I’ve been a Francophile for as long as I remember, putting
me at odds with the majority of my fellow Englanders. Where my compatriots see
a nation of simians prone to laying down weapons with an unhealthy enthusiasm, and
afflicted with an innate weakness for cheese and shit wine, I have tended to
see a nation of philosophers and poets, artists and beautiful people. The
country of Monet, Rimbaud and Zola. And Plastic Bertrand.
I think I can trace this love of the French to my early years,
sitting in Hulme Library reading Tintin*,
immersing myself in a world of espionage, adventure, fluffy dogs, exotic
countries and drunken sailors. My early
impressions of France was that it was a country of excitement, where round
heads and tiny quiffs were the uniform of the super-cool, where the streets
were narrow and everyone seemed to carry a gun. It was my kind of place.
My experiences were drawn a little more into reality with my
first French lesson at St Thomas Aquinas High School**, when we were introduced
to the French family who inhabited the pages of Tricolre, the text book of choice in 1980s French classes. This was a (stereo)typical French family,
with a mere, a pere, a young son and a teenage daughter called Marie-France. It
is to Marie-France I apportion the inspiration for my real attraction to
France, because Marie-France would have been about two years older than me, and
was stylish, studious and pretty fit. As line-drawings go, anyway. Not a
Francine Smith or Lois Griffin, but enough for a pubescent adolescent to get
distracted by. If French girls were like that, I wanted in.
So, to my initial belief that France was a country riddled
with spies and pirates , the carefree, stylish young-girl-about-town was added***.
And so, until my twenties, this informed
my vision. France: a country of two-dimensional
adventure and penciled objects of desire.
I’ve recently returned from a trip to France, and every time
I go, my original simplistic love is diluted with real France, as it occurs in
the actual country. It’d be going a bit far to call it a disappointment, because
I still love it. But it would be fair to say that I’ve met few philosophers,
artists or pirates.
Most annoyingly for me, however, is that France has long had
a reputation for being tres chic, the
home of style, the fortress of couture. When
I first met real live French people, twenty-odd years ago, I was struck by the
lack of correlation between this idea, and that ever-pesky annoyance, reality. Then, in my very early twenties, all the
Frenchies I knew looked like they were dressing like their parents, or had been
dressed by their parents.
Nothing has changed.
The cheese is great, the wine is risky, the clothes are shite. At some point in the fifties, French fashion
was probably lightyears away from the staid, drabness of the rest of
Europe. In fact, for people over fifty,
the clothes would still be classed as very stylish. But the fashion for the
under forties is, with a few exceptions, best described as Meeting-the
In-Laws-Friendly. Not so much cutting edge as Alderley Edge.
So, while I am always sad to leave, and for a fortnight
afterwards dine on French produce purchased to draw out the holiday buzz, and
read some Baudelaire and Tintin with wistful pangs of regret for the life
Marie-France and I never made together, the
pain of leaving is easily lessened by purchasing some actual fashion on my
return to Blighty.
So tomorrow I’m getting a tiger-stripe onesie. I bet Tintin never had one of them.
*I know he’s Belgian, but at the age of seven I assumed he
was French. I don’t think I really became aware of Belgium’s existence until the 1982 World Cup. An awakening that has not improved my life in
any measurable amount.
** Which no longer exists.
Twenty-seven teachers won a lottery syndicate a few years after I left.
The school hit a rapid decline following twenty-seven resignations shortly
after.
***Like a younger Genevieve from The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. Or Les
Parapluies de Cherbourg, if vous preferez.
