So, I’m just back from the annual attempt to spend as much as I can on booze and decent food in order to a) save the failing economy of a foreign country and b) prove once again that alcohol has no calories. I fail at b, every year.
This year it was France. Specifically the south of France. My spiritual home. Fabulous place. Fabulous food, people, scenery, weather. Great. I love it. I want to live there. You get the picture.
This year, as a first, les flics decided to relieve me of €45 for driving too fast. How can you possibly drive too fast on a superbly surfaced and traffic-free autoroute? I’m not sure but apparently the local plod think I could, and he went off with my €50 note with a typically French shrug and muttering “J’ai pas la monnaie.” So, another beer for him later as he chortles over les rosbifs and their, or his, lack of small change.
Despite that minor inconvenience, The Beast continued to take us down the Autoroute du Soleil at a prodigious rate and for twelve glorious days The Girlfriend and I lazed about doing nothing much more strenuous than casting envious eyes over the Gin Palaces berthed in Cannes, Frejus and St Tropez. Want one, want one.
We, and the two teenage young ladies accompanying us generally had a good time (despite the inexplicable preference of the youngsters for McDonalds over anything even vaguely Gallic. Strange creatures, but not of my progeny so that probably explains that)
All was well in Paradise until the teenagers figured out that some Canadian boy (I had to confirm this on the interweb – his voice is that of a girl to my jaded ears) called Justin Bieber was bloody unlikely to turn up unannounced at a very French holiday park and much more likely to be camped out at the George V in Paris, so could we just nip there for the last couple of days please (stopping at McDonalds on the way so they could replenish their “food” supplies and re-apply the eye make-up that was clearly going to lure Justin to his early death from sexual exhaustion). Ok says I, but I carefully pointed out Paris is a place for grown ups in love and that rules out some testosterone-free pop star being allowed out on his own past 6pm.
We get to Paris, via McDonalds, check in to a lovely hotel, and, suitably attired go off to do The Tourist Thing. Marvelled at the Eiffel Tower, laughed at the incredibly crap singer on stage outside the Sacré-Coeur and, instead of going to one of our usual haunts (good food, good wine, good service) tramped the long/wrong way round Montmartre to some brasserie as recommended by the otherwise normal and pleasant seeming porter at the hotel. Where things went all Parisian.
Y’see, I know Paris quite well, been there lots. I speak French quite well, having lived in Bruxelles for a while. I go places I know where, generally, I’m not treated like a tourist or an idiot. Where people are pleasant, can understand my desire to pretend to be French and are usually helpful, polite, cheery and welcoming. I stick to what I know for a reason – I’m a bit of a “I know what I like” person when it comes to Paris, so I tend to hang out around the Quartier Latin and watch the world go by. I find places round the back streets where few tourists would bother going and simply sit sipping coffee and calvados. When I want to see the “beautiful people” I go to Les Deux Magots and pretend to soak up the history left there by Sartre, de Beauvoir and Picasso whilst simultaneously keeping an eye on the world and his wife walking by (ok, mainly just the world’s wife walking by if I’m totally honest)
Not this time though, oh no. This time it was the full-on stupid-tourist-in-Paris treatment. The teenagers ordered moules frites, I had a filet of veal Normande (despite the fact that even after my asking three times in both French and English the waiter wouldn’t tell me if it was the Normande apple sauce or one of the two kinds of Normande mushroom sauce. I can bear cooked apples, just, but mushrooms are the food of the devil. It was mushrooms, of course. The Girlfriend ordered filet mignon tartare (wish I had) and that was about the only thing the bloody place got right.
The waiter returned, some minutes later, to inform us that there was only one portion of moules left. How can that be – it was 9pm, early by Paris standards, it was a Saturday, the place was mostly empty (that should have been a clue). Nevertheless teenager two reordered something else with chicken (which turned out to be something else with veal, but there you go). By this time I was getting a tad restive – these were not the standards of service to which your author is accustomed.
Now, things went well-ish, or at least as well as any meal taken with s’leb obsessed teenagers in Paris could go. What is it with this obsession with s’leb culture? When we went to Cannes I did decide to point out to them that if they went to the loo in the Martinez or Ritz, then their bums would perhaps be on the same thrones as previously used by these s’lebs. This seemed to excite them, so I guess they missed the point I was trying to make, sigh. The inane chatter about who, like, said what to, like, who about who (“whom” not being within their ken, obviously) was getting to me. My tolerance levels were depleted, probably something to do with the litre of crap lager I had forced down by the time the waiter actually bothered taking our order at all.
Then I spied a relief route – the brasserie was equipped with a tabac! I could buy a cigar and nip outside for a 10 minute period of savouring the Paris night. Clearly, having forsaken the dreaded cigarette form of the weed some years ago, this might not go down too well with The Girlfriend, but it was the last night of our hols, she was feeling more than usually tolerant of me and permission was granted! Without trying to look too overjoyed, I made my way to the bar and asked the non-French-non-English-speaking waiter for one of their finest cigars and a box of matches. He looked at me, and I saw the gleam of joy in his eye. He waited a few seconds, savouring the moment, biding his time before delivering his coup de grace: “Le tabac, m’sieu, est fermée.” I swear he almost laughed as he delivered this killer blow, this final straw. The shelves of weed were 50cm behind him, I could have reached across the bar and picked a cigar up, but no, that was not going to happen. Oh no, he repeated, an evil smile spreading across his chops, “Le tabac, m’sieu, est fermée.” That was it – all chances of a semi-civilized evening in The City of Lights were snuffed in one sneer. The bastard had trumped me, and he knew it.
I returned to our table seething and wondering why Henry hadn’t just finished the bastards off after Agincourt. Only for chief teenager to put the cap on it by telling me that she thought the food was ok, so that made it alright. That didn’t go down well. I’d been sneered at by a bloody waiter, eaten mushrooms, listened to girl-children pretend to be grown up about Justin Bieber and now the child was lecturing me on the fitness of a restaurant and the resulting quality of experience and that was when the fate of the evening was finally sealed.
Taxi, quick as poss, back to the hotel, dump the women, taxi, quick as poss, to Boulevard St Germain, extremely nice waiter brings me the first of three double espressos and large calvados(es). I unwind, I sigh with relief, my tensions ease instantly, I sit back, no-one bothers me, no-one cares who I am or what I’m doing, no-one chatters about what s’lebs might be around, no-one worries if anyone is looking at them. I watch pigeons feasting on discarded frites, I watch waiters scuttling about their business, I watch people doing exactly the same thing as me, I watch people amble by wrapped up in their own delights…
… and I remember why I love Paris.
