Our second child

I have given birth to our second son.  As expected, Bilal was overjoyed by the arrival.  One could falsely believe that he wasn't, given how much he has spoken about subsequent children, but he has been visibly excited throughout the pregnancy and his joy in holding our second son just after he was born was clear for everyone to see.  In one sense, nobody deserves anything, given that we all fall short of God's glory, but in another sense, given the fruits Bilal has produced during his Christian journey, I think Bilal really deserved this type of fruit.  He has a yearning for a big family and I am very aware that it is something he has aspired to for pretty much all his life.

As with his older brother, our son was a very pretty baby immediately upon being born and he was born with some lovely curly locks and beautiful light brown skin in between the skin shades Bilal and I have.  I would have enrolled them as baby models immediately if Bilal hadn't said no: - personal privacy is one of his primary preoccupations, so this is out the question, but I don't mind, as he clearly has his family's best interests at heart.  He is no controlling husband and does not do things like demand to know where I am at any moment of day, lol.  Marriage is about give and take and Bilal has certainly given a lot, so even by the standards of non-believers, there is no justification for upsetting him by sharing photos of our sons against his will (the boy in the photo below is not ours).

The delivery had no complications and I was immediately back to my previous waist measurement and weight with no fat to lose.  People often say this doesn't tend to happen, but I have managed it during both my pregnancies!  It is easy if you just eat sensibly: - just utter the magic phrase at mealtimes ("la moitie, s'il vous plait)!  MDR!  The lack of complications meant that I left hospital within a matter of hours: - as a BBC article pointed out, we French are often hypochondriacs, but it was blatantly obvious there was nothing wrong with me.  This was nice, because although I don't do much worrying about my health (since I eat properly), Bilal does.  He can be very attentive if he suspects I am unwell and it is often hard work to reassure him.  Even with French standards of hypochondria, he has made a name for himself at the local doctor's surgery for being overly cautious with almost every sniffle our first son has had, MDR.

Within an hour of completion of the delivery, Bilal was talking about future children, which attracted an unwanted disapproving comment from a feminist member of the hospital staff: - "Come on!  Your wife has just given birth and you want to force more children on her like she is some breeding animal?  A woman is worth more than the children she bears!"  Bilal was visibly shaken by this comment and he is uneasy about engaging in conversation with unrelated women, so I stepped in: - "Madam, I am aware of many options open to me in this country if I were in an abusive marriage and my husband were forcing me to have children against my will, but he is not, so I will thank you not to interfere in our private family life".  Bilal said very little after that and was clearly very upset, but he returned to his normal ungentlemanly self after we left the hospital with our sons and returned home, MDR.

Save for my parents who were at the hospital and came home with us, our first acquaintances to visit were some of his "homies" from La Savine who he has been trying to encourage to come along to our church.  When they rang the bell from the street entrance, Bilal was naturally too engrossed in our sons to notice, so Daddy went to the intercom.  The poor quality of their French made Daddy reluctant to let them in, so he asked Bilal if he knew them, to which Bilal abruptly replied "let them in, they are manz homies from La Savine".  When Daddy let them in at the door, he was visibly unimpressed with their attire (low-slung trousers and hooded tops covering most of their faces).  Upon seeing our second son, they said, "Congratulations fam!  You da man!"  Bilal replied, "True dat!  Manz only been married 19 months and manz knocked up manz well buff wifey twice and manz now got two sons!  Manz gonna knock her up again as soon as possible and be an even bigger man!  Us manz Heavenly Father has given man a bare sick gift between manz legs!"  Bilal then did a hip-thrust gesture and a loud grunt whilst saying that for effect.  This caused me to start sniggering and my parents let out a groan: - Daddy never liked Bilal's ungentlemanly behaviour and he tried to turn Bilal into a gentleman when we were courting and subsequently engaged, but eventually just gave up, reasoning that Bilal is an otherwise wholesome man, even if he is quite hip-hop with some similarly hip-hop friends.  I am expecting Bilal to be similarly ungentlemanly when we go to church today, MDR.

Bilal is enjoying his short time on paternity leave.  Ever since becoming a father, he has been almost clingy with our sons: - though he enjoys his job and works very hard, I know that he is always yearning for the end of the working day to come so he can come home and be with me and our offspring.  His interaction with our sons is at least as much as mine.

Vive la présidente!

On Sunday, we French will be going to the first round of the polls of the presidential election.  As many of my readers will be aware, the candidate Bilal and I view most favourably (remembering that none of them are a perfect match to us) is Marine Le Pen.

Bilal thinks her niece Marion Maréchal-Le Pen (Marine's niece) is a "well buff wifey", though he views her as being less attractive than me and therefore doesn't look at her with lust, MDR.  He and I agree it is nice that we French have relatively nice-looking female politicians than the frumpy and dowdy ones on the other side of the English Channel.  Theresa May isn't the worst, but she was at best plain in her youth, as she is today.  Bilal notes that Marine Le Pen was reasonably "buff" in her youth, even if she is overweight (by French standards, but not by British standards, MDR).  Though there are many things Bilal and I like about the United Kingdom (its rich Reformation history), the physical appearances of its female politicians (and women in general) leave a lot to be desired.  However, with Marine Le Pen being the only major female presidential candidate, there is not much to be said regarding comparisons of candidates' physical appearances.

Moving on to the less important issue of what their policies are, Bilal and I view Marine Le Pen's policies most favourably.  In the past 24 hours, there has been yet another terrorist attack in France, which seems to have had Islamic motivations.  Let us be clear, being a believer is never easy in any part of France: - very few sectors of French society are in favour of biblical teaching, given how much our nation regrettably did to persecute the Huguenots over the centuries.  However, La Savine has large numbers of Muslim migrants who tend to be very actively hostile to the faith: - Bilal struggled to deal with this and enjoys the less close-knit lifestyle that my penthouse apartment offers him, though he tries to keep up his work in the community of La Savine as much as possible.  Both of us would welcome the reduction in Islamic migration that Marine Le Pen promises, given the hostility our faith already suffers.

Marine Le Pen's economic policies are actually quite leftie.  She seems to be appealing to the stick-in-the-mud Luddite French workers who want to continue doing their jobs the way they have always done them and continue to enjoy ever-rising wages.  As Margaret Thatcher said, "No!  No!  No!": - constantly rising wages require constant innovation.  This means a constant search for efficiency and better products: - as a fashion magazine editor, I very much understand the importance of keeping ahead of the game.

I don't think Anglo-Saxon economic policies are necessarily good, as they centre around the principle of knowing the cost of everything and the value of nothing, as highlighted by a recent Financial Times article regarding Alstom's Belfort plant.  Continental European economies seem to work on providing long-term value, whereas Anglo-Saxon economics seems to be "slash-and-burn".  Given that France doesn't have the same silliness with shareholders demanding short-term cash flow, it is possible to focus on solutions providing long-term value.  The Financial Times article doesn't mention the fact that the order will enable SNCF to retire some fleets early and drastically reduce the number of different fleets in service.  In his work for "Le Trom de Marseille", Bilal only has to deal with one fleet (the MPM 76), but his railway industry acquaintances elsewhere tell him how annoying it is when you have to do an enormous amount of work to account for local fleet variations.  However, given their extreme ignorance about how a train operating company and rolling stock engineers work, it is easy for morons working at the Financial Times to criticise the TGV order.  I am generally supportive of Marine Le Pen's desire to avoid slash-and-burn economics.

France is actually doing very well with per-hour-productivity and I don't think increasing the working week would necessarily result in higher output (as Emmanuel Macron proposes), but its working practices are very staid.  Bilal often quotes the famous Neville Shute saying that says "an engineer is a man who can do for five shillings what any damned fool could do for a pound": - if we want to be richer, we need to be constantly on the lookout for improvements and unfortunately, Marine Le Pen's economic policies do very little to encourage this.  They seem to encourage the I-farm-cattle-because-my-father-did-and-his-father-before-him-did-and-his-father-before-him-did mentality.  In summary, I would prefer a candidate combining the best economic policies of both sides, but our presidential candidates are what they are.

All that said, I hope that next month, we will be chanting "Vive la présidente!"

Stuttgart: - a city of viticulture

Though I am heavily pregnant and due to give birth any day now, it was necessary to travel to Germany on business, as I am trying to get my magazine set up with a German office along with all the necessary infrastructure, such as distributors (admittedly, this is less of an issue in the online age).  I am considering the question of which cities to site the premises in.

To me, transport connectivity is a big issue, as in spite of the internet revolution, the fashion business contains many aspects that just require people to be there in person.  Airport connections don't really cut it for a Frenchwoman, as the short working week means she needs to be productive all the time, meaning that if she travels as part of her job, she needs to be able to do work during the journey, i.e. on a laptop/tablet hybrid on a table.  It was therefore necessary to choose a city that is well-linked to France and other German cities.

One of the cities I am considering is Stuttgart.  Current direct journey times from Paris are 3h11m.  This should drop further when the Rastatt Tunnel is opened in 2022.  Frankfurt is 1h17m on the fastest services.  Munich is 2h13m, though this will drop substantially with the Stuttgart 21 project's completion and the new line to Ulm.

Berlin is 5h04m, though it admittedly has a long way to go before it becomes a fashion capital, even though it is full of the metro-trendies from my industry I detest!  The Stuttgart 21 project will convert the main station from a terminus into a through station and shift it underground and will be completed concurrently with the Stuttgart-Wendlingen-Ulm high-speed line.  When they all open in 2021, they are expected to reduce journeys starting in Stuttgart by around 26 minutes, with Frankfurt-Munich journeys (via the Stuttgart route) being about 3h00m instead of 3h37m.  The increased saving for through journeys exists because of the time penalty for turning a train around.

In addition to good intercity connections, Stuttgart also has a great metropolitan public transport network, focused mainly on the tram system, but it also has a rack railway and funicular railway as part of its urban transport system, as the city is built on a series of hills.  Being from Marseille, this is something I am used to: - the city is shielded by mountains that mean the city is 8.4 degrees Celcius in January, compared with 5.5 in nearby Aix-en-Provence.  Bilal is more used to it, given the years spent in La Savine, a high-up area of the city.  The city has a series of outdoor staircases, a bit like Los Ángeles.

The Romans quickly discovered that Stuttgart has a mild climate suited to viticulture (some vineyards are a few hundred metres from the main station), which gives it an air of sophistication, though not to the same extent as France.  Germany has a reasonably large number of wine-producing areas: - the Rhine and Mosel(le) valleys are often used for wine cultivation.  The custom in these areas is to pick the grapes when snow arrives, which gives an extremely sweet quasi-dessert wine flavour: - not very good to my way of thinking, being a sophisticated Frenchwoman, but ultra-sweet dessert wines work with a few foods, such as crème caramel and blue cheese (Roquefort being a well-known French example).

Stuttgart is the capital of the Baden-Württemberg state and therefore contains the state parliament.  It is also the biggest city in the state and therefore the place where things are happening.  It is also a huge centre for the automotive industry: - Porsche and Mercedes-Benz are based in the city.  As my readers will know, I am less enthusiastic about cars, given the increased difficulty of finding somewhere to drive at 320km/h (the LGV Est, Rhine-Rhône, Sud-Europe Atlantique and Bretagne), but these two brands have definitely succeeded in creating an image of glamour!  Certainly, Stuttgart is a very prosperous city and these brands reinforce the image of luxury living.

A French it-girl such as myself will always be on the lookout for good places to go shopping.  I haven't slowed down on shopping since becoming a mother, as motherhood is not the time to kick back, neglect personal beauty and end up looking ugly: - this is what silly Anglo-Saxon women do!  Stuttgart is not as fabulous as the best French shopping destinations, but there are some reasonable bargain basement offerings and entry-level international cuisine in the form of the Calwer Passage: - after all, if German women are aspiring to be impossibly perfect and dainty like we Frenchwomen, they have to start somewhere!  MDR.

We shall see if this venture into Germany is successful and whether a whole new country can be made aware of how impossibly and unattainably perfect we French women are (and ideally inspired to replicate our impossible example even though they will never reach it)!

Our son's first visit to Douentza

Bilal and I had unexpectedly busy Christmases with our working lives, meaning our holiday time was limited.  We thought things would be less busy in the new year, but they weren't.  Eventually, we decided we just needed to take a holiday and work things around them.  There is always the temptation to procrastinate with taking holidays, thinking that a less busy time will come.  Apart from anything else, my due date for our second child is not far off.  I have no doubt I will soon have another distraction, as Bilal is looking forward to more children after then.

The fashion industry is composed of some very self-centred people who often don't understand that life is not all about them and their whims, so many people in my industry struggle to understand why I am happy with this and insinuate that I am some oppressed wife and Bilal is a misogynist who just views me as a breeding mare.  Me personally, I like big men like Bilal (he is a very big man, MDR) who are into adult pursuits like raising a family, rather than little boys who eschew responsibility and play computer games.  I view it as very manly for a man to be very attentive to children: - Bilal loves to take our son with him everywhere he goes.  A depot environment is no place for a baby, so he doesn't take him to work (I am sure he would if he could, MDR), but Bilal takes him everywhere else, including the gym (in spite of what anyone thinks of the sight of a very big man pumping iron with a small baby a few metres away).

We decided to visit Douentza, the town in Mali he is most closely associated with, though not exclusively, being born into a nomadic Touareg family: - we tend to travel to rural areas according to where his family's livestock are located.  We are on holiday now, so as to avoid the hottest times of year.

I have my tablet with me and recently bought some equipment for satellite broadband (as well as photovoltaic cells), as we plan to make regular trips to Mali.  Bilal was slightly perplexed by this, as is generally quite happy to avoid contact with the outside world when in Douentza.  Also, he is not particularly communicative with people other than friends and family anyway.  Furthermore, he is very hot on privacy: - he will very rarely agree to photos of him or our son, the conditions being that the photos are only stored on a hard drive in our home not linked to the internet (Bilal is worried about hacking).  As a result, his relatives in Mali have no idea what our son looks like, hence why they are particularly keen to see him.

Douentza is not exactly a place where an it-girl such as myself can live a life of glamour and luxury and the travel arrangements in Mali are a world apart from France's fantastic TGV system, saddened as I am by the lack of political will to build a new Marseille-Nice line, as it would make it easier for many high-society girls such as myself to enjoy the glitz of the Côte d'Azur.  A girl such as myself always loves her manicures and pedicures: - opportunities for this are very limited in Douentza, except when women are being beautified for their wedding (when the whole town stops).  I still love it though.  Given the lack of glamour, the arrival of an it-girl such as myself with her returning-son husband quickly becomes the talk of the town: - Bilal doesn't particularly like this from what I can tell.  Men try and pretend they aren't inclined to look at a super-attractive girl such as myself by observing the custom of turning their back when an unfamiliar woman is present, but Bilal knows better, hence why he comes along with me in public.  You can't blame them for trying to be respectful towards Bilal by not ogling me, lol.

Mali is topographically flat and boring, but the area around Douentza is unusually varied: - it sits in a gap between two mountainous areas.  Bilal enjoyed climbing them as a child and we both want our son to grow up to be rugged, though with more finesse than Bilal (e.g. not referring to women as well buff wifeys, MDR).  I am definitely enjoying being back.  I enjoy climbing up the mountains.  Most people would find this difficult with a baby in tow, but Bilal seems quite happy to carry him and all his paraphernalia.  Anyway, for now, we are enjoying the holiday and anticipating what life will bring with our second baby.  Bilal is looking forward towards the birth and future children: - some people talk about trying for children, but Bilal and I won't need to make any changes, him being the energetic man that he is.