1.) The food in restaurants and cafe's - what can I say except that I have never had a poor meal anywhere in France. I've had poor service in France by my own inflated UK standards, but never a poor meal. In the UK I've had wonderful service and been served with barely enough food to feed an aneroxic 4 year old. I've had crap service and been served "art on a plate" pretentious bollocks food. I've been in UK restaurants where I've been force fed crap in order to make way for a second sitting. Wherever we have eaten in France we have seen the sense of pride the chef has in producing something thats tasty and uncomplicated, and the proprietor has always made us feel that the table was ours for the whole night. Vive le Difference!
2.) The food in the shops - A French supermarket is quite different to ours. They do have frozen food sections, but these usually consist of one or two aisles, whereby the fresh food aisles outnumber them by several counts to one. The French think nothing of shopping daily and buying local fresh produce. It isn't a chore to them, its a pleasure and an obligation. Its part of their very fabric and culture. In the Hyper-U in Agde (the closest major supermarket) you could not buy any fresh fruit or veg that wasn't "en saison". Not for the French the idea of flying strawberries across the world, nor do the French see the value in summer satsumas. Cherries.....hmmm...not a chance. Nope, if it isn't in the growing season you can't get it. We bought all of ours from the site shop, the old man in the vineyard opposite the "holiday parc" or from the local markets. We did the same for meat after the initial supermarket shop. The meat is sublime, superb cuts that sizzle on the barbecue and smell like they use to when you were a kid. The cucumber was the size of a marrow, curved, light green and get this....it tasted like cucumber and NOT water. Ditto this for Radishes ......when was the last time you ate one that bit back like they should? Onions that make you cry when you chop them and also when you eat them, tomatoes of different shapes and sizes that literally burst with flavour when you eat them, grapes (with seeds) and plums that transport you back to the 60's when your Mum bought them as a treat and and industrial growing practices were a twinkle in an agro-scientists eye. And lettuce with mud on it that doesn't need to be kept in the fridge until its almost a block of ice in order to be edible. And don't even get me on the wonderful cheeses for sale in the markets thats MADE LOCALLY and smells like old socks and tastes like proper cheese should.
Fan-fucking-tastic. We have moved a long way from this type of fayre in the UK and we're all the poorer for it.
3.) Cycling - near enough every French road has a cycle path marked on it. The pavements have optional cycle routes. Cycling along the Canal du Midi is accepted and even welcomed by anglers and walkers. Every village, town and city has communal bike racks. The drivers always give a wide berth no matter how fast the road might be. Even little Yappie the Dog gets to ride quite often in the owners basket. Like the Dutch, the French have embraced cycling as a perfectly normal means of getting about, whilst jolly old UK lurches towards the American travel dream of no pavements and everything being reached by car, no matter how close. remember the scene in Toy Story 2 where the "villain" toy collector leaves his apartment , drives to work which is his own toy shop dead opposite where he lives! Thats truer than you think in the US. We bought 3 bikes for GMD and the girls having transported an old jalopy of mine out there. We paid around £300 for them, each were good quality, each were tested vigorously before we could buy them by a polite Frenchman who knew all about bikes - unlike the spotty 17 year old Halfords fuckwits. Again a different culture and one we could (and may be just starting to) learn from.
4.) Wine - at E1.60 a litre from the vineyard opposite, how wrong can you go? Alright it wasn't vintage, but it was nice, light and eminently drinkable and sold without any fuss by the same guy who sold us our fruit and veg. All with a smile. And a taster glass. No pretentiousness, no faux-academic bollocks talk, no snobbery, no frills. No problem.
5.) The Roads, specifically the Motorways - yes...I know they appear in the previous list....but the truth is there is no road system in the world that has been capacity planned for the holiday rush. The Peage in France are reasonably priced, are models of efficiency at the toll booth, have automated systems which recognise the coins you throw in, or can read a card in a split second. Even the manned ones are adorned by polite staff who always welcome you with a "bonjour" or bid you "au revoir". Can you really see that happening here? Road pricing may seem an abomination here but thats only because we know it would be exorbitant and penalise those who could least afford it. It might not be perfect, but it seems to work better than ours. And the roads don't melt when the mercury hits 30 degrees!
5.) The weather - In the South at least you can't argue that the climate is just that bit more reliable than ours. It rains enough to keep it green, and the mistral wind blows warm during summer and keeps the humidity at bay after a day of 30 plus temperatures. Not really a French attribute I know...but then they live there...and we don't. Let's hope we didn't choose first!
6.) Markets - we're getting there on this front, but the French see markets as a vital part of the local economy and again something at the heart of their society. I only like the food bits, although the odd piece of summer hippy jewellery, or the odd pair of cheap sunglasses have been known to come my way via the markets in France. Before our first visit in 1998 we would have died before buying food in any market. But then we saw the locals buying .....sorry...trying and then buying. Since then we have enjoyed so much of the experience of true shopping, of trying before we buy, of savouring the tastes and smells that when we arrive we may as well be Monsieur et Madame Epicierjacques!
7.)The Boulangerie, the Patisserie, the Boucherie and the Pharmacie. High streets with real shops not just Estate agents, Pound shops and Building societies. Supermarkets exist and play a vital part, but not at the expense of the "local shop for local people" (and tourists!). It's amazing just how much more you can get over the counters in France that you need a prescription for.
8.) Cold soft drinks - kept in a proper cold fridge which is turned on and run at a proper low temperature, where the drinks are rotated properly so that new warmer cans are at the back and the colder ones at the front, unlike the tight-fisted fuckers over here who seem to have fridge light on but nothing else, and then just lob the cans in how they like so that you have to scrape your arm and twist it impossibly to reach the only semi-chilled can shoved right at the back.
9.) The Euro - are they any less French because of it? No of course not.....its just money thats all, not the national identity. Perhaps thats why we reject it, because we've lost so much of our own national identity* that we are desperate to hang onto nay little thing we believe might preserve what little identity we have left.
* England only.
In France, as in most of Europe they simply got on with it. So, while they move freely around drawing out money from ATM's without paying commission, paying by credit cards for meals without a conversion fee,we happily lie down and let the banks legitimately take more money from us. And we have the nerve to call them "Cheese eating surrender monkeys"? When it came to the Euro, we ran the white flag up the pole ages ago because we're too scared of change. Imagine if we'd adopted that view in 1971 when we decimalised the money system. Are there seriously any people out there pining for "pounds, shillings and pence"? Ditto the undeniably easier Decimal system for weights and measures. Christ , my kids barely use miles, inches, pounds or ounces, but yet the Little Britisher brigade insist we keep this archaic, complex and anachronistic system in every day use. Land of Dope and Moron indeed.
10.) Satellite navigation- well the Trafficmaster bit at least. Over here the TM signal is carried on one station, Classic FM. If you're driving through a weak reception area then you're buggered. In France there are a multitude of carriers all broadcasting the TM news on a higher power output. Wherever you go the Sat-nav gets traffic info and warns you most of the time before you hit it. How can they do this, and we apparently can't?
There is so much more that in my view puts them ahead of us, but really its isn't meant to be an anti-UK diatribe, more a comment on how Americanisation and maybe even globalisation and our apparent desire for multi-culturalism has somehow allowed us to lose attributes as a people and nation, that once rivalled France , but that we somehow allowed to slip away.
Later, Grocerjack
PS - ooops..
11.) I forgot coffee. No really...order a Starbucks skinnylatte decaf with a fucking twist if thats what you want you corporate ars-licking city slicking lightweight ponce. But if you want to be a real man or woman, then drink real coffee. Order it in a Cafe in France and then sit back, switch off the pacemaker and get ready for a real caffeine kick. Its so lovely I could almost buy a packet if Disque Bleu or Gauloises to accompany it.
1.) Local French roads are the maddest thing ever. The French seem quite happy to spend hour after hour whiling away time in local traffic jams on the N and D roads (the equivalent to our A/B roads) when there are perfectly acceptable old roads that will get you there quicker by virtue of being empty. They have a definite herd mentality.
2.) Bar service is frankly appalling. In Spain a waiter will whisk his or her way over to you, take an order, whizz it back and then give you an option to pay then or later. In France its a case of get to the bar you lazy bastard (like we do in jolly old Angleterre of course), or eventually a waiter may wander over after finishing his Gauloises and chatting on his phone, take your order with a 50% chance of getting it right and then take the money on delivery. I thought "manana" was a Spanish thing, but the French seem to do it with a more laissez-faire attitude if thats possible.
3.) Rap - if you thought the centre of world rap was new York, think again. This appalling drivel fits the French language perfectly and there is barely a radio station or car full of French "yooves" that isn't pumping this bollocks out all day and night. Oh yeah, and the french youth, unlike its UK counterpart, hasn't worked out that driving down the road pumping out bollocks music with the windows down makes you like like pricks and not like fanny magnets.
4.) French motorways - a weird one this because they will also feature in the things the French do well. For the first 2 or 3 Saturdays of August France adopts a collective holiday madness whereby the North departs to the South. How the country doesn't tip up I don't know. Anyway, the point is this, the motorways which function excellently all year round suddenly clag up and the exits/entrances are to blame. Some of the peage points have 50 toll booths spread across the road, but at holiday time they have to deal with thousands and thousands of cars, manned by idiots who don't have the right money or are completely incapable of using an automated debit/credit card system which takes around 7 seconds if you're prepared....peage ticket in, debit card in, press receipt button, drive away.....just how fucking hard is that?. Its a bottleneck and there's no way round*
*Unless you have Sat-nav with Trafficmaster....in which case my advice is learn to trust the bloody thing and not ignore the polite woman who says "there is stationary traffic on your route", kindly works out a detour which you then ignore and then silently fume over for 2 hours! It was a lesson I learnt very quickly and now Sally (as my Sat-nav is affectionately known) rules the cockpit. Her advice is unswervingly right every time even if some re-routes require a leap of faith.
5.) French signposting - a complete and utter fucking waste of time. Utterly untrustworthy, utterly confusing and mostly utterly missing.
6.) French children, from baby through toddler until about 8 years old - noisy, screaming, shouting annoying little bastards who despite the lack of E numbers in their diet seem to be on a permanent sugar rush. And yes, I am getting old but the days when a screaming nipper filled me with delight went out the window the day that Baby grew up.
7.) Dog shit - a plague upon France for her peoples total acceptance of dog shit on grass verges and some pavements. Now I know some ignorant gits in the Uk are the same, but in some towns and cities, despite valiant efforts by the local Mairie office to supply turd-bags on lamp posts there is a mentality that says its OK to allow their frankly annoying yappie little Fou-Fou's and Fi-Fi's to lay a steamy whipper wherever it fancies and leave it there until SOME UNSUSPECTING HAPPY TOURIST WEARING LONG BAGGY TRENDY JEANS WITH HIS FAVOURITE TRAINERS STEPS INTO IT AND DOES THE RIGHT FOOTED DEATH SLIDE AND TRIES TO MAINTAIN BALANCE WITH DIGNITY WHILST NOT ENDING UP SITTING IN THE PILE WHICH QUITE FRANKLY SEEMS BIGGER THAN THE FUCKING YAPPIE LITTLE KOREAN DELICACY THAT LAID IT!
Oh yeah, one was even laid on the grass verge outside The Money Pit as well....good job I never caught them because I'm not sure how a Stamford Bridge kiss would help the "entente cordiale" when combined with their dog being thrown on my red hot barbecue coals.
However, when one compares this to some of the good things then maybe the good outweighs the bad. Coming next..........
Later, Grocerjack
Bonjour , one and all. EpicierJacque est retournee!
That was fucking lovely to be a bit blunt. 3 weeks of rest and relaxation under the warm Mediterranean sun (well most of the time anyway). Big events are heading my way during this month and so lets list a few below.
1.) The Premiership : Yes, I know its already started, and that the Mighty Blues have stuttered slightly with an unexpected defeat to Middlesbrough, but for me the season only really starts on my return form my annual holiday, hence for it started yesterday with our 2-0 demolition of Blackburn "kick everyone in the air" Rovers.
2.) Return to work : Yes, the big event that normally kicks off the PHD (Post Holiday Depression). I've been reading emails since I went via the nuisance device called Blackberry and all I can say is thank fuck I'm moving to a different area. All I've seen is bollocks about how well we've met the KPI's, how we must get our 07/08 budget forecasts in by the end of August, and how we must improve our weekly reporting withing The Schoolteachers area. Can my new boss (Provisionally titled The Scream as he bears an uncanny resemblance to Edvard Munch's masterpiece) be any more pernickety and deadly dull than The Schoolteacher? Yep, anything is possible but he would be hard pushed to be quite so fucking pedantic and controlling.
3.) Orthondontics : Hmm..... for the last 6 months (yes, 6 months) I have been walking round with a gob full of metal on my top 6 front teeth. The has been via a "spring" like fixed brace, recently replaced by a fixed wire brace. Alongside this I have had to wear a sort of prostethic rubber brace to cover my lower teeth whilst eating, and a removable "space brace" all of the rest of the time. Yes, of course I've cheated and taken the removeable one out, especially when down the pub, after all who wants to sound like a stroke victim crossed with a deaf person? Thats what the removable one does. Anyway, this month apparently I have the first session to have the "full fixed appliance" fitted. Its done over 4 appointments apparently, each at 90 minutes in length. I also have to stump up the remaining £2272.02 at the same time. So, if they're fitting the "full fixed appliance" what the fuck has been stuck to my top 6 front teeth since April?
4.) Start my new job: September the 18th is the day. The way I see it is this....either I'll be as happy as Larry (who he?) and the role will springboard me to one final grade promotion and the consequent barrowload of money and extra perks, or it'll be more of the same, or it'll be an unmitigated disaster and I'll be outsourced to some shite slave driving bunch of cash stealing, liberty removing, automaton corporate crooks. Either way it'll push me down an avenue of decision about my own furute one way or another. And, weirdly that uncertainty is slight exciting. Maybe its the spark I need to pull yself out of my now self imposed silently rebellious rut. My first impression of my new team is that they are a bunch of piss taking bastards with a penchant for free drinks and gambling. Sounds promising.
4.) The BIGGEST thing of course is my brother Skank gets married this Friday. Its only taken him 42 years to find the right woman and God knows he's "road tested" a few in his time. We're not having a stag do as I think this might form part of the reception and besides he is trying to keep everything low key. Not because he's tight, but because like GMD and me, he wants to make the day about them, and not the guests. Our wedding was in a registry office (second time round for both of us) with the reception held in the local village pub and then back at our house. It was far more intimate and memorable than any huge sprawl and the lack of a disco or band meant people actually had to speak to each other (shock...horror). I know this is what he has planned. I am of course the Best Man (of sorts) and this means a speech I assume. Last night before my return to work I couldn't sleep and lay there mulling over my speech. It was funny, followed by funny, with a bit of moving , some more funny and then the toast. Of course I didn't write it down because iIwas in bed trying to get to sleep, but the mind was working at 100mph. Do you think I can remember a single thing to talk about? Of course not! So the next few days will be notes written on Post-Its as hopefully the speech points come dribbling back.
Next post...things I like about France and things I don't!
Later, GrocerJack
Its been busy at work hence the lack of writing, especially as I prepare my "exit strategy" for The Schoolteacher.....his words not mine. But today is the day I try to recoup some of the wedge lashed out on The Money Pit by actually spending some substantial time there. So for the next 3 and a bit weeks I'm in the (hopefully) sunny South of France....the car is cleaned and polished, the sat nav is primed, the bike is on the back, the boot is packed........but best of all GMD will drive to the port tonight so that I can have a few beers to mark the departure of The Governor from my local to pastures new.
The picture shows the pub in its glory and this is the passing of an era. The Governor and his wife have over the years built an atmosphere within the pub that one can only describe as typically English. The loudest noise you hear is the drone of people chatting and laughing with clinking glasses in the back ground. The building itself helps to make what is ostensibly a proper real English pub, but The Governor built the clientele, created the sense of community in the pub and hence the friendly and welcoming environment that is my local and we are all going to miss him and the lovely Governors Wife (who's cried every time we've left lately). They are off to a pub about 5 miles up the road and it remains to be seen if the pub retains its current clientele, but for sure we will be visiting the new place and keeping in regular touch. Fullers took the pub over when Gales sold their souls to them but it is only fair that the replacements are given the chance to prove themselves as worthy of our custom.
Have a nice time. Don't get me wrong but I hope the weather is foul here for the next 3 weeks......it just makes me feel better about being on hols.
Au Revoir, EpicierJacques
