Belately realising things

I recently read an article by a Northern Irish lady named Lorraine Wylie belatedly realising how wonderful French women's lives are compared to Northern Irish women at https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/life/features/northern-ireland-can-learn-a-little-on-lifestyle-food-and-fashion-from-the-french-37451558.html .  What struck me most about this is that this was published on the 24th of October 2018 (less than a month ago).  Clearly, though the author has a French first name, she has been stuck in a bunker for the last decade-and-a-half or so!  Has it taken her this long to realise how effortlessly perfect we Frenchwomen are?  No wonder effortlessly perfect Frenchwomen like myself feel the need to go on endlessly about this!  MDR.

The article talks about her visit to her French friend Véronique Maquin Chillou.  She doesn't give the name of the town in which this article is set, though she mentions that it is part of Vienne.  I don't think I would be breaching privacy laws to say a quick Google search reveals it to be Chauvingy in Nouvelle Aquitaine.  This part of France is particularly famous for goat's cheese, with less famous foods being Echiré butter, Farci Poitevin paté and Tourteau Fromagé.  Not as wonderful as Provence, but every culinary region of France is wonderful compared to any region (or country) not under French sovereignty.

Lorraine Wylie talks about how she walked up the steep cobbled streets.  I must say, if she views French women's passive exercise as a new revelation, I can't think what sort of isolated circumstances she has been living in.  This woman has probably been sweating away in a gym (and overeating afterwards) in an attempt to lose weight, as is typical among frumpy Anglo-Saxon women.  Meanwhile, we Frenchwomen are staying effortlessly thin, to oversimplify things slightly, by just walking more (using the stairs and less car travel) and saying "la moitié, s'il vous plaît" when offered some food.

Regarding the tips about beauty, yes, a Frenchwoman definitely knows how to use a beauty regimen to make herself look nice, though I think Véronique Maquin Chillou has a fairly laborious routine.  I don't spend anywhere near the time she appears to spend on beauty (I have compressed my routine to a few minutes in the morning) yet Bilal still thinks I am a "bufft'ing" and comes home each evening with a huge appetite for after our sons have been put to bed.

The advice on food is hardly revolutionary.  Véronique Maquin Chillou says she makes rich dishes and avoids processed foods, sticking to simple things (a Frenchwoman loves elegant simplicity).  She also doesn't avoid cheese, desserts and wine, three not-so-guilty pleasures that Frenchwomen regularly enjoy.  The biggest No-sh"BLEEP"-Sherlock part of the article is "As suspected, a slender silhouette has nothing to do with national heritage. It doesn't matter which side of the channel our bread is buttered, staying in shape is simply about portion control."  I don't know how many times the phrase "La moitié, s'il vous plaît" has appeared in this blog so far.  Okay, she might have been suspecting it for a long time, though I don't know why it took so long for her to confirm her suspicions.

Okay, it is generally harder to reach Northern Ireland from France than the nations making up Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales) by land, but how has Lorraine Wylie been in the dark for so long?  She talks about the tips as if they were groundbreaking new revelations, which they should not be, even in the Anglo-Saxon world.  This demonstrates that there is plenty more work to do with this blog!

Taking credit where it isn't due

As many of my readers will be aware, I am strongly in favour of trains as a transportation mode.  Mireille Guiliano has often pointed out passive exercise as being a reason why French women are so effortlessly thin and perfect.  In order to make this situation workable in today's globalised world, it is necessary to have good public transportation networks, of which high-speed intercity railway plays an important part.

Of the presidents we French have had in the past few years, Nicolas Sarkozy is the one I am most favourably disposed towards.  He didn't help himself by being a bling-bling president pursuing a glamorous romance with his now-wife Carla Bruni, but he did many good things, such as coming up with some ideas for economic reform (rewarding hard work) and setting the process in motion for construction of LGVs (Lignes à Grande Vitesse, or high-speed lines), in particular Le Mans-Rennes, Tours-Bordeaux and Nîmes-Montpellier.  In addition to this, he played a key role in starting the process for introducing high-speed rail to Morocco.

Granted, an organisation cannot go on indefinitely if its debts just keep ballooning and I am pleased that Emmanuel Macron is cracking down on the gravy train that many SNCF employees enjoy, but I am not happy with the change in the way high-speed lines will be funded.  https://www.railjournal.com/in_depth/sncf-reform-back-on-track-after-devastating-strike explains that SNCF Network will not fund any more high-speed line projects, but the funding will come from the regions.  I don't mind the idea that people in Marseille shouldn't be funding the Tours-Bordeaux line, given the limited benefits we will receive from it.  Some of the principles behind it are good, but what I am unhappy with is the possibility that it will make LGV construction unviable, given the relative lack of power regions have to pull together disparate funding sources.  It is hypothetically possible that Languedoc-Roussillon will persuade say Catalonia and the Spanish government to chip in for the LGV Montpellier-Perpignan.  Maybe PACA (Provence-Alpes-Côte d'Azur) will persuade Liguria, Italy and other French regions to chip in for the upgrades to the Marseille-Nice route.  I am not holding my breath though.  Marseille-Nice is already badly congested and Montpellier-Perpignan stands to get worse, given the lines that converge at the ends of the proposed route (two in Montpellier and three in Perpignan).

Having done so much to stop future high-speed line construction, our ridiculous president is making appearances when new lines kicked off by Nicolas Sarkozy are opened.  He showed up at the ceremony concerning the soon-to-be-opened Tangiers-Kénitra line, even though it clearly wouldn't have happened under him: - https://newsbeezer.com/franceeng/morocco-inaugurates-the-first-tgv-line-in-africa/ .  I am pleased that the government pushed through the Paris-Marseille route with a lot of enthusiasm, but it is a shame LGV development looks like it has come to a grinding halt in France.

Update: - third baby born

Apologies to my readers for the lack of updates.  Our third son was born a couple of months ago and I have been distracted from this blog by the various things to do at home and work.  Mireille Guiliano has explained how French women are good at making choices.  In her case, she chose not to have children in favour of having a career.  Later, she chose retirement and writing over her role as CEO of Veuve-Cliquot.  In my case, I wanted to continue expanding the reach of my magazine and my family, meaning that my blogging about how wonderful French women are has taken a back seat.  This is not to say that I will never write any more blog posts though: - I am hoping to write some more when I have some more spare time and creative energies.

I don't tend to write much about family matters.  Bilal was never a controlling man, but he is a very private man, so out of kindness to him, I run topics that concern him or our children by him before I write them.  He is happy for me to talk about our fast-growing family, as he is very proud to have had a third son so quickly: - he is very much a man who is still in his prime.  Let's just say he is not slowing down!  He is also happy for me to talk about him being hip-hop.  However, he jealousy guards our sons' privacy and wants this to continue until they are old enough to decide for themselves how much of their lives they want to expose in public.  Therefore, all I will say about our third son is that mother and baby are both doing well, plus the father and the older two sons.

I have various things to say regarding news articles.  For instance, the LGV Nîmes-Montpellier will open to passenger traffic on the 8th of July (it opened to freight traffic in December 2017), with Montpellier's Sud de France station also entering service that day.  However, Bilal is disappointed with the fact that in the interim, it will not speed up his train journeys to visit his homies in Seville: - he loves to take our sons on the train to Seville to visit his homies (I come along when I am able).  Only a few passenger trains (not tending to cover this route) will use the station each day in the interim.  This is because it is not possible to use the new line to serve Nîmes until Nîmes-Pont de Gard station is complete.  Also, the current lack of an extension of Line 1 of Montpellier's trams to Sud de France station limits the station's usefulness.

Also, there are the French railway reforms that were recently passed.  Reforms of SNCF are badly overdue: - its workers are all too often unionised and entitled, causing the organisation to be bloated.  I am hopeful that the reforms will lead to lower taxpayer subsidies and lower ticket prices.  However, the main problem with Emmanuel Macron's ways of doing things regarding railways is his lack of enthusiasm for building new LGV routes.  François Hollande pushed back the LGV Montpellier-Perpignan and his successor looks set to push it back even further: - this route will also reduce the train time to Seville for Bilal.

There was the famous incident of Mamadou Gassama, the Malian immigrant who climbed up a few flights on the outside of an apartment block to save a baby boy in danger of falling.  There is no doubt that this man's actions saved this boy from extreme danger, though from rumours I have heard, it pales in comparison to some of the things Bilal did while growing up in La Savine.  I mentioned in a previous post that he saved a child in danger of drowning: - if the rumours are correct, this was among the tamer examples of things he has done.  Still, Bilal and Mamadou Gassama put many native-born Frenchmen to shame in terms of what they will do to protect the vulnerable.

Loads of things to catch up on, but hopefully, I will write some more posts when I have time!