Just got back from a dirty weekend in the countryside. Not with that prissy English boyfriend of mine, who dumped me after I called him prissy in the last Embedded piece. With my new French Fry.
I'd like to call him my new French hotpants, like my trendy friend Viia from Fashion Magazine but unfortunately I can't. He was wearing Y-Fronts.
If you Google French etiquette or similar terms, you'll think you've reached the rules and regulations page of a Russian Cold War prison.
Most of the search pages are written by people who have Googled French etiquette.
I decided I owed it to you to try out the rules myself, sans Google.
I was trying to find a good quote to start this piece off, but couldn't find one that was tacky enough.
In vino veritas? Well, there's some truth in that.
"Get drunk and stay drunk forever." That's Baudelaire, the 1960s poet, and his fatherly advice to budding poets. Not so poetic, really.
So how about some philosophy? Fernand Desnoyer, the French philosopher, says "This is our night! Drink is the real pleasure! There's nothing after! Nothing except to drink again! While we wait for the dawn to rise!" Hmmmm, very philosophical.
In half of Europe, and many states and cities in the US, smoking in public places is illegal. In most bars and cafes in Paris, on the other hand, it is still obligatory. Refusing a proferred cigarette is like refusing a slice of birthday cake on the grounds that cake makes you fat.
Asking some hottie of the opposite sex for a light is a precursor to wild and extravagant sex in the toilets. Well, it usually works for me. And I've never visited a prostitute, but I'm told it's standard practice for the girls to offer the customer a post-shag fag in the hope of a bigger tip.
Nobody loves the weekly supermarket run, even in Paris.
But we all love a good market. Take a load of food that's normally available at your local superstore, clean and neatly packaged, placed at convenient heights on labelled shelves and surrounded by helpful recipes and appropriate sauces.
Now remove the items that are out of season, let a few of each go mouldy, cover everything over with a light covering of dust or mud, stand them in the sun for half a day, then arrange them randomly in rows under plastic covered stalls in overcrowded streets.
Food shopping suddenly becomes a lot more of an attractive prospect. Even something you'd want to do on your holiday.
We're not talking the dirty pleasures of cheese on toast in the middle of the night, or even cheesy-crust pizzas.
It's a rare thing if there's a carbohydrate in sight. Not even biscuits. What do you think this is, a children's tea party? You might be allowed to attach a breadcrumb if you're lucky, but that's as far as it goes. You might even catch sight of a grape, but you're not supposed to actually eat it. I once went to a restaurant in Paris where the grapes were plastic.
The pleasures of a good piece of cheese might be dirty, but at least they're enjoyed pure.
Bridges over the river Seine. There's a whole section about them in my guidebook. If you're the kind of person who believes their guidebook, you'll know that bridges in Paris are made of magic.
You know those scenes in Angel-A - desperate brooding man stands on bridge - unnaturally tall and beautiful female attempts suicide jump - heroic rescue - turns out she's an angel from heaven - love at first sight - grows giant wings and gets dragged off by the great Almighty - frantic avowals of eternal love - sun down, tongues out, violins up. Yup, happens all the time.
If you ask me, what the guidebooks say about the Seine is a load of old cod. Or to be truly accurate, a load of dead carp. The most romantic you'll get on a bridge in the centre of Paris is a pair of mangy pigeons shagging on a pile of ancient cigarette butts next to the overflowing bins.
The above Stephen Hawking with Parisian dancers photo is not the winner of a Fark Photoshop contest, au contraire, as a matter of fact we can vouch for its authenticity.
The lesson here? While the world's smartest man may be best known for his contributions to the fields of cosmology and quantum gravity, Mr. Hawking, like any run-of-the-mill non-genius, knows where to find sex in Paris.
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