Here in the land of milk and honey (well, cider and crêpes), it’s amazing how many pizza
restaurants there are. They’re obsessed with pizza here. Maybe it’s a sort of cousin of the crêpe – fast food of a floury sort
with a filling of your choice.
When we have been out spending huge amounts of cash on
kitchen fitments, or plaster board, or any of that DIY essential collection
with which the working man likes to surround himself, we occasionally find
ourselves away from home at lunchtime. In the shopping complex which houses the
biggest bricolage store, there is also a pizzeria, where we sometimes drop in for lunch. Imagine
our disappointment when the last time we went, it was closed for refurbishment
– it’s being renamed and turned into another pizzeria.
So we climbed into the car (He Who Does Everything Around Here
having the taste of pepperoni so close and yet so far) and headed for the next
one along the road, only to find it was full. Everyone else, driven by
deprivation, had headed in the same direction.
We ended up in a bar-brasserie attached to a supermarket, where all the workers go to
eat. This is a guarantee of good food, by the way – so if in doubt, eat like
the French White Van Man. (That ought to translate as Homme de Van Blanc, but we’ll
gloss over that.)
In the frantic atmosphere of shouted orders and whizzing
waitresses, while we awaited our lunch (not pizza), we looked around. There
were the working men with their plates piled high and their carafes of rosé wine (it’s summer: real men do
drink pink) enjoying a good hour’s conviviality with their colleagues. A second
carafe replaced the first, and they ate and chatted and eventually went out
into the rain for a smoke.
This happens a lot: diners leave the table en masse, and
then come back for a dessert and a coffee. They are trusted not to do a runner
without paying the bill.
The thing is that as of July 1st, every car has
to be equipped with 2 self-test breathalyser kits. Really you need one, but if
you use one, then you have none, so you have to have two to make sure you have
one. (Do keep up.)
The idea is that, if you have partaken of a few bevvies with
your lunch or dinner, you can test your suitability to get behind the wheel of
your chosen vehicle, and can stop yourself, and say, No, I have had too much to
drink. I will spend some of my hard-earned cash on a taxi, leave my car in this
rather dodgy car park, and come back for it when I am sober.
However, thinking of the chaps who lunched, and have lunched
that way every day of their working lives, I wonder: at what point are they
going to think, when they have never thought before, that they may have had
more than is wise?
If you attend any country market, you’ll find the local bar
busy, well before lunchtime, and frequently before breakfast time, with men
(and it is mostly men) knocking back a glass of marc, or a beer. There is a
story that in some regions market stall holders will have a bowl of French
onion soup on a winter’s morning, and will wash the bowl out with a glass of
red wine in which they will dip their bread.
Will they reach for the self-test kit?
And if they do, have they got one (or two)? The shops had
sold out long before the date when the law applied. The police can stop you and
fine you 30 euros on the spot if they find you less than fully equipped. If you
are a foreign person on holiday here, you have until November to comply, except
that the police in general do not know this, and will fine you anyway.
I wonder if the kits have a use-by date; and being of a
frugal race, will a French driver get within two days of this, and think, I’d
better use it before it goes off, and find that all his life he has been
drink-driving? He’s more likely to think the kit has failed.
In much the same way as you can take a horse to water but
you cannot make it drink, you can take a Frenchman to a bar-brasserie for lunch but you cannot make him
test his alcoholic intake. Lunch and a
glass of wine – it’s written into the Constitution, surely?
©lms 2012
And I have driven behind some of those Hommes de Van Blanc and their close cousins, the Hommes des Petits Put-puts.
ReplyDeleteHere in Tenerife the level of alcohol allowed is even lower than in Britain, yet every petrol station has a bar-cafe!
The answer is to shop in the mornings.