Excuses

Having just given birth to our second baby and received regular confirmation from Bilal that I am still a "well buff wifey", I am once again reminded of how thin and impossibly perfect my figure is.  Bilal is welcoming lots of visitors from La Savine (hip-hop people, in other words) to see our son: - the police were called to my flat because someone called them suggesting that there was drug dealing going on here, MDR.  When Bilal's homies visit, he lets his guard down, i.e. using hip-hop French I don't always understand and openly talking about knocking me up and me being "well buff" after two children: - his "homies" often express open agreement with the second point.  Unlike many Western women, I love this aspect of Bilal and I would never want a herbivore man: - I was always attracted to big, strong and macho men.  I ask him to try and avoid saying things too openly in front of people who aren't from La Savine (who are like him) or church (who have come to accept him as he is), as it is easier to just not have to explain, MDR.

Being a mother-of-two and still beanpole thin, one thing that has become ever more apparent to me is that Anglo-Saxon women have an endless supply of excuses for not being thin.  On the other hand, a Frenchwoman has an iron will and unbreakable self-discipline that enables her to be attractive in any season of life (both the young filly and old bag season, as Zoë Williams put it, MDR).  In this blog post, I outline typical excuses of Anglo-Saxon women and what a Frenchwoman's solutions are.

Excuses

Anglo-Saxon women seem to be under this bizarre impression that they need to eat for two when expecting a baby.  Granted, I have only given birth to two children, but having used the same strategy to stay thin during both pregnancies, my assumption is that the process is repeatable, no matter how many children a woman has: - Bilal is only too happy to oblige in enabling me to prove this, MDR.  During both pregnancies, I observed the rules I observed when not pregnant, primarily portion size.  If you remember them and have an iron will like we Frenchwomen, there is no reason to ever get fat.

Many Western women fall into the trap of comfort eating, the excuse being that because they are sad, depressed or whatever, they comfort-eat.  In other words, what they are saying is they have a bad lack of self-control when their moods are low.  A Frenchwoman knows very well that comfort eating never was the solution to low moods, as it causes large amounts of food to become like an addition, i.e. she is bad-tempered until she gets her fix.

Another common thing Western women do is blame people around them for "unrealistic" images of beauty, i.e. setting off a yo-yo dieting pattern because she does crash dieting to achieve the desired weight, which is followed up by eating more and getting heavier.  They often blame unrealistic images and the men in their lives, as Natalie Grant did in that article.  Our Heavenly Father displayed His wisdom in pairing Bilal and me: - I am able to listen to all he has to say about me being a "well buff wifey", appreciate it, and still remain in full control of my eating and weight, irrespective of anything Bilal does or doesn't say.  Natalie Grant (the author of the article the link points to) would no doubt respond in a similar way if she were married to a man like Bilal who appreciates fine women.

Solutions

Simple solutions are often the best.  A Frenchwoman knows that there is no black magic necessary to achieve a pencil thin figure: - just say "la moitié, s'il vous plaît" at every mealtime!  If necessary, keep doing so until the portion is befitting of a dainty Frenchwoman!  Simple!  This phrase has been key to keeping a Frenchwoman thin for many generations.  A French female learns this phrase that acts as the perfect solution for staying thin when she first starts to talk.

If the food portions available are more than twice as big as they should be, the next solution is to remember what proper food portion sizes are.  Mireille Guiliano discussed portion sizes she regards as standard, though truth be told, they are a little too big for me, MDR.  Even so, the principle  behind the solution is the same: - women should build an idea in their mind about what standard portion sizes are and stick to what they remember.  If she lacks ambition and she wants to use Mireille's portion sizes, she can carry such objects around with her to look at during quiet moments and continue building up her familiarity.

Exercising control of moods is another solution.  A Frenchwoman does not tend to indulge her moods in ways that lead to her indulging herself further with food.  Anglo-Saxon women tend to get angry about things and rant angrily, before resorting to comfort eating to lift their moods.  On the other hand, a Frenchwoman will just light another Gauloise (just kidding, we French women are not the stereotypical chainsmokers Zoë Williams thinks we are), do a Gallic shrug and say "bof".  She knows that self-discipline in general is key: - if she has mastered it over her moods, she will more than likely have self-discipline over food as well.  I am not saying a Frenchwoman never has trying times in life, but her solution is to deal with them by other means, such as more searching for beautiful garments.

The power of imagination is another solution in a Frenchwoman's arsenal.  She considers eating more of her favourite foods and then remembers the joy of being able to fit into all her favourite clothes.  When tempted, she thinks of the joy of being able to walk round in tight outfits and the misery of being too fat to fit into beautiful clothes!  Simple!  The only times I have ever been too big are during my two pregnancies: - the danger during this time is women will slip, given that she won't fit into her previous clothes anyway, so she needs to picture a postpartum shopping spree for the most gorgeous clothes she can find (I wouldn't dream of wearing fashions from 9 months ago) and fitting into all of them perfectly as she has no pregnancy pounds.  One day, I hopped on the train at Marseille-St. Charles at 08.38, arrived in Paris 3h07m later, rushed round shops selling haute couture (that would never fit fat and dumpy Anglo-Saxon women) and found anything I wanted fitted me just like before. I got on the 16.15 train at Paris-Gare de Lyon with my hands full of shopping (plenty of room though, given how little of the seat I took up, MDR) and 3h10m later arrived back at Marseille-St. Charles to find Bilal waiting for me with our sons telling me I was a "well buff wifey" in my latest outfit and that he was treating us to an exquisite dinner at the Vieux Port.  Imaging such situations is the ideal solution for maintaining self-control during pregnancy!

Though France suffers from big government, a Frenchwoman knows the solution is to take responsibility for her own body.  Mireille Guiliano pointed out that "French women choose their own indulgences and compensations.  They understand that little things count, both additions and subtractions, and that as an adult everyone is the keeper of her own equilibrium."  It is nice that Natalie Grant chose to take control of her diet for her own health, but she is vulnerable to falling into the bulimia trap again, as she lays the blame for this at the hands of her ex-boyfriend/fiancé, rather than accepting she is the keeper of her own equilibrium.  Granted, her ex-boyfriend/fiancé was unsuitable for her as a believing lady: - my daddy made it clear he would turn away all suitors if they had no history of regular attendance, participation and volunteering in a church (eventually, he realised it was not possible to fault Bilal on this).  However, a Frenchwoman has self-control and self-discipline and accepts responsibility whatever the men in her life are like: - I would never take the easy way out and blame the men in my life (Bilal and our two sons) for sidetracking me from exercising personal responsibility for staying beanpole thin!

So there you go: - common excuses for not being thin and a Frenchwoman's way round these excuses.  Stop making excuses and be impossibly perfect as we Frenchwomen are!

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.

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.

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!

The ease of eating like a Frenchwoman if abroad

Apologies for the long lull in my posts: - no-one said running a fashion magazine would be easy!

I have had some rather unkind people contacting me about my blog posts, calling me smug, up myself etc etc.  I have also faced accusations that from my supposed ivory tower, I don't understand what life is like for real struggling people in terms of affording proper food.  A chav who lives in the British town of Gravesend in Kent got in touch with me and challenged me to put my money where my mouth is.  You know me, I can't resist a challenge!

Gravesend is a funny place.  It contains some reasonably pretty areas.  The picture above depicts Khartoum Place, which is so named on account of the association of General Charles George Gordon with Gravesend, who died in the Siege of Khartoum.  Another reasonably pretty building in the town (though nothing holds a candle to my native Marseille) is St. George's Anglican Church.

St. George's Anglican church contains the most famous thing associated with the town: - the remains of Princess Pocahontas.  Yes, she was a real person, not just a Disney character.  Pocahontas, after visiting the British Isles, decided to make the journey back to Virginia in the Land of the Free (fat, more like) with her husband John Rolfe.  She became ill while on the ship near Gravesend and was carried ashore dead or dying and was buried within the grounds of the church, though no-one today knows which remains are hers.

However, the chav nature of Gravesend was very scary.  Above is an old photo of one of the main streets (Wikipedia wrongly says that it is the High Street).  As you can see, Woolworths (thankfully now defunct) and Primark are in the photo.  There is also an Asda, Aldi and Tesco in the town, with a Morrisons on the outskirts.  There is also a pier (normally a symbol of chav British seaside towns, though the restaurant in this one was relatively posh.  Yeek!

Gravesend is very easy to reach from France.  One can simply take a Eurostar train to Ebbsfleet International station, the parkway station along the UK's high-speed line to the Channel Tunnel that I assume was built mainly to serve commuters into London and people wishing to reach a Eurostar station by car.

From there, one can take a British Rail Class 395 (known informally as the "Javelin") connecting train to Gravsend.  Though this particular rolling stock model is only designed for 225km/h or so in service, its acceleration is impressive and enough to knock me off my feet.  As far as I'm aware, there are a couple of likely reasons why it was designed around a 225km/h maximum speed.  Firstly, given the gearing ratio question, higher speeds would result in a trade-off regarding acceleration.  Secondly, approximately half of the trains leave HS1 (the high-speed line to the Channel Tunnel, aka the CTRL) at Ebbsfleet International and the speed between here and central London is limited to 230km/h or so, meaning that only half of the trains or so (the ones going towards Ashford) would be able to make use of higher speeds.

Anyway, enough about the side matters, as this article is intended to talk about how it is possible to eat properly, even if one is a chav.  I met up with the chav who I had been in touch with and, at great risk of traumatising myself for life, I commenced the journey round the local supermarkets.  Aldi was reasonably continental in its offerings, though the quality wasn't great (one has to be a sophisticated Frenchwoman like me to know the difference) and there wasn't a great selection of dark chocolate.  Very close to the station is Tesco (the one shown below is not the one in Gravesend), where I found a large selection of chocolate.  I found two varieties of 85% chocolate.

One was labelled "Swiss 85% Plain Chocolate" and the other was labelled "Tesco Finest Dominican Republic 85% Dark Chocolate".  On the inside label, it reads "Tasting fine chocolate should be done with all of your senses.  Look for a nice glossy brown finish, listen for a crisp snap when you break a piece off, smell delicious chocolate notes and hints of other aromas before you take the first bite.  Let a piece melt slowly on your tongue to truly experience the depth of flavour, which will change from start to finish.  Using the flavour wheel below, you can identify the unique, characteristic flavour profiles of each of the Tesco Finest single origin chocolates."  As one can see from my earlier post about dark chocolate, even a bumpkin Frenchwoman could have told people that for nothing, but anyway.  The price?  One for £1.50 and two for £2 at the time of my visit.  Ok, so I wouldn't eat it myself, as people who are the bee's knees like myself only go for the best quality from specialist chocolatiers, but how is it that people think it is impossible to eat like a dainty Frenchwoman with 85% chocolate being that cheap?

We also went onward to Asda (above is the headquarter building in Leeds).  I was not very happy about having a choice between taking the escalator or the lift to get there (luckily, I found out in advance of my ascent after finishing in Asda that there is an outdoor steps route to the main road passing Asda), as a dainty Frenchwoman such as myself much prefers the stairs/steps.  Anyway, one of the things we looked at in Asda was the cheese section.  Yes, there was lots of rubbish, e.g. discounted Cheddar, Cheddar mixed in with horrible rubbish to make processed cheese (e.g. pickle, chili etc), but I was pleasantly surprised to see some continental cheeses there.  Comté, Castello Blue (which takes on a lovely taste as it ages), Manchego, Gorgonzola, Parmigiano Reggiano, Camembert, Brie (though I wouldn't personally go near the Cornish versions of these two), Roquefort and I was even amazed to see Reblochon de Savoie!

  The quality was probably substandard, given the low prices (a Frenchwoman knows that clever people never cut corners when it comes to spending money on quality food).  We also found some cheap vegetables (regrettably, the ones near the cheese aisle happened to be frozen, though there were some fresh ones near the entrance).  Fresh bread was also baked in-store (though I didn't intend to try it, as I knew the quality would be poor).  I rejected my chav companion's suggestion that she was too poor to buy butter instead of margarine, as the own-brand stuff (I hope nobody was contemplating the idea that I would ever let this near my lips) cost just £1!  For something marginally better, there was some Somerset Farmhouse butter for £1.40.  Ooh arr, gert lush (not)!  Slightly cheaper at £1.25 was the French brand Président, which is the bare minimum of quality I will ever consider, which I advised my chav companion to buy.

I followed my chav single mother companion to her home in a slum on Huntley Avenue in nearby Northfleet (pikey mothers shouting "Oi!  Come 'ere now!" at their children, noisy Staffordshire Bull Terriers, grannies wearing football shirts etc), with her purchases of items including dark chocolate, Président butter, Reblochon de Savoie, French-style bread etc.  She was originally considering taking the bus back, but I insisted that we walk, as a Frenchwoman would do.  She was originally planning on making cheese and chips for her family (all of whom were overweight), but I insisted that she make tartiflette (which uses cheese and potatoes and so has some similarities with cheese and chips, though it is in a different league altogether) instead, a lovely rich French dish that I have discussed in a previous posting that is very rich and fills a dainty Frenchwoman up very quickly.  She made gigantic portions, but obviously found she and her chidlren were unable to finish them, so I went onto the street and called in some chav neighbours to show them what proper food is like (I don't like food going to waste and the quality isn't so good if it has been microwaved) and fed them with the remainder of the tartiflette.

Eventually, when I decided I had had enough of the chav surroundings, I walked to Ebbsfleet International station across the bridge near Huntley Avenue, caught my train into London and went about my business of promoting my fashion magazine.  I don't know if the chav single mother I met up with has changed her ways, or if she is too proud to realise that we Frenchwomen are impossibly perfect and should be slavishly replicated, but maybe I'll ask her sometime.  All in all, though economy stuff is never the highest quality, the suggestion that one is overweight because one cannot eat like a dainty Frenchwoman is absolute nonsense.  What I say to people in Anglo-Saxon nations is, stop making excuses, get up off your incredibly overweight backsides, walk to the supermarket (if you aren't successful enough to afford the specialist stores), buy some proper food and watch the weight tumble off!

The intense pleasure of yoghurt

As a stylish Frenchwoman, yoghurt is a food I like to consume a lot of.  When made properly, it is an absolutely delicious food that a French woman can't get enough of (if one ignores the fact that she has a dainty appetite, tee hee).  Mireille Guiliano wrote a post about the magic of yoghurt at http://frenchwomendontgetfat.com/content/magic-yogurt .

As I have said in a previous post, low-fat low-sugar low-flavour foods are a poor strategy when it comes to dieting and I much prefer the strategy of eating a dainty Frenchwoman's portion of the real thing.  There is another disadvantage to low-fat low-flavour yoghurt that helps explain why a French woman will not touch the stuff.  If one dips one's spoon into low-fat low-flavour yoghurt and lifts it out again, the so-called yoghurt tends to dribble off the spoon.  With real full-fat yoghurt, if one does the same, one can turn the spoon upside-down and it will stay on the spoon.  A Frenchwoman eats her yoghurt by turning the spoon upside-down like this, slowly inserting it into her mouth upside-down, closing her eyes, slowly withdrawing the spoon whilst pouting and keeping her lips gently pressed against the spoon and gaining a sensation of pure pleasure in the process.

I wouldn't know personally, given that I go for artesanal producers and the closest thing to a supermarket I am willing to enter is Le Bon Marché.  However, from what I have heard, the brands of yoghurt that appear in French supermarkets that also appear in Anglo-Saxon supermarkets tend to have different formulations, i.e. the full-fat varieties appear in French supermarkets.

Obviously, the last part is impossible if it is low-fat low-flavour yoghurt, MDR.  Only the highest quality of yoghurt is sufficient to cause someone with a refined palate such as a Frenchwoman to gain a sensation of pure pleasure in this way.  For this reason, if one wants to be effortlessly thin, but still gain pleasure from eating yoghurt (i.e. from the taste, rather than one's belly being stretched), one has to select the finest yoghurt the way a Frenchwoman would do.

Firstly, one should always go organic.  A Frenchwoman's refined palate can detect anything unnatural a mile off.  Secondly, one should buy from the farm gate whenever possible.  A Frenchwoman's refined palate much prefers yoghurt that is artesanal and make by the hands of a skilled craftsman.  If one lives within a city, one should pay someone to drive or travel via TGV to a parkway station (Avignon TGV and Aix-en-Provence TGV being examples of parkway stations) to travel to a farm where artesanal yoghurt is produced, rushing it back into the city without delay.  Real yoghurt does not have unnatural preservatives in it to make it last longer: - a Frenchwoman's sophisticated palate (which can detect such things with the greatest of ease) will cause her to wince when it passes her lips.

So there you have it: - a Frenchwoman knows that yoghurt is something that needs to be done properly if one is to get maximum pleasure from it.

Medical science aiding people with excuses

Though I most definitely don't have any interest in returning to the United Kingdom for anything other than business, given that the United Kingdom is a planned future market for my magazine, I find it expedient to keep abreast of current affairs, hence why I often find myself reading BBC News Online.

Another reason why it is expedient for me to read up on current affairs in the United Kingdom is the fact that sometimes, it gives stylish and sophisticated Frenchwomen such as myself excuses to feel good about ourselves and look down on less stylish and sophisticated British women.

I just came across one such excuse at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-24402163 .  This article talks about how lots of people are wrongly labelled as having food addiction when in reality, they are just greedy and gluttonous.

I can't stand the way people in the Anglo-Saxon world constantly try to attach medical explanations to everything to justify human shortcomings.  In the USA, yuppies have enjoyed wasting psychiatrists' time when they knew perfectly well there was nothing wrong with them.  This nonsense has been around for a very long time.  I recall George Webber (the protagonist of the film "10", played by Dudley Moore) visiting a psychiatrist for frivolous reasons: - this film was released in 1979!

Examples abound everywhere.

Dyslexia is middle-class for thick: - middle-class Anglo-Saxon parents don't want to admit their children are actually thick as two short planks, so they get quacks to diagnose them with dyslexia.

Autism is also middle-class for badly-behaved.  Michael Savage, one of the few Americans with any common sense at all, was noted for saying, "Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, "Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.""  The Anglo-Saxon medical establishment, rather than admitting that it over-diagnoses people with autism spectrum conditions turned on him and persecuted him.  On the other hand, whilst the Anglo-Saxon world remains in ignorance, French people know all about how to raise children properly: - a lady named Catherine Crawford from Brooklyn, New York finally admitted that we French know best when it comes to raising children in her book "Why French children don't talk back" (a parody of Mireille Guiliano's "French women don't get fat").  However, she is a very rare breed.  Most of the time, rather than admit that we French know best about everything, the Anglo-Saxon world chooses to slag us off, e.g. this article about France's supposed autism treatment shame at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17583123 .  There is also a documentary in post-production called "Shameful" produced mainly by Alex Plank, an American autism advocate and film-maker, which attacks France's supposed poor record when it comes to autism treatment.

The truth is that we French, in our effortless perfection, recognise that sometimes, medical explanations are attached to human shortcomings to try unsuccessfully to justify them.

This is not to say that there aren't people out there with genuine binge-eating disorders, dyslexia, autism etc.  In fact, another reason I dislike all these phoney medical diagnoses is the likelihood that this will lead to the few people who do genuinely have binge-eating disorders, dyslexia, autism etc not being taken seriously, given that for every one person given a correct diagnosis, the medical profession probably gives 50,000 wrong diagnoses.  If the medical profession is not willing to stop phoney diagnoses on the basis that they are just excuses, it should stop phoney diagnoses on the basis that they make a mockery of people who really have the conditions.

Anyway, rant aside, because according to Zoë Williams, French women don't rant like this: - instead, we just light up another fag and say, "bof".  MDR!

Anyway, back to the main point.  Why won't people in the Anglo-Saxon world just realise how effortlessly perfect we French are and slavishly replicate our wonderful example?  We don't pig out on food and then blame it on phoney psychiatric illnesses.  No, what we do is we take responsibility: - we only eat the daintiest quantities of food of the highest quality, use the stairs rather than the lift, walk rather than take the car (though I have to admit I use the TGV for Paris-Marseille journeys, given that the distance is almost 750km, MDR) etc.

If one is overweight and does not feel "bien dans sa peau", one can do no better than refraining from seeing a psychiatrist and looking to the effortless perfection that we French display.