Life and work in Abu Dhabi are busy and getting busier. The gaps between postings may well grow. So inspired by French TV babbling away in my hotel room, I will dip into the archives of a two-year blogging career that began in Paris. Before Christmas becomes an even more distant memory, or cards and tinsel go on sale for the next one, let's go back to where it all started: my very first online shot at online writing, published two days before Christmas Day 2005 and slightly modified here
Even as colleagues at the Telegraph’s London office asked me to write about Christmas shopping in Paris, I was descending into seasonal gloom about what to buy my wife.
I may have lived in the City of Romance for nearly 18 months but I remain, as she would quickly confirm, a northern oik. To a man of my generation and background, coming up with the right present for a chic Frenchwoman will always be tricky.
But I am a learning oik. I know that chip pans and foot massage machines are out, that perfume is predictable and that no, she won’t want a signed photo of the Sunderland football team. So, after looking around as sheepishly as a man loitering furtively in the Pigalle red light district, I darted into a lingerie boutique on the swish Rue St Honoré.
Success! It was first thing in the morning and we - by which I mean the attractive young assistant and I – were alone. But more of a success was the instant rapport between us. I have endured many embarrassing moments in British stores, and they were only in the nightwear departments.
This was so different; not only were rows and rows of knickers, bras and combinations set before me on a table, but I was given a running commentary on the assistant’s preferences, her observations on colour, texture and – yes – sex appeal as matter-of-factly as if we were discussing tins of cassoulet.
In just a few minutes, I had not only selected a dinky little bra-and-pants set but discovered that the assistant had a penchant for pink, and for fabric that felt or looked special on the skin. “Oh, you Anglo-Saxons,” she exclaimed at one point. “You’re only embarrassed about such things because you’re brought up to be.”
By now, though, I was beyond British reserve and getting carried away. Did you know, I said, that a French gynaecologist spilling the beans in a new book on his career had reported that 80 per cent of French women opted these days for le string? “Non monsieur, that doesn’t surprise me at all,” she replied, “but then I should know as well as him.”
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