At the risk of pushing this whole business into a straight-up celebration of mediocrity, I have a statemnt to make. I love grocery shops. I probably spent more time than most in grocery shops as a child, playing, as I did, with willful abandon amongst the dead animal carcasses and massive knives of my grandfather’s butcher shop during the holidays. Similarly, my grandmother, who I hung out with a lot in my formative years,often took me on her trips around the ‘hood, to fruit and veg shops, butchers, fish shop on a Friday. Why, we even had a corner shop run by a kindly old man who may or may not have done magic tricks.
And here we have me today, as thrilled to go and buy vegetables (Evergreen on Camden St, a lovely shop where one might get cooking tips or get told where to go for the best value seasame oil. And while you’re in the area, head across the road to Morrissey’s for the couple special, two bags full of meat for only 22 quid, what more could one possibly need?) as most people are to buy things like clothes, holidays, or starter homes. And here’s another dirty little secret. I love supermarkets too. Fruit ‘n’ veg, meat ‘n’ fish, €1.50 naan breads, I will buy in their respective shops, and relish doing so. But for general supplies, nothing pleases me more than wide aisles full of endless jars and bottles and sachets. Superquinns are a favourite, but I have no shame in wandering arund a decent size Tesco (I do like how country people, or perhaps it’s all Irish people, call Tesco Tesco’s, like there is a Mr and Mrs Tesco sitting by a beach somewhere in the Algarve) or Dunnes, wide-eyed, for about twenty minutes before I actually start doing any shopping, which, taking into account my usual budget, is usually three packets of Knorr Chicken & Noodle soup and a six pack of Coca-Cola.
Now the French, the French are good at supermarkets. They may have quaint little specialized shops for newspapers, cigarettes and horse meat, but when they lump them altogether it is glorious. Miles of cheese! Cold meats as far as the eye can see! Fizzy pink wine for €3! Multi-packs of Kinder chocolate, including those tiny bars with toasted rice in them! I have also been enjoying observing the French in an environment where I don’t have to worry about trying to communicate with them and thus upsetting myself. Women actually wearing gladiator sandals, which until now, I thought were a mere fabrication, invented by the fashion editors at Grazia when they are stuck for No. 10 in ‘The Top 10 Hot New Looks For Summer’ every year. Toddlers, and all French toddlers to seem to do this, pushing around little mini-buggies with heart-rending expressions of stress on their faces. However, there are times, most recently when I spent over half an hour in our local Monoprix looking for where these insane people were hiding the chillies (In the preserves aisle. In jars.), when I do sometimes wish that I used some of the hours I spent merrily trekking around the Dublin 2 area looking for lemon sole or rice vinegar, or good value seasame oil, on actually learning some useful French, something along the lines of “Where are the damn chillies in this tremendous place?”
A few years ago, after studying French in college for a year, I realised that my once firm grasp on the language was slowly crumbling before my eyes. I decided that a French exchange would be my best course of action to return to my previously glittering standard in la belle langue. Because it had totally worked for one of my mates.
But oh, the luck of the draw. Whereas my chum spent three weeks in a villa near Lyon with a charming young woman who drank, smoked and flirted brazenly with Gallic charm and ease, my own canditate, a college friend of same, was a highly strung cat lover who lived in a one bedroomed apartment in St Etienne. The list of things which she found dègeulasse was inexhaustable, but very definite entries were: girls drinking pints, paying more than €3 for a meal, Hollyoaks, alcohol, and hugging. This tyrant in Diesel jeans displayed, with an almost nationalistic fervour, all of the worst clichès which one can associate with French women: arrogance, a penchant for Spanish guitar pop, hypochondria, disquieting racism towards Arabs and an impressive line in complaining without stopping. At all. Not that she wasn’t entertaining. In particular, the argument with her anorexic mother, which ended in the two of us fleeing down the stairwell, with the mother’s screams of “stupid fucking bitch” (approximate English translation) ringing in our ears, really was one for the memoirs. It was a tiring and bizarre six weeks that I spent in her company. I feel so bad about the three of them that she was inflicted upon my friends and family, that I speak of them rarely.
However, today I find myself back in France, Paris this time, house-sitting for the next three weeks. Having been here for under a week now, I have realised something concerning that shrill exchange student. Not only did the six weeks we spent together have no effect whatsoever on rebuilding my, by now decimated, French, but she has also instilled in me a tremendous fear of Frenchwomen. Given that I haven’t been able to get my legs waxed since leaving Dublin over three weeks ago, I feel looks of disapproval and reproach whenever I leave the house. Even when there’s no one on the street. They know something dègeulasse is going on. They know that below the dresses and tights and leggings, I really look like this -
And that I probably drink pints of beer.
