Understatement

At the theatre

At the theatre, before the play starts. Behind me, a woman in her early thirties and a man, same age, are having a chat in French. She has an Eastern-european accent. He is wearing a suit, without a tie. He's French. After a few seconds, it's obvious that they work for a bank.

'In my team, some people eat at the canteen at work three times a day, she says.'

'In my team, people are having their breakfast in front of their computer, he says.'

'You know, thingie, she was in the office until 3am last night and, this morning, she was at her desk at 7.30 am as usual, she says.' 

'So, what?', he says in a I-am-not-impressed way.

'Well, do you think it's normal to work until 3am?' She sounds as if she's not quite sure she can express herself without any restraint, how much astonishment she should put in the tone of her voice. 

'If she had some work to do', he snaps back at her.

'Yes. Maybe, it can happen once', still hopeful that she is not 'getting something wrong'.

'Or for a week, he interrupts her.' He now speaks with a very robotic voice. 'We work on a project at the moment and we are in the office until 2am-3am.' He sounds quite proud of himself, I think but the robotic voice doesn't make it easy to interpret his feelings.

[I turn around and look at him. I am now very tempted to intervene in the conversation. 'How can you pretend slaving at work 18 hours a day is normal?']

The woman keeps quiet. After a few seconds: 'We don't even know what kind of play we're going to see, do we?'

***

E-mail from me to a person organising a conference:

'Dear xxx, I am sorry but I won't be able to attend the conference. I wasn't there this morning. I thought I would be able to join you this afternoon but it turns out that I can't. Sorry again. I'll ask a fellow journalist to sum things up for me. Apologies.'

At the theatre, talking to myself: 'I tend to apologise a lot at the moment. Even when this guy I was interviewing picked up his phone during the interview, I said 'sorry'. What a fool, I made of myself...'

My phone vibrates in my bag. I pick it up. 

'Dear xxx, thank you for your message. In fact, the conference wasn't today. It doesn't happen until next week. Perhaps, you will be able to come after all?'

Bollocks. 

 

 

 

 

 

The feminist in me

I have never been naive enough to think that, we women didn't have to go the extra mile to gain the respect more easily attained by our male counterparts. But recently, I have found myself getting regularly incensed by male chauvinism. I have to thank Julian Assange and his entourage for that. They did a damn good job at awakening the feminist tiger in me. And I can only hope that I am not the only one out there. 

So far, this blog hasn't been about anything really serious. I haven't really decided what this blog is about; you have probably noticed. But this is serious. So, if you are not in the mood for serious stuff just now, I recommend you coming back another day. 

I don't know for sure whether Julian Assange sexually harassed two women. It is a rather complex story. But his supporters seem to know, for sure, that he didn't. I find it astonishing. They are putting Assange on a pedestal because he is the founder of Wikileaks. I am aware that it is nothing new. But having heard some of those arguments again very recently, I feel the urge to write about it now. 

I attended the hearing of Assange's extradition case on February 7th and 8th in Belmarsh court. 

From the press room, I witnessed how Assange's barrister, Geoffrey Robertson QC, tried to depict the Swedish prosecutor Marianne Ny as a crazy feminist activist, among others. You can say it was a defence strategy, but not a decent one from my point of view. Robertson came out with some mind-blowing quotes as well. I am not sure I want to give them more publicity than they have already had. Suffice to say that up to this point, i.e. after attending the hearing, I was already quite annoyed by how Assange and co. used a male chauvinist defence. 

But, this week, my sense of anger at Assange & co and their arguments went up a level.

During a conference, I was amazed to hear a male supporter of Assange, and academic, attacking The Guardian for publishing the accusations of sexual harassment and rape against the founder of Wikileaks. The Wikileaks supporter said something along the lines of "I did some research and I've found that since 1810 no journalist in this country has been attacked as Julian Assange was attacked (by the Guardian). And nobody stood up to defend him. In three years, Assange has done more investigative work than several journalists have during their entire career."

I am quoting from memory here but the quote left quite a mark in my memory. I was completely stunned. My first reaction was to stand up and say 'WTF?', which I admit is not the right way to react. So, I kept quiet and when, eventually, I was able to articulate something a bit more elaborate than 'you're such a macho man, how can you dare say such a thing?', the discussion was over and nobody in the room had reacted to his attack against the Guardian etc. 

So, here is what I wanted to say but didn't have the opportunity to say. Why should the accusations of sexual harassment and rape against Assange be silenced because he's the founder of Wikileaks? Laurie Penny has written about it on her NewStatesman blog back in december when Assange was presented as some kind of semi-god by lots of media. And I have found an interesting post on the same topic written by Kate Losey here. 

Things are slightly changing now concerning for Assange. The media -sorry for painting everyone with the same brush- are a bit more critical of him now that several books came out on him. But, that is not in itself a reason to rejoice. I wish that the turn of events wasn't so much the result of some 'media fatigue' and that male chauvinism expressed by some of Assange's supporters had been given a closer scrutiny. 

 

 

My big fat Corsican wedding

Sunday evening. So far, we had had a really good week-end. A dinner-party on Saturday night, a picnic on Sunday…I felt re-la-xed until I decided to call my Mum to clarify how many people where going to attend our wedding.

 

For the last two weeks, she had dropped a few additional names over the phone -to a list which was already quite long. A good way to tell was the look people gave me when they found out how many guests we would have. Which, in turn, would make me feel a bit worried. Without realising, I now think I had started lying a little bit about how many guests we were going to have. So, when my Mum told me how many people we should expect, I was taken aback. The gulf between my estimations and the reality was even bigger than expected.

“Are you certain about it?”, I enquired. “Let me check and I will call you back”, she said. Twenty minutes later, she called back. It turned out that she didn’t count properly the first time. She had MORE guests that she had announced previously. I didn’t ask her to count again, just in case she finds some more and because I am already feeling a bit oppressed. I am trying to figure out quickly how we’re going to accommodate so many people in the salle des fêtes and how long it’s going to take me to talk to everyone. TEN HOURS. If I spend two minutes on average with each of the guests, I will need ten hours! I pass on the information to B.

 

A scream comes out of his mouth.

I didn’t ask my Mum how that happened. I already knew the answer. I could remember her explaining over the phone how my Dad had developed some strange phobia recently. He couldn’t open the mail any more. Just in case it was someone declining an invitation to my wedding. So, he would ask my Mum to open the letters. And, then, he thought ‘let’s invite some more people!’. Or, en résumé, he’s a Corsican father who wants the all village to attend his daughter’s wedding.

As those things were going through my head, B. had entered some figures in an Excel spreadsheet. It was not a big surprise really but it turned out that “his” English guests were going to represent a tiny minority. 

We’re now considering implementing some positive discrimination policy. We don’t know whether we should provide limitless beer to the English guests or serve them cake twice. Probably both. Any suggestion?

Hung parliament: a guide to journos' partners

On Saturday, when B. brought me tulips to put on my desk as I was typing as a mad woman on my key board, I realised how serious the situation was. It was 2.30pm, I haven't had any lunch and my man thought a bunch of (pretty,true) flowers could make my life easier.

 

I didn't make any comment because 1) I didn't want to upset him 2) I didn't have time. But when it dawned on me that B. was not going to prepare me some food -on top of bringing me flowers, yes-, I was bewildered. I thought that my message was pretty clear. "Have you had any food?", he had inquired earlier. "Apple" was my answer. So, how come he then went on to watch TV instead of preparing a sandwich for me? Was I supposed to munch on the tulips?

 

 

The day before already, I had had the feeling that some kind of adjustment to the situation was required. Judge by yourself: as I was trying to make some sense of the big political mess, B. sitted behind my chair and  tried to get access to the printer in the pursuit of some menial mercantile interest –selling old junk on Ebay. How inappropriate.

 

So, here are a couple of advices for next time the country is in peril.

1) If your partner happens to be on a day off while you are covering some historical moment, push him/her out the door. Unless, he/she has been briefed beforehand about the behaviour to adopt in this case of emergencies, the chances are he/she is not going to be that helpful and you won’t have time to explain the rules.

 

2) If you feel like something big might happen in the news, ask him/her to provide ammunitions. Have a list of things he can feed you with –sorry guys, don’t take offence but I don’t think women need to have any kind of request put on paper, they can figure it out by themselves…It should almost no time to prepare and keep our minds sharp for 12 hour solid.

 

3) If your boyfriend thinks flowers might help your work, well…Maybe, he does mean well –mine did, I’ve checked. In which case, consider marrying him. But, do stipulate not to put the flowers on your desk anymore in this kind of situation. It’s not convenient.

 

Now, if you're on the other side of the fence, you should read those this before engaging in a relationship with a journalist.

 

 

Cooking week-end

It started off on Saturday at lunch-time with B. making fresh pasta for the first time. It finished off with a visit to the first Underground farmers market organized by Miss Marmite lover at her home. And, it was “pretty good stuff”, as B. would say.

 

Despite a difficult start, B. actually went on to make a nice dough and some gorgeous tagliatelli with a mushroom-pancetta-tomato sauce. I wish I had taken pictures of the result but I was too eager to give them a go that I forgot to take a picture... But, trust me, it was delicious. If you are tempted by the experience, I have to warn you that it is a bit time consuming though –it took about three hours as a whole. And expect to have your floor covered in floor. It’s part of the fun.

 

 

As for the Underground Farmers market, it was a pleasant and yummie experience. Miss Marmite lover, food blogger and illegal restaurant holder, had invited fellow foodies to her house to sell their products and make demos. At first, I thought there were too many cupcakes and too many people and that I wasn’t going to hang around for too long.

 

 

 

Yellow and pink cupcakes served by copycats of Brie Van de Kamp is a bit freaky. And the house is quite special as well. It’s absolute vintage. In every single corner. Every little detail. I mean, it’s nice but I was expecting something a bit different. I thought I was going to feel like I were in my kitchen except that it’s bigger. But it was a really foodie kitchen.

 

 

 

Nevertheless, after half an hour and a porridge demonstration made by Porridge lady, I thought the event was pretty cool. I did learn things about porridge –even that somewhere in Scotland a world porridge competition is organized every year. It’s funny because I only tried porridge for the first time about a month ago. As any French person arriving in the UK, I thought this stodgy pudding looked pretty disgusting. Now, not only can I see myself eating porridge nearly every day, but I even listened to a porridge obsessed lady talking about the stodgy thing for 30 minutes…How bizarre.

 

 

Other good things:

- I tasted chocolate and beetroot cake. I had never dared to try it before. It doesn’t taste of beetroot. It just tates like a light chocolate cake. Pretty damned good.

- I had pancakes from Mama Lan. There are Chinese pancakes as you never had them before. It’s simple: you didn’t even know that they existed. Awesome.

But I have to say that my favourite stall –if you can call it a stall- was the cocktail making stall. In Miss Marmite lover’s bedroom, David was preparing cocktails on a tiny ironing board. I think Tom Cruise’s cocktail maker sex appeal is gone. It’s 2010, you know. In post-crisis Britain, small and low budget facilities, that’s hype.

 

 

We don't celebrate Valentine's day

We don’t celebrate St Valentine. We commemorate another date which is much more meaningful –i.e. the day we got together. It happens to be on February 1^st. It makes Valentine’s day pretty irrelevant. Or, so I thought until I found out last week that B. had made the effort to buy a little something to celebrate love in tune with the rest of the world.

 

I worked out pretty quickly that B. had found the “little Valentine’s surprise” at the supermarket. Hence, the 48 hour teasing I inflicted upon my romantic fiancé.

“Let me think…Did you go for the heart shaped chocolates? Or did you buy 5 tins of my favourite rice pudding? Or, maybe, you went for a tie-rack since your 20 ties have been living on top of my jumpers for more than a month?”

 

 I forgot to say that I knew that he had not spent more than 5-6 pounds on the present (I won’t bore you with the details). Hence my questions. I wasn’t accusing him of going for the cheap option. Of course, not. Again, we don’t celebrate Valentine’s day, do we?

 

But, I have to say that B., being very romantic indeed, surprised me with a “stupidly cute bottle of champagne” (his words).

 

 

I know that writing about one’s happiness is not the best way to attract lots of readers. But, at the same time, I don’t want to be hypocritical and write about the great disappointments of being a couple and the farcical nature of marriage. Not today.

 

I am not married yet. True. However, as a person who is going to get married, I feel a bit like I am about to become part of a persecuted minority. I accept that you don’t need to get married to be happy or in a stable relationship or whatever but I find the British media tendency to publish a great amount of articles about the failures of marriage and relationships in general quite irritating.

 

If you’re interested in the topic, have a look that the column published in the Guardian on Saturday. The journalist, who is divorced, is amazed that anyone gets married at all”. I just can’t see why, as a reader, I could be interested in his bitter comments about marriage. But, again, I am a lucky girl who got a stupidly cute bottle of champagne for Valentine’s day. That’s probably the difference.

 

 

 

 

In praise of vegetable and fruit boxes

 

Tuesday again, my vegetable and fruit box has arrived and it makes me feel joyous.

1) The food is fresh, organic, tasty and affordable. Judge by yourself: we pay 20 pounds for a fruit and vegetable box, one litter of milk, 250g of cherry tomatoes and half a dozen eggs.

2) It gets delivered to our door by a very nice man called Paul Jardine – the irony is that “Jardine” means “Gardening” in French. And, as I am working from home, I get the privilege of having a little chat with him every Tuesday.

3) The amount of packaging is reduced compared to the food you can buy in supermarkets. I used to be incensed by the stupid number of plastic boxes that we ended up with at the end of the week. Now, I can relax. The box is reusable and foldable.

4) There is the sheer pleasure of not knowing exactly what you are going to have (you can have a look to the content of the next box on Fridays but there may be some change). Surprise, surprise!

5) I discovered new vegetables, for example Jerusalem artishokes (topinambours, in French) - on the photo below, they are the brown round things which look a bit like coconuts. Actually, it was beetroot (there is scope for improvement there, I think).  It is a little challenge to find out how you are going to cook them. And, if you don’t have a clue, the weekly newsletter which is delivered with the box contains various recipes.

 

6) I feel some kind of responsibility to make the most of them. So, I tend to cook more. There are special babies! Yes, maybe, I am getting a bit emotional there…

  

In case you were wondering, I haven’t been offered any free box to write this on my blog!  

I know that there are similar schemes out there. We chose Riverford farm because we liked the fact that this is a cooperative and the website is very well done. They really bother to make lots of information about food miles, CO2 emissions, the life of the farm etc. And you can go and visit the farm as well. Exciting!

The week of the witches

What I like about England is that everybody is so polite. When I go back to France, I feel like I am being attacked several times a day -in a shop when somebody nearly bumps into you and doesn’t say sorry, when people raise their voice to express some discontent etc. It makes me feel like an orphan lamb which has to fight for his life but expects other animals around him to invite him for tea and biscuits. That what I thought until last week. A couple of unpleasant experiences came as a bit of a shock.

 

First round: at the Post Office 

 

I knew that the person on the other side of the glass window wasn’t going to like me too much –it was peak time and my hands were full (parcels, letters, envelops…). Tough I didn’t expect to have my bottom kicked by some kind of head mistress. It turned that I was being way too optimistic.

 

The woman wore glasses, she had a stern look and, like on a first school day, I had the feeling the teacher wasn’t going to be fond of me...

 

Me: “I would like stamps for Europe.”

Witch n°1: “Have you checked the weight of the letters?”

 

Here, she is, suspicious from the start. I know that the letters are not going to exceed 20 grams (there are Happy New Year cards, for God’s sake) but I don’t want to annoy the madam. So, I comply and weight the letters.

 

She gives me the stamps. As I start putting the stamps on the letters –I had three letters, she stops me: “Have you checked the envelop is big enough for the parcel you are sending?” Suspicious again!

Me: “Yes.” (grinding my teeth)

Her: “Can you weight your parcel?”

Me: “I will do it but first let me put the stamps on…”

Her: “No, weight the parcel first.”

I think that if we had not been separated by a window, she would have taken my hands off the stamps and force me to grab the bloody parcel. I decided I should do what she asked me to speed things up.

 

To cut a long story short, the Post office lady behaved like a witch* from the start till the end. But, I didn’t make a fuss. The problem is I didn’t know how to react. I never heard anybody having an argument in a Post Office in England. I thought I would come out as the typical French woman who things she can cause mayhem in a quiet London Post Office. So, I kept quiet. And bitter.

 

Second round: in the clothes shop

 

I had no intention to do the sales but, on Saturday morning, B. was busy doing some heavy duty male job -or so I had decided, he was putting together some Ikea furniture. I thought I should enjoy the last days of the sales to find some real bonnes affaires. So, on Saturday morning, I head to Bond street. I find a very nice coat. It’s a tiny bit too small. I call another boutique to check that they have the coat but a size bigger. Bingo: they do.

 

After a 30 minutes journey, I arrive into the shop. It is a French brand, all the shop assistants I have ever talked to in this shop and other shops in London seem to be French. The lady I talked to on the phone was French. So, without fear, I address the shop assistant in French.

 

Bad luck. Not only she is not French, but she is a witch. Witch number 2. “We speak English here.” No smile. And, no more coat. They don’t have my size any more. To add insult to injury, the dragon suggests that I could try the coat in size 14 (44 French size) –that is three sizes bigger than my size. Thank you but not thank you. And, she insists, the cow! But again, apart from answering to her with my most hypocrite smile, I stop short of giving her a proper dressing down for being so unpleasant. And I leave bitter again.

 

What I dislike about England is that everybody is so polite.

 

*You can replace this word by another one. I am not suggesting anything.

God is missing

So, the day has come. Not the day of the wedding yet. There is another 9 months to go. No, the day we are meeting our parish priest to start the formalities. B. is a good Catholic boy who comes from a practicing family. I am not. Hence, this little rehearsal/mock test before meeting Father P. Just a precision: I am normally quite an independent minded person.

B.:‘‘So, if Father P. asks you whether we intend to have a family, we say yes.”

I nod. Easy. I want four kids. B. thinks it’s bad for the planet. We’ll talk about this later.

 “If he asks whether we intend to bring them up in the Catholic faith, what do you say?”

Silence.

 Me (hesitantly):“I say… yes.”

“Ok, just checking there.”

(Can somebody tell me whether I should worry about B. not being quite sure about this even tough we’ve been together for 7 years? Tough I am not a practicing Catholic, I think it’s important to teach them Catholic values.)

Me: “But if he asks me about whether I believe in God. What should I say?”

B.: “I guess you say that…hum, you have your doubts. Because of child abuse in Ireland and because of what is going on in the world.”

“But then aren’t we going to go into a big debate?”, I inquire.

Short silence. “You can say that you don’t believe in God.”

“That wouldn’t be a good start, would it be?” (me, still pretty nervous)

“That is not the first time that a non-believer marries a believer, is it? And if we promise that we are going to bring our kids as Catholics, it’s a good deal for the Church, I think.”

5 pm. We put our most-Catholic smile on and meet Father P. He talks about papers to fill, a one-day marriage preparation to attend and doesn’t even mention God.

Disappointing.

Cheesy drama

 

When B. asked me anxiously what present he could bring to my parents for Easter, I thought that cheese would do the trick. “Do you remember how much they enjoyed this creamy cheese from Derbyshire that they tried when they visited us last October?” “Dovedale blue, that was the name of the cheese”, remembered B., very happy with my suggestion.

 

So far, my parents, as probably the vast majority of French people, thought that there wasn’t such thing as British cheeses. I had tried to initiate them to cheddar but, after a few bites, my Mum had despised it as “some kind of tasty plastic”. That’s why B. was immensely proud to have found a British cheese that my French picky parents had, believe it or not, enjoyed.

 

For his first visit to their place since he had proposed in December, B. thought that dovedale blue would make a good job at securing some extra happy smiles from his future mother-in-law. But after visiting all the supermarkets in his area, a distraught B. called me to say that he hadn’t been able to find the smallest piece of Derbyshire creamy goodness. Disaster. All of a sudden, the happy week-end chez les beaux-parents was under threat! “Don’t worry. Maybe I can find it in a fancy London supermarket”, I answered. But my own Dovedale blue-hunting operation failed. Où est passé the lovely cheese? When I brought myself to inform B. that the bloody cheese was nowhere to be found, the only answer I had was a long silence at the other end of phone. What is possible that this little piece of “local gourmet food star” as a lyrical B. had coined it, had gone unnoticed?

 

Late the same evening, the doomed news arrived in my e-mail box entitled “The death of dovedale blue cheese?”. B. had not had the courage to pick up the phone. It was terrible news: the Hartington creamery, the only one in the whole country to make this little wonder of a cheese, this cheese-gem, had closed last February and the owner of the creamery, Clawson, informed a rather alarmed B. by e-mail that “at the current time the product remains under review, as part of the consolidation process that Clawson are undertaking following the closure of the Hartington Creamery. As a result, I’m afraid that I cannot be more specific about the future plans for the product at the current time.” “Do you realise that this cheese is not any cheese? It has a registered EU food name as a Protected Designation of Origin.  As such it is a protected local produce alongside worldwide recognised high quality products like parmesan cheese”, an angry B. informed me.

 

At that point, I thought that his efforts to please my parents were very touching but at the same time, B.’s heartfelt implication in this cheese story was starting to become a little bit concerning. Suddenly, the Gallic passion for public outcry found grace to B's eyes: “In France , such news would have made the headlines. Thousands of people would have been protesting on the streets and maybe Sarkozy would have asked the parliament to pass a law to ensure the cheese production would never stop.” More realistically, I answered B., trying to temper his mood, “employees would have held their boss hostage for some hours or even days, which method you, English civilised Labour party member, completely disagree with. Do you remember?” At this point, I suggested that buying flowers or chocolates would make my mum very happy. No need to launch a "Save dovedale blue campaign". She already loved to bits. B. moaned, the discussion came to an end and the day after when B. picked up the phone, with his normal voice, I thought that the cheese drama was long gone. Big mistake. “Have you seen the article about farmers’ revenues in the Guardian? Apparently, they went up by 36% last year. I was thinking it would be a rather good business idea to buy a little farm, pick up the dovedale blue production and export to France, don’t you think?”