I fainted on the Rue de la Rivoli! (La smorgs is back!)

Yep, fancy going?

Tis but a short walk for McTag.

x

Three buses and a longish walk, I reckon, or an intrepid bike ride through the mean streets of south Manchester.

I'm away for the weekend (LLandudno).

I will be back with further adventures on Monday. Till then...

smorgs
x

I wait with bated [ah!] breath.

How interesting that both Sarah and Mctag come from Manchester! Hmmm. Could be something going on there!

Bonjour, ma vielle amie smorgs! I'm enjoying your travelogue very much.

What I want to know is, what did you mean to say when you said, "regardez mois grande jolie moule." Just wondering...

Sir,

I resent the suggestion of impropriety (and I can't even spell it) betwix McTag and myself. McTag rarely has the bus fare to travel all the way to the South Manchester area ('cos I is posh). Unless he has had a sucessful day busking outside the Arndale Centre.

mac11, what I meant to say was 'look at the large, lovely mussels' in an attempt to have a conversation gastronomique. I was informed that the word 'moule' is a slang term for a woman's 'treasure chest'.

Best damn moules I ever had...

Boy, that was a short "weekend"!

How was Llandudno?

Reminds me of a joke....

Old man (ruefully) says "When I was a young lad, for a joke, I had "Llandudno" tattooed on my male member.

But it only says "Ludo" now".

Owww! [Howls!]

Mctag, that was a bloody awful joke!

Made me smile though...

This report in today's The Observer comes too late for smorgs ...



The Observer, 06.08.2006, page 43

Look you, boyo...

I'm back!

It was really great eating crap food, staying in a crap B&B, surrounded by Burberry clad chavski's and devil dogs on the litter strewn beach!

(can you tell I miss France?)

x

Oui should go to France together someday, smorgs. Our travel styles are tres similar!

Oh yes lets do, Eva...

I'll look on the internet, you get the fake tan, guide book, and Vodka!

x

Oooh can I come to...

I'll promise to win us a fortune everyday at the casino so we can extend our stay indefinitely if we like...

I've already got the fake tan and the guide books. I'll bring you some vodka if you like, but with all that vin blanc, who needs it? Good wine is cheaper than Coke in France.

I have lots of scarves, too. You have to wear a scarf to be truly Parisian, y'know. Tie it around the handle of your handbag if nothing else.

We'll put Casino Joe on a bus from Nice to Monte Carlo (gorgeous drive) and he can wire us his winnings.

Joe Nation gave me some get-by tips that made my trip to Paris so much fun. Let me see if I can find his guide to understanding French. It was hilarious. It's in a file here somewhere......

Your tan looked natural to me when I saw you in Chicago, Eva.

You saw me at my natural transparent white stage, wandeljw. That was early May. I don't break out the self-tanner 'til June. :wink:

Ah, here it is!

-----------------

To learn French easily one must be born there, but no matter. French son tres facile. (My French boy has three faces.) It is all a matter of looking at the words or, if you have to, listening to them because they just go on and on forever making these blurps and jetets (jettys) and je vouses till you could just choke them, but I digress, what was I saying?? OH yes, just look at the words until they make sense. Get a piece of paper and cover the following translations below until you KNOW what they mean. Amaze yourself.

Okay, ready?

HARLEZ-VOUS FRANCAIS
Can you drive a French motorcycle?

RESPONDEZ S'IL VOUS PLAID
Honk if you're Scottish.

LE ROI EST MORT. JIVE LE ROI
The king is dead. Just kidding.

MONAGE A TROIS
I am three years old.

L'ETAT, C'EST MOO
I'm bossy around here.

Another good way to learn French is to buy an air filter made by Bionaire ("My resume is hot air." See? Easy!) There's a whole lot of French words in the instructions that you can look at till you understand them. You have to be careful though about which French people you read them to. I tried reading them to some people in a restaurant (French word!) and apparently there is a lot more humor in those instructions than one might guess. I had to stop when the wine began coming out of their noses.

Which is another way of learning to speak French. Drink about two and a half bottles of French wine. There is something in the grapes because right after about the sixth glass you begin to understand everything that is spoken to you no matter what the language is. Tres bien! Nes Paz. ("Good hair, but not my father's.")

Next we'll talk about money, which they don't have any of in France. It's all like Monopoly money. You just give them some bills until they say, "Ouch, ouch, mercy!" (Oui, oui, merci.)

-------------------

I respectfully submit some of my own observations of Parisian life:

1. You can often gage the sophistication of a café by the way they take your payment. If they ask you to pay immediately after serving you your coffee, it's usually a lower-rung establishment. If they give you a bill but do not ask you to pay right then and there, it's a little more sophisticated. If they wait until you're obviously done, or long after you're obviously done, or long after you've asked for the bill and have grown tired of waiting, it's a pretty sophisticated café, or is trying to be one.

Sometimes you can also get a measure of the café by what they do if you've paid the bill but wish to linger for a bit. Sophisticated cafés will take your money and the bill, trusting themselves to remember that you paid. Less sophisticated cafés will take your money and leave the receipt but put a slight tear in it to indicate that it's been paid. Really low-class places will crumple the receipt into a little ball. At one place I went to, the waiter came to take my money but had a heavy tray of dishes in one hand, so he picked up the receipt with his other hand, put it into his mouth and chewed on it a bit. I haven't decided where that lies on the sophistication scale.

2. In Paris, the "fast" in "fast food" refers to the time it takes to make the food, not the time it takes to serve it. Eating at a "fast food" place is quite likely to take as much time as eating at a restaurant; the only difference is that the food is worse and no one waits on you.

3. French cashiers will do everything in their power to minimize the amount of change they have to handle. If the change you cause them to hand you consists of at least three coins, expect to receive The Look of Utmost Disgust. Tempting though it may be to placate them, DO NOT OFFER TO PAY WITH CREDIT CARD INSTEAD. You'll just piss them off more. It requires them to restart the entire transaction.

4. Many French businesses close for lunch--including, counterintuitively, restaurants and cafés. A restaurant sign reading "non-stop service" does not mean it's open 24 hours a day; it just means it doesn't take a lunch break. Businesses that do take lunch breaks often do not have regularly scheduled times when they do this; sometimes the lunch break happens whenever they decide they're hungry.

For some of the smaller, more informal establishments, the lunch break does not necessarily mean that the workers actually leave to eat lunch; it doesn't even mean that they close their doors or that you are forbidden from entering. It just means they stop working. In some cases you are still allowed to come in, chat with the proprietor and enjoy a cigarette. The one thing you are not allowed to do is order food.

Eva and Shapeless, those are priceless!

But smorgs, dear heart, I'm on tenterhooks waiting for the story of how you fell into a dish of ravioli.