Image via WikipediaIn a week which has revealed the French elite pissing all over the French people, I began to wonder what had happened to the great invention of Paris municipal architect, Etienne Vanderpooten, who in 2005 unveiled the French capital's answer to those (men) who urinate in public places.
It was a wall that peed back.
His theory was that a jet of pee is launched at an angle....so if it meets an sloping surface it is fired back at the launch pad, dampening the trousers.
So the Paris municipality tried it out in the 10th arrondissement, where there were supposedly the highest number of offenders.
How they came to make this rating I have no idea.
Arrests?
Municipal agents noting incidents in pocket books?
Justine Putet peering from behind her curtains?
A coefficient?
Did it work?
Well, in 2009 Monsieur Vanderpooten noted that people (men) who used to use the area where the wall had been installed were now pointing Percy elsewhere.
Somewhere where the wall did not fight back.
Paris has built no more such walls, and, as far as I am aware, no other town council tried them out either.
But French walls need protection.
Here in San Jose, in the areas where homeless men sleep in cardboard boxes on the pavements, there is a reek of stale urine that has impregnated the walls and pavements despite the best efforts of shopkeepers and street cleaners to hose things down, and the smell always reminds me of my early trips to France, when you could smell Calais before the ferry docked and park walls stank.
If you wanted to eat your picnic without losing your appetite you sat well into the centre.
I could understand if women were driven to use outdoor facilities....considering the indoor ones on offer where you have to cope with a light which goes out half way through the performance leaving you balanced above a hole in the ground clutching your handbag in case the violent flush carries it away under the door.
No wonder there is so much emphasis on gymnastics in French schools - and on the availability of laxatives in French pharmacies.....you do not need to add constipation to the list of hazards above.
However, French men seem to regard urinating in a public place not to be the resort of the terminally sozzled, unable to distinguish between a street sign and somebody's letterbox, but as a sort of inalienable male right, despite the growing availability of free loos.
There's even a dog loo round the back of the cathedral at Chartres.
And they're quite bold, these men.
I remember years ago in Caen seeing a butcher's shop with a sign on the wall under the display window which proclaimed
'Defense d'uriner'. No peeing.
Who would take a risk of peeing there, in close proximity to an outraged butcher with handy access to meat cleavers?
Clearly enough to make the purchase of the sign worthwhile.
And it's not only in towns.
Holidaying in France, years ago, I had decided to eat my picnic in one of those vast laybys formed when a new road cut off a vast swathe of the old, winding one.
I was alone.
I perched on the bonnet and was happily eating my sandwiches when another car appeared.
A car with a French numberplate.
I cursed, knowing that the French, always wary in case another unexpected German invasion should burst through the Maginot line and be upon them before they could leg it for safety, like to laager up in car parks, and this was no exception.
With unlimited space available, it pulled up just in front of me, manoevring fussily so that I would have to reverse in order to drive on when I'd finished my picnic.
The driver got out, said
'Bonjour, Madame'
and proceeded to open his flies and have a pee.
It certainly did nothing for my cheese sandwich.
However with the 'phlegm' for which we Britanniques are famous in France I finished eating and reached for the thermos flask of coffee.
It would take more than a flash of something 'shocking' to disturb me.....
And, what's more, I'd seen more impressive specimens in saucers of vinegar on shellfish stalls.
No wonder there is so much emphasis on gymnastics in French schools - and on the availability of laxatives in French pharmacies.....you do not need to add constipation to the list of hazards above.
However, French men seem to regard urinating in a public place not to be the resort of the terminally sozzled, unable to distinguish between a street sign and somebody's letterbox, but as a sort of inalienable male right, despite the growing availability of free loos.
There's even a dog loo round the back of the cathedral at Chartres.
And they're quite bold, these men.
I remember years ago in Caen seeing a butcher's shop with a sign on the wall under the display window which proclaimed
'Defense d'uriner'. No peeing.
Who would take a risk of peeing there, in close proximity to an outraged butcher with handy access to meat cleavers?
Clearly enough to make the purchase of the sign worthwhile.
And it's not only in towns.
Holidaying in France, years ago, I had decided to eat my picnic in one of those vast laybys formed when a new road cut off a vast swathe of the old, winding one.
I was alone.
I perched on the bonnet and was happily eating my sandwiches when another car appeared.
A car with a French numberplate.
I cursed, knowing that the French, always wary in case another unexpected German invasion should burst through the Maginot line and be upon them before they could leg it for safety, like to laager up in car parks, and this was no exception.
With unlimited space available, it pulled up just in front of me, manoevring fussily so that I would have to reverse in order to drive on when I'd finished my picnic.
The driver got out, said
'Bonjour, Madame'
and proceeded to open his flies and have a pee.
It certainly did nothing for my cheese sandwich.
However with the 'phlegm' for which we Britanniques are famous in France I finished eating and reached for the thermos flask of coffee.
It would take more than a flash of something 'shocking' to disturb me.....
And, what's more, I'd seen more impressive specimens in saucers of vinegar on shellfish stalls.
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