Top Five List: Best Things About France

I’m writing this from the middle of a whorish delay for my flight from Lyon to London. There is very little to celebrate considering the captain just told us we have a two hour wait on the plane. Then again, at least we are on board. The guy next to me has been trying for three days to get back to the UK.

And the reason? Industrial action from French air traffic controllers in Paris. Since we are flying over the capital it affects us because they’ll be a few men short. The wait is painstaking. My options are thinning, too. I know for a fact that my laptop battery won’t survive the last two episodes of season one of The Wire. Fuck.

Somewhere in Paris right now there are some smug French bastards enjoying cheese and bread with some red wine after a dinner they have been allowed to extend all the more due to the socialist network of lazy, back scratching (fill in appropriate French stereotype) Gallic sons of bitches. These very same delicacies are now being deprived from me, which is a painful scenario. If you throw in the fact that 3 rows behind me the stewardesses are eating a cooked dinner, you’ll realise the sense of injustice I’m living through.

So in this type of no-win situation – the captain just told us to expect a 2.30am arrival at Gatwick, which puts me at my final destination some time around 4.30am – I think it’s best to try and put a positive spin on events. So here is my Top Five List: Best Things About France. (I’ve decided the philosophical approach is the only way to ride this thing out).

(photo - http://blog.yimmyayo.com/)

Coming in at Number Five on the list is Frenchmen. Specifically the male half of the species. Frenchmen have a playful nature that somewhat belies their Roman/Gallic ancestry. They are for the most part pretty cheery and they have that undaunting, luke-warm, French guy brow, which makes them look like a French Joey Tribiani just got told to look ‘surprised’. It’s endearing in a way that Spanish and Italian guys can’t master. They are also fun to hang out with, and don’t seem to be as sleazy as the movies make them out. Then again I’m not a 22 year old woman, so it’s hard to know really.

Before I finish, you can’t underestimate the value of a two syllable reference when naming someone, i.e. French Guy. Easier than ki-wi guy, or aus-sie guy. Call it the One Syllable Corollary. Ok you get it, and you’re not that impressed. But think about it. Not too many of the one syllable types going around, are there? It certainly helps for this article, but in wider life it makes addressing foreigners just that little bit easier.

I digress.

At Number Four is the French Attitudinal/Cultural Situation. Staunch defenders of their culture, France does its best to keep itself steeped in its own ways and shielded from much of The West (and The East). And you may say what you want about their arrogance and disrespect of people who don’t assimilate, but I have a healthy respect for any culture that stands up for itself with such gusto, especially in a region as diverse as Europe. And while they have marks taken away for such distaste for cricket, the country that gave us the term ‘French Flair (with the ball in hand)’ also gave us tennis, fly-kicks and head-butts on the field of play, and a hell of a cycle race. But possibly my favourite part of it all is the attitude: nonchalant and nonplussed, which has ironically led me to my current delayed circumstances and henceforth glowing reviews. Yes they are pricks for sending me to a tired grave tomorrow, but I can’t fault them after spending time with them. C’est la vie.

Numero trois is the French Language. In the second Matrix film, the Merovingian claims that “swearing in French is like wiping your arse with silk”. While I don’t do either, I can assume they are both luxuriant qualities. In fact, almost everything sounds better when using French words: arguing, ordering dinner, talking to strangers, giving directions in the car. Possibly everything with the exception of rapping.

On top of how it sounds, there’s also a distinct quality in the manners being used. Bonjour monsieur, bonsoir madame, etc. it’s almost an ethical way of speaking for lack of a better word. And don’t forget the introductory kiss; just because it’s not words doesn’t mean it’s not language. Very good ice-breaker, and it’s appreciated any time the ‘should I?’/’shouldn’t I?’ Kiss Hello situation is eliminated. You just do it.

At Number Two on the Top Five List of The Best Things French: French Women. I still can’t believe I haven’t named them top of this list but good reason will follow. French Brabes (One Syllable Corollary again; rolls off the tongue) are some of the finest in the world. Beautiful, sexy (not mutually exclusive concepts by design), slender, full lips, a superb fash/style appreciation, and they speak French! The perfect combination (except for Salma Hayek’s boobs of course).

French Brabes don’t share the same dark features as their Western European cousins – more mousy brown – but they carry a distinct aura about them. This aura shouldn’t be confused with arrogance, or an elitist condescending attitude that makes you feel like you might break into pieces if they lock their sunken, half-sleepy eyes onto yours. No, it’s more an acknowledgement that they live in such an aesthetically appealing environment already, that they must do all they can to enhance themselves in the face of such surroundings. In a method similar to animals anticipating danger, and VVS saving his best for Australia, French Brabes call on a 6^th sense that enhances their sex appeal, allowing them to be greater than the sum of their parts, and even making the shoulder pads on their throwback 80’s-era tailored jackets look desirable. Indeed the French Brabe is a cut above.

Finally at Number One, and keeping French Women from where they ought to be: French Cuisine. Yes, French Food, and to an equal extent the method by which one consumes French Food. It’s an important business, this eating. And not in a three squares a day kinda way. Lunch is the main meal of the day, so you take your time in the afternoon indulging in delicacies and political chit-chat in equal measures.

The food itself is a mixture of the alarmingly simple and the disarmingly odd. Fresh French bread bookends every meal, it seems. Yet in between the soft crunchy morsels of pain you might come across a lentil salad or a fluffy egg and fish creation that looks and tastes like neither, yet is evidently very moorish.

Or perhaps you’ll be served some local delicacies like beef tongue or escargots or veal face, each in their own delectable sauce. If you’re the kind who won’t drink spirulina because it’s green, then you may struggle with French food. My advice is to harden the fuck up and enjoy. It tastes like the finest, tenderest meat there is and the cartilage only adds to the experience.

All the while you’ll be sipping on a bottomless glass of Cote du Rhone or Beaujolais, seasonally depenent. And before it’s all over comes the best part: the cheese. It should almost be Number One by itself. The closest thing I got to a religious experience in France was my unhealthy obsession with St. Marcellin – a soft, locally produced cheese. I couldn’t forget the blues, bries and fromages blancs, but they’d need a few more pages.

Dinner will follow in the same vein but it will lack the pleasurable emphasis placed on lunch. It’s more a means to an end rather than the visceral, emotive experience one has at lunch time. Yet no matter what time you dine, you will eat well my friend.

So there’s my five and not a moment to soon. I’m back on English soil five hours late, and after a Subway sandwich while waiting for my train, I find myself pining for that paradoxical French land once more.