France is a foreign country;they do things differently there. One of my favourite French places is Montpellier. It has the air of a city designed by Syrie Maugham, that celebrated 1920's progenitor of all that is white and spacious. She was married to Somerset Maugham; a marvellous writer of whom I am very fond. She, alas, was not quite so keen, and their marriage was famously acrimonious. It featured bitter words, open sobbing at dinner, and the regular crash of pearlised pottery. A riveting biography of WSM exists, written by Selina Hastings in 2009. In one section it recounts how the ageing Maugham visited a clinic in Vevey, for the purposes of having fresh minced sheep foetus pumped into his buttocks with a syringe of the kind more usually found in a horse doctor's bag. This he found so up-perking that he was later observed by an elderly lady chasing his companion/secretary around Vevey Station in a game of hide and seek,carolling "You-hoo" as he leapt out giggling from behind the ticket office. The old lady chided his red-faced and reluctant playmate, Alan Searle, with the words "You ought to be kind to that nice old man, you know.He thinks he's Somerset Maugham" . Noel Coward had gone in for the same treatment; briskly pronouncing it "Non-ewe".
The Maughams attempted to distract themselves from their dismal situation by moving to ever-grander houses,which Syrie would cause to be decorated in white wood, silver, and the height of Art Deco elegance. And so I always thought of them when I was in Montpellier. Apart from all the splendid spacious blue and whiteness; it boasted two English bookshops, which is probably two more than we now have in England. There was also an exceedingly tempting selection of clothes shops.Not by any means haute couture, but stylish and cheap, as Montpellier has a population of 553,000, of whom 552,500 are students. I have fond memories of shopping there,in the far-off days when I was allowed to have credit cards and a job. The G.B's ferociously French father would take the child to see his rels in a nearby area.They would go to visit some fish they knew, and go cycling..(not the fish, they don't need bicycles, apparently), and for blissful picnics by the river. As this was and remains my idea of Hell, I would get the train to Montpellier and stay there until it was safe to return. I was a smaller person in those days,and could almost fit into French sizes. My stumbling block was my breasts, which stubbornly resisted any attempts to be manipulated into Taille 40, and would make sudden leaps for freedom,usually when on the Metro or in Monoprix. French sales assistants took a dim view. I was straining to fasten some buttons on a really rather lovely jacket (Prix Shoc!) one afternoon. Failing to subdue my stubborn British chest, I handed it back to the vendeuse with "Oh dear, I am afraid it is too small.." "Mais non, madame" she replied with all the tactful charm that the French have made their calling card throughout Europe;"It is Madame who is Too Big". I wanted to flatten her with my huge meaty fist. It is worth adding , that at this point in my life I was a size 10, (apart from the offending items who had their own postcode). I went shopping with my friend Gaelle, who was, pleasingly, a meteorologist, in Galeries Lafayette or similiar.We were nattering away around the bras, and I began to finger them with intent. She looked troubled, and whispered,without any malice whatsoever, "Oh Leez, ahm soh sorree to tell you, we will 'ave to fhaind zher Beeg Ladeez shurp for zhose".
Right.
Not only was I freakishly huge, I was also conspiciously white-skinned. It got to the stage where, if in a town where the circus had just pulled in, I would contemplate handing out flyers. Most of the inhabitants thought I was a sideshow anyway. Mind you,during a stay in Southern Italy, I was denounced as a witch. THAT was the long red hair,oh, and the broomstick I suppose.
I am here to tell you, though, that the small dimensions of the French female are absolutely not as a result of the healthy,refined lifestyle implied in those smug and maddening books. You know the ones about how French women don't get fat/old/jealous/grubby etc?They are thin because they smoke all the time and live on black coffee and one yoghurt a day. C'est simple.
As a Celtic Giantess, I tried to explain that I subsisted on potatoes, in their various forms, washed down with large quantities of booze. They looked scandalised by this,wondering openly and aloud how it could be that Les Anglaises could reproduce themselves? As the French chaps present had already expressed the opinion that English men were , to a man, homosexual,it was turning out to be a grim evening all round for the Entente Cordiale.
I am doing my bit for international relations further afield by teaching English to a pretty Russian girl. She and I have wrestled with, and partially subdued, the Gerund,and are now tackling some fairly sticky irregular verbs. I find myself running out of logical explanations as to our grammatical structure,and often end up saying "Well,it JUST IS, Natasha". I feel obliged to apologise to her for the frankly mad departures from sense and reason that, for instance, cause words like bow, bough, cow and cough to do the things that they do. She keeps telling me ,reproachfully,that the weather is beautiful in Omsk just now. But I'm not apologising for our weather as well; it's too much responsibility for one woman. At least we share a love of spuds and hard liquor, that should see us through the winter nicely.
The Maughams attempted to distract themselves from their dismal situation by moving to ever-grander houses,which Syrie would cause to be decorated in white wood, silver, and the height of Art Deco elegance. And so I always thought of them when I was in Montpellier. Apart from all the splendid spacious blue and whiteness; it boasted two English bookshops, which is probably two more than we now have in England. There was also an exceedingly tempting selection of clothes shops.Not by any means haute couture, but stylish and cheap, as Montpellier has a population of 553,000, of whom 552,500 are students. I have fond memories of shopping there,in the far-off days when I was allowed to have credit cards and a job. The G.B's ferociously French father would take the child to see his rels in a nearby area.They would go to visit some fish they knew, and go cycling..(not the fish, they don't need bicycles, apparently), and for blissful picnics by the river. As this was and remains my idea of Hell, I would get the train to Montpellier and stay there until it was safe to return. I was a smaller person in those days,and could almost fit into French sizes. My stumbling block was my breasts, which stubbornly resisted any attempts to be manipulated into Taille 40, and would make sudden leaps for freedom,usually when on the Metro or in Monoprix. French sales assistants took a dim view. I was straining to fasten some buttons on a really rather lovely jacket (Prix Shoc!) one afternoon. Failing to subdue my stubborn British chest, I handed it back to the vendeuse with "Oh dear, I am afraid it is too small.." "Mais non, madame" she replied with all the tactful charm that the French have made their calling card throughout Europe;"It is Madame who is Too Big". I wanted to flatten her with my huge meaty fist. It is worth adding , that at this point in my life I was a size 10, (apart from the offending items who had their own postcode). I went shopping with my friend Gaelle, who was, pleasingly, a meteorologist, in Galeries Lafayette or similiar.We were nattering away around the bras, and I began to finger them with intent. She looked troubled, and whispered,without any malice whatsoever, "Oh Leez, ahm soh sorree to tell you, we will 'ave to fhaind zher Beeg Ladeez shurp for zhose".
Right.
Not only was I freakishly huge, I was also conspiciously white-skinned. It got to the stage where, if in a town where the circus had just pulled in, I would contemplate handing out flyers. Most of the inhabitants thought I was a sideshow anyway. Mind you,during a stay in Southern Italy, I was denounced as a witch. THAT was the long red hair,oh, and the broomstick I suppose.
I am here to tell you, though, that the small dimensions of the French female are absolutely not as a result of the healthy,refined lifestyle implied in those smug and maddening books. You know the ones about how French women don't get fat/old/jealous/grubby etc?They are thin because they smoke all the time and live on black coffee and one yoghurt a day. C'est simple.
As a Celtic Giantess, I tried to explain that I subsisted on potatoes, in their various forms, washed down with large quantities of booze. They looked scandalised by this,wondering openly and aloud how it could be that Les Anglaises could reproduce themselves? As the French chaps present had already expressed the opinion that English men were , to a man, homosexual,it was turning out to be a grim evening all round for the Entente Cordiale.
I am doing my bit for international relations further afield by teaching English to a pretty Russian girl. She and I have wrestled with, and partially subdued, the Gerund,and are now tackling some fairly sticky irregular verbs. I find myself running out of logical explanations as to our grammatical structure,and often end up saying "Well,it JUST IS, Natasha". I feel obliged to apologise to her for the frankly mad departures from sense and reason that, for instance, cause words like bow, bough, cow and cough to do the things that they do. She keeps telling me ,reproachfully,that the weather is beautiful in Omsk just now. But I'm not apologising for our weather as well; it's too much responsibility for one woman. At least we share a love of spuds and hard liquor, that should see us through the winter nicely.
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