How to survive the French

We love to hate the French - and vice versa. I read an amusing article in the Sunday Times entitled "why can’t the English be more like the French?" and the sub-heading "with the high-speed link to London about to open at last, Hortense de Monplaisir warns her fellow Parisians of the horreurs anglais that await them". I read to find an amusing satire of English mores from a Parisienne's perspective, covering London houses, Boden catalogues, an Englishman's sex life and our love of Marks and Spencer, house price conversation and "me time." Here's a few nuggets:

* It is well known that Englishmen are no good at sex. They go at it in a medieval fashion, blind drunk, ignorant and with no respect for la séduction.

* THE best shortcut to the English Look can be found in the “jolly hockey sticks” Boden mail-order catalogue. Large pale Englishmen are photographed in the country, cavorting with “good sport” girlfriends, with captions that assume the reader has no knowledge or feeling for clothes. He favours large beige trousers to house thighs like tree trunks, while she downs a pint of bitter in a lurid floral cardigan and a camisole “cut to conceal, not to reveal”.

* Documentaries show Londoners happily fleeing their homeland to hide away in some godforsaken corner of la France profonde. Can you imagine a Parisian family abandoning their apartment to begin a new life in a cottage in Wales?

And then I discovered you could buy a whole book on the subject Le Dossier: How to Survive the English!by Sarah Long. I shall buy one.

Comments

[le petit cabinet de curiosites]

This english Book sounds funny !!