. The forms have been sent out in three huge postal waves, meaning that people with surnames ending in A - O may have bagged all the available places. Desperate times call for desperate measures: I’ll have to take my chequebook and see if she can be bribed.

Who knows, she may be one of the doctors boycotting the new system in protest at becoming some sort of clearing house and refuse to sign any forms at all.

In any case we now have until July 1st to be ill, visit the doctor and get the forms signed. And if we remain in perfect health, we’ll probably end up making an appointment anyway (at a cost of just over € 20 to the social security system) just to get the signature and coveted inky stamp on the form (the French are VERY attached to their ‘tampons’, and no official form would be complete without several illegible stamps).

If every single French person does this before 1 July, at a cost of € 20 per adult, I think we can safely expect an even bigger social security deficit this year. Thereby defeating the cost-cutting object of the whole excercise, at least in the short term. And creating a swathe of paperwork for the bureaucrats to process.

Atchoum! I feel a cold coming on. Off to the doctor’s I go…

*French for Atishoo! I have actually heard people pronouncing the ‘m’ when they sneeze. I swear.

Marching season has begun again, despite the rather cold weather we are having.

Public sector employees (fonctionnaires) from the SNCF (French railways), EDF (Electricity board) and La Poste are striking this week in protest against the right-wing government’s ‘policies of economic liberalisation’. Or rather, they are protesting about how the policies may affect them. More specifically, they would like higher wages and reassurance that the government’s loosening up of the 35 hour working week legislation will not apply to them. Well, wouldn’t we all?

Call me selfish, but I find it hard to have much sympathy for French civil servants. Not because when they strike it is a battle to get to and from work and I don’t receive any post. Althought that clearly doesn’t put me in the most sympathetic frame of mind. Not because in general they work far fewer hours than people employed in the private sector, have a job for life and get to retire at least 5 years earlier, on a better pension. Even though they make smaller social security contributions.

The thing that really gets on my nerves is the fonctionnaire attitude I have had to deal with time and time again. Public service would appear to be a misnomer. Take the lovely staff of the main Préfecture in Paris whom I first encountered when applying for my carte de séjour (residence permit, no longer required for EC residents, and not before time). I presented my paperwork, with the requisite sheaf of photocopies, at the front desk. This hurdle down, I was allowed to take my numbered ticket and move into the waiting area, where I soon realised that there were approximately fifty people in the queue before me. I wished I had the foresight to have prepared a packed lunch, a thermos of tea and a good book.

Of the ten booths, two were actually manned (or womanned) by sour faced civil servants, and the simple form filling procedure appeared to be taking at least ten minutes to complete. And the other members of staff? Well, they were out of sight, but within earshot. I could hear one lady talking about her holiday plans, another moaning about being overworked, and the tantalising sound of a packet of biscuits being passed around. It was 10.30am. The department had been open for half an hour. And they were already having their first coffee break of the day.

When my turn finally came, two and a half hours later, I was bemused by the suspicious attitude of the person who received me. As a citizen of the EU, it wasn’t strictly legal for the French government to demand that I carry an ID card of any kind, and my right to live and work in France was indisputable, card or no card. However that didn’t stop the lady across the counter from being snappy, impatient and downright unpleasant. I think she enjoyed wielding some sort of (imaginary) power over applicants, making them sweat a little at the prospect of being escorted onto the next flight back to their native country because they only had two passport photos instead of three, or their utility bill was not recent enough. I hardly dare imagine how the people in the adjacent room (for applicants from African countries) were being treated.

The Irish girl in the next booth to mine was told by a weasel-faced man that she didn’t have enough photocopies of her utility bill. The solution to this insurmountable problem? As the coin-operated photocopier in the waiting room was out of order, she was dispatched off find a functioning copier elsewhere in the building (without directions), and then she would just have to take a ticket and wait her turn all over again. She left, close to tears.

As for me, my application was processed. The next step was that I would have to come back again, in two month’s time, to take another numbered ticket and wait my turn to actually receive the attractive, plastic covered card.

After this and countless other soul-destroying exchanges with French civil servants, I find myself struggling to have any sympathy for the ‘plight’ of the nation’s fonctionnaires.

How heartless of me.

Hello, my name is petite and I’m a fully recovered shopaholic.

The New Year sales started at an unfeasibly early hour yesterday morning here in Paris (which felt odd, considering some had begun before Christmas in the UK). I for one will be scrupulously avoiding any form of retail therapy for the duration. I can think of few things worse than braving the Galéries Lafayette or Printemps department stores only to have to fight my way through hordes of middle aged women in tasteless (fake?) fur coats and trowelled-on make-up to ferret out ‘une bonne affaire’. I observed, with detached amusement, the women in the Monoprix next to my office sourcing and even trying on items on Monday and Tuesday in preparation for the hallowed opening day on Wednesday 12 February. But I realised I had no desire whatsoever to join them.

BT (Before Tadpole), shopping was a hobby which took up a fair amount of my time. The whole point of Saturdays was to spend hours scouring my favourite shops with Mr Frog for items of clothing and shoes to buy. We shopped at an eclectic mix of stores: from H&M to Kiliwatch, Zara to the Agnès B, as well as in Dior, Givenchy and Louis Vuitton private sales (when I worked for a luxury goods empire and could get hold of invitations). We were young(er), on decent salaries, mortgageless and had nothing better to do than spend money frivolously. The sales were an opportunity to lust after reduced (but still obscenely expensive) Marc Jacobs ballerina pumps or Miu Miu handbags at Kabuki.

Mr Frog possesses a quality rare in men: he likes shopping. Not just for his own clothes (where he is fastidious to the point of being impossible to buy for), but he actually enjoys shopping with me/for me. He would give me advice on what to buy, and tried to take all the credit for my gradual transition from a doc marten wearing grunge goddess (when we met) to whatever I have now become. I did on occasion have to be firm, because being a woman I instinctively know when something which looks very attractive on a coathanger will be ill-suited to my hourglass figure. On the whole though he excelled in his role of guru and partner in crime. This is an unusual quality to find in a heterosexual man (I have always joked that if he left me, it would be for a man), but I wasn’t complaining. It was good fun shopping together.

It was the arrival of Tadpole which cured my shopping habit overnight.

I can now no longer endure weekend trips into central Paris, knowing that this will first entail negotiating several flights of stairs with a pushchair, then ramming said pushchair into fellow traveller’s shins in a crowded, airless metro carriage. Several more flights of stairs and long underground corridors later, we will finally emerge onto a congested, and often dirty pavement where the crowds do not magically part at the sight of a pushchair. And where hundreds of lighted cigarettes are brandished at Tadpole’s eye level.

Although I had never noticed this previously, I can count the number of Parisian shops equipped with a lift on the fingers of one hand. To my amazement I have shopped at several stores where infants’ clothes are located on the first floor, accessible only via a single flight of stairs, with neither a lift nor an escalator in sight. Should we need to make a Tadpole pit stop, restaurants with baby changing facilities or high chairs are few and far between. So shopping with a child is only for the ferociously motivated. It’s a parcours du combattant I can well do without.

The alternative is a relay-race dash to the shops. First I snatch my couple of hours while Mr Frog entertains the Tadpole, then I pass the baton to Mr Frog and it is his turn to ride off into the smog on his Vespa. It’s not half as much fun as shopping together. I miss Mr Frog’s company and feel a pang of guilt at squandering some of the precious time Tadpole and I have together, which means that leisurely browsing and actually trying things on has been replaced by a one-stop lightening visit to Gap every few months from which I bring back every item I like in my size, fervently praying it will all fit.

So, if you came here expecting extensive coverage of the glamorous Parisian sales, sorry to disappoint.

I shan’t be crossing a stream carrying a cat any time soon. Or treading on any cats’ tails. This is because I don’t own a cat. Not out of a healthy respect for French superstition, which dictates that these actions would bring me bad luck, or worse still, in the case of the latter, prevent me from finding a husband this year.

I came across the aforementioned French superstitions on a catblog (and yes, I admit it, I was surfing on blog explosion at the time. Where else would one find such a thing?) These expressions excepted, it occured to me that most of what I had assumed to be English superstitions are actually shared by the French and have direct translations. The French are as prone to finger crossing (croiser les doigts) and wood touching (toucher du bois) as the English. They avoid walking under ladders, breaking mirrors and opening umbrellas indoors. Horseshoes and four leaf clovers are thought to be lucky. As are rabbits’ feet. So far so good.

The number 13 is considered unlucky in many cultures. There is even a very long word meaning ‘fear of the number thirteen’: triskaidekaphobia. More specifically though, it is deemed bad luck in France to have only thirteen people à table when sitting down to dinner. Apparently the thing to do in this situation to keep bad luck at bay is to set a place for a fictitious fourteenth person.

Friday 13th is also considered unlucky, but I think this date is only seen to be ‘unlucky for some’, not least because the French national lottery (Loto) always holds an exceptional super-cagnotte Friday 13 draw.

Apparently, in French folklore, breaking a white glass brings good luck (for as long as a year). Sadly we don’t own any white glasses, only transparent ones. I think it might be worthwhile checking whether I can source some white wine glasses in the sales this week, as a little extra luck couldn’t go amiss. And, judging by the number of glasses Mr Frog has managed to break this past year while washing up, we could be onto a winner.

Vying for the number one spot in the most bizarre superstitions I have come across today are the following:

Treading in a crotte with your left foot is considered to be lucky. Pardon? I’m sorry, but I fail to see how by any stretch of the imagination treading in dog excrement can be A Good Thing. I cross-examined to Mr Frog about this belief, and he said it didn’t matter which foot you did the treading with, it was lucky to tread in dog poop no matter what. Well, I suppose us Parisiens can count ourselves lucky as we must have a very high luck quotient.

It is allegedly bad luck to sneeze while lacing your shoes. Hay fever sufferers beware! It may be advisable to invest in a pair of slip-on shoes, or alternatively, footwear with a handy velcro fastener.

That is if you subscribe to any of this charming nonsense.

One superstition which I do plan to take seriously from now on (I suffer from very selective scepticism) is the French notion that it is dangerous to ‘passer le balai une fois le soleil couché’. Now that is good advice. The sun sets at approximately 5.30pm at this time of year. So I shan’t be allowed to reach for a broom on weekdays. And, as I feel it is appropriate to apply a modern interpretation to such old-fashioned expressions, that goes for the hoover to.

I abhor the way so many French people think drinking and driving is acceptable behaviour.

Mr Frog rolled in merrily at midnight the other night, after dinner with a friend, reeking of alcohol. He claimed to have drunk only a couple of glasses of wine. I will concede that he is the only person I know who after drinking one beer often smells like he has knocked back an entire bottle of whisky. There is apparently a phrase for this in French, avoir l’haleine qui marque facilement (breath which ‘marks’ easily), which I’m not sure has a direct equivalent in English. This means that I never really know whether he has had two drinks or ten. But on many occasions I have witnessed the difficulty he has turning the key in the front door lock, heard him crashing around the apartment like an injured rhinoceros, and seen how ropey he is feeling the following day. So I suspect that his definition of ‘a couple of drinks’ differs quite radically from mine.

It’s not the drinking that worries me. It’s the fact that he cheerfully rides home on his Vespa when he’s had a skinful. It’s the fact that when I wake up briefly in the night and see that it is 4 am and his side of the bed is still cold and empty, I am filled with terror at the thought that he might be lying in a hospital somewhere, or, worse still, undiscovered at the side of the road. It’s the fact that he is a daddy now, and I wish he were a little more aware of his own mortality, not to mention the damage that he could do to some innocent pedestrian or driver if he loses control of his scooter.

And let’s face it, vintage Vespas are not the most stable of vehicles. It’s easy to tip over, especially if the road is slippy or wet, and he has already had one accident (sober) which involved the wearing of a very attractive leg brace (une attelle in French) and receiving early morning visits from a nurse for injections to prevent blood clots caused by wearing said brace.

My own experience when living in the UK was that although we Brits do drink to excess, and indeed have an alarming tendency to consider getting drunk as The Whole Point of an evening out on the town, the person driving usually doesn’t touch a drop. Not even one measly little shandy. Despite the fact that it is a shockingly expensive business buying soft drinks in a bar. If there is no ‘designated driver’, we get taxis. Or a night bus. Or walk. If anything, the younger generation tend to be even more sensible about this than our parents’ generation.

Ever since I’ve lived in France, I’ve been consistently dumbfounded by the amount of drinking and driving I have encountered. Which includes middle aged people driving 80 km home from weddings and New Year celebrations, a doctor and father of two driving back from an extended drinking session which had been rounded off with several tequila slammers and Parisian friends driving from restaurant to bar to home on a night out in Paris. It’s true that the French tend to drink in moderation and at a wedding, for example, eat a four or five course meal over as many hours and don’t tend to get as inebriated as a British person would, but I think that this is precisely where the danger lies. Because someone who has had three or four drinks is simply not qualified to make a decision about whether they are fit to drive or not. Short of taking a breath test kit with them (and I did once see these handed out at the end of a wedding celebration to all drivers) it is not a judgement they can make. Moderation can be a treacherous thing.

There have been some hard-hitting television ad campaigns over the last few years targeting this problem, and statistics show that these have had some success in increasing awareness and reducing the number of casualties. But I think there is still a long way to go. Articles I have read point out the French (along with some other European nations like the Germans and Austrians) do not believe in ‘designated drivers’, they believe in drinking up to the limit (which some think should be increased) and crossing their fingers that they won’t get stopped for a random breath test. A Frenchman’s right to a glass of wine or two with his meal cannot be challenged.

Who am I to challenge this very different drinking culture? I will simple continue to pray, every time Mr Frog goes out with friends, that he won’t have to learn his lesson the hard way.

• Playing on my Ipod: nothing. I haven’t received it yet. And when I have, I won’t be telling you, so there.
• Missing Blighty: Bez on Celebrity Big Brother. Can someone tape it for me?

I am wondering whether the way I saw in the New Year augurs well for 2005.

It all started well as Mr Frog and I, accompanied by my sister and her fiancé, had a civilised meal in a gorgeous Thai restaurant we had been itching to try for some time. The food was amazing, if a little fiercely spiced, and with each successive dish our lips and mouths burned a little hotter and we felt obliged to extinguish the flames with large quantities of wine. We drove along York’s scariest pub crawl street (Micklegate) on the way home in order to point and laugh at all the girlies with their mini skirts on tightless legs, strappy tops baring arms and shoulders, glad to be inside a heated car muffled up in jumpers and coats.

And then it all started to go wrong. Shortly before midnight after a couple of G&T’s, petite anglaise decided that New Year or no, it was time to call it a night and lie down, stomach churning with spicy food swimming in a vinegar coulis. I am not proud of my early departure, but at least I know when enough is enough. Mr Frog, singularly unimpressed and fired up on Chimay and assorted spirits - which I think you will agree do not generally sit well with wine, champagne and Thai food - dragged my father down to the village pub to join my siblings and watch the fireworks. And continue drinking. I half awoke when he slipped into bed and I gather my first words to him in 2005 were ‘WTF are you doing texting at this time of night?’ as I became dimly aware of a tappety tapping noise and saw the backlight of his mobile gleaming in the darkness.

Some time later I was roused again, this time by a hand touching my forehead. I made out a shadowy figure crossing the room. Then I heard a coughing noise I know only too well. Mr Frog did not make it to the bathroom.

And so it was that my first deed of 2005 was dealing with a soiled towel and bedclothes - which would not have been out of place in the film ‘Trainspotting’ - using only the bathroom sink and toilet. I couldn’t even get downstairs to the washing machine as I knew the burglar alarm would be switched on and couldn’t for the life of me remember the code. After leaving an embarrassed little note for my mum instructing her to touch the pile of festering bedlinen in the bath under no circumstances, I went back to bed and called Mr Frog every nasty name I could think of in a very angry whisper.

This morning on the metro I finally got around to switching on my mobile phone, which had gone down with a nasty case of flat battery during my stay in the UK as I had omitted to pack my charger. And found a text from Mr Frog written at 1 am on Saturday 1 January 2005 which read:

‘Je t’aime [insert secret pet name here] et je te souhaite une merveilleuse année 2005′

I’m feeling a little guilty now.

Hoz qbout q post totqlly unrelqted to Chris;t;qs?

That’s better. I’ve now managed to fool the keyboard into thinking it is French.

Sorting through a box of the few remaining things I keep at my parents’ house last night (teenage diaries, letters, photos), I happened to find a photo of my French penfriend, Florence. I met Florence for the first and last time fifteen years ago.

Everyone at school went on French exchanges. From the moment I started learning the language at the age of eleven at the girls’ grammar, the French exchange was all I could think about. Imagine being able to go to France and speak French with real French people (as opposed to doing listening comprehensions from Tricolore with headphones on in the language lab).

How my hopes were to be cruelly dashed. My mother, who could be described as something of a pessimist (a gross understatement), avoided the issue until the letter from school arrived asking parents if they would be allowing their children to participate in the upcoming French exchange. And finally came clean and said what she must have been thinking all along, whenever the subject was mentioned: I was not allowed to go. In her defence she recounted every horror story and urban legend she had ever heard about poor English girls expected to sleep in unheated, rat infested sheds/haylofts/attics and forced to eat live snails and puppy dogs’ tails (or something similar). I suspect these were embellished a little for extra dramatic effect.

I think what actually worried my parents the most was reciprocating: they were unwilling to welcome into the family home a complete (and rather foreign) stranger who might conceivably demand to eat raw cows for breakfast and or have novel ideas about what constituted personal hygiene. And might sport webbed feet/a tail. Or all of the above.

I was devastated. But no matter how much I cried and moaned that ‘everyone else was allowed to go except me’ and ‘it wasn’t fair’ , no matter how much I raged that my evil parents were ruining my chances of passing GCSE French and compromising my very future, they remained insensitive to my pleas and stood their ground. I watched my classmates leave, with the sinking feeling that I would no longer be top of the class when they returned and that the girls would all meet handsome French beaus and return fluent in both the French language and the art of kissing with tongues.

Needless to say GCSE French (Pour aller à la gare s’il vous plaît?) did not prove to be a difficult proposition even without participating in the French exchange. However once I was at Sixth Form College studying A-Level French, the thorny subject had to be broached once more. With the same results. And this time my teachers seemed to think students who did not participate would struggle to do well in the French oral exam.

Determined to find a way to get myself to France, because my one day trip to St Malo during a family holiday to Jersey was clearly woefully inadequate for French oral purposes, I managed to find a penfriend through a magazine. We corresponded. She seemed pleasant enough and her letters were actually quite amusing. Finally I hit the jackpot: she invited me to stay with her family near Lyon. I was seventeen at the time. My parents were still not at all keen on the idea, but I bought the plane ticket with my own hard earned Saturday job cash and there wasn’t an awful lot they could do to prevent me from going. Boarding a National Express coach in Leeds, I made my way slowly and tediously down to Heathrow (with only my cassette walkman for company) and flew from there to Lyon. Which if you are English, you may wish to spell with an extra ’s’. (I, for one, have never understood the point of that ’s’. It looks wrong.)

Staying with Florence was an eye-opener. She lived with her father, a widower, and several brothers, some married with children of their own, in a village called St Symporien sur Coise. She pretty much ran wild with her big gang of friends. We could drink, smoke and stay out as late as we liked. The welcoming committee she brought to the airport to meet my flight consisted of several of these friends, and I was rather taken aback when I realised the plan was to hitch to her village from Lyon with my rather large suitcase, as her father was at work. It was a very good thing my parents hadn’t known about that.

Then there was the issue of where to sleep. It transpired that Florence, who smoke a packet of Galloises a day, and I were to be sharing her double bed. She snored like a rhinoceros. Something she had omitted to tell me in her letters.

My only other memories of my stay with Florence and her family are of the food, which I recall being very simple but tastier than anything I had ever eaten at home, and of being chased down the street by a gang of boys who had removed all their clothes (after a few drinks in a local restaurant). Oh and seeing men peeing in village urinals without doors. And against walls. In full view of anyone who happened to be passing by. All in all it was a very positive experience, my irrational love of all things French undiminished.

When I returned to college my teacher was suitably impressed with my new found fluency in French, my extensive slang repertoire and my pronunciation of the word ‘oui’, which now resembled ‘ouais’.

As Florence showed no interest in coming over to England to visit (and probably couldn’t afford to), my parents were equally happy. We continued to exchange letters for a while, but then lost touch when I went to university. I think the last I heard she had dropped out of school and gone to work in the local sausage factory with her father.

Maybe I’ll try and look her up.

Christmas hasn’t happened for me yet.

It matters not how expensive the foie gras, nor how crisp and chilled the champagne. These things do not Christmas make. I am painfully aware of this fact after spending a profoundly unfestive weekend at the In Laws’ place.

The Frog is an only child, and this means that around the dinner table on Christmas Eve(ning), when Christmas dinner traditionally takes place in France, were Mr Frog, his parents and I. Tadpole was sleeping. No festive decorations adorned the table, and dinner was, quite frankly, nothing special. Either MIL is losing her touch, or I am not quite so easily impressed as in days gone by when Mr Frog and I first met. The foie gras lacked gros sel to sprinkle on top, the salmon looked rather forlorn without a marinade, or at the very least a wedge of lemon. Main course was a minuscule caille (guineau fowl) and there were no vegetables, only salad. I don’t think the EVILs are fond of the traditional French yule log dessert, bûche, so there was a rather bland ice cream version.

The FIL proudly uncorked his bottle of Pauillac Grand Cru Classé and proceeded to steer the conversation on a familiar tour of all the usual subjects: why Mr Frog and I need to find time to do some sport, why we need to buy a flat immediately, why we shouldn’t go on a wintersun holiday because skiing holidays are healthier, repeat to fade… Any controversial statement was backed up with ‘I saw it on the telly the other day’. Mention of television made me think wistfully of Eastenders’ double bills and other UK delights I would be missing.

Mr Frog manages to remain unruffled as his father tells us to how to live every aspect of our lives. I on the other hand, emboldened by a few glasses of claret, tend to get quite defensive and irritated. Pray tell how Mr Frog is supposed to find time to go a gym when he works 14 hour days and rarely sees Tadpole and I as it is? How can an armchair traveler who has never taken a plane and rarely left France tell me what to do with my precious holiday time? On the subject of buying an apartment, I do agree with him on the necessity to buy sometime soon, except I’d like an attractive flat in an old building, similar to the one we currently rent, and FIL would like to see us in a functional, characterless 70’s block of flats.

The meal was rounded off nicely with the exchanging of gifts. Mr Frog had virtually nothing to unwrap, as he had not yet made up his mind exactly which bag he wanted me to buy for him (a posh rucksack, not a French manbag, I hasten to add), nor which ski gloves he wanted his mum to buy (to keep his hands warm when traveling to work on his Vespa).

I, on the other hand, was spoiled rotten. I am now the proud owner of a waterproof poncho and an electric stapler.

??

Okay. I’ll admit that I have been saying to Mr Frog for quite some time that it is impossible to steer a pushchair and hold an umbrella at the same time, meaning that ferrying Tadpole to and from the childminder’s place in inclement weather can be rather a moistening experience. But there are some things which are just too practical and boring to be given as Christmas gifts. Surely? As for the electric stapler (pink, batteries not included), well, words fail me. The last thing I need on my desk at work is something to remind me that MIL is going a bit loopy as retirement beckons. Mr Frog has one too (blue) and is as perplexed about this choice of gift as I.

Perhaps it can be used as a weapon?

Dear Mum,

I may have criticised your Christmas dinners on occasion (I am referring specifically to my comment that it was ‘a glorified Sunday lunch’, whereas French Christmas dinner was more elegant and refined) but I now take it all back. I’d prefer your overcooked meat, roast potatoes and lashings of veggies any day. No matter how much bickering there might be between my sisters and I, no matter how tipsy dad will get, this weekend has brought home to me forcefully that you lot are what Christmas is all about for me.

Can’t wait to see you all tomorrow!

p.a.

A group of young French teenagers caught my attention in the metro yesterday. There was something familiar about the way the girls were talking in louder than necessary voices, laughing too much and sneaking covert glances at a group of boys standing nearby. This sight transported me back two decades, and I saw my eleven year old self catching the school bus. As I attended a girls’ grammar school, the only exposure my friends and I had to opposite sex was on daily journeys to and from school. Our aim was to occupy the front seat on the top deck, where we took centre stage and ‘performed’, hopeful that we might catch the eye of the heartthrob of the moment.

These childish attempts at seduction were unsuccessful, of course, as you will know if you read my previous post about national health glasses. A pity, with hindsight, because the object of my affections went on to become a national tv star, and even dated Ulrike Jonsson for a while.

But let’s get back to the French teenagers. Their flirtatious behaviour was identical to any English teenager’s, except for one important detail. As each one neared their metro stop, the conversation came to a seemingly pre-agreed momentary halt whilst each and every fellow schoolmate was given la bise. Imagine how potentially loaded with information that innocent gesture could be. You could choose to kiss the air, accidentally-on-purpose brush a cheek with your lips, or execute proper lip smacking pecks of varying durations. As you change from one side to the other, you could conceivably brush the other person’s lips. Quite frankly, highly strung as I was at that age I think I would have swooned at such intimate contact.

La bise is second nature to the French. For a foreigner like myself it is a minefield.

First of all, there is the matter of how many kisses you are supposed to bestow. In Paris the norm seems to be two. In certain Parisian suburbs however you are expected to give four (which must be time consuming when you have to take your leave of a party of ten people). In some regions three is the customary number. Many a time I have proffered my cheeks twice, only to find that I was expected to go two full rounds.

The other ‘unknown’ which makes things awkward is that I have never understood which side I am supposed to start with. Whichever I choose seems to be instinctively wrong: causing an embarrassed direction change in mid-air to correct the trajectory. I’m sure if I asked Mr Frog which side to start on he would say that there is no right or wrong answer. It probably comes under the heading of innate French knowledge which I will never by privy to, however many years I spend in France.

How does one know in which situations an ‘I work in fashion daahling’ air-kiss is expected, or when it is appropriate to give an enthusiastic peck on one/more cheeks? I invariably air kiss (English reserve: I prefer to give too little rather than too much) and when the other person plants a proper kiss on my cheek and I feel like I’ve insulted them by not reciprocating.

Last dilemma: to kiss or not to kiss? The other evening I noticed Tadpole’s playmate’s mum giving our shared nanny a kiss when she greeted her. That would never feel natural to me. Nanny gets la bise on two special occasions only: her birthday and at New Year (when it is compulsory to kiss everyone).

The plot thickens when I return to the UK: at some point during my prolonged absence, continental-style cheek kissing was adopted by my peers. I don’t know if it’s the circles I move in or a more generalised phenomenon. So now I am faced with a similar dilemma when I greet my long-lost English friends. What is expected: a shy, awkward English ‘hello’ with no physical contact whatsoever, a kiss on one cheek and an affectionate squeeze, an air kiss on both sides?

The solution: read the book pictured above, written by a person with a reassuringly posh sounding double-barrelled name and dubious royal credentials.

On second thoughts, this one might be more suitable for beginners/dunces like myself.

I spied a poster in the metro yesterday for an educational exhibition which the Cité de la Science science museum is currently hosting for children. Crad’expo: from the slang word crade, meaning ‘dirty’ or ‘grotty’. The by-line, les fonctions «impolies» du corps humain, and the photo of a child picking her nose roused my curiosity.

According to the blurb, using interactive games and a host of characters with evocative names, such as Roméo le Roi du Rot (The Burp King) and René la Goutte au Nez (Runny Nose René), the exhibition explains to children the science behind those bodily functions that we are raised to regard as rude, undesirable or even outright taboo. It does this by encouraging children to crawl through a reconstruction of the digestive tract, explore the ‘nasal cave’, shoot dustballs into giant nostrils to make them sneeze and play ‘fart wars’ (whatever that might be). It is a feast for the eyes, ears and nose: there is even an exhibit where you have to sniff various unpleasant odours - feet, armpit, fetid breath - and identify them. I have to say I’m less keen to do that bit. My fridge smells of all of the above combined at the moment as there is an overripe camembert belonging to Mr Frog in there.

There is one small snag. The exhibition is aimed at 5-12 year olds. Tadpole is clearly too young and I would feel a little conspicuous going along without a small person. Would a kind volunteer be willing to loan me a child of a suitable age on Saturday? It sounds like much more fun than Christmas shopping, and you never know, I might learn something.

It would also give me an opportunity to improve my French vocabulary of ‘impolite bodily functions’, which is rather limited as this arguably indispensable subject did not feature on my GCSE/A-Level/Degree syllabuses. What scant knowledge I do possess in this respect, I have kindly distilled into the following quiz.

parlez-vous crade?

can you pair the following French words/phrases with their English equivalent?

answers will be posted in the comments box shortly

When Tadpole burps, she is now at the stage where she thinks it is hilarious. She proudly yells ‘burp!’ to draw attention to the fruit of her labours (in case we happened to miss it), then puts her hand over her mouth and giggles in an adorable and very mischievous fashion. I think I must have unwittingly taught her this, as she apes my every gesture at the moment. Ahem. As a new parent I now more aware of the very different attitudes that we adopt regarding bodily functions according to the age of the child: when a newborn baby burps after a feed our reaction was to congratulate Tadpole for her prowess with a ‘good girl!’ At some point in the not too distant future I will have to teach her that some discretion is required in public and laughing when people make odd noises is not an appropriate reaction.

What a shame.

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 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