Les Anglais

The Stone of Scone:


A tub of butter:


We may not live in France any more, but we can still go back there on holiday. And yet we find it too hot now, simply sweltering compared to Norway.

On the way home from Toulouse, I was not too surprised to find that the easyjet flight back to Gatwick had been cancelled. We had made the mistake of waiting in another part of the airport for some time and then only going to the gate when it was due to open. If we had gone sooner, we might not have found ourselves at the back of the queue for "sorting out".

Based on previous bad experience with easyjet on pretty much every occasion I have flown with them, I had built a back up plan into our travel arrangements: my connecting flight would be caught after a 24 hour stop over in London. But it just wasn't enough. No flight to London available until 48 hours later. And a 24 hour wait to get back to Bristol.

In the heat of southern France we made frenzied calls to change the booking with the hire car company and found ourselves unwillingly competing with other irate passengers for flights, hotel and taxis. A quite pathetic spectacle really.

That night I lay awake all night (literally) in a horrible air conditioned room in a Toulouse hotel of the kind that: (1) has a contantly wheezing fan; (2) freezes your face while at the same time turning your bed into a toasted sandwich maker - too drafty to throw the covers off - (3) a small white box with no indication of how to turn off the power and just for good measure (4) a set of pillows, each one resembling in all possible ways the Stone of Scone.

The other reason I couldn't sleep was the worry of leaving my family in France with no more than an easyjet ticket for protection. I had to decide: would I get up at 4.30 a.m. and buy a BA ticket to make sure I got an early flight back to London and thereby make my connection, or would I lie in bed and go with the family to Bristol and then turn up to work in Norway 2 or 3 days late?

I got up at 4.30 a.m. and I got my ticket.

The family were okay.

No thanks to easyjet.

As I sat in Gatwick, waiting for my flight to Norway, having checked in painlessly with Norwegian airlines ticket scanning machine (a world apart from the easyjet savannah watering hole stampede we had survived on the way down to Toulouse), I watched the flight departures board fill up with all of easyjet's late flights and cancellations, including the same flight to Toulouse cancelled for a second day in a row.



As I watched, I began to get an angry feeling that easyjet had never had the intention of putting flights out to Toulouse on a regular basis. Instead, they had conned us into thinking that we might get a flight, but that in reality it was only sending flights out as a sort of rescue service for its own stranded passengers. Though only at its own convenience. So how long was it possible to stay waiting for a flight? According to the information we received in Toulouse, easyjet would guarantee that it wasn't more than a week. But what kind of people do you think you're ferrying around easyjet? Jobseekers?

But to get back to the lighter side... I forgot to mention that I was rather sick while this was going on. Luckily I had the foresight to sort myself out with Smecta and immodium. This is another aspect of France we don't miss: the business of constantly getting bugs or suffering from food gone off in the heat...

Anyway, I hadn't been able to eat for the previous 2 days and my wife had put some dinner she had made into four resealable plastic tubs that had once contained butter. While waiting in a rather bedraggled state for our easyjet flight next to the car hire counter, my wife had persuaded us to eat our cold dinner leftovers. So we all tucked in. It was a meal consisting of rather a lot of cold mashed potato. In my case it turned out to be a bad idea.

What was strange though, was the way all the people in the grindingly slow car hire queue were looking at us like we were some sort of green aliens. Were they looking at us oddly? Yes, they really were. And then we realised that to them, it just looked like we were a family sitting together eating President butter directly from the container. And what's more, we each had our own tub of it. Zut Alors! Les Anglais!

Despite Their Hypocrisy

I'm just back from holiday in France where we have been in the Dordogne. It is one of my favourite places, having a great deal of history about it, some of that human history stretching very far back in time: the famous painted caves of Lascaux and elsewhere - and some of it more recent: the many medieval castles and the romanesque churches of Souilliac and Perigueux.

Because of the temperatures last week we spent a good part of the holiday trying to keep cool. One day we managed this by going to visit the romanesque church (formerly an abbey) in Souilliac. It's a very large church, more like a cathedral really, but very simple inside (as befits a monastery) and with some striking carved columns inside the large door of the nave. Many beasts of different kind have been carved rising up the columns, each one biting the one next to it and seemingly affirming the tooth-and-claw nature of existence.

I had spent the holiday reading Terry Jones' book about medieval occupations. It is entitled 'Medieval Lives'. I recommend it as a thought-provoking journey through the social landscape of the time. Jones is not an unbiased commentator and his personal take on the behaviour of those living in the past provides thought-provoking insights. He is particularly down on the idea of knightly chivalry and also well explains why he believes that monks became hypocritical in their behaviour. The riches of the church, he explains, came from the wealthy kings, barons and knights who paid the monks to pray for their souls after slaughtering the enemy in battle. For every dead man, someone would have to pray for 40 days - and as the lords didn't have the time to do it, they preferred to pay a monk to do their praying for them. A lot of people died (notably in the early days of the Norman Conquest) and therefore the number of abbeys that had to be built and housed with praying monks was large).

But the rub was, according to Jones, that the monks, who took their vows in order to lead a simple and pure life, instead inherited a world of conspicuous wealth boosted by all kinds of taxes on local populations. They overate and found ways to circumvent their vows of silence using a sign language that was known throughout Europe.

With these thoughts in my head, I sat in Soulliac abbey looking up at the beautifully pure proportions of the cupola and arches, the restrained windows up high which brought touches of colour into the muted yellows of the shaded interior.

We were alone in the building, keeping quiet as one generally does in a holy place, when two men, dressed as tourists, came into the church. They walked quickly down to the altar area and then one of them began singing Gregorian chants. He continued for several minutes, walking around like any normal tourist, but singing in what might have been Latin. He seemed to be testing the acoustics. Then, as quickly as they had come, both men left.

I have never seen anyone visit a church and behave in this way before, and found myself quite impressed by the man's presumption. My thirteen year old daughter, normally quite retiring, clearly felt the same way and was emboldened to go up to the altar area and try out her own voice.

My family were now alone in the cathedral as she sang to us, her lovely singing filling the vast echoey space. Her impromptu performance consisted of devotional songs which she had learnt this year before going on a choir tour in Belgium. The sound took on an immense physicality as it bounded out into the great amplifying chamber and reverberated back at varying intervals from the different enclaves of the church.

Those minutes of her singing are ones I will always remember. And here was also the other side of history. The other legacy of history that cannot be contained in arguments (however well justified) between the pages of a book. Which has to be gone out and looked for and touched and sung into being. At that moment I wanted to thank the monks and the chevaliers for what they had left behind, despite their hypocrisy.

Tarmac

I was back in Paris last week and returned for the first time to the neighbourhood where I used to live on the Western side of Paris. The sun shone bright and low in the sky, reflecting off tarmac spread on the cracks in the road, making it look like silver caligraphy or a hot lava flow. Daffodils were in bloom and I met our gardener having his evening beer (well deserved as always) in the cafe at the end of our road. "Ca commence à pousser" I told him, and we laughed a knowing laugh together.

Leaving France

Leaving France was rather painful for us. After five years in situ we were leaving behind friends, a language that we had learned and were growing to love, a deeper understanding of French society and the way to get along and enjoy life. The move itself was fraught with difficulty since we were obliged to rid ourselves of a large proportion of our belongings. As a result, all our furniture and an enormous number of books had to be sorted, packed and shipped back to the UK.

Our grumpy removers proved less than helpful and the move turned into a logistical nightmare. For a couple of months I was running eveywhere with an A4 lever arch file packed full of documents (tax, banking, ferry bookings, flight bookings, rental car bookings, insurance, car import documents etc etc etc ad nauseam).

At one point, I hardly slept for three nights due to packing and tidying and had to organise a last minute van hire in order to come back to France and rescue some of our belongings from a kindly neighbour's basement where we had temporarily left them. All of this while somehow attending work meetings with business partners, putting on a cheery face and a good show as if nothing were remotely wrong.

There were upsides however. We had a wonderful farewell party in our garden attended by nearly all of our friends. The weather held, the food flew off the tables and everyone drank too much (since we couldn't bring our drinks cabinet to Norway). And then there were the friends who rallied round and helped us to survive relocation, looking after the children for us as we packed box after box of belongings, helping us to shift unwanted furniture and to feed us when all our kitchen utensils had disappeared.

And, unexpectedly, the French postal service proved a useful ally in our moment of need, providing an excellent forwarding service for our mail. Their best service: the one that helps you to leave the country...

Now, every time I receive another package with the jolly little Sempé-inspired cartoon on the outside, it fills me with a nostalgic glow. And that word: "Réexpédition" has such a grand and adventurous ring to it, as if St Exupery himself had delivered it. It goes a little way towards recompensing for the fact that every book delivered by La Poste during the past five years has been snapped in half by some maladjusted postal sorting machine...

Don't Eat Jewellery

Adieu

Our days in France are limited. Limited to only a couple of weeks in fact. Where has the time gone? We've been in France for five years now, having arrived in the midst of the dreadful canicule heat wave summer of 2003. I remember when we first arrived at our new house, walking in through the door at 10 pm in the evening and feeling the heat trapped inside. I touched the radiator and shouted "some idiots left the heating turned on!" But they hadn't. It was just the latent heat of that tremendously hot day still throbbing through the pipes.

My younger daughter, that's her in the photograph above, has grown up here, and it's her who will miss the place most. I can hear her playing next door at the moment, talking to herself in French. Luckily we have been able to find a French school in the place we are going to, so she will not lose this gift. It has been great to see her slowly fitting in among her French peer group, and to see how well loved she is by the teacher, whom she adores in return, kissing her on the cheek in the morning when she arrives and in the evening when she leaves. She is the only child that does this!

France hasn't changed very radically in the five years we have been here, and I think that is, on the whole, a good thing. The longer I am here, the more I appreciate the rather conservative approach of the French. A suspicious approach to liberal free market economics, a healthy over-evaluation of their own culture, a robust state bureaucracy, plenty of rules, plenty of formality, no Sunday opening. All of this is good for France in an odd sort of way. It slows down the pace of life to one that is manageable, not frenetic. It values traditional things and at the same time does not seem to stymie innovation.

There is, in France, a level of group activity which should be the envy of other countries in Europe. In my sphere of interest, for example, there is the 'Marche de la Poesie' which brings together all the small publishers of poetry from all over France and unites them in a single poetry jamboree. This kind of event, which exists in all different spheres and at both regional and countrywide level, can allow you to become passionate about the things you love, whether that be reading poetry, consuming wine and cheese or touring on a racing bicycle.

So now we have to bid our adieus. Several friends have said they wished we were staying. Have said how much they value our contributions to the community. They are especially referring to my wife who has energetically supported almost every organisation known in Croissy-sur-Seine. But... our thoughts are already moving on, we have found a new house, are dreaming of mountains, fjords and sandy beaches...

Vicky's Tips

Vicky, my better half, is currently making regular appearances on the Yvelines Premiere cable TV network: "L'atualité des Yvelines dans la langue de Shakespeare..." It's a TV show aimed at ex-pats living in Paris.

This week, Vicky scrubs up well as a James Bond girl...

She appears about half way through...

And if you feel in need of further tippilation, there are two of her other shows here.

Football Crazies

I'm not a big fan of football. I've watched a few of the world cup matches. Some have been fair. Some have been foul. There have been a few perfect moments, like the goals in the last minutes of extra time of an otherwise boring Germany vs Italy match.

I had a fairly strong hunch France would win the match against Portugal tonight. I had to stop late at work so wasn't able to watch the game. It's a fairly horrible experience working late in 'the tower' when the weather's hot because they turn the air conditioning off at 7pm and it soon becomes more sweltering inside than it is outside.

When France scored their goal, many windows burst open in the tower block 100 yards away from the one I was in, and dozens of youths leant out from various flats, yelling and waving scarves. They seemed to be communicating their joy to other youths in another towerblock some distance away. I reflected on the fact that the only other occasion they would be likely to behave like that would be if their building caught fire.

I left the office before the match was over so as not to get too caught up in the aftermath celebrations. As my RER train sped towards the suburbs, suddenly we few passengers began to hear people in the stations we passed making a racket in any way they could: either beating a fist against a metal hoarding or simply shouting.

Cars started racing along the roads next to the train, beeping their horns, youths seated on the car window ledges and clinging to the roof or waving flags as the vehicles sped along.

By the time I reached my destination, roller-skaters and cyclists were taking to the streets. Cars were everywhere, hooting loudly, their passengers yelling their jubilation at any overworked fool who happened to be making his way home. By the time I arrived Chez Nous, I was relieved to be shutting my door on them all.

Maintaining a Constant State of Unpreparedness

At just past 5 o'clock today, a storm of biblical proportions swelled over Paris. The sky, which was not due to darken for about five hours, turned black while thunder and lightening cracked outside, reverberating through the tall building where I work and making my computer screen tremble.

When I left the office to go for a drink with an Indonesian friend who is leaving Paris, we found that the subterranean concourse where we were going to have ' une petite seize' (une petite seize-cent-soixante-quatre, also known as a glass of Kronenbourg) had been flooded by the sudden downpour of rain that emanated from said cloud.

All the barmen were hurriedly stacking chairs that they had pulled away from the encroaching floodwaters, men with oversize mops were sweeping back and forth through the little lake that had formed underneath the central skylight and the rows of electric lights set in the stainless steel ceiling were flashing on and off in fancy formation, whether manually or of their own accord, I don't know. Outside each of the cafes situated in the four corners of the concourse, young execs whiled away they early evening in idle chatter, watching the late workers navigate dry spaces.

I reflected on the fact that if the building had been built more soundly, all this activity wouldn't be necessary. But who would want to be without this spontaneous chaos, this creative turmoil? Better not to waste time preparing for every eventuality. Better to lack one layer of protective skin and be ready to appreciate the consequences.

My Indonesian friend told me he wanted to go back to nature, to live in the countryside and maybe buy a farm. But he would have to be careful, he said. Indonesia has no state welfare system so he would have to make sure he had saved enough money. The only trouble was, in the country, he would stand out as a rich person, even though he was not really that rich. Security would be the problem. He would become a target for criminals, for mafia types. He looked sad.

He asked me if I would come to Indonesia one day. I said I didn't know. What would it be like to work there? Ah, he said, you might like it, but your wife would be a stranger, living among strangers, and outside the strangers she lived with, would only be other strangers.

And the climate, what is it like? I asked. Oh, it is very wet. One moment it is raining here, the next moment over there. I thought of Claude Levi-Strauss' description of the January rains in Sao Paulo that I had read on the train to work: "the rain does not 'come', it is engendered by the surrounding humidity, as if the universally permeating vapour had materialised into beads of water which fall thick and fast yet seem to be retarded by their affinity with the steamy atmosphere through which they are passing. The rain does not descend in vertical or oblique lines, as in Europe: it is more like a pale flickering, made up of a multitude of tiny globules of water pouring down through a moist atmosphere, a kind of cascade of clear tapioca soup."

The Urban Safari

To appease the children, we decide to visit the safari park at Thoiry on the west of Paris. We miss the correct turn which would have taken us down the speedy A12, and instead end up meandering through Plaisir and other connurbations. Plaisir is appropriately named as it is mainly known for its large shopping precinct, one of a number on the west of Paris. To others it is privately known as 'Enfer'. My wife knows her way there perfectly. She asks me if I would be able to retrace the route? No, I say. I rely on her atlas-like brain.

Eventually we are driving through green fields and hamlets with carefully pointed brickwork. We arrive in Thoiry and pass straight through the the village without seeing a sign for the safari park. When we turn around and go back, we realise that in fact they are everywhere, but we have arrived from the wrong direction.

The safari park is behind an imposing château on top of a hill. We pay and start our meander around the reserve. Our youngest has been asleep and so it is a surprise for her to wake up and see an ostrich outside, rolling its egg around. The animals roam around in the warm sunshine: camels, zebras, antelopes, gnus. Elephants head-butt trees scraped of all their bark. Rhinoceroses stand still as sculptures with flanks like weathered stone. Despite the signs: "Attention: Animaux Dangereux" almost every car has its windows wound down. Zebras patrol the rows of parked cars, looking for tidbits. One even puts its head right inside a car window looking for snacks. Three hippos bathe in the distance in a large lake. Giraffes move at speed across rolling grassland.

The lions apparently are not of the aggressive variety as the keepers don't bother to close the gates that connect them to the herbivores. The bear enclosure is unexciting, apart from the moment when the family in the car in front dangle their small child out of the window à la Michael Jackson. The bears aren't interested though. They doze on in the warm sun.

The French have a long history of keeping animals in captivity. Off the coast of Marseille lies a small island which is now home to the picturesque château d'If. This little island entered history with the arrival in 1515 of the first rhinoceros brought to Europe since Roman times. This beast was sent from India to Emmanuel, king of Portugal, in 1513. From a sketch taken in Lisbon of this animal, Albrecht Dürer composed his celebrated engraving, which was reproduced in many old books on natural history. I'm not sure how the beast came to end up on French soil. Perhaps a gift between monarchs. Dürer's image is said to be fanciful, but in fact it is not very far from the truth. His animal gives the impression of wearing clanking armour that stops above the knee with scaly legs protruding. On a real rhinoceros, you see that this interpretation comes from the folds of skin which hang down from the body. No doubt the Rennaissance imagination had some military application in mind. V tells me of a computer programme which can model the anatomical changes associated with an increase in body weight. When you increase the body weight of a gazelle, the program thickens its legs until eventually it looks like a rhinoceros. All makes sense doesn't it?

We have an icecream at the exit, accompanied by the smell of bear poo coming from the woods on the other side of the fence. Should have known...

The rest of the tour of the animal kingdom is on foot. We park up and stroll around the zoological gardens behind the château. All the usual creatures are there: tiny marmosets cling to their mother's back, their little black eyes gazing anxiously at the big white faces hungrily (they think) gazing in at them; capebaras, normally splashing through amazon swamps, gnaw artichoke heads in a concrete pen or swim languidly underwater in their brown pool. The kids love it. At the monkey cage, behind a plate glass window, they go into a fit of hysterical laughter as troop of macaque monkeys rush past. Our eldest is disgusted by their bottoms which have intricate patterns and, in some cases, glow pink.

My wife guides me home by the same route with slight complications caused by the numerous one way sections. French roads are too much for me. Sometimes they break down into complex patterns of white lines. Luckily the roads are not too busy as I am incapable of arriving at an understanding in time to react. We buy some 'droppies' (croissants with chocolate drops) and a pain au cereal at a boulanger. The bread is by far the nicer. My wife says it would be even better with some President butter, and I am inclined to agree.

Cartoon Nation

Yesterday evening we watched the six nations rugby final on French TV. It was a clash of the titans: England vs France. The match had been greatly looked forward to in France since it represented an opportunity to heal the wounds inflicted by defeat in the 2003 Rugby World Cup Final held in Sydney. In that event, France came fourth behind England, Australia and New Zealand. England came out triumpant with a 20-17 victory over Australia, sealed with an extra-time penalty by a heroic Johnny Wilkinson.

The match last night at Stade de France was an exciting one. The French started well in the first half, then England tried to claw their way back in the second half, but just couldn't manage it. Dimitri Yachvili was the man of the match, the son of a former French international player, he looked slight compared to his team mates, but golly was he quick, nipping down the wing to score France's last try.

Watching England play France on a French TV channel was an odd experience. After half-an-hour of watching England's trial-by-fire, we started to yearn for the familiar voice of an English commentator giving consolation. Instead we heard laughing French men crying ooh-la-la-la!

An aspect of the French presentation of the match that has no parallel in the UK was the presence of 'live' artists documenting each turn of the match. Two artists were on hand to give different views of the action. The first stood by the pitch with a large sheet of watercolour paper and with rapid, impressionistic brushstrokes he produced colourful images of scrums and flying tackles. The second artist was a cartoonist who's lightning-fast sketches commented on the state of play. ....England were making a front row push.... the artist held up his sketchpad and there was the England captain driving a tank through the french opposition. ...The French scored a try... again he held up his sketchpad to show a picture of a wilted English rose.

This style of cartoon commentary is something peculiarly Gallic and is not just restricted to rugby matches. In the company I work for, particular individuals with the gift of humour and the courage to satirise are not only put up with, they are encouraged. Their work is featured in internal publications. It is considered normal and beyond comment when they send out cartoons attached to circular e-mails, commenting on some new company policy. These individuals take it upon themselves to be the small voice of sanity, speaking in quips and squiggly lines.

Where does it come from, this need to cartoon on the fly? Perhaps it is a result of the typical French business meeting, where sometimes the only way to get a word in is to write it on a piece of paper and hold it up. But also, cartooning is part of the mass culture. Children grow up on a diet of comic books: Asterix and Tintin to name only the famous tip of the iceberg. Picture stories for adults (bande desinée or BD) are also incredibly popular, forming an essential part of the cultural diet. The French, can, in fact, see themselves more clearly through these cartoon creations. It is their way of understanding better what is going on, and enjoying it more.

Brocante

This afternoon we went to the 67th Foire Nationale à la Brocante et aux Jambons, which takes place on the Ile de Chatou. Don't ask me what the 'aux jambons' is about. We didn't see any ham for sale. You have to pay 5 Euros to get in and the stuff is not exactly antiques (on the whole) but something called 'brocante'.

Brocante is basically old stuff that someone might be persuaded to pay something for. It is generally very pricey (10 Euros for a scabby ash-tray, that kind of thing) with an accent on the bizarre. I was browsing through one stall and suddenly found myself looking at a large, full-on oil painting of a doctor carrying out a gynaecological investigation. We had to get the children out of there, and QUICK...

An Emotional Bastille Day Parade

When I got up this morning, I wasn't sure whether I should be going into work or not. Nobody mentioned to me whether I had to take public holidays or not. I got up early for breakfast anyway and started walking to the office. I had not gone 200 yards before I realised there was really nobody at all heading for the office. I was a single person standing alone on the vast La Defence esplanade. Every office was shut.

I sat down on a bench, and got out the recently signed contract from my bag. 28 days holidays it said. Nothing at all about national holidays. I thought I would probably look stupid if I went to the office, so I just went back to the apartment, got changed, and washed some dirty laundry. At 9.30 am, I decided I would go and see the parade on the Champs Elysee. I left the apartment and took the Metro to Charles de Gaulle-Etoile station, where the Arc de Triomphe is. Lots of people milled out of the single exit that was open. The area around the Arc de Triomphe was closed. Soldiers blocked all the access roads, and so the crowd was surging round onto the east side, filing down side streets until they could join the Champs Elysee.

Along the Champs Elysee there was a crowd standing four or five deep. Children perched on window ledges above the crowd and some people had brought step-ladders on which to stand. The marching cohorts were already in position. A general stood at attention in his jeep. I walked along the Champs Elysee, trying to get a view of the front of the march. At one point I had to turn down a side-street and there, in front of me, was a line of tanks stretching into the distance. People were posing in front of them. I walked along past them, their unsmiling crews ready to depart. There was no way to get down the road, so I began to walk back. Then, just as I slipped under a barrier and crossed the road, a squadron of jets trailing red, white and blue vapour trails roared overhead. Where I stood, I could see them coming up a side street and passing straight over my head at low level.

"Regarde, regarde" shouted several voices. I suddenly felt tears welling. I was thinking of Iraq and of Afghanistan. The night after night of bombing I had watched on the television. How terrifying it must feel to see these jets with their huge bombs bearing down on your city, and on you. As flight after flight roared overhead, my cheeks became wetter and wetter. I continued to walk down the Champs Elysee. The marching had started now, in time to music broadcast from loud speakers. A blind man stood with his child on his shoulders. The child was telling his father all that he could see. The tears welled again.

On the corner of one little park, the ground was dusty, and spirals rose into the sunlight. There were bursts of applause and cheering, notably for the Sapeurs Pompiers de Paris (the firemen) who marched with shining silver helmets and glinting ceremonial axes over their shoulders (but most with machine guns).

When the infantry and the navy had passed, there was a pause before the gentle rumble of armed personnel carriers and then the more general roar of tanks. Each tank carried the name of a battle: La Moskowa 1812, Bruxelles 1693, Treves, Asti 1705, Austerlitz, Djebel Zaghonave, Lai Sinh...

Then the loudest roar of all, the heavy guns, their huge barrels protruding phalically and a troop of armoured earth movers. And then other vehicles for which it was difficult to see an application, some with large rubber water containers bouncing on the back. A girl who had been standing in the heat and bright sunlight collapsed in front of me and her father carried her to the shadows. I went to offer them my water but the mother had some already and she gave it to the child.

I returned to watching the passing display. An older man next to me kept muttering "Incroyable, incroyable" (incredible, incredible), and as the last of the vehicles passed under a flight of helicopters, the man next to me began crying and left the crowd with his family who all started crying as well, apparently in sympathy for him. Here was a memory of what wars do.

As I walked away, from the Champs Elysee, I saw I was standing by the statue of Charles de Gaulle in a marching pose. He was cordoned off by a ring of dozens of police and plain clothes policemen. Even made of bronze, such men need protection. But it is not the man, it is the idea that needs protecting. The nationhood. The defense of a nation. The ability to defend onseself. It is very clear here. The people see it. They see the need for military parades. They enjoy them.

The last to pass were the cavalry. A cohort of men with no useful purpose in modern warfare. Just a symbol of past glory. A nostalgic reminder.

Why the little shops survive

My first weekend staying in Paris since my arrival last week and I'm working in the office all day. I must be crazy. Just down the corridor from my office, an invisible door has opened in the wall and lies slightly ajar. Inside, a maintenance man is apparently working on a vast piece of machinery which I can glimpse as I walk by. Every so often I hear the clank of a dropped spanner and an exclamation of 'merde' floats down the corridor.

Later I go to get some shopping at the large supermarket Auchan in the Quatre Temps shopping centre. I only want an exercise book to write in and a bit of food, but it takes me hours. I had to scour the shop for the exercise book and literally had to pounce on the last one since it seems that now all the children have finished school there is no demand and all the shelves are being cleared. Then I had to stand for ages in the check out. It seems the french haven't yet grasped the concept that the more people you get through the cash till, the more money you make. Queues of grumpy people like this don't seem to exist much in Britain any more. In France they are everywhere.

Perhaps that is one of the reasons that the small shops selling meat, bread or fruit and vegetables still survive. Here the concept of queueing doesn't exist due to 'boulangerie etiquette' which insists that you must have made up your mind what you want before you come into the shop. A delay of more than five seconds to cast your eyes over the twenty different types of baguette available is greeted with angry clicks and tuts from the assisant.

I went back to the apartments and ate some goat's cheese, bread, olives and tomatoes while watching the making of a Christina Aguilera video. "This is the real me" she kept saying as she gyrated in the shower or flounced around the boxing ring surrounded by sweaty weight-lifters. "I hated that bubblegum image they tried to force on me..."