A French toast

All over Paris the word was out. The greedy Englishman is coming. Snails cowered in their shells, eclairs hid behind the macaroons and herds of cows donned false moustaches and raincoats and stampeded to the first Metro out of town. Some got away - I was only there for four days - but it was a long weekend of massive consumption.

I was in town to celebrate both of my parents hitting pensionable age in August, and an extremely good time was had by all. Paris and Parisians were at their best in the cosistently excellent sunshine, and we gawped around the various sights in a high holiday spirits. It really is a bloody brilliant city.

An early highlight was seeing the unmistakeable figure of Jarvis Cocker hopping off the Metro at Pigalle, probably on his way to sample its notorious fleshpots and sex shops. Shortly after that I spent about five minutes staring at this poster trying to work out if it was an obscure pun on the words 'shopping list' (probably not):



The Parisians maintained the national hobby of providing an almost surreal level of poor service. A call to room service asking for a kettle resulted in, after a suitably surly delay, two tea cups being thrust through into our room. The breakfast buffet featured a man allegedly on omlette duty who, having clearly developed a conflicted relationship with the omlette making process, watched the buffet from a porthole window in the kitchen and sauntered out only when no guests were within 30 feet of his spotless frying pan. On our last evening a receptionist at the hotel cheerfully promised to book a taxi for us in an hour. Sixty minutes later the street was conspicuously lacking in cabs and the woman on reception had no record at all of our request. This would have been more understandable if she was not the receptionist from before.

When not beset with Manuel-esque incompetence, we were beseiged with beggars. Parisian street folk have clearly held a meeting on the emotional blackmail of tourists and come away with several key action points:

1) Babies
2) Kittens
3) Puppies
or
4) Babies, kittens and puppies arranged in a drugged pile

I assume that the kittens and puppies at least end up chewing a brick at the bottom of the Seine the moment they hit adolescence. Surely this shamelessness makes as many people less inclined to hand over money as it provokes the desired reaction in others? We also visited a horrfic pet shop straight out of an RSPCA recruitment campaign where dozens of traumatized stares peeked out of tiny glass-fronted boxes. A spaniel puppy had stood in his own muck and was folornly making a dirty protest on the glass of his cage, while nearby enormous game birds clucked in panic as their tiny bird brains endlessly re-learnt the fact that they were stuck in a space too small to turn around in. Hideous stuff, although probably no worse than the pet shops in this country until a few years ago.

One thing the French do have in their favour (and this is something of a gear-mashing segue) is that their enthusiasm for the work of the vastly underappreciated awkward rock genius Luke Haines has kept the old weirdo solvent for years. He is back with a new work of madness in November (21st Century Man/Achtung Mutha) full of songs called things like "Russian Futurists Black Out the Sun", but no music has yet leaked onto the interweb so instead I'll leave you with "Off My Rocker at the Art School Bop" from his last album. Enjoy, and be extra nice to the next animal you meet.