Working lunch...

I have never been keen on lunch time meetings, so I have fitted in perfectly well to the French system as it is usually not possible to have a meeting in France between the hours of 12 and 2pm, due to the fact that it is the sacred lunch hour(s), but on some occasions it just can’t be helped.

In the UK, this would either be dealt with by everyone just hanging on in there until the meeting finished, or for very special occasions by a platter of sandwiches and crisps, and possibly a few grapes.

Things are just a little bit different here….



Yes, this is a regular, even for internal meetings occurrence, and gives the words “lunch box” a whole new meaning.

Not only do you get a 4 course meal, complete with starter, main course, dessert and cheese, but each tray comes with individual mini bottles of olive oil & balsamic vinegar, and miniature metal knives and forks. All of which gets thrown away afterwards, except when some people, like me, scavenge round and collect up the knives and forks, wash them up and save them. For what I’m not quite sure, but to throw them away is scandalous…

This is not just our company, but hospitality stretches much further here. A great example is the difference between large multi-national company who we work with in both countries. In the UK, the most I have ever been offered was a cup of coffee and once, a free trial of their new yoghurt product. Woo hoo. In France, my colleagues were given a 3 course lunch with wine in the staff cafeteria.

Even at a meeting with another agency, suddenly a large cake box was produced which had large, individual chocolate cakes, which were possibly the most buttery, calorific and most gorgeous things I have ever tasted. If the plan was to render the whole of our team completely speechless and unable to write anything down due to trying to eat these large, oozing cakes then it certainly worked, not to mention I will do anything they ask as long as they promise a) more cakes or b) to show me where the bakery is…

Be careful where you wave that baguette...

The baguette is perhaps THE most famous French export. However, the supermarkets that produce “french sticks” in the UK just haven’t got it right. Do they not know that after 5pm at night the baguette you bought in the morning is not supposed to be edible still? It is supposed to be rock solid, providing every child (or student) with weapons that not only hit hard, but make a huge mess too – what fun, none of that poncey soft crusted stuff for us thanks.

Whilst I think it is great that the French have clearly kept preservatives out of their food (or whatever it is that means that all other bread worldwide keeps for longer), I have no reason to believe that it is due to health reasons, but more of a stubbornness to accept that any other country may have found something that may be useful in the culinary world.

It is therefore perfectly acceptable in most restaurants to give you a basket of fairly hard bread if you go there late in the evening – and what good exercise it is for the jaws too.

What is also so French about baguette is that it is frankly a ridiculous size and shape (well why would you take on the idea of another country just because it is more practical – stick to your traditions and all that). Baguettes never fit in shopping baskets, bags or anything else, which means 9 times out of 10 it’s tucked under someone’s arm, or sticking out of the basket on a bike (trés Français). Why not buy two that are half the length and fit in your bag? Because then you get twice the amount of rock solid baguette end that everyone tries so hard to avoid, except those who are trying to sharpen their teeth. (thanks to Pete for doing a classic French impersonation...)


I have even fallen foul to flying baguette debris on several occasions, when a bite of a baguette has launched a projectile of rock solid bread particle into my eye. Luckily, I sustained no lasting injuries and I have taken it as part of the initiation of becoming a local.

I may seem to be derogative to the baguette, but I have to admit that I love the stuff – baguette and a bit of butter is one of the simplest, nicest things you can eat. Such a shame that you don’t get given any butter with the bread in French restaurants….

Imagine my delight recently whilst reading Harry Potter in French, that Harry wards off all things evil by brandishing a baguette at them! Excellent news! Anyone who is scared of being attacked by a large snake, a werewolf, death eaters or Lord Voldemort need only grab the left overs from breakfast and all will be banished. However, I thought that this might not be taking their translation job seriously if they were changing the story to include French bread.

Not the case apparently – baguette = wand, stick and French loaf of bread evidently…

Je suis une trentenaire...

It sounds a bit more glamorous in French, but horror of horrors I have hit 30. It's actually not so bad at all - I now feel I can wear what I like, eat what I like and ignore the consequences... almost.

To celebrate my birthday I had a big black tie dinner (with my friend Gemma who was also hitting 30) back in London surrounded by my friends and family which was absolutely great, and very civilised which is surely a sign of my age. Without really planning to it seems I managed to hit the absolute height of ginger on my birthday, oh good...

Rugby & frogs

The usually very French Lyon has been invaded by Rugby fans. Although through the summer you could occasionally hear the odd English or American accent, it’s pretty much just French here. Suddenly the town has grown in size – and not just through volume of people, but individual size too. It is very rare to see any really fat French – bring on the worlds assortment of Rugby fans! What better place to be than in France when England gets off to such an incredible start. Incredible for the lack of any points whatsoever that is. Lucky for us that the French lost the football to Scotland last week so they can’t be too cocky.

Update as I didn’t publish this in time… oh how things have turned around with England through to the final! Woo hoo, bring on Saturday. How on earth do you approach a team who has thrashed you in the opening stages? We shall see.

For those of you who read my Korean blog, you may remember a particular blog entry where I wondered what happened if you kissed a large gold Frog – hoping particularly that it would turn into an extra rich prince. Not the case it would seem. I can safely say that if you kiss a large gold frog, it turns into a….. frog. Yes, I can now reveal that shortly after arriving in France I did kiss a frog – not a large inanimate gold one this time, but in the form of a French man, and he is now my boyfriend. Considering it is year of the Golden Pig out in Korea, it’s lucky I didn’t kiss a pig I reckon – although you could argue I have done in the past!

Here is the man in question... Guillaume! (oh what an easy one to pronounce and spell for a Brit!)

Les Vacances encore

Not having much holiday left, I am at least trying to make the most of my weekends. This weekend I visited a beautiful little village called St Germain – all flowers, cottages and farm houses basking in plus 30 degree heat, set on a hillside with a breath-taking view across the plains of the French countryside, dotted with trees, cows and the odd lake. And quite a lot of horse poo. I don’t know whether someone was hoping to grow roses in the middle of the road, but there was a good sprinkling along a 2 mile stretch of road. It all added to the charm and aroma of the countryside though.

The purpose of the visit was to visit Mr. Kauffman, a very nice French Grandpa of a friend of mine who, as it turns out, happens to live in a beautiful cottage with a beautiful garden which just makes you want to start drinking Pastis and stay there forever. I was given a tour of the house and garden – lovely vegetables growing in the sun, a cool dark barn-like extension to the house which although pretty much unused was at least a third bigger than my apartment in Lyon, and came with it’s own sunny garden, and numerous sunny, bedrooms with white shutters and pretty views of the garden.

Then there was “Le Cave” – a room used as a wine cellar which, I have learnt, any self respecting wine lover (and therefore French person) should have and nurture. Hard to do in a small flat, but one can try. This room, although not particularly large, housed around 300 bottles of wine, a few spirits, and more recent/ more frequently changing additions of a few crates of beer, among which I was a bit surprised to see a crate of “Desperado’s” – sweet lime flavoured beer with a dash of tequila more commonly drunk by English students in ski resorts or bars in Clapham.

I was very privileged to be given a short, sharp course in Brandy tasting by a connoisseur. Mr Kauffman has collected his brandy’s for many years, and the first one I tasted was made in 1969 – which would have been a sobering thought, drinking something 8 years older than me, except that sobering is the last thing that a 50% brandy does to you. Certainly warmed the cockles, and I imagine did the equivalent of exfoliation to the back of my throat, oesophagus and stomach lining. We tasted 3 in all – the last being a mere 6 years old, made of Mirabel’s which are a common fruit in the area (yellow prunes – haven’t come across them in England I don’t think…) and being of more recognisable strength and a fruity flavour. The first 2 had a definite difference between them, one being heavier and more honeyed, the second a bit more fruity but both incredibly strong. I noticed one bottled on the dusty shelf which said 70%. My only question would be, does alcohol get stronger with age? If those were nearly 40 years old and started off at that percent, lord only knows how strong they are now!

So after an impromptu brandy tasting course, we retired to the patio for some Mirabelle tart washed down with a very nice desert wine, in the late afternoon sun. Perfectly acceptable to be tipsy at 4pm on a Saturday afternoon, after all, I am (pretending to be) en vacance.

Les vacances...

This last week has seen a turn for the better in the weather here and has generally been scorching hot. It has been a slightly irritating hitch in my French holiday, having to go to work every day, but I am trying to maintain the pretence that I am just on a long holiday. To keep up the pretence, I have been strolling back from work in a casual manner (as casual as you can be with a heavy laptop bag) and indulging myself in a huge chocolate ice cream most days whilst sitting in Place Bellecour (as pictured) soaking up the holiday feel, and pretending I am a tourist.

Normally there are not many English speakers in Lyon, but this balance has tipped in the last few weeks as a few more Americans and English have arrived, but more noticeably the balance has shifted because the French have left. I don’t know what came first – do the tourists arrive and the French leave, or the tourists arrive because the French have left?! August in France of course means that everyone winds down a notch and most head for the coast or for their holiday villa somewhere other than the cities. Coming from England, this is all a bit of a change having been used to requests for 2 weeks holiday being met with raised eyebrows as if to say “2 weeks, what could you possibly want to do with 2 weeks off work, you slacker” and 3 weeks of holiday needing sign off from the MD and a bloody good reason! Here, the minimum time off seems to be 2 weeks, with plenty of people departing for 3, which is only reasonable given that most haven’t had more than 2 weeks off since May! (if only I was on a French contract and had that much holiday!).

So, this mostly leaves the English to sweat it out in the, until recently, non air conditioned office. However, the air conditioning has arrived. Now usually you wouldn’t notice air conditioning arrive. It is simply cool or not, there is simply a quiet background hum to an office or not. However, it was with great ceremony and a lot of difficulty that 3 large a/c units arrived the other day, about 4 foot tall and wide and trailing a hell of a lot of cabling and tubing which now snakes around the office in a very “un-health-and-safety-you’d-never-get-away-with-that-in-the-UK” kind of way. Big water cables, bundled up with electricity cables strewn across the floor, a few feet from a flight of stairs. Now if this was the UK, you could be forgiven for hatching up an elaborate incident to claim off the insurance and I am talking big bucks here – after all, how much could you get for tripping over, launching yourself down a flight of stairs whilst being electrocuted? However, I am sure the French would just think you were a clumsy idiot for doing so (and probably quite rightly so) so I am not going to test out the French compensation system just yet. I have a strong suspicion that there isn’t one.

So, back to the air con. The long awaited arrival of these machines hasn’t worked quite as well as we had hoped, due to the fact that half of the office still want their windows open, and the other half want a/c which therefore renders the a/c useless, or very over worked. The second flaw in the plan is the fact that the water tubes for the a/c unit nearest to me actually go out of the window, which obviously now has to be permanently open. No wonder perhaps, that after day 3, two out of the 3 are no longer working. Time to go on holiday perhaps?

I want to break free...

Evidently, having E.Coli then getting your bridesmaid dress fitted, then celebrating for 2 weeks by eating everything in sight is not good for then getting back into the dress for the wedding. Oops. It certainly was figure hugging, although perhaps more of a chunky crayon skirt than a pencil skirt. I really had problems when it came to sitting down, especially when I had to get into my car and drive. The seams began to stretch a bit, and by the end of the night the seams down the front were fully fraying. However, by that time of the night no one noticed, and it held on enough to protect my modesty. The reason I am smiling so much in this picture is because I am standing, and am therefore not at risk of the bottom of my dress making a bid for freedom, and of course because I am stood with my good friend Brownie.