Getting into good habits early on

I recently read an article about parents overfeeding babies.  When I first realised I was expecting a baby, one of the first thing Bilal and I discussed was what we would do regarding feeding habits when the baby arrived.  Obviously, it is good for new parents to have aligned attitudes about things involving children.  We agreed that feeding habits would be consistent for the initial period in the baby's life, as it is important for babies to get the food they need to grow properly.  No diligent parents would want to leave their children malnourished.

However, we agreed that at a certain age, there would be divergence according to gender.  Ideally, if our baby had been a girl, the first expression she would learn would not be "oui", "non", "papa" or "mama", but "la moitié, s'il vous plaît".  As indicated by the book "Why French children don't talk back" by Catherine Crawford, we French know a thing or two about how to raise children.  We like to get our children into good habits early on and beauty is one of the primary ways I plan to do this with any daughters I have: - I don't want them to grow up looking fat and ugly.

There is all sorts of talk in the Anglo-Saxon world about how women are bombarded with unrealistic images of what women should look like, to the extent that they have tried to make fat women legitimate by introducing a "curvy Barbie".  Apart from the fact that cartoon (or otherwise not-real) characters are exaggerated in how they are constructed, I think they should be ashamed of themselves for encouraging women to get fat like that!  With any daughters I have, I plan to promote the skinny ideal to them so they grow up to look like a pretty Frenchwoman, not a fat and dumpy Anglo-Saxon woman!  Quelle horreur!

However, none of this matters to us at present, as our baby turned out to be male.  To me, my ideal situation would be for him to grow up with the suave urbane sophistication of a traditional Frenchman, but with all the ruggedness and muscularity of Bilal, who plans to teach him how to run the farm he recently purchased in the mountains to the north of Marseille, making visits to his family's farms in Mali where possible to teach him about farming in an extreme climate.  I have no doubt that Bilal will want to introduce him to La Savine's culture, which I admit I have some reservations about, but I know Bilal will be more than capable of protecting him.  I have no doubt that our son will be irresistible to women if he manages to acquire both French sophistication and Malian ruggedness!

Anyway, if he is to have all these things, he will need a large food intake.  My food intake is fine, as I have a medium-intensity exercise routine (not considering using the lift unless my destination is more than 20 floors away and walking as much as possible).  However, our son will need more than that, so I am thinking of how to expand his dietary repertoire beyond Bilal's chicken and jollof rice!  MDR!  French cuisine has plenty of options for accomplishing muscle growth with high-calorie diets: - there are lots of dairy, meat and fish products that have been discussed in previous articles.  There are also lots of nice healthy fats in the area around Marseille, most notably olive oil, which will enable him to fulfil his calorific requirements without putting undue strain on his heart.

Anyway, all that is a long time away and I am still getting used to baby stuff!

The Bordeaux-Toulouse/French border line

Another article about high-speed rail.  Yes, I know, there are things with more gravity that have happened to me recently (marriage and motherhood), which I will address in time.  However, writing is not always about priorities, but where the creative inspiration lies at the time.  There are plenty of stories to tell about the wedding, the honeymoon, pregnancy, childbirth etc, but they will be covered in due course.

Some readers may be aware that the project to build a y-shaped high-speed railway system between Bordeaux, Toulouse and the French border, or GPSO (Grand Projet Ferroviaire du Sud-Ouest) for short, is advancing, albeit slowly.  François Hollande's government has unfortunately pushed the construction of new lines back significantly.  Nicolas Sarkozy's government, in spite of being relatively right wing (it seems to be unusual for right-wing governments to favour high-speed rail), advanced several projects very substantially.  Nicolas Sarkozy did various things to try and get the economy back on track, which have unfortunately died a death, though to François Hollande's credit, he is belatedly pursuing labour market reforms that Nicolas Sarkozy would no doubt have favoured, resulting in strikes everywhere.

I would personally welcome the flexibility.  I don't plan to work more than 35 hours a week on a regular basis, but if it is a week with lots of fashion shows taking place, then obviously, my magazine's working requirements will be different in comparison to quiet times.  It is no good if a fashion show requires 40 hours of labour in a week and I have to send two people to cover it because one person has maxed out at 35 hours.  Obviously, when one person returns to the office, there is a large amount of work to catch up on, but it is an annoyance that I have to put two workers in a situation where they are rushing to catch up on their return.  I would rather than send one person to a fashion show to work 40 hours and allowing a day-off-in-lieu (a lovely French expression that many English speakers mispronounce) when he or she has caught up.  Apart from anything else, having to send two people to do one person's work is not an efficient use of my working resources.

Anyway, I'll stop this diatribe now, as I risk destroying Zoë Williams' image of French women never ranting, but lighting up another Gauloise and saying "bof" (I have never smoked, by the way).  MDR!  Back to the GPSO!  So what does the GPSO mean for me personally in Marseille?  It means that there are several cities in south-western France that I will be able to reach much more easily.

The benefits for reaching Bordeaux more quickly will be realised with the first phase in 2024.  I love Bordeaux, given its position in the French wine industry.  A Frenchwoman always loves a glass or two of wine: - there is the question of whether Islam (a religion prohibiting alcohol) compromises one's French credentials (reformed Christianity doesn't, particularly given the labours of John Calvin in places like Strasbourg), but that is another story.  Bordeaux itself is a lovely town that is very easy to get around given its tram system.  There are various sights, including the Place de la Bourse (Stock Exchange Square), the river Garonne, Saint André Cathedral (though I admit its beauty is more architectural than spiritual), the Porte Cailhau, the Column of the Girondins etc.  Europe's largest sand dune is not too far from Bordeaux.

The benefits for reaching cities in the far south-west and northeastern Spain will be realised with the opening of the line in two phases in 2027 and 2032.  The main city I like in that part of the country is Biarritz, a ritzy-glitzy seaside resort (okay, well admittedly not as glamorous as Monaco, which is closer to me).  The city is known for its casinos (I'm not into gambling, but the glamour of these places is still nice) and surfing culture.  There is also the Hôtel du Palais, which  has extensive links with various thrones past and present.  The square in front of Sainte Eugénie church is also pretty.

Toulouse is another city I love to visit, though journey times from Marseille will not improve with the GPSO.  However, it is worth a mention.  I have read that the route between Paris-Orly and Toulouse-Blagnac airports is the busiest in the whole of Europe.  A search on http://www.bahn.de showed the fastest Paris-Toulouse journey to be 5h31m: - not competitive with air travel.  However, LGV Sud-Europe Atlantique (Tours-Bordeaux, due to open next year) will reduce the journey time.  When the Bordeaux-Toulouse comes into service, the journey time is expected to go down to 3h10m (which could admittedly be lower still with a proper bypass of Bordeaux, which does not yet appear to exist in the plans, bof).  Bilal says 3 hours is a target the railway industry often uses in terms of deciding which links to pursue to make journeys competitive with air travel.  In any case though, France has been generally a lot more enthusiastic about building bypasses when inner-city stations are served.  Germany virtually never builds them (the one exception I can think of being Cobourg on the not-yet-opened Erfurt-Nuremberg line), the result being that it takes ages to get anywhere by train in Germany.  Admittedly, it is harder in Germany, since it has lots of cities throughout the country that are in the way when you build a new line.  However, Spain has a similar settlement pattern to France, yet there are no full-speed bypasses where inner-city stations are served, with the exception of those on the Madrid-Barcelona high-speed line.  Therefore, Spain's journey times, though good, could be better.

Shame the benefits of this will not be realised until our recently-born baby is on the verge of adulthood, bof.  Maybe someone like Nicolas Sarkozy will come to power and reinvigorate high-speed line construction and the economy.  We can only hope.

The LGV Montpellier-Perpignan

I learned in the past few months that the preliminary route of the LGV Montpellier-Perpignan has been approved.  Bilal is naturally pleased, as it means that if he wants to use the train to visit his homies in Seville, he will be able to get there quicker than before.  Marseille and Seville are both extremely "street" cities with lots of hip-hop people, hence why Bilal loves Seville.  The closure of this last gap will mean that save for slow tracks in the vicinity of cities, the railway route between Marseille and Seville will be high speed all the way.

And what a scenic route it is too!  I can't comment on the not-yet-in-service lines, but the high-speed routes in service for this journey are beautiful.  There is the journey over the Rhône just after Avignon TGV station.  The slow route has many coastal stretches.  After the end of the slow stretch just after Perpignan, there is the beautiful sight of the Pyrenees approaching at 300km/h.  There are various areas of beautiful scenery from there until Zaragoza, when the line enters the Sistema Ibérico, a high mountain range.  Beyond Madrid, the line passes through many beautiful hills and olive cultivation areas, before eventually traversing the Sierra Morena and then finally through the Guadalquivir valley to Seville.  Why am I speaking this highly about a foreign country?  Bof, dunno.  *Gallic shrug*

Then there are the beautiful cities along the way.  Many Spanish ones, though I will concentrate on some lovely historic French ones along the way: - Aix-en-Provence, Avignon, Nîmes, Montpellier, Béziers, Narbonne, Perpignan etc.  The new line will be away from the centres of all these cities except Perpignan (even Perpignan's station is a little way from the historic centre), but nevertheless, they will reduce the journey times to these cities and make them easier to visit.  Too much to say about these cities to compress into one single blog post.  However, though it takes longer today, they are still worth visiting, so why wait till the completion of the line?

More pointless diatribes

As many readers will know, I have a particular dislike of the British journalist Zoë Williams, who is somewhat covetous of the effortless perfection that we Frenchwomen possess.  She wrote a review of Mireille Guiliano's French Women Don't Get Facelifts.

Nobody (save for our Lord and Saviour) is perfect, but I particularly like the way Mireille Guiliano proclaims the effortless perfection of French women.  In this book, she tells the world how French women age well, choosing natural beauty over horrid facelifts.

It is not as if we Frenchwomen don't know anything about ageing.  French women tend to rank very highly in life expectancy tables.  According to the OECD, in 2013, only Japan and Spain had higher female figures (pun intended).  Many will be aware of Jeanne Calment, who lived her whole life in Arles, a town not too far from Marseille.  Some of the stories she told were a bit silly, e.g. eating 1kg of chocolate a week.  Any Frenchwoman will tell you that if you did this, you would be incredibly fat, especially given the reduced physical activity that comes with advancing age (unless one is very diligent).  Mireille Guiliano recommends a one-square fix of chocolate each day.

Many Anglo-Saxon women choose to have cosmetic surgery after giving birth, e.g. to remove surplus skin, stretch marks etc.  Having just had a baby, I know that it can be a challenge to avoid the changes to one's tummy, but it can be done.  If you look after your body, you can keep your skin supple and able to cope with the changes pregnancy brings.

I note the bitchy comment about the supposed contradiction between not spending a lot on vitamins, but spending money on Bottega Veneta.  A Frenchwoman knows that nature is best when it comes to food and real natural stuff does not come at great cost.  However, when one buys fashion, one pays for the skill of the designer.  Granted, there are some deviations to this rule, but generally, you get what you pay for in the word of fashion.

I also disagree with the comment that watching one's weight and receiving admiring glances are a betrayal of feminism.  Readers will be aware of my desire to allow Bilal to build our family in the image of the Bible (with the husband as the head).  Zoë Williams would say the Bible oppresses women, to which I would say that she doesn't know about the very capable businesswoman in Proverbs 31, but anyway.  A Frenchwoman knows that it is possible to both look good and do well in life, be this one's career, business, politics etc.  Segolène Royal was, as Bilal would say, well buff (though far less so than me).  Granted, she lost to Nicolas Sarkozy, but in my opinion, that was because she promoted socialist policies which France did not need.  Mireille Guiliano was the CEO of Veuve Cliquot before her retirement and she wrote all these books showing the world how wonderful we Frenchwomen are.  Who says such women have betrayed the feminist revolution?

I always find Zoë Williams' francophobic diatribes funny and I particularly loved her rant in the last two paragraphs about Mireille Guiliano playing, as I understand things, a Borat-style naïve foreigner.  However, when I finished laughing, I thought to myself, why doesn't she just face up to the fact that we Frenchwomen know how to be beautiful and live life to the fullest?

Brief update

Hi all, very many apologies for the lack of updates.  Bilal and I were married and our first baby arrived a couple of months ago (my waistline was no bigger).  I will hopefully update and write some more articles, now the stress of planning the wedding, preparing for the baby and getting used to the change in lifestyle with a baby around have passed.