A trip to London with Bilal

Recently, I needed to travel to London on business and I hadn't seen so much of Bilal on account of various other things that needed to be done (in spite of my Frenchwoman efficiency) and so I asked him to travel with me to London.  Given his relative lack of travelling experience, I wanted to show him why there is such a need for my magazine to be promoted and be part of the fight against lack of sophistication.  As always, he was reluctant, on account of his predisposition to homesickness.  We took a TGV to Paris and a Eurostar to London on the Friday afternoon: - I have made this journey numerous times, though Bilal hasn't done the Paris-London leg before.  I am eagerly anticipating the introduction of Eurostar's direct London-Marseille services.Following a bit of research, I found out about a part of London that I thought Bilal would be inclined to visit.  I found out that the Borough of Southwark contains the Aylesbury estate: - one of the roughest areas in the whole of the United Kingdom, home of the rapper Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu, better known by his stage name Tinie Tempah, for the first twelve years of his life.  This was so that Bilal could be with the "homies", lol.  I also found out that the Borough of Southwark contains the church where Charles Spurgeon preached.

Earlier in the visit, we visited some marginally more sophisticated places.  In a previous post, I talked about Mariage Frères, the French brand of tea that knows how to do tea properly, unlike stupid English people, who tend to drink the disgusting "English Breakfast" variants with milk.  Yuck!  They have a counter in a British store named Selfridges on Oxford Street.  I was booked into a hotel that had the disgusting English stuff and I had forgotten to pack some Mariage Frères tea, so I was pleased to discover this.  While in Selfridges, I also discovered that Selfridges has a mini gluten free section in the food hall.  Bilal bought a few gluten free cakes: - as I mentioned, he is an extremely ravenous man on account of being tall, muscular and having coeliac disease!  The complete antithesis of me as the Impossibly Dainty French Woman!  I explained to Bilal that he should make sure to avoid developing a taste for sweet foods such as creamy cakes, given that they are characteristic of unsophisticated people.  Unfortunately, the taste was already there, as people in Mali are used to drinking extremely sweet tea!  Still, he is thankfully unlikely to consume such things regularly, given that coeliac-friendly bakeries are not exactly ubiquitous in Marseille!

I bought some Mariage Frères tea from Selfridges in the evening.  Given the late hour of our arrival, there weren't many options available for sophisticated French stuff in London (our decision to visit London was last-minute).  I found some French restaurants in London, though they were a pale imitation of the real thing.  Bilal and I ate in various French restaurants on the Friday evening and on the Saturday.  On account of our unwillingness to do anything that would generate employment on the Lord's Day (Sunday, remember the 4th commandment), we had no intention of visiting restaurants, meaning we therefore desired a packed lunch.  Good quality food stores are hard to come buy in the UK, so we decided to go to a bog-standard place in the Knightsbridge area known as Harrods.  The food wasn't particularly good quality, but it was the bare minimum that I was willing to condescend to, MDR.

I conducted my business meetings late on the Friday and during the Saturday: - a Frenchwoman is careful about work-life balance and does not avoidably work on a Sunday, much less a Bible-believing Frenchwoman!  The people involved in the business discussions wanted to resume discussions on a Sunday and I completely refused, saying that I would sooner refuse their business than work on a Sunday: - luckily, they agreed to have some late-night business discussions instead.  The discussions finished just early enough for me to catch up with Bilal that evening, who was at the Aylesbury Estate when I called him.  The estate is currently in the process of being demolished, though not all of the residents have left yet.  Bilal doesn't speak English and so had been struggling to communicate with the locals, though some of them were French speakers.  When I arrived, I agred to help him out by interpreting for him.  My interpretation capabilities were pushed to the max, as Bilal was talking in French hip-hop slang and the people in the Aylesbury estate also spoke hip-hop slang!  I probably looked rather ridiculous like Cléo Le Tan, a middle-class "bien élevée" ("well-brought-up") woman using hip-hop slang!

Bilal was asked by some hip-hop people if he would sing them a song.  They probably thought he would sing something silly, such as "Jungle is massiv", but instead, Bilal gave the most beautiful performance of "Je suis Tien, Seigneur" ("I am Thine, O Lord", by Frances Crosby): - http://www.mcreveil.org/Recueil/cantiques/lyrics/jsts278.htm .  One of the others present was from Congo and was therefore able to tell his friends what the lyrics meant.  Rather than an encore, he opted to sing "Croire, obéir" ("Trust and obey", by John Sammis): - http://www.mcreveil.org/Recueil/cantiques/lyrics/co396.htm.  Prior to his performance, the people present were boisterous, yet almost as soon as Bilal started to sing the first hymn, the silence was deafening.  Again, I know Bilal has made some friends for life and again, they parted with a fist bump!

The following day, we visited Charles Spurgeon's church.  In my church, we are very familiar with the work of Charles Spurgeon.  As with Bilal, The Assistant Pastor comes from Mali, yet he speaks a very educated form of French, rather than Bilal's hip-hop slang: - a fact I can hopefully use to persuade Bilal to learn to speak properly! I don't believe I would find a better boyfriend anywhere else and I adore Bilal in spite of this idiosynracy, but this is nevertheless something I want to work on.

We took the very earliest Eurostar service to Paris (05.40-09.26), as I was eager to be surrounded by sophistication again, with the Marseille train following shortly afterwards (I'm posting this via mobile broadband).  During the journey, Bilal told me that he is beginning to loosen up when it comes to travelling to unfamiliar destination, given that "homies" don't only exist in La Savine!  MDR!  Bilal has always been awkwardly shy, but I seem to be having some success in getting him to come out of his shell.  I am enjoying having a new travelling companion who I absolutely adore.  I hope our relationship progresses quickly.  Bilal refuses all physical contact with me (quite rightly, given that we are unmarried) and I have very rarely seen him without some sort of head covering (given that he is a tuareg): - he wore a hooded sweatsuit during the trip to London.  I can't bear to be apart from him for long and I can very easily see myself being his wife one day.

L'Occitane en Provence is now coming to St. Pancras International station

I was recently in St. Pancras International station: - regrettably, I had to attend to a business engagement in London.  Tee hee!  When I was there, I noticed that L'Occitane en Provence is opening a store in the station on the 20th of March (two days' time at the time of writing).  I thought I would educate my readers about this chainstore, which seeks to bring the finesse of Provençale culture to the rest of the world.  Given Eurostar's plans to offer direct services to Marseille next year, I am hoping that Provençal tourism authorities and Eurostar will use this opportunity to tie up with L'Occitane en Provence to promote the area as a tourist destination, perhaps in the St. Pancras International branch.

Me personally, I don't tend to buy from them unless I am buying a cheaper alternative for a business client as a present if the person in question is too unsophisticated to know the difference between this and the highest quality stuff.  Sometimes, this has been necessary, on account of not finding out in advance of my arrival in the UK that I plan to visit the people in question.  In terms of what I personally use, I will spend whatever money is necessary to get the finest hand-crafted products locally in Marseille: - I'm the bee's knees (meaning that nothing but the best will do for me) and I must always look my best.  However, this doesn't mean that L'Occitane en Provence's products are poor quality: - it just means they aren't right at the very top of the quality scale, MDR.

If, for whatever reason, one is not able to travel to Marseille to buy the finest quality local handmade products and one doesn't want to do mail order, then I just adore going to L'Occitane en Provence.  When I lived in London, I sometimes had to do this.  Sometimes, I was working very long hours (despite my instincts as a Frenchwoman that efficiency was more important) and didn't have the time to travel to Marseille.  Under such circumstances, my parents would often send beauty products to me by post, but sometimes things didn't arrive and sometimes I was away overnight (e.g. attending post-show fashion show parties) and therefore unable to pick up the packages as normal.

A Frenchwoman just adores verbena perfume from Provence!  As Mireille Guiliano said, "French women know one can go far with a great haircut, a bottle of champagne and a divine perfume".  Verbena perfume is exactly that: - divine (in the non-religious sense of the word).  The aforementioned woman also correctly said that we would never forget to dress up, even for taking out the rubbish: - added to my list of things to never forget would be my verbena perfume.  Mireille also advises caution about which perfumes to use in which circumstances: - of course, all this is second-nature to a sophisticated Frenchwoman such as myself.

I would also never be without Savon de Marseille, one of the things that make Marseille so sophisticated and without equal.  As L'Occitane en Provence explains, there are several criteria that soap must fulfil in order to receive the classification "Savon de Marseille", most notably 72% of the content being olive oil.  L'Occitane en Provence sells something vaguely related under its "Bonne Mère" label, though they have craftily worded some of the variants as "Bonne Mère Marseille Soap", presumably to get around the fact that it doesn't fulfil the criteria for Savon de Marseille.  I have no doubt that this is an attempt to dress an industrial product up as a small-scale hand-made product.  This is exactly what is done with Bonne Maman products: - they use packaging and a name to create this image, but the image they create is decidedly phoney.  If one wants to find the real thing, one should visit various provençale market towns.

I have a whole list of toiletries that I would not like to be without.  This is one of my reasons for my continued enthusiasm for travelling by train: - I like to have all my luggage with me and there are extreme restrictions on the quantities of liquids that can be taken aboard a plane!  Carrying around her lipsticks, perfumes, soap, shampoo, conditioner etc around with her is one of the ways in which dainty Frenchwomen such as myself get passive exercise that helps keep us dainty: - we don't drive around everywhere and keep them in the "trunk" (an American corruption of "boot").

In summary, L'Occitane en Provence's St. Pancras International branch will not sell things that are good enough quality and stylish enough for me, but I hope it will help bring Marseille and the provençale culture to the uneducated masses and inform them about Marseille (and indeed the whole of Provence) as a tourist destination.  Tee hee!

Is takeaway food bad?

I have often heard the question debated about whether takeaway food is bad and I saw an article on the BBC's website at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-26546863 about the issue.  So what do I, as the Impossibly Dainty French Woman think regarding the question of whether takeaway food is bad?  Yes and no.  It depends on various factors.

If we are talking about battered Mars bars, that archetypical example of disgusting British cuisine that can be found in some Scottish takeaways, then Bilal's coeliac disease and the barley malt in the ingredients list plus the flour in the batter mean they would be very bad news for him.  For me, they would be bad news on account of their severe lack of sophistication!  Tee hee!  I would also not be willing to touch the fish, chips and mushy peas shown in the picture below.

I have noticed that British takeaways, which have sadly been serving curries instead of fish and chips in recent decades (not that this was ever tasty, but it is a shame that Britain is selling itself out), tend to serve things in much bigger proportions than in France.  In a British takeaway, when buying fish and chips, one will get a huge package of thickly-cut chips wrapped up in newspaper, whereas in France, one receives a dainty portion of thinly-cut chips in a small square polystyrene container.  Granted, French chips tend to have more fat per unit weight, given the increased surface area, but what people forget is that cutting one's food up into small pieces is a way we impossibly perfect Frenchwomen have of making less seem like more!

Me personally, I wouldn't touch such disgusting food even if it were done the French way, though as I have admitted in previous posts, I am very partial to sophisticated French dishes that use potatoes and fat, such as tartiflette!  Tee hee!

The summary answer to the original question of whether or not takeaways are bad is as follows: - not if you are a dainty and sophisticated Frenchwoman who only eats the daintiest of portions like me, but its unsophisticated nature means one will probably eat more on account of getting one's jollies from one's stomach being stretched, rather than the effects on one's taste buds, MDR.

Meet France's toughest rappers: - a programme I watched with Bilal

I don't know if any of my readers have heard of a French celebrity named Cléo Le Tan.  I use the term "celebrity" in the loosest sense of the word, as it would be legitimate to describe her as being famous for being famous.  As someone in the fashion industry, I am very aware of her antics as a party girl and her failed attempts to replicate the fame of her forefathers.  As a believing woman, I don't care much for many of the silly celebrities out there, but if one is a fashion magazine editor and owner, one has to know the industry very well in order to stay on top of the game.

Her father is the French painter Pierre Le-Tan.  Her father's father is the Vietnamese painter Le Pho (famous for exaggerating women's skinny figures, though mine needs no exaggeration, MDR), who came to France for his studies in fine arts and married a Frenchwoman: - no surprises there, though Vietnam is one of the few nations with thinner women than France!  Tee hee!  Her father's father's father was the last Viceroy of Tonkin (Northern Vietnam).  Her sister is Olympia Le Tan, who has had arguably more success, in her case as a fashion designer.  Cléo Le Tan is descended from royalty, yet she is suffering the ignominy of having to make herself famous by being a party girl.  As of late, she has tried to make a name for herself as an author, though not with any noteworthy success.Pierre Le Tan commented not all that long ago that his daughters were raised amongst antique dealers, designers, writers, decorators, architects, landscapers ... same-sex couples who lived together and dressed up to attend masked balls.  Being a believing woman, I am very glad I did not grow up around same-sex couples.  However, she has therefore had privileges I can only dream of, yet all she has managed to make of herself is a name for being a party girl.  Apart from anything else, I would never allow her to appear in my fashion magazine, as she isn't even thin by French standards!

Anyway, enough details about why Cléo Le Tan is a non-celebrity clinging to the coat tails of her forefathers, I recently watched a programme with Bilal presented by her called "Meet France's toughest rappers", in which she exposed the dark underside of the suburbs of France's large cities (though the programme only covered Paris) and the hip-hop culture that exists there.  I was curious to know what Bilal thought of the programme, as Bilal is by far the most hip-hop person I have any regular contact with.  He and I are very different in this respect, though I don't love him any less and I wouldn't want anyone else for a boyfriend.  Given that he spent much of his life in La Savine, I consider him an authority in hip-hop matters, MDR.

 The first thing Bilal noted is that the rappers in the video were not tough by the standards of La Savine.  As I have mentioned, Bilal works as a rolling stock engineer for the Métro de Marseille and for his training, he often travelled to Paris (one of very view exceptions in terms of his travelling habits).  When he was there, he got to know the local 'hoods and he says that although they are more numerous than in Marseille, La Savine is far tougher and he therefore viewed the people in the video as being merely wannabe tough rappers.

Another thing Bilal and I noticed during the course of the programme was when Cléo Le Tan started talking like a wigger.  She is an obviously upper-middle-class woman from the way she talks, both in English and in French (this is probably the only positive thing one can say about her), yet during the course of the programme, she is shown referring to women as "meufs" (verlan for "femmes"), translated in the subtitles as "chicks", though "birds" is another way of translating this.  I don't view it as being in the least bit unusual any more when I hear Bilal talking in verlan, given that he tends to use such words as if they were normal words.  However, an upper-middle-class woman like Cléo Le Tan (don't forget she is descended from Vietnamese royalty) sounds very silly when she uses verlan words.  As Bilal would say, "tu voit ce que je veux dire?", which is French street for "ya see what ah'm sayin'?"

  

Generally speaking, Bilal thought Cléo Le Tan stuck out like a sore thumb, no matter how hard she tried to ingratiate herself with the locals during the video, e.g. by helping them out with facilities to make a rap video of their own when their budgets would not stretch to this.  As British street people would say, it was a blatant case of somebody not "keepin' it real".  Maybe she was trying to portray herself as some sort of explorer, trying to get to know new things that she was not previously familiar with?  She still looked silly.

 

All in all, Cléo Le Tan is someone who doesn't appear to fit into either world.  She has not had much success of her own in the French celebrity circuit and she will soon be tomorrow's has-been and she certainly doesn't fit into the hip-hop world either.  Given that she is not pencil-thin like me, she certainly would look out-of-place in my magazine and there is no way I would feature her unless she lost a lot of weight!

Being fat is a sign of stupidity

Och, ah jist read aboot a study in Scotland sayin' that fowk wha' dinnae keep their figures in check dinnae dae sae well in exams the noo!  Translation for those of us who don't understand this corrupted form of English: - "I just read about a study in Scotland saying that people who don't keep their figures in check don't do so well in exams".  http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-26523602

This is a very diplomatic way of saying that being fat is a sign of stupidity.  During my time living in the UK and my various travels in the Anglo-Saxon world, it gradually became increasingly clear to me that Anglo-Saxon women are in fact stupid.  When I speak with such women, they often tell me about their ridiculous dieting strategies.  Since they tend to tell me such things over business lunches (during which I will always say, "La moitié, s'il vous plaît", unless it is a buffet, in which case, I take food to suit my own stomach), it is normally necessary for me to be diplomatic.  If I weren't constrained by the need to be diplomatic, I would tell them how idiotic they were.

I know of one American woman who tried the diet mentioned in "The Devil Wears Prada" (eating nothing at all and then eating a cube of cheese when close to fainting).  She lasted about three days on the diet and the next time I saw her, she had gone from obese to morbidly obese.  As Mireille Guiliano points out, any regimen you can't maintain for life is bound to fail you.  Granted, French cheese (the cheese in the picture below is Banon, from the eponymous Provençale town, a.k.a. Banon à la feuille) is so delicious that it can satisfy with a single cube, but the diet described removes pretty much all of life's pleasure.

I have also seen countless examples of Anglo-Saxon women having only a green salad at lunchtime (though often covered in very sugary dressings) and then snacking all the way through the afternoon.  Similarly, many women much fatter than myself proudly tell me that they have skipped breakfast, yet by mid-morning, they are munching on disgusting-looking preservative-laden muffins!  When will Anglo-Saxon women wake up and realise their own stupidity?

There is nothing particularly complicated about how we Frenchwomen manage to stay pencil-thin.  These are a few of the main rules (though we admittedly have a few other tricks): -
1)  The three main reasons why French women are so thin are portion control, portion control and portion control: - practice saying "La moitié, s'il vous plaît" several times a day
2)  Only eat food of the highest quality: - get your jollies from your taste buds, not from your stomach being stretched
3)  No snacking
4)  Only make desserts as sweet as they need to be to cleanse your palate of the previous course: - excessively sweet desserts are characteristic of bumpkins and minimally sweet desserts are characteristic of stylish Frenchwomen
5)  Passive exercise: - my mother won't consider using the lift unless her destination is at least 10 floors away and the figure for me is 20 floors, not forgetting to walk everywhere as well, though Paris-Marseille at almost 750km is a little too far even for me!
6)  Slim-fitting high-quality fashion: - if a woman finds herself struggling to fit into her clothes, she will have an extra source of motivation to be dainty in her eating
7)  Living in a society where a trim figure is necessary for success: - I despair when I hear the phrase, "It's not what's on the outside, it's what's on the inside", as it can cause women to become demotivated and lazy about keeping their weight down, like Anglo-Saxon women
8)  Only doing vigorous pursuits if they bring pleasure: - maybe this means hillwalking, maybe this means tennis, à chacun son goût, but make sure it is pleasurable
9)  Only eating chocolate if it is above 60% cocoa: - only really stupid people consume chocolate with lower cocoa proportions, as the difference is often made up with sugar and it doesn't have the same filling effect
10)  Taking care of one's appearance: - if one takes pride in one's appearance, one will not want to spoil it by overeating (even when a Frenchwoman is "in the field", she will always have at least two lipsticks, one for the day and one for the evening)
11)  Making sure to read fashion magazines promoting beanpole-thin figures as the ideal: - one's standards should always be set high
12)  Not watching television excessively: - there is always some scouring to be done in markets for the choicest ingredients
13)  Not making ridiculous excuses about one's weight: - occasionally, people have differences when it comes to metabolism rates (e.g. Bilal's coeliac disease causing him to have malabsorption problems, meaning he has an enormous appetite), but I am tired of hearing gormless Anglo-Saxon women justify their huge waistlines with excuses such as genetics, being big-boned etc

It is time Anglo-Saxon women stopped coming up with all these fad diets (Atkins, South Beach, Beverley Hills etc).  The only fad diet (if one would call it that) that has any basis in reality when it comes to becoming and remaining thin is the Okinawan habit of "hara hachi bu" ("eat until you are 8/10 full"), which is a variant of the French teaching of only eating food of the highest quality in the daintiest quantities.  Anglo-Saxon women, stop being stupid, pretending that you have the faintest idea about how to be beanpole-thin and slavishly replicate the impossibly perfect example that we Frenchwomen set!

Spain: - a country with almost as dainty portions as France

 Recently, Bilal and I made the train journey to Madrid and I finally got around to doing another blog post.

Apologies for not having posted an article recently.  As my regular readers will know, I am now in a courtship and it wouldn't do to neglect my boyfriend in favour of blogging.  Also, as I've often said, running one's own fashion magazine is never easy.  I'm always pursuing new business opportunities, as I am always keen to share the knowledge we Frenchwomen have about fashion.  Anything a Frenchwoman doesn't know about fashion isn't worth knowing!  Tee hee!  I don't always enjoy being away from my beloved Marseille, so I love the opportunities that modern communications and networks offer me to do business remotely, e.g. with WhatsApp (a pun on "wassup?", an English translation of "wesh-wesh?"), Facebook, Skype, e-mail, LinkedIn etc.

However, occasionally, there are times when face-to-face meetings are needed.  On this occasion, a face-to-face meeting was needed with a distributor in Madrid, the capital of Spain.  I am not particularly familiar with Spain, but I was aware that RENFE (the Spanish national operator) had started a daily direct train service in both directions between Marseille and Madrid.  The journey takes a little over seven hours, as a large part of the time is spent on the slow tracks between Nîmes and Perpignan: - our incompetent president has severely delayed the construction of the Montpellier-Perpignan route, supposedly for lack of capacity needs, but in reality because he has run the economy into the ground.  We French are the best at producing high-speed trains and planes, but as Mireille Guiliano likes to point out, Frenchwomen like to unwind and savour the moment, so I thought I would go by train.

Bilal took some leave and accompanied me to Madrid.  He was a bit apprehensive, as this was his first time travelling outside of France and Mali.  Travelling is just not something he has tended to do regularly, unless it was between Marseille and his family's lands in Mali.  However, as I will explain later, he found some things that made him feel at home.

In the seven-plus hours of the journey, the train stopped at the following stations: - Aix-en-Provence TGV, Avignon TGV, Nîmes, Montpellier, Béziers, Perpignan, Figueres-Vilafant, Girona and Barcelona.  One thing that is notable about Spain is that it has the longest high-speed rail network in the whole of Europe.  It would have had the longest high-speed rail network in the whole world briefly before being overtaken by China, but delays in opening the Madrid-Valencia line meant this didn't happen.  Some of the cities have no high-speed bypass routes, e.g. Girona, Barcelona and Madrid (the Yeles Bypass exists, but the trains slow down to 150km/h or so for this): - the entrance to Barcelona from the northeast in particular was extremely slow.  However, save for exceptions such as these, the whole of the route beyond Perpignan was high-speed.

I remember the route beyond Barcelona as being very mountainous: - if one looks on a map, one will see that the high-speed route is rather strange, but given the surrounding topography, it didn't look like there were many alternatives.  One other thing that is notable about Spain is that it is the most mountainous country in Europe besides Switzerland (in terms of total mountain area, I assume).  The line goes towards Martorell (the location of Seat's main factory and headquarters and where the Audi Q3 is produced) before curving towards Madrid.  As the line approaches Camp de Tarragona station, one can easily see the Mediterranean Sea on the left, though the train had no stops between Barcelona Sants and Madrid Puerta de Atocha stations.  The train sped past intermediate cities such as Lleida/Lérida and Zaragoza.  As the train drew closer towards Calatalyud station, it passed through the Sístema Ibérica (a mountain range) at its narrowest point.  After a few more mountains here and there, followed by a plateau with high mountains on the right, the train began its descent into Madrid.  Madrid was chilly at that time of year, though I am told things are very different in summer!  Still, we were dressed up for cold weather, so things weren't so bad.

Given my interest in food, there are many things that I am inclined to point out about Spain.  The most notable point as far as Bilal was concerned is how coeliac-friendly the country is.  Restaurant staff and shop assistants were never once bemused when asked about the gluten-free credentials of their food.  Also, food on sale in supermarkets often has a label indicating that it is gluten-free (useful to Bilal, as he doesn't speak Spanish) and supermarkets often have relatively large gluten-free food sections.  One of the people we met during the visit was familiar with the Catalonian town of Blanes, in which a store selling only gluten-free products named Soms Celiacs (Catalan for "We are coeliacs" exists).

The other notable feature of the Spanish food scene was the availability of food in different portion sizes.  There are three sizes in ascending order of size: - "tapa", "ración" and "porción".  The idea of the tapas culture is that one can try small quantities of food and go between different bars, sampling small amounts of lots of different types of foods.  Being the Impossibly Dainty French Woman, as far as I was concerned, a tapa was the size of a full meal.  During our first evening in Madrid, I ordered a few tapas and was shocked when I saw their size, given what I had been told about the tapas culture.

However, Bilal was with me and he ate the rest.  Because Bilal has coeliac disease, he needs to eat quite a bit more to gain the same amount of nutrients.  Many coeliacs are very thin because their bodies don't absorb food and nutrients very well, though other coeliacs are overweight because their bodies overcompensate and cause them to overeat.  Now, any Americans or British women reading this should bear in mind that not everyone who is overweight has coeliac disease or any other physiological reason why losing weight isn't so simple.  Most people who are overweight are that way because they are gluttonous, self-indulgent and not as impossibly perfect as we Frenchwomen!  So if you want to lose weight, stop blaming physiology and emulate the habits of impossibly perfect Frenchwomen such as myself.  MDR.

Though Spanish cuisine isn't as impossibly perfect as French cuisine, it was not all that bad and certainly a lot better than American and British cuisine.  Madrileño restaurants have a strong focus on fresh ingredients, especially when it comes to fish.  With the high-speed link to Valencia now complete, it is possible to be at the Mediterranean Sea using a train taking just 1h38m.  If I find I have more time on my hands, one interesting business venture would be to have people catch fish just off the coast of Valencia and then take them by train to a restaurant I would set up close to Puerta de Atocha station.  They would have a much more beautiful flavour than fish preserved in ice for a few days before reaching their target market!  Now that Bilal knows he has coeliac disease, rather than a narrow-minded digestive system when it comes to cuisine, he is more willing to try new foods.  He tried various other things that he found had reasonably tasty flavours.

Bilal started to feel homesick, as the two different hotels we stayed at were not in the ghetto.  We therefore decided to take the train to Seville.  The high-speed line to Seville was Spain's first high-speed railway line when it opened in 1992.  The route to Seville was very pretty.  We passed the depot in La Sagra, before passing Toledo (famous for swords), before going uphill slightly and crossing the plateau towards Ciudad Real and Puertollano, before heading in the direction of the Sierra Morena.  The terrain became particularly mountainous after the not-yet-opened Villanueva de Córdoba-Los Pedroches station.  After passing through Córdoba station (the train was non-stop), the train continued through the obviously-fertile Guadalquivir valley, with the Sierra Morena mountains gradually becoming more distant.  Two hours and twenty minutes after leaving Puerta de Atocha station, the train arrived at Sevilla Santa Justa station.

The old town was very pretty, though Bilal wasn't entirely at ease with the Giralda Tower, as it was built by the Moors and preserves the architectural styles that remind him of Islam, the religion he has turned his back on.  However, though he didn't like the Alcázar Palace for the same reason, he loved the Alcázar's gardens.  He enjoyed the area of the city with lots of modern architecture known as La Cartuja and found the Metropol Parasol de la Encarnación interesting.

After having seen various sights in the old town and elsewhere, Bilal and I travelled with Seville's only metro line to Primero de Mayo station, which was situated near two "de la zone" barrios known as Los Pajaritos and La Candelaria.  The former was where the hip-hop singer Haze grew up and the latter is where he filmed his video "La potenzia pa' tu carro".  Bilal was finally starting to feel at home!

Following our visit to these two barrios, we then travelled to the barrio known as "Las Vegas"/"Martínez Montañés" within Las 3.000 Viviendas, possibly Spain's most dangerous barrio.  I wasn't entirely comfortable and my visit to the barrio was a grudging concession to Bilal, who was only now ceasing to look nervous and starting to loosen up, given that he was back in da 'hood, MDR.  We also visited Pino Montano, the barrio Zatu and Acción Sánchez of the hip-hop group SFDK came from.

As Bilal doesn't speak Spanish, he had to relay his questions through me, with me speaking in English, as there was a small number of people in the barrio who spoke English.  A lot of his questions concerned life in their 'hood and vocabulary and he wanted to get onto subjects of evangelism, but we had to rush back to catch the train and.  Before we left, Bilal got some e-mail addresses for people he met in the barrio Martínez Montañés: - it is clear that he has made some lifelong friends, lol.

They parted with a fist bump/nudge/spud (whatever name one prefers).  We then walked back towards Virgen del Rocío station (shown with an asset inspection train of some sort), from which we caught a train to Santa Justa station, in order to catch our train to Madrid.  One thing that is quite nice about Spanish high-speed rail services is that they have an integrated ticket available if travelling with the high-speed AVE services.  What this means is that one can use the Cercanías services (similar in nature to France's Transport Express Régional services) for free.  All one needs to do is have the AVE ticket ready, enter the code from the ticket into the Cercanías machines and, hey presto, you get a free ticket!

We then travelled back to Seville.  I continued my business discussions in the city until it was time to take the pre-arranged train back to Marseille.  Bilal definitely enjoyed the trip to Seville, but he was becoming noticeably homesick and, if I'm honest, so was I, as I was missing the intense quality that only exists in French cuisine!  Tee hee!  Bilal said that if he lived in Spain and weren't thinking about marriage to me and having children, he would head straight for the barrio Martínez Montañés, but I guess this is one aspect of his character I will have to work on, as I would never go there without a big muscular dark-skinned man like him for protection.  We shall see how his nascent friendships with the hip-hop people there go, MDR.

Though Spain is not a wasteland when it comes to sophistication that the UK and USA are, I was overjoyed when the train pulled into Marseille St. Charles station.  As the old Wizard of Oz cliché goes, "there's no place like home".  We ate dinner at a Vieux Port restaurant and I enjoyed my usual dainty portions and pastis!  There is nowhere like Marseille, but it is spendid that we have these new train connections!