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.
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