Stratford, an area of London that Bilal loved

I enjoy travelling with Bilal and, as can be deduced from my posts, theology is a shared interest of ours.  We were aware of a church conference taking place in London that we knew would be promoting sound theology, so we decided we would visit the conference.  Bilal and I both found the conference edifying, but there is so much to be said about it that it is probably best discussed on a blog about theology, rather than a blog about how wonderfully dainty we Frenchwomen are!  Naturally, I also decided I wanted to do some business: - given that the UK has absolutely no plans to introduce a 75% tax rate, there are far more opportunities for business than in France!  This is just about the only favourable comparison I can make with France!  MDR!One thing I often tend to do is leave Bilal to his own devices to explore while I am doing business trying to promote my fashion magazine and then travel over to where he is if he has found something that interests him.

Being a railway aficionado like my father, Bilal observes the route keenly during train journeys and he has often noticed that on the final approach to St. Pancras International, in between the two long tunnels (named London Tunnel 1 and London Tunnel 2), the Eurostar trains pass by, but never stop at, a station.  Bilal looked up this station and found out that it is called Stratford International.  During one of my business meetings, Bilal decided to Stratford International and watch the trains pass for a little while.  The British high-speed rail line (known as the Channel Tunnel Rail Link) is unusual in that the trains go very fast through city centres: - in Ashford, this is by means of a flyover and in Stratford (an area of London), this is by means of a box.

When he started to feel hungry, Bilal ventured into the adjacent Stratford Westfield shopping centre.  I had forgotten to make him something for lunch that day, given my desire to make sure he only eats high-quality food!  MDR!  Poor Bilal didn't find things very easy.  He has coeliac disease and although he is learning English, he is not particularly fluent at present.  Almost immediately upon entry to the shopping centre, there is a shop prominently selling artesan bread!  He has a long way to go when it comes to written English as well and so he struggled to understand the labels to see if food contains gluten or not: - this is very different to Spain where gluten-free foods tend to contain a label to this effect!  Eventually, after a lot of fruitless exploring, he overheard some people talking in French and decided to ask them if they could offer him some advice regarding seeking-gluten free food.  Someone then explained that British supermarkets sometimes have a "free from" section and suggested trying Marks and Spencer (middle class, but still low quality in comparison to the worst France can offer).

On the way to Marks and Spencer, he walked passed a shop called New Era that he made a mental note of.  After having bought a few items from the "free from" section of Marks and Spencer (he was feeling rather faint by this point), he walked back to the New Era store.  Surprisingly for a hip-hop person such as him, Bilal was not aware of the existence of the New Era headwear company.  Bilal was delighted to enter the door of the Stratford branch and see a whole shop filled with hip-hop baseball caps.  Bilal had great fun trying them on, but after a while, it was proving difficult to find one for his head size, so he called me on my mobile and asked for me to tell the shop assistant by phone that he wanted to know if there were some caps in his size.  The shop assistant said there were and opened some drawers containing the correct size.  Bilal had a whale of a time trying on the caps and bought several.  Unusually, he was so entranced by the variety of hip-hop baseball caps around that he didn't seem to mind the fact that  his head was uncovered in public between trying different caps on!

After buying several caps from the New Era store, Bilal started exploring the Stratford area and very quickly, he fell in love with it, as everywhere he looked, he saw people of African origin dressed up in hip-hop clothing more often than not wearing baseball caps of the style sold by New Era.  Bilal had no way of identifying who was a French speaker beforehand, so he waited for me to finish my business dealings elsewhere in the city and travel over to Stratford so that I could interpret for him.  He had a great time socialising, even though he had to conduct his conversations through me.

Again, just as with our visit to the Aylesbury estate a few months ago, my interpretation abilities were tested to the max, given the large number of hip-hop slang words used by both Bilal and the locals!  Some people were keen to learn French, but said that it didn't seem a very cool when they were taught it at school.  Bilal suggested that if anyone genuinely thought that, they should seek to learn new vocabulary using a website he is intimately familiar with called Dictionnaire De La Zone.  The locals in turn suggested that Bilal get himself acquainted with Urban Dictionary in order to familiarise himself with English-language hip-hop slang.

Apart from the New Era shop, Bilal also discovered a new chain store that interested him called Arabian Oud, which sells Arab-style perfume.  The scents reminded him of when he visited Saudi Arabia, where the population as a whole is very keen on fragrances.  Unfortunately, Bilal was performing the Hajj when he was in Saudi Arabia, in a way, this trip was part of the old man that needs to be mortified when one becomes a new creature in Christ, but he still thought it was a beautiful country and thought it was a shame that such a beautiful nation is under the yoke of Islam.  Bilal bought some spicy men's perfume and I thought it smelled absolutely divine (in the non-religious sense of the word) on him.  I respect many things Mireille Guiliano writes, but I don't agree with what she wrote about spicy fragrances not smelling good in hot weather!  Bilal was very pleased to learn that there is a branch in Paris.  In fact, I also remember one on Oxford Street that I saw on that occasion when I went to Selfridges to buy some Mariage Frères tea.

Bilal also spoke with a Muslim evangelist outside Stratford station  who happened to be from Algeria.  The Muslim evangelist made some very silly claims.  Firstly, he claimed that there is no place in the Bible where it says Jesus and God are the same person: - Bilal suggested that perhaps he was half asleep when he read John 10:30.  The Muslim evangelist then claimed that the Bible never says that Jesus is the Son of God.  Bilal then pointed to our Lord's baptism and the Transfiguration and suggested that if, as he claimed, he had genuinely read through the entire Bible and reached the conclusion that the Bible never says Jesus is the Son of God, he must have been reading it using glasses with wooden lenses.

As per custom in areas like these, Bilal and the locals parted, friends for life, with a fist bump.  Unfortunately, we hadn't left enough time for Bilal to spend more time with the locals: - we needed to get back to Marseille so that we could discharge our duties at our church in Marseille the following day, as well as doing some set up work for the various activities that take place on Sundays the day before.  I also thought it a shame I didn't have more time to explore the uncountably large number of fashion stores in Westfield Stratford.

However, on the Eurostar to Paris, Bilal announced that he had enjoyed his time in Stratford (and previously the Walworth area) that he was planning to buy properties in both these areas to add to his investment portfolio.  He is not sure if he plans to use them for short-term rentals, staying in them during holidays in London, or whether he will use them for longer-term rentals, but he will look into that in time.

Bilal and I are very different people: - he is what we French refer to as a "zoulou" (a lover of hip-hop culture) and I am obsessed with fashion and eating ever daintier portions!  MDR!  However, I really do love him and I am glad he was willing to persist in asking my father's permission to court me for several years until my father agreed.  No surprise though, given that I'm worth it!  Anyway, jokes aside, I hope he proposes soon, as he is quite rightly keeping distance between the two of us until we get married and I don't want to be in suspense much longer.

A trip to London with Bilal

Recently, I needed to travel to London on business and I hadn't seen so much of Bilal on account of various other things that needed to be done (in spite of my Frenchwoman efficiency) and so I asked him to travel with me to London.  Given his relative lack of travelling experience, I wanted to show him why there is such a need for my magazine to be promoted and be part of the fight against lack of sophistication.  As always, he was reluctant, on account of his predisposition to homesickness.  We took a TGV to Paris and a Eurostar to London on the Friday afternoon: - I have made this journey numerous times, though Bilal hasn't done the Paris-London leg before.  I am eagerly anticipating the introduction of Eurostar's direct London-Marseille services.Following a bit of research, I found out about a part of London that I thought Bilal would be inclined to visit.  I found out that the Borough of Southwark contains the Aylesbury estate: - one of the roughest areas in the whole of the United Kingdom, home of the rapper Patrick Chukwuemeka Okogwu, better known by his stage name Tinie Tempah, for the first twelve years of his life.  This was so that Bilal could be with the "homies", lol.  I also found out that the Borough of Southwark contains the church where Charles Spurgeon preached.

Earlier in the visit, we visited some marginally more sophisticated places.  In a previous post, I talked about Mariage Frères, the French brand of tea that knows how to do tea properly, unlike stupid English people, who tend to drink the disgusting "English Breakfast" variants with milk.  Yuck!  They have a counter in a British store named Selfridges on Oxford Street.  I was booked into a hotel that had the disgusting English stuff and I had forgotten to pack some Mariage Frères tea, so I was pleased to discover this.  While in Selfridges, I also discovered that Selfridges has a mini gluten free section in the food hall.  Bilal bought a few gluten free cakes: - as I mentioned, he is an extremely ravenous man on account of being tall, muscular and having coeliac disease!  The complete antithesis of me as the Impossibly Dainty French Woman!  I explained to Bilal that he should make sure to avoid developing a taste for sweet foods such as creamy cakes, given that they are characteristic of unsophisticated people.  Unfortunately, the taste was already there, as people in Mali are used to drinking extremely sweet tea!  Still, he is thankfully unlikely to consume such things regularly, given that coeliac-friendly bakeries are not exactly ubiquitous in Marseille!

I bought some Mariage Frères tea from Selfridges in the evening.  Given the late hour of our arrival, there weren't many options available for sophisticated French stuff in London (our decision to visit London was last-minute).  I found some French restaurants in London, though they were a pale imitation of the real thing.  Bilal and I ate in various French restaurants on the Friday evening and on the Saturday.  On account of our unwillingness to do anything that would generate employment on the Lord's Day (Sunday, remember the 4th commandment), we had no intention of visiting restaurants, meaning we therefore desired a packed lunch.  Good quality food stores are hard to come buy in the UK, so we decided to go to a bog-standard place in the Knightsbridge area known as Harrods.  The food wasn't particularly good quality, but it was the bare minimum that I was willing to condescend to, MDR.

I conducted my business meetings late on the Friday and during the Saturday: - a Frenchwoman is careful about work-life balance and does not avoidably work on a Sunday, much less a Bible-believing Frenchwoman!  The people involved in the business discussions wanted to resume discussions on a Sunday and I completely refused, saying that I would sooner refuse their business than work on a Sunday: - luckily, they agreed to have some late-night business discussions instead.  The discussions finished just early enough for me to catch up with Bilal that evening, who was at the Aylesbury Estate when I called him.  The estate is currently in the process of being demolished, though not all of the residents have left yet.  Bilal doesn't speak English and so had been struggling to communicate with the locals, though some of them were French speakers.  When I arrived, I agred to help him out by interpreting for him.  My interpretation capabilities were pushed to the max, as Bilal was talking in French hip-hop slang and the people in the Aylesbury estate also spoke hip-hop slang!  I probably looked rather ridiculous like Cléo Le Tan, a middle-class "bien élevée" ("well-brought-up") woman using hip-hop slang!

Bilal was asked by some hip-hop people if he would sing them a song.  They probably thought he would sing something silly, such as "Jungle is massiv", but instead, Bilal gave the most beautiful performance of "Je suis Tien, Seigneur" ("I am Thine, O Lord", by Frances Crosby): - http://www.mcreveil.org/Recueil/cantiques/lyrics/jsts278.htm .  One of the others present was from Congo and was therefore able to tell his friends what the lyrics meant.  Rather than an encore, he opted to sing "Croire, obéir" ("Trust and obey", by John Sammis): - http://www.mcreveil.org/Recueil/cantiques/lyrics/co396.htm.  Prior to his performance, the people present were boisterous, yet almost as soon as Bilal started to sing the first hymn, the silence was deafening.  Again, I know Bilal has made some friends for life and again, they parted with a fist bump!

The following day, we visited Charles Spurgeon's church.  In my church, we are very familiar with the work of Charles Spurgeon.  As with Bilal, The Assistant Pastor comes from Mali, yet he speaks a very educated form of French, rather than Bilal's hip-hop slang: - a fact I can hopefully use to persuade Bilal to learn to speak properly! I don't believe I would find a better boyfriend anywhere else and I adore Bilal in spite of this idiosynracy, but this is nevertheless something I want to work on.

We took the very earliest Eurostar service to Paris (05.40-09.26), as I was eager to be surrounded by sophistication again, with the Marseille train following shortly afterwards (I'm posting this via mobile broadband).  During the journey, Bilal told me that he is beginning to loosen up when it comes to travelling to unfamiliar destination, given that "homies" don't only exist in La Savine!  MDR!  Bilal has always been awkwardly shy, but I seem to be having some success in getting him to come out of his shell.  I am enjoying having a new travelling companion who I absolutely adore.  I hope our relationship progresses quickly.  Bilal refuses all physical contact with me (quite rightly, given that we are unmarried) and I have very rarely seen him without some sort of head covering (given that he is a tuareg): - he wore a hooded sweatsuit during the trip to London.  I can't bear to be apart from him for long and I can very easily see myself being his wife one day.