The relationship between us Brits and the French has always been somewhat shall we say ‘rocky’…I have lost count of the amount of times I have heard someone say, “France is great, the only problem is, it’s full of French”.
I was actually in a bar in Shoreditch on Saturday night attending a friends leaving do. She happens to be moving to France next weekend. Her mother approached me and asked me what advice I could give her intrepid daughter…My response was simple, treat them like they treat you.
To highlight this point I want to give you a quote from Stephen Clarke’s book, ’talk to the snail’:
“ One Saturday morning, at a slightly snooty cheese shop near my home in Paris, I saw a woman get sadistically put in her place by a man in a white overall.
I was being attended to by the female half of the husband-and-wife crémerie team, and was ogling some small decorative goat’s cheeses - a selection of round pats of fresh white cheese sprinkled with black pepper, encrusted in sultanas or coated with herbs. But the viciousness of the snub was shocking enough to distract me from drooling.
The victim, a middle-aged lady, bustled into the shop, already rifling through her handbag for her purse. Probably in a rush to get home to give her kids their lunch.
“Un litre de lait frais demi-écrémé, s’il vous plâit”, she said. A bottle of semi skimmed milk.
The male co-owner exchanged a look with his wife, who raised her eyebrows in sympathy . “Bonjour”, he said to the woman.
“Un litre de lait frais demi-écrémé, s’il vous plâit”, she repeated, getting out her cash.
“Bonjour”, the owner repeated, a little louder this time.
“Je voudrais juste un litre de lait”, she said, changing tack and still not fully realising that there was a problem. She was explaining that she only wanted milk, and was not splurging on expensive cheeses, because cheese-shop owners sometimes think that it is beneath their dignity to sell unfermented dairy products, especially semi skimmed ones.
“Don’t you ever wish people good-day Madame?”, the cheese seller asked. Subtext: I am not a servant, I am a noble purveyor of fine foods, I have a house in the country and a cleaning lady who irons my overalls, so you’re not getting your piffling bottle of milk until you say hello.
“Oh, sorry, yes, of course, bonjour”. the woman said, blushing and apologising. She look expectantly across at the cheese seller. She was still in a hurry, still hoping to buy some milk and get back home before the weekend was over.
“Bonjour Madame”, the cheese man said. “What would you like?”
The customer had to repeat her request for a bottle of milk, and then wait while the shopkeeper counted out her change and put the plastic bottle in a bag, “because we like to treat our customers comme il faut (properly). He saw absolutely no contradiction between what he was doing and what he was saying.
At last the woman was allowed to leave the shop, with a loud “au revoir” from both husband and wife ringing in her reddened ears.
I really should have walked out, but I’d been sent on a last minute errand to get the cheese for a lunch party, so I meekly made my selection, paid and wished them a polite ‘bonne journée‘.
By the way, I must emphasize a key aspect of the previous scene - it was a clash between two French people. We non-French people often think that the French are trying to insult us because we’re foreign, but it’s not true. They’re like that with each other too.”
My only other piece of advice would be…Good luck!
Don't go to France without reading this book!
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