Vive la France!

Yes, alright, I know....a few months ago I was slating the French and saying it was a great pity we couldn't use Jeff Goldblum to frighten them all back to where they belong, and never fear - there will always be a space in my heart for light-hearted racist banter. However, I must give them credit for things they do well: mainly cheese, sleaze, rudeness, old people, and cats. I base this entirely on thorough, unbiased research; a random trip across the border where people immediately started to drive in a totally erratic manner and where merde smeared the pavements and cobbled streets, sprinkling romantic shine to any town.

It started, funnily enough, with a cat and an wizened old man in Figueres, who found my friend and I strolling the streets before breakfast. A dentally-challenged man, so he was, and apparently ocularly impaired - he found it extremely difficult to keep his eyes fixed on ours instead of roving up and down our legs; a most terrible affliction. We'll never know whether we followed the cat or the cat followed us, but we were led straight to this gnome-like creature who vehemently disapproved of all things feline. By this time, I was convinced that the black cat was an enchanted girl whom the old man had bewitched, and she was asking for help in the rather bizarre manner of lying on its back whenever we called it, as if asking to have its belly rubbed.

 After the encounter, we made for France and much of the same. Not only were there cats everywhere - in trees, on cars, on gateposts - but there appeared to be a running theme throughout the place. Le chat qui rit is a restaurant so incredibly posh that they distainfully declined to serve us even a coffee. The cat was evidently laughing because potential customers are lured by the promise of smiling cats and a wonderfully decorated interior only to be spurned, sent away, pining for what can never be.... Obviously, the cats are somehow in league with the townsfolk, one who was probably a witch. I came to this conclusion after the evidence laid so forcefully at my door: she shouted at us, in French, from her window (something about private parking) then immediately demanded our company and kept us standing for twenty minutes whilst she spat all over us and her beard; I truly tried not to stare, but there was something bewitching about her wiry moustache hairs that mechanically moved up and down and side to side like a puppet's strings. If we hadn't left when we did, I'm certain we would have been transmogrified into some hairs on her upper lip - if anyone goes missing in the south of France, that's where to look.

So on to the très important business of luncheon: we tucked into a bella sandwich de steack, sauce barbecue, oignons, salade, fromage, tomate, poitrine fumée, et cheddar. Ah, que belle...it sounds so wonderful, so glorious, so French. It was a burger with bacon with cheese. It is a gift the French have, to have something so totally ordinary and dress it up with a fancy name - it's like making Katie Price elegant. Except that this burger was actually tasty.
And, oh, the sleazy men eyeing us up and down. Even with my thick winter coat I felt stripped and bare of all dignity. (Never mind I was wearing a miniskirt.) No wonder they had condom machines on the streets - just in case you were up for a quickie in front of the pharmacy, presumably because then, if the condom split, you could simply nip in for extra emergency contraceptives.

So, oui. I have ranted against the Fench in stereotypical British fashion. Yet polite people did help us when we were lost. But they were Catalan, so it doesn't count.