Oh là là!
Earlier this month, France and Britain swung left in national “punishment” elections in the same week. The French fascist front who expected to take control of this ossified economy have been trounced and I could hear neighbours cheering. Quelle surprise.
Fair play to Macron – unlike the almost anagram-like Cameron in 2016, the President of the French Republic’s ‘Brexit’-like gamble paid off and he proved he’s a clever little bottom. Love to the beard.
Seriously, as Bastille Day storms its way through the country yet again, I thought it’d be a curious thing to mark seven years as a resident of France.
Europe’s second largest country after Ukraine, France is a secular republic and one of the founders of what is now the European Union. It’s famed for its cheap (largely nuclear) energy, cheese, cuisine, wine, first class footballers, long luscious coastline, excellent transport system, the Alps, clean rivers, beautiful buildings, and endless historic towns and cities… and the occasional riots.
Is it any wonder France is the world’s most visited country?
It’s also a stubborn mix of modernity and backwardness. The last remaining country in Europe where DNA paternity testing is still illegal; a country where people still use cheques to pay for goods, but where, in January 2024, it saw its youngest-ever prime minister and first openly gay one take his position. That’ll be 35 year-old Gabriel Attal from Emmanuel Macron’s Renaissance party, and who’s only been in politics for as long as I’ve been living here.
Anyway, without further ado, here’s a lovely listicle of 55 things that have cemented my Francophile status over the years, from discovering one of the French national soccer team is a distant cousin to the maker of the very first and last cars I’ve owned.
And it all started in the 1980s, around the time of that first holiday away from family — a week-long school trip to Normandy aged 12, just weeks after and just weeks after OMD’s Maid Of Orleans (The Waltz Joan of Arc) set the scene, in musical style at least, from “my” side of the Channel, and where the year before, the fourth single I bought (Adam & The Ants’ Ant Rap, 45 fiends) contained the immortal lines
“Buttons and bows and bleu, blanc, rouge
All things lively must be used
Liberté, egalité, aujourd’hui c’est très, très, très
Voici l’opportunité, nous Incroyables”
Vive la France.
Agnès B.
Alain Delon
Antoine Griezmann
Art Deco
Baudelaire
La Belle Époque
Benjamin Pavard
Brigitte Bardot
Cadinot
Catherine Deneuve
Champagne and red wine
Chanel
Charles Aznavour
Claude Debussy
Le Corbusier
Croissants
Customs, etiquette and tradition
Dior
Édith Piaf
Égalité
Épernay
Étienne Daho
Eurostar
François Kevorkian
François Truffaut
Gaspard Ulliel
Gaultier
Givenchy
Haussmann
Honoré de Balzac
Inspector Clouseau
Jacques Cousteau
Jacques Tati
Jean Cocteau
Jean Genet
Jean-Michel Jarre
Jean-Paul Belmondo
Jean-Paul Goude
Jeanne Moreau
Kylian Mbappé
Lacroix
Madame Bovary
Magic Fly
Marcel Duchamp
Marcel Marceau
Matisse
Michel Foucault
Moulin Rouge
Orléans, Rouen and Joan of Arc
Paris and The Louvre
Pernod
Peugeot
Renoir
Saint-Étienne
Tintin
Tour de France
Voltaire
Yannick Noah
Yves Klein
Yves Saint Laurent
Steve Pafford, Nice
