All things being equal...

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I had been in Paris, running between the French Foreign Ministry, the British Consulate and the Costa Rican Consulate prior to going on to London to run between the Costa Rican Consulate and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office...which for my purposes was in Milton Keynes....before returning to Paris to run to the Costa Rican Consulate again, in order to get all the appropriate papers stamped, signed and recorded in order to apply for residence in Costa Rica.
As it turned out I was lucky to have made the acquaintance of both the Costa Rican consuls at this point as I would later be in dire need of their assistance.

Now in London I was fed, wined and lodged by a good friend, but in Paris I was on my own.

I hadn't thought it would be difficult. I had booked two nights in hotels via the Paris Tourist Board website, each for one night as the first had no vacancies for my second night and found the first hotel delightful...I had a four poster bed in a room which overlooked the garden of another hotel...there was free internet...and a nice Italian restaurant on the corner....which was as far as I felt like moving after a day of  queuing, paying and queuing, not to speak of getting past the Costa Rican Consulate's security system.

They should patent it.

On arrival, you mount the steps to find that there is an intercom system mounted on the wall to your right....it controls the gates which bar your access to the building. Except that unless you are built like a basketball player you can't reach the thing.
Because of the gates.

This was a puzzler. I do not have a mobile 'phone, so could not telephone to ask the inmates for assistance and the hours at which the public were admitted were drawing to a close.

What to do? Throw rocks at the window?
No chance...since 1968 the Paris municipal authorities have replaced cobble stones with asphalt...it takes more energy than a student possesses to chip up a chink of that and hurl it at the police.

The street was deserted...people say Paris is a collection of villages and this bit of it resembled one of those villages where all the shutters are closed and the only sign of life is the gleam of eyeballs in the shadows behind.
I was in luck, though. An elderly lady approached...she was also going to the Consulate. She had an umbrella with which she deftly poked the appropriate button, shouted when the disembodied voice answered and the gates opened.
We were in.
I made sure I had an extensible ruler in my bag for the return trip.

Having since seen Costa Rica in the rainy system, all is now clear.
Every Costa Rican worth his or her salt carries an umbrella - for when, not if, it rains.

The system installed at the Paris Consulate is thus designed with Costa Ricans in mind...who carry umbrellas and will have no problem.
It must be a first test towards residency.

I was ready to move hotels the next day when I thought I'd check the Internet.
There was a most unwelcome message.
The hotel to which I was about to remove myself had cancelled my booking.
The booking I had made a week earlier.
Through the Paris Tourist Board.

I imagine that I gave tongue as the receptionist came over to see what was going on and was most sympathetic. She would ring round and see what she could find.
In less than five minutes she came back. She had found a hotel...her nephew worked there....the porter would take me round and it was only one street away.
It turned out to be the hotel of whose garden I had had a view the previous day, was cheaper than the one I had booked originally and was very comfortable...even if there was no four poster.

Let no one say Parisians are not kind and helpful, especially if they happen to be Algerian.

I got through the rest of my business in Paris, took the Eurostar to London - and the sooner they replace that shoddy, overcrowded specimen with a decent German train the better - and dealt with the paperwork at that end.
I returned to Paris on the shoddy overcrowded specimen, enlivening the journey by an encounter with a young woman on boarding the train.

There is a sort of flow system in the carriage and she was coming against it, which is all very well if you only have bodies to deal with, but I had luggage... my overnight bag and a large bag well stuffed with knickers  and stuff from Primark.

I had seen Costa Rican knickers on previous visits...they varied between items so scanty that you could not make a decent pocket handkerchief from ten of them to things wonderfully labelled as 'bloomers senora' into which you could fit ten ladies. So, to tide me over until I could investigate further....Primark.

The young woman was making progress, but I could see that there would be a problem when she got to me...behind me I had a queue of other passengers and my overnight bag...the seats each side of the aisle alongside me were occupied...the knickers were in front.
There really is not much room on the Eurostar.

But there was an option...between us, one of the aisle seats was unoccupied so I suggested she nip in there...being more manoeuvrable as it were...frigate to my oil tanker...so that I could pass and unblock the gangway.
With a toss of the head she kept on coming....what on earth she was thinking of was beyond me. What could there be to object to in ducking out of the aisle for a moment?

Well, a pretty young thing with a vanity case will get away with this with the weaker sex - men - but not with a crabby old bat with a bag of knickers and half a coachload of passengers backed up behind her.
She received a firm but not violent rugby hand-off amidships with the knickers which put her into the vacant space and I went on my way while her angry voice squawked

Do you mind!

Which gave me the one and probably the only chance I will ever have to utter the immortal line from 'Gone with the Wind'

Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn.

And neither did I.

There was no worry about being arrested by the guard, either...they're never to be seen when hooligans are around.

I reached Paris without further incident and I had promised myself one last lunch in the City of Light before heading for home on the afternoon train.

Normally I would have gone to Chartier, which, touristy hell that it is, I love.
The food is solid, traditional French, the wine is drinkable, the cheese for some reason is always out of this world and the waiters don't have attitude.

But I had had a recommendation for a place off the Champs Elysee...not frightfully expensive...from a foody friend, so I thought I would give it a try.
A last fling, as it were.

I found it, was shown to a table and a waiter appeared with a menu within a few minutes.
I was thirsty after the journey and asked for some water, tap water, while I made up my mind what to order.
It did look an interesting menu, after all.

The waiter reappeared...with a bottle of mineral water which he was about to open when I stopped him.

No, Monsieur, I asked for tap water.

Yes, but Madame will not enjoy tap water with her meal.

Madame was not intending to stick to water with her meal.

The tap water is not recommended for the palate.

The wine will cure that.

Madame, as a foreigner, does not understand the subtleties of French cuisine.

Madame, as a foreigner, knows very well she will be charged for mineral water while tap water is free.

Madame, as a foreigner, does not have the same sense of values as the French.

Madame, as a foreigner, entirely shares the French system of values when it comes to money and she is not paying for what she does not want and did not order.

Madame, as a foreigner, does not understand the classless nature of France....where a client doesn't think themself too grand to accept the recommendations of the waiter.

Madame foreigner or not, understands all too well the nature of France and is not going to be talked into buying water she does not want even if by so doing she contributes towards the income of the doubtless underpaid waiter.

Madame, coming from a class ridden society, does not understand the spirit of equality in France....a French client understands that they and the waiter are on the same footing, combining to produce an agreeable dining experience.

Madame does not see any problem in achieving an agreeable dining experience once she gets the water she asked for and is able to order her meal.

Madame does not understand that in France everyone is equal....from the Revolution of 1789!

Madame has news for you. When the National Assembly of 1789 debated the franchise it was decided, among other measures, that servants should not be eligible to vote. And that included waiters.

While he was digesting that one I picked up my knickers and left the establishment.
Clearly, no agreeable dining experience would be in the offing.
Which was a shame as the menu looked interesting.

The queues by now at Chartier would be too great to give me time for lunch if I were not to miss my train so I grabbed something that called itself ciabatta at Montparnasse railway station on the way home which made me bless the skills of my dentist and gave me indigestion.

If only I had understood, after all these years in France, how to obtain an agreeable dining experience.......

Bean soup and bottled courgettes.

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I am making Alice's bean soup. It is a useful, tasty soup and keeps alive the memory of the fun we had together, Alice, Edith and I.
I met them when I was living in my first house in France. I spent a lot of time in the garden, trying to make it into one, and often saw a little 2CV passing the gate very slowly as two heads swivelled towards me. The car would proceed to the house round the corner and return some hours' later, the heads again in motion. I met the owners of the swivelling heads one day on the road up from the village where I had been doing some shopping....the Deuch stopped, two elderly ladies emerged, shook hands and levered me into the back seat, depositing me, not at my house, but at the one round the corner. Alice and Edith were out for the afternoon and I was the cabaret. They had coffee in a thermos, a packet of sweet biscuits and, suspiciously, an extra cup.
They had, explained Edith, been planning to invite me round, and now seemed a good moment. We were seated on the garden wall and after a while, once names, ages, family details etc had been exchanged, I asked why we were outside with a thermos while the house no doubt boasted water heating equipment, tables and chairs.
Ah. The house belonged to Edith, but a couple of years earlier her son had persuaded her to move to the village and she had let the house to a young couple. She had retained use of the garden where she grew her veg and flowers. Her son had retained use of the barn for making and storing wine from the grapes from the plot behind the house. This was my first introduction to the French habit of never quite letting go. Clearly, the young couple had accepted these terms quite readily....they both worked, so the garden was probably of no interest. At that time, only the older people did veg gardens...the younger element liked lawns and plants bought from the plant catalogues....every modern bungalow had its' flowering hedge from Jacques Briant and its' bulbs from Willemse. I explained that I wasn't so sure I would like to come back from work and find my landlady having a cuppa on the garden wall, but then I'm not French.
Oh. Well, did I know that my house had once been part of the chateau estate? And that the chateau owners, three sisters, would come marching into the house to see what the tenants had within without so much as a by your leave. And that they would take what they wanted from the garden. Didn't have a penny to bless themselves with...known as the 'six fesses'.
Translation literal, six buttocks. Translation colloquial, three bare arses.
How long ago was this? Thinking, inter war, perhaps?
Until that new chap bought the chateau when one of the sisters died...a couple of years ago. He got rid of the old tenant and put the house up for sale.
I later learnt from the chap who had bought the chateau that the remnants of the ex owners still tried to invade his premises and that it had taken a long campaign to deter them finally. However, as he admitted, there were by that time only two bare arses to deal with.
The afternoon on the garden wall was the start of a long friendship. They would come to my house, we would have coffee and they would inspect my garden. The cougettes were the first cause of concern.
You're picking them too small.
They were the Elizabeth David approved size and I looked astonished. Wasn't this the difference between the coarse habits of the northlands with their swollen vegetable marrows and the delicacy of French cookery?
No, it was not. The ladies liked them the size of the bloated gherkins which used to leer from jars in fish and chip shops when I was young. Size, I was going to learn, matters in rural France. In order to relieve me of my glut they sent round Martine, the baker's delivery van driver, who, once gherkin size had been reached, took the crop and, to my horror, bottled them! How in blazes could anyone bring themselves to eat a bottled courgette? Worse, she kept coming...I had visions of her store room, with shelves full of things resembling specimen jars containing endless soggy vegetables. Mad scientist stuff.
The green beans came in for the same criticism.
There's nothing on them.
That was the idea. M. Untel, seed representative extraordinaire, had patiently guided me through three bottles of wine and the vegetable catalogue in order to find a variety that was particularly good but must be eaten young...Triomphe de Farcy. I explained and was greeted with hoots of scorn.
Typical man! All right thinking about the flavour...but you want a bit of bulk to make things go round.
An end of row I had missed was leapt upon and proclaimed to be just how it should....the beans were beginning to form, there was a string forming, and they looked a bit knobbly.
That's what you want...like that!
Alice explained that they were good for soup. Chop off the worst bits of the beans, sweat off some potato and onion, throw in the beans and a few tomatoes and stew it all down. Blend it, seive it and there you had a solid soup to keep the family quiet. I made it for years according to her recipe and then one day decided to pick it up with some ground cumin. I have made it with cumin ever since, but it is still Alice's soup.
My conceptions of French food were fast flying through the window and it wasn't the only lesson I was to learn from my friends.
The house needed renovating, and I was telling them what I wanted to do.
Alice shook her head.
You don't want to do anything of the sort. If you start tarting it up, someone - with a significant nod of the head in the direction of the ex-tenant's house down the road - will denounce you!
I must have looked particularly blank. Denunciation was something I thought was a phenomenon of the wartime occupation, and the Germans had been gone some forty years. She explained.
He will tell the tax office that you are spending money on the house and they will investigate you. Freeze your bank account. Make your life hell for years. No one spends money on the outside of their houses.
Well, that accounted for the uniform colour of the shutters in the area....faded blue grey or dog turd brown, depending on the source of army or railway surplus paint available. I had wondered about local taste.......
Again, the chap with the chateau confirmed Alice's warning. Merely by buying the chateau he had aroused suspicion, especially since he had gone bust a few years' back and everything was now in his wife's name. He was still undergoing investigation, three years' later and it went on for some time after that.
Legend after legend was exploded by these two ladies...the occupation, the Resistance, food, wine, the artisan francais....I began to wonder what I had come to, but they provided the first wake up call to stop dreaming and drifting and to learn about the society into which I had thrust myself.
The way of life they had followed was fast dying out. No one now used the pond up the road to do their washing....no sharp eyes would detect that a woman was pregnant because she was not washing out bloody clouts. No one now walked their cows from end to end of the commune along the verges to get good grazing. No one now caught bovine tuberculosis and became crippled as Edith's son had done. Only Papy up the road still cooked in a cauldron over the fire. Life was better, they agreed...no nostalgia for them.
No book could have been a better preparation for getting to grips with the mindset of France and no book could have made me laugh so much while I was learning.
But I will never bottle a courgette. There are limits.