Salut!

Small town blues, lucky red smalls

Tastier baguettes for under 50p, sunshine instead of freezing fog and a view with room taking the place of a room with a view. One of the things I liked even less about living in the heart of Paris than the high cost of everyday purchases was that in common with most others sharing the experience, I had no outside space. Of course the Tuileries were opposite, the Luxembourg gardens and other parks were within easy reach and Paris lives up to its City of Light image in splendid fashion. But there is something about being able to go outside and still be at home. A terrace, as we have here in the Var, is one great asset - and it was almost warm enough to eat lunch on it today. A modest garden, like the one we left behind in London, is another. In Paris, even a small balcony would have sufficed provided we could have sat outside on it. If the terrace here, with its uninterrupted view across the hills, is something for which to be mightily grateful, small town life may take some getting used to. I spent all but the earliest three months of my first 23 years in Shildon, County Durham (being born in Hove is naturally a source of both shame and constant impudent reminders from friends). Then I had short spells elsewhere in Durham - Darlington, Hobson (though not by choice, I used to say) and Newton Aycliffe - before moving to London. And for the past 30-odd years, it's been the big city: Bristol, another stay in London and finally Paris. Wandering around Le Lavandou today, I was impressed as ever by the palm trees, the lovely bay and the sea air. But lots of bars, shops and restaurants had congés annuels signs up. Tonight's fireworks display drew a fair-sized crowd to the promenade, but it still did not truly feel like a place that was "lively all year round", as my wife was assured the last time she had her hair done here. Time - and the occasional reference on Salut! - will doubtless tell. But I should add that things did look up a little on the marina, where a poster for the Equateur nightspot promised a hip réveillon. Customers were offered two bits of advice: book early and wear red underwear "for good luck". It wasn't until I switched on the news an hour or so later that I discovered that the second part of the advice - red knickers for New Year's Eve fortune - was a recent tradition originating in Italy. If, in the coming days, anyone comes across a beaming Bill Taylor - Salut! regulars will know he is spending tonight in Rome - they may be able to guess what he packed before leaving Toronto.

Bonne année to all.

Gone today, Hyères tomorrow

Salut! is on the move.
Surrounded by cartons stuffed with millions of folk CDs, football
fanzines and books on everything from the French revolution to the
history of badminton, we bid farewell to Paris.
Specifically, it is adieu to the rue de Rivoli, our grand if not very
homely home for the past two-and-a-half years. Part of the magnificent
view from the living room is captured inexpertly here (where's Bill
when you need him?).
Tomorrow, we will pass the busy little Mediterranean town of Hyères -
which really has nothing much to do with this except that I couldn't
resist the title - on the final approach to Le Lavandou and a new life
there.
There is little time between filling in insurance forms and supervising
the removal of our belongings to say much more, and there is also
little need.
But what will I tell my neighbour Jacques Chirac? Despite our ups and
downs, the president has gamely invited me back to the Elysée for the New Year's drinks reception he throws for journalists each January.

This, we can safely assume, will be his last such voeux,
and it looks as if I shall be among absentees.
And the loss of presidential office will mean that the Chiracs will
also no longer be our neighbours in the Var, since their holiday home
at, the Fort de Brégançon, goes with the job. But somehow I feel our
paths will cross again.
I'll be back here soon enough once we've settled in, with reflections
on what I will and will not miss about Paris. In the meantime, I will
lift France in Flashes near the top of the blog in case the more recent
additions inspire further comment.

Labels: badminton, Elysée, folk music, French revolution, Jacques Chirac, Le Lavandou, moving, Paris, president, rue de Rivoli, Var

France in flashes.....9

Soon I will be leaving Paris, but not France. Two-and-a-half years in the City of Light is not much of a milestone but it's the longest I've lived anywhere outside London since the 1980s. Thanks to this Parisian phase of my life, and indeed to living in France generally, I am able to start listing - in no special order - a few of the things I now know. It is a work in progress; the number in the headline will change each time I have a flash of inspiration and want to add something and - as now - I may bring it to the top of the blog.

New thoughts will always appear first in the list but the earlier
comments from readers are at the original posting.....feel free to find
inconsistencies with what I wrote in 2003.

************** WHAT I KNOW NOW **************

* Paris may not, despite a former colleague's insistence, be the City of a Thousand Bad Restaurants. But I am up to double figures and truly believe London now has a distinct edge on quality, variety and service - though not always value.

* Provincial
France is still streets ahead for eating out. But my search for a good
Indian restaurant seemed doomed to failure until I stumbled the other
night upon Le Royal Shah Jahan at Enghien Les Bains, where 95 (Val
d'Oise) meets bad old neuf-trois (Seine St Denis). Easily the
best I've had in France. It was our friends' fallback idea after their
first choice, at Argenteuil, turned out to be full.
* The French press is more decent - and more dull - than its British
counterpart. One (French) theory, heard again today, holds that the
country has just two seriously good daily papers: L'Equipe for sports lovers and Mon Quotidien (plus stablemates) for kids.

* Anyone who voluntarily leaves a proper job in France, even a
job he or she loathes, is considered mad unless there is something
immediate fixed up.
* From the millionaire to the man on the Boulevard Masséna tram, French
people know how to appreciate good food. The mountainous plateau de fruits de mer served to my table yesterday could have been ordered at either end of that spectrum (and indeed was, though I'm not saying which).

* And at both ends, they know how tipping is done at the
restaurant in France: sparingly or not at all, and without hint of
self-consciousness.
* People who insist you should never dine in or near railway stations
don't know Paris. Two of my best eating experiences have been at the Brasserie Terminus Nord directly opposite Gare du Nord and, complete with fabulous arty decor, Le Train Bleu inside the Gare de Lyon.

** Châtelet is probably the grimmest of Métro stations unless you are going through without stopping, but if you do have to change, alight or board there, it also has the best buskers on the system.
* When a Parisian receptionist welcomes you with the question: "Is
someone behind you?", this is not because she assumes such a nice
person would surely have friends queuing up to accompany you. It's her
way of telling you to close what you thought was an automatic door, and
sharpish.
* Charles de Gaulle airport is not, repeat NOT, the least
user-friendly place in the world to fly to or from. Not quite. But
getting to terminal three offers a strong challenge to that view.
* Toulon, the nearest town of any size to where I'll be living come
January - at least in the short term - has been placed bottom or second
bottom in league tables for economic activity, employment, culture and
heaven knows what else. Have I made a dreadful mistake? The eastern
city of Nancy, which I have never visited, came top in one of these palmarès des villes.

* Policemen on roller skates and - when deployed as traffic cops - bicycles will always look like something out of a French farce.

* Marks & Spencer should be ordered to re-open its Paris store. Don't take my word for it; ask a native Parisian.

* The French are not the worst drivers in Europe and probably not even the second or third worst.
* It is therapeutic to swear in English at psychopathic drivers who try
to mow you down on green at pedestrian crossings. But this is not
advisable if you happen to be having a mobile phone conversation with a
charming American lady at the same time.
* If you want to find out something from a French ministry, make friends with a French official in London. Exposure to le modèle Anglo-Saxon will have given him a hint of urgency.
* Power walking or gentle jogging in the Tuileries is not recommended
for those liable to feel like physical wrecks in the presence of
superfit Parisian sapeurs pompiers.

* Arriving
on time, for dinner, drinks or similar, is a serious gaffe. Getting
there early is positively insulting and destined to bring social
exclusion.

* Gard du Nord handles people more efficiently than Waterloo. And no one there will try to serve you wine in a cardboard cup.

* Anna Perry
was right. The Champs Elysées may look pretty when lit up for Christmas
- see above for photographic support, however amateurish, for that
claim - but feels ugly and naff most of the time and, at the bottom
end, menacing late at night.
* Brits who want to live in France, but stick to English-speaking
ghettos and recoil in horror from any idea of integration, bring
disgrace on their country and should go home.
* French reality and game shows are even worse than those on British TV. And French television generally is dire.

* Leaving Paris on a TGV feels much better than coming back.

* Coming back to Paris on Eurostar feels much better than leaving.

Here's an explanation I prepared earlier

Yule blog

Christmas Day just isn't the same in France. Not my view necessarily but that of the French person I know best, the woman I am married to. "We all go back to work on the 26th so it's more like our Boxing Day," she commented as we drove back through fairly heavy traffic from Le Mans to Paris. And it is true that Christmas Eve, the time for le réveillon, feels much more, well, Christmassy. Lots of shops were open in Le Mans and Paris today, some of them the sort of shops that might be in trouble if they thought of opening on a Sunday. But let me forget all that for a moment and welcome my great nieces Manon and Clara into the world. Well, they've been here for three weeks now but yesterday, deep into La Sarthe where they live with their parents, Christophe and Karline, we had our first meeting. It made more of an impact on me than on them, but they did put up very sportingly with camera flashes and being hoisted out of their cots to be cooed over. The twins so far have no known views on the French presidential elections, or even the Nathalie Gettliffe case, but they join me in wishing a very happy Christmas - and an even better Boxing Day - to anyone who may be up and about in the blogosphere tonight.

Labels: babies, Boxing Day, Christmas, France, Le Mans, Nathalie Gettliffe, Paris, réveillon, shops, twins

Christmas lesson in school catering

Nothing would have been too good for the working classes (of the Notre-Dame de la Providence school) ...

School dinners were a fairly grim business in my day.

From lumpy mashed potato and even lumpier snagger - a vile turnip purée
- to watery gravy and stringy meat, the fare had little to redeem it,
save for the occasional chocolate or ginger pud.
Of school Christmas lunch, I have only the vaguest memory. I realise
that turkey must have played its part but cannot even remember that.
In a new spirit of being kind to Canada (now that we have Bill Taylor's
admission that its justice system is based on "deals"), I
should share the joke he cracked when I told him a few years ago I was
going to Cape Breton (Nova Scotia, not the one in France).
I look back fondly on a visit to a beautiful part of the world blessed
with ample supplies of crustaceans but also beset with more than its
fair share of economic woe.
"The children are so poor they have to go to school with lobster
sandwiches," the sage of Toronto gravely informed me.
But if disgusting school food is a character-forming part of growing
up, the pupils of Notre-Dame de la Providence school in Vincennes, on
the outskirts of Paris, will turn out to be a spineless lot. They
didn't quite dine on seafood from the Marché St Honoré in the 1st
arrondissement (above). But just look at the Christmas bouffe that was served up.

Menu de Noël Maternelles & Général Jeudi 21 décembre

Foie gras
Saumon
Jambon de pays

Magret de canard
Filet de dorade royale

Pommes smile
Poêlée de légumes

Brie

Clémentine
Bûche de Noël glacée
Chocolats de Noël

Bon appétit...

The friend whose son was offered that feast tells me he was
"gobsmacked" (I preferred "his eyes nearly popped out" but they should
be his words) when he saw the choices for each course.
"My school meal at Christmas was gruel plus an extra hunk of bread as a
treat," he said sadly. "But that's English public schools for you."

Labels: Canada, Christmas, lobster, Paris, school dinners, Toronto

Var humbug? Not likely. Joyeux Noël à tous

Over the coming days, I may need to beg a large degree of patience and understanding from Salut!'s faithful followers and casual visitors.

It is not that the blog's management has decided to give me Christmas
off in recognition of the long, unpaid hours of labour since the blog's
launch in October. Nor is it awarding an end-of-year bonus for all that
willingness to embrace new ways, new technology.
The plea of poverty is not quite the whole story in any case. In truth,
I am excitedly awaiting my first payment for your clicks on targeted
advertisements. There is reason to believe that the figure may well
stretch beyond cents into dollars (though in low single figures).
But leave aside Christmas, arrival of daughters, family visit to Le
Mans and even - on the box tomorrow - Crystal Palace vs my beloved
under-achievers Sunderland.

There is the imminent move to consider.

This time next week, we shall be hitting the road in our elderly, sans clim'
BMW and exchanging the famous room with a view over the Tuileries for a
home from which you can see, beyond the rooftops of other houses, for
miles across the hills of the Var.
Monette, accustomed to a swish, mollycoddled life as a Parisian chat d'intérieur,
will have to learn about the outside world. And about other cats. We'll
have to see how the geraniums get on without polluted Parisian air.
Before the removal men arrive, there are a million cardboard boxes
still to fill with CDs, books, files, clothes and whatever. A mail
redirection form to fill in. Change of address cards to send; "no, sir,
we don't sell them, they're found uniquement à la Poste,"
I was told in a stationery shop though la Poste insisted they'd stopped
stocking them ages ago.
If I get the chance, I will blog, but it would be unwise to make too
many promises. For now, then, allow me simply to wish all my readers,
supporters and critics alike, a fine festive season.
In particular, I hope that Nathalie Gettliffe
is able to derive some enjoyment from her short spell of freedom,
granted smartish - and rightly, of course - very soon after her
repatriation to France.
She has to return to prison after Christmas, pending legal moves to
obtain a more permanent release.
But as one who does not consider that French justice always works as it
should, I am delighted to applaud the judge who reached the sort of
compassionate decision that seemed beyond the thinking of Canadian
counterparts. Meanwhile, there is plenty of scope for comment in recent
postings and the responses received so far, so don't ignore croissants,
culottes, Diana and the forever growing France in Flashes. Meanwhile, Salut! has notched up two notable new
achievements this week: the total hits passed 20,000 and profile visits
1,500. That, in two-and-a-half months, isn't bad for a blog described
here recently as dying the death.

Labels: advertising, Canada, cat, Christmas, daughters, family, football, Monette, moving, Nathalie Gettliffe, Paris, Sunderland, Tuileries, Var

Salut! salutes Asian royalty

Just when I had decided that my famous search for a good Indian restaurant in France was a fool's mission, I chanced upon this unexpected gem.

There is a mention in my updated France in Flashes posting - up to version number 8 now with new additions, though these did not quite justify lifting the file to the top of the blog again.

Le Royal Shah Jahan is out in the Parisian suburbs at Enghien-les-Bains, where the intermittently pleasant Val d'Oise meets the often very unpleasant Seine-St-Denis. The well known Enghien lake is just along the road.

It took an age to find anywhere to park, but everything about the restaurant itself was right.

My old standby, chicken tandoori, was by a long shot the tastiest I have come across in France. All that was missing was the sizzling onion, but I have given up expecting that here.

My wife and her friend from childhood have both lived in England, so asked for their vindaloos to be hotter than the Pakistani-owned restaurant would normally serve to squeamish French customers. Both
expressed delight with the results.

Peter, the friend's British husband, who has lived in Paris far longer than he hasn't, was slightly less impressed with his chicken tikka masala. Maybe that is a dish best sampled only in the place where it was invented - Britain.

But even he was content when the waiter produced some Indian lager, which may be not be that much better than the usual Kronenbergs and Heinekens, lager essentially being lager, but somehow always seems so.

Curiously enough, we dined there only because our friends' first choice was full. So for Peter and his wife, Maryvonne, we we dining at only the second best Indian restaurant in Argenteuil.

Since we're very much in countdown mode now - leaving Paris between Christmas and New Year - there is no time to try the restaurant they had intended to take us, Le Diplomat.

I already know nothing better awaits me in the Var. So the Le Royal Shah Jahan can take comfort that its new crown, from Salut!, is safe for now.

Labels: Britain, chicken tikka masala, eating, Indian food, Paris, suburbs, tandoori

And the winner is......

Q: What kind of baker has his own press attaché? A: One who makes the best croissant in Paris.

And who says Pierre Hermé's croissants are tops? The team of six judges assembled by Le Figaro's midweek magazine Scope
to munch its way through 64 of them.
All the competing croissants were bought on the same morning across the
capital and then judged according to appearance, smell, flavour, price
and even the welcome received by those doing the round of bakers and -
let me be fairer to M Hermé - pâtisseries.

Actually replicating Le Figaro's operation presented obstacles. At any rate, it did when it came to Salut! second guessing the judges by paying its own visit to the winner's shop.

Scope helpfully gave M Hermé's address as 72 rue de Bonaparte, which threads through the Latin Quarter to St Sulpice and beyond.

Maybe Salut!
was having a bad day. It cannot, of course, hope to have a bad hair
day.
But look for yourselves. Would it not be entirely possible to see no 72
from the other side of the street and conclude that the magazine must
have made a mistake?
For here is a shop that sells croissants and cakes but has a façade
that looks rather more like that of an upmarket jeweller. It took a
return trip to confirm that those small windows contained not necklaces
and bracelets in 18 carat gold but M Hermé's less durable creations.
I hate to quarrel with a winner. But questions really need to be asked
about an item associated throughout the world with breakfast but not
sold before 10am.
In fact, even 10am proved a variable sort of opening time.
The door was not unlocked until four minutes had gone by after the
sounding of the bell atop the nearby 6th arrondissement town hall.
If M Hermé feels this was a trivial delay, he may be interested to
learn that by then, half the queue - OK, two people - had also gone by.
They didn't even look back. Once inside the shop, however, you found
that service came with a broad smile. My four croissants, costing 1.20
euros each, were packed by the pretty, cheerful assistant as carefully
as if she were wrapping delicate porcelain.
But it took another 10 minutes to pay. Pretty, cheerful assistant was
not interested in receiving payment; a colleague at the till was in
charge of that. Inconveniently for me, she was also in charge of taking
Christmas orders.
The town hall bell for a quarter past rang out soon after I left the
shop. It seemed a long time to have spent making such a small purchase
in an uncrowded shop.
Had Mr Hermé been present, and willing to interrupt his labours for a
couple of minutes, I would have asked what was the secret of his
success, why he opened so late and whether I was right long ago to
think croissants absolutely had to be served hot.
But he was not present. "Pas ce matin," the assistant replied. Oui, mais plus tard? Non.
Thinking it would then be a simple matter of arranging a quick
telephone interview, I outlined my mission. "I'll give you a number for
his attaché de presse," came the response.

The questions, therefore, will have to wait. Salut!
cannot afford airs and graces but also has no wish to start negotiating
on small print for an interview with a croissant-maker. Next, he'll be
wanting copy control or banning any reference to flakiness and crumbs.
In any case, we can surely rely on Scope sufficiently to trust the
thoughts attributed to him after the results were pronounced. The great
croissant, M Hermé confided, needed a dry and crunchy texture. The
buttery taste had to betray a perfect balance between salt and sugar.
When M Hermé wandered off into "I hear the cry of the croissant....it's
alive, the soul of its creator" territory, I felt it was time just to
get on with eating the wretched thing.
So,
just after 11am and in the knowledge I would soon be meeting friends
for lunch, I had my late breakfast.
It was good, very good, and I was content to eat it cold.
But I would have had more difficulty thsn the judges in finding it so
much better than all the rest. Or in relegating last year's winner -
Julien, located on the rue St Honoré - to seventh place, or last year's
third placed contender (a Paul branch on the rue de Seine, not far from
M Hermé) as low as 24th. Unless, of course, Paul served the undercover
buyer a 2005 croissant.

Labels: croissant, eating, food, Latin Quarter, Le Figaro, Paris

Diana: not the last word

Picture: Paul Cooper

The cover of Private Eye after the death of Diana, Princess of Wales showed crowds milling outside Buckingham Palace at the start of an astonishing week in the history of relationships between the Royal Family, the people and the press. Beneath the headline Media to Blame, the quote bubbles brilliantly captured the public mood in all its hypocritical glory. "The papers are a disgrace," declared one person. "Yes, I couldn't get one anywhere," agreed another while a third offered reassurance: "Borrow mine. It's got a picture of the car." No one from paparazzi to Prince Philip came out of the affair particularly well, as we are reminded by Stephen Frears's outstanding film The Queen, with its string of superb character readings from Mark Bazeley's Alastair Campbell to the incomparable Helen Mirren's monarch. Royalty was left looking cold and unfeeling, media obsession with the image of Diana was seen to have assumed grotesque proportions and there were aspects of the mass outpouring of grief that seemed more than a little disturbing. As for the accident itself, that is all it ever was. Despite the preposterous conspiracy theories, three people died in the underpass at the Pont de l'Alma because the driver was way over two limits - drink and speed. Yet nothing in Lord Stevens's report on the affair will stop Mohamed Fayed, aided and abetted by his chums at the Daily Express, from banging on about an Establishment plot to murder a princess rather than risk her marrying a Muslim. There has yet to be an intelligent explanation of how even the most skilled of secret agents could orchestrate each circumstance of a car crash of the sort that happened in Paris in August 1997. No one has ever described how these murky operatives were able to ensure that one, two or three people would die in the sort of collision from which more fortunate occupants might emerge alive (especially if, unlike Diana and her friend, Fayed's son Dodi, they were wearing seatbelts). And if they could not ensure the outcome, what exactly would have the purpose of the enterprise? But as I have remarked before, the blinding stupidity of the murder-in-the-tunnel theory has not discouraged plenty of ostensibly normal people from believing the unbelievable. And nor will it do so in future. Yes, I realise that the obvious time for these thoughts was the end of last week, when I was busy on other things in London. A late contribution to the debate was inspired by calls from two friends who, because they had to plough through the 832 pages of Lord Stevens's report, alerted me to my own passing mention. Back in 1997, I remained in London for a week or two covering the repercussions there. Then I was asked to go to Paris to research a substantial account of what was known, and what was being said, about the accident. The piece appeared at huge length in the Telegraph's Weekend section and prompted a protest from Michael Cole, the BBC royal correspondent who had become Fayed's publicity director. Had the Press Complaints Commission upheld Cole's complaint, the logic would have been that an article head City of Rumour, dealing exhaustively with whatever details and claims had emerged about the accident, should somehow avoid mentioning anything deemed hurtful (however much in the public domain it already was). The two rumours in question were that the princess was pregnant with Dodi's child and that traces of cocaine had been detected in the crashed Mercedes. Rumours, remember, and both well publicised before I portrayed them as part of the "wilder speculation" surrounding the accident. Fortunately, the PCC seems to have had no difficulty in understanding what Cole could not: namely that it was perfectly proper to make passing reference to such matters. Furthermore, it was perhaps obvious to the more careful reader that I had not swallowed either proposition. So in 1997, it was "scurrilous" according to Fayed's man, Cole, to suggest (or even to report that others had suggested) that Diana was pregnant, and not a scrap of evidence existed to support such a "damaging" allegation. Getting on for 10 years later, what do we find when we turn to the Express, the paper that has enthusiastically followed the Mohamed Fayed line? A reminder that the Harrods owner, so loyally served by Cole, believed she was pregnant and that her body was embalmed in order to cover up the fact.

Minutes after the car carrying Diana turned right out of this street, rue Cambon, she lay dying in the wreckage at the Pont de l'Alma

Cole, who only this summer justified his complaint against me by saying it was "cruel and wrong to speculate about those so recently dead", is now quoted as saying Diana, on the last occasion he saw her, was "bubbling over like there was a little secret inside her that was making her happy". The complaint to the PCC was thrown out. I await Cole's belated apology, but with breath unbated. After accusing me of being cruel and wrong, he is too busy telling us that the Stevens report - which Diana's own sons believe should bring an end to conjecture - will not be the last word.

Labels: accident, Diana, Dodi Fayed, Lord Stevens, Mohamed Fayed, paparazzi, Paris, press, Royal Family

France in flashes.....8

Soon I will be leaving Paris, but not France. Two-and-a-half years in the City of Light is not much of a milestone but it's the longest I've lived anywhere outside London since the 1980s. Thanks to this Parisian phase of my life, and indeed to living in France generally, I am able to start listing - in no special order - a few of the things I now know. It is a work in progress; the number in the headline will change each time I have a flash of inspiration and want to add something and - as now - I may bring it to the top of the blog.

New thoughts will always appear first in the list but the earlier
comments from readers are at the original posting.....feel free to find
inconsistencies with what I wrote in 2003.

************** WHAT I KNOW NOW **************

* Paris may not, despite a former colleague's insistence, be the City of a Thousand Bad Restaurants. But I am up to double figures and truly believe London now has a distinct edge on quality, variety and service - though not always value.

* Provincial
France is still streets ahead for eating out. But my search for a good
Indian restaurant seemed doomed to failure until I stumbled the other
night upon Le Royal Shah Jahan at Enghien Les Bains, where 95 (Val
d'Oise) meets bad old neuf-trois (Seine St Denis). Easily the
best I've had in France. It was our friends' fallback idea after their
first choice, at Argenteuil, turned out to be full.
* The French press is more decent - and more dull - than its British
counterpart. One (French) theory, heard again today, holds that the
country has just two seriously good daily papers: L'Equipe for sports lovers and Mon Quotidien (plus stablemates) for kids.

* Anyone who voluntarily leaves a proper job in France, even a
job he or she loathes, is considered mad unless there is something
immediate fixed up.
* From the millionaire to the man on the Boulevard Masséna tram, French
people know how to appreciate good food. The mountainous plateau de fruits de mer served to my table yesterday could have been ordered at either end of that spectrum (and indeed was, though I'm not saying which).

* And at both ends, they know how tipping is done at the
restaurant in France: sparingly or not at all, and without hint of
self-consciousness.
* People who insist you should never dine in or near railway stations
don't know Paris. Two of my best eating experiences have been at the Brasserie Terminus Nord directly opposite Gare du Nord and, complete with fabulous arty decor, Le Train Bleu inside the Gare de Lyon.

** Châtelet is probably the grimmest of Métro stations unless you are going through without stopping, but if you do have to change, alight or board there, it also has the best buskers on the system.
* When a Parisian receptionist welcomes you with the question: "Is
someone behind you?", this is not because she assumes such a nice
person would surely have friends queuing up to accompany you. It's her
way of telling you to close what you thought was an automatic door, and
sharpish.
* Charles de Gaulle airport is not, repeat NOT, the least
user-friendly place in the world to fly to or from. Not quite. But
getting to terminal three offers a strong challenge to that view.
* Toulon, the nearest town of any size to where I'll be living come
January - at least in the short term - has been placed bottom or second
bottom in league tables for economic activity, employment, culture and
heaven knows what else. Have I made a dreadful mistake? The eastern
city of Nancy, which I have never visited, came top in one of these palmarès des villes.

* Policemen on roller skates and - when deployed as traffic cops - bicycles will always look like something out of a French farce.

* Marks & Spencer should be ordered to re-open its Paris store. Don't take my word for it; ask a native Parisian.

* The French are not the worst drivers in Europe and probably not even the second or third worst.
* It is therapeutic to swear in English at psychopathic drivers who try
to mow you down on green at pedestrian crossings. But this is not
advisable if you happen to be having a mobile phone conversation with a
charming American lady at the same time.
* If you want to find out something from a French ministry, make friends with a French official in London. Exposure to le modèle Anglo-Saxon will have given him a hint of urgency.
* Power walking or gentle jogging in the Tuileries is not recommended
for those liable to feel like physical wrecks in the presence of
superfit Parisian sapeurs pompiers.

* Arriving
on time, for dinner, drinks or similar, is a serious gaffe. Getting
there early is positively insulting and destined to bring social
exclusion.

* Gard du Nord handles people more efficiently than Waterloo. And no one there will try to serve you wine in a cardboard cup.

* Anna Perry
was right. The Champs Elysées may look pretty when lit up for Christmas
- see above for photographic support, however amateurish, for that
claim - but feels ugly and naff most of the time and, at the bottom
end, menacing late at night.
* Brits who want to live in France, but stick to English-speaking
ghettos and recoil in horror from any idea of integration, bring
disgrace on their country and should go home.
* French reality and game shows are even worse than those on British TV. And French television generally is dire.

* Leaving Paris on a TGV feels much better than coming back.

* Coming back to Paris on Eurostar feels much better than leaving.

Here's an explanation I prepared earlier

Labels: Champs Elysées, driving, Eurostar, food, France, Gare de Lyon, Gare du Nord, L'Equipe, Marks and Spencer, Mon Quotidien, Métro, newspapers, Paris, restaurants, television, TGV