Our second child

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

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

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

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

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

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

Vive la présidente!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Why Bilal is a real man

Donald Trump's inauguration will happen soon.  In spite of being a macho man, he won a clear victory in the electoral college vote (with liberals continuing to go on about how he lost the popular vote) over Hillary Clinton, who I and many others are glad to see the back of.  Traditional masculinity has come under attack in recent years.  I am a super-attractive, glamorous and successful woman and I have no objections to women being like me, but I always found real men more attractive than the emasculated men we seem to see these days.

I was recently reading an article about the marks of Christian manhood that talked about marks of Christian manhood and it got me thinking about how Bilal is every bit the real man I desired.  The marks they gave were: -
1. Spiritual maturity sufficient to lead a wife and children.
2. Personal maturity sufficient to be a responsible husband and father.
3. Economic maturity sufficient to hold an adult job and handle money.
4. Physical maturity sufficient to work and protect a family.
5. Sexual maturity sufficient to marry and fulfill God's purposes.
6. Moral maturity sufficient to lead as example of righteousness.
7. Ethical maturity sufficient to make responsible decisions.
8. Worldview maturity sufficient to understand what is really important.
9. Relational maturity sufficient to understand and respect others.
10. Social maturity sufficient to make a contribution to society.
11. Verbal maturity sufficient to communicate and articulate as a man.
12. Character maturity sufficient to demonstrate courage under fire.
13. Biblical maturity sufficient to lead at some level in the church.
Bilal demonstrated 1. in his leadership of Sunday School classes and his informal mentoring of various other boys inside and outside the church (e.g. his boxing club) and demonstrated 2. in countless situations.  He has demonstrated both 3. and 4. with his day job with "Le Trom de Marseille" (as he calls it) and his accumulation of a fortune through shrewd online investments in shares.  He demonstrated 5. by refusing physical contact with unrelated women, which included holding hands with me during courtship (obviously, I learned on the wedding night what he had been labouring diligently to keep under control).  He has demonstrated 6. and 7. through his prolonged willingness to stand apart from the world and its evil practices at whatever cost to his own popularity.  He has demonstrated 8. by how passionately he carries out his church activities and is able to shield himself against outside distractions where necessary.  He has demonstrated 9. by how much joy he has brought to other believers in their fellowship with him, in spite of how shy he is.  He demonstrates 10. by his immense labours within the church and community to spread the Gospel message and help keep young La Savine boys out of trouble.  11., 12. and 13 are not that obvious, given his shy character, but he never shirks his duty to speak about the Gospel when called.

Beyond these issues that are, without doubt, the most important ones, he has shown himself to be a real man by both secular and religious criteria and I am glad I have him, rather than several other half-men who have approached me, but not demonstrated anything an it-girl like myself required.  Bilal has demonstrated manhood in every department.

His early life was spent in the Sahara Desert as a Touareg herdsman.  This is physical hardship at its best: - fiercely hot days, cold nights, defending his family's livestock from predators etc.  He lived in La Savine (probably Europe's toughest housing estate) upon arrival in France and only ceased living there when we returned from our honeymoon.  He feels rather lost in the immense luxury of my penthouse apartment overlooking the Vieux Port, but he likes the proximity of a metro station ("Réga du Trom" as he would say).  All these things have contributed to make him the rugged man he is today.

Bilal has been into strongman training since he arrived in France and came across a Marseille gym during early exploration of the city.  He was not old enough to be allowed in, so he occasionally watched from outside and sought advice from members as they left the gym.  When he was old enough, he took out gym membership, doing odd jobs to earn money to pay for this and other paraphernalia associated with developing the strength necessary for strongman contests (this was before online share trading became common).  He very quickly gained in weight.  He was a fairly shy child, preferring to sit in a corner reading the Holy Bible and other religious literature during break times and was therefore often the victim of bullying (I often used to see him with bruises on his face at church).  However, this soon ceased after he started gaining weight and physical strength.

I think that the ability and desire to have children (coupled with acceptance of all the responsibilities parenthood entails) is a mark of manhood.  If one is among the few people gifted for celibacy, fine, but otherwise, I think avoiding having children (apart from being against Psalm 127:4) is a mark that a man wants to live a freewheeling bachelor lifestyle and is, in reality, a boy rather than a man.  On the occasions before our wedding I mentioned this subject with Bilal, he always said abruptly, "Children are an inheritance from the Lord and I want to conceive as many as the Lord, in His almighty grace, will allow me to conceive".  Sure enough, when we got married, he wasted absolutely no time.  I admit he isn't always politically correct about this: - the Sunday at church after the test confirmed my second pregnancy, I overheard him say with enormous pride to his church "homies", "I've got her pregnant again!  Yes!", punching the air and behaving with the excitement of a football fan whose team has just scored a goal (in a way, he had scored a goal himself).  Someone in the group of friends (hip-hop people, of course: - the image below is from Wikimedia commons and does not depict him or anyone else we know) immediately spudded him and said, "Brap-brap-brap!  You're a big man doing that so quickly both times!  Regardless of what feminists think, I am pleased to have a husband who views the ability and willingness to conceive as the height of being a macho man.  I wouldn't want a boy who viewed children as an encumbrance to his freewheeling bachelor lifestyle: - Bilal also views the ability and willingness to conceive and properly raise children to be a mark of manhood: - he is keen to have a third child as soon as possible following the birth of our second.  I am due in a few months and have still not yet accumulated flabber!

In other respects though, he doesn't fulfil traditional macho values.  He does at least half the work of caring for our son, doesn't mind being seen pushing our son in his pram in public and is seen cradling him in church for most of the day: - he certainly takes much more of an interest in our son than pretty much all fathers I know.  He is generally a very quiet and shy character, but with the glut of people with an opinion to publicly express and the dearth of people interested, a few more quiet people in the world wouldn't go amiss!  I agree with most of Tomi Lahren's views, but she seems capable of little besides ranting!  The media needs people who will go out there and dig out stories, rather than just ranting aimlessly about what is there!  My fashion magazine is a great example of how to do this: - it is at the vanguard of fashion trends, not just reporting them, but predicting and defining them!

Here's to looking forward to a very large happy family with Bilal and gloating to women who lose self-control over their diet during pregnancy and have flabber to lose after giving birth!

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.

I'm engaged

Today, Bilal made a proposal of marriage!  This is something I have been eagerly awaiting for several months and I can now announce that it has finally happened!  I accepted without hesitation.  Bilal and I are very different people, but I appreciate his exotic nature, with him being a mix of Touareg and hip-hop influences.  This is evident in his language usage and clothing.  He is definitely my tall, dark (and heavily-built) stranger.

Bilal has moved into my parents' home (readers will note that I live in my own flat a short distance from the Vieux Port).  The reason for this is to adapt him to French culture a little bit more, as I have no willingness to live in La Savine, even if a top-floor flat would offer fantastic views of Marseille and the Mediterranean Sea.  Such a rough gangsta area is not appealing to a sophisticated haute couture Frenchwoman such as myself.  I would get tired of people greeting me by saying "Wesh-wesh toubab?" ("Wagwan honky?")  For some reason, Bilal never looks entirely at ease when in some more typically French areas in a way that he did in Mali (I cannot vouch for what he is like in La Savine, having never been there) and often appears homesick.

In the longer term, we are wondering about what sort of arrangements will be most agreeable to us.  One option we are considering is purchasing a livestock farm that would enable Bilal to feel at home.  Although the Common Agricultural Policy allows French farmers to get away with many backward and inefficient agricultural practices (hey, I suppose some compromises are necessary to produce the pure and natural products that a Frenchwoman desires), they are still a world apart from Touareg practices.  Another possibility is for us to construct a mountain home in the mountains to the north and east of Marseille to allow him to life a hill farmer lifestyle when he is not at work.  If anyone has any suggestions, please e-mail me at mariannegaboriault@gmail.com : - we are looking for countryside that is as rugged as Bilal is, MDR!

Even if we struggle to find somewhere that causes Bilal to feel completely at home, Bilal has told me he is willing to endure feelings of homesickness for the rest of his life in order to be with me, adding that I am "une femeu bien faite" (French for "a well fit bird") even by French standards: - obviously, when he is living with my parents, they will attempt to smooth some of his rough edges.  Bilal was never a macho man, but he has spent so much time around people who speak in this manner that he uses such words as if they were normal words.  He managed to restrain himself for job and university interviews, but found it too tiring to keep up a pretence beyond that.  This is partly why he tends to gravitate towards tasks that involve doing things in the background at work: - he can prove himself by the quality of his outputs and is unlikely to be obstructed by his hip-hop use of language.  At university, he would just turn up for lectures, practical assessments etc and just go home again afterwards to do his study: - he did very well academically and he was very diligent with his studies, but he never had any interest in being involved in the extracurricular life of his university, as he never really felt at home with the white middle-class liberal atheistic students the way he does in da 'hood or at church.  He feels at home at church because he knows that in this world, we are to regard ourselves as merely sojourners and if a church is a sound church, it is the closest experience a believer will have to the world to come.  Obviously, the wedding will take place in our own church (not the one shown below).

Obviously, given my obsession with food and Bilal's coeliac disease, we will need to expend a lot of thought about what food will be served at the wedding.  It will not be nice for me to have to share a marital bed with Bilal if the food served at the wedding has caused him bowel problems, MDR.  Unless a gluten-free croquembouche is available, we may unfortunately have to have an Anglo-Saxon style wedding cake.  Maybe we could have something along the lines of Mireille Guiliano's flourless chocolate cake?  Bilal is awfully fond of this recipe, but given that it is a recipe Mireille Guiliano approves of, presumably I shouldn't worry, MDR.

I think Bilal will look absolutely gorgeous in a morning suit, but he doesn't like suits and as far as I'm aware, the only time he has ever worn one in his life was for his job interview with the "Trom de Marseille" (as he and his homies call it in Verlan, MDR).  He is very fond of his Touareg attire and some of this looks gorgeous upon him though, especially the bright indigo garments.  Because he is such a handsome man, being around him requires a greater amount of self-restraint and I am pleased that with our engagement, the amount of time I will have tocontinue to exercise this self-restraint is getting shorter.

I will be looking for the most beautiful bridal dress I can find.  Apart from the fact that I am the bee's knees and worthy of the best, it would not do for a fashion magazine editor to turn up for her own wedding in an unfashionable bridal gown.  This will be my biggest worry when it comes to wedding preparations (apart from possible legal hiccups obstructing the legal validity, e.g. the registrar being sick on the day of the wedding).  However, as I have always been dainty in my eating, I will certainly not have to worry about how my figure will look in the dress as lesser women do!  All I can say is roll on the wedding day!

London-Marseille trains confirmed!

Recently, I learned that direct London-Marseille trains have finally been confirmed.  Yay!  I am pleased with this, given my unfortunate regular need to visit London on business.  As far as I am concerned, after having spent a few days in London and coming close to death on account of the lack of sophistication, the sooner the train can get me back to Marseille, the better, MDR.  Maybe in the future, Marseille will be the city where everything is happening (or at the least, maybe Paris will regain that title), but until that happens, I will need to keep going to London to ply my trade.

Bilal is also happy on account of the fact that he can visit his "homies" who he met during visits to the Elephant & Castle and Stratford areas of London much more easily.  Both of these areas have direct connections to St. Pancras International via the Thameslink and Southeastern High-Speed services respectively.  He e-mailed his homies in London as soon as he found out the news (his English isn't yet up to phone calls, though he is a regular visitor to http://www.urbandictionary.com for practice) and they were similarly delighted, as they have heard all about La Savine with its rappers from Bilal and can't wait to visit.  He has kept in regular touch with them, sending them occasional gifts, which resulted in them sending him gluten-free products from a local store, plus a cap with "Sorry I'm hip-hop and you're not" written on it, both of which he was delighted to receive.  I wasn't so pleased that they had sent him cake mixes for sickly sweet-looking cakes, but hey, he does not have any flab on account of the enormous amount of exercise he does, so I suppose I shouldn't worry too much about this.

I don't know if they will use the older or the newer rolling stock, but we shall see: - given that the whole route from London to the outskirts of Marseille (bypasses where applicable) uses the TVM (Transmission Voie-Machine) in-cab signalling system, there is no need to use the new rolling stock from a signalling point of view (from what I heard, the lack of space for ERTMS equipment was the main reason they were procured).  There is also no speed advantage, given that the existing rolling stock allows for 300km/h, the maximum speed already allowable on that route (the new rolling stock can do 320km/h).

I am hopeful that the new services will cause ignorant Britons to be cognizant of Marseille's value as a tourist destination.  Obviously, too many tourists is not a good situation: - we certainly don't want drunken British tourists who will just gulp down large quantities of pastis without appreciating the craftsmanship that has gone into the drink and barf up all over the streets.  However, there is a perception that Marseille is a run-down and dangerous city, i.e. that La Savine is a microcosm thereof.  I would welcome the idea of more adventurous and discerning tourists visiting the city to see how wonderfully sophisticated it is and how much it has been regenerated over the years.

Some of the less sophisticated tourists who like hip-hop culture could obviously head for the quarter (or "tchéquar", as Bilal would say, given his tendency to use verlan) of La Savine, where Bilal lives: - though he loves hip-hop fashion, being a sophisticated haute couture person is not one of his strengths.  He and other people in the area would be able to give such people tours to show them the other side of the city, perhaps introducing them to the aspiring rappers, as well as show them where the members of Psy 4 De La Rime and Puissance Nord and Soosol grew up.  Some people have contacted me to ask me why Bilal is my boyfriend, given these things I say about him.  I respond by saying that everyone has their own strengths and weaknesses and Bilal's strengths more than make up for his weaknesses, e.g  what I said in the last post about how he is so attractive that I will give him my full cooperation in whatever attempts he makes to create a large family.  That is before I go into his credentials as a believer.  But that is beside the point.  Even though I don't have any taste for hip-hop culture, I have no doubt that Bilal will be delighted by the influx of tourists who he will be able to introduce to the Marseille hip-hop scene.

The tourists who love great scenery will love Marseille as well.  I have never been to La Savine, though Bilal tells me there are great views of the area from there.  The city is surrounded by mountains and though the Basilica of Notre-Dame de la Garde has no spiritual beauty to speak of (it is part of the Church of Rome), there are great views from the hill it sits upon, both of the city and the Mediterranean Sea.  It doesn't take too long to walk from the Gare de Marseille-St. Charles (or "réga", as Bilal calls it) to the top of the hill: - naturally, a dainty Frenchwoman such as myself would not consider taking the metro (or the "trom", as Bilal calls it).

All in all, Marseille has something for everyone.  It has a huge hip-hop scene for the less discerning tourists and immense sophistication in things such as Pastis de Marseille, Bouillabaise and Frenchwomen saying "la moitié, s'il vous plaît" for the more discerning tourists.  If anyone reading this wants to know more details, or even if they want me to give them a tour of Marseille (I am very happy to do this), they should contact me at mariannegaboriault@gmail.com .

Meet France's toughest rappers: - a programme I watched with Bilal

I don't know if any of my readers have heard of a French celebrity named Cléo Le Tan.  I use the term "celebrity" in the loosest sense of the word, as it would be legitimate to describe her as being famous for being famous.  As someone in the fashion industry, I am very aware of her antics as a party girl and her failed attempts to replicate the fame of her forefathers.  As a believing woman, I don't care much for many of the silly celebrities out there, but if one is a fashion magazine editor and owner, one has to know the industry very well in order to stay on top of the game.

Her father is the French painter Pierre Le-Tan.  Her father's father is the Vietnamese painter Le Pho (famous for exaggerating women's skinny figures, though mine needs no exaggeration, MDR), who came to France for his studies in fine arts and married a Frenchwoman: - no surprises there, though Vietnam is one of the few nations with thinner women than France!  Tee hee!  Her father's father's father was the last Viceroy of Tonkin (Northern Vietnam).  Her sister is Olympia Le Tan, who has had arguably more success, in her case as a fashion designer.  Cléo Le Tan is descended from royalty, yet she is suffering the ignominy of having to make herself famous by being a party girl.  As of late, she has tried to make a name for herself as an author, though not with any noteworthy success.Pierre Le Tan commented not all that long ago that his daughters were raised amongst antique dealers, designers, writers, decorators, architects, landscapers ... same-sex couples who lived together and dressed up to attend masked balls.  Being a believing woman, I am very glad I did not grow up around same-sex couples.  However, she has therefore had privileges I can only dream of, yet all she has managed to make of herself is a name for being a party girl.  Apart from anything else, I would never allow her to appear in my fashion magazine, as she isn't even thin by French standards!

Anyway, enough details about why Cléo Le Tan is a non-celebrity clinging to the coat tails of her forefathers, I recently watched a programme with Bilal presented by her called "Meet France's toughest rappers", in which she exposed the dark underside of the suburbs of France's large cities (though the programme only covered Paris) and the hip-hop culture that exists there.  I was curious to know what Bilal thought of the programme, as Bilal is by far the most hip-hop person I have any regular contact with.  He and I are very different in this respect, though I don't love him any less and I wouldn't want anyone else for a boyfriend.  Given that he spent much of his life in La Savine, I consider him an authority in hip-hop matters, MDR.

 The first thing Bilal noted is that the rappers in the video were not tough by the standards of La Savine.  As I have mentioned, Bilal works as a rolling stock engineer for the Métro de Marseille and for his training, he often travelled to Paris (one of very view exceptions in terms of his travelling habits).  When he was there, he got to know the local 'hoods and he says that although they are more numerous than in Marseille, La Savine is far tougher and he therefore viewed the people in the video as being merely wannabe tough rappers.

Another thing Bilal and I noticed during the course of the programme was when Cléo Le Tan started talking like a wigger.  She is an obviously upper-middle-class woman from the way she talks, both in English and in French (this is probably the only positive thing one can say about her), yet during the course of the programme, she is shown referring to women as "meufs" (verlan for "femmes"), translated in the subtitles as "chicks", though "birds" is another way of translating this.  I don't view it as being in the least bit unusual any more when I hear Bilal talking in verlan, given that he tends to use such words as if they were normal words.  However, an upper-middle-class woman like Cléo Le Tan (don't forget she is descended from Vietnamese royalty) sounds very silly when she uses verlan words.  As Bilal would say, "tu voit ce que je veux dire?", which is French street for "ya see what ah'm sayin'?"

  

Generally speaking, Bilal thought Cléo Le Tan stuck out like a sore thumb, no matter how hard she tried to ingratiate herself with the locals during the video, e.g. by helping them out with facilities to make a rap video of their own when their budgets would not stretch to this.  As British street people would say, it was a blatant case of somebody not "keepin' it real".  Maybe she was trying to portray herself as some sort of explorer, trying to get to know new things that she was not previously familiar with?  She still looked silly.

 

All in all, Cléo Le Tan is someone who doesn't appear to fit into either world.  She has not had much success of her own in the French celebrity circuit and she will soon be tomorrow's has-been and she certainly doesn't fit into the hip-hop world either.  Given that she is not pencil-thin like me, she certainly would look out-of-place in my magazine and there is no way I would feature her unless she lost a lot of weight!

Direct London-Marseille trains!

Finally, an important piece of news that I had been waiting a long time for: - I have heard some vaguely likely news that Eurostar is planning to do direct services from London to Marseille (also with a stop in Lyon), according to http://www.travelweekly.co.uk/Articles/2014/01/23/46730/record-results-for-eurotunnel.html .  One can step on a train at St. Pancras International, the terminus of Eurostar services in the UK where the height of sophistication is Fortnum & Mason (MDR), and see the Mediterranean Sea on the final approach to Marseille a few hours later!

Regrettably, I sometimes have to go to London on business even today, given all the creative trendy types there who tend to be interested in designing and wearing fashion, one area in particular being Old Street, which is situated just two stops away from Kings Cross St. Pancras station on the London transport system.

However, I will now be able to conduct my business in London and quickly get back to Marseille by train before I succumb to my thirst for sophistication.  I am not entirely sure which rolling stock model Eurostar will use for such services.  It is possible that they will use the original rolling stock, because as I understand things, the reason Eurostar made the decision to purchase new rolling stock is the fact that they wanted to install ERTMS equipment to allow them to access new routes, but found there was simply no space to do so.  Unfortunately, British railway engineers were daft enough to build their lines in a much smaller loading gauge than we trendy continentals, so they had to build the Eurostars to a smaller loading gauge.

However, when the British finally opened the second phase of the CTRL (Channel Tunnel Rail Link) in November 2007 (the first phase was opened in 2003), it resulted in Eurostar no longer needing a third-rail pickup system (only the British seem to be capable of being bonkers enough to use this on mainline trains) or a British loading gauge for its trains.  When the second phase of the CTRL was opened, Eurostar removed the third-rail pickup shoes (which had been causing problems in terms of damage to trackside equipment in France on account of drivers forgetting to retract them), though changing the loading gauge of a train is obviously not so easy.  Anyway, I digress, when Eurostar placed its tender for its new trains, it found it no longer needed to specify 750V compatibility (the CTRL uses 2*25kV), British loading gauge compatibility or third-rail pickup shoes.  Unfortunately, they are procuring the new E320 trains from Siemens, rather than Alstom (which obviously means they will be of lower quality).  Please note that the design of the trains has changed since the photo below.

However, none of the high-speed route between London and Marseille uses ERTMS (European Rail Traffic Management System, a signalling system intended to be promoted throughout Europe), so maybe they won't be using it on this route, given that they have already committed to using it on the route to Amsterdam (which uses ERTMS Level 2, which allows for in-cab signalling).  Even if they don't use them for Marseille routes, it won't be so bad though, as Eurostar has a contract with Pininfarina (an Italian design firm) for refurbishing them.  What I hope this will mean is that the trendy Europeans who have lives split between London, Paris and Brussels will include Marseille in their destinations and they will realise that it is even more sophisticated than Paris, with its residents sipping pastis on the Vieux Port.

I get tired of talking to people who think that Marseille is all about La Savine, the extremely rough area of the city where Bilal has lived since moving over from Mali.  Paris has its rough areas just like Marseille does and La Savine is not the only area of Marseille.  I look forward to seeing more trendy creative types in Marseille on account of the Eurostar services that are planned to serve the city as of next year.

A BBC attack on French women's effortless perfection

About a week ago, I came across a BBC article expressing disapproval of French women's perfection.  In it, the BBC journalist named Joanna Robertson attacked the supposed tyranny of the French culture pushing women to be thin.  In the article, she proved that she doesn't care much for consistency either.  Towards the beginning of the article, she wrote: -
"Pharmacies are filled with miracle-claiming diet products and women's magazines run endless columns of slimming advice."
Then later on, she wrote something far closer to the truth, which read: -
"There is an idea put about in what the French call the "Anglo-Saxon" press that French women do not grow fat.  
They simply follow a set of mystic rules, handed down from mother to daughter, that govern their personal grooming, comportment and, most of all, their eating habits.  
A sensible, balanced diet. Plenty of fresh produce. Three meals a day. Absolutely no snacking. Regular, reasonable exercise. Nothing to excess."
It is an almost direct contradiction, though I broadly feel unable to disagree with the points raised in the second quotation.  The major point I disagree with is the word "mystic".  There is nothing mysterious about how we are impossibly thin.  It is the fact that we are impossibly perfect.  We have absolutely delicious food that means we feel satisfied by the taste, rather than the feeling of our bellies being stretched (as is the case with unsophisticated Anglo-Saxon women).  Joanna Robertson is entirely right when she says that obesity is frowned upon in France.

I note one point that appeared towards the end, which read: -
""It is an absolute tyranny," says Marjorie, a 49-year-old business executive, herself pencil slim.
"The tyranny of the silhouette, we call it - but it is also a kind of dream because it represents total success.
"It is not like in the UK where TV shows have women of all shapes and sizes doing all kinds of things. I love that - chubby 55-year-olds kissing men full on the mouth. You would never see that here," she adds.
Marjorie works near the Paris suburb of Saint Denis where there is a large immigrant population from the Maghreb.
She is inspired by these women with their full, rounded, curvaceous figures and the way they walk tall.
"They are so much more feminine than our Parisian chic," she says, "but the sad truth is that if they want careers in this society they are going to have to get skinny to get ahead.""
Fat and feminine!  These two terms are almost mutually exclusive.  I view it as severely unfeminine to be fat.  I have seen such scenes on British television with obese 55-year-olds kissing men on the mouth and it made me feel physically sick, but anyway.  In pre-industrialised society, men needed to marry a woman with strong arms, because he knew he would need someone who was capable of doing large amounts of physical work on the farm.  Proverbs 31:17 reads, "She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms."  The English NIV renders this as, "She sets about her work vigorously; her arms are strong for her tasks."  However, in an industrialised society, there is no longer a need for women to be heavily built.  This does not mean we work any less hard.  Today's women work just as hard, even if the work isn't always physical.  However, as Joanna Robertson seems to be close to admitting, but doesn't want to, thin is beautiful.  This is unfortunately a fact that she correctly indicates has not yet occurred to "Maghreb" women living in France.  Bilal told me that he never liked the sight of women from his culture having "full, rounded, curvaceous figures".  He has told me that he always thought it looked horrible.  Granted, Bilal comes from Mali, which is outside the zone traditionally known as the Maghreb, but that is a minor detail.

Bilal has told me that one of the reasons he enjoyed being able to take the bus and get out of La Savine for a few hours at a time on Saturdays and weekday evenings (of course, on Sundays, his reason was coming to church) was because it was so refreshing to him to see lovely, thin French women, rather than the "full, rounded, curvaceous figures" *cough* of the immigrant women he came across in La Savine.  Granted, this was a minor reason: - a much bigger reason was that he found it hard work steeling himself against all the hip-hop gangland culture he witnessed in La Savine.

This was the main reason, but for him, seeing chic and elegant French women was a bonus for him.  As he has reminded me, such women no longer interest him, as I have agreed to be courted by him.  He has been entranced with my beauty for a long time, hence why he was willing to wait several years to receive my father's approval to court me.  Why wouldn't he be?  I'm the impossibly dainty French woman!  As Joanna Robertson points out, we French (rightly) regard being skinny as a sign of success.  Bilal has rightly recognised that there is more to me than my physical beauty and has correctly said that my physical beauty is only the tip of the iceberg.  However, he says he just finds the sight of fat Arab women using a veil to hide their ""full, rounded, curvaceous figures" disgusting.

Why can't the rest of the world appreciate the beauty that we French women possess with our effortlessly dainty figures?  It is not true to say that we have these because we smoke, because we use magic, because we pop pills or anything like that.  It is ultimately down to the power of a simple, but very powerful phrase: - "La moitié, s'il vous plaît" ("half of that, please").  It means we enjoy the pleasure of good food, but we only eat dainty portions thereof.  We don't have fat diets, we do eat things besides cabbage soup at mealtimes and we don't starve ourselves!  When someone offers us some food, we just say, "La moitié, s'il vous plaît": - if that means we have to only put half as much on our forks to allow us to keep pace with the other participants at the meal, then that is exactly what we do.  We cut the food into dainty pieces, put these dainty pieces into our mouths and savour the immense pleasure of eat bite, so that we don't need to consume huge quantities to feel full.

So there you have it.  The secret of my success.  Women around the world should say at least a hundred times a day the phrase behind my success: - "La moitié, s'il vous plaît".

My new boyfriend

I have recently received e-mails criticising me for not being politically correct, given my comments about hip-hop culture, suggesting that I am old-fashioned (in spite of the success of my fashion magazine) in my views on trendy multiculturalism, totally forgetting that I deal with trendies all the time.  In my line of work, whether or not you like it, you have to deal with silly people who like to think they are the bee's knees because they hold fashionable views.

Well, I have got some news for such people: - there has been a change in my life.  I recently acquired a boyfriend who is a member of a very trendy ethnic group.

In the church I attend, our custom is for a man who is interested in a lady to approach her father for permission to court her. The father then asks the suitor to open his books to him, by which I mean he asks him to assure him that he is a suitable prospect for his daughter, i.e. he is financially stable, he can support a family, he is a spiritually fruitful man, he is diligent in his day job and labours for his church etc.  He also has to convince the man that he understands that courtship should be no longer than necessary for both people to make a decision about marriage and that as long as he is in a courtship with the man's daughter, he is to be constantly attempting to move himself to a decision on whether or not he wants to make a proposal of marriage.  If he can convince him that he is a sound prospect in all these areas, the father will then ask his daughter if he is happy to be courted by him.  If the answer is "yes", then he gives his permission and then he is at liberty to commence a courtship with her.

Being the impossibly dainty, glamorous, fashionable and stylish Frenchwoman that I am, I am very regularly approached by men.  Obviously now, my answer will simply be that I am spoken for.  However, up until now, what I did was I placed bulk orders for business cards with my father's contact details on (say 1,000 at a time with companies such as Vistaprint).  When men asked me out on a date, I would simply give them a business card with my father's details on and say, "Here are my father's contact details.  Direct your request at him.  If you get past my father, then you are probably somebody worth considering."  Sometimes, the man would persist and in such cases, I would normally repeat my answer.  With some men, I found myself saying, "What part of the phrase "contact my father" do you not understand?"  Up until now, the problem was that I was handing out huge quantities of business cards to interested men, but up until now, I haven't been asked by my father if I am happy to be courted by a man.  Obviously, I don't know if Daddy has been excessively picky on behalf of such a stylish girl such as myself, or if very few of the men I gave business cards to were serious enough and man enough to contact my father, or if many of them did, but were totally unsuitable prospects.

The full name of the man who has finally gotten past my father and claimed the much-coveted prize of being able to court a stylish and impossibly dainty Frenchwoman such as myself is is Bilal Ataubaq Ag Abdul-Khaliq.  In case anyone wants to know the meaning of the names, Bilal means someone who satisfies thirst, Ataubaq means handsome, beautiful, helpful, generous with got a lot of love to share and Abdul-Khaliq means servant of the Creator.  Ag means "son of": - his last name is Abdul-Khaliq, his father's name, because where he comes from, the father's name is often used in place of a surname. Bilal is a Touareg from Mali and is well known in the church for his extreme diffidence.  Although there are photos of Touareg peoples in this posting, none of them are of Bilal, as he was not happy about any photos of him being public and anyway, it is easier to just pick things of Wikimedia Commons.

I have been aware of Bilal's existence since he first started attending our church at the age of around ten.  He would come in all by himself at that tender age and he would be dressed in whatever hip-hop clothing was fashionable at the time and he had a strong preference for hooded tops.  The hooded tops would tend to have the drawstrings pulled tight, so as to show as little of his face as possible.  He would always sit at the back of the church in a slightly hunched posture.  If a female approached him and tried to start a conversation, he would simply ignore her: - cultural conditioning, I suppose.  Since the start of our relationship, he has made an exception for me, but otherwise, that is still the way he is now.  If a man approached him, he would reply to him in a monosyllabic fashion, though as time went by, if a man started a discussion with him about theological matters (e.g. the sermon the pastor had just delivered), it was possible to engage him in conversation.  The church could not and would not stop him attending the church services, but without parental consent, the church was unable to allow him to participate in Sunday School, which was a shame, as Sunday School might have made him less solitary.

I found out that the reason Bilal was always alone when coming to church was because he converted to Christianity in the face of extremely strong disapproval from his family.  His conversion happened when he was back in Mali: - he attended a church there, hoping to point out the supposed absurdities in Christianity and why only the word of Muhammad was accurate (*cough*), but his soul was soon won for Christ after a few weeks of attending the church.  When his family moved to Marseille, he searched out a church with similar doctrines (i.e. ours) and that is when he started attending.  One Sunday, the police turned up to take him home, as his parents had found out about his church attendance and falsely reported him as having run away (not true, as he would turn up on Sundays, stay all day and then go home).

His parents tried to stop him attending and even went as far as throwing him out of the family home.  He turned up on the Sunday looking very scruffy (this was aged 11 I think), as he had been sleeping rough.  One of the elders spoke with him and ascertained what had happened, took him to his parents' home, told them that he had several high-profile contacts in the police force and social services and threatened that he would have them arrested for dereliction of parental duties if they did not take him back.  They said that they would do so only if he renounced the religion that the Westerners had corrupted him with (a load of nonsense, as the pastor of his church back in Mali is a local man).  Bilal told his parents that he still loved them and, as far as practicable, was determined to honour them in accordance with the fifth commandment, but that he would openly disobey them to attend church on Sundays.  He also cited the words of Acts 5:29 ("Il faut obéir à Dieu plutôt qu'aux hommes" according to Ostervald and "We ought to obey God rather than men" in the KJV) and the words of Matthew 19:29, Mark 10:29 and to them.  The words say that whoever has left his family members for the sake of the Gospel will be abundantly rewarded in the future.  Bilal also added that if he had to sleep rough, he would, for he was used to harsh conditions back in Mali and reminded his parents that the family livestock would not last long in the very hot summer months without someone physically strong enough to take care of them.  In the end, the elder kept up his threats against the parents and his parents took him back in.  This I only found out a few months ago, though I remember the day he came in looking scruffy: - obviously, a stylish and impeccably-dressed Frenchwoman like me will not struggle to notice something like this!

About a year after this (age 12 or so), Bilal started wearing a tagelmust (aka a cheche), a head covering that Touareg men wear when they reach puberty.  The way he wears it, it only shows his eyes and the top of his nose.  For reasons of practicality and for the sake of blending in (he lives in La Savine, Marseille's roughest area), Bilal often wears hip-hop clothing (say a sweatsuit with a hoodie to obscure his face), though he wears a tagelmust and other Touareg clothing when this is reasonably practical.  In Touareg society, men will generally wear the tagelmust except in the presence of close family members and they feel shame in showing their full facial features to a stranger or person of higher social standing than themselves.  I am aware that for this reason, when teaching his Sunday School class, he will remove his head covering (as it is understood in our church that being a Sunday School teacher is a position of authority), so as to be able to gain rapport with the children, but he will only do this behind closed doors.  Being alone with children is a bad idea from the perspective of child protection issues, so he has a younger adult male perform classroom assistant duties during his class.  If someone knocks on the door, he will replace his tagelmust before telling the person to come in and he gets very funny if people come in without knocking.

These days, he is very heavily involved in the church.  Teaching Sunday School is the only "frontline" duty he has, but I know that he has many "back office" duties, e.g. preparing the elements for communion, ensuring the baptismal pool remains clean and is filled with warm water on the evenings when baptisms take place (our church is a credobaptist one), ensuring that the church's IT systems are well looked after, ensuring the electrical affairs of the church are in order, typing out letters on behalf of the pastor when he leaves a recording for this purpose on a dictation machine etc etc.

One other miscellaneous thing he is involved in concerns music.  My church recently released a CD with organ plus solo renditions of all the hymns in our hymnal and I bought a copy sometime last spring ago.  The first hymn on the CD was "Jésus mis à mort pour moi" ("Jesus put to death for me", a translation of "Rock of ages, cleft for me").  The photo below shows the rock that the hymn is believed by some to have been based on: - this is near a garden centre in Burrington Coombe in the British historical county of Somerset (a county regrettably composed of people deluded enough to think they are capable of producing as good quality cheese as we French).  Immediately, I was taken aback by the beauty of the haunting singing voice on the CD and as the CD progressed, it was clear that the singer had a range of at least four octaves.  I decided to look on the cover and see whose voice it was: - it was Bilal's.

I also learned of a story a few weeks ago where the pastor had to visit La Savine (Marseille's roughest area, which is also where Bilal has lived throughout his time in France) on account of a pastoral emergency (the wife of a church member who lives in La Savine dropped dead suddenly).  Bilal accompanied him as a bodyguard.  He dressed up in hip-hop clothing in order to blend in, pulling the hoodie drawstrings tight to hide his face, as is his custom.  Someone then approached the pastor to demand his valuables from him, threatening him with a knife.  Bilal stepped in front and politely told him to kindly leave them alone.  This didn't work, so the attacker lunged at the pastor with his knife.  Bilal picked him up by the front of his shirt and threw him a bit like one would throw a javelin.  The pastor's attacker then landed about five metres away and ran away, obviously scared and not willing to persist.

Last summer, we had a church day out one Saturday and we visited a small sandy beach (there are no natural sandy beaches in Marseille) that is just off the Avenue Pierre Mendès France.  At the beach, there is the Skatepark du Prado and a go-karting track, which the younger children who attend the church enjoy.  Part-way through the day, panic set in when it became apparent that one of the children swimming a little too far from the shore for comfort was getting into difficulties.  Bilal (wearing full-on Touareg dress and reading a book at the time) became aware of this and walked towards the sea, undressed down to his swimming trunks, swam out to the child in distress and brought him back to the shore.  There was rapturous applause upon the child's return and someone said to Bilal, "I thought you couldn't swim", to which he replied indifferently, "Well how do you think you rescue livestock stranded by flash floods in the desert in Mali when you are miles from anywhere?", before putting his clothes on and resuming his book.  Some people started crowding round Bilal to congratulate him, but luckily, the pastor stepped in and explained that giving him unwanted attention like this would be like shooting a mocking bird.  For those readers not au fait with English literature, this was an obvious reference to what Scout said about Mr. Radley in Harper Lee's "To Kill A Mockingbird".  My mother insisted that I read this to help with my English fluency, but quite why my pastor decided to cite from low-quality literature, knowing that we French are the best at everything, I don't know.  Anyway, this was the first time I had ever seen him even with his head uncovered.  He had these beautiful naturally curly locks of black hair (not the sort that gets knotty, more like a perm, though natural in his case), with a skin tone somewhere between white northern African Arab and black African.  The other thing that was noticeable about him was his extremely heavy build and enormous muscles: - I used to read silly girlie magazines that contained pictures of heavily-built men, but they all seemed rather scrawny by comparison to Bilal.

This brings me onto the next point about him.  Growing up, he laboured in the family business of being a herdsman.  Sheep, goats and camels were his specialism.  He is from the Timbuktu area, which is drier than southern areas, meaning that farming cattle is not desirable there (given how much grass they consume).  During summer holidays, we would not normally see him in church, as he would return to Mali to look after the animals (no easy task, given that average daily maxima in Timbuktu are above 35 degrees between March and November).  He would do whatever he needed to do, be this engaging in one-on-one combat with animals or people attacking his livestock, herding them to areas with food and water (in the mountains if necessary, of which there are some to the west of Timbuktu) etc.  When he arrived in France, he did well in his studies and went through the university system.  He now works as a rolling stock engineer with the Marseille Metro and he has the long-term aim of starting up a business as a high-speed open-access railway operator along the lines of NTV (Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori, the Italian open-access high-speed operator) and is taking steps to lay seeds for the fulfilment of this aim.  I have no doubt that this went down well with Daddy, although the fact that Daddy works for SNCF means he is unlikely to welcome the competition that Bilal's proposed open-access high-speed operator would offer!  MDR!  Bilal has told me that he is into online share trading and it is rumoured in the church that he is a very wealthy man.  I am not interested on finding out the precise extent of his wealth at this stage, as Daddy has already ascertained that his financial maturity is sufficient to start a family.

Anyway, the event concerning him I found most notable was when I was walking past one of his Sunday School classes in progress a few weeks ago.  He was giving a talk to some secondary age children about the Five Points of Calvinism: - remember, John Calvin was born in Noyon in Picardie, which is further evidence that we French are the best at everything, which includes producing theologians!  MDR!  I loved Bilal's passionate and theologically sound explanation of the doctrines of grace to the children and how he expertly dealt with all their questions.

Coming to the conclusion of this blog post, Daddy told me that several years ago, Bilal approached him and asked his permission to court me.  Daddy then said any black man who came anywhere near his children would suffer very serious consequences.  Bilal then said, "Sir, Marianne is under your authority and I fully respect that.  I can see that I don't have your approval now, but I am willing to wait until I do receive your approval.  Oh, and just a little diversion, don't bother threatening me like that.  I've lived in La Savine since I was 10 years old and for many years, I have had to fight wild beasts and livestock raiders in order to protect my family's herds.  If you think I'm even batting an eyelid at a threat like that, then you obviously don't know me very well.  However, as I said, I won't court Marianne without your approval, but I will wait until I receive it and I will work to earn your approval."  Daddy added that there were a few other instances where he asked between now and the first request.  In the past few days, Bilal approached my father asking to court me again.  This time, Daddy asked me if I was willing to agree to it.  I don't know him very well, but I decided I would at least see what he had to offer, so I said "yes".  Daddy therefore went back to him and said, "Bilal, you are 100% welcome to court Marianne.  There is nobody in the church who is more worthy than you to do so.  I would be honoured to have you as part of my family if this courtship results in marriage."

So there you have it: - I have my first boyfriend.  Bilal told me I am the type of girl he always aspired to court.  Conversely, Bilal is not the suave Frenchman I always dreamed of in my youth (Serge Gainsbourg minus the cigarettes is the archetypical example, I suppose), but I am open-minded.  A few days into the relationship, I am very happy.  Watch this space.