"Bobo" and Picasso

 

Le Marché, Place du Marché Sainte-Catherine

I chatted to my Airbnb host about what my Parisian friend had said about Parisians being cross and embêté.  

Ah, ben…she said, noncommittally, with what my father calls “the gallic shrug”.

Well, I said, illustratively, when I went into the cafe downstairs, I said “Bonjour”; the barman replied “Putain!” She laughed. Whatever he had been doing had not been going well.  He had seen me but a few minutes later said “Bonjour”, not in the sense of recognition and acknowledgement but in terms of, Yes, what do you want?

The comedy of the exchange perhaps appealed to her bobo side. Bobo has long been a derogatory term she said but she said she was out and proud about it.  It’s wanting your kids to be well-educated, in having nice things, but not taking things too seriously, being a little cool a bit funky, in the good sense, wanting to have fun. Her apartment was cosy, full of bright, Picasso inspired motifs and colours, posters of jazz musicians and jazz playing lazily in the background.  

She sent me to the superb Picasso museum in the Marais, where Paul Smith, the British designer had recently styled the latest exhibition. Museums tend not to be free in France as they are in the UK, but I spent €9 and stayed at least four hours there including a long time in the garden square.  

Picasso's magnificent sense of humour

Picasso museum garden

My host recommended Le Marché, a restaurant in Place du Marché Sainte-Catherine with an agreeable man running it and good food for a reasonable price.

Salade de betteraves et chèvre frais

If eating out in France, I like to go around midday.  You are more likely to get a table, the food is fresh and things have not become stressful.  Afterwards, I came across the husband and wife team running Moustache, an award-winning artisan glacier opposite the Square du Temple on the Rue de Bretagne. The 65% dark chocolate had just the depths you want in such a flavour and was not too sugary. 

I’ll have to come back, for other flavours, I said.  But what is there to do in the area?  The husband part of the team suggested the Musée des Arts et Métiers.  Before pudding though, I will need lunch, I said.  So he recommended Chez Nenesse, a simple restaurant, again with pleasant hosts, regulars at lunchtime and perfectly cooked fish.  The menu changes in the evening and becomes more upmarket.  The ice cream makers told you me you would have to book for the evening.

When I went back to them I tried the coconut ice cream which had an infusion of nettle, and was mixed through with chia and a pink kind of barberry, which only foragers normally know about. 

The outstanding ice cream that reminded me of the award winning independent ice-cream maker we used to have on George Street in Perth who had flavours like sea buckthorn. Now, another Perth resident, a young man has recently begun making outstanding ice cream to sell in Edinburgh, Joelato’s on NW Circus Place in Stockbridge. Apparently he trained at ice cream school in Italy.

Local administrations: France and Scotland

 

Regional specialities, clockwise:
carbonade maison, potjevleesch, poulet au Maroilles (a local cheese), 

The French countryside was not as I remembered.  Big Amazon-style warehouses dominated the flat landscape around town.  We were driven out to a retail park to 'Beers & Co', a chain, apparently, where the decor could have been anywhere in America but the food, or at least some of it was French, even regional and good (see photo).

I asked the mayor of the right-leaning town about it.  This was a former mining area, he said. We need the business.  The village where we were staying had a vending machine for baguettes.  I could hardly believe my eyes, but he was practical. If it isn’t profitable enough to have a boulangerie here, it’s the next best thing, he said.  Why?  Piped up one of the children? Well, for people who can’t get about, came another pragmatic answer.

France has long had a tug-of-war between centralisation, dating back to Louis XIV and the country's regional identities that find expression most famously in food and dialect. Administration in the area we visited was radically decentralised, compared to Perth and Kinross in Scotland. The mayor of the French town presided over 5000 souls, was paid alongside his day job in the professional classes and had several maire-adjoints, also paid, alongside their day jobs to help him. This mayor had been canny.  All his maire-adjoints were chosen by him and specialised in whatever they were experts in in their day jobs.  So when someone challenges us we can point to our day jobs, and say "I am a professional in this field, are you?"  Whereas in the next town, the woman in charge of security was a teacher.  In Perth and Kinross, the councillor heading up the powerful Environment and Infrastructure committee which decided the road and building decisions for an area over 2000 square miles. Most recently this person is a retired army officer.  Before that, it was a photographer. 

In that small town in France thirty elected councillors, some of whom also have specialised functions assist monsieur le maire, who has a budget and power.  I spend my time calling people to try to get money for grants and special projects on top of what we are allocated, he said. 

- Alors, il s'agit des relations, des contacts, quoi ?
- Oui, c'est ça.
- Ils viennent ici, ces gens-là, pour voir la ville ?
- S'ils veulent venir ici et manger dans le meilleur restaurant, c'est ce qu'on va faire.

So it was about contacts and wining and dining if necessary, to get the grants.

In Perth and Kinross, forty elected councillors decide the fate of the region, some 150,000 citizens.  The day to day running of the region is done by several thousand unelected operational and administrative council staff.  Villages towns and "community councils", voluntary organizations that are set up by law by the Local Authority. They are the most local tier of statutory representation in Scotland.  In our region they famously have no power, meaning that decisions are made on behalf of villages and towns across the region by the centralised authority whether the local communities like it or not.  The region's community councils passed a vote of no confidence in the Chief Exec back in 2009 but nothing has changed. 

Administratively, there was a déséquilibre in the twinning exchange.  I felt culturally there was too though there was nothing but excellent good humour, kindness and interest from the French.  The men in our party drank (beer) far more than the French and bragged about Scottish drinking culture in a way I found embarrassing and not what we should be exporting. They ordered Mcdonalds to eat and cooked only twice - once burgers, the other time sausages at 2AM in the middle of a 5 hour late night drinking session.  Astonishingly, the French took it all in excellent good humour and seemed to love having them there. Maybe because beer drinking is a big thing in that part of France.  Undoubtedly the kilts and and the bagpipes helped.

Eating French

Beers, Arras

In my Airbnb in the XXieme my Parisian host said going inside to pay (see previous post) was a new thing nowadays. Incidentally, the French will rarely bother you by bringing you the bill unasked.  It is seen as rude, a harassment, whereas in America, it is common, being all about table turnover and money. Restauration rapide is, besides, an American way.  Food is fuel, not an end in itself, a means to conviviality, or both.

I am still getting used to the new names for the French region.  The Nord-Pas-de-Calais and Picardy became les Hauts-de-France in 2016. I was there earlier in the week, before Paris on a town twinning visit. I asked the man from the mairie who picked us up at the airport what the regional specialities were.

- Les frites, he said.

- Comment?

- Les frites.

- Vous êtes sérieux? Les frites sont une spécialité de la région?

- Eh oui. 

- Ah bon?

It seemed too that fast food was on the rise in France.  

Et pourquoi?

- Ben, les gens ont moins de temps.
- So do you no longer have the “pause” entre midi et deux?  I knew they did.

- Si, si, on l'a.

- Et alors qu’est-ce-qu’ils font les gens s'ils ne passent pas ce temps à table?
- Ils mangent et puis ils discutent avec les amis.  

They eat and then talk.  I abandoned this line of conversation.

But it was true, apparently.  Chips, hand cut, were a northern speciality although I never did get to try them.  We were right next to the Belgian border.  Mussels, beer and chips were common.

When I was studying, articles about le zinc being a French institution abounded.  The loi Toubon, forbidding anglicisms like le weekend in public broadcasting and in governmental offices had been passed.  It was never implemented, said the mayor.  How could it be?  Things had changed.  Bars and cafes have declined from 600,000 in 1960 to 34,000 today.  

But meals French-style, at home, were still as I remembered.  Our hosts invited us to their place for a meal with hors d’oeuvres, a delicious stew, cakes, cheese and fruit and we reciprocated the next day when I cooked for 10 in our gite.  They arrived at 1PM and left around 7.30, with most of that time spent à table.  Oh, and the mayor brought horse meat. I didn't believe it at first and still do wonder. Yes, I tried it. It was slightly spiced and tasted like the German meats,  I had eaten regularly as a child: something between the pâtés and soft german sausages.

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Le zinc: the counter of a bar, symbol of an aspect of traditional French bar and cafe culture.

Paris new and old

Paris's new look: wildflower and rental scooters, Metro Barbès

A Parisian friend who was born on the Île de France and lives in the suburbs is not a fan of her home city.  I said it was the crottes de chien, the pollution and the “Non” culture of the Parisians that did for me after about four months around 1997.  That and not finding a job.  The dog do is awful she said, though on this trip I saw much less of it than previously and the pollution seemed better.  The e-bikes and scooters zipping across pavements though were alarming.  I narrowly escaped accident half a dozen times in three days. The push bikes in Amsterdam are speedy, but I never had the sense of being in imminent peril, partly because I was usually on a bike myself.  Nevertheless, in Amsterdam it is more the tourists  weaving on to the bike lanes that are the danger, whereas in Paris it is the scooters and ebikes infringing on the pavements or shooting across roads you are trying to cross. In 2022 there were over 450 injuries from “personal electronic mobility devices” alone and three deaths between 2021 and 2022, but rental scooters will be banned in Paris from this September. 

But what annoyed my friend most was the attitude of other people.  In a delicious irony she was embêtée, by people who feel embêté. The verb means to annoy, to bother, Je crois que je les embête / I think I am bothering them. It also means to be annoyed or to be bothered. Il est embêtant / he’s a pain, a bother, a nuisance; Il m'embête - ditto, but to me, i.e. he bothers me. So she disliked that Parisians were always annoyed with people. She gave some examples:  Tu les embêtes parce que tu es dans le metro, tu les embêtes quand tu demandes quelque chose de l’assistant dans un magasin, même si de t’aider c'est leur travail. Tu embêtes les gens tout le temps, quoi, peu importe ce que tu fais. In Paris, it didn’t matter what you did, whatever it was was going to upset people.

Even the homeless seemed careful not to embête anyone. Their tents were discreet and tidily set out down an alleyway in the Marais.

I had not been to Paris for well over twenty years and recalled the number of times I had been told:

Non, ça ne fait pas ici mademoiselle or Ah no, madame, je ne peux pas vous aider. 

If  I asked Sauriez-vous où ça pourrait se trouver?, the answer would inevitably be:

Ah, non.  Non.  Non.

Even if you don’t speak French, you will get the idea.  Parisians were not, at that time at least, very disponible. They were and still are famous for it, even among the rest of France.

At that moment, I wanted to get the bill and asked the waitress for it.  She didn’t say Ah non, of course, but the next best thing: C’est à l'intérieur, madame - i.e. it’s not our job to bring it out to you, you have to come inside to pay.