The folly of crash diets

Apologies to all my eager readers who have been eagerly lapping up everything I have written about how to be an impossibly perfect Frenchwoman: - I am aware that I have not written a post for a long time.  As was said in my previous post, Bilal and I are now engaged.  I have been a woman in high demand for a long time, but so far, only Bilal has been able to win my father's approval to court me.  He is a very handsome Touareg man with an extremely muscular physique and lovely curly hair: - the muscular physique is a consequence both of his tough desert upbringing and his desire to continue to work out when his family moved to Marseille.  He speaks hip-hop French, but hey, as was said at the end of "Some like it hot", "Well, nobody's perfect".

I am hoping to work on Bilal's French.  Although it is his native language alongside his local Touareg language, his accent is a mix of Mali and La Savine, with his vocabulary being hip-hop, e.g. saying "tu voit ce que je veux dire?" at the end of sentences, inverting words (verlan) etc.  Although I am somewhat bemused by his use of French, I would much rather have a big, muscular and tough man from the ghetto toughened by living through years and years of gang warfare with real muscles than an upper middle-class man who has lived a cushy lifestyle, doesn't like the great outdoors and whose only way of looking nice is to stay under a gym sunbed and occasionally work out on sweaty gym apparatus (not to a Frenchwoman's liking, as Mireille Guiliano explains).  If one wants to see some of Bilal's acquaintances without actually visiting La Savine, many of them can be seen in 1.D.3's video Marseille Paname: -

Even though Bilal has grown up surrounded by such people, he is actually a very gentle character who has always resisted the pressure to get involved in a life of crime and who has presented an extremely convincing testimony of his new birth in accordance with what the Bible describes as the signs thereof, even if he is not so good at resisting the creeping influence of the language.  Anyway, I digress.  Bilal and I are in the midst of wedding plans.  We are spending ages obsessing about what we will have for each meal.  A croquembouche will unfortunately be out the question unless we can find a gluten-free version.

Bilal would probably just have jollof rice, taguella, goat's meat and Eghajira if I left the whole thing up to him, but since most of those present will be of European origin, we want something much more sophisticated.  With the exception of Bilal, we are planning to serve some extremely dainty portions, so as to show how sophisticated we are: - they will be so dainty that even the daintiest Frenchwoman will feel no need to say, "La moitié, s'il vous plaît".  Some people will be shocked (e.g. my English relatives on my mother's side), but I will respond that they are entirely normal portions for me.

Already, some people are asking me if I am worried about how I will fit into my dress.  I respond by telling them about how I already have an absolutely perfect figure.  I am aware of an unpleasant story about a crash diet called the LighterLife diet: - a British woman followed this diet on account of a desire to look good on her wedding day and died.  I am not inclined to make extremely inappropriate, insensitive and tasteless jokes about the deceased woman, but the article I have linked to really does indicate how French women really do know best when it comes to diets (or the lack thereof).  As Mireille Guiliano explained, French women never diet: - they simply make permanent changes to their lifestyle to shed the weight, whether this means walking further each day, buying a flat further from the ground floor, cutting out sweet foods, saying "la moitié, s'il vous plaît" more often etc.  Granted, Mireille Guiliano does not have any children as far as I know, but Bilal and I want a large family and I hope in creating our large family, I will demonstrate to the world how a Frenchwoman maintains her dainty figure even during and after pregnancy.

Samantha Clowe, the lady who unfortunately lost her life to a crash diet, did not understand the rule of the harvest.  The rule of the harvest says that if you wait till two weeks before the harvest to plant your seeds, spray them with hydroponic solution, cover them with bright lamps etc, you will not reap a harvest.  There are too many people who simply do not understand the value of setting good habits early on so that they can be kept with little effort.  Non-French women think they can buy the skimpiest bridal dress and then do a crash diet to fit inside it.  If such women had read the words of Proverbs 24:27 ("Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house"), they would realise that their order of working was wrong.  Occasionally, some Anglo-Saxon women manage to fit into skimpy wedding dresses (the photo below is of Patricia Nixon-Cox), but this is the exception rather than the norm.

I have no doubt that I will look absolutely divine (in the non-religious sense of the word) in my wedding dress.  Bilal is not exactly a perfect gentleman, as he uses the term "bien faite" to refer to my physical appearance, but I know he means well.  He has done very well to restrain his desires for me all this time.  I have no doubt that he will look similarly ravishing in a morning suit.  He refuses to wear suits at work and insists upon wearing a tagelmust and his colleagues have gotten used to this.  Don't get me wrong, he looks gorgeous in that, even though one cannot see much of his face, but I am hopeful that our wedding will persuade him to wear a suit.  Anyway, back to the subject of the baffling situation of Anglo-Saxon women eating like there is no tomorrow, somehow or other finding a husband-to-be (it's beyond me how) and then crash dieting to fit into their wedding dress.  Why won't they just adopt the la-moitié-s'il-vous-plaît diet that Frnech women use?

As a believing woman, I think unnecessarily long engagements are not a good idea on account of the temptation during the engagement, but maybe some Anglo-Saxon women would do well to spend a few months getting their eating habits sorted out before they try sorting out their wedding dresses.

Postpartum dainty figures

Recently, Bilal and I had a discussion about the subject of childbearing.  I asked him what his views were on the subject of how many children to have.  Eventually, after several questions that were essentially identical, but done from different angles, he said he would definitely like to have a "famille nombreuse" (large family).  When I probed why, he cited Psalm 127:4 (which talks about how a large family is a blessing to a man) and his love for the Touareg culture i.e. his desire not to "westernise" and turn his back on his culture by having a smaller family.  The fertility rate for Touareg women in Mali is apparently 6.6 (admittedly using out-of-date statistics).  Also, it is plain for me to see that Bilal is very fond of small children: - he is not as reticent about initiating interactions with them as he is with non-Touareg adults.  The wife of someone he is reasonably friendly with at church gave birth to a son a few weeks ago and I regularly see Bilal cradling the baby, obviously entranced.

Bilal said that he didn't want to push this on me, given that he would not be carrying the children around for 9 months each, but said he would be overjoyed if he did have a large family.  I said that although I don't yet know first-hand what stresses pregnancy puts on a woman's body, once we are married, my plan is to offer no obstruction at all to creating a large family, even if this means no sleep and working at home for a few days each month.  Why?  Because I love him so much.  He has brought me so much happiness and if children and more children will bring him enormous joy, then that's what I plan to give him.  After all, provided we are married at the time, given that he is the most attractive man I have ever seen, why would I ever have any desire resist him?  I would also enjoy a large family myself.  Visiting people from the United Kingdom have told me that they have noticed that in France, having children makes you that much more socially acceptable.  All part of impossible French perfection I suppose.  I know I am always grumbling about taxes in France, but one thing that is great about France is how the income tax brackets favour  couples with lots of children, even if I don't like the way the tax advantages diminsh steeply after the first child.  Then there are various other advantages, including the Carte Famille Nombreuse for discounts when travelling on the trains: - I don't suggest that anyone has children for the sake of financial advantages, but I think it is great that France is doing things to incentivise people to have children.

Some people might call me an enemy of feminism because I plan to give Bilal as many children as he wants and I am always preaching about the importance of having a dainty figure.  How would I respond to such suggestions of betraying feminism?  If I were a Frenchwoman with the characteristics portrayed by Zoë Williams, I would just light up another Gauloise and say, "bof", MDR.

"But aren't you bothered about your figure any more?", Bilal asked me.  I said I didn't think it was a dichotomy.  It is quite possible for a woman to have a wonderful figure very soon after giving birth or even immediately thereafter.  I recall a photo of Catherine Zeta-Jones that appeared around the time after her wedding showing how much baby weight she had lost on account of her desire to look good in her wedding dress: - unusually for a British (in this case, Welsh) woman, she had a fabulous figure in the photo.  I have no expectation of being in this situation, because neither I nor Bilal approve of fornication, so I would argue that Catherine Zeta-Jones could have saved herself the bother of crash-dieting prior to her wedding by not committing fornication, but anyway.  That example aside, I also remember the controversy over the Norwegian WAG Caroline Berg Eriksen's postpartum selfie of her figure.  What would I say in response to this controversy?  I say you go for it girl!

If you've got a lovely figure like that so soon after giving birth, show it to everyone so that women will be willing to aim high!  Why should this woman listen to the grumblings of women who are just jealous that they don't have such a wonderful postpartum figure?  This is what I would call the "crab mentality" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crab_mentality): - people become jealous at the success of others and try to "pull them back down".  Of course, such wonderful postpartum figures are the norm in France.  There is the perception that a Frenchwoman is so stupid that she doesn't know that heavy drinking and smoking during pregnancy are bad for the unborn child's health, but none of this is well-founded: - in fact, heavy drinking is characteristic of a British ladette, rather than a Frenchwoman.  A pregnant Frenchwoman eats a little bit more than usual (given the need to nourish the unborn child), but her self-discipline when it comes to dainty portions means she has absolutely no weight to lose after she gives birth.  She looks with derision on Anglo-Saxon women who view pregnancy as a time to indulge themselves and then find themselves miserable when they find they have lots of surplus weight after having given birth, possibly suffering post-natal depression as a result of their weight gain, though I admit I would find it hard to avoid post-natal depression if I gained as much weight as Anglo-Saxon women do during pregnancy!  MDR!

I recall the Little Britain character Marjorie Dawes (one of the few British people with the good sense to realise the benefits of halving portions), who commented to two of the fatties at Fat Fighters who had gotten married and were expecting a baby that their decision to have a child was somewhat selfish, given that the child would be born with an addiction to food and would therefore have to go cold turkey.  As far as I know, an addiction to food is not heritable: - after all, my English-born mother was overweight before she began to spend time in France, yet here we are, both with very dainty figures.  However, if an addiction to food were heritable, I would whole-heartedly agree with Ms. Dawes' assertion that they were selfish.

In conclusion, I have absolutely no apprehension about what pregnancy will do to my impossibly dainty French figure.  I am not doing to do a Scarlett O'Hara and refuse to have any more children on account of such fears, knowing that continuing to eat dainty portions, rather than birth control, will preserve my impossibly perfect and dainty French figure.

Don't forget dainty portions!

We are almost at the stage where this is no longer news.  Today, I read yet another story about how British females are letting themselves go when it comes to their weight: - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-2642305/British-girls-fattest-Europe-Almost-females-age-20-UK-overweight-obese-claims-study.html

 The article talks about how peer pressure has lead to British schoolgirls eating fast food more often than they should.  However, what they have failed to realise is that it is still hypothetically possible to remain slim and trim even if one eats fast food: - one just needs to eat dainty portions!  Simple!

Or is it?  I admit with great shame and reluctance that I once ate a McDonalds e-mail and a Burger King meal.  Worse still, they happened to be on the same day!  The reason for this was I was working at a British fashion magazine at the time and, for work purposes, I was obliged to visit an extremely ugly-looking town named Basildon in Essex with lots of tanning salons and nail bars.  If anyone has ever seen the series "The Only Way Is Essex" (often abbreviated to "TOWIE"), you will have a good idea of how gormless the people there are!  It seems that whenever you go to Britain, you cannot avoid hearing about this awful programme!  As Mireille Guiliano points out, "French women don't have much TV to watch".  We have much better things to do, such as internet shopping for a new pair of tods!

As we were in a rush to get several things done, I had to accede to the suggestion of a colleague to get some very quick lunch.  I was horrified when the colleague came back with a McDonalds meal, but I knew that the colleague carried an enormous amount of influence behind the scenes, so I steeled myself to eat it.  I felt physically sick, but then a short while later, I felt extremely hungry, on account of the lack of pleasure given to my taste buds on account of the low quality of the food.  In the evening, I had to accede to a similar suggestion, on account of time pressures to get some food before the departure of the only train that would enable us to get back into London for an important meeting.  Again I was horrified: - the colleague had brought back a Burger King meal!  Again, I ate it on account of my desire not to stir up political problems, but the experience scarred me for life!  It was then that I became particularly motivated to find a way into the French magazine industry!

A Frenchwoman does not like to use scales, but I thought I would break with tradition, on account of the dire situation.  I weighed myself at various points during the week and, in spite of my desperate efforts to make cutbacks, I gained half a kilogramme over the following fortnight because the two fast food meals had knocked my body out of kilter and caused me to crave large amounts of food!  This was, without doubt, the worst experience of my entire life!  If I were a British woman, I would have gone to the nearest detox practitioner, though the catch-22 is that if I were a British woman, I would not care about putting polluting foods into my body in this manner!  MDR!

As a stylish Frenchwoman, I knew that the only thing to do was to eat even lighter meals until my equilibrium was restored.  I give myself treats from time to time, but I had to have fewer treats to compensate for the filth that entered my body and the experience left severe psychological scars as well!  MDR!  So, in conclusion, I say what I always say.  Eat only food of the highest quality so that you get your jollies from your taste buds experiencing pleasure, rather than your stomach being stretched.  Simple really!

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.

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!

Remaining impossibly thin during the Christmas season

People have often asked me how I remain an impossibly thin during advent, the season to celebrate the birth of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.  They talk about all the sweet foods and hearty dinners they attend at this time of year, basically indulging in gluttony during what was traditionally a penitential season.  As a supporter of reformed Christian doctrines, I have no time for all these imposition of fasts, penitential seasons etc by the Church of Rome (I don't like the term "catholic", as that word means "universal", which the pseudo-Christian Church of Rome is not). 

The reformed Christian readers of this blog might have heard of something called the Affair of the Sausages, where Ullrich Zwingli protested against the Roman Catholic fasting during lent as being an extra-scriptural obligation, following which Christoph Froschauer hosted an event to eat sausages during Lent in protest.  I don't know which type of sausages they used.  I hope they didn't use those disgusting sausages that one finds in British "fry-ups", say Lincolnshire sausages or chipolatas (that one feeds to dogs); yuck!

Sausages are something that we French know how to make far better than anyone else.  As a sophisticated Frenchwoman, I only eat French sausages.  Being from Provence, the type of sausage I view as being absolutely divine (in the non-religious sense of the word) is Saucisson d'Arles.  It is an absolutely delicious sausage that has some origins in Boulogne, a town in the far north of France.  However, it was brought to Arles (the home of Jeanne Calment, the longest-living person in the world) by a charcutier named Godart.  Traditionally, it was drunk with local rosé or white wine, though the people of Arles would accompany the sausage with pastis instead.  Yum!

Anyway, back to the topic.  As said earlier, being a subscriber to reformed Christianity, I don't do penitential seasons.  As a stylish Frenchwoman, I am always seeking to have as much pleasure as possible, hence another reason why I don't dig penitential seasons.  So how do I stay so skinny?  Simple.  The same way I have always done.  By eating extremely dainty portions and only of food of the highest quality.  I was once in the USA over Christmas and when I attended parties, I would see fatties munching their way through mediocre sweets (known as "caaaaaaaaaaayndy" there") and biscuits (known as "cookies" there).  Apart from my dislike of hearing Americans murder the English language, it made me feel physically sick, MDR.

So how did I stay thin?  Simple: - apart from the fact that most American confectionary is simply too disgusting to allow between my lips (often on account of being too sweet for a sophisticated Frenchwoman such as myself), the strategy I use is as follows.  Instead of spending the whole evening munching my way through substandard sweets and biscuits, I restrict myself to one or two chocolates tasting absolutely divine!  Often, such chocolates were hard to come by at American Christmas parties, so I often used to sneak a bar of very dark chocolate into the party in my handbag, or perhaps something posted over from Marseille from my local chocolatier in Marseille, MDR.

On one occasion, one of my hosts noticed me sneaking a chocolate from my handbag and she was 'avin' the 'ump with me, asking me, "Is my cooking not good enough for you?  Would you rather be at Buckingham Palace instead of here?"  I told her it wasn't my fault she didn't know how to cook and exercise proper discernment about food, which resulted in her having kittens (another interesting phrase my mother taught me), which resulted in me just turning my back to her and resuming my conversation from which I had been interrupted by her.  So rude!  Thankfully, some high-class people in the USA mercifully invited me to their parties and they were sophisticated enough to import Belgian chocolates, so that Christmas wasn't all bad.

So what to do if you are attending lots of Christmas parties?  Apologies for the late nature of this advice, but one can use it on Christmas Day I suppose.  As mentioned, only have one or two absolutely divine chocolates.  If you are going to have more, make sure the portion sizes are suitable for a dainty Frenchwoman and if not, say, "La moitié, s'il vous plaît" ("Half of that, please"), if halving it is what it would take to get it down to a suitable size.  Just in case your host doesn't know how to cook and you are in an unsophisticated country like the UK, I have done a quick price comparison for Lindt & Sprüngli 90% cocoa chocolate: - http://www.mysupermarket.co.uk/asda-compare-prices/block_chocolate/lindt_excellence_dark_chocolate_supreme_90_cocoa_100g.html .  The comparison mercifully shows that Waitrose is selling it at the lowest price at present, so what I recommend is buying this and secretly keeping some in one's handbag in case all the food is low-quality.

All in all, anyone following my advice (not just here, but throughout my blog posts) should emerge from Christmas and New Year no less dainty than before.  Merry Christmas everyone!

A fat Frenchman

I was surprised to read an article recently about a morbidly obese Frenchman named Kevin Chenais (from Ferney Voltaire, near Geneva) and his difficulties in finding someone who was willing to transport him.  Firstly, let me say that although virtually every Frenchwoman is effortlessly dainty and perfect, there are exceptions to the rule.  There is also a bit of sexism in attitudes to people being overweight in France.  We rightly view it as being normal for a woman to have an impossibly perfect and dainty figure, but if a man is overweight, it is regarded as a sign that he is living the good life, Gérard Depardieu being a famous example.  Ok, Gérard Depardieu has renounced his French citizenship, though I am pleased someone has made a protest against high taxes on successful people such as myself.  As for me personally, I don't find it at all attractive for a man to be overweight, unless the weight is on account of him being extremely muscular and he has nicely ripped abs.  I cannot understand who on earth would find it attractive for a man to be overweight, but anyway.

The situation with Kevin Chenais is that he has been disgustingly obese since childhood (supposedly on account of health problems *cough*) and, aged 22, found himself with few travel options (apart from his mobility scooter).  The US train system transported him from Chicago to New York's Penn Station, following his treatment for his condition at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester (presumably he travelled by train from Rochester to Chicago, I'm not sure).  When in Nuu Yawk, British Airways refused to fly him and eventually, Virgin Atlantic agreed to fly him.  However, his travel difficulties didn't end there.  Eurostar refused to transport him, citing regulations requiring them to be able to evacuate everyone in the event of an emergency (Kevin Chenais and his mobility scooter fell afoul of this).

I also suspect that his enormous weight would have caused havoc regarding some of the other technical requirements.  Rolling stock boffins will be aware that Eurostar's current trains (shown above at Ashford International station) have an articulated design, meaning that rather than two bogies underneath each carriage, (most of) the intermediate carriages instead have a Jacob's bogie between them (therefore meaning there is an average of a little over one bogie per carriage).  Because the weight of the carriages are spread between fewer bogies, it is necessary to make the carriages shorter (I also wonder if the end-throw imposes some requirements, but I'm not sure how to find this out in a hurry).  Given that Eurostar's trains are under these weight constraints, I suspect that carrying this disgustingly obese man as a passenger would have put one of the axles over the axle load limit of 17 tonnes, tee hee!  Shown below is a Jacobs bogie on a Spanish RENFE 101 Series on the Euromed route (they were converted to S100 units for the Madrid-Seville line and the Euromed route is now covered by S130 trains).  These were a French creation and they look set to run on French soil again, as next month, RENFE plans to introduce them for the Toulouse-Barcelona, Lyon-Barcelona and, best of all, Marseille-Barcelona routes.  These were supposedly delayed on account of homologation issues, but I think the reasons are political: - RENFE doesn't want us out-competing them on the Barcelona-Madrid line (their most profitable one) with our economies of scale (the double-decker TGVs can hold over 1,000 passengers when two are coupled together).

I love the way Eurostar's trains are designed around dainty Frenchwomen!  The standard class seats are regarded by fat British and Americans as being too small, though even an impossibly dainty Frenchwoman such as myself enjoys the luxury of lots of space in first class, even if the décor is very dated (though it is currently being refurbished by Pininfarina from what I recall).

Above is an on-board Eurostar meal.  I wouldn't touch the main course personally, as the Lincolnshire sausage is too British for me.  Some people criticise the French for indoctrinating their people to believe French is best and only French is sufficient quality, but I am delighted that we have the wisdom to teach our people such things.  I recall travelling companions from Anglo-Saxon nations bleating about the dainty nature of the on-board meals, e.g. the single packaged Malteser-esque sweet ("the lighter way to enjoy chocolate", MDR): - they complained about the wasteful nature of packaging a single sweet like that, but a Frenchwoman knows that packaging sweets individually is a trick one can use to make less seem like more.  Added to that the fact that Maltesers are very light as they are mostly made up of air: - a large part of eating less is using culinary tricks to make your mind think you are eating less than you are.  As for me, I took on even fewer calories, as I wouldn't touch it, given that the chocolate used was less than 60% cocoa!  MDR!

Anyway, back to Kevin Chenais.  I think he looks absolutely disgusting and I think he is an embarrassment to our great nation of France, which is famous for its women with dainty figures (such as myself), but whose reputation could be under threat by some disgusting looking pig who eats so much that he requires a mobility scooter and oxygen.  Obesity in Anglo-Saxon nations is, dare I say it, in some way, understandable, given that Anglo-Saxon peoples, in their monstrous ignorance, do not know the things that Frenchwomen know.  However, being obese in France is absolutely inexcusable, given the wisdom that French women just happen to know.  Kevin Chenais, shame on you!