Excuses

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

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

Excuses

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

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

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

Solutions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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!

Visiting Mali

As some of you, my readers, might have deduced, I was keen to visit Mali at some point.  I wanted to visit Mali and Bilal's family and generally experience the environment that has made him the man he is today.  This is the reason why I have not posted for quite a while now.

Our journey commenced at Marseille-St. Charles station.  Marseille has very good connections to Charles de Gaulle Airport via the high-speed lines, with the trains leaving the main route shortly before Paris and entering the LGV Interconnection Est.  Given François Hollande's very high taxes, I feel the need to pursue cheap train fares where this option is available (hey, some sacrifices are sometimes needed if one wants two penthouses and eat only the highest quality food!) and I was delighted that Bilal and I managed to find cheap idTGV fares between Marseille-St. Charles and Charles de Gaulle-TGV stations.  Vive la France! From there, we took a flight to Bamako, the capital of Mali.  We could have flown onwards to Mopti, but Bilal wanted to show me Bamako first and we figured that car rental choices would be better there.  I rarely seem to travel by car, but in Mali, it turned out to be necessary: - we didn't have enough time for travel by camel to be practical.  Even though I, as an impossibly dainty Frenchwoman, love to walk everywhere, the distances were too great to be practical.  Tee hee!

Another reason for hiring a car was that some members of Bilal's family met us at the airport.  Even though I am able and willing to walk long distances, the relatives who met us were not!  We needed the car in order to have the flexibility of visiting relatives of his in different parts of the country.  I said Bilal comes from the Timbuktu area, which is true, but the definition of the word "near" is somewhat flexible here!  The word "near" could mean several hundred kilometres in a vast and empty nation like Mali!  MDR.  Being a Touareg, the question of where he comes from is somewhat nebulous.  However, the specific town he is most associated with is Douentza.  Douentza has an airport, but we had no success in finding information out about flights there anyway.  Douentza is quite small, with a population of only about 20,000, but they seemed very hospitable, even if they are under the yoke of Islam.  Douentza sits in the middle of nowhere in between two beautiful mountainous areas.

I always viewed Bilal as being very athletic and rugged, but I was in for a shock when we went into these mountainous areas!  Training as a herdsman began for Bilal at the age of approximately three to four years, in line with tuareg custom.  Various people in La Savine are pseudo-tough, as are some people in the dodgy Paris suburbs.  So too are the wiggers in various middle class areas of French cities!  If one wants to see tough, one should see what people who have been surrounded by gangland culture in La Savine and grown up as a herdsman in the harsh, unforgiving environment that Bilal grew up in!

As I have often said, Bilal is very much a hip-hop person, having grown up in La Savine.  When he speaks, his French is somewhere between a Marseille 'hood accent and a Malian accent.  When he is in France, it sounds more like the former, whereas during the trip to Mali, it sounded more like the latter.  Given that we were in Mali, he toned down his hip-hop vocabulary, knowing that people there would not understand words like "pineco", "darblé", "renoi", "rebeu", "racba" etc!  He was also easier to understand for me as well, as the gulf between Malian French and French French is much smaller than the gulf between La Savine hip-hop slang and French French!

Being the Impossibly Dainty French Woman, the thing that was most notable during the whole of the visit was the attention given to my weight.  In France, I am rightly admired for having a dainty figure, but various stupid people in Mali looked upon me with pity!  People were constantly asking me if my father did not feed me properly, to which I had to reply that I was earning my own income and that my impossibly dainty figure is something I consciously chose!  In Mali (and indeed many African nations), obesity is regarded as a sign of prosperity.  In France, we regard it as a sign of stupidity.  Luckily, Bilal was willing to be a dissenter and tell people around him that he simply did not find it attractive for a woman to be overweight.  Also, I found that there were a few relatively Westernised people in the larger cities (e.g. Bamako, the capital) who follow Western fashions and therefore know that being thin is attractive and a sign of sophistication.

Shopping for local attire was difficult, as the (relatively) high-quality clothing tended to be made for disgustingly obese women, whereas the clothing suitable for impossibly dainty women such as myself tended to be lower quality on the expectation of such people having lower incomes.  In the end, I just visited a local seamstress who made something for me, having taken my measurements.  I don't like dressing in a way that exposes large amounts of flesh, as I feel it is not befitting of a Christian woman and does not look attractive anyway.  However, on this trip, I felt it would be practical to cover even more of my flesh, given that the sun is very intense at this time of year in Mali.

Obviously, given that we weren't in France, the food was not of such good quality as I am accustomed to in France.  However, it wasn't as bad as in the Anglo-Saxon world!  MDR!  Taguella is a ubiquitous part of Touareg cuisine and tends to be made out of millet: - as I understand things, it can be made out of wheat, but fortunately for Bilal's bowels, this is relatively uncommon common in Douentza!  Millet porridge is very common as well: - it is relatively easy to grow millet in hot and dry climates.  People tend to eat sheep, goat and camel meat as and when their finances allow.  I got the right 'ump (said in a Cockney accent) when I found myself having to eat the latter, MDR.

As a result of the lower quality, it was inevitable that I would find myself eating more.  However, that wasn't a bad thing under the circumstances, as I was even more active than normal.  The reason for this is that I tended to accompany Bilal on his journeys to look after his family's livestock.  Just following him was exhausting enough!  However, being a quintessential Frenchwoman, I was well prepared.  As I have often mentioned, a Frenchwoman does not like to use lifts or escalators and prefers to use the stairs where possible.  I live in a penthouse in a tall and luxurious building near the Vieux Port in Marseille (which has a lift as a grudging concession to the wealthy and overweight foreigners who have bought flats there), so I am naturally used to such exercise!  My physical fitness attracted stares from puzzled locals, but who cares?  Anyway, I found that my dainty Frenchwoman portions were not enough for the physical exercise I was doing, so I found myself eating more, but I quickly burned the calories off, given the increased exercise.

As mentioned, although Douentza is the town Bilal is most associated with, he does not have an overwhelming association with one town, given that he is a Touareg and the Touareg people often live a nomadic lifestyle.  Douentza is at the edge of the zone inhabited by the Touareg peoples.  Douentza is on the edge of the Pays Dogon (Dogon Country), which is primarily inhabited by, yes you guessed it, the Dogon people.  The Pays Dogon is an absolutely beautiful mountainous and historic area.  There are lots of historic Tellem granary buildings everywhere and I am told the environment is a lush and green one (Bilal and I were there towards the end of the dry season).

Timbuktu was also another region we visited.  The mosques there were the main architectural attraction in terms of their historic value.  They are completely devoid of spiritual beauty, being mosques, but they abounded in architectural and historical beauty, particular the Djinguereber Masjid.  Bilal took me to see some relatives there and again, they asked me if my father was starving me and again, I had to explain that being slim is a sign of sophistication and being fat is a sign of stupidity.

One thing that was noticeably different was Bilal's temperament.  He often has a facial expression (often obscured by a hooded top or a chèche) that looks rather wistful, as if he is homesick.  I have never visited his home in La Savine, so I don't know if it is absent there, but it was noticeably absent in Mali.  Granted, believers should not feel entirely at home anywhere on earth, as they are looking towards the future in their celestial abode and Bilal is delighted to be in church on Sundays, but he still seems to feel as though he is out-of-place when he is in middle-class areas of Marseille.  He is normally painfully shy, but during the trip, he was noticeably different.  He was unusually inclined to start conversations with others and he was not avoiding conversations with monosyllabic answers as he normally does.  Whatever is most normal for him, I adore him, I was glad to see part of the other country that has gone into making him the man he is today and I can't wait till he makes a proposal of marriage.

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.