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".

Cassoulet: - a very naughty French dish (supposedly)

One thing I have noticed is that Anglo-Saxon women like to talk about "naughty" foods, i.e. ones that contain fat.  This shows a very poor understanding of how to eat properly.  A Frenchwoman does not go around thinking about forbidden foods and which foods are "naughty" to eat.  Silly Anglo-Saxon woman talk about "naughty, but nice", as shown in the advertisement below (whose saying was popularised by Salman Rushdie) for cream cakes that featured a now-mostly-retired washed-up soap and Carry On actress (Barbara Windsor, who played Peggy Mitchell in the silly trashy British soap opera EastEnders, where vem characters off of it don't neva talk wiv no proper grammar).

As Mireille Guiliano pointed out, a Frenchwoman doesn't watch much television, so I can't really comment too authoritatively, but anyway, I digress.  A Frenchwoman doesn't do this "naughty, but nice" group.  It is mostly true to say that a Frenchwoman does not abstain from any food types, not even fatty ones.  As a reformed baptist, I am aware of at least 10 parts of the New Testament which say that all foods are fine (Matthew 15:11, Acts 10:9-16, Acts 11:1-10, Romans 14, 1Corinthians 8, 1Timothy 4:1-5, Titus 1:15, Mark 7:14-23, 1Corinthians 10:23-33 and Luke 10:8 for the readers who are interested to look them up).  The only exception to this rule is when the foods are excessively sweet.  As I often say in this blog, as far as an impossibly dainty and sophisticated Frenchwoman is concerned, a dessert should only be as sweet as it needs to be to cleanse one's palate of the previous dish.  Any sweeter than that and it becomes increasingly less sophisticated.

Onto the main point of this article, ignoring the disgusting-looking cupcakes above.  A few days ago, I was contacted by a reader in Barcelona who said that though tapas were available, it wasn't always possible to find the rich foods that would enable her to eat like a dainty Frenchwoman.  I could have told her that cassoulet is vaguely similar to the Spanish Fabada Asturiana, but I don't want her to think anything is even remotely comparable with French cuisine, so I suggested that she visit France more often, MDR.  She said that France wasn't all that accessible, given the low quantity of direct daytime trains, mentioning that the night service to Paris was due for imminent abolition.  I replied by pointing out that earlier this month, RENFE and SNCF started offering more cross-border services this month (previously, the French TGVs only went as far as Figueres) and that two of the new destinations served are Carcassonne and Toulouse.  These two settlements plus Castelnaudary are rather blasphemously referred to as the Holy Trinity of cassoulet, a very well-known dish that helps make we French people as stylish as we are.  Carcassonne is accessible in 2h22m from Barcelona using the new service and Toulouse in 3h07m, which uses the RENFE S-100 rolling stock (notably built by Alstom, a French manufacturer, tee hee), which can be seen below in Seville's Santa Justa station.

All in all, it is very easy for residents of Barcelona to travel to two of the three locations where cassoulet is native to.  Cassoulet is a very, very rich French dish.  On account of its very rich flavour, a dainty Frenchwoman feels no great need to eat large quantities of it.  It is almost the case that a Frenchwoman can take a few dainty nibbles and feel full, savouring each nibble to the fullest, as I have described doing with chocolate in earlier postings.  I have been in Carcassonne and seen stupid Americans ordering four cassoulets per person (because they look around and see how small the dishes are and assume this won't fill them up) and then finding themselves unable to get beyond the second helping.  Still, at least most of them had the good sense to appreciate the beauty of Carcassonne.  As today's weather forecast was relatively good, I suggested a visit to Carcassonne with Bilal.  As the regular readers of my blog will know, Bilal is a solitary character and has therefore not always found much occasion to travel to other areas of France, so he appreciated the change of scenery.

The main ingredients of cassoulet are meat (e.g. pork, goose meat, duck meat etc), pork skin and white beans.  This is one pleasure that a Frenchwoman can therefore enjoy whilst being relatively free of Muslims and Jews: - being a reformed baptist who believes in the principle of sola scriptura, I refer to the above parts of the Bible when someone asks me how I can gain so much pleasure from cassoulet, knowing that supposedly forbidden foods feature so heavily in it (ditto Saucisson d'Arles).  For a few years after his conversion to Christianity, Bilal continued abstaining from pork and restricting himself to halal food, so as to avoid compromising his witness with his family.  After a few years though, he eventually stopped bothering to abstain, as he realised that it is a minor issue in the enormous gulf that separates him from his Muslim family members, though he avoids doing so in front of his family still.

Bilal tried cassoulet for the first time during our visit to Carcassonne today and he also gained an enormous amount of pleasure from the incredibly rich flavour, though this is not something Bilal plans to eat regularly.  The reason for this is that Bilal is an extremely heavily built guy and needs a lot of protein to fulfil his needs, meaning that rich foods of which he feels only able to eat dainty quantities are not ultimately in his best interests.  As ever, Bilal wore his tagelmust/chèche to Carcassonne and this provoked a few stares (I also got a few stares from foreign men not used to seeing dainty Frenchwomen like me, MDR).  However, this was a wise decision, as it was fairly windy and I felt a little cold, while Bilal was wrapped up comfortably warm.  Below is a picture of a Touareg man who appears engaged in thought.  This is not Bilal, but he can often be seen with such facial expressions.

Bilal and I enjoyed our trip to Carcassonne today and I am looking forward to several such days out with him on Saturdays in future: - when one is able to engage Bilal in communication, he is a very personable man with a lot of insightful things to say.  One weekday evening, I would like to show him how to cook cassoulet, tartiflette and all the other wonderful dishes that make we Frenchwomen impossibly perfect and thin: - he was not previously used to it, but he enjoys the culinary variety.